Blessed Forever

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 01:24-25, NKJV).

In these two words, “blessed forever”, Paul provides us with the only proper response to God. A perfect way to understand what he means is to look at how the NIV translates it: He is to be forever praised.

God is worthy of our praise, and being honored as God, for all eternity. There is no diminishment over time, there is no reason ever to do less, and it brings to mind the magnificent ways the Bible reveals to us the character and essential nature of our Creator, especially in relation to us, His creatures.

I have listed below just a few of these. Note how and what God is... It is clear why we will praise Him forever. These are things about God that are vital for you to know, and to keep close to your heart, for the world and the enemy will try to take them from you, but they cannot.

“God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? - Numbers 23:19

“For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. - Deuteronomy 4:24

‘for the LORD your God is He who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.’ - Deuteronomy 20:4

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” - Joshua 1:9

God is my strength and power, And He makes my way perfect. - 2 Samuel 22:33

...for our God is greater than all gods. - 2 Chronicles 2:5

...for the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn His face from you if you return to Him.” - 2 Chronicles 30:9

God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against Him and prospered? - Job 9:4

God is a just judge, And God is angry with the wicked every day. - Psalms 7:11

God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. - Psalms 46:1

For God is the King of all the earth; Sing praises with understanding. - Psalms 47:7

Behold, God is my helper; The Lord is with those who uphold my life. - Psalms 54:4

When I cry out to You, Then my enemies will turn back; This I know, because God is for me. - Psalms 56:9

I will wait for You, O You his Strength; For God is my defense; - Psalms 59:9

In God is my salvation and my glory; The rock of my strength, And my refuge, is in God. - Psalms 62:7

Our God is the God of salvation; And to GOD the Lord belong escapes from death. - Psalms 68:20

My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. - Psalms 73:26

For God is my King from of old, Working salvation in the midst of the earth. - Psalms 74:12

For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly. - Psalms 84:11

Exalt the LORD our God, And worship at His holy hill; For the LORD our God is holy. - Psalms 99:9

Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; Yes, our God is merciful. - Psalms 116:5

The king answered Daniel, and said, “Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret.” - Daniel 2:47

The LORD God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills... - Habakkuk 3:19

“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” - John 4:24

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? - Romans 8:31

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. - 1 John 4:16

In addition to all these magnificent truths, there is one other that never ceases to speak to my heart:

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” (Genesis 15:1, NKJV).

God is not a man and does not lie. He is a consuming fire and is with you wherever you are for all time and beyond time. He is your strength and power and is greater than all gods. He is gracious and merciful, wise and mighty. God is a just and righteous judge, and is, and always will be, your refuge and strength. He is the King of all the earth, and your King. He is your helper. He is for you and will always be your defender. He is your salvation and glory. Only through Him will you escape the bonds of death. He is light and protection. He is holy and merciful. He is your shield and your reward.

He is all these things for you. He loved you so much (He IS love) that He sent His Son to die so that you will live forever.

I want you to know who your God is, beloved, so that no one deceives you with empty words or the futility of the philosophies and imaginations of mere men.

Love,

Dad

Creature Worship

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 01:24-25, NKJV).

Rather than acknowledging the truth of a Creator, rebellious humankind have exchanged that truth for “the lie”, and in consequence have inexplicably, and historically, worshiped the work of the Creator (the creature) rather than the Deity whose power is the source and origin of all Causality.

This creature worship includes not only living things, but the planet itself, investing it with attributes of life and consciousness that flies in the face of all demonstrable fact and experience. This break with reality would be labeled insanity in a sane world, but in ours it is termed, “spiritual”.

Know this, when God is purposefully divorced or exiled from our thinking, vacuous irrationality ensues. I know from personal experience.

Gaia (Mother Earth) Worship is an example of this, and is as prevalent today in some circles as it was millennia ago. There are otherwise intelligent men, women and children who have forsaken God, replacing Him in their irreverence with an inanimate, non-living lump of rock orbiting a nuclear furnace.

Certain proponents of AGW (Anthropological Global Warming – the unproven theory that human activity is changing the planet's climate) are unapologetic Gaia Worshipers. Their sometimes unexpressed, but implicit belief system is that Mother Earth would be infinitely better off without human beings (presumably, except for themselves).

The Bible teaches the diametric opposite: that earth was created expressly for humanity and that we are to take dominion over it. Before the Fall in Eden, that stewardship was expressed as Adam “tending” (not exploiting or ravaging) the Garden. The intent was for humans to use their God-given intelligence and abilities to responsibly use planetary resources to maintain and imprint (put a uniquely human stamp on) earthly life.

I can only imagine what this would have entailed without sin having corrupted the plan. Perhaps ancient mythical tales of magnificent and almost magical kingdoms and realms comes closest to what it might have been, but the reality is quite different.

Fallen humanity has taken this directive of dominion and perverted it. Instead of responsible stewardship, there is exploitation, instead of “tending”, there is destroying. So the impulse of Creature Worshipers, while utterly without foundation, is nonetheless understandable. It is an expression of that divinely instilled desire to have the earth be as God intended.

Ironically, while this impulse comes from the Creator, its outworking in this pagan religion is the denial of the very God who made the heavens and earth and all the creatures in it.

