The garden was the habitat designed by God for the first man, Adam.  This is of course assuming you don’t believe in a pre-adamite theory!  The four rivers are:

• Pison.  This river head encompassed the land of Havilah which may have been 3 separate parts.  It is associated with a land of gold or shimmering. Because of this clue some people, such as Egyptologist David Rohl, identify it with the Sefīd-Rūd. This riverbed runs through Iran.
• Gihon. Meaning bursting forth or gushing, similar to the meaning of the Euphrates. The Book of Jasher identifies Gihon with a great sea.  The land that this river encompasses is said to be Cush which is the ancient name of the land of Ethiopia.  Cush is the land settled by Ham and his descendants.  Because of this, some have identified it as the Nile.  It could be possible that this is identifying the Red Sea as well.
• Hiddekel. The Hiddekel is associated the the Tigris river in Mesopotamia which is modern Iraq.  There is very little debate about the identity of this river amongst modern day academia.
• Euphrates. The Euphrates river has been a landmark river amongst all during biblical times and is not disputed today.  It, along with the Tigris river flows through modern day Iraq.

An interesting article of the four river heads was written by David Gibson.

Verse 15 tells us that man was placed in the Garden of Eden to work it and guard it.  He was required to dress it, which means variously to be in bodage to, work, or be enslaved to which basically means to work it (such as dressing a turkey is arranging items and working it).  To keep it means to guard it and protect it.  Guard and protect it from what though?  Any ideas?

This was a great thought from an excellent message by our Connecticut District Superintendant, Bishop Hanson.

This is how the night sky looked on June in the year 2 B.C. from Babylon in modern day Iraq.  Venus and Jupiter the king and queen star rising together in the east in the constellation of Leo (Lion).  I just finished watching The Star of Bethlehem and find Rick Larson’s research quite intriguing.  I’d recommend viewing this video.  I bought the DVD, but you can see the videos on Youtube under ‘The Real Star of Bethlehem” as well.

After watching this video, I downloaded Stellarium for the Mac (They make it for Windows and Linux too) for free and looked at the dates Larson mentioned in the videos.  I am quite impressed!  Go ahead and research it for yourself.  Good stuff!

Click the button below to go to Lulu.com and purchase.

Thanks for supporting my site!

P.S. I only get $3.60 for each sale, so I am not getting rich on it!

Ryan

What do you think of this?

http://laf.pentecostalblogger.com

Lev. 11:44 For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  45 For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

LORD in both of the referenced scriptures above is the tetragrammaton (YHWH) referring to the one God of Israel.  This name for God in the Old Testament occurred  6,823 times in the Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia which form the basis for the underlying Hebrew text of the Old Testament.

God, as read above,  is a translation of elohim which, as noted in a previous post in this series is the plural form of Eloah and is used to delineate a plural of majesty or a plural of attributes in God.  Notice the coupling of elohim and YHWH.  YHWH is the name of the one true elohim of Israel.

Lev. 18:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the LORD your God.

Lev. 18:4 Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God.

Again, we see the same pattern repeated in these scriptures too.  All through scripture we see the God of Israel being a single entity.  He is called YHWH or Yahweh in the Old Testament by Jews and Jesus Christ in the New Testament.  There is no reference to a trinity or even a duality in God in the bible.  The theology and doctrine taught by the scriptures is that of One God who came down to earth manifested in flesh to redeem a fallen mankind from their sin.

The forum’s address has changed to http://laf.pentecostalblogger.com.  It used to have it’s own url, but due to financial concerns, I have decided to let that url go back into the great internet pool in the sky!

Anyway, for all those interested in discussing bible topics, archaeology, or anything related to the Christian faith, stop on by and lets chat!

One of the things I’m going to change soon is the nature of my articles.  I am going to make the emphasis more scholarly and less leisure-like reading.  For a very good daily devotional which is Apostolic Oneness in doctrine, try Bro. and Sis Parker’s Morning Manna.  I get it delivered to my e-mail daily and is a joy and a blessing to me.

I hope you all are having a blessed new year!

