Don W

I think that we are too much a part of the world at times and this may be why we have to make sense of God

God wanted all the honor and glory for defeating the Midianites, and not to give any of it to the few Israelites who would be chosen to fight in the war against them; and this shrinking of the army

Gideon wants to make sure of his faith in the Lord God so he asks for 2 different signs from the Lord. Gideon wants to make sure his faith is solid in the Lord so he tests him to make sure that the Lord God is with him all the way in this situation, and I really don

The Holy Bible said that the Spirit of the LORD Jehovah came upon Gideon and afterwards, he blew a trumpet to call first his own tribe and then some of the smaller other tribes of Israel to come and to help him fight against the Midianites. What Gideon has in common with the other judges and leaders of his era is that he had the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom upon him as they all had God with them to give them God

Up until this point Joash, Gideon

The Israelites must destroy all their places of sacrifice and worship before the false gods (idols) of the land before God would use men as Gideon to rid them of their enemies and to bring in once more the true worship of God Jehovah. He is a jealous God and won

God saw Gideon as he would become, a mighty warrior and deliverer of Israel from his enemy in this case the Midianites; but Gideon saw himself as a man without any strength in himself and from the smallest, weakest tribe in Israel, and himself from the weakest, least important person in his family. In one way his self-perception was accurate in the fact that he could not become a mighty warrior in his own strength and that he was weak without the Lord helping him to become mighty in God

Gideon was asking God why this was happening to them since it seemed as if they had been abandoned to their Midianite enemies, and here God approaches Gideon and calls him (even though he was hiding from their enemies) a

According to the prophet, the reason for Israel

As noted above, because of Christ’s resurrection, death is no longer the victor nor does it hold anything on us, but when we are resurrected by the Lord, our new bodies will be reunited to our spirits in heaven and we will forever be present with Him in glory!!!!!! Probably, some Christians have lost their active expectation and hope for their resurrection because either they have taken their eyes and hearts off of their final goal, the Lord Jesus Christ, and have become too much a part of the world and not enough looking forward to the new heavens and the new earth; or else they’ve been taught that it has taken so long a time since Christ’s resurrection to His Second Coming, that they no longer have any interest in their own coming resurrection, nor believe that it will really happen. Maybe such people have lost their first love for the Lord Jesus or have never been taught in church about Christ’s resurrection or on the great and coming Resurrection Day. We all need to study God’s Word harder and more thoroughly, and one of the things we need to study harder is to find out about the hope we have in the coming resurrection and entering into God’s glorious heaven where we will be staying there in Jesus’ presence forever and ever. Sure it seems to have taken a long, long time for the Second Coming of Christ and His resurrecting our bodies to be with Him in heavenly glory, but I also remember the verse that states this truth as: “to the Lord, one day is like a thousand years” (or something similar to that) so while we are in a time-constraint here, then waiting for Him to come is hard and sometimes very hard, but once we are in eternity there will be no time-constraints for us and we will know then that, indeed, one day (there with the Lord Jesus) is like a thousand (being on earth and not in His direct presence). So, please come quickly, Lord Jesus!!!!! Amen!

Our resurrected bodies will be just as Jesus’ resurrected body in heavenly glory, that is, they will be perfect, sinless, and spiritual as well as physical bodies. I believe that we will be given our new and everlasting resurrection bodies because we cannot face a thrice holy God in His sinless perfection and as Almighty God without them; in other words, we cannot face our God in our natural mortal bodies, but only in our resurrected and perfect bodies just as Christ Jesus, our Lord and Redeemer, has now in heavenly glory. The point is that we are now growing every day closer and closer to Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but then one day (hopefully soon) we will be given our new resurrection bodies that are as His, and we will be present with Him forever and ever throughout eternity!!!!! Amen!