There is a profound spiritual principle involved in this outcome, and it's this: the most brilliant human intellect becomes imbecilic without God. And the corollary is this: the most noble human impulse, without God, becomes idiotic.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that this replacement of the Creator with His creature is done through irremediable ignorance. It is willful arrogance and pride. The heavens themselves declare the glory of God, unmistakably. It takes work to look at the complexities of existence and attribute them to time and chance, or to the Universe itself, rather than to a Transcendent Intelligence and Power.

But what alternatives do the pagans or naturalists have? If they let the evidence of Creation speak for itself it can only lead to God, and that is entirely unacceptable.

As Harvard biology professor Richard Lewontin, speaking for the scientific community, famously remarked, “It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Note that last remark: we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

And materialism, like Earth Worship, is just another instance of substituting that which is created – in this case matter and energy – for its unfathomable Source.

All this would all be excusable except for two things: one, every human being is endowed with an inherent certainty that there is Something beyond him or herself. This is seen by the innate desire each of us has to worship that something – either imaginary gods, intellect, materiality, or ourselves in some mystical sense. Secondly, God's self-revelation, both through the canvas of existence, and the gift if His Word, leaves us without excuse.

As Paul wrote in a previous verse... Professing to be wise, they became fools.

Love,

Dad

The Lie

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 01:24-25, NKJV).

It is interesting that Paul uses a definite article to refer to a singular falsehood that humankind has exchanged for the truth of God. Whatever outward form of that lie was prevalent 2000 years ago, I believe its essential nature has been the same since shortly after the Fall of Man. It's this: God is not the Sovereign Ruler and Author of Life and Creation.

Today that falsehood is encapsulated in the Theory of Evolution and it has powerful deceptive properties and ramifications. For me, it was the single most significant obstacle to my becoming a believer. Evolution, along with its corollary of Long Ages directly opposed the plain truth of Scripture, especially the foundational book of Genesis.

Do not think that Evolution was invented by Darwin. The first recorded instance of it was by the ancient Greeks centuries before the birth of Christ, and the bedrock of its appeal then and now is Materialism, and Naturalism. Its seductive delusion is that nothing exists that is not material (meaning there is no spiritual realm and therefore no life after death), and the only things that can exist come from Nature (and thus nothing Supernatural – like Deity – is allowed in the picture).

I have discovered in life that these two basic premises, Materialism and Naturalism, actually underpin the unspoken philosophy of many who consider themselves religious. By this I mean that many people who claim to believe in God, hold a kind of unexamined belief, based on their own imaginations and largely materialistic upbringings, that conceives of God as having invented the Universe and then having mostly sat back and let things unwind.

This is Deistic thinking at heart, along the lines of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, with a token mixture thrown in of conditional Supernatural favoritism bestowed by “the man upstairs” upon those He favors. This is not Christianity, and for most purposes of living, is not very far removed from purely Naturalistic Evolution.

And the pervasive Lie, is the same: God is not the God revealed in the Bible, who is the Creator, Judge and Sovereign Ruler over all that is.

Today, most professional scientists are atheistic Evolutionists. It is a virtual prerequisite. And the vast majority of College graduates are, as well. This is in large part due to the fact that The Lie of Evolution is the only thing allowed to be taught in government schools.

Make no mistake, Evolution, with its insistence on Long Ages and Survival of the Fittest, is a philosophy that enables unspeakable evil. It views Life, including human life made in the image of God, as an accident of chance over time, and thus no different in value from any other life.

It facilitates genocide and ethnic cleansing, and what the Nazi's termed “Life Not Worthy of Life”. It makes abortion not only acceptable, but despairingly logical. It gives permission for any and all human behavior because it removes God's transcendent authority completely from all moral equations.

Evolution is a brilliant and effective scheme of the enemy, and plays right into mankind's inherent rebellious hatred of God, and self-justifying pride.

I have heard the following said by “highly educated” men. “The problem with the world is all these religions and all the violence associated with people trying to impose their religious beliefs on others.”

This is demonstrably and historically false, especially within the last 100 years. In reality, far more people have been killed – millions more – by atheistic communist states than all the “religious wars” throughout history combined. Furthermore, in the world today there is only one “religion” that proclaims conversion or death (the ultimate imposition), and that religion is most emphatically NOT true Biblical Christianity.

We will see what this reductionist view of human life leads to more thoroughly in subsequent posts, but know this, it is impossible to logically and consistently believe in the salvation offered through Jesus Christ unless the book of Genesis is understood to be literal history.

To many this is an utterly shocking statement, instantly relegating me to a lunatic fringe of religious fundamentalism, but do not read into my words in the previous paragraph more than their literal meaning. I am not saying that those who deny Genesis but believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are doomed to Hell.

I am saying that their belief in Jesus and the need for Him as Savior is inconsistent with a non-literal view of the origins of the Universe, humankind, and sin as recounted in Genesis. Thankfully, consistency is not a requirement for salvation, only sincere faith in the Person of Jesus Christ.

But consider this as well. It is obvious that Jesus viewed Genesis as actual history. Examine His statements in the gospels about Creation, Adam and Eve, sin and marriage. Consider also the fact of His Deity (a necessary tenet of true Christianity).

If the Lord Jesus rejected The Lie of Evolution, and embraced Special Creation, then so should we.