Ryan

Chapter two introduces the concept of fasting. It highlights pericopes of scripture which describe fasting and lists three types of fasting as follows:

1. Absolute fast- no food or drink
2. Normal fast- only water is consumed
3. Partial fast- where only certain foods and drink are consumed

Fasting is for a purpose.  Not simply as a diet fad, but rather as a way to mold yourself and draw closer to God.  Fasting does nothing to change God.  It is all a discipline to help us get our flesh under control and focus more keenly on the Spirit of God and drawing closer to Jesus.

Chapter three goes into the life of Daniel and the choices he had to make while living in captivity.  He could have chose the easy route but instead decided to stay focused on serving the God he knew to be true!  The next chapter follows with how a Daniel fast will affect change in our spirit, body and soul.  The next is a detailed listing of 5 steps to success!  This concluded the first pat of the book.

The second part of the book includes a food list of recommended foods to purchase while doing the Daniel Fast.  It also contains 115 pages of recipes with the last portion of the book devoted to a meal planner and frequently asked questions.

The recipe and food list take up the majority of the book and what I found to be the most useful portion of the book.  The book is paperback and constructed of typical quality paper.  If you are planning on using the book extensively in the kitchen, I’d recommend either laminating the pages or making a photocopy of the recipe and using that (be sure to shred afterwards to avoid copyright lawsuits)!

Anyway, my review gives it a thumbs up for background info on the Daniel fast and for the recipes.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com® book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Here is an interesting fact about Tonga:

According to the constitution of Tonga, The Sabbath Day shall be kept holy in Tonga and no person shall practise his trade or profession or conduct any commercial undertaking on the Sabbath Day except according to law; and any agreement made or witnessed on that day shall be null and void and of no legal effect. (Substituted by Act 3 of 1971.)

Here are some statistics collected by the U.S. Department of State on Tonga:

Geography
Area: 747 sq. km. (288 sq. mi.).
Cities: Capital–Nuku’alofa (pop. 34,000).
Terrain: 171 islands, mainly raised coral but some volcanic; 48 inhabited.
Climate: Tropical, modified by trade winds. Warm season (December to May), cool season (May to December).

People
Nationality: Noun and adjective–Tongan(s).
Population (2011 est.): 105,916.
Age structure (2011 est.): 37% below 15; 6% over 64.
Annual population growth rate (2011): 0.24%.
Ethnic groups: Tongan 98%, other Polynesian, European.
Religions: Christian.
Languages: Tongan, English.
Education: Literacy (2007)–99.2%.
Health: Infant mortality rate (2011)–13.65/1,000. Life expectancy at birth (2011 est.)–75.16 years (female 76.58 years; male 73.79 years).
Work force (2006): 35,670. Agriculture–65%.
Unemployment (2006): 1.1%.

Interesting sites include Ha’amonga.  Known as the Stonehenge of the South Pacific, the mysterious Ha’amonga was erected in 1200AD. It consists of two upright coral stones about 5m high, topped by a horizontal connecting stone 6m long. Each stone weighs some 40 tonnes. The monument is now part of a 23ha protected reserve.

The United Pentecostal Church has two missionaries to the island nation of Tonga, Sis. Reece and missionary couple Bro. and Sis. Blunt.  Please help by praying for the nation of Tonga, or become an AIM supporter.

Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?^{MAL 2:10}

The Prophet Malachi whose name means “my messenger” or “angel” lived approximately 400 years before the Birth of Christ during the time of the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity. Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets, therefore the Post Apostolic Fathers refer to him as “the seal of the prophets.”

God had emphatically warned Israel against mixed marriages with pagans (Exo. 34:16; Deut. 7:3; and Josh. 22:12,13). Through intermarriages with the heathen they profaned that covenant. Ezra had done his best to eradicate the evil (Ezra 9:10); and, “Nehemiah, too, contended against those who had contracted such marriages,” having found many such violations of God’s law upon his return to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 13:23-28). The important consideration in this desire on God’s part that Israel should not marry foreign wives was that doing so injected an element of paganism into Israel, an injection which had actually been the source of the total apostasy of both the secular kingdoms of Israel before the exile.

The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world’s plurality of gods to the one only true God; not understanding that, although He is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with His own οἰκονομία . The numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity; whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being destroyed, that it is actually supported by it. They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-eminently the credit of being worshippers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and theTrinity rationally considered constitute the truth.