This is what we hope for to come is in our resurrected bodies we will be present with the Lord forever. Now we groan within ourselves as we eagerly wait for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Our redemptive bodies will be as Jesus’ body was after His resurrection; as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15 changed from corruptible, sinful bodies to perfect incorruptible ones without sin; from dishonored, shameful bodies (again from sin) to glorious, shining, radiant bodies (without any sin like Jesus’ body); weak, deathly bodies changed instantly to powerful, mighty, strong and eternal bodies; and natural, dying bodies of decay and ungodliness to become spiritual, never dying but eternal, and godly bodies able to operate both in the spiritual as well as the physical realms of Christ Jesus’ new creation—His heavenly glory. These changes will all be made instantly as the Lord takes us to be home with Him forever and ever!!!!! Amen!

We Christian believers will all be present with the Lord Jesus immediately after death; but if we die before the great Resurrection of Christ’s Second Coming, then our bodies will be resurrected from our graves and will be instantly changed (we don’t at this time know how they are changed) into some kind of heavenly bodies and be brought into the presence of Christ in heavenly glory. If we happen to still be alive upon His coming again, then our bodies will be changed instantly in the same way and we will enter into His glorious presence with our new heavenly bodies into His glory forever and ever. We await Christ’s resurrecting us as His people either in our graves or still alive here on the earth until He returns for us, but either way, we will still be in glory with Him forever and ever!!!!!!! Amen!

At the Lord Jesus Christ’s second coming to the earth, all of the saints—whether dead or alive—will be gathered together to be in His victorious Army (as well as the angels) as He comes down to the earth in Judgment upon all of the earth for all of the evil-doers who are ever on the face of the earth—He separates the good crop of wheat (all of the believers in Him) from the bad and evil crop of weeds—and brings all of the weeds into Judgment Day for all of their evil and ungodly deeds. This is how the Apostle Paul described Christ’s return or Second Coming in terms of the victorious Roman General who came into Rome with all of their captives and spoils of their victory before he and his Roman army, and went into the city where all the people were celebrating their victory over their enemies. Returning to the picture of Christ’s Second Coming, right after words when Christ Jesus bringing us in His complete and final victory over all of His enemies, including death because of His resurrection (and ours), will judge the heavens and the earth; and then bring in the new heavens and the new earth where we believers will be with Him in His glorious presence forever and ever!!!!! Amen! Halleluja!!!!!!!!

These are characteristics of the believers who trust in the Lord and have the hope of our own resurrection just as our Lord Jesus was here on earth and became our hope because of His resurrection from His death. We are to continue laboring for Him as our Lord and Savior, keep on keeping on in doing what He has given us to do for Him and His honor and glory; and someday these things (whatever they may be) will be met by His declaration to us in heavenly glory, “Well done, faithful servant; now enter into My heavenly glory!” and we will be rewarded by Him for the labor we did for His name’s sake. Amen!

From many verses in God’s Word is His promise of our physical resurrection from the dead just as Jesus was resurrected this Easter morning; and if God said it in His Word, then I believe it!!!!! Jesus is the “firstfruits” and “firstborn” of all creation because He was the first One to be resurrected from the dead and to stay alive forever more, and we who trust and believe in Him will follow in being resurrected from the dead and to stay in our new, resurrected bodies forever and ever to be with Him in His presence in glory!!!!! As my pastor mentioned, others were resurrected from the dead in both the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible, but they lived and died again; but our Lord Jesus was the first One to be resurrected from the dead and stay that way—forever living in His resurrection power in heavenly glory and reigning as the Lord of lords and King of kings! Thank You, Lord/King Jesus, for doing all of this and finishing Your work forever for us who believe and trust in You! Amen.

Our baptism is a New Testament picture of the Old Testament circumcision or the cutting off of the fleshly, worldly nature of believers for the spiritual, “new lives” of the believers (then Jewish believers; now, Christian believers). It is a picture then as well as now of the cutting off of the old life of the world for the new life in Christ; and Christ’s resurrection gives the same picture as does His death on the cross, but adds to it a promise of our resurrection in Christ as well. Christ Jesus has given us as His people His spiritual power through our union with Him; and He has done it all for us because there is basically nothing good in us that can bring this union upon ourselves except by His holy, perfect and Almighty power He has both saved us from our sins as well as many other things, one of which is to be in union with us as well as to bring us into union with each other just as Jesus Christ is in perfect union with His Father and the Holy Spirit. All we can do about this is to give Him all the honor and glory He deserves in worshiping, praising Him, and living our lives, our very existence, to Him as our Lord and Savior. Amen!

