Many examples of God's love and wrath can be found in the Christian Bible's Old Testament but in the New Testament the message that the Bible brings to man is very simple. To grasp the message of the Christianity, it is essential to understand God's plan of salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ.

The Plan Of Salvation From The Old Through The New Testament

There is no permanence for man except for God. Only God stands as a rock, while everything else is in flux and confusion. He is righteous and true. He is good and provides for man and his offspring through the generations. Those who do not know Him are like drowning men in the torrent of time without a rock to cling to. Those who call God evil do not know Him, but simply see their own reflection. In their sinful corruption, they have lifted their hearts in pride and built vain edifices, strange philosophies, doctrines of demons where a transient man would make himself God and wreak havoc on rudderless humanity.

The message the Bible brings to man is very simple. Understanding the plan of salvation is crucial in grasping the message of Christianity. God is the Creator. He is the Alpha and the Omega. It is His plan. You can look at God as the Supreme Artist, the Ultimate Programmer. God is good per the traditional definition of "good." The Bible warns that in the last days men will call evil good and good evil. Today's relativistic definition of good is determined by a majority vote and what is politically correct.

God's goodness is exemplified in His bounty. His orderly creation provides man with food, clothing, energy, shelter and such nonessentials as beauty and incredible variety. So well is man taken care of that he has plenty of time to squander his resources on fighting major wars such as World War II, which killed fifteen million service personnel and many more civilians. It is not God who personalizes the duality of good and evil. It is man. Man without God is capable of ultimate evil. It is man who pollutes God's beautiful creation.

An understanding of who God is and what His plan is for mankind is the first step in liberating man from the bondage of his innate evil. An understanding of the supernatural realm and how evil has infected that dimension will give perspective to those in spiritual darkness. Accepting Jesus Christ as one's Lord and personal redeemer is the fulfillment of God's plan for mankind.

God, in his infinite creativity, created the universe in all its beauty, variety and complexity. He created Adam as a companion and friend. God placed Adam in a garden toward the east named Eden which he was to have and cultivate. God commanded Adam, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:16-17). God did not create Adam as a robot. He gave him free will. Adam could, if he wanted, eat of the tree of good and evil.

God was concerned for Adam's welfare and He concluded it was not good for man to be alone, so he created a helper—Eve—from one of Adam's ribs. Eve knew of the prohibition of eating from the tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of good and evil, and the consequences of eating from that tree, but the serpent beguiled her. "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). Eve ate of the fruit of the tree and gave some to her husband and he ate also.

Because of her disobedience, God told Eve he would multiply her pain in childbirth and he said to Adam that, because of his transgression, the earth would be cursed, that he would have to toil to eat from it, and that he would die. Upon eating from the tree of good and evil, Adam and Eve became conscious of their nakedness and made themselves loin coverings from fig leaves. Then, "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them" (Gen. 3:21). To make garments of skin for Adam and Eve, God had to kill animals.

Up to that point, we are told, God looked at his creation and it was good. Now, death was introduced into the system. Blood had to be shed for man's disobedience, innocent blood. God then drove Adam and Eve away from the Garden of Eden "lest he stretch out his hand, and take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" (Gen. 3:22).

The Serpent Lucifer

You had the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering:
The ruby, the topaz, and the diamond;
The beryl, the onyx, and the jasper;
The lapis luzuli, the turquoise, and the emerald;
And the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets,
Was in you.
On the day that you were created
They were prepared.
You were the anointed cherub who covers,
And I placed you there.
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked in the midst of the stones of fire.
You were blameless in your ways
From the day you were created,
Until unrighteousness was found in you.
By the abundance of your trade
You were internally filled with violence,
And you sinned;
Therefore I have cast you as profane
From the mountain of God.
And I have destroyed you, O covering cherub,
From the midst of the stones of fire.
For your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground.

Michael and his angels were stronger than the dragon and his angels. Good is stronger than evil. Good and evil are distinct and separate, and not two faces of the same coin as some of man's "philosophies," religions, and pop-entertainment profess. The angels are created beings and, as such, have distinct personalities and even the free will to rebel against their Creator.

The Nephilim and The Great Flood

The dragon was thrown out of heaven shortly after God created Adam as he was present in the Garden of Eden in the form of a serpent. As the descendants of Adam and Eve multiplied over the face of the earth, we are told in Genesis 6:2 that, "the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and that they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose."

