Please consider
God the Father’s idea of retribution and please consider the following story
from the Bible. “Yahweh saw that the
wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that the thoughts in his heart
fashioned nothing but wickedness all day long.
•Yahweh regretted having made man on the earth, and his heart
grieved. •’I will rid the earth’s face
of man, my own creation,’ Yahweh said ‘and of animals also, reptiles too, and
the birds of heaven; for I regret having made them’ •But Noah had found favour with Yahweh.
“This is the
story of Noah:
“Noah was a good
man, a man of integrity among his contemporaries, and he walked with God. •Noah became the father of three sons, Shem,
Ham and Japheth. •The earth grew corrupt
in God’s sight, and filled with violence.
•God contemplated the earth: it
was corrupt, for corrupt were the ways of all flesh on the earth.”
“God said to
Noah, ‘The end has come for all things of flesh; I have decided this, because
the earth is full of violence of man’s making, and I will efface them from the
earth. •Make yourself an ark out of
resinous wood. Make it with reeds and
line it with pitch inside and out. . . .
“’For my part I
mean to bring a flood, and send the waters over the earth, to destroy all flesh
on it, every living creature under heaven; everything on earth shall
perish. •But I will establish my
Covenant with you, and you must go on board the ark, yourself, your sons, your
wife, and your sons’ wives along with you.
•From all living creatures, from all flesh, you must take two of each
kind aboard the ark, to save their lives with yours; they must be a male and a
female.’ . . . Noah did . . . all that God had ordered him.” Genesis 6:5-22
“7 Yahweh said to Noah, ‘Go aboard the ark,
you and all your household, for you alone among this generation do I see as a good
man in my judgement. . . . •For in seven days’ time I mean to make it
rain on the earth for forty days and nights, and I will rid the earth of every
living thing that I made.’ •Noah did all
the Yahweh ordered. . . .”
“Noah
with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives boarded the ark to escape the
waters of the flood. . . . Seven days later the waters of the flood
appeared on the earth. . . .
“The flood
lasted forty days on the earth. . .
. The waters rose and swelled greatly on
the earth, and the ark sailed on the waters.
•The waters rose more and more on the earth so that all the highest
mountains under the whole of heaven were submerged. . . .
And so all things of flesh perished that moved on the earth, birds,
cattle, wild beasts, everything that swarms on the earth, and every man. •Everything with the breath of life in its
nostrils died, everything on dry land.
Yahweh destroyed every living thing on the face of the earth, man and
animals, reptiles, and the birds of heaven.
He rid the earth of them, so that only Noah was left, and those with him
in the ark. . . .” Genesis 7:1-24
“Then God said
to Noah, •’Come out of the ark, you yourself, your wife, your sons, and your
sons’ wives with you. •As for all the
animals with you, all things of flesh, whether birds or animals or reptiles
that crawl on the earth, bring them out with you. Let them swarm on the earth; let them be
fruitful and multiply on the earth.’ •So
Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. •And all the wild beasts, all the cattle, all
the birds and all the reptiles that crawl on the earth went out from the ark,
one kind after another.
“Noah built an
altar for Yahweh, and choosing from all the clean animals and all the clean
birds he offered burnt offerings on the altar.
•Yahweh smelt the appeasing fragrance and said to himself, ‘Never again
will I curse the earth because of man, because his heart contrives evil
from his infancy. Never again will I strike down every living
thing as I have done.” Genesis 8:15-22
Please consider how human beings categorize other human
beings. For example, drug addicts,
convicts, ex-convicts, parents, married, single, legitimate, illegitimate,
bastards. Please note that God the
Father does not do “illegitimate” or “bastards.” He can only create good, whole human
beings. Human beings use these
categories to set human beings apart from each other for whatever reason.
Please consider the word “Racism.” The thing is there is no such thing as racial
anything in Eternity where God the Father lives. Only human beings on the earth know of such a
thing as “racism,” however you may understand the word “racism.”
Please consider God the Father
considering the following scenarios.
“I saw Cain’s descendants becoming more
and more godless and sensual. . . .
