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God the Father of all Mankind
Pope John Paul II wrote: "The whole of the Christian life is like a great pilgrimage to the house of the Father, whose unconditional love for every human creature, and in particular for the 'prodigal son, we discover anew each day.' In the Old Testament the Jewish people realised that God loved them like a father, and Jesus taught his followers to call the Father 'abba', a word which means 'daddy'.
Every day we say the Our Father prayer, and every day we offer the sacrifice of Jesus to the Father (at Mass). Nonetheless it is surprising that the Church has not instituted a special feast day for the Father. This is currently being requested of Rome, particularly by the Father of All Mankind Apostolate. The prayers that follow are taken from a publication produced by that organisation, and it has the Imprimatur.
Why promote a feast day for God the Father at this time? Because the Father has made it clear that he wants us to draw closer to him. Extraordinary as it sounds, in 1932 an Italian nun called Mother Eugenia Ravasio had visions of God the Father: 'Her most important legacy to us is the Message of the Father, the only private revelation made personally by God the Father and recognised as authentic by the Church, after ten years of the most rigorous examination." The Bishop of Grenoble conducted the Enquiry and he wrote: "The object of the mission which would appear to have been entrusted to Mother Eugenia is precise and, from the doctrinal point of view, I see it as legitimate and timely. Its precise object is to make God the Father known and honoured, mainly by the institution of a special feast which has been of the Church. The Enquiry established that a liturgical feast in honour of the Father would be quite in keeping with catholic practice as a whole."
The above quotations come from the book The Father Speaks to His Children (Imprimatur 1989). It is worth repeating that this is the first time in the history of the Church that private revelation from the Father has been authenticated. Therefore we should feel very blessed that it is for our times.
In the Bible God made his presence known in various ways, and in order to speak with Mother Eugenia the Father took the form of a young man. He said: "I cannot give my beloved Son another time to prove my love for men! I am now coming among them in order to love them and make them know this love, assuming their image and their poverty..." God the Father wanted us to have a picture, which would represent him and remind us of his presence. The above icon resembles the description given by Mother Eugenia.
(Why didn't we hear about this wonderful event before? The heresy of 'modernism' has tainted the Church for over 150 years, and one of its influences is an indifference to private revelation. Even Fatima and the Divine Mercy messages are not appreciated.)When teaching the Jews at the time of Moses, God instructed them on how he wanted to be honoured. He asked for an 8-day feast with the final day called the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23 v.33-43). This formula was later repeated, with another 8-days and the final day called the Feast of Dedication of the Temple. Octave is the Latin word which signifies the number 8, and the Church continued the tradition of associating 8 days with a major feast. In our times, God instituted Divine Mercy Sunday as the 8' day of Easter - a fulfilment of the Easter promises. Now, in giving honour to the Father we again use an octave of prayer. The 8th day falls on the first Sunday in August - the Father's chosen day for the feast. This means that the octave starts on the last Sunday in July.
However the prayers can also be said at any time. The main purpose of the eight days of prayer, is that they will focus our minds on the Father in various ways. Then we will be ready to consecrate ourselves to the Father. This preparation and consecration is important: God wants us to re-dedicate ourselves to him. In the Bible, after the Temple had been defiled by invaders, the Jews had an 8-day feast of re-Dedication. Similarly, our souls are defiled by sin and apathy, and the consecration will be a renewal and blessing for us.
Video talk Philip Illsley - God The Father of all Mankind 2011
"Through Him,
with Him and in Him"God is my Father
My father in heaven, how sweet it is to know that You are my Father and that I am Your child!
Especially when the skies of my soul are cloudy and my cross weighs more heavily, I feel the need to repeat to You: Father, I believe in Your love for me!
Yes, I believe that You are a Father to me at every moment of my life, and that I am Your child!
I believe that You love me with an infinite love!
I believe that You are watching over me night and day and that not a hair falls from my head without Your permission!
I believe that, in Your infinite Wisdom, You know better than I what is good for me.
I believe that, in You infinite power, You can bring good even out of evil.
I believe that, in Your infinite goodness, You make everything to the advantage of those who love You; even under the hands of those who strike me I kiss Your hand which heals!
I believe, but increase in me faith, hope and love! Teach me always to see Your love as my guide in every event of my life.
Teach me to surrender myself to You like a baby in its mother's arms.
Father, You know everything, You see everything, you know me better than I know myself; You can do everything, and You love me!
My father, since it is Your wish that we should always turn to You, I come with confidence to ask You, together with Jesus and Mary...
(here request the favour that you desire).For this intention, and uniting myself to their Most Sacred Hearts, I offer You all my prayers, my sacrifices and mortifications, all my actions, and greater faithfulness to my duties(1).
Give me the light, the grace and the power of the Holy Spirit!
Strengthen me in this Spirit, that I may never lose Him, never sadden Him and never allow Him to become weaker in me.
My Father, I ask this in the name of Jesus, Your Son! And You, Jesus, open Your Heart and place in it my own, and, together with Mary's, offer it to our divine Father! Obtain for me the grace that I need!
Divine Father, call all men to Yourself. Let all the world proclaim Your fatherly goodness and Your divine mercy!
Be a tender Father to me and protect me wherever I am, like the apple of Your eye. Make me always a worthy son/daughter; have mercy on me!
Divine Father, sweet hope of our souls, may You be known, honoured and loved by all men!
Divine Father, infinite goodness poured out on all peoples, may You be know, honoured and loved by all men!
Divine Father, beneficient dew of humanity, may You be known, honoured and loved by all men!
(Mother EUGENIA)
Partial indulgence
+ GIRARD, Vicar Apostolic of Cairo
9 October 1935
+ JEAN, Cardinal Verdier
Archbishop of Paris
8 May 1936The Father Speaks to His
Children Reflections on
this wonderful Bookby Philip Illsley
Over the years I have been given much to read by people but have rejected most of this because of my involvement with the devotion to the Divine Mercy and in taking pilgrims to Medjugorje. When I say I have rejected this material it is more a matter of finding the time to read what has been given to me and invariably it is put into a draw and forgotten about. Two years ago I was given the booklet The Father Speaks to His Children. Why I began to read this book I really don't know it maybe because of the icon image on the front cover which prompted my response. But when I started to read this book I just could not put it down I was fascinated by what this nun Mother Eugina Raviso had achieved in her life and she reminded me so much like Sr Maria Faustina, and the more I read about her the more you began to realise why God the Father chose her to appear to and God the Father appeared to her on the 1st July 1932. These message's given by the Father to Mother Eugina have been reconised as authentic by the church after ten years of the most rigorous examination.
When we talk about a vision we mean that He chose to appear in a way that we can all understand. He takes on a masculine gender so that we can relate to Him. He told Mother Eugina : I cannot give My Beloved Son another time to prove to prove My love for Men. So I have decided to come Myself Now. This time we now live in Is His Time. I truly believe that we are all of us now living in the time of the fulfilment of our Salvation as promised in the book of Revelation ( Rev ch 21 v1 –7 ) Heaven and earth will be transformed, God Himself will be with them; He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Heaven on Earth, Thy Kingdom Come Father
The coming of the new Jerusalem. Something we as Christians have been praying for over the last 2000 years in the Our Father, the prayer His Son Jesus taught us.The messages also make it clear that God the Father wants to be Known and Loved by all His Children. He wants people of every nationality and Faith - or no Faith, to realise that He is the Father of all Mankind. That He loves and cares for everyone. My Ardent desire He said : Is to come and dwell as a Father, A brother, A close friend, With all my creatures Men. But in spite of This they have forgotten Me, and offended Me with countless sins. I Gave Moses My 10 Commandments, they were supposed to observe these commandments, but little by little they have heaped outrages upon Me. Of course I can understand My childrens
Weaknesses, because of this I asked My Son Jesus, To give them the means to get up again after they had fallen. These means are the seven Sacraments, and the greatest means of your salvation. My dear Children, I have lavished these gifts upon you for over 20 centuries, but with what miserable results.I Will Forgive You !!, after you have repented eEven if your sins were as repulsive as Mud. Your confidence and Your Love, will make Me forget them. So You will Not be Judged! I am Just It Is true ! But Love pays for everything. In other words great eniquities, can be expiated with just a little Love. Great sins can be expiated with little acts of Love, Mercy, and forgiveness. So that you will not be judged, Or rather, That You will be judged with infinitely Merciful Love. However what I do require, is the faithful observance of the 10 commandments I gave the church so you will be rational creatures, and that You will preserve the treasure which is the soul I gave You clothed in the fullness of Its Divine Beauty.
Man will not enjoy true happiness except with His Father and Creator. I created Man for Myself, and It is right that I, should be all for him, because his heart that beats inside him was made by Me, and is Made for Me, Alone. I know all your needs, Your desires, and everything in your hearts, but how happy and grateful I would be if I saw you coming to Me and confiding in Me your needs. Like A Son who has total trust in His Father.
Remember This He said : I will always show Myself to be Your Father, Provided that You show yourselves to be My children.What the Father wants of us His Children:
1) The Father desires His Image in every Home. (You can down load this image on this web site) I desire He Said: That every family prominently display this image in their homes. I wish every family to place itself under My special Protection. There every day the family will share with me Its needs, its works, Its Sorrows, Its Sufferings, Its Desires, Its Joys. I will let a ray of Peace fall upon all families that Honour Me, and Trust Me. This Family will be relieved in all its troubles, all its worries, all its sufferings. If Families Love and Honour Me, I will give them My peace together with My providence. What a wonderful promise from God Our Loving Father. (I cannot begin to tell you all the Light, Peace And Understanding I have received from praying before this icon. This icon makes our Father alive and present with us. I am sure that this icon is a window of the Divine. This icon helps us all to meet Almighty God, Abba our Father. This icon must be contemplated in silent prayer, God is a friend of silence, He is waiting for us all, to speak to us, and to listen to us, in the silence of our hearts. Place before our loving Father all your desires and all your needs.
2) The Fathers request is a new prayer to the Father. Called "Through Him, with him and in Him " God is my Father. (this prayer can also be downloaded on this site) This new prayer to the Father, is not to replace "The our Father " Given to us by His son Jesus. But is an additional prayer to the Father.
3) The Father also desires a Feast day. He said : I desire a Sunday to be dedicated to Honouring Me in a special Way. Under the title of Father of all mankind. I choose He said the 1st Sunday of August. This Feast Day is currently being requested of Rome by the Father of all mankind Apostolate and others. The Holy Octave of Consecration to God Our Father, starts on the last Sunday in July, The main purpose of these 8 days of prayer, (Saying the chaplet is to focus our minds on the father, so we will be able to consecrate ourselves to Him). This preparation and consecration is very important, God the Father wants us all to re-dedicate ourselves to HIM. we Love you Father and we give ourselves to You
The book "The Father speaks to His Children" (can be downloaded from this web site) or Hard Back books can be ordered by contacting Mr. P. Illsley on 01443 203 305. A donation is required and the cost of postage.
The Father speaks to His Children Book
Can be ordered from the UK distributor: Mr P. Illsley. 18 Meadow Hill, St. David's Manor, Church Village, East Glam. CF38 1RX.
Donations to help cover priting cost and postage will be gratefully received.
Come
Holy Spirit -
Creator Come!Jesus said: “Whoever invokes the Holy Spirit will look for me and find me. His conscience will be as delicate as a flower in the field. If this person is the Father or Mother of a family Peace will reign in this family and their hearts will be in Peace in this world and in the next. They will not die in darkness but in Peace.”
WE ALL OF US TODAY Need to say this Prayer below for all the poor sinners in this world who are far from God . And especially for all who do not believe that God Exists. That they will all return to their Father’s house before the coming tribulation, the warning, and the chastisement. (see details of this on Heavens Warning page and DVD)
“COME HOLY SPIRIT AS YOU CAME TO THE APOSTLES, OPEN OUR MINDS THAT WE MAY SEE THE HIDDEN THINGS OF GOD, SEND LOVE IN OUR HEARTS LIKE A FLAME OF FIRE, THAT OUR LIVES MAY BE CHANGED BY THE POWER OF YOU SPIRIT, TO DO GOD’S WORK ON EARTH AND BRING PEOPLE WITH US TO HEAVEN. HOLY SPIRIT, INSPIRE ME, LOVE OF GOD CONSUME ME, ALONG THE RIGHT PATH GUIDE ME. MARY MY MOTHER, LOOK DOWN UPON ME. WITH JESUS, BLESS ME, FROM ALL HARM, ALL ILLUSION, ALL DANGER, ALL EVIL, PRESERVE ME.
FILL ME NOW O LORD, WITH THE GIFT OF YOUR HOLY SPIRIT , TO CARRY YOUR MOST HOLY WORD TO SINNERS, WHO I MUST HELP TO SAVE IN YOUR NAME. HELP ME TO COVER THEM WITH YOUR PRECIOUS BLOOD, SO THAT THEY CAN ALL BE DRAWN BACK TO YOUR SACRED HEART. GIVE ME THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, SO THAT THESE POOR SOULS, CAN ALL RETURN TO THEIR FATHER’S HOUSE BEFORE THE COMING TRIBULATION, THE WARNING, AND THE CHASTISEMENT. AMEN. FIAT.