Tertullian himself admits that the majority of believers in his day were believers in a Unity or oneness view of God as opposed to Tertullian’s view of the trinity.  He even goes so far as to say that the majority of believers threw accusations against him of being a preacher of two or three gods by preaching his doctrine of trinity.

Malachi as well throws accusations against the unrepentant Israel by stating a fact of God’s inherent quality of being one, not divided into a multiplicity of gods or persons.

Sarah Young is a missionary with her husband Steve to a Japanese congregation in Perth Australia.  She was born and raised in Nashville, TN.  She holds multiple degrees in counseling and psychology.  She is a church planter with Mission to the World, a Presbyterian evangelistic initiative.

First, let me say that I really enjoy the New King James Version of the bible.  It is a solid reworking of the KJV or Authorized Version of the bible and has one of the best available Greek New Testaments to back it up.  Of the plethora of available new translations on the market, I would still prefer the KJV, but I would get the NKJV if forced to use a modern translation for whatever purpose.  It reads well, is faithful to the majority type set, and is a literal translation rather than a Dynamic Equivalence translation which I’ve never really been a fan of.

I was given the electronic version to read, using my Kindle App on my iphone, but according to the publisher (Thomas Nelson) the following features are available in the print version:

• 260 scenarios with devotions by Sarah Young
• Hundreds of inspiring scriptures highlighted throughout the text
• New King James Version® (NKJV) in paragraph format
• Index to devotions
• Two-color text
• Presentation page
• Ribbon marker

[Gen 3:24 KJV] “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

There is very little information regarding this sword on the internet.  The Hebrew reads חֶרֶב לַהַט or lahat chereb for flaming sword as translated into English by the KJV.  The translation of lahat according to Brown-Driver-Briggs is flame, devour, or magic as in hidden.  The flaming sword is not visible to our eyes.

Where did the sword go?  It is still in the hands of one of Gabriel’s angels.  Gabriel is the leading angel in the rank known as Cherubim according to Rabbi, Torah scholar, and Jewish philosopher Moshe ben Maimon, (also known as Maimonides) who wrote the order of hierarchy in his book “Mishneh Torah”.  According to this source, Cherubim were known for helping people deal with the effects of sin in this world.  God’s Cherubim or angels guard the path to the tree of life according to the account in Genesis.

Jesus will open the path to the tree of life in the last days, allowing us to pass into the New Jerusalem as long as we remain faithful and true to the Truth found only in following Christ.

[Rev 22:14 KJV] “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”

Some Jewish rabbis correlate the natural birth experience with the ejection from the Garden of Eden.  The knowledge of eternal life being guarded by Angelic beings, or Spiritual enlightenment.

What I see is that we have been denied knowledge of the eternality of the soul unless we believe completely in Jesus Christ.  As we bind our spirit with His Spirit, we are made alive again in the Spirit world by having God “quicken” our Spirit, or rather breathe life into these dry bones again and raise us spiritually from the dead.  This is what we find in Revelation.

The leaves of the Tree of Life give healing again, and according to Rev 22:14 quoted above, that same tree is accessible at the end of this age by following “his commandments” which mean the commandments Jesus (aka God) gives us in His Word.

The tree is still there, the angels are still there, and the spiritual sword still guards that path whom we know as the Word.  The Word is the sword of the Spirit that divides asunder.

[Heb 4:12 KJV] “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Mac OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit processor

First, let me say that I absolutely love the iPhone version of the Biblereader+ and have been using Biblereader+ starting with PalmOS, migrating over to Windows Mobile 2003, and the eventually moving to the iPhone.  The reader has always been solid on mobile platforms, and some would argue that they are the leader in mobile Bible viewers.  So needless to say I was very excited to learn that they had finally gone over to making a Bible reader for a Desktop / Laptop operating system.  I was also slightly disappointed to learn it was only available for Lion!  Fortunately for Apple, I just had to try it out for myself, so I’ve upgraded to Lion last night for the sole purpose of getting Olivetree’s Biblereader for Mac.  It is easy to install, just go to the Mac Store and download / install Biblereader.  My initial reactions are very positive.  Accordance Bible could learn a thing or two about interface design from Olivetree.