The sons "of God" are distinguished from the daughters "of men," indicating breeding by heavenly beings with earthly ones. These "sons of God" were most likely the fallen angels. There is Biblical authority that the term "sons of God" is used in the sense of supernatural beings, but beings that are no longer godly in character. The next four verses indicates that this interbreeding produced strange offspring that did not please God (Genesis 6:3-5):

The King James Bible translates Nephilim as "giants." God was not pleased with the rampant evil. The Lord was sorry that he had made man and even animals, and creeping things, and birds. The creation had been defiled and the interbreeding with the "sons of God" had a large part to do with this rampant evil. Noah, however, pleased God because of his righteousness. God instructed Noah to build an ark and to take into it his household, along with the animals. Then, "all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened" (Gen. 7:11). It rained forty days and forty nights until even the highest mountains were covered. Every living thing that moved on the earth perished.

There are today two conflicting worldviews regarding man's origins. One is the creationist view, which is the Biblical view. The other is the evolutionary view, which discounts God and attributes nature to random chance, survival of the fittest, and mutations. The latter view considers creation as a type of protoplasmic machine which, by fits and starts, builds upon itself. Because of its random, accidental nature, evolution needs millions, if not billions of years to explain itself. Evolution turns a blind eye to the fact that there is no evidence of any species evolving into another or of any mutation being anything but regressive and unable to propagate itself. As such, evolution is more of a belief system than scientific.

To take theory into practical reality, one merely has to take a watch apart, place its parts into a juice blender and turn the blender on. Despite the mixing, shaking and rolling, it is extremely unlikely a functional watch will ever be put together. An intelligent force, a person, will have to do it. The simplest living organism is much more complex than a watch. Life itself is programmed in binary code, and the universe is knit by orderly physical laws. Through the law of entropy, energy is lost over time and things progress from a more orderly to a less orderly state.

The Great Flood easily explains the presence of large oil fields in various parts of the world. The tremendous tidal activity of the flood could have quickly compacted vast quantities of washed up organisms. The "fountains of the deep" bursting has been interpreted as lava flowing from the earth's crust. The combination of heat and pressure can reduce carbon-based plants and animal matter into oil over a very short time. Geological formations, such as the Grand Canyon, can be created by the rapid erosion and silting up produced by the tidal conditions of the Great Flood. Millions of years are not required.

A belief in evolution negates the need for an intelligent Creator who is separate and distinct from His creation. The creation itself is its ultimate god. For man, this is a very appealing philosophy because it allows him, through his own efforts, whether it be yoga, meditation or just merely evolving, to eventually become god. Just like Lucifer, man's heart can be lifted up in pride. That pride is a direct affront to God and it arises from the lies the serpent told Eve in Eden, that by eating the fruit "you will be like God" (Gen. 3:5). Through Adam and Eve's rebellion, trying to be gods themselves, the iniquity of sin permeated the entire creation. It is based on man's usurpation of God's rightful position.

God established a lineage, which He protected, from Adam and Eve, to Noah, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Isaac, to David, to Joseph, to Jesus, to offer salvation from the iniquity of sin.

After the flood, God told Noah and his sons to be fruitful, to multiply and fill the earth. Man's pride remained, however, as it is illustrated in the attempt to build a tower in the plains of Shinar (Gen. 11:4):

Pharaoh Is Judged

God's goal with man is to establish a personal relationship with righteous individuals, those who seek Him sincerely in their hearts. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were such individuals. God established a covenant to bless them and their children. Jacob, whom God had renamed Israel, and his sons settled in Egypt as a result of Joseph gaining favor with Pharaoh by interpreting Pharaoh's dream.

Pharaoh had dreamt he was standing on the banks of the Nile and beheld seven sleek and fat cows coming out of the Nile and grazing on marsh grass. He then beheld the first seven fat cows eating seven thin ugly gaunt cows. Joseph, who had gained a reputation for interpreting dreams, was called before Pharaoh and told Pharaoh that it was not him who interpreted the dreams, but that God would give Pharaoh a favorable answer. Joseph then told Pharaoh that his dream represented seven good years for Egypt followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh, discerning that Joseph was a man in whom was the divine spirit, proceeded to set Joseph over the land of Egypt. Joseph established granaries to store the grain reaped in the good years for the subsequent bad years.