(SAY THIS PRAYER MANY TIMES DURING THE DAY, AND HELP IT TO GO AROUND THE WORLD.) Our Blessed Lady Calls us to Pray to the Holy Spirit Daily to Illuminate us and guide us.
WE SHOW OURSELVES TO BE GOD THE FATHER'S CHILDREN BY KEEPING HIS COMMANDMENTS, AND BY LOVING ONE ANOTHER
The 10 Commandments1) I am the Lord your God: You shall not have strange god's before me.
2) You shall not take the name of the Lord Your God in Vain.
3) Remember to keep holy the Lord's Day.
4) Honour your father and your mother.
5) You shall not kill.
6) You shall not commit adultery.
7) You shall not steal.
8) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
9) You shall not covet your neighbour's wife.
10) You shall not covert your neighbour's goods.
We Love You Father, and we give ourselves to You.
The Holy Octave of Consecration to God Our Father
This involves Eight Days of Prayer, which starts on the last Sunday in July, and ends on the first Sunday in August -the Feast of the Father of All Mankind. May we approach God Our Father through these eight days of prayer with anticipation and love. He is our Father and we are His Children. We belong to Him and to Him we were created to return.
DAY ONE
THEME FOR THE DAY: PRAISE“I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.” Psalm 146 verse 2
Glory to you, God my Father!
You who made the universe and all that is in it.
You who made the brightest star and the darkest ocean depth.
You who made the fiercest storm and the gentlest summer breeze.
You who made the heavenly angels, as well as the beasts, birds, and fishes of the earth.
You who made me, created in your image.
I praise you, God my Father — now and forever! Amen.Meditate on the wonders God our Father has created, and praise him in your own thoughts and words.
Say the daily chaplet (below). The prayers can be said without the chaplet beads.DAY TWO
THEME FOR THE DAY: THANKSGIVING“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits.” Psalm 103 y. 2
Thank you, my dearest Father, for loving me into existence.
Thank you for this body, mind, and soul that you fashioned especially for me.
Thank you for the people and circumstances of my life.
Thank you for opening my heart, so that I may love you.
Thank you for taking me by the hand and leading me home, through all the dangers and difficulties of my life.
Thank you for loving me unconditionally. Amen.Meditate on all that God our Father has given you. Thank him in your own words.
Say the daily chaplet (below).
DAY THREE
THEME FOR THE DAY: OFFERING“And like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” I Peter chapter 2 verse 5
You have given me everything, Father. You have given me yourself!
Let me offer you the first fruits, the best out of all that I do.
Let all your children offer themselves as the fruit of your Tree of Life, ripened on the sacrifices, sufferings,
and crosses of their earthly journeys. - So that the worldwide effect of our sins: darkness, discord, and disorder,
may be transformed and made new through your Light and Love.
I raise my arms in offering to you Father, receive into your Paternal Heart all that you have given to me. Amen.Meditate on what you can offer up to God our Father. Offer back to him all that he has given you — the blessings and the crosses - so that all may be transformed in his love.
Say the daily chaplet.
DAY FOUR
THEME FOR THE DAY: REPENTANCE“Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.” 2 Corinthians ch.I y. 3
My good Father, you are all loving, but you are also Just.
How can your children ever make reparation for all their sins?
How can they ever hope to balance your scales of justice — especially in these times.
These times when so many of your children say ‘No’ to you.
These times when so many of your children reject your Will.
When so many of your children no longer believe in you, and have enthroned themselves as gods’.
When so many of your children embrace the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
They put themselves before you and have embraced the lie, they have embraced death.
Shower us with your grace and mercy, Father.
Cleanse us in your tears.
Help us to be compassionate warriors of your Mercy on earth: may your Sword of Justice be transformed into a loving means of your Mercy. Amen.Meditate on all the many ways you have hurt or offended God our Father. Ask for his forgiveness and mercy. Ask for the grace to know, love, serve and honour him, and to do his Will in all things.
Say the daily chaplet.DAY FIVE
THEME FOR THE DAY: INHERITANCE“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are Sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry Abba! Father! It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Romans ch. 8 v.14. 17
Dearest God my Father:
With awe and wonder, I have learned to praise you and all your creation.
With sincere gratitude, I have learned to thank you for your boundless generosity.
With humility and love, I have learned to offer up to you - all you have given me.
With a sorrowful but hopeful heart I have learned to repent, and ask for your forgiveness and tender mercy.
And now that I can fully appreciate that you exist, that you are God, that you created this entire universe,
that you created me... I now learn, that in addition to these wonders, you are truly my Father and I am truiy your child.
You created me in your own image so that I could spend eternity with you. You loved me that much.
But even though you have told me this in Holy Scripture, and through the teachings of the Church,
my ears have not heard the words, my heart was hardened. I had wandered far away — from your voice, your Heart,
and from your love for me. But now the veil is lifted, the fog has cleared. I see, I hear, I understand —You are truly
my Father and I am truly your child! I am your prodigal child, running back to you, into your waiting arms.
I am coming home to you, my Father, where I belong.
Please hold me tightly to your Heart and never let me go — now and forever. AmenMeditate on what it means to have God as your true Father, and for you to be his true child. What does this legacy mean? Think about the tremendous joy and responsibilities that this involves.
Say the daily chaplet.
DAY SIX
THEME FOR THE DAY: FIAT (Saying ‘yes’ to God our Father)“Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word.” St Luke ch. I y. 38
“My Father... let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” St Matthew ch. 26 y. 39My good and loving Father, please allow me the privilege of saying my ‘Yes’ to you!
I say yes to you Father in all things. Not a conditional yes that involves doing only the things that are comfortable or easy.
Not a yes that means doing only the things that benefit me. No, I give you my yes in all things Father, because I know you are pure Love, and as pure Love you can transform everything.
Doing your Will can never hurt me.
Doing your Will can never harm another.
Doing your Will brings about the harmony of your Will here on earth.
Doing your Will spreads your Light and your Love.
Doing your Will brings me closer to you.
Doing your Will helps to bring others to you.
When I live within your Will, I am united with its order and harmony.
When I step outside your Will, I am stumbling alone in the chaos, disorder, and discord of darkness.
Let me listen to your gentle, loving voice beckoning me, inviting me into your Divine Will.
I am yours Lord, do with me as you please, because I know that your Will is Love.
Even when your Will may seem painful or unfair, I know that your ways are not man’s ways.
Only you can see the grand scheme of things. Only you know the ‘whys’ of my crosses.
Despite what may sometimes appear to be unjust, I trust you totally. Why? Because you are my Father...
and you love me. You will give me your blessing in every situation if I trust in you. You want me to come home to you, and there is nothing that I want more. So I say yes Father! I say yes to you! AmenMeditate on what it means to give your yes to God our Father. How will this change your life? How will it change your relationship with God and with others?
Say the daily chaplet.
DAY SEVEN
THEME FOR THE DAY: FIDELITY (Loyalty)“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 2 Timothy ch. 4 y. 7
Dearest Father, my Love and my Life: I pledge my faith, hope and love as a precious gift, a promise of my unconditional fidelity to you. Know that I trust in your love for me. Give me the strength and perseverance to never doubt, never stray, never despair. Please bless this vow, and make me a gentle warrior, battling the darkness with your sword of Love and Mercy. - As you will never abandon me, so I pray that I will never abandon you. Please press me close to your heart, and never let me go. In you Father I trust! Amen
Meditate on promising your loyalty, what does it mean to be loyal and committed to God? What does it mean to be a ‘gentle warrior’ of God the Father’s Love and Mercy here on earth? Do you want to help others to return to God’s love?
Say the daily chaplet.
DAY EIGHT
THEME FOR THE DAY: CONSECRATION“If we are the temple of the living God, as God said: ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’” 2 Corinthians ch. 6 y. 16
Dearest God my Father: I call upon you to witness and participate in my solemn consecration to you. After seven days of preparation, I come to you as one who is still learning how to know and love you, - how to praise and thank you, - how to offer up to you all the blessings and crosses you have given me, and how to ask for your forgiveness and mercy. I also come to you as a warrior, strong in my resolve to serve and honour you. But most importantly, I come to you as a child, filled with awe and wonder in the knowledge that I belong to you, and that you the Creator of the universe are really my Father.
Although I have wandered far from you in my lifetime, I choose now to return, for I long to be with you in your house forever. In your Divine Presence, with full knowledge and free will, I consecrate myself to you on this day. Like a small child I approach you, and I ask you to keep me close to your Fatherly Heart, and never let me go. Let me be a temple fcx you to dwell in, Father. With the greatest love, may I be your gentle and loyal companion, carrying you within me all the days of my life. May I bring you to my family and friends, and to strangers I have yet to meet, so that they might also see your light and know your tender love. When you dwell in us, there is a blessed connection between heaven and earth. May more and more of your children consecrate themselves to you. As Jesus taught us to pray: may ‘Thy Kingdom come....’ Amen.
Meditate on what it means to be consecrated to God our Father. The word consecration means to make holy or to give oneself for a holy purpose. How can you live your consecration every day?
Say the daily chaplet.DAILY CHAPLET
(On the chaplet there is a medal and three large beads, followed by 8 sets of 8 small beads.)
On the medal say: Dear God our Father, I humbly ask that on my journey home to you, your holy angels will protect and guide me; that your blessed saints in Heaven will intercede for me; and that your suffering souls in purgatory will pray for me, as I pray for them now. AmenOn the 3 large beads say: 1. The Hail Mary. 2. Jesus my God and my Saviour, you loved me so much that you died for me on the Cross - so that I could return to our Father in Heaven. You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Through your Holy Eucharist, please sustain me and be present with me on my journey home. Amen.
3. Holy Spirit, my God and my Sanctifier, you were sent by Jesus to help me on my journey to the Father. Please purify and refine me. Fill me with your Divine Light and Love, so that the Presence of God may dwell in me. Amen.Each set of 8 small beads is preceded by a large bead (as with the rosary).
1 large bead: Meditate on Adam and Eve’s choice not to do the Father’s Will, their exile from Paradise, and the Father’s promise that one day the head of the serpent would be crushed. (Genesis ch. 2 y. 8 — 3 y. 24) Say the Our Father.
Small beads:
- In Praise, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In Thanksgiving, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In Offering, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In Repentance, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In my Inheritance, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In saying my ‘yes’, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In Fidelity, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
- In Consecration, I love you Father and I give myself to you.
2” large bead: Meditate on God the Father’s presence among us during the Old Testament era. Say the Our Father. Small beads: As above.
3rd large bead: Meditate on Our Lady’s ‘yes’ to God’s Will, and how she became a living tabernacle for the presence of Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, Saviour of God our Father’s children. Say the Our Father, Small beads: As above.
4th large bead: Meditate on how God the Father sent Jesus in order to save us and bring us back home to him. Through his passion, death and resurrection, Jesus defeated sin and exile from God. Say the Our Father. Small beads: As above.
5th large bead: Meditate on how Jesus asked God the Father to send the Holy Spirit. In doing this God could be with us in a new way — not only with us, but in us. (St John ch.14 v.16-17) Say the Our Father. Small beads: As above.
6th large bead: Meditate on how we are all prodigal children of God our Father. We can make the decision to return to our Father’s house. This means turning away from our worldliness and sinfulness. Say the Our Father. Small beads: As above.
7th large bead: Meditate on giving your yes to God the Father (keeping his Commandments). We become temples of the living God. In a sense, heaven and earth are joined: Thy Kingdom come... Say the Our Father, Small beads: As above.
8th large bead: Meditate on the fulfilment of our salvation as promised in the Book of Revelation. — Heaven and earth will be transformed: GOd himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes’ (Rev, ch. 21 v.1-7) Small beads: As above. Say the Our Father.
Mass in honour of God the Father of all Mankind
Sunday 5th August 2012 at Nazareth House in Cardiff
Mass in honour of God the Father of all Mankind
Sunday 7th August 2011 in Cardiff University Chaplaincy, Park Place Cardiff
The Consecration Prayer of "The Holy Octave of Consecration to God Our Father"
My Dearest Father, please accept this offering of myself – my body, my mind,and soul :
I praise You for Your Creation - all Your works and wonders.
I thank You for giving me life and for all that You have done for me.
I offer up to You all that You have so generously given to me.
I am sincerely sorry for not knowing, loving, serving, and honouring You as I should.
I embrace my inheritance as Your child,both the joy and responsibilities.
I give You my "Yes" so that I may be an instrument of Your Will.
I pledge my Fidelity and I ask for the grace of steadfastness and perseverance in my Faith.Most loving, caring, and merciful of Fathers, in Your Divine Presence, I sincerely proclaim my love for You; I give myself
(and my family) to You; and I solemnly consecrate myself (and my family) to You - now and forever.Dearest Father, as Your child, I ask
That You send Mary to guide me to Jesus, and that Jesus sends me the Holy Spirit so that they may all bring me to You.
That You dwell with me and in me - a living temple prepared by Mary, dedicated by Jesus, and purified by Your Holy Spirit and may I always be with You and in You.
That You permit me, as Your child, to be Your true and intimate friend - one who loves You above all things.