The left hand side of the screen is taken up by a quick access list which displays recently viewed Bibles, or all Bibles depending on the configuration you’ve set up.  The bibles can be downloaded to your App with the built in downloader.  If you’ve been a user of the free mobile Biblereader then the interface of the Mac edition will come naturally to you as the design seems to have been imported from the iPhone version of their App.  For instance, on the left is a screenshot of the famous verse chooser that they’ve been using for quite some time on the iPhone (and I assume the droid as well).  In three clicks you’re taken to the exact verse you want to read in whatever Bible you happen to have open at the time.  This is the easiest bible browser I’ve come accross on the mobile platform and is infanately more useable than flipping through a long list in sequential order.   By clicking on a verse number it allows you to enter a comment on that verse which you may then sync with Olivetree’s cloud service to allow syncing between your laptop and mobile phone device.

By highlighting a portion of text, you will see a plus sign pop up.  Click on that plus sign to open up the menu shown on the right which allows you to enter a note on that portion of selected text, highlight that text in a color or bookmark that text.  The whole look and feel of it seems polished.  By clicking the little arrow icon as shown on the left, you will expand the currently selected window into it’s own window.  Also, to add bookmarks is a simple as clicking the ribbon in the top left hand corner of the bible or book you are in.  See the picture on the right for a screenshot of what the ribbon looks like.  Olivetree should be commended on the work they have accomplished with BibleReader Mac.  Now the one place they don’t excel is in speed of searching.  Now with Accordance (My choice for gold standard in search speed) searching is near instantaneous.  So quick it is impossible to time with a stop watch, however with Biblereader there is a definite lag.  You can literally count one thousand one… one thousand two before the hits appear.  Now as to how they are displayed, it is easy to tell that they are porting this over from iOS devices.  The search results pane are very similar to what you’d expect to see on a mobile phone App.  The other interesting thing about it is all the books you’ve purchased for the mobile reader can be downloaded for free on the Mac version.  Olivetree also has some competitive pricing on their texts.  A lot more competitive than Accordance which seems to want to break the bank even when buying public domain texts!  All-in-all I’d give this App solid marks in just about every category.

e-Sword is an excellent freeware bible study application designed for Windows PCs.  The specifications required to run this program are listed as follows:

• Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
• Pentium based PC (or equivalent)
• 800 x 600 resolution or greater

The screenshots I’ll be using throughout this review will be of my e-Sword install on my Mac using WINE.  See my tutorial on installing e-Sword on a Mac for instructions on how to get this bible study software up and running on a Macbook using Snow Leopard.

The image on the left is the bible navigation pane which is displayed on the left when you open up e-Sword in the default layout.  This allows for quick and easy access of any book of the bible with 2 to 3 clicks.  Of course you could just type in the reference by typing your verse reference in the box shown in the image on the right. You can also browse for a reference by clicking the bible icon shown to the right of the text box shown in the picture.  This will open a pop-up box allowing you to browse to the specific verse you’d like to view.  This is fine, but I wish that it would open multiple verse reference at once.  Accordance allows for this simply by typing all references you want in the verse search window and then clicking the search button.  This is very valuable if your reading a bible study and it gives multiple bible references you wish to read at once rather than going sequentially.  In fairness to e-Sword, I have not run into many bible study programs that can accomplish this besides e-Sword.  By clicking on the binocular icon, you are able to enter into an advanced search dialog box.  This allows you to apply more filters and refine your search.  The problem is that it still will not allow for a multiple verse search to be entered.

The actual layout of the program I found to be very intuitive.  The main program window is split into 4 separate sections. They are editors, dictionaries, commentaries and bibles.  In previous versions of the program, you could access other reference works called topical files by going to the editor window, selecting the topic file in the drop down list located on the bottom of the window and then browsing the table of contents in yet another drop down box on the top of the editor window.  Well, you can still do this, but now in version 10 Rick (the maker of the software) has added the Reference window which is available by going to the Tools>Reference Library menu option.

I personally find this a lot better and enjoy using the reference module window.  Now the topic files are available in a refx format which is a read only format unlike the topic editor (topx) format which was user editable.