Their children were very large. They
possessed a quickness, an aptitude for everything, . . . And so arose on this mountain and spread far
around, a wicked race which by violence and seduction sought to entangle Seth’s
posterity likewise in their own corrupt ways.
Then God declared to Noe His intention to send the Deluge. During the building of the ark, Noe had to
suffer terribly from those people.”
“I have seen many things connected with
the race of giants. . . . These people could form all kinds of images
out of stone and metal; but of the knowledge of God they had no longer a
trace. They sought their gods in the
creatures around them. I have seen them
scratch up a stone, form it into an extravagant image, and then adore it. They worshipped also a frightful animal and
all kinds of ignoble things. . . . The women invented music. I saw them going around among the better
tribes trying to seduce them to their own abominations.”
“Cham’s descendants likewise had similar relations with the
evil spirits after the Deluge, and from such connection sprang so many . . .
mighty ones of the world, so many great, wild daring men.”**
God the Father is thinking in terms
of Himself, just as human beings think in terms of their selves. And so God may think, “All right, you don’t
want to be bothered by Me. That’s not an
acceptable idea. It won’t work.”
Please consider the results of
God’s marking the skins of Cain’s descendants, not in any order of
occurrence. The slave trade between the
colonies and the New World. The Civil
War in the United States (1861 to 1865 ).
Segregation in the United States.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. The riots in Newark, New Jersey and Los
Angeles, California among other places where cities were destroyed. And abortion (which is the murder of a human
being) which targets African-American women.
And the list goes on.
Please consider the following
excerpt from the article entitled “War and Rape, The most shameful consequence
of conflict comes out into the open” by Aryn Baker, published in TIME
magazine April 18, 2016.
“First they killed her
husband. Then the soldiers killed her two
sons, ages 5 and 7. When the uniformed
men yanked her daughter from her hands next, Mary didn’t think it could get any
worse.
“Mary and her family were members
of the Nuer tribe in South Sudan, caught up in a vicious power struggle between
the new nation’s President, Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka tribe, and his
Vice President, Riek Machar, a Nuer.
Their war, fought largely along ethnic lines, has turned the northern
part of the country into a wasteland. At
least 50,000 people have been killed, according to the U.N., 2.8 million are at
risk of famine, and an additional 2.3 million have fled their homes, recounting
tales of civilian slaughter, gratuitous torture and even forced
cannibalism. Mary’s family were among
the tens of thousands of civilians seeking refuge at a U.N. peacekeeping base
in the northern city of Bentiu when they ran into Kiir’s forces on the road in
June 2014.
“The 27-year-old recounts what
occurred next distantly, as if she were explaining something that happened to
someone else. The soldiers told Mary
that they considered the Nuer in the camps to be rebels and that they killed
her sons because they couldn’t risk letting them grow up to be fighters. “We don’t kill the women and the girls,” Mary
recalls the soldiers saying. “They said
they would only rape us. As if rape were
different than death,” says Mary, speaking in a safe house in Uganda run by
Make Way Partners, an American Christian organization that provides housing,
medical care and schooling for South Sudanese orphans and victims of human
trafficking. After the soldiers killed
her husband and sons, five of them held her down and forced her to watch as
three others raped her 10-year-old daughter.
Her name was Nyalaat. When the
men were done, Mary says, “I couldn’t even see my little girl anymore. I could only see blood.” Then the men took turns with Mary. Nayalaat died a few hours later. “I wanted to die too.”
The thing is God the Father has
given us just so many things to send us to perdition: drugs, alcohol, sex, in any of its forms,
etc. Same old, same old stuff that human
beings do to themselves and to each other.
The thing is if there is one thing which human beings fear most, it is
other human beings.
Please consider that just as God, the
Father worked through His Son, Jesus, the human being, when He was on the
earth, so Jesus and God, the Father still work through human beings.
How do we know that God, the Father worked
through Jesus? There are at least two
recorded instances in the Bible. The
first is when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan.
“As soon as Jesus was baptized he came up from the water, and suddenly
the heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and
coming down on him. And a voice spoke
from heaven, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on him’. (Matthew 3:16-17*) See also Luke 3:21-22.*
The second instance was the Transfiguration on Mount
Tabor. “Six days later, Jesus took with
him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could
be alone by themselves. There in their
presence he was transfigured: his
clothes became dazzlingly white, whiter than any earthly bleacher could make
them. Elijah appeared to them with
Moses; and they were talking with Jesus.