The Israelites, Jacob's descendants, were fruitful and greatly multiplied in Egypt. They prospered in Egypt until "a king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph" (Exod. 1:8) and who was afraid that the Israelites would grow mightier than the Egyptians. The Egyptians then brought the Israelites into bondage, but God, faithful to his promises to Abraham and his descendants, raised a deliverer, one who had been brought up in Pharaoh's own house. He was Moses.

Moses, after living in Midian many years, with some prodding from God, returned to Egypt and asked Pharaoh to let the Israelites go celebrate a feast in the wilderness. Pharaoh refused. God elicited Pharaoh with a series of plagues to break his stubbornness and let the Israelites go.

The Nile and all the water reservoirs of Egypt turned into blood, becoming foul, and killing the fish; frogs swarmed over the land; gnats and then insects infested the land; the livestock were stricken with pestilence; beast and men were afflicted with boils; hail struck men and beasts, and destroyed plants and shattered trees; locusts ate what the hail had not destroyed; thick darkness covered the land for three days. Pharaoh persisted in his stubbornness, agreeing to let the Israelites go, then changing his mind once God removed the plague.

Finally, God told Moses he would bring on Pharaoh and Egypt one more plague, after which Pharaoh would surely drive Moses and all the Israelites out of Egypt. The first-born in all the land would die at midnight from Pharaoh's first-born to the fist-born of the slave girls, to the first-born of the cattle. Moses instructed the Israelites, according to their fathers' households, to take an unblemished lamb and kill it at twilight. They were then to take some of that lamb's blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintels of their houses where they were to eat the lambs.

At midnight, the Lord struck all the first-born in the land of Egypt and, "there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no home where there was not someone dead" (Exod. 12:30). The lamb was a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the Israelites. The Egyptians were smitten with death, while the homes of the Israelites where the blood of the unblemished lamb had been applied were spared.

The Lamb of God

When John the Baptist first saw Jesus, he fully realized Jesus' Deity. As Jesus was coming to him he said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). Again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples as Jesus was walking by, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" (John 1:36) and John's two disciples followed Jesus.

In the Garden of Eden, because of the sin of Adam and Eve, God introduced death into the creation by killing animals to clothe Adam and Eve with their skins. Subsequently, men, to atone for their sins, offered God animal sacrifices. It was the blood of a spotless lamb sprinkled on the doorposts and lintels of the Israelites that protected their households from the death of their first-born.

There is only one perfect sacrifice. That sacrificial offering had to be unblemished by sin. Since the creation was tainted by the fall of Adam and Eve, only God is without sin. The perfect sacrifice had to be God Himself. The Living God, the God of the Universe, had to take the form of a man to die on a cross so that the entire creation would be redeemed.

Jesus told Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews and a Pharisee who came to Jesus for counsel, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14). Jesus was comparing himself to the bronze serpent that Moses set on a pole in the Israeli camp by the Red Sea after leaving Egypt. Many of the Israelites were speaking against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food" (Num. 21:5).

God sent fiery serpents among the people. They bit the people, and many died. The people went to Moses and acknowledged they had sinned by speaking against the Lord. They asked Moses to intercede with God so that the serpents might be removed. God told Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole. Whoever was bitten merely had to look at this bronze serpent on a pole and would live. In the same fashion, Jesus was "lifted up" on a pole, a cross, that whoever looks up to Him does not die, but lives.

Jesus' entire statement to Nicodemus reads as follows (John 3:14-16):

The "Word" John was referring to is Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate existence. We are told that the Word was with God and, in fact, was God. We were told all things came into being through him. Therefore, Jesus Christ was the Creator. Relating to Jesus Christ's incarnation as a man, John says: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

God thus became flesh and dwelt on earth as the Lord Jesus. This incarnation was the "only" begotten from the Father. There are no other incarnations and only Jesus Christ has ever been begotten from God. The gospel of Luke relates how Gabriel came to Mary and informed her she would have a son named Jesus. She asked the angel how this could happen since she was a virgin. The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35).

Matthew 1:23 cites a prophetic passage from Isaiah, one of the Old Testament prophets: "Behold, the virgin shall be the child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name 'Immanuel,' which translated means, 'God with us.'"

