All That Really Matters October 2, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, Faith, god, Jesus
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Back when I was an atheist, and I believed this is all there is I was passionately interested in politics, economics, and current events. I was committed to working for my side and to defeating the other guy. Now that I’m a born-again child of God, a citizen of Heaven, and merely a pilgrim here[1] I follow the ever-changing kaleidoscope of civic events more like a soap opera.
Yes, I understand that within this bubble we know as the space-time continuum the ins and outs of who’s up and who’s down actually make a difference. For example, it will have a profound impact on the United States whether we hand the government over to socialist revolutionaries or if we deliver it to capitalists. However, in the grand scheme of things this makes about as much difference as which queen bee is laying eggs in which hive.
I came to this level of a wokeness after years of Bible study, prayer, and fellowship with God. Just as a caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis and becomes a butterfly, I believe humans go through much the same process. Only instead of a two-stage process like a butterfly we go through three stages.
First, we’re a fetus (in Latin fetus means little one) for nine months. Second, we’re born into this world and live here for as long as we do. And finally, we pass from this world into eternity. Let’s see: nine months, maybe 120 years, eternity. Which stage do you think is the real deal? The nine months prepare us for the 120 years and the 120 years prepare us for eternity. Two of these stages are merely steppingstones for the main event. Therefore, I contend that humans are in fact eternal beings who pass through two stages of development to become what we were created to be.
All that really matters in this stage of our development is the direction we’re facing when we leave it. Are we looking to God and putting our faith in Him? Or are we looking to the world still grasping for all it has to offer? Think of it this way: if when we’re a fetus inside our mother the umbilical cord is wrapped wrong or if there is a chromosomal problem, we could enter life with some sort of handicap that we will spend the next 120 years dealing with. In the same way if we enter eternity facing in the wrong direction, we will spend eternity dealing with the ramifications of that choice.
From my personal Christian perspective here’s the 411 on how we turn from the world and face in the right direction.
Everyone can see that this world is broken. Evil runs rampant. The bad are rewarded. The good are crushed. Sickness, poverty, and oppression are on display in every direction. If God is good, why would He create such a horror show?
The easy answer is He didn’t. When He was done with creation He paused and looked around. Surveying all that He had done, and it was “Good.”[2]
Then man turned away from God, embraced Satan, and God cursed the world while at the same time promising that a Savior would come who would step on Satan’s head and deliver humanity from the grip of the evil we chose.[3]
The price was a sinless sacrifice, the good for the bad.[4] No human could do it because none of us has ever or could ever live a sinless life. Therefore, God sent His only Son, Jesus, to be incarnated as a human, live a sinless life, and then offer himself up as a sacrifice for us all. After His sacrifice Jesus descended into hell and as an eternal being suffered the punishment for every sin that had ever or would ever be committed. Then He was born-again in the very heart of darkness, triumphed over Satan, and God raised Him from the dead.[5] Jesus led all those who had died waiting for this deliverance out of Satan’s grasp[6] and emerged on the third day with the keys to death and hell.[7]
After spending forty days instructing His disciples on how to carry the message of the best news ever to the world He ascended into heaven. Ten days later the Holy Spirit arrived and filled the new believers so that from then on, they were no longer earth-bound humans. They were instead wall-to-wall God twice-born children of the Most High God on a pilgrimage here with a mission[8] to share their experience to be witnesses.[9]
There it is in a nutshell. The word Gospel means “Good News” in old English. So, when you get filled to overflowing with all the bad news the world vomits up every day why not turn to the good news.
Don’t worry about what you can’t do anything about. Do you think if you missed one news broadcast or if you stopped watching them forever it would make any difference to what is happening on the stage of the world, or would the actors just keep reading their lines and playing their parts? The bad news impacts us more than we can ever impact it.
It’s like a joke making the rounds:
An English asks an Amish fellow, “Why isn’t the COVID rampaging through your communities?” The Amish fellow says without hesitation, “Because we don’t have any TVs.”
The TVs, radios, magazines, and papers may carry the news, but only the Bible has the Good News. It all comes down to choices: “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”[10] In other words no matter what, we’re all going to serve somebody. It will either be any one of the countless gods of this world or the one true God.
How do you make that choice? Is it by joining the right church? Is it by attending the correct services, worshipping in a certain way, or following any of the endless rules the world invents to complicate and build a barrier between us and the God who wants us to join His family? No! Not only has He made it simple He has made it easy. All we need to do is confess Jesus as the Lord of our life and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead and we will be saved.[11] That’s it. Do that and we have joined God’s family. Then we can pour ourselves into His Word so that its life-giving Spirit will fill us and recreate us.
