God preserves all things through His providence. Without God continual care and activity the world or universe or earth would not exist. God also preserves His people through His providence. Therefore, the doctrine of providence affirms God's absolute lordship over His creature and confirms the dependence of all creation on the Creator.

It is the denial of the idea that the world or universe is governed by chance or fate or otherwise. In other words, nothing happens by chance and there is always a reason for everything. God is King of the universe who has given the Lord Jesus Christ all power and authority to reign. - Matt. 28:18 - "God gives Jesus the Spirit without reserve. The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to him." - John 3:35 -

'For this reason the whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.' - Acts 2:36 -

This you can tell from the strength of his power at work in Christ, which he used to raise him from the dead and to make him sit at his right hand, in heaven, far above every Sovereignty, Authority, Power, or Domination, or any other name that can be named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. He has put all things under his feet, and made him, as the ruler of everything, the head of the Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole creation. - Eph. 1:20-23 -

Apparently, God permits sinful acts to occur but God does not cause man to sin or tempt or entice man to sin. If man chose to sin, do man think he and she will escape God's judgment? Be sure that, man stubborn refusal to repent is only adding to the anger of God and when His just judgment will be known, God will repay each one as his and her works deserve.

By divine power, he has given us all the things that we need for life and for true devotion, bringing us to know God himself, who has called us by his own glory and goodness. In making these gifts, he has given us the guarantee of something very great and wonderful to come: through them you will be able to share the divine nature and to escape corruption in a world that is sunk in vice. But to attain this, you will have to do your utmost yourselves, adding goodness to the faith that you have, understanding to your goodness, self-control to your understanding, patience to your self-control, true devotion to your patience, kindness towards your fellow men to your devotion, and, to this kindness, love.

If you have a generous supply of these, they will not leave you ineffectual of unproductive: they will bring you to a real knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But without them a man is blind or else short-sighted; he has forgotten how his past sins were washed away. Brothers, you have been called and chosen: work all the harder to justify it. If you do all these things there is no danger that you will ever fall away. In this way you will be granted admittance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. - 2 Peter:1:3-11 -

However, man is not free to choose and act independently from God's will and God's plan. God chooses and acts in accordance with them. In His sovereignty, God controls man's choices and actions. "Then Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come closer to me.' When they had come closer to him he said, I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt. But now, do not grieve, do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here, since God sent me before you to preserve your lives." - Gen. 45:4-5 - God's actions, however, do not violate the reality of human choice or negate man's responsibility as a moral being.

For the first 27 years of my life I was an atheist or a pagan. I was born in 1962, and I have no knowledge and information about my infancy period until I was 6 years old. By then, through years of hard labours, I came to know, understand and greatly empathized what is abject poverty, humiliation, being abused, violent situation, notorious environment, hunger, that is, sometimes living without food for a day because in order to have food to eat I have to worked, waking up early in the morning, that is, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on weekend and on weekday, after schooling. I was only 6 years old then, and its continued until I was 15 years old.

Incidentally, I was not living with my family but with my relative. I think this is one of my saddest reminiscence. This is just a small part of the summary because as scripture says: if anyone wants to boast, let him boast about the Lord. This is exactly what I must do. Thus, a brief account where I came from, indicating that God is presence in my life, and indeed, it is considered a blessing from God because I am still alive today. As a result, I believed God preserves all things through His providence.

As it is, I grew up without knowing much about so many things, for example, speaking properly and with mannerism, writing a message or a letter, even speaking in English language is a major obstacle, etc, etc. When I began to know how to think a little, question like, Does God know what it is to suffer? Does God know anything about being born and not knowing who is my father and mother? and many, many others, but now I called it stupid questions because of God, the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, mercy and loving-kindness upon me. For "I am nothing and God make me into all things that is good." Amen!

Yes! God knows! For He is Omnipotence! Omnipresence! Omniscience! In accordance with the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, God transferred our transgressions, our sufferings, our poverty to Himself and bore them away as the Heavenly Scapegoat. More important still, God overcame them, and the Lord Jesus Christ triumphed by overcoming the pain by giving the earth the only serious wound it ever received - the wound of an empty tomb. ( the Passion, Death, Resurrection )

Brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, the gospel that you received and in which you are firmly established; because the gospel will save you only if you keep believing exactly what I preached to you - believing anything else will not lead to anything.

Well, then, in the first place, I taught you what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ Jesus died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve. Next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though I was born when no one expected it.

I am the least of the apostles; in fact, since I persecuted the Church of God, I hardly deserve the name apostle; but by God's grace that is what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless. On the contrary, I, or rather the grace of God that is with me, have worked harder than any of the others; but what matters is that I preach what they preach, and this is what you all believed.

Now if Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached, how can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless; indeed, we are shown up as witnesses who have committed perjury before God, because we swore in evidence before God that he had raised Christ to life. For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people.

But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him. After that will come the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, having done away with every sovereignty, authority and power. For he must be king until he has put all his enemies under his feet and the last of the enemies to be destroyed is death, for everything is to be put under his feet. - Though when it is said that everything is subjected, this clearly cannot include the One who subjected everything to him. And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected to him, so that God may be all in all.

If this were not true, what do people hope to gain by being baptised for the dead? If the dead are not ever going to be raised, why be baptised on their behalf? What about ourselves? Why are we living under a constant threat? I face death everyday, brothers, and I can swear it by the pride that I take in you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If my motives were only human ones, what good would it do me to fight the wild animals at Ephesus? You say: Let us eat and drink today; tomorrow we shall be dead. You must stop being led astray: 'Bad friends ruin the noblest people', Come to your senses, behave properly, and leave sin alone; there are some of you who seem not to know God at all; you should be ashamed. - 1 Cor. 15:1-34 -

All around us, potential converts abound. The tragedy is not that they lack faith, but we seldom ask them to embrace it. A non-Catholic Christian lawyer was asked on his deathbed by his Catholic Christian partner of twenty years, "Now that you are nearing your end, how about coming into the Church?" The dying man raised his eyebrows. "If your faith meant so little to you during the twenty years you have known me", he replied, "it cannot make that much difference now."

Conversions are not more difficult in our times than before, but the approach must be different. Today, people are looking for God not because of the order they find in the universe but because of the disorder they find in themselves.

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Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless. 

By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -