Author: adonai4oo

Jeremiah 24:7; I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.

Jeremiah 31:33; “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Hebrews 12:11; No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

The mind can be trained in certain aspects, but the heart can not be trained. The heart in this case is used as a synonym for a person’s nature, or character attributes, such as kindness, envy, jealousy, compassion, empathy, and so on.

Most people break rules and regulations, especially if they think they can get away with it. Though some people follow some rules and regulations. There is a saying that can be paraphrased as: ‘You can take the person out of the ghetto, but you can not take the ghetto out of a person’. Most people that display anti-social behaviours, can temporarily keep it in check, while under observation, but the moment they are no longer under observation, or the motivation for the controlled behaviour is no longer present, they revert back to type.

This does not mean that there is no place for training, however it simply means that observation or the motivation has to be in place, to maintain the desired behaviour. Character attributes that is second nature to a person, do not need constant observation, or motivation, or positive reinforcement, to maintain. The Scripture with regards to the Lord and the heart of men, consistently states that the Lord will give new heart to the chosen ones. Does this confirms that the heart can not be trained, but the mind can. It is the heart that leads the mind, and not the other way round.

This is comparable to what Jesus Christ taught in Mathew 15:3-9; Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honour your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honour their father or mother’ with it. Thus, you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’

Prophet Eli, the High Priest asks in 1 Samuel 2:25; If one person sins against another, God may mediate for the offender; but if anyone sins against the Lord, who will intercede for them? A good and right mediator in a dispute between two parties, should not be biased, should be independent, and should not be less in all measuring indices, than either of the parties in the dispute. Only God can mediate in a dispute between God and any other party.

The terminologies; Mediator, Son of Man, Son of God, Lord our God, and Saviour, are all titles, so is God Almighty, and they could and do apply to the same Entity; Yeshua. John 12v41; In the gospel of John, he gave an account of what Prophet Isaiah saw in Heaven during the commissioning of Isaiah as a prophet as recorded by Isaiah himself in Isaiah 6v1-4. In John’s gospel, he recorded that Isaiah saw Jesus’ glory [Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.]. Isaiah recorded that he saw the Lord Almighty on His throne with Seraphim’s and other angels.

Isaiah 6:1-4; In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. The Salvation plan was conceived before Creation; Ephesians 1 verses 4-10, by the Alpha and the Omega. The phrase “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Koiné Greek: “ἐγώ εἰμί τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ”), is an appellation of Jesus and of the Father in the Book of Revelation (verses 1:8, 21:6, and 22:13). Is this appellation denoting two entities or One?

#Psalm119v163

Often times people confuse a ‘who’ with a ‘what’. “Who” is used when asking the identify of people. “What” is used when asking the identity of an object, or an attribute of a person, or a skill or activity that a person is engaged in or practises.

When the Psalmist makes the statement in Psalm 119:163; I hate and detest falsehood, but I love your law. This can be paraphrased to mean God detest falsehood, this is an attribute or activity that a person engages in. Psalmist is NOT saying here that God detest the person. This is a clear distinction between a ‘who’ and a ‘what’.

As a fan of #ChelseaFC, the current Head Coach #GrahamPotter, when asked by journalists in October 2022, how he manages star players, puts it succinctly, saying that the superstar players have only one head, not two, meaning, the players are human being (‘who’) first of all, then they are gifted players (‘what’), professional football players.

If we take the time period 2010 to 2022, and we take the following people: #AlexFerguson, #PepGuardiola, #CarloAncelotti, #DavidMoyes, #LouisVanGaal, #JoséMourinho, #OleGunnarSolskjær, #ErikTenHag, #AntonioConte, #MaurizioSarri, #FrankLampard, #ThomasTuchel, and #GrahamPotter. Now take the following football clubs; #ChelseaFC, #ManchesterUnited, #ManchesterCity, #FCBarcelona, #RealMadridFC, and #FCBayernMunich. Put into this mix the following roles; Club owner, Chairman, executive and non-executive directors, director of football, performance director, transfer, and acquisition director, scouting coach, Manager, and Head Coach. These are all ‘what’, that is the roles, filled by ‘who’, that is people. Success or failure accompanies the distinction between a ‘who’ and a ‘what’, or the blurring of the lines between the two.

Pep Guardiola cannot always win the #ChampionsLeague irrespective of the football club, and neither has #RealMadridFC won the #ChampionsLeague consecutively every year during the period in question.

There is truth in the statement that God knows everything, and He does not learn anything. Be it in eternity past or in eternity to come. Therefore, it falls to reason, that Salvation plan was conceived before Creation. Otherwise, those with the position that it was when Man fell, due to sin, is the moment that God decided on the Salvation plan, are inferring that it was at that moment that God learnt that man has fallen, that God came up with the Salvation plan. This is in contradiction to the Scriptures. Paul in one of his epistles wrote about this. Ephesians 1:4-10; For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

The Scriptures tells us about the kind of prayers and fasting that pleases God [Isaiah 58:3-7]. Furthermore, the Scriptures also tells us about what God considers true religion [James 1:27]. These were recorded by Isaiah and later reiterated by James, the text is consistent with the account by Prophet Zechariah in the following text, Zechariah 7:8-10; And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’