Then Peter spoke to Jesus:
‘Rabbi,’ he said ‘it is wonderful for us to be here; so let us make
three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah’. He did not know what to say; they were so frightened. And a cloud came, covering them in shadow;
and there came a voice from the cloud, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’” Mark 9:2-8.* See also Matthew 17:1-5.*
Please consider the Venerable Anne
Catherine Emmerich who was a very holy woman to whom these revelations were
given. The Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich
was also a faithful and trusted follower of Jesus, to whom He could entrust
these revelations.
“The person to whom this Summa Biblica was revealed was a peasant
girl born of devout and very poor parents on a farm in Westphalia in 1774. She received little education. For a number of years she worked on the farm,
then as a servant girl, and later became a seamstress. At the age of 28 she entered the Augustinian
convent at Dülmen, a small country town a few miles from her birthplace, near Münster. Ten years later, in 1811, all religious
communities in western Germany were suppressed on the order of Jerome Bonaparte
and the nuns forced to separate and find refuge wherever they could.
“Shortly before taking her vows,
while she was still working in the world, Anne Catherine had received the
visible stigmata of the bleeding Crown of Thorns on her head. A few months after the closing of the
convent, a cross appeared on her breast, as well as the wounds of the Passion
on her hands, feet and side. She was
given shelter by charitable persons of the town and for the remaining years of
her life was unable to leave her bed.
Her life became that of a victim soul, voluntarily dedicated to
suffering and acts of mystical reparation.
She gradually lost the power to eat food and often could not even drink
a few drops of water. Also, toward the
end of her life she did not sleep. She
became widely known, and the public manner of her life added greatly to her
sufferings. Besides the great numbers
who came to see her, not always from pious motives, there were two prolonged
and scrupulous investigations made of her case, one by a deeply antagonistic
civil commission, in which every conceivable—and futile—effort was made to heal
her mysterious wounds and expose her as an imposter.”** Anne Catherine Emmerich died on February 9,
1824.
The Stigmata (the Wounds of Christ)
is very painful and the wounds actually bleed.
There is a need for the wounds to be bandaged and changed as may be
needed. There is also a smell that
sometimes accompanies the Wounds. You
may recall Padre Pio, O.F.M. of San Giovanni Rotondo in Italy (Saint Pio of
Pietrelcina, O.F.M.) who also had the Stigmata.
Padre Pio lived from May 25, 1887 until September 23, 1968.
Please consider Jesus’ instructions
to those who would follow Him in religious life. “He made a tour round the villages,
teaching. •Then he summoned the Twelve
and began to send them out in pairs giving them authority over the unclean
spirits. And he instructed them to take
nothing for the journey except a staff —no bread, no haversack, no coppers for
their purses. •They were to wear sandals
but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic’.
•And he said to them, ‘If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until
you leave the district. •And if any
place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, as you walk away
shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to them.’ •So they set off to preach repentance; •and
they cast out many devils, and anointed many sick people with oil and cured
them.” Mark 6:7-13* The thing is those human beings who have
followed Jesus in the religious life have taken vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience to conform with Jesus’ instructions and they continue this practice
to this day.
*All
Biblical quotations are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, Copyright ©
1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd. and Doubleday, a Division
of Random House, Inc. All Rights
Reserved. Printed in the United States
of America March 2000 First Doubleday Reader’s Edition.
**Taken from the book The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical
Revelations, Volume I, From the Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine
Emmerich, Originally published in 1914 by Desclée, De Brouwer & Co. of
Lille, Paris, and Bruges, in conjunction with The Sentinel Press of New
York. Reprinted by Academy Library Guild
in 1954, and later by Apostolate of Christian Action, both of Fresno,
California. Reprinted in 1979 by TAN
Books and Publishers, Inc. Retypeset and
published again in 1986 by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc.
Copyright Bernardette
Grant, 2018 All rights reserved
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