What I Believe…

Beginning a Bible blog only seems appropriate if I actually start with a declaration of what I believe, so here:

In the beginning, there was nothing, only God.

Out of His love, and through what we’ve come to call The Big Bang, He created everything we know (and don’t know).  Not in the forms as we see them now, but setting in motion their development.  As the sub-atomic particles dip, dive, and swirl into and out of various combinations, ever-changing throughout history, the world as we know it has – evolved – from the primordial mass that God first used to bring life forward from the nothingness.

As the natures of the atoms reified God’s vision for Life, stars and planets coalesced, rocks cooled, rain fell, and water incubated cells. Plant roots broke the rocks, generations and iterations of animals accelerated the taming of a hostile environment with the build-up of soil, and in a final exclamation point to the grandest crescendo of all time, God created Man.

God, in His infinite love, gave Man the ability to choose: live with Him, or live apart from Him.  Led astray by the false promises of an evil angel, Adam and Eve made the choice that would affect every one of their billions of descendants – they chose that humanity should live apart from God.  And for a time, evil reigned

Being of too much love to abandon His creation, God began a plan to save humanity and invited us back to Him in a way that still allowed Him to be “just” in His condemnation of evil and sin.  Through Abraham and the Jews, God established a holy beachhead on Earth, setting apart a people unto himself.

Establishing the price of sin to be death, commensurate in sacrifice with the level of sin, God Himself came to Earth and offered Himself as a perfect, holy, and sinless offering to redeem every human being of the sinful inheritance shackled to them at birth by Adam and Eve.  To regain communion with God, men and women must only confess Jesus as the Son of God and ask forgiveness for their wrongdoings.  Good works should be done as an outward sign of a well-intentioned heart, but salvation through Jesus is a gift, not a reward.

At some time, the Earth as we know it will disappear.  The faithful will live with God, warmed by His gentle light and shrouded by His love.  Those living without God will be destroyed, and with them all desires to do evil, all hurt, all pain, and in a sense, anything short of blissful love and happiness.

Amen.