Dear Editor,

The Bible-“The Book of Life”-is also “The Book of Judgment” wherein the Triune God makes himself known, in part, through the creation of matter and human beings as revealed by him in Gen 1:1-2:25, Jn 1:1-3, Rom 1:19-21 & Mk 12:29-31. In a paradigm of freedom, God expressed his will to grow human beings into his image of wisdom, righteousness, pleasure, and joy that constitute love. “Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.”-Ps 16:11 The greatness of humanity’s freedom of choice to believe or not to believe God and the consequences: life or death, freedom or slavery, free enterprise or a statist economy are recorded in Gen 3:1-24, Deut 30:15-20, Jn 5:17-27, & 8:30-32. History encompasses humanity’s stupendous narrative.-Rom 1:16-32 God’s omniscience entails knowing all the probabilities of individuals’ choices as they are made. Thus, when Eve and Adam sinned, the Triune God sought them out and asked three questions that reverberate down to the present, “Where are you?” “Who told you that you were naked?” “What have you done?” With great sorrow, he bans the guilty pair from the Garden lest their state of sin or ungodliness becomes permanent by eating of the tree of life. God’s decisive act reveals the next step in his plan for redemption.

That plan dramatically unfolded over the centuries preparing for the momentous incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity.-Mt 1:18-23 Jesus the Christ is sent by God, conceived and birthed; he then chooses to grow in the wisdom, favor/grace, and stature that is pleasing to God.-Lk 2:40-52, Heb 5:7-9 In thirty years and nine months, the Divine Imperative “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let him have dominion. . . .” is fulfilled in Jesus’ realizing all righteousness at his baptism that is celebrated by the Godhead on the banks of the Jordan River.-Mt 3:15-17 “For the LORD is righteous, he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.”-Ps 11:7, Jn 14:6-7 Jesus’ holy life is the covering, the atonement, or the propitiation for the sins of the world unasked.-Jn 1:29, 36

Subsequently, Jesus’ three year ministry further grows godliness in his body of flesh by exercising the authority God intended a human being to have through belief.-Jn 5:17-26 Just as the Triune God searched for Adam and Eve so too Jesus came to seek and save the lost in sin or ungodliness by inspiring belief in himself unto receiving eternal life through repentance and the forgiveness of sins availing themselves of God’s mercy in his Son’s imparted life.-Jn 14:18-21, 23

In three years of ministry, Jesus’ faithful obedience completes God’s work that prepares him for Gethsemane and Golgotha where his urgent, prevailing prayers continue to reveal God’s paradigm of freedom in life lived, “Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee, since thou hast given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom thou hast given him. And this is eternal life that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do. . . .I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”-Jn 17:1-4, 26 In Gethsemane and on Golgotha Jesus continued to fulfill the Great Commandmentunto effecting the Great Salvation in his body of flesh.-Lk 22:42-44, Mt 27:45-46, Mk 12:29-31, Heb 2:1-4, Jn 6:51 Jesus’ unwavering belief trumped malevolent unbelief by glorifying the Father who always glorified the Son.-Heb 1:1-3, 2:14-15, Jn 8:28-29, 10:17-18

There is a reason that the inalienable rights expressed in our Declaration of Independence are ordered as being “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Life precedes the Liberty to Pursue Happiness that consists of cultivating virtue-moral excellence-while a responsible government as well as the individual secure private property both physical and intellectual. The reason the founders appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world-Jesus the Christ from the tribe of Judah-to sanction the founding of this nation is that he was battle-tested.-Heb 7:14-28, Isaiah 52:13-14, 53:5,10,12

John 1:12-13 can be interpreted as follows, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood-fascism and racism (White, Black, Brown, or Yellow), nor of the flesh-communism, (the worship of matter), nor of the will of man-secular progressive democracy (mob-based), but of God.” The choice of which to believe in-the Triune God or an arrogant, presumptuous Elite-determines one’s destiny as well as the destiny of a nation. The prophet Isaiah addressed this in Isaiah 26:1-2, “In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: ‘We have a strong city; he sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. Open the gates, that the righteous nation which keeps faith may enter in.” The Apostle John complements this imperative in Revelations 19:10-11 in part, “Worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.” The Apostle Paul elaborates on the spirit of prophecy in I Cor 14:3 as that which “. . .upbuilds, encourages, and consoles.” A nation and its citizens need all three if they are to be! The War for Independence, the War Between the States also called The Civil War prepared this nation for the wars of the 20th and 21st Centuries that includes the present turmoil. The question is “Will we choose to continue to stand as a nation as founded or not?”-Ps 12:1-8

William M. Yavelak

Belmont