And that You come for me when I die , to bring me home to You.I further ask You, Father, for the sake of all mankind;
To have mercy on all Your children - past, present, and future.
To bring peace to the world and to gather all Your children to Yourself.
And that Your Kingdom comes and Your Will is done one earth as it is in heaven.AMEN
The Litany: To God The Father
The Holy Octave of Consecration to God Our Father
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Christ, hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.God, the Father of Heaven. Have mercy on us.
God, the Son, Redeemer Of the World. Have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Spirit. Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God. Have mercy on us.God Our Father saved eight people on Noe's Ark.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father decreed that all male babies be circumcised on the eighth day as a sign of His Covenant with us.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father manifested Himself to Moses and His children after they completed an eight day period of consecration and offering to Him.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father instituted the eight day Feast of Tabernacles to remind His children that He was with them, loved them, and brought them out of the bondage of Egypt.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father accepted purification offerings from His children on the final eighth day of ritual cleansing.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father was glorified when David, the eighth son of Jesse, brought the Ark of the Covenant into the City of David
Amidst praises sung for the octave upon harps.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father heard David's repentant cry played on an eight- stringed harp.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father was glorified when Solomon completed the House of the Lord in the eighth month of the year.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father filled the Temple with his majesty and came to dwell with His children on the eighth day of Solomon's Feast of the Dedication.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.The Presence of God Our Father was to be approached by eight steps in the new temple envisioned by His prophet Ezekial.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father was glorified when His Temple was purified and re—dedicated by the Maccabee's during the eight—day Feast of the Dedication.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father made a new covenant with His children, through Jesus, His Son, Who was circumcised on the eighth day.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father revealed His Son Jesus during the Transfiguration, eight days after Jesus fed the multitudes.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our father was glorified when, from Solomon's Porch in the Temple, on the eighth – day Feast of the Dedication, His Son
Jesus, revealed that He was consecrated to God Our Father and that He and the Father were one.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father was glorified after His Son, Jesus, rose from the dead on the eighth day of His week of Passion and Redemption for our sins.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.God Our Father was glorified when Jesus showed His wounds to unbelieving Thomas eight days after His Resurrection.
Have mercy on us, O Loving Father.Let us pray:
Dearest God Our Father, let us know, love, and honour You through eight days of purification and dedication, as You willed it throughout our Salvation History. And may The Holy Octave of Consecration to God Our father and its eighth solemn day, The Feast of the Father of all Mankind, serve to bring all Your children back home to You.
May this be granted through You Love and the Love of Jesus, our God and Saviour, the Holy spirit, our God and Sanctifier;
And Mary, our MotherAMEN
Mother Eugina Elizabetta Raviso - 1907-1990
By Philip Illsley
In 1932 God the Father appeared to a religious nun called Mother Eugina Raviso. Who is Mother Eugina, she is in my view one of the greatest lights of our time. What this Nun achieved in her life is truly remarkable. She is a light given by the Father to this world at this time of Darkness, of Chaos. So we may all see the road that has to be followed. She was born in a small town in the province of Bergamo in Italy in 1907. She came from a very poor family, and received only an elementary education. She reminds me so much like Saint Maria Faustina. She entered the congregation of our lady of the Apostles at the age of only 20. It was here that her great charismatic personality developed leading her to be elected as Mother general of the world wide congregation at the age of only 25.
She opened over 70 centures each with infirmary school and church in the remotest parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. It was she who discovered the first medicine for the cure for leprosy extracting it from the seed of a tropical plant. This was later studied and developed further at the Pasteuer institute in Paris. During the period 1939 –1941 She conceived and planned the project for a lepers city in the Ivory Coast this was a massive centre covering an area of over 200,000 square miles. You now begin to realise why God the Father choose this remarkable nun. God the Father appeared to her on July 1st 1932, and these messages have been reconised to be authentic by the church. These messages make it very clear that God The Father, wants to be known and loved by all men. He wants people of every nationality and of every faith, or no faith, to realise that He is the Father of all Mankind, that He Loves and cares for everyone.
Whether this name "Father" is properly the name of a divine person?
Objection 1: It would seem that this name "Father" is not properly the name of a divine person. For the name "Father" signifies relation. Moreover "person" is an individual substance. Therefore this name "Father" is not properly a name signifying a Person.
Objection 2: Further, a begetter is more common than father; for every father begets; but it is not so conversely. But a more common term is more properly applied to God, as stated above (Q[13], A[11]). Therefore the more proper name of the divine person is begetter and genitor than Father.
Objection 3: Further, a metaphorical term cannot be the proper name of anyone. But the word is by us metaphorically called begotten, or offspring; and consequently, he of whom is the word, is metaphorically called father. Therefore the principle of the Word in God is not properly called Father.
Objection 4: Further, everything which is said properly of God, is said of God first before creatures. But generation appears to apply to creatures before God; because generation seems to be truer when the one who proceeds is distinct from the one whence it proceeds, not only by relation but also by essence. Therefore the name "Father" taken from generation does not seem to be the proper name of any divine person.
On the contrary, It is said (Ps. 88:27): "He shall cry out to me: Thou art my Father."
I answer that, The proper name of any person signifies that whereby the person is distinguished from all other persons. For as body and soul belong to the nature of man, so to the concept of this particular man belong this particular soul and this particular body; and by these is this particular man distinguished from all other men. Now it is paternity which distinguishes the person of the Father from all other persons. Hence this name "Father," whereby paternity is signified, is the proper name of the person of the Father.
Reply to Objection 1: Among us relation is not a subsisting person. So this name "father" among us does not signify a person, but the relation of a person. In God, however, it is not so, as some wrongly thought; for in God the relation signified by the name "Father" is a subsisting person. Hence, as above explained (Q[29], A[4]), this name "person" in God signifies a relation subsisting in the divine nature.
Reply to Objection 2: According to the Philosopher (De Anima ii, text 49), a thing is denominated chiefly by its perfection, and by its end. Now generation signifies something in process of being made, whereas paternity signifies the complement of generation; and therefore the name "Father" is more expressive as regards the divine person than genitor or begettor.
Reply to Objection 3: In human nature the word is not a subsistence, and hence is not properly called begotten or son. But the divine Word is something subsistent in the divine nature; and hence He is properly and not metaphorically called Son, and His principle is called Father.
Reply to Objection 4: The terms "generation" and "paternity" like the other terms properly applied to God, are said of God before creatures as regards the thing signified, but not as regards the mode of signification. Hence also the Apostle says, "I bend my knee to the Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph. 3:14). This is explained thus. It is manifest that generation receives its species from the term which is the form of the thing generated; and the nearer it is to the form of the generator, the truer and more perfect is the generation; as univocal generation is more perfect than non-univocal, for it belongs to the essence of a generator to generate what is like itself in form. Hence the very fact that in the divine generation the form of the Begetter and Begotten is numerically the same, whereas in creatures it is not numerically, but only specifically, the same, shows that generation, and consequently paternity, is applied to God before creatures. Hence the very fact that in God a distinction exists of the Begotten from the Begetter as regards relation only, belongs to the truth of the divine generation and paternity.
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Over the centuries, man’s journey on his way home to God has been characterized by many memorable and immortal events. From Noah’s Ark to the Ark of the Covenant, from the Annunciation to Calvary, our salvation history is rich with people, places, promises, and extraordinary miracles. This fascinating history comes alive for each generation of God’s children as the past is never more real in any area of our lives as it is in matters of religion and faith. This is especially true for Christians, because we trust in Scripture’s words concerning what must come to fulfillment before the end of the world. Thus, we are always waiting, searching and hoping for God to reveal Himself and the unfolding of His plan in our lifetimes.The revelations in this book from God the Father to Barbara Centilli appear to embrace these truths and to add new understanding to the entire subject of eschatology. From new insights into the meaning of some of the promises contained in the Old and New Testaments, to a greater and more profound understanding of what Christ taught about our Eternal Father, Seeing With the Eyes of the Soul is a masterpiece of spirituality, rich and unparalleled in its impact on the reader.
Most significantly, the Eternal Father’s revelations teach us how love and sin can either save or destroy us and how love and sin will now either save or destroy the world. Seeing with the Eyes of the Soul also teaches us about our present life and
eternity and how inevitably both are shaped and determined by the choices we make in our journey back home to The Father. This book is a stairway to that home and is destined to be a classic in Catholic mysticism.
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"The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how the 19th century liberal Protestant theologian Adolph Harnack once summarized the Christian faith. Nowadays Harnack would find his brand of reductionist religion dismissed as hopelessly sexist and exclusive by many feminist theologians. The "brotherhood of man" might be reworked into "the family of humanity" or its equivalent. But what would they do about the Fatherhood of God? Can we replace the allegedly "sexist" language of Divine Fatherhood with so-called gender-inclusive or gender-neutral terms such as Father/Mother or Heavenly Parent without further ado?Many people—including some Catholics—say "yes." "We not only can," they contend, "we must. God is, after all, beyond gender. Calling God ‘Father’, without adding that God is also Mother, unfairly exalts one image for God above all others and ignores the culturally conditioned nature of all our images of God," they argue.
A Consensus of the Many and the One
Of course, not everyone agrees. While most "mainline" Protestant churches have acquiesced, Evangelicals, the Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church have maintained traditional language for God—although even within these communions some people’s sympathies run in the other direction.
That the Catholic Church and these churches and ecclesial communities would agree on a point of doctrine or practice presents a formidable unity against feminist "God-Talk." How often do we find that kind of united witness among that range of Christians? Yet as solid a prima facie case as that makes, a more serious obstacle to feminist revisionism exists—an insurmountable one, in fact. Not the witness of this group of Christians or that, but of Christ Himself. The commonplace manner in which Christians address the Almighty as Father comes from Him. In fact, Jesus actually used a more intimate word, Abba or "Daddy."
Unfortunately, twenty centuries of Christian habit has eclipsed the "scandal" of this. For the Jews of Jesus’ day, however, it stunned the ear. They did not usually address the All Powerful Sovereign of the Universe in such intimate, familiar terms. Yes, God was acknowledged as Father, but usually as Father of the Jewish people as a whole. Jesus went further: God is (or can be at least) your or my Father, not mere our Father or the Father of our people. Anyone who wants to fiddle with how we talk of God must reckon with Jesus.
But did Jesus really call God "Father"? Few things in modern biblical scholarship are as certain. Skeptics may question whether Jesus turned water into wine or walked on water. They may doubt that He was born of a Virgin or that He rose from the dead. But practically no one denies that Jesus called God "Abba" or "Father." So distinctive was the invocation in his day, so deeply imbedded in the biblical tradition is it, that to doubt it is tantamount to doubting we can know anything about Jesus of Nazareth.
What is more, not even most feminists deny it. What then to make of it?
Since Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, they must hold that He most fully reveals how we, by grace, should understand God: as Father. Otherwise they tacitly deny the central claim of their faith—that Christ is the fullness of God’s self-disclosure to man. Non-Christians may do that, of course, but Christians cannot—not without ceasing to be Christians in any meaningful sense of the word.
"But surely we must hold," someone will object, "that Jesus’ view of God was historically conditioned like that of his contemporaries? His masculine language for God cannot be part of the ‘fullness of God’s self-disclosure,’ as you suppose. It was merely a residue of first century Jewish sexism. We must look instead to the ‘transhistorical significance’ of his teaching. And that is not the Fatherhood of God but the Godhood of the Father—that God is a loving Parent."
Two Errors
At least two false claims lie hidden in that objection. The first is that Jesus’ own concept of God was "historically conditioned." The second, that we can strip away a patriarchal "coating" to His notion of God to get at the gender-inclusive idea of the Divine Parent beneath. In other words, God’s Fatherhood, per se, is not central to Jesus’ revelation of God, only those qualities which fathers share with mothers—"parenthood," in other words.
But was Jesus’ view of God "historically conditioned"? Not if you mean by "historically conditioned" "wholly explicable in terms of the religious thinking of His day." We have no reason to think Jesus uncritically imbibed the prevailing ideas about God. He certainly felt free to correct inadequate ideas from the Old Testament in other respects (see, for example, Matt. 5:21-48) and to contravene religio-cultural norms, especially regarding women. He had women disciples, for example. He spoke with women in public. He even allowed women to be the first witnesses of His resurrection. How, then, on this most central point—the nature and identity of God—are we to suppose He was either unable, due to His own sexism and spiritual blindness, or unwilling, to set people straight about God as Father? Even if you deny Jesus’ divinity or hold to a watered-down notion of it, such a view remains impossible to maintain.
Furthermore, even if Jesus had "picked up" the notion of God as Father from His surrounding culture, we can not simply dismiss an idea as false merely because it happens to have been held by others. Otherwise Jesus’ monotheism itself could be as easily explained away on the grounds that it, too, was generally affirmed by the Jews of the day and therefore must, on this view, be only ‘historically conditioned.’
Nor can we simply ignore Jesus’ teaching about God’s Fatherhood, as if it were peripheral to His revelation. Time and again Jesus addresses God as Father, so much so that we can say Jesus’ name for God is Father. If Jesus was wrong about that, so fundamental a thing, then what, really, does He have to teach us? That God is for the poor and the lowly? The Hebrew prophets taught as much. That God is loving? They taught that as well.