Forget about the bad news and study the Good News instead. Let’s “Eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive, latch on to the affirmative, and don’t with mess mister in between.”
Or to put it another way, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”[12]
[1] 1 Peter 2:11-12
[2] Genesis 1:31
[3] Genesis 3
[4] Isaiah 53:1-5
[5] Colossians 2:15
[6] Ephesians 4:8
[7] Revelation 1:17-18
[8] I Peter 2:11-12
[9] Acts 1:1-11
[10][10] Joshua 24:15
[11] Romans 10:9
[12][12] Hymnal.net, accessed 5-15-21, https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/645
Who Are We September 25, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, god, Jesus, Salvation
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Who can ever know us better than we know ourselves? Obviously, the answer is no one. Yet most people spend much of their life in frustrating attempts to figure it out. We’re like a man who looks into a mirror and as soon as he walks away forgets what he looks like.
I have that experience in an outward way daily as my inner man who feels like he’s in his mid-thirties remembers that outwardly I appear for some reason to be in my late sixties.
I’ve heard people say that life can be confusing because it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. I always feel bad for these people because they haven’t discovered there is a set of instructions for being a human being on the planet Earth. It’s called the Bible and it’s a really good book.
If we ever decide that this one book was in fact inspired by God in a literal sense, that its words are a God breathed revelation written and preserved through thousands of years just so that we can learn the meaning of life, the universe, and everything and no, it isn’t 42. It can change our life. At least I know it did for me.
You see, I’m one of those radicals who believe to the deepest depths of my soul the Bible is God’s Word for humanity. I have a simple belief … God said it … I believe it … that’s it.
This life changing revelation teaches us God created a perfect world. Man was given the keys to the kingdom and made God’s overseer. We turned away from God and gave the keys to the Devil. God is a just God. He wanted us to have dominion over his creation but we gave it away so He couldn’t just take it from the one we’d given it to and give it back to us.
Imagine our Daddy bought us a brand-new car. He wanted us to have the car. He wanted us to enjoy the car. He gave us the keys and the title. It’s our car. Then we give the car to someone else. That isn’t who Daddy wanted to have the car, but we gave it this other person. We gave them the keys and signed the title over to them. Now it’s their car. It was legal transaction so it wouldn’t be fair or just if Daddy just took the car from that other person and gave it back to us.
It’s the same way with God’s creation. By turning our backs on God and following the devil we turned the whole thing over to our enemy and we became his slaves. That’s what original sin is all about. We inherit the sin nature from our father Adam then each of us adds to the burden of sin on our own. The sin from the first to the last must be paid for if God is to return the title deed to creation back to humanity. And the only way for that to happen was for someone to carry all that sin through a perfect life, pay the penalty for sin, which is physical and spiritual death, descend into hell, and take the keys back from the devil. No human could ever do it because none of us has ever or could ever live a sinless life.
So God had to do it himself. He became flesh. He lived a sinless life. His death on the cross was a physical and spiritual sacrificial substitution for all of us. He went down into hell. He took the keys away from the devil. He rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven. And now as the new Adam of a new human race He declares any who believe in Him to be His children which means we can stand in the presence of God without any feelings of guilt or shame. We are completely forgiven and made sinless because we are united with Jesus through faith. When God looks at us, He sees Jesus. He gives us back the keys.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Who are we? We are who He says we are. We’re His children. We’re living stones built up into a spiritual temple where He himself dwells. He says if we confess Jesus as Lord, acknowledge Him as the boss of our life and believe God raised Him from the dead we will be saved. He doesn’t say we might be saved. He doesn’t say we could be saved. He says we WILL be saved. Believe it. Receive it. Live it. Walk out of this vale of tears and into the light of the Son of His love.
Who are we? You can be anyone you want to be. As for me and my house we will follow the Lord … we will be who He says we are … His children.
The 5th Law of Thermodynamics February 10, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Born-again, Christianity, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus Christ, Jesus is Lord, Laws of thermodynamics, Salvation
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Whether we call it “Flipping the switch,” or “Mashing the button,” when we do it, we expect the light to come on. But if there’s no power all we end up with is a futile finger exercise. Even a flashlight needs batteries. No power no light. It is the power of the sun’s thermonuclear inferno that provides the natural light illuminating life on earth.
In the arcane world of physical cosmology and astronomy the debate about Dark Matter and Dark Energy consumes the attention of the best and the brightest even though this has about as much every day walking around relevance as the ancient question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” We’re told that which is invisible is measurable. Some scientists go so far as to say that only 4% of the universe is physically observable, made up of matter. The remaining 96% they say is dark or invisible.
