Sunday, December 23, 2012

CELEBRATING THE BIRTH OF CHRIST

English: Moses Sees the Promised Land from Afa...
English: Moses Sees the Promised Land from Afar, as in Numbers 27:12, by James Tissot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
William Blake - Satan Watching the Caresses of...
William Blake - Satan Watching the Caresses of Adam and Eve - WGA02226 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WHY WE NEEDED THIS DELIVERER!


Over two thousand years ago in the little town of Bethlehem Judah, Christ (the messiah) was born as a baby in a manger. He was conceived through the word of an angel-Gabriel that stands in the presence of God. This child who was born to a virgin –Mary, was destined to change the course of humanity forever.

The prophets of God right from one of Israel’s greatest prophets and deliverer of old by the name of Moses, had prophesied about the coming of this blessed child. In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 18 and verse 15, re-iterated by Peter in Acts chapter 3 and verse 22, Moses prophesied about the coming of this savior as follows:

22-For Moses truly said unto the fathers, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you”.

God had earlier spoken to Abraham the father of faith, concerning the curse that was upon all mankind because of sin, that this curse will be reversed, and the earth shall be blessed through his own seed.

Adam disobeyed God in the garden when he ate the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and submitted his will to Satan. Thus sin or disobedience crept into the earth especially upon mankind of whom Adam was the first and the father. As a matter of fact the devil had earlier inherited sin and the curse that follows it by disobeying God and trying to take over authority from Him. He was ruling the pre-Adamite world and traded with the kings of the nations that were before Adam. He had fooled a third of the angels in heaven that he would completely defeat God and His loyalists and take over the ruler ship of the entire universe.

Satan failed in his mission, Michael God’s Army General in command of the loyal forces of heaven, whipped the devil and a third of the angels and cast them out of heaven, and they landed here on earth total stripped of all glory and lost their bodies in the process, but retained a little of their spiritual power, especially those of coercion and deceit. That was their first defeat which took place in heaven.

Then that pre-Adamite man who was not made in God’s image might have fallen into the devil’s deceit

or his antics, and out of His fierce anger, the Lord destroyed the whole earth. That was the first destruction before the re-creation, and Noah’s flood. In Jeremiah chapter 4 and verses 23-26 we read:

23-“I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.

24-I beheld the mountains and lo they trembled and all the hills moved lightly.

25-I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled

26-I   beheld, and lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord and by His fierce anger”.

God decided to make man in His image-that was this Adam. He breathed into Adam the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul. He then anointed this Adam, He said to Adam, “Be fruitful and subdue the earth”, thus and anointing for dominion, ruler ship, kingship and multiplication came upon Adam.  Adam who was made in the image of God lost that authority to dominate the earth when he obeyed Satan through the weakness of his wife-Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

Satan who came to the earth defeated and shamed, now received a new authority-he was now going to rule over the earth, because Adam gave it all to him. He then took of the fallen soldiers that came down with him, and placed the former generals among them over the atmosphere, in the second heaven in various cities and nations as principalities, to enforce the curse upon the nations.

Adam’s mistake in submitting to the devil brought upon mankind the curse of sin which include-sickness, poverty, failure, shame, reproaches, defeat, unfruitfulness, slavery, losses, untimely death and so on and so forth.

God was disappointed and displeased because he loved man whom he had made so much and did not like man’s new predicament. He had to work a way out fast to enable Him redeem man. He sought for a man amongst men.

One day He saw a man named Abram who lived with his parents in the Ur of the Chaldeans in the region of Mesopotamia. He called Abram who had no child and bore the name of exalted father. He said to Abram, “Get thee out of thy own country, and from amongst your own kindred to a new place that I will show you” , and he obeyed.

This simple act of obedience by this man-Abram was all that God needed to know that He was on His  way to restoring man’s lost glory, because through Adam we learn-That all have sinned and fallen short of glory.

Then one day, God decided to see from His friend Abram, if he will show Him something about what He plans to do in future concerning this redemption, which will be to have a son, and offer him as a sacrifice to take upon himself the sin of mankind. This is because of the scriptural principle which says, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin”. Therefore the only way God was going to meet the demands of justice would be by having his sinless son die on the cross to take up to sins of the world.

God therefore decided to test Abraham. He asked Abraham to go to one of the mountains of Moriah to offer up his only son-Isaac as sacrifice to God-remember that this Abraham had no child, but God visited him and promised him and later gave him one.

Again this Abram, now Abraham because God has changed his name-obeyed God and accepted to offer his only son as a sacrifice. God was satisfied that a man who had no previous example of this sought of obedience to a God he had not seen before could do this.

God then preached the good news-gospel to Abraham saying, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou has obeyed my voice”.

And in the book of Galatians, chapter 3 and verse 16 we read,

16-“Now to Abram and his seed were the promises made. He said not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ.”

This anointed one, together with his anointing, has brought to mankind-The blessing, as God had promised. Healing is now the bread of the children, through his poverty, we are now rich, and we are no longer in shame or defeat because he has given us back the glory-in John 17 and verse 22 we read as follows:

22- And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them; that they may be one even as we are one:

This Jesus, our savior, is also now the second Adam. Whereas the first Adam who was also a son of God, was made living soul, this second Adam has been made-a life giving spirit, and he says, “I have come that they (you), might have life, and have it more abundantly”, because if any man shall come to him, “though he were dead, yet shall he live again”.

Spiritual death, has been defeated, and even the physical death has no more power-because Jesus defeated it and rose up from the grave, and said, “and these signs shall follow them that believe… heal the sick, cleanse the leapers, raise the dead”.

We also are now more than conquerors through Christ-hallelujah, thank you Lord Jesus for all that you have done for us.  Therefore, as we now wrestle with the devil, principalities and powers, the rulers of darkness of this world, the spiritual wickednesses in high places, and the demons, we already know who the victors are because of Jesus and what he has come and already done!

We shall not cease to celebrate this salvation that you have brought-by the anointing.
 

 

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