Notice too that these truths—still widely held today—are subject to the "historical conditioning" argument. They are just as liable to be wrong as Jesus’ views about the Fatherhood of God, are they not? They, too, can be explained away as ‘culturally conditioned.’
Furthermore, Jesus’ way of addressing God as Father is rooted in His own intimate relationship to God. Now whatever else we say about God, we cannot say that He is Jesus’ mother, for Jesus’ mother is not God but Mary. Jesus’ mother was a creature; His Father, the Creator. "Father" and "Mother" are not, then, interchangeable terms for God in relation to Jesus. Nor can they be for us, if Catholicism’s doctrine that Mary is the "Mother of Christians" is correct.
The Real Issue
Undergirding Jesus’ teaching about God as Father is the idea that God has revealed Himself as to be such and that His revelation should be normative for us. God, in other words, calls the theological shots. If He wants to be understood primarily in masculine terms, then that is how we should speak of Him. To do otherwise, is tantamount to idolatry—fashioning God in our image, rather than receiving from Him His self-disclosure as the Father.
Many Feminist theologians seek to fashion God in their image, because they think God is fashionable (in both senses of the word). Many feminists hold that God is in Himself (they would say "Herself" or "Godself") utterly unintelligible. We can, therefore, speak only of God in metaphors, understood as convenient, imaginative ways to describe our experience of God, rather than God Himself. In such a view, there is no room for revelation, understood as God telling us about Himself; we have only our own colorful, creative yet merely human descriptions of what we purport to be our experiences of the divine.
Whatever this is, it is not Christianity, which affirms that God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ. C.S. Lewis, in an essay on women’s ordination in Anglicanism, put the matter thus:
But Christians think that God himself has taught us how to speak of him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favor of Christian priestesses but against Christianity.Cardinal Ratzinger made a similar point in The Ratzinger Report: "Christianity is not a philosophical speculation; it is not a construction of our mind. Christianity is not ‘our’ work; it is a Revelation; it is a message that has been consigned to us, and we have no right to reconstruct it as we like or choose. Consequently, we are not authorized to change the Our Father into an Our Mother: the symbolism employed by Jesus is irreversible; it is based on the same Man-God relationship he came to reveal to us."
Now people are certainly free to reject Christianity. But they should be honest enough to admit that this is what they are doing, instead of surreptitiously replacing Christianity with the milk of the Goddess, in the name of putting new wine into old wineskins.
Taking Another Tack
Here proponents of feminine "God talk" often shift gears. Rather than argue that Jesus’ teaching was merely the product of a patriarchal mindset to which even He succumbed, they say that Jesus chose not to challenge patriarchalism directly. Instead, He subverted the established order by His radical inclusivity and egalitarianism. The logical implications of His teaching and practice compel us to accept inclusive or gender-neutral language for God, even though Christ Himself never explicitly called for it.
This argument overlooks an obvious point. While affirming the equal dignity of women was countercultural in first century Judaism, so was calling God "Abba." Some feminists counter with the claim that the very idea of a loving Heavenly Father was itself a move in the feminist direction of a more compassionate, intimate Deity. The first century Jewish patriarch, they contend, was a domineering, distant figure. But even if that were so—and there is reason to doubt such a sweeping stereotype of first century Judaism—revealing God as a loving, compassionate Father is not the same as revealing Him as Father/Mother or Parent. That Jesus corrected some people’s erroneous ideas of fatherhood by calling God "Father" hardly means we should cease calling God "Father" altogether or call Him Father/Mother.
Feminists also sometimes argue that Scripture, even if not Jesus Himself, gives us a "depatriarchalizing principle" that, once fully developed, overcomes the "patriarchalism" of Jewish culture and even of other parts of the Bible. In other words, the Bible corrects itself when it comes to male stereotypes of God.
But this simply is not so. Granted, the Bible occasionally uses feminine similes for God. Isaiah 42:14, for example, says that God will "cry out like a woman in travail." Yet the Bible does not say that God is a woman in travail, it merely likens His cry to that of a woman.The fact is, whenever the Bible uses feminine language for God, it never applies it to Him in the same way masculine language is used of Him. Thus, the primary image of God in Scripture remains masculine, even when feminine similes are used: God is never called "She" or "Her." As Protestant theologian John W. Miller puts it in Biblical Faith and Fathering: "Not once in the Bible is God addressed as mother, said to be mother, or referred to with feminine pronouns. On the contrary, gender usage throughout clearly specifies that the root metaphor is masculine-father."
In fact, the Bible ascribes feminine characteristics to God in exactly the same way it sometimes ascribes such traits to human males. For example, in Numbers 11:12 Moses asks, "Have I given birth to this people?" Do we conclude from this maternal image that Scripture here is "depatriarchalize" Moses. Obviously, Moses uses here a maternal metaphor for himself; he is not making a statement about his "gender identity." Likewise, in the New Testament, both Jesus (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34) and Paul (Galatians 4:19) likened themselves to mothers, though they are men. Why, then, should we think that on those relatively rare occasions when the Bible uses feminine metaphors for God anything more is at work there than with Moses, Jesus and Paul?
Of course there is a crucial difference between God and Moses, the Incarnate Son and Paul. The latter possess human natures in the male gender, while God, as such, is without gender because He is Infinite Spirit. Furthermore, the biblical authors obviously knew that Moses, Jesus and Paul were male and intended to assert as much by referring to them with the masculine pronoun and other masculine language. The same cannot be said about the biblical writers’ notion of God. Even so, they speak of God as if He were masculine. For them, masculine language is the primary way we speak of God. Feminine language is applied to God as if it were being used of a masculine being.
Why the Masculine Language to Begin With?
Which brings us to a more fundamental issue, namely, "What is the masculine language about in the first place?" Since Christianity, as St. Augustine was overjoyed to learn, holds that God has no body, why is God spoken of in masculine terms?
We could, of course, merely insist that He has revealed Himself in this way and be done with it. That would not, however, help us understand God, which presumably is why He bothered to reveal Himself as Father to begin with. No, if we insist that God has revealed Himself as Father, we must try to understand what He is telling us by it.
Why call God Father? The question is obviously one of language. Before we can answer it, we must observe a distinction between two different uses of language—analogy and metaphor.
Sometimes when we speak of God, we assert that God really is this or that, or really possesses this characteristic or that, even if how He is or does so differs from our ordinary use of a word. We call this way of talking about God analogy or analogous language about God. Even when we speak analogously of God, however, we are still asserting something about how God really is. When we say that God is living, for example, we really attribute life to God, although it is not mere life as we know it, i.e., biological life.
Other times when we speak of God, we liken Him to something else—meaning that there are similarities between God and what we compare him to, without suggesting that God really is a form of the thing to which we compare Him or that God really possesses the traits of the thing in question. For example, we might liken God to an angry man by speaking of "God’s wrath." By this we do not mean God really possesses the trait of anger, but that the effect of God’s just punishment is like the injuries inflicted by an angry man. We call this metaphor or metaphorical language about God.
When we call God Father, we use both metaphor and analogy. We liken God to a human father by metaphor, without suggesting that God possesses certain traits inherent in human fatherhood—male gender, for example. We speak of God as Father by analogy because, while God is not male, He really possesses certain other characteristics of human fathers, although He possesses these in a different way (analogously)—without creaturely limitations.
With this distinction between analogy and metaphor in mind, we turn now to the question of what it means to call God "Father."
The Fatherhood of God in Relation to Creation
We begin with God’s relationship to creation. As the Creator, God is like a human father. A human father procreates a child distinct from and yet like himself. Similarly, God creates things distinct from and like Himself. This is especially true of man, who is the "image of God." And God cares for His creation, especially man, as a human father cares for his children.
But does not what we have said thus far allow us to call God Mother as well as Father? Human mothers also procreate children distinct from yet like themselves, and they care for them, as human fathers do. If we call God Father because human fathers do such things, why not call God Mother because human mothers do these things as well?
No doubt, as CCC no. 239 states, "God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature." Scripture itself, as we have seen, sometimes likens God to a mother. Yet, as we have also seen, Scripture never calls God "Mother" as such. Scripture uses feminine language for God no differently than it sometimes metaphorically uses feminine language for men. How do we explain this?
Many feminists simply dismiss this as sexism by the biblical writers. But the real answer rests with the difference between God and human beings, between fathers and mothers and between metaphor and analogy. The Bible sometimes speaks metaphorically of God as Father. But it would be strange for Scripture so often to call God Father and so seldom to use maternal language, if the whole thing were merely a difference in metaphor. By never calling God "Mother" but only likening God to a human mother, Scripture seems to suggest that God is really Father in a way He is not really Mother. In other words, that fatherhood and motherhood are not on equal footing when it comes to describing God. To understand why this is so, let us look at the difference between fathers and mothers.
Father and Mother
What is the difference between fatherhood and motherhood? A father is the "principle" or "source" of procreation in a way a mother is not. To be sure, both father and mother are parents of their offspring and in that sense both are causes of their offspring’s coming-to-be. But they are so in different ways.
Both mother and father are active agents of conception (contrary to what Aristotle thought). But the father, being male, initiates procreation; he enters and impregnates the woman, while the woman is entered and impregnated. There is an initiatory activity by the man and a receptive activity by the woman. Furthermore, modern biology tells us that the father determines the gender of the offspring (as Aristotle held, though for a different reason).
Thus, while father and mother are both parents of their offspring and both necessary for procreation, the father has a certain priority as the "source" or "principle" of procreation. (This "priority as source" is complemented by the mother’s priority as first nurturer, due to her procreating within herself and carrying the child within herself for nine months.)
This difference between fathers and mothers for the Fatherhood of God is crucial. As Dominican Fr. Benedict Ashley has argued, so long as we compare God’s act of creating to a human father’s act of procreation through impregnating a woman, we speak only metaphorically of God as Father. For God does not "impregnate" anyone or anything when he creates; He creates from nothing, without a partner. But if we move beyond the particulars of human reproduction, where a father requires a mother to procreate, and instead speak of the father as "source" or "principle" of procreation, then our language for God as Father becomes analogous rather than merely metaphorical. As a human father is the "source" or "principle" of his offspring (in a way that the mother, receiving the father and his procreative activity within herself, is not), so God is the "source" or "principle" of creation. In that sense, God is truly Father, not merely metaphorically so.
Can we make a similar jump from the occasional metaphorical likening of God to human mothers in Scripture to an analogical way of calling God Mother? No, and here is why: A mother is not the "principle" or "source" of procreation the way a father is. She is a receptive, active collaborator in procreation, to be sure. But she is not the active initiator—that is the father’s role as a man in impregnating her. A father can be an analogue for the Creator who creates out of nothing insofar as fathers—while not procreating out of nothing—nevertheless are the "source" or "principle" of procreation as initiators, as God is the source of creation. But a mother, being the impregnated rather than the impregnator, is analogous neither to God as Creator from nothing, nor God as the initiating "source" or "principle" of creation. As a mother, she can be likened to God only in metaphorical ways—as nurturing, caring, etc., as we see in Scripture.
One reason, then, Scripture more often speaks of God as Father than likens Him to a mother is that fatherhood can be used analogously of God, while motherhood can only be a metaphor. We can speak of God either metaphorically or analogously as Father, but we can speak of Him as maternal only metaphorically. Thus, we should expect that masculine and specifically paternal language would generally "trump" feminine and specifically maternal language for God in Scripture. For an analogy tells us how God truly is, not merely what He is like, as in metaphor.
But we can go further. Even on the metaphorical level, it is more appropriate to call God Father rather than Mother. To understand why, we return to the difference between father and mother, this time introducing two other terms, transcendence and immanence.
Transcendence and Immanence
Transcendence here refers to the fact that God is more than and other than His creation—indeed, more than and other than any possible creation. This is part of what it means to call God "the Supreme Being" or "that than which no greater can be thought" (to use St. Anselm’s description). Immanence, on the other hand, refers to the fact that God is present in His creation—as the author is "in" his book or the painter "in" his painting, only more so. God created the world and it is marked by His creation of it. But God also continues to sustain the world in being. If He ever withdrew His power, the cosmos would cease to be. In that sense, God is closer to the cosmos than it is to itself—closer than its very own existence is, for God gives the cosmos existence, moment by moment.
Now back to fathers and mothers. We said a father "initiates" procreation by impregnating the mother, while the mother "receives" the father into herself and is impregnated. The obvious difference here is that the man procreates outside and "away from" himself, while the woman procreates inside and within herself. Symbolically, these are two very different forms of procreation and they represent two different relationships to the offspring.
Because the father procreates outside of himself, his child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) other than his father. Likewise, the father is other than his child (though also not wholly). In other words, the father, as father, transcends his child. Fatherhood, in this sense, symbolizes transcendence in relation to offspring, though we also recognize that, as the "source" of his child’s life, the father is united or one with his child and therefore he is not wholly a symbol of transcendence.
On the other hand, because the mother procreates within herself—within her womb where she also nurtures her child for nine months—her child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of herself. And similarly, the mother is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of her child. In other words, the mother, as mother, is one with her child. Motherhood, in this sense, symbolizes immanence, though we recognize that as a distinct being, the mother is also other than her child and therefore not wholly a symbol of immanence.
