God's Story in the Stars - Mazzaroth (Part 1)

I have to credit Tim Miller for turning me on to this topic. I was in riding in a van with him some time ago and this topic came up in conversation and what he told me was something I had never even heard before...so that set me to exploring and researching. What follows is the result of that work, all thanks to that conversation. This all all overview of what I have learned from others. A book that I highly recommend and which I will cite several times, it entitled, "The Mystery of the Mazzaroth" by Tim Warner. I also recommend a video you can find on YouTube called "The Star of Bethlehem" (Rick Larson). There is another series of 3 videos on YouTube called "Mazzaroth - Story of Yeshua" by Russell Judd which I also highly recommend.

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"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." (Psalm 19:1-4, NIV)

There have been times, over the past two and half years, where I feel like God has specifically brought something to my attention and this is one of those things. Generally speaking, if I take something on, I feel the compulsion to research it exhaustively and with God knowing that about me, I believe He does this on purpose. This is one of those things and I have to say at the outset, it has been so profoundly inspiring and encouraging, I couldn't wait to share it. It started, as I mentioned in the brief introduction above, with a relatively benign conversation that I was only a hearer of. Someone who I have a lot of respect for, Tim Miller, had written a children's book several years ago entitled "The Heavens Declare" and someone else asked him a question related to that book. In his answer, Tim was talking about how the constellations tell God's story, which was an idea I had never heard before. That same night, I stayed over at a friend's house and happened to be using one of their kid's rooms (thank you again, Parks' family!) and the next morning, I was getting ready and noticed on the wall a printout of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. I thought to myself, "what are the odds? I have this stuck in my head and now I see it, randomly, printed out." It felt like God was tapping me on my shoulder saying "Adam, I want you to look at this." And so I started looking into it, and it is more fantastic than I could have imagined. Not only is it reinforcement of God's wonderful plan for the restoration of the Kingdom, but it also reinforces just how thorough and creative and merciful our God is.

This is going to be another multi-part series of posts. I want to introduce the ideas first and then dig deeper in subsequent posts.

A Gospel Presentation - Part 6 (Culmination/Cure)

Previous Posts in this Series:
A Gospel Presentation: Part 1 (Two-Age Worldview)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 2 (Creation/Curse)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 3 (Covenant/Commitment)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 4 (Confirmation)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 5 (Charismatic Witness)

"After all of this I will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your elderly will have prophetic dreams; your young men will see visions. Even on male and female servants I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will produce portents (wonders) both in the sky and on the earth - blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The sunlight will be turned to darkness and the moon to the color of blood, before the day of the Lord comes - that great and terrible day! It will so happen that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who survive, just as the Lord has promised; the remnant will be those whom the Lord will call." (Joel 2:28-32, NET)

"Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Jesus), in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer exist anything that is cursed [because sin and illness and death are gone]; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve and worship Him [with great awe and joy and loving devotion]; they will [be privileged to] see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be night;  they have no need for lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign [as kings] forever and ever." (Revelation 22:1-5, AMP)

I chose these two Scriptures to open this last post because they capture the essence of what all of time and history is leading up to: The Day of the Lord, followed by the restoration of the Kingdom of God. As I have mentioned many times during this series, our Great Hope and the essential, fundamental message of the full Gospel, is that God is working out a plan to restore all things (Acts 1:6, 3:21).

Thought of the Day - When is Jesus Not Jesus?

I am reminded of this question from time to time, but today I have been thinking about it again - the question is simple: If we change anything about who God or Jesus are, at what point do they cease being the actual God/Jesus and instead become idols of our own making?

I've been very clear, if you go back and read past posts, about my own sinful history. For most of my life, I struggled with pornography. It is always something that will be there crouching at my door - like an drug addict is never truly free from addiction, so this will follow me around the rest of my life. With that being said, I used to read a verse like 1 Corinthians 6:9 ("Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God") and I think "surely that can't mean someone like me."...as if what I was doing wasn't sexually immoral and therefore disqualifying me from the kingdom. To be clear, I know there is a lot more to it that this simple statement, but nevertheless...my point is, mentally I was trying to make Scripture into something I wanted, rather than something that is objectively true and requires me to change me life in response to it.

We have no problem conceiving of Jesus as a kind-hearted, loving, jovial person. What we often fail to recognize, however, is that sometimes his words were very direct and difficult. "Many will say to me 'Lord, Lord, did we not (insert great things here) [...] and I will say to them, 'away from me you evildoers, I don't know you.'" (Matthew 7) or "He replied, "I tell you that everyone who has will be given more; but the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. And these enemies of mine who were unwilling for me to rule over them, bring them here and slay them in front of me." (Luke 19)

"My Body, My Choice"? Stop.

A few years - I was talking with a friend of mine about the death penalty. He asked me if I was pro-life and I said, "yes, of course". He said, "well, then you can't be in favor of the death-penalty". He went on to say that if you are pro-life, then you uphold life in all of its forms, regardless of the circumstances. That is the only intellectually honest way to look at it. It is one of the rare times in my life where my opinion on something was truly changed. I no longer support the death-penalty, no matter how much I think it might apply in a given situation.

Recently, I have seen Christians and others who are against vaccine/mask mandates using the slogan 'my body, my choice'. That phrase, of course, is 'stolen' from the pro-choice movement. While I do not disagree, ideologically, with the message the anti-vaccine mandate folks are trying to send - I think that kind of messaging is intellectually inconsistent. First, it is legitimizing of their argument. If you are pro-life, you don't even recognize that 'my body, my choice' is the right argument. After all, in the VAST majority of abortions, the baby is being killed simply because the mother doesn't want the inconvenience of a child. The choice was made, well before a child was conceived, to engage in sexual relationships. That was the choice - the baby was the consequence. It is never one's choice to prematurely end the life of another, whether that life exists within the womb or otherwise.

Second, it is sending mixed messages. If you are staunchly against abortion, and argue against 'my body, my choice' when its about something you disagree with, but then embrace the phrase when it is convenient for the argument you're trying to make, then you've muddied the waters and watered down what you believe in. Regarding an issue as grave as abortion, we cannot afford to water down our convictions.