Adult Sunday School - Part 10 - Gideon

Adult Sunday School - Part 10 - Gideon - by P.K.Odendaal - September 2012

How do you go from rejection, bitterness, accusations and humiliation to arrogant and steadfast faith? How can any man go from the one extreme to the other? Just ask Gideon. For me he is an example of what can be done if you are touched by God - more than once. Many of us are touched by God and it stays a touch - and even soon disappears.

Read the article by Annemie here :

http://what-a-friend-an.blogspot.com/2012/08/dont-let-your-encounter-with-god-leave.html

I have been touched by God many times, and it stays an anchor for my soul in times of abject depression, which fortunately are quite rare.

We start off with Gideon - himself, his family and his nation being rejected and forgotten by God, with no hope and no God.

Adult Sunday School - Part 9 - Revenge

Adult Sunday School - Part 9 - Revenge - by P.K.Odendaal - September 2012

 

We have seen that the law had to come, and that minimised but partly legitimised revenge, although it was not meant to. It was meant to give redress only.

But, despite this, mankind persisted in revenge on a grand scale, and we have only to look at Samson to see this. Samson is our type for revenge, because that is more or less what his life consisted of - and the sad part was that he was such a man of God called a Nazarite who was called to free his people from bondage by the Philistines. Instead he brought them into further bondage.

Adult Sunday School - Part 8 - Joseph

Adult Sunday School - Part 8 - Joseph as a type for (of) Jesus - by P.K.Odendaal - August 2012

We find the story of Joseph in Genesis chapters 30 to 50, and nowhere else in the Bible has one man gotten so much coverage as Joseph, except Jesus Christ, and the point is that it is a very important story. Not so important as a story of Joseph, but much more importantly, as a foreshadow of the story of Jesus Christ.

The story of Joseph contains numerous intrigues, prophecies, examples and lessons interspersed with the best mankind has in terms of courage, long-suffering, forgiveness and love - characteristics we find in Jesus Christ himself. So we are not going to read this story as a story of Joseph. We are going to delve deeper into it and regard it as a story of the life and times of Jesus Christ.

Adult Sunday School - Part 7 - The Law

Adult Sunday School - Part 7 - The Law - by P.K.Odendaal - August 2012

We find ourselves in the beginning of the world. Adam and Eve, who knew God personally, may have died already. What do we find? Violence, revenge, war, aggression - and people in bondage, even slavery. And this despite God's will that we be kind to each other and enjoy His creation.

How did this transpire then? It is because we could sin with impunity. There was no law. God wanted us to be free and not subject to any laws other than the one forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.

But we had eaten of this fruit - we now know what sin and evil is, and we are going to pursue this line for survival, not knowing that it leads to death.

Of course we will not be punished for our sin and evil, other than dying because of it one day. So there is this uneasy peace with God, and it is building up tension between us and God and between us and our fellow men. We were on a path of self-destruction.

Adult Sunday School - Part 6 - Shaking the Earth again

Adult Sunday School - Part 6 - The earth is shaken for a last time. - by P.K.Odendaal - August 2012. 

Whilst we are busy with the destruction of the earth and the subsequent reconstruction and replenishment on many occasions, it will be prudent to take it to its final conclusion. What we know is that in most of these cases only the earth was shaken, but in the end of times, the heaven will be shaken as well as in:

Heb. 12:26  Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

In previous parts I have already dwelt on the meaning of heaven as referring to the sky. Our conclusion is thus that on many of the occasions when the earth was destroyed it was done from inside itself as a sort of implosion, but in Revelation the skies will also be shaken, meaning that the whole earth will tumble as in:

Adult Sunday School - Part 5 - The first sin

Adult Sunday School - Part 5 - The first sin - by P.K.Odendaal - August 2012

And so the world was new again and there was no sin and no law and no evil, only a serious warning by God that they should not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because they would then die (spiritually).

Gen 2:17  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

It is clear from this that when there is no law and no knowledge of evil then there cannot be any sin. This verse says that once you know what is good and evil, then you will know what is sin and then you will die of your sin.

Adult Sunday School - Part 4 - Regeneration

Adult Sunday School - Part 4 - Regeneration and Replenishment of Earth. - by P.K.Odendaal - July 2012

And so we come to Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

We have seen in the previous part how the earth was laid waste, being void, and without form and without light. It was time for God to remake the vessel :

Jer. 18:4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make.

If we read this story as the story of creation, we will see many anomalies and discrepancies. If we read it as the regeneration of earth, we will find it interesting. If we read between the lines or on a deeper level, we will find it vital and exciting - and I will try to bring all three to you.

Adult Sunday School – Part 3 – Disaster strikes

Adult Sunday School – Part 3 – Disaster strikes – by P.K.Odendaal – July 2012

We have seen that God has created the heavens and earth in Genesis 1:1 - and all was well.

But then … sin was found on earth ... and God destroyed almost everything on earth, with only a few souls remaining. Scripture says He shook the earth.

The aftermath of this tragedy is described in Genesis 1 verse 2 : And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. In Hebrew the word ‘hayah’ is used which means ‘it became’ and not as translated ‘it was’.

It is clear from this scripture that something terrible happened. If you read this as part of the original creation, you need to explain why God created such a chaotic thing. After Gen. 1:1 the earth was perfect, because God does not create chaos. But, in the meantime, something terrible has happened.

Adult Sunday School – Part 2 – In the beginning

Sunday School for Adults – Part 2 – In the beginning - by P.K.Odendaal – July 2012.

The story of creation is very much misunderstood and abused and derided by atheists and agnostics, because they, and many of us, think that it is narrated in the first book of Genesis.

However, if you read that piece carefully, you will find that it is not the story of creation. There are at least eight serious anomalies, which cannot be explained away, and thus we were taught in Church that it is merely a myth covered in a cloak of religion, much like the religion of many Christians in the world is a myth covered with a 'form of godliness, but denying the power thereof' (2Ti 3:5). We are rather encouraged to 'refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise ourselves rather unto godliness' (1Ti 4:7).  And this I will try to do in this series. I will go into this supposed story of creation in more detail in a next part of this series. Today I am addressing the actual story of creation.

Adult Sunday School – Part 1 – Introduction

Sunday school for adults – Part 1 – Introduction – by P.K.Odendaal – July 2012

I was brought up in a strictly religious environment. Every week I had go to Church – about three times, attend Sunday School, 'Kinderkrans' (Children's religious ring), CSV ('Christian Student Association'), Hostel 'stiltetyd' (quiet time) – seven times a week, and many other. So when I left school, I had had enough of religion. But … it prepared me for the day I met God and Jesus Christ some twenty years later.

Today I am astounded to hear that all these things have been banned from the school program or curricula, and I mostly find people who have never been to Church and who do not even have a Bible. I am writing this series for them, to solve their BKDS, which, as everybody knows, is their Bible Knowledge Deficit Syndrome.

On friendship - Part 3 - A friend of God is a friend of me.

A friend of GOD is a friend of me ... and fair weather friends.

By P.K. Odendaal - 2 October 2011

This is not a spiritual blog, although it has some spiritual connotations. It is rather a satire on friendship and brotherhood, two terms which I still have to come to terms with.

The subject comes from a joke I heard many years ago.

An elderly nun, dressed in a long black dress with flapping long black coat, was trying to cross a busy street one day. Suddenly a young boy rushed up to her, from the other side of the street, and quickly helped her over the street - an etiquette young boys are not known for. The nun then thanked him profusely for the consideration he has shown, and asked him why he did it, to which he replied: A friend of Batman is a friend of me.