The user community is very active!  Bible Support is the unofficial / semi-official forum for finding thousands of extra modules which you can download and install into your base e-Sword package as well as help on just about everything you can think of relating to e-Sword.  The site also has created a nice 10.x user’s manual for e-Sword which was well done and valuable for the newbie to e-Sword.  I have also uploaded it here for easy download, but you must understand that it is not to be sold or made available in any form that would require paying money for it’s use.  Officially supported modules are available through the built-in download feature of the program.  This reminds me a lot of the Sword Project’s module installation feature which has been available in their software for years and years.

Version 10 has several new features, including sermonaudio.com integration that allows you to listen to various sermons and bible studies sorted by bible reference, the aforementioned reference modules, and continuing support for STEP modules.

Accordance is a Bible study program designed for the Macintosh operating system.  The specifications for running Accordance 9.5.1 are as follows:

Accordance 9 is fully Intel native and optimized for Mac OS 10.6 and up. It also runs on PowerPC Macs and OS 10.4 and up (users with earlier Mac OS X or OS 7-9 can install the Classic version).

With the advent of Accordance 9.3, OakTree has created an enhanced user interface designed for new users to immediately jump into using Accordance.  It is called the Assistant Window.

The Read section allows the user to type in a verse or book of the bible and open a window displaying the passage in the user’s preferred bible.  Alternatively, it also allows the user to open a window displaying devotional readings to choose from.

The next section, Find, allows the user to locate word or words in a wide range of selections wether it be the bible, or User add-on modules and texts.

The last section, labeled Learn, includes hyperlinks to Oaktree’s various resources for learning how to use the software including the built in help and the Accordance Forum.

The assistant window is one step in improving Accordance’s usability for the average experienced Mac user who is new to Accordance.  Accordance has been notoriously known as non-intuitive for the average user.  It relies on keyboard commands and menu options often buried in menues.

The main window is known as a workspace.

This is a screenshot of the main view of Accordance.  The focus is on the search features.  At the top of the screen you’ll see a search bar with various options to allow you to search words or verses.  The search algorithm is extremely fast.  In fact it is the fastest search algorithm of any bible software I have tested wether PC or Mac.

Checking the interlinear checkbox immediately opens the English, Greek (Hebrew) the Strong’s number and the parts of speech the word belongs to.  This is very handy for conducting word studies or verse studies.  Triple clicking a word will open the default lexicon and display details of the underlining Greek (Hebrew) word in a separate workspace.

Although this is a very powerful search program, (for example right click and choose search for… lemma, root, inflected or tag in any appropriately tagged or marked bible such as the Novum Testamentum Graece (Tischendorf)), it is sometimes unclear on how to search through all texts and modules you might have purchased, or user created modules you might have made using Accordance’s built in user module authoring system.  To search through everything in your whole entire library, for example, you must go to Amplify>Search>Search all…

The resource pallette as shown on the left provides an interesting way to access your resources.  By clicking the appropriate icon you have access to purchased English, Hebrew, Greek and graphical texts and modules.  One of my favorite resources and one I personally think should be included in the base software package is the timeline module.  A screen capture is shown on the right of the timeline module.  It is a graphical representation of the history of bible people and kingdoms.  Not only that, but it also displays the timelines of contemporary histories of nations such as the Chinese and the Egyptian dynasties.  Another way cool feature of the timeline is the ability to add your own events to the timeline.  There are also alternative timelines labeled ‘conservative’ and ‘critical’ which will shift the dates based on which-ever timeline you believe to be more correct.

The program is well designed with a very active user community who enjoy sharing tips and hints on the Accordance Forums.  If you get stuck with a particular problem, more than likely either Helen, Dr. J or one of the other community users will be able to answer your questions or point you in the right direction.  My username there is fireandsalt, which will probably be no surprise to those who know me as I tend to use that username all over the internet on various bible, theology, and techie forums.

All in all I give this the following ratings:

Holiness is the separation of sin and worldly pursuits and the dedication to God and godly pursuits.

1Pet. 1:15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;  16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

There is no neutral ground in the spirit realm.  You are either in God’s will or Satan’s will.  One is a Holy family, a royal priesthood.  The other is an unholy family, an unregenerate people.

Rom. 12:1   I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.