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Showing posts with the label fearing God

Creating gods

An ancient writer once wrote that if horses had gods, they would look like horses. Likewise, in the various religions of the world, when people create their own gods or idols, they look very human like. The ancient Greek gods were scoundrels and perverts. So were the gods of the ancient Near Eastern religions - Molech, the various regional forms of Baal, Ashtoreth / Astarte, and such. When people invent their own religions, they can only create gods in their own image - or in the image of animals and people, with human (a)moral characteristics. No man-made religion was created in which its god or gods were not created in man's image, in the likeness of humans, with human limitations or human-like nature. However, the God of the Bible is completely different. He is always shown to be a loving, holy, just, and even wrathful God, equally in both Old and New Testaments (those who claim otherwise either don't know the Bible well enough, or are reading it thru their own cultural filt...

Fearing and loving God

'Fearing God', in the biblical sense, is not human, natural, psychological fear in the normal sense, but an attempt to capture in words the kind of attitude of profound awe and respect we are to have toward God. It is a deep, serious, arresting sense of wonder and amazement of who God is and what he is like, realizing how totally mind-blowingly awesome and totally different he is from us or anything we know, how he is beyond human comprehension.. Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses. (Psalm 25:12) The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. (Psalm 25:12-14) Do not let your heart envy sinners, but be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day. (Prov. 23.7) The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction; he will not be visited with evil. (Prov. 19:23) Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work...