God, through His Spirit, made Mary conceive at a time when she was a virgin. God was the father of Jesus. God took the form of a man to show us His divine nature. In Jesus, we can see God's compassionate nature. Jesus constantly shows His concern for men and women in the gospels. He heals the blind, the deaf, those with withered limbs, and he raises the dead back to life. He delivers those in demonic bondage, casting the demons from them with His authority. He comforts the broken-hearted and feeds the hungry.

He befriends the outcasts of society including tax collectors, a prostitute, and the Roman oppressors. He refuses to condemn those whom the religiously righteous avoid and stone. He reaches out in love to those who hate Him, even to those who crucified Him. Nevertheless, He will not tolerate hypocrisy, especially from the spiritually proud. His bitterest attacks are reserved for the false religious teachers who would lead His flock stray.

Jesus was his own best advocate claiming unequivocally that He was the Son of God and God incarnate. When Jesus said, "I and the Father are one," (John 10:30) the Jews picked up rocks to stone Him. They told Him they were going to stone Him for blasphemy "because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God" (John 10:33). They knew the claim He was making, but did not accept it. Jesus was nearly stoned in the temple when He told the Jews, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM," (John 8:58) indicating His preexistence.

Jesus said to Thomas, "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him" (John 14:7). Jesus was telling Thomas that by knowing Jesus, Thomas now knows God and has seen Him. Prior to that statement Jesus told Thomas, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (John 14:6).

"I Stand At The Door And Knock"

The fall of Adam and Eve permeated the entire creation with sin. Man is sinful and separated from God. Paul in his letter to the Romans states, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." There is no way man can be good enough to cleanse the sin in his own nature. We can try to follow man's laws or systems, which promise salvation. We can practice yoga religiously, meditate regularly, give all our wealth to charities, chant from sunrise to sunset, observe the strictest diet, pray to a wide array of gods, but unless we accept God's only provision for sin, His Son's blood, we will not have a relationship with God now or in eternity. God and sin cannot coexist. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).

This author accepted Jesus Christ on a dare. Having verbally asked Jesus into his life, he did not expect anything to happen, yet after he accepted Him, he could not meditate (mantra yoga) anymore and, within a few days, did not even attempt to do so. If you feel you need a relationship with the True God, simply ask Jesus, in your own words, to be your Lord and Savior. Ask Him to forgive you of your sins and to take charge of your life. He will honor this prayer by giving you eternal life and sending His Holy Spirit to indwell in you.

Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any one hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me" (Rev. 3:20). We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by entering into this contractual relationship with God. Once you enter this relationship, God will give you the power to renounce the forces that are holding you in bondage and to clean house. He will also give you eternal life, forever in the companionship of God. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 1:18, acknowledges that, "For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." God established a plan to redeem mankind from sin. If that plan entails God incarnating as a man and dying on a cross of wood for our sins so that we might have eternal life, that is God's prerogative. It is the only plan that works. The Old and New Testaments, as already demonstrated, reflect the internal consistency and dynamic cohesiveness of that plan through the ages. We do not have the luxury to select an alternate plan, a counterfeit plan created as a fraud by sinful men who would be gods or by rebellious angels.

By not participating in God's plan by accepting Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, as one's personal savior, you are guaranteed an eternity without God. Your soul will end up in a very cold, bleak, evil place of eternal torment, a place which God did not create for man, but for Satan and the fallen angels. Hell must indeed be a terrible place because God became incarnate as a man and died to keep man from spending eternity there.

Prior to His arrest and crucifixion, Jesus withdrew from the disciples and prayed in such agony that his sweat turned into drops of blood and fell on the ground, a rare physiological reaction caused by extreme stress. He prayed, "Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done" (Luke 22:42). He knew the torture in store for Him. He would be beaten, mocked, whipped, given a crown of thorns, jeered, pierced with nails, suffocated by his own weight on a cross and stabbed with a spear.

The Bible has over fifty verses addressing a place called "hell" and, in Luke 12:4-5, Jesus boldly states:

God is good. He is compassionate. He is merciful. He is also righteous. He will not allow sin to blemish His purity. Unless one has accepted His provision to remove sin, the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ, one cannot exist with Him throughout eternity. The Lord killed the first-born of the land of Egypt. It was not Satan. The Lord sent Pharaoh numerous plagues to convince him to let the Israelites go. Pharaoh would consent, then, once the Lord removed the plague, Pharaoh would retract his consent. The Lord killed the first-born of all the Egyptians, not just Pharaoh's. He held all of Egypt accountable for their ruler's conduct.