If we Christians believe that Christ died only to save us from our sin and disobedience to God, then while we still are living, we wouldn’t have any hope for God resurrecting us from the dead when we die, nor when we die we would just stay in the ground and let the worms and decay eat us and have no hope for a future life with the Lord in heavenly glory. Our whole system of believing in Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior is based on both Christ’s death on the cross for our sins and His resurrection from the dead so we will follow Him into glory; and without both we wouldn’t really be true believers in Him and His Gospel. The Apostle Paul explains this well in 1 Corinthians 15: “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile: you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.” (vs. 17-26). So instead of being unbelieving and unhappy and being pitied among those with no hope, we Christians should be rejoicing and thanking and praising God for the hope God has given us in Christ’s resurrection for our own resurrection from the dead when the Lord puts all His enemies under Him (even the final one of death) and takes us into His Kingdom to be with Him forever and ever! Amen! If we do not believe in Christ’s resurrection but only in His death for our sins, then, as Paul puts it (above) we are the ones to be most pitied because we have no hope in Christ after we die and are buried in the ground. But in believing in both His death and His resurrection, we not only have the hope of our own resurrection that is coming someday, but we know it is going to happen and we will be resurrected as well and brought into His glory. Amen!

Jesus’ ministry would not have had any credibility to it if His resurrection from the dead was not true—especially the talks to His disciples about His death and being raised up from the dead in 3 days—but it all was true and He therefore showed that He is the Suffering Messiah since He had predicted exactly what would happen to Him several times to His disciples and others. His resurrection is God’s seal of approval on Him because it shows that Jesus indeed died for all of the believers in Him for all of our sins; the burial once-for-all times of our sins; and because He was raised from the dead so we believers too are risen from our former dead, sinful lives onto the new, eternal lives that the Lord gives to us. And some day (maybe soon) He will also raise us bodily from physical death to living eternally in our new, resurrected bodies in the presence of our Lord in heavenly glory. So His resurrection is not only a sign of God’s seal of approval on Him but it is a sign of His seal of approval upon us as His children as well. Amen!

All of the many proofs for the resurrection are compelling to me as I believe them all, but in narrowing it down to the physical appearances of Jesus after His resurrection to His disciples, I think that the most compelling one was His appearance to Thomas in which Jesus tells Thomas to put his fingers into the wounds of His hands and side in order to be a believer instead of an unbeliever. There is no record that Thomas put his fingers into Jesus’ wounds but Thomas’ answer to Jesus is one that all believers should answer Him: “And Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” I would use this example and others, and especially the verse that speaks of Jesus’ appearing to 500 brethren, to ensure a friend that Jesus indeed did rise from the dead and now is our resurrected and living Lord and God!!!!! Amen!

As stated above, the disciples were all very disheartened, discouraged, and in hiding from the Jews and the Romans so they wouldn’t be doing anything with the body of Jesus because they believed that He was buried dead and gone. Only after His resurrection appearances to them (and 500 others) did they believe that what Jesus had told them before was absolutely the truth—which He would die and then be resurrected to live forever in 3 days after His death! Hallelujah! The Lord is risen indeed!!!!!

The disciples would not have had any motive to steal Jesus’ body; in fact, they were frightened of the Jews and the Roman soldiers and were in hiding from them when the Lord was resurrected from His death and were not even around the empty tomb until after the resurrection happened. The Roman guard would be motivated to believe and even pay others off in bribes in order to save their own lives because if they were discovered to have fallen asleep, then they would be put to death so they and the Jews had the greatest motivation to make up and spread these lies about the disciples “stealing” Jesus’ body instead of Him being resurrected from the dead. I am not sure what Joseph of Arimathea believed because the Bible is not clear in that—depends really upon whether he was or became a Christian or not because if he did believe and found the empty tomb he gave to have Jesus buried there, then he would of disbelieved the thief theory and believed the truth of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as a believer in the Lord. Those who believe this lie, by the way, cannot say anything about the sealed tomb or who was strong enough to roll away the large stone at the opening of the tomb. The Word of God states that angels rolled the stone away because even many men were not strong enough to do so.