Now God is distinct from and the source of His creation. He is infinitely greater than and therefore infinitely other than His creation (transcendent). As Creator and Sustainer of creation, He is also present in creation (immanent). And we, as creatures who are both part of creation and distinct from the rest of it, can understand God as transcendent (more than creation) or immanent (present in creation). If we go a step further and use "father" for transcendence and "mother" for immanence, we can say that God’s transcendence is represented by fatherhood, which symbolizes God’s otherness and initiating activity (His being the "source" of creation). Meanwhile, God’s immanence is represented by motherhood, which symbolizes intimacy and union with the things God created. Which leaves us with the obvious question, "If this is so, why does traditional theology use only male language for God?"
The answer: because God’s transcendence has a certain priority over His immanence in relation to creation. And this is for at least two reasons. First, because transcendence, in a sense, also includes the notion of immanence, although the reverse is not true. When we speak of God transcending creation we imply a certain relationship of immanence to it. For Him to transcend creation, there must be a creation to transcend. And since creation resembles its Creator and is sustained by Him, He is present in it by His immanence.
But the opposite is not necessarily so. We do not necessarily imply transcendence by talking of divine immanence. Pantheism (Greek for "all is God"), for example, more or less identifies God with the cosmos, without acknowledging divine transcendence. To prevent God’s transcendence from being lost sight of and God being wrongly reduced to, or even too closely identified with, His creation, language stressing transcendence—masculine terms such as father —is necessary.
A second reason for putting God’s transcendence ahead of His immanence, and therefore fatherly language ahead of motherly language for God, has to do with the infinite difference between transcendence and immanence in God. God is infinitely transcendent, but not, in the same sense, infinitely immanent. Although God is present in creation, He is above all infinitely more than the actual or any possible created order and is not defined or limited by any created order. The cosmos, however vast, is ultimately finite and limited because it is created and dependent. Therefore God can be present in it only to a finite extent—not because of any limitation in God, but because of limits inherent in anything that is not God.
Thus, in order to express adequately God’s infinite transcendence and to avoid idolatrously identifying God with the world (without severing Him from His creation, as in deism), even on the metaphorical level we must use fatherly language for God. Motherly language would give primacy to God’s immanence and tend to confuse Him with His creation (pantheism). This does not exclude all maternal imagery—as we have seen even the Bible occasionally employs it—but it means we must use such language as the Bible does, in the context of God’s fatherhood.
In other words, God’s Fatherhood includes the perfections of both human fatherhood and human motherhood. Scripture balances transcendence and immanence by speaking of God in fundamentally masculine or paternal terms, yet also occasionally using feminine or maternal language for what is depicted as an essentially masculine God. This helps explain why even when the Bible describes God in maternal terms—God remains "He" and "Him."
The Fatherhood of God in the Trinity
We see, then, that God is Father because He is the Creator and creating resembles human fathering in some important ways. But what if God had never created the world or man? Would He still have been Father? Or what about before God created the world or man? Was God Father then?
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us the answer to these questions is "yes." The First Person of the Trinity, Trinitarian doctrine reminds us, is the Father. He is, in fact, Father of the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity (CCC 240). Before all worlds and from all eternity, the First Person "begot" the Second Person, who eternally proceeds from the Father, "God from God, light from light, true God from true God," as the Creed puts it (CCC 242). In the Trinity, the Father is the Underived Principle of the Son (and through Him, of the Spirit as well); He is the Source or Unoriginated Origin of the Triune God.
Again, we draw on the analogy of human fatherhood. As we have seen, a father is the "source" of his offspring in a way a mother is not. The First Person of the Trinity is the "source" of the second Person. Thus, we call the First Person "the Father" rather than "the Mother" and the Second Person, generated by the Father yet also the Image of the Father, we call the Son.
Although the Son is also God and the Image of the Father, He is also distinct from and other than the Father. The Son is begotten; the Father, unbegotten. The Son is originated, the Father, unoriginated. Father-Son language expresses this relationship better than Father-Daughter; Mother-Daughter or Mother-Son language.
Of course because we use analogy, there are crucial differences between God the Father and human fathers. In the Trinity, God the Father begets the Son without a cooperating maternal principle, unlike how human fathers beget their sons. Moreover, God the Father does not precede His Son in time as a human father does his son. Both Father and Son are eternal in the Trinity, hence neither Person existed before the other. Finally, while human fathers and sons share a common human nature, they each have their own human natures. The father does not know with his son’s intellect; the son does not choose with his father’s will. And while they may have similar physical makeup, their bodies are distinct and genetically unique.
Yet in the Trinity, the Father and the Son do possess the same divine nature, not merely their own, respective divines natures as humans possess their own, respective human nature. This is because there can be no such thing as divine "natures"; there can be and is only one divine nature, just as there can be and is only one God. The Father and Son each wholly possesses the divine nature, though each in his distinctive way. The Father possesses it as unreceived and as giving it to the Son; the Son, as received from the Father.
Thus, within the Trinity, there is fundamental equality—each Person is wholly God—and basic difference—each Person is unique and not the Others, not interchangeable. And there is also sacred order, with the Son begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. This shows that equality and difference, and even equality and hierarchy, need not be understood as opposed to one another, as some feminists claim.
Furthermore, a proper understanding of the Trinity also helps us to see why we cannot just substitute "Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier" for "Father, Son and Holy Spirit," as some feminists propose. Traditional theology allows us to associate creation with the Father in a special way because of a similarity between the act of creation and the fact that the Father is the Unoriginated Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Likewise, we can associate Redemption with the Son because He became incarnate to redeem us, and Sanctification with the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit proceeds in love from the Father and the Son and the gifts of the Spirit which sanctify are gifts of Divine love. This process of associating certain divine works in the world with a particular Person of the Trinity is called appropriation.
But in all these cases what is associated with or attributed to a particular Person of the Trinity—whether Creation, Redemption or Sanctification—really belongs to all three Divine Persons. In other words, the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity are not "defined" as Persons by these actions, since Creation, Redemption and Sanctification are common to all Three. What defines them as Persons are their unique relations among one another, with the Father begetting, the Son being begotten and the Spirit being "spirated" from the Father and the Son. To reduce each Person of the Trinity to a particular function—Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier —is to succumb to the ancient heresy of Modalism, which denies that there are Three Persons in God and instead holds that there is really only one Person in God who acts in three different modes—Father, Son and Spirit. Or in this case, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
The Father of the Incarnate Son
But we must not stop with the First Person of the Trinity’s Fatherhood of the Son before all worlds. For the Triune God has revealed Himself in history. The Son united Himself with human nature. He is the Son of the Father in His human nature as well as His divinity. This, in part, is the meaning of the Virginal Conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary (Lk 1:35). Jesus has no human father—St. Joseph is His "foster-father." Jesus’ Father is God the Father and He alone. That is why Jesus refers to God as "Abba"—a highly personal and intimate form of paternal address. Jesus’ existence in time and history parallels His eternal, divine existence as God the Son. For this reason, we must not speak of God as Jesus’ Mother, as if the terms "father" and "mother" are interchangeable when it comes to Jesus’ relation to God. God is Jesus’ Father; Mary is Jesus’ Mother and she is not God.
Fatherhood of God by Divine Adoption and Regeneration in Christ
We come now to God and humanity. Is God the Father of all mankind? In a sense He is, because He created us and, as we have seen, to create is like fathering a child. Yet God also made rocks, trees and the Crab Nebula. How is He Father of man but not also Father of them? Granted, humans are spiritual, as well as material, beings, which means they are rational beings—capable of knowing and choosing. In this, they more closely resemble God than the rest of visible creation. Nevertheless, human beings, as such, do not share God’s own life, as children share the life of their fathers. Thus, we are not by nature "children of God" in that sense, but mere creatures. And, as a result of sin, we are fallen creatures at that.
Yet Jesus tells His followers to address God as Father (Mt 6:9-13). He says the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Lk 11:13) and that the Spirit of their Father will speak through them in times of persecution (Mt 10:20). He tells His disciples to be merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful (Lk 6:36). He speaks of being "born from above" through baptism and the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:5). On Easter Sunday, He directs Mary Magdalen to tell the other disciples, "I am going to my Father and your Father . . ." (Jn 20:17).
Elsewhere in the New Testament, God is also depicted as Father to Christians. Through Jesus Christ we are more than mere creatures to God; by faith in Him we become the children of God (1 Jn 5:1), sharing in Jesus’ own Divine Sonship, albeit in a created way (Rom 8:29). God is our Father because He is Jesus’ Father (Jn 1:12). What God is for Jesus by nature, He is for us by grace, Divine Adoption (Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:4-7; Eph 1:5-6), and regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Tit 3:5-7).
Behind this language of Divine Adoption and regeneration is the idea that God is our Father because He is the "source" or "origin" of our new life in Christ. He has saved us through Christ and sanctified us in the Spirit. This is clearly more than a metaphor; the analogy with earthly fatherhood is obvious. God is not merely like a father for Christ’s followers; He is really their Father. In fact, God’s Fatherhood is the paradigm of fatherhood. This is why Paul writes in Eph 3:14-15, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named . . ." (RNAB). It is not that God the Father is earthly fatherhood writ large; rather, earthly fatherhood is the faint copy of Divine Fatherhood. This is why Jesus says, "Call no man on earth father. For you have but one Father in heaven" (Mt 23:9). In other words, no earthly father should be seen as possessing the fullness of patriarchal authority; that belongs to God the Father. All earthly fatherhood is derivative from Him.
Thus, God is not Father of those who have not received the grace of justification and redemption in the same way as those who have. Yet they remain potentially His children, since the Father wills the salvation of all (1 Tim 2:4) and makes sufficient grace necessary for salvation available to all. God desires that all men become children of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, hence the universal mission of the Church (Mt 28:19-20; Mk 16:15; Acts 1:8). We can speak, then, in general terms of God as the Father of all men, inasmuch as He created all men to be His children by grace and makes available to them the means of salvation.
Conclusion
We see now that there are good theological reasons for why we call God "Father," not the least of which is that such language is not ours to adapt or abolish to begin with. God gave us this language—admittedly through a particular culture and its images—but it was God who nevertheless gave it. God wants us to understand Him as the Transcendent Source of creation, a truth better expressed using the language of fatherhood than motherhood. Within the Triune Life of God, the First Person is Father because He is the Unoriginated Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, He is also Father of the Son in history, through the Incarnation. And, by Divine Adoption and regeneration, He is Father of those who are united to Christ in the Holy Spirit—"sons in the Son." Finally, as a result of God’s universal salvific will, all human beings are potentially children of God, for all are called to share in the Divine Life of grace through Christ in the Holy Spirit.
Mark Brumley is the Managing Editor of The Catholic Faith Magazine.
Our society is in serious trouble. Over the past fifty years there has been a dramatic decline in the quality of our education and morals, and an equally dramatic rise in crime, murder, suicide, abortion, drugs, sexual promiscuity, divorce, debt, blasphemy, and other societal ills. Is the reason for this decline due to economics? Is big business to blame? The unfair distribution of wealth? Is it the fault of special interest groups? Lobbyists? Is it caused by the Republicans? The Democrats? Both parties? Hollywood? The mainstream media?
Before this dramatic decline began, A.W. Tozer concluded that almost everything wrong with the society of his day was due to the fact that as a nation, we had been losing the knowledge of God. He stated that almost all of life's problems and their solutions are theological. The person who comes to a right belief about God will relieve himself of many other problems in life. The person who has a wrong concept about God will add many other problems to his life. There is hardly a problem in society that can't be traced back to faulty ideas about God. It is impossible for an individual to keep their moral practices sound or a society to keep their values right when their ideas about God are inadequate or erroneous.
Tozer reasoned that if this decline of the knowledge of God brought on many of our troubles, then the rediscovery of the knowledge of God would go a long way toward curing them. If we would bring back true spiritual power to our lives and health to our nation, we must think about God as He really is - not as we assume He is. Tozer believed that one of the most important responsibilities for Messiahs Holy Community of Jews and Gentiles - the Church, was to purify our concept of God until it was once more true and accurate and worthy of God.
Tozer was right about society in his day and his advice is even more applicable to our society today. We have fallen much farther from the knowledge of God. One way to enrich our knowledge of God is by studying the names, titles and metaphors used to describe Him in the Holy Scriptures. In the Divinely Inspired Writings, a person's name often tells us about his character, his nature, his essential qualities. Sometimes a persons name tells us about the purpose that the Lord has for him to accomplish. Gods names, titles and the metaphors used to describe Him tell us much about who He is and what He wants to accomplish.
ELOHIM
Elohim is the first name for God found in the Tenach (Old Testament). It is in Genesis 1:1 and is the third word of the Hebrew Scriptures: In the beginning "Elohim" - "God. Elohim is the most common name that is translated as "God. It comes from a root that means "strength, might, power. It is used over 2,300 times in the Scriptures to refer to the God of Israel. Elohim is unusual since it is plural. It can also be translated as "gods. Exodus 12:12 refers to "all the elohim (gods) of Egypt. This plural name that is used for the One God opens the door for the revelation of the plural yet single nature of God that is more fully revealed in the rest of the Scriptures. When Elohim is combined with other words, different attributes of God are emphasized.
