come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”; Ephesians 6:17 “the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which the word of God.”; Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Much remains to unfold by the divisiveness of the word of God mentioned in the bible, most notably Christ’s return which will mark the fulfillment of history mentioned in the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and finally the book of Revelations—most touted historically for its mark of the beast presented by the number 666: “Here is wisdom, let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six” (Revelation 13:18). Many interpretations and predications have surfaced throughout history by which it’s believed “666” will be among the last signs that beckons the return of Christ. This number I have seen recurrently in my life by no human coincide, through personal associations and relationship that recalled early memories of my Christian education and transpired my return to Christ. Nevertheless, I leave the more speculative prophecies to the tests of time. I believe it is far more important to hone in on the more critical aspects of Christianity, most importantly Christ, and His impertinence to salvation. I have, therefore, been made to believe that God goes through extraordinary measures to reveal Himself to those whom He calls. My testimony speaks to this truth, having redefined my understanding of Him as Savior—not only as a God—through personal experiences, where God’s hands was unmistakably present. Surpassing boundaries and limitations of manmade religions and rituals, a life in Christ is a transition by the Holy Spirit from the mere acts of being Christian to a very close personal relationship with Christ. Christ overshadows our lives on earth, giving tremendous clarity and perspective, distinguishing between right and wrong, with strides in personal revelations that change our core values from the world’s to those of Christs. Moreover, Jesus’ life revealed God’s divine secret ordained before creation, to reverse our aimless wandering by a more purposeful destination to heaven. A necessary change from the Christian status quo, that of a minister’s son, by a more complete Christ-like life, in which we are called God’s children. As David the psalmist most poetically wrote: “But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
In A Mirror is a simple attempt at complex topics to those already familiar with Christ, reaffirming their stance on the more loosely defined terminologies that evade common spiritual beliefs. My hope is that this book will reinvigorate your questions about the purpose of your faith and your relationship with Jesus Christ, bringing about a favorable change to your life and others around you, replacing the lukewarm indifference characteristic of Christian dilettantes, by a more cognitive and causative desire to attain assurance to eternal life with Christ. I pray my writing encourages others to take a deeper look into Jesus Christ and share their testimony. Witnesses to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are the source of faith which has greatly impacted the world, making Jesus Christ among the most popularly published and influential figures in today’s history.
1. 2 Timothy 3:16
2. Ephesians 1:4–5
3. Exodus 20:8–11
4. Luke 10:27
I. Creation
“For every house is built by someone,but God is the builder of everything.”(Hebrews 3:4)
Inadequate, photography of faraway galaxies takes us back to evolution theory’s most egregious gap in its answer to our origin question.
Space photography is one of the more promising man-made creations that have accelerated our understanding of the universe and the world around us, bringing to focus incredible depiction of the universe with stunning shots of earth’s magnificent solar system relative to those of other planets and stars in the milky-way; albeit, inadequate, photography of faraway galaxies takes us back to evolution theory’s most egregious gap in its answer to our origin questions by evasive theories that are inconclusive with regards to the initial matter that brought the world into order. In the vastness of the universe and the precise interdependencies that make up our most intricate creations on earth, the imprints of an impeccable designer are present everywhere, requiring a more perceptive mind over a less primitive creation to subdue and make meaning of its purpose. Living organisms allow for a greater understanding of our capacities as intelligent beings able to give and derive meaning from life, distinguishing differences between ourselves others, creating a hierarchal order of power through which we comprise our theories about God and life. Given words and language we are able to speak and understand, formulating ideas about who we are in relationship to the universe, and a much greater creator, by whom we must have been created for a reason, and whose power far exceeds that of creation. Seen at the microscopic levels and scaled to galaxy expansions, are efforts leading the investigation of the causative agents behind their perfect coherence, inspiring a figurative conversation with God and man, perhaps a modern Job, whose apprehensions about life’s toils awakens the perceptive mind of a poetic Godly response: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimension? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38:41)
Bounded by incomplete theories of evolution5, or the initial spark that brought the precise order of the universe into place, probabilistic theories6 comprised no unified answers about the basic elements and their origin. Made of similar matter to those of plants and animals we find evidence of our human superiority mostly in the distinguishing consciousness that sets us apart from the acts of our closest genetic species. While presumptuous evolutionary theories far fetch the magnitude of time required to project in both past and future, it leaves doubt in the balance to a man impatiently fidgeting for an answer to life’s purpose. A simple, self-evident presence of a higher God, who ordered the universe into being was made more complex by a man attempting to reason its own God-like superiority over others. Missing the mark on usability, mankind’s upcycle of the truth: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:1,2) reached unprecedented heights of defiance by evolutionary theories, which falter by inconsistent proofs regarding the onslaught and self-governance of the precise laws of nature. Highly improbable, hypothesis of self-organizing blueprint of life’s DNA lies in the domain of the impossible, unfounded by a short historic collective memory of humanity without any consistent proof. With certainty comparable to a random chance, self-evolution is similar to unaided attempts of reverting colors of a painting to comprehensible uniformity from chaos, an example of which is in Figure 1, where mixed colors are reconfigured on their own into their individual color spectrum without any intervention. Similarly, big bang’s initial molecule couldn’t have sparked life into the universe without the work of an agent, to bring viable order from absolute chaos.
The word of God is the power by which we establish truth about creation. Immutable, it is the sword by which a clear divide is made between darkness and light
An egregious oversight to the calculations of our discoveries is discrediting God of creation, by similar inadequacy to excluding invisible light rays from the spectrum of light in spite of their felt evidence. In denial of an omnipotent creator, we are threatened by the existence of God whom we associate with the limiting agents of law and sin and whom we fear would spoil our self-exploratory inquisitions to much promised lead to controls when our consciousness is distant from Him.