By the same token, He will hold every one of us accountable for where we stand with respect to accepting or rejecting His Son's death on the cross. All it took was some blood from a spotless lamb splashed on the doorposts and lintel of an Israeli's house in ancient Egypt to ward off the Lord's wrath. All it takes for us to have eternal life is our decision to accept blood from a cross which stood outside Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago.

Weather Changes in Bible Prophecy

The author of this website recently gave a lecture at a university campus in Rhennes, France, on "Why Does God Allow A Tsunami?" It's a tough subject because many "good" people including Christians (lecture was from a Christian perspective) died in the January 05 Southeast Asian tsunami and in Hurricane Katrina.

Doesn't God care? (For a discussion on "Is There A God" or " Proof of God" go to www.earthharvest.org) . If God is a loving God of course he cares. He created a "good" creation (see "Creation vs. Evolution" for a discussion or the universe's origins). Genesis 1:9-10 states:

"Then God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear'; and it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good."

But we all know that tsunamis that wipe out hundreds of thousands of people and a hurricane that destroys New Orleans with hundredss of coastal inhabitants are not "good" waters. What's the problem here? Did in fact God create something which was "bad"?

In discussing the end time Jesus discusses a time when nation will rise against nation, " and there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven" (Luke 21:11). He goes on to say in Luke 21:25, "And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heaven will be shaken. And then will they see THE SON OF MAN COMING IN A CLOUD with power and great glory."

I don't know if we are in the end times or not. Global warming seems to be baseless with 1934 as the warmest year in the past century (based on temperature data from U.S.Weather Bureau, NASA), the earth cooling from 1940-1970 when carbon monoxide emissions, the supposed cause of global warming, increased (Goddard Space Center, Columbia University), and an area which is 2% of Antartica melting, as it has been for 6,000 years, while most of Antartica is actually getting colder.

Perhaps the huge tides and hurricanes we are seeing, whatever their cause, are the beginning of the "birth pangs," which are the precursors of Christ's Second Coming and the Millenium, a time when global peace will reign as Jesus Christ, the Messiah, will rule with a "rod of iron" with absolute justice (no more wars, corruption, physical catastrophes, terrorism, dictatorships) . The prophesied earthquakes, especially if offshore, can create huge tidal waves and tsunamis. These climatic changes will manifest in association with political changes (see "Nostradamus vs. Bible Prophecy).

So is God evil to permit to allow this destruction? The Old Testament informs us that God created Adam and Eve and gave them free will. He could have created robots but he wanted them to have the right to rebel against even their Creator if they chose. That they did by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden . And because of the rebellion of Adam and Eve the earth was cursed and death was introduced into the Creation. As a matter of fact Adam and Eve did the first killing when they killed animals to clothe themselves.

When the earth was cursed through the lies of the serpent (Satan) it no longer functioned as God meant it to function. Earth is now off kilter. There are earthquakes, fires, famines, floods, tsunamis, crashing meteors, rage and violence in the heart of man etc.

But God has not thrown us into a violent, dangerous world without a lifeline. He incarnated in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, that all those who believe in Him and accept Him will have a personal relationship with Him, spiritual peace, forgiveness of sin, and eternal life. All you have to do is pray: "Jesus, I ask you to come into my life. I accept you as my Lord. Take charge of my life. Wash me with your precious blood shed on the cross for my sins. Prove to me that you are real and protect me, my family, my community, my country from destruction."

Many, including Christians, may drown in a tsunami, a hurricane, or be buried in an earthquake, however by accepting Jesus Christ as your friend and personal savior (just ask him in your own words), as the Apostle Paul says, even if you die you will live eternally in a place called Heaven where there is no death but eternal joy in the presence of God!

WE URGE YOU TO PRAY THAT HURRICANE RITA MAY DISSIPATE AND NOT CAUSE ANY FURTHER DAMAGE TO THE GULF COAST. PRAYER WORKS. JESUS ORDERED A STORM TO BE STILL AND IT WAS. HOUSTON EXTENDED A GRACIOUS HELPING HAND TO THE VICTIMS OF KATRINA. LET’S PRAY FOR THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GALVESTON, HOUSTON AND THE WHOLE GULF AREA.