God Of The Beginning (Deuteronomy 33:27): The Powerful One always existed. He is the First One, before all things in time and priority. He must be before all else in our affections, and come first in our admiration.
God Of Hosts, or God Of Armies (2 Samuel 5:10): The Strong One is a mighty warrior and is the Commander-In-Chief of the armies of Heaven and His people on Earth.
God Of Justice (Isaiah 30:18): The Powerful One is perfectly just and will bring complete justice and righteousness to the world.
God Of Heights (Micah 6:6): The expression Heights signifies supremacy of power and position. The Strongest One is supremely exalted.
God Who Is Near (Jeremiah 23:23): The Mighty One is not distant. He is close to His creation - even nearer than our breath; so near that in Him we live and move and have our being. Yeshua's incarnation supremely expresses this truth.
God Of My Kindness (Psalm 59:11): The Strong One is kind and He works to make us kind. Yeshua's life and sacrifice is the supreme example of God's kindness.
God Of My Strength (Psalm 43:2): The Strongest One desires to make us strong. When we realize that we are weak and learn to rely on Him, then He is able to make us strong.
God Of My Praise (Psalm 109:1): God is supremely worthy of our praise. He desires to be the main subject of our accolades as well as what we talk and think about. He enables us to do the things that will add to His praise. Whatever praiseworthy things we ever do are ultimately due to Him.
God Of My Salvation (Psalm 18:47, 25:5): Humans beings are estranged from God, and alienated from the Source of Life. God's nature and will is to rescue, redeem, deliver, help and restore. Salvation must be personal for each human being. The Mighty One must become the God of my Salvation. Salvation is found in being in a right relationship to a Person - Yeshua, not by having a mere belief system or good works.
God Of Gods (Deuteronomy 10:17): There are other so-called "gods" and higher powers, but the Strongest One is mightier than all. Even they acknowledge Him as the Most Powerful, and compared to His infinite power, they are powerless.
God Of The Rock Of My Salvation (2 Samuel 22:47): Rock is strong, solid, dependable and enduring. It is useful as a weapon or for defense. We can completely depend on the Most Powerful One to give us eternal salvation.
God Of All Flesh (Jeremiah 32:27): The Mighty One created all living things on Earth, and rightly demands that they conform to His plans for them.
God Of The Spirits Of All Flesh (Numbers 16:22): God created us with both a physical and spiritual dimension. He claims lordship over body and soul, flesh and spirit. The One who made every human being is able to see into our innermost being, and distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, between those who really love Him and those who are religious hypocrites.
Holy God (Leviticus 19:2): The Mightiest One is unique, incomparable, one of a kind. There is no one and nothing like Him, and there never will be. He is distinct from everyone and everything else that exists. He is infinitely pure and free from anything that is wrong.
Living God (Jeremiah 10:10): The Strongest One has life in Himself. He gives life to everything else that exists. He desires to give us life that is eternal and abundant.
God Of Forgiveness (Nehemiah 9:17): Men might be slow to forgive, but it is the Mighty One's nature to forgive. God's desire is to forgive all of our sins and reconcile us to Himself, if only we will come to Him on His terms.
EL
El comes from the same root as Elohim, is translated God and is used 200 times in the Scriptures. El is also combined with words that emphasize different attributes of God.
The Faithful God (Deuteronomy 7:9): Everything the Mightiest One says and does is 100% reliable. He is completely trustworthy.
The Great God (Deuteronomy 10:17): He is great in all ways: His size (Heaven and the Highest Heavens cant contain Him), His stature, His attributes and His deeds.
The Holy God (Isaiah 5:16): The Strong One is unique. There is no one and nothing like Him. He is incomparable - distinct from everything else that exists.
The God Of Israel (Psalm 68:35): The Powerful One chose the Jewish Nation and is forever uniquely connected to His Chosen People.
The God Of The Heavens (Psalm 136:26): The All-Powerful One created the Heavens - the sun, the moon, the planets, and the multiplied trillions of stars. His throne is in Heaven, where He rules over the heavenly hosts.
God Of My Rock (Psalm 42:10): The Mighty One is strong, enduring, and my defender, my stronghold and my protection from all attacks.
God The Joy Of My Exaltation (Psalm 43:4): The Strongest is the source of tremendous joy to me, as He raises me up in position and honor.
The God Who Sees (Genesis 16:13): The Most Powerful One sees and knows all. Nothing is beyond His sight.
The God Of Glory (Psalm 29:3): God Himself is beautiful. He is the source of all beauty and creativity. He is to be supremely honored.
The God Of Knowledge (1 Samuel 2:3): The Mighty One is all-knowing and is the source of all wisdom and understanding. Whatever knowledge man has comes from Him.
The God Of Eternity or The God Of The Universe (Genesis 21:33): The Strongest One is eternal - without beginning and without end. He is the Maker of time, eternity, and the universe.
The God Of Truth (Psalm 31:6): The Powerful One is the source of ultimate reality. Everything connected with Him is true and real. Likewise, the lives of His children are to be characterized by honesty and truth.
The Faithful God (Deuteronomy 32:4): The Strong One is completely reliable. You can trust Him completely in this life, and you can entrust your eternal destiny to Him.
The God Of My Salvation (Isaiah 12:2): God Himself is the source of our help. He alone can deliver us from the consequences of sin and death. He wants all human beings to be saved, but each individual must personally know Him as the God of my Salvation.
The God Of My Life (Psalm 42:9): The Strong One is the source of all life. He is the One who gives life to each human being, and He gives eternal life to those who find Messiah Yeshua.
The One God (Malachi 2:10): There is only one true God, who eternally exists as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The God Of Compassion (Deuteronomy 4:31): The nature of the Powerful One is one of kindness. He is full of compassion and feeling for people. He is completely free of any cruelty or meanness.
The Gracious God (Jonah 4:2): His nature is gracious, giving and generous, even when we don't deserve it.
The Jealous God (Deuteronomy 4:24): His very name and character is Jealous (see Exodus 34:14). The Mighty One is extremely protective towards His people and doesn't want to share our affections with any other "gods.
The Righteous God (Isaiah 45:21): Everything The Powerful One does and says is right. He is incapable of even the slightest iniquity. Although there is much unrighteousness in the world, He is completely fair and just in all His doings. Eventually He will make everything right.
God The All-Sufficient (Genesis 17:1): Like a nursing mother, El Shaddai completely nourishes and satisfies His people and takes care of all their needs.
The Most High God (Genesis 14:18): Height signifies power and position. The Powerful One is supremely exalted, and should be highest in our thoughts and affections.
The God Of Yeshurun (Deuteronomy 33:26): Yeshurun means "Upright One" and is another name for Israel. The Mighty One is forever and uniquely connected to Israel. He is righteous and will make Israel, and all those who are grafted into Israel, completely righteous.
The Mighty God (Isaiah 9:6): Yeshua, the Son of God, is fully Man and yet fully God. He is the mightiest warrior and the strongest force in the universe.
Elohim and El reminds us that God is the Strongest One in the universe and the source of all power, might and strength. No one is more powerful than He. We can go to the Mighty One, the Powerful One, the Strong One, who will infuse us with strength, and empower us to do all that He calls us to be and do.
ELAH
Elah is another name that is translated as "God. It is used 70 times in the Holy Scriptures. Like Elohim, it comes from a root that means strength, might or power. It can be combined with other words so that different attributes of God are emphasized.
God Of Jerusalem (Ezra 7:19): Elah is uniquely associated with one city - Jerusalem, the City of Peace. The Mightiest One is forever connected to the capital of Israel. It is the place that He chose for the Temple, where He manifested His presence on Earth, and enabled atonement to be made. It is the place where the Son of God offered His ultimate sacrifice, which brought final atonement. It is the place where King Messiah will rule for 1,000 years when He returns to the Earth. At the beginning of eternity, the New Jerusalem will descend from Heaven to the New Earth, and it will be the eternal dwelling place of God and mankind, and the capital of the New Heavens and the New Earth.
A note about witnessing to Moslems: I have heard it repeatedly taught that Moslems dont pray to the same God as Christians do; that Allah was an ancient moon god and so, when Moslems pray to Allah, they are not praying to God. I find this argument shallow. It is my understanding that the Biblical name Elah and the Arabic word Allah are virtually identical. When Moslems pray to Allah, they know they are praying to the Creator of the universe. Christians should not tell them that they are praying to a false god. The situation is similar to the Jewish people who have a zeal for God, but are not praying to Him with sufficient knowledge. It is similar to the situation with the Samaritans. Messiah informed the Samaritan woman that her people worshiped what they didnt know. The Samaritans had some knowledge about God. They had the Torah. In spite of this, their knowledge about God was insufficient. We dont witness to Moslems by telling them that they are worshiping a false god, but rather that their knowledge about God is insufficient.
God Of Israel (Ezra 5:1): God has a special connection with the Land and the People of Israel.
God Of Heaven (Ezra 7:23): The Strongest One created Heaven, which is a real place where He and the good angels dwell. He also created the Heavens - the sun, moon, stars and planets. Gods throne is in Heaven, where He rules over its heavenly inhabitants and everything else that exists.
God Of Heaven And Earth (Ezra 5:11): The Mighty One rules over the entire universe. There is no one and nothing that is not under His power.
ELOAH
Eloah is the singular of Elohim, so it too comes from a root that means strength, might or power. It is used 50 times in the Bible. It too is translated as "God.
YHVH
YHVH is a name that is generally translated "Lord. It is used approximately 7000 times in the Tenach (Hebrew Scriptures), more than any other name for God. It is also referred to as the "Tetragrammaton, which means "The Four Letters, because it comes from four Hebrew letters: Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay. This name comes from the Hebrew verb which means "to be. YHVH emphasizes God's absolute being. He has life and being inherent in Himself. Everything else derives its being from Him. The Lord is the source of all being, all existence and all reality. He is without beginning and without end because He always was, He is, and He always will be.
Even though YHVH appears in Genesis 2, God didn't reveal Himself as YHVH until Exodus 3 in conjunction with the creation of Israel. This is the special memorial-name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. "And God said to Moses, "I Am Who I Am; and He said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I Am has sent me to you... this is My eternal name, and this is how I am to be recalled for all generations" (Exodus 3:14-15).
Although some pronounce YHVH as Jehovah or Yaweh, those are only guesses, since we no longer know for sure the proper pronunciation. The Jewish people stopped saying this name by the third century AD out of fear of violating the commandment, "You shall not take the name of YHVH your God in vain" (Exodus 20:7), and we lost the knowledge of its proper pronunciation. According to the rabbis, the Tetragrammaton may not be pronounced under any circumstances. Another name, "Adonai, is usually substituted in place of YHVH. When YHVH is combined with other words Gods different attributes are emphasized.
Adonai Elohim - Lord God (Genesis 2:4): This is a powerful revelation of God as the Strongest One who is the totality of all being, reality and existence. He is the Mightiest One who has all the power He needs to do whatever He wills. He has all the resources to meet all of mankind's needs.
Adonai Tz'vaot - The Lord Of Armies (1 Samuel 1:11): Adonai is the most powerful being in the universe. The One with Life in Himself is the greatest of all warriors and the Supreme Commander in Chief of His forces in Heaven and on Earth.
Adonai M'kadesh - The Lord Who Makes Holy (Ezekiel 37:28): The Source of Being is holy - different from everything else that exists, unique, special, one of a kind. There is one God and there is no one and nothing like Him. He is infinitely pure and separate from any hint of evil. He sets apart people, places and things to accomplish His purposes. The closer we get to and the more we become like the Holy One, the holier we become.
Adonai Yireh - The Lord Who Sees: (Genesis 22:14): Adonai sees all and knows all. Since He is omniscient, He is aware of all our problems and needs. The Source of Existence is committed to provide for all the needs of His people.
Adonai Neesee - The Lord My Miracle, or The Lord My Banner (Exodus 17:15): If we need a miracle, Adonai is able to do one for us. In the midst of life's raging battles, the One who is our Banner, is always able to be seen, high and lifted up and greatly exalted, leading us to victory.
Adonai Shalom - The Lord Of Peace (Judges 6:24): "Shalom" means peace in the sense of wholeness and completeness. The Lord is complete in Himself. The Self-Existent One needs no one and nothing to make Him complete. His purpose is to restore peace and wholeness to His creation that was fractured by sin.
Adonai Rofehcha - The Lord Who Heals You (Exodus 15:26): The Lord is the Great Physician and the ultimate source of all healing - spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, societal, environmental. If you are in need of any kind of healing, He is the first One to turn to.
Adonai O'saynu - The Lord Our Maker (Psalm 95:6): Adonai made us by given us existence and life. Since He is our Creator, we must follow His plans and designs for us. Since He is our Maker, He deserves all that we are and all that we have.
