A Christian Viewpoint

13Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. 14“And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15“Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. 16“But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
The Holy Bible, New King James Version, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.) 1982.

So I had a small epiphany this afternoon. I was watching John Hagee on television. The subject doesn’t matter. What he quoted did. There is that passage above from Genesis 15 where God is talking to Abraham about the children of Israel going to spend 400 years in Egypt. What I found strange and did not understand was the use of the term “in the fourth generation” they will come out. It was one of those things I could not understand. A generation is 100 years long? It is one of those things that you read and put off understanding to the future.

Oh yes, the epiphany? It doesn’t matter why God calls it “the fourth generation.” It is that he does. It puts me in remembrance of what a writer of an epistle wrote “that one year is as a thousand and a thousand as one year.” Something is simply because God calls it that way.

So what does this have to do with anything for us today?

Remember that Jesus talking to his disciples on the night he was betrayed said to them that “this generation” that would see the signs he just talked about would not pass away till everything was fulfilled. I have seen many people try to figure out the length of this generation. Take all those listed in Matthew’s genealogy and divide that into the years that passed. Do the same for Luke’s genealogy. Or take three score and ten. Or?

The first use of time and generation is Genesis 15. Why not simply take what God has said and use that for the time scale. If Israel became a nation in 1948. If Jerusalem was taken back in the 1967. Using one of those dates as the start of the prophetic clock then Jesus could be returning anytime before 2048 or 2067. That certainly stretches out the clock.

So what does this mean? We could have a much longer time to wait for the appearing in the sky. The rapture could be after I die. Yet it is during this generation. Could be anytime soon…

So keep looking up.

I got an email today from someone having a problem with a page I wrote titled He who comes to God must believe that He is.

This is what he wrote:

it all started out so good but, how do you get “And these three are one, and are each one, God” ? how do you deal with these scriptures: 1.here o israel the lord thy god is one lord.: 2. one lord one faith and one baptism.:3. one god and father of all.:4 and his name shall be called wonderful……….everlasting father.5.god is spirit and they that worship him must do so in spirit and in truth. my point is i do believe that you must first believe that god is but after you need to seek god for the understanding of who is. i know that some say the trinity is mystery but it’s one that we should not even have to try to solve because to understand the oneness of god is to truly learn of gods’ love. he said he looked for a man and could not find one so his own arm has gotten him this salvation. no greater love than this that a man would lay down his life for his friend. we know god is not a man but he took upon himself the form of a servant and humbled himself even to death on the cross. isaiah writes i even i am he and besides me there is no savior. i conclude that trinity makes no sense at all and to believe in one would cause us to question who is the father of jesus the holy ghost that overshadowed mary or the father that said this is my beloved son in whom i’m well pleased.

Here was my response:

Thanks for writing. I read your email with interest. The scriptures you have used below are all valid. I will not dispute with you what they mean. A simple reading explains what each of those references mean. I accept what they say.

In my page that you read I also use scriptures. I will honestly expect you to read them with the same determination you used when pointing out your own scriptures. I have laid out for you the scriptures themselves and then I go further and point out to you what they mean to me. The conclusion I wrote about is the one that I believe is right.

Does this mean that I think you are wrong? No, not according to the scriptures you have used. The question then becomes; “what of the scriptures that Joe quotes?” In the beginning was the Word etc… is John’s way of saying that the Jesus he saw in the flesh is the same person who said… “let there be light” in Genesis.

The question you need to ask yourself is, “do I use all the scriptures to understand what God says about himself?” I know this is a hard question to honestly answer. I have struggled through years of searching to understand “the mystery.” There came a point for me when I had to simply believe what the scriptures revealed… all of them… and accept that your core statement “hear O Israel, the Lord is One” and one of mine “in the beginning… the Word was God” and “became flesh.” Do they seem at odds with each other? Of course they do. Does that mean one or the other is wrong? No, they are both right.

I would like you to know the Jesus that I know. That comes from revelation. Not because I am smart or clever or specially holy, I am not, it comes from God the Father. I needed to stretch “my faith” to accept what the bible declares. Read my page again and then pray.

Like the scriptures say, “God is the rewarder of those that diligently seek him” (which is the next page in the series).

May God bless your continued search for the truth… wherever He may lead you.

I am interested in knowing what you think on the subject. Ahem… play nice (as Patti says).