We’re told if these unknown and unknowable quantities aren’t factored into our calculations our accepted laws of physics, at the universal and the infinitesimal ends of the scale, don’t work. They just appear to work within the observable bubble scientists call “The Space-Time Continuum” or as we call it out here in the work-a-day world, “Reality.”
In other words, though these intricate Laws of Physics may look and are presented as rock solid, they aren’t. It’s good to remember these and all Laws of Science are just theories constantly in search of either affirmation or repudiation.
What this tells us about the reality we observe is that science says it isn’t what it seems. If the Dark Matter – Dark Energy theory is correct most of what is – is invisible to us. If it isn’t true, we’re relying on science based upon physics which we know is incomplete, imprecise, and fundamentally wrong. If the foundation is bad how can the structure built upon it be good? If the basic assumptions of science are faulty how can we trust it to reveal the universe around us?
Some people believe that science is based on fact and religion is based on faith. When we learn that once quantum physics intersects with normal physics and once Dark Matter and Dark Energy collide with observable matter the claptrap of the modern scientific edifice is shown to be a house of cards built upon multiple leaps of faith disguised as logical assumptions.
If some want to embrace theories as dogma acting as the Apostate Apostles of Scientism preaching a religion of materialism that is their right. However, I do find the way the “If I can’t feel it, see it, or hear it; it isn’t real,” crowd twist themselves into prattling pretzels over the problem of Dark Matter and Dark Energy extremely interesting.
The many atheists in the religion of materialism tell us Christians that believing in a world we can’t see all around us making that which we can see possible is drivel. At the same time, they use their incantation of equations to prove that the world we see is made possible by that which we cannot see. One of the most fascinating phenomena I’ve ever witnessed is the fact that these evangelists of physical evidence can’t see the hypocrisy of their cult-like adherence to their anti-deity dogma in the face of believing and espousing basically the same set of facts.
Just a few questions for the High Priests of Pragmatism:
If the universe has an end than it must have had a beginning. Every beginning has a cause. What was the primary cause of the universe?
Or, if the universe is never ending doesn’t that in and of itself prove the existence of eternity?
If the universe is infinite yet expanding where would something that is infinite expand?
If the universe is finite yet expanding into what is it expanding?
Our solar system is powered by the sun. Without the sun there would be no planets, no life. If our sun was not there, there would be no here.
I am speaking of physical power, physical light, and physical life.
If we turn our attention to the spiritual reality, God is the source of everything. And Jesus Christ as the Son of God and His incarnation is the perfect physical expression of God. Coming to sinful man Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven where He is seated right now on the right hand of God the Father. If we repent of our sins accept Jesus as our Savior, He will cleanse us of our sin nature and unite us with Himself. We will become one with all other believers and one with God.
Jesus is the power of God. And without that power there is no light and we walk in darkness. For Jesus is the light of the world. He is the light that shines through the darkness and the darkness can’t understand it. We are descended from our father Adam , and we enter this world with a sin nature separated from God whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. Unless and until we turn from the material world and embrace the spiritual, we cannot even understand what has just been said. It will be gibberish, the ranting of a fool. For the spirit cannot be understood with the natural mind.
Forsake the world of darkness and embrace the light. Leave the City of Man and be translated to the City of God.
The Laws of Thermodynamics are:
The Zeroth Law: If two systems are both in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.
The First Law: The energy gained (or lost) by a system is equal to the energy lost (or gained) by its surroundings.
The Second Law: Natural processes tend to go only one way, toward less usable energy and more disorder.
The Third Law: A system’s entropy approaches a constant value as its temperature approaches absolute zero.
Even in the natural scientists say that the visible is dependent upon the invisible. That is based on their conjectures. Christians base their beliefs on the revelation of God. Though He reveals Himself in all creation we cannot think our way to Him. We cannot deduce Him or imagine Him apart from His revelation for He is eternal, infinite, omnipotent, and omnipresent. These are all attributes beyond the grasp of our finite minds. However, because He has chosen to reveal Himself to us in and through Christ, we know the material is dependent upon the spiritual.
Scientists say there are three laws, but we all see four. Which brings me to, the 5th Law of Thermodynamics: No power no light. Turn from the beggarly forces of the physical and embrace the infinite power of God and let the light of Christ blaze forth in your spirit. Then let your life become a beacon as that light illuminates the world around you.
No Jesus no peace. Know Jesus know peace.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