YESHUA IS YHVH
The same Lord who revealed Himself as YHVH in the Tenach is revealed as Yeshua in the New Testament. Yeshua shares the same attributes as YHVH. He has life in Himself: "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John 5:26). He gives existence to and sustains all other things: All things came into being by Him (John 1:3). "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). "He upholds all things by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3). In addition, the Son of God claimed to be Adonai. When asked by some Jewish leaders how He could have seen Abraham, who lived 2,000 years before, Yeshua replied: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am (John 8:58), I Am being an essential part of the Tetragrammaton. Rabbi Paul tells Messiahs Holy Community at Rome: "if you confess with your mouth Yeshua as Lord... you shall be saved. A few verses later, in 10:13, Paul backs up this statement by quoting Joel 2:32: "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord (YHVH) will be saved. Calling on Yeshua as Lord is equivalent to calling Him YHVH, because Yeshua is YHVH. In fact, the powerful title, Adonai Tzidkaynu - the Lord our Righteousness, is prophetically applied to the Messiah (Jeremiah 23:6). In some miraculous way, a human being who comes from the royal line of King David will ascend to Davids throne, save us and rule over us with wisdom and righteousness. And, He is also Adonai Himself, the Source of Being, who enables those who trust in Him to have a right relationship with God.
YAH
Yah is a shortened form of YHVH, and so it too comes from the Hebrew verb that means "to be. It is generally translated as Lord. It is used approximately 40 times in the Holy Scriptures, and appears primarily in the book of Psalms. It is also found in the compound word "hallelu-Yah", which is a plural command to "praise Yah". The way to praise someone is to say nice and true things about him. If you son comes home with good grades, you dont say: Praise you son; praise you son; son, praise you! No, you praise him by telling him that he is smart, that he is a hard worker. In just the same way, we praise Yah not by saying, hallelu-Yah but by saying nice and true things about who God is and what He has done, is doing and will do.
ADON
Adon means Master or "Lord" (Isaiah 10:33), and lets us know that God is the Lord and Master of all things. He has the right to rule over us, and issue commands, which we should obey.
ADONAI
Adonai is an emphatic form of "Adon. It is a plural, and can be translated as "my lords. It is used approximately 450 times in the Tenach. It is also used as a substitute for the Tetragrammaton. Lord of lords, a compound form of Adonai, is found in Deuteronomy 10:17. The God of Israel is the Master of masters, and the King of kings, and the Lord who rules over all principalities, powers and authorities that exist, whether they are visible or invisible.
Biblical Names, Titles And Descriptions For
God The Father That Are Found In The Tenach
Biblical Names And Titles
Creator (Ecclesiastes 12:1): The One who, by His infinite and almighty power, created everything in the universe.
Creator Of Israel (Isaiah 43:15): God brought the Chosen Nation into existence, through which He will accomplish the redemption of humanity and the salvation of the world. He will fulfill His good purposes in and through Israel.
Maker (Psalm 115:15): The One who constructs, out of nothing and sometimes from what already exists, everything that has being. As our Maker, He has the right to direct every aspect of our lives.
The Name - HaShem (Leviticus 24:16): "Name" stands for character, reputation, essence and authority. When we refer to God as The Name, it means that He is the Supreme Being, the Ultimate Person with impeccable character and supreme authority.
The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac, And The God Of Jacob (Exodus 3:15): The true God who made a covenant with the Jewish Fathers, promising to bless them and through their descendants, reveal Himself to the nations and send the Redeemer who would save mankind.
God Of Gods And Lord Of Lords (Deuteronomy 10:17): There may be other beings with great power and authority, but God is infinitely greater in wisdom, power and authority!
The Great, Mighty And Awesome God (Deuteronomy 10:17): The Almighty is supremely big and powerful. There is no being in the universe whose strength can be compared to His infinite power. Therefore He must always be treated with reverential fear.
Father (Isaiah 64:8): The Almighty is not an impersonal force, nor merely a supreme idea, but a personal, intimate, loving Being. He gives us existence, and adopts those who are joined to Messiah Yeshua as His sons and daughters, making us partakers of His divine nature. Like a good father, He teaches and corrects us, as well as provides for us.
Holy One (Habakkuk 1:12): The Supreme Being is infinitely pure, separate from all evil and absolutely unique. There is no other being in the universe like Him.
Holy One Of Israel (Psalm 78:41): Israel is a holy nation, separate from all the other nations on Earth. This holy nation has a holy land, and a holy city, which was and will again be home to a holy house served by holy priests, with holy days and people dressed in holy clothes, eating a holy diet! The God of this holy nation is holier than all else!
Upright One (Isaiah 26:7): The Lord is exactly who He appears to be. He is like a straight and level path, with no twists or turns. He is morally and ethically straight. There is nothing crooked or deceitful about Him.
Redeemer (Psalm 19:14): The Strongest One is able to extract human beings from the difficult situations in which they find themselves, including our most dangerous dilemma - being sold into the satanic slave market of sin and death.
Redeemer Of Israel (Isaiah 49:7): The Most Powerful has helped the Jewish people out of many difficult and threatening situations. He will ultimately rescue the Jewish nation physically, spiritually and completely!
Deliverer (Psalm 144:2): The Holy One enables us to escape from dangerous situations, including the most desperate situation of all - being dead in our trespasses and sins, and alienated from God, the Source of our life and happiness.
Savior (Isaiah 45:15): The Faithful God can rescue us from any danger, give aid in any situation, and help all those who ask for it.
Metaphors Used To Describe God The Father
That Are Found In The Tenach
Light (Psalm 27:1): The Eternal God is the source of wisdom, truth, revelation, understanding, knowledge, victory and salvation! He has most powerfully accomplished this through Yeshua, the Light Of The World!
Light Of Israel (Isaiah 10:17): The Chosen Nation's salvation is found, not in itself, nor in its own wisdom or strength, but in God, who gives His people knowledge and salvation.
Dwelling Place (Psalm 90:1): From a close relationship to the Living God comes the ability to live properly and in peace.
Fortress (Psalm 91:2): The Mighty One is able to provide protection for those who are facing any kind of attack.
Stronghold (Psalm 18:2): The Greatest One is like a strong and secure place, which is inaccessible to our enemies.
Tower Of Strength (Psalm 61:3): The one and only God is like a secure and impenetrable tower, which protects us from those who are trying to hurt us.
Refuge (Psalm 46:1): When we are in danger, we can flee to the Most Powerful, who will shield us from all evil that is devised against us.
Shield (Psalm 18:30): Like a shield that protects a warrior from sword, bow or spear, the Lord of Hosts protects His children from dangerous attacks.
Hiding Place (Psalm 32:7): The God of Heaven, who is invisible to human sight, is able to conceal us from peril, so that we are safe.
Rock (Habakkuk 1:12): In an unstable world, the Strongest One protects us, adds stability and provides a solid foundation for our lives.
Stone Of Israel (Genesis 49:24): [Used of the foundation stone of a house (Isaiah 28:16), or precious stones (1 Kings 10:2, 11) or to commemorate a special event (Joshua 4:3 and 1 Samuel 7:12), or as a weapon (1 Samuel 17:40)]. The Eternal One is the foundation of our existence, upon whom we can build our lives; He is our protector, whom we should continually remember.
Rock Of Israel (2 Samuel 23:3): Just as one hides among rocks and finds safety, or uses a rock as a weapon, so the Lord is the Protector of His Chosen People.
Rock Of My Strength (Psalm 62:7): The One who defends a nation is also the One who watches over each of His children individually. The Lord is my Defender, and the Source of my ability and stability.
Strength (Psalm 46:1): The Mighty One gives us the ability to accomplish all the good things He has ordained for us to do.
My Portion In The Land Of The Living (Psalm 142:5): An intimate relationship with God is preferable to my share of food or wealth.
The Portion Of My Inheritance (Psalm 16:5): I desire a close relationship with the Righteous God more than my share of the family's assets!
My Cup (Psalm 16:5): Knowing God is like drinking a refreshing glass of water on a hot day, or drinking a delicious cup of wine that brings a feeling of happiness.
Beautiful Crown And Glorious Diadem (Isaiah 28:5): Like a glorious crown which sits on the head of an honorable king, a symbol of authority that adds beauty to the monarch, so the Lord will bless His people with beauty and power.
Potter (Isaiah 64:8): God is responsible for shaping humanity and each individual human being; He has the right to mold us to His purposes, and to allow those circumstances, gifts, abilities, and trials in our lives that He chooses.
Husband or Lord (Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 31:32): The Most High God relates to us like a good man to his wife - loving us, providing for us, protecting us, and helping us reach our full potential.
Shepherd (Genesis 49:24): The Almighty, with all of His vast resources and abilities, cares for us like a shepherd manages his sheep. He protects us and provides for all of our needs. Even though we are stubborn, weak, timid, foolish, pathetic, need endless attention and cause Him a lot of trouble, He is gentle, kind, firm and selfless in His devotion to us.
Shepherd Of Israel (Psalm 80:1): It is God who directs the Chosen Nation, meeting all of our needs and providing for our protection and discipline.
My Lovingkindness (Psalm 144:2): The Living God continually acts with love and kindness toward me; He showers me with His grace, and inspires me with love and zeal.
The King (Isaiah 6:5): The Lord is the Supreme Authority over all things; He rules over everyone and everything in Heaven and on Earth; it is our duty to be His loyal subjects, yielding to His will and obeying His ways.
King of Glory (Psalm 24:7): Many earthly rulers have had a measure of glory, but the Supreme Authority is surrounded by infinite beauty, power, riches, wisdom, blessing, majesty and honor!
King Of Israel (Zephaniah 3:15): The Mightiest One has the right to govern the Jewish people, and issue commands concerning every aspect of our existence.
Lord Of All The Earth (Micah 4:13): The Almighty has the power and the right to control everything on this planet - animate and inanimate. Everyone and everything has the duty to bend to His will.
The Most High (Deuteronomy 32:8): The Lord is in the position of greatest honor, supreme authority and ultimate power; He is infinitely beyond all other beings.
Ancient Of Days (Daniel 7:9): God is without beginning, eternally full of wisdom and honor. As the Eldest, He is worthy of our greatest respect.
The Fear Of Isaac (Genesis 31:42): The One whom Isaac feared, dreaded and held in awe. The Holy One is supremely deserving of our respect. We should be afraid to displease Him, and dread incurring His wrath. We should always revere Him, and respect those things closely connected to Him - His People, His Land, His City, His House, His Son, His Spirit, His Word. We should never speak ill of Him. We should never ignore His desires. We should never defy His will. We should never disobey His commands. We should never worship, serve or pray to any other god. We should fear God more than man. We should fear God more than death. As the prophet Isaiah said to his generation: It is the Lord of Hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, and He shall be your dread.
When the Lord delivered us from the Egyptians, and brought us safely through the Red Sea, then Moses and the sons of Israel asked, "Mee chah-moh-cha ba-elim Adonai? Who is like You among the mighty ones O Lord?" The answer was, is now, and always will be, "There is none like You!"
Names, Titles And Descriptions For The Son Of God
That Are Found In The Tenach
Adonai Tzidkaynu - the Lord our Righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6): This is a prophecy about a human being who comes from the royal line of King David. He will ascend to Davids throne, save the Jewish people, and rule over us with wisdom and righteousness. The Lord is righteous - everything that He does, and everything that He says is perfectly good and right. Since He is our righteousness, He enables those who trust in Him to have a right relationship with Him, and be considered righteous by Him. Ultimate, saving righteousness doesn't come by keeping commandments or doing good deeds, but by developing a right relationship with Adonai Tzidkaynu and being declared righteous by Him.
The Son of David is also Adonai, and possesses all the attributes of Adonai. Adonai is also referred to as the "Tetragrammaton, which means "The Four Letters, because it comes from four Hebrew letters: Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay. This name comes from the Hebrew verb which means "to be. The title Adonai emphasizes God as the Supreme Source of all being, all reality, and all existence. He has life and being inherent in Himself. Everything else derives its existence from Him. Adonai is without beginning and without end because He always is. He is involved in creation, but is Himself beyond this creation. Messiah has life and being inherent in Himself: Yeshua said, "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John 5:26). He gives existence to and sustains all things: All things came into being by Him (John 1:3). "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). "He upholds all things by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3). Furthermore, the Son of God claimed to be Adonai. When asked by some Jewish leaders how He could claim to have seen Abraham, who lived 2,000 years earlier, Yeshua replied: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am (John 8:58), I Am being an essential part of the Tetragrammaton. As Adonai, Yeshua has all the resources to rule over Israel with wisdom and righteousness, to save the Jewish people, and give us a right standing and relationship with God.
Messiah (Psalm 2:2): The anointed Prophet, anointed Priest and anointed King. Messiah Himself uniquely embodies all three offices in one Person. He is the Prophet greater than Moses, the Priest greater than Aaron, and the King greater than David. He was not merely anointed with oil (a symbol of God's presence) as were Israel's earthly prophets, priests and kings, but He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God, the reality to whom the oil points! Moses was indeed great, having performed miracles, saved us out of Egypt, mediated the covenant at Sinai, taught us God's laws, and led us, but Yeshua is far greater! He performed greater miracles, saved us from sin and death, is the mediator of the New and Eternal Covenant - one which saves and blesses all the families of the Earth. Not only did He teach us, but He Himself is the Living Torah. He is our High Priest, who offers a better sacrifice for us - Himself. He fully atones for us, reconciles us to God, lives forever and intercedes for us, and is able to save us to the ultimate by means of His eternal, indestructible life. Yeshua is the Anointed Ruler sent to save us, the descendant of King David and rightful eternal heir to his throne, who is destined to rule with perfect justice over Israel and the nations, bringing salvation, peace, prosperity, justice and righteousness to every corner of the Earth.