Q1. What do you think motivates liberal “Christian” scholars to explain away the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ? Why would they claim that it is unhistorical more than some other event in the first century? http://www.joyfulheart.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=576 I would have thought that the author would have put quotation marks around the word Christian in naming these so-called scholars because there is absolutely nothing in them that is truly Christian! They don’t believe in the true Jesus Christ of His resurrection or the miracles He performed on the earth so they are still walking in darkness and unbelief; and that is exactly what their whole philosophy or world-view is based upon are the lies of the father of darkness, Satan. They chose to believe lies and to live in darkness rather then to believe the truth and to live in the Light of the Scriptures; and someday they will have to answer to the real and living Savior God for their unbelief and lies, unless, of course, they repent from their unbelief and turn to the true, living, and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ and believe and trust in Him as truly their Lord and Savior. These people remind me of what the Apostle John said so long ago in his 1st letter: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.” (1 John 2:19). What an adequately precise description of these so-called scholars of today who claim to be “Christian” but don’t believe in the true and living Lord Jesus Christ!

Jesus tells us to pray in secret so that He gets all the glory in hearing and answering our prayers, and we don’t get prideful nor take any credit at all for our prayers because they come from a humbled heart rather then a proud and sinful one. If public prayers are done out of pride for one’s eloquence and prideful abilities to give these prayers for men’s applause, then they are wrong and will not go beyond receiving men’s approval; but if they are done out of a sincere and humbled heart for our poverty in spiritual things, then God will not only hear His own peoples’ prayers, but He will bless us with His tremendous answers to them. Flowery prayers hinder the disciples’ spiritual growth and development by their showing off their pride and eloquence, as the “pick of the litter” so-to-speak, to each other and not to their heavenly Father and for His honor and glory. We may have the same problem—especially in praying publicly in church or at a meeting—and this is something we all have to be aware of such leading to pride and showing our eloquent speech in our prayers before others. It is much easier, I think, and more rewarding (from God’s hand) to shut myself in my room, away from everyone else and other distractions, and then to make my requests be known to God our heavenly Father who answers our secret prayers with His blessings upon them; then it is to pray in public and not know whether or not I am doing so in the right attitude of spirit before the Lord so I rarely pray in public meetings. But it is not so easy for an ordained minister to choose one over the other so they have to beware of their attitude in praying in public and be very careful of the words they use in their prayers before others. We all must as Christians make sure all of our prayers, whether secret or in public, are the true heart-requests led by the Holy Spirit, and are all to glorify the Lord our God and never for ourselves.

These verses influence me to give to the poor in secret and as not seen by men and women around me; but we must also be careful in giving to them that they don’t use the gifts in order to carry on their sinful addictions, such as an alcoholic using the money to buy more alcohol, etc. That is one reason (among many) that I usually give money to the poor through my local church that reaches out and provides our money to them through other agencies such as the homeless rescue shelter, etc. If I were directly asked by a poor, homeless person to provide money to them, I would take them to the nearest store and buy some food instead for them; and then direct them to the nearest rescue mission or church which could provide for their needs much better then I could. I have been poor myself and a branch of the church I now attend in a different part of California helped provide for me my need of food and shelter as well as some training I needed to get another job; and I have really appreciated their efforts for the help I needed at the time. That is another reason why I believe it is best to provide for the poor through a church, which is open to providing for them, and does so as part of their ministry. There are several reasons why we don’t give more to the poor—some of them valid reasons such as the economy downfall (right now) and our requirements to provide first to our family and their needs; but there are other reasons not so valid such as greed and holding onto our money for the future, etc. and these ungodly attitudes only God can and will change in us so we will provide more of our money to the poor and needy, both here and in other parts of the world (through missionaries we know who are working with them, etc.). We can do such things with our gifts so that only God knows what we’re doing, and He will get all the honor and glory from our giving gifts to others who are in need. Amen!