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Father Of Eternity, Prince Of Peace (Isaiah 9:6):
Wonderful: The nature of this Son who is given to us (the Jewish people) is above that of any ordinary man; He is miraculous and full of wonders.
Counselor: He is available to give us the best counsel in every situation. His advice is unparalleled for its depth of wisdom, and given freely to everyone who asks Him for it. He is our Chief Rabbi, the Supreme Teacher who guides us into all truth.
Mighty God: This Son who is born to the Jewish people is fully man, but also fully God. In some miraculous way, He is Immanu-El - God with us - the Word made flesh, the fullness of God dwelling in humanity! Since He is fully God and fully Man, He is the only Mediator capable of ending the estrangement between God and man. He is the Bridge that spans that infinite gulf, enabling God and man to be reconciled. As the Mighty God, He wields within Himself power so great that He can atone for all the evil that is or ever has been in the world, and bring us forgiveness, reconciliation and peace with God.
Father Of Eternity: Since He is the Mighty God, He is also eternal. He is utterly beyond the limits of time. A thousand years in His sight are like yesterday when it passes by. He is the Creator and the Possessor of eternity. Since He is eternal, He is forever able to meet all the needs of His people. He is the One who enables His people to live forever. Father of Eternity can also be translated and understood to mean "Eternal Father, indicating that the Son of God shares the very same name and nature, character and essence as God the Father.
Prince Of Peace: Yeshua has so much power that He can restore shalom - wholeness, completeness and peace - to a broken and shattered universe. He is able to establish peace between man and God, between man and his fellow man, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, blacks and whites and between man and nature. The wonderful peace that He will bring at the inauguration of his kingdom will not be temporary, but will last forever!
Light Of The Nations (Isaiah 42:6): Messiah is the source of wisdom, truth, revelation, understanding, knowledge, victory and salvation, not only for the Jewish people, but for all the peoples of the world!
Star (Numbers 24:17): Messiah is like a Heavenly body - high and pure, which radiates its own light in the vast darkness of the universe. His light shines in the darkness of this world, pointing us to God, and to salvation, victory and life! As the stars declare God's intelligence, power and glory, so does Messiah!
Cornerstone (Isaiah 28:16, Psalm 118:22): Just as the cornerstone adds strength to the foundation, upon which the rest of the building is supported, so we must build our lives on the Son of God. It is impossible to have a stable and enduring life apart from Him.
Stone (Psalm 118:22): Just as stones are used for building, so we must build our lives with Messiah. Just as a stone may be used as a weapon, so Messiah is our protector. Just as stones are used to erect memorials, so Yeshua is the One we should continually remember.
Branch (Zechariah 6:12): As the branch or sprout which starts out small but grows great and soon produces fruit, so the activity of God's Son was to begin in a humble way, but will increase until He accomplishes all of God's purposes.
Scepter (Numbers 24:17): As a rod which is used to strike one's enemies, so the Son of God will defeat all the enemies of God. As a royal rod in the hand of a king, which symbolizes his authority, so the Messiah is God's authorized ruler.
Messenger Of The Covenant (Malachi 3:1): The Messiah was sent by God to inaugurate a new covenant (contract, agreement) with the Jewish people, and with the nations of the world. The terms of this eternal covenant include knowing and loving God, the ability to understand Gods Word, and having all of our sins forgiven. This covenant became effective when Messiah died and then came back to life.
Covenant To The People (Isaiah 42:6): Messiah Himself is the essence of this contract that God has made available to mankind. Anyone who rejects this Covenant remains in a state of alienation from God. All people everywhere must believe in Yeshua and follow Him in order to participate in this new contractual relationship with the God who can save us.
Shiloh (Genesis 49:10): This is a remarkable prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, who will descend from the tribe of Judah, and rule over Israel and the nations. While there have been many suggested translations for Shiloh, the one I like best is "to be quiet, to enjoy rest and security. I like the way one rabbi translated Shiloh as "final tranquility. He is the One who can give rest to the weary and heavy-laden. Ultimately, He will bring tranquility to the entire world.
Ruler (Micah 5:2), Prince (Daniel 9:25), King (Jeremiah 23:5): From His throne in Jerusalem, Messiah is destined to rule over Israel, which will be the head of the nations. He will be a good and fair ruler, an exceedingly capable ruler, a firm, righteous and enlightened ruler. There have been thousands of rulers over humanity, but Yeshua will be the best ruler that humanity has ever experienced! His enlightened administration will end all war and injustice, heal the world's wounds, extend peace and righteousness to the farthest reaches of the Earth, and bring the knowledge of God and salvation to all of humanity.
Arm Of The Lord (Isaiah 53:1): Just as a man's arm does his work for Him, so the Son of God is the Father's Executor. The Father plans and commands, and the Son obeys and carries out His Father's will, counsel and purposes. It is through Messiah that the universe came into being. It is through the Messiah, that the great work of atonement and salvation was accomplished.
Son Of God: In both Psalm 2:12 and Proverbs 30:4, God tells us that He has a Son. That does not mean that God created Him, or that He is younger than God - exactly the opposite! Just as a son shares the same nature as his father, so Yeshua shares the very same nature as His Father. The Son of God is fully divine, complete deity, eternal, uncreated, with life and being within Himself, sharing all the attributes of God!
Names For The Spirit of God
That Are Found In The Tenach
Holy Spirit (Psalm 51:11): God has a Spirit - His non-corporeal, immaterial essence, who pervades the entire universe, but indwells certain places and things more than others. His Spirit is holy - infinitely pure, separate from evil, and unique.
Spirit Of God (Genesis 1:2): The Spirit of God has the attributes of a Person; He has consciousness, mind, emotion and will.
The Spirit Of The Lord God (Isaiah 61:1): the immaterial essence and mind of the One who is Master of all things, and the Source of being.
In Isaiah 11:2, the Spirit of God, who given a sevenfold description, is predicted to rest on the Messiah. From the Spirit of the Lord spreads six branches, which corresponds to the seven branched menorah in the Temple, the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne of God in heaven (see Revelation 4:5), and the seven eyes on the Lamb (see Revelation 5:6). These sevenfold things tell us that Messiah Yeshua has the fulness of God's Spirit abiding on Him. The Messiah, who is a descendant of David, will be empowered for His task of ruling and reigning over Israel by more than merely human abilities. Everything about His leadership will testify to a supernatural empowerment. He will be anointed by more than oil, but by the reality which oil pictures, the fullness of the Spirit of God.
The Spirit Of Adonai: He is anointed by God Himself. The whole creative Spirit of God rests on Him. He fullness of God rests on Him in bodily form. This is the center of this description. From it flow six other aspects:
The Spirit Of Wisdom: Wisdom is more than just knowledge, but how to wisely apply knowledge to accomplish the desired goals. There are many knowledgeable fools.
The Spirit Of Understanding: The Messiah will be full of understanding, intelligence and skill in any art or learning. He is quick to understand.
The Spirit Of Counsel: He gives the best advice and counsel. He can always and in every situation discern what is best and give good counsel and advice. He will be able to perceive things correctly and will be able to carry out correct decisions. He always forms the right conclusions. He has no need to surround Himself with advisors and counselors. He counsels all that come to Him for wisdom. This term "counsel" is used to execute a plan or purpose, and it is used of the counsel or purpose of God. King Messiah helps form and then puts into action the counsels, plans and purposes of God. He is a Wonderful Counselor. He gives wonderful, miraculous advice, unfailing in the depths of it wisdom. He is the supreme source of counsel for the Jewish nation. We ought to listen very carefully to everything that He says. It is more important, more beneficial, than what anyone else has said. You can listen to the foolishness of human wisdom, or the supernatural wisdom of the Messiah.
The Spirit Of Strength: He has the ability to carry out all His counsels with power. He will have God's true might and power about Him, power so great that it can absorb all the evil which can be hurled at it. He will be empowered to reign justly and righteously over Israel and all the nations of the world. This one individual is more powerful than all the armies of the world put together.
The Spirit Of Knowledge: intelligence, understanding, wisdom. He is more knowledgeable than Solomon, who knew about all manner of earthly things, animals, creatures, they way things worked. Someone wiser than Solomon will be with us. Especially the knowledge of God, personal intimate knowledge that comes from experiencing God. He helps us to know God personally and intimately.
The Spirit of the fear of the Lord: He is dominated by the respect and awe of God. He takes everything connected with God seriously and with the utmost respect. The Lord is at the very center of His life. Everything that He does centers around God.
NEW TESTAMENT NAMES, TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS
The Names, Titles and Descriptions for God that are found in the New Testament are rich and varied. The writers of the New Covenant referred to God in many other ways than the Lord Jesus Christ, or God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
New Testament Names, Titles And Descriptions
For Messiah Yeshua
Names, Titles and Descriptions Emphasizing Messiahs Deity
Son Of God (Matthew 26:63): That does not mean that God created Messiah, or that Yeshua is younger than God, or that Yeshua was in some way given birth to by God the Father. It means exactly the opposite! It means that Yeshua shares the very same nature as God, just as a human son shares the human nature of his human father. Yeshua is deity, divine, eternal, uncreated, with life within Himself, sharing all the essential attributes of God.
The Son is equal to the Father in nature, but the Father is superior to the Son in position and authority. The Son sits at the right hand of the Father. The Father sits on the main throne. The Son does not send the Father. The Father sends the Son. The Son is sent by the Father. The Father commands the Son. The Son obeys the Father. The Son never commands the Father. The Father speaks the word, and the Son carries out the word of the Father. The Son acknowledges that the Father is superior in position when He calls Him Father and God (see John 20:17).
God has many sons. Angels and human beings are also called sons of God. Perhaps angels and humans are called sons of God because God is their Creator, and since they are intelligent creatures, and have mind and will, and because God loves them and provides for them, as a father does his children, they are entitled to be called sons of God. But there is one Son who is unique. Therefore He is called is the Only Begotten Son (1 John 4:9). He stands in a special relationship of sonship to God. The Son shares the Fathers name and nature, deity and attributes and essence. He is very God of very God. He is one with God in nature and substance, but separate from the Father as to His person. The Son is eternal and His relationship to His Father is eternal. He always was in the eternal relationship of Son to His Father. His relationship to God the Father is begotten - referring to eternal sonship. Eternally begotten - never created, not made. However, angels and men do not share all of Gods nature. But, there is one special Son who does fully share Gods nature. Therefore He is called the Son (John 8:36) and the Son of the Father (2 John 1:3).
Only Begotten God (John 1:18): God has many sons, but Messiah Yeshua is unique. He is the uniquely begotten God - fully God, sharing the nature of God, yet begotten - in the position of eternal Son to His Father.
Because the Son shares the good and loving and perfect nature of the Father, and obeys the Father, and always did and always will do what is pleasing to the Father, the Son of God is Gods Beloved Son (Matthew 3:17) and the Beloved (Matthew 12:18) in whom God delights. And, we should love and delight in Him too, above all else! Do you?
Son Of The Most High (Luke 1:32): Height signifies superiority in power and position. The Creator is the Most High, and the Most Powerful One and is rightfully in the position of greatest honor and supreme authority. He is infinitely higher than all other beings. The Most High God and the Son of the Most High should be highest in our thoughts, affections, priorities and devotion. Are they in yours?
I Am (John 8:58, see Exodus 3:14): The Carpenter from Nazareth claimed to be the same Supreme Being who appeared to Moses at the burning bush - the I am who I Am, and the source of existence and being for all else. If we believe that Yeshua is the great I Am, then we will be, and we will live forever. If we deny that Yeshua is the infinite and eternal I am, then we will die and it will be as if we will not be. Before Abraham was, Yeshua could say I am. Do you believe that?
Lord (Romans 10:9-13, see Joel 2:32): Rabbi Paul tells Messiahs Holy Community at Rome: "if you confess with your mouth Yeshua is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. A few verses later, Paul backs up this statement by quoting Joel 2:32: "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord (YHVH) will be saved. Yeshua is YHVH. This special name for God is also called the "Tetragrammaton, which means "The Four Letters, because it comes from four Hebrew letters: Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay. This special name for God comes from the Hebrew verb "to be. He is without beginning and without end because He always was, He is, and He always will be. YHVH emphasizes God's absolute being. He has life and existence inherent in Himself. Everyone and everything else derives its existence from Him. The same Lord who revealed Himself as the Tetragrammaton in the Tenach is revealed as Yeshua in the New Testament. Confessing that Yeshua is Lord is equivalent to calling Him YHVH. To be saved, we must believe that Yeshua is Lord - fully divine, fully God, equal in nature to Adonai. Do you believe that Yeshua is Lord? Lord also means one who rules. Yeshua is the Supreme Ruler over all the powers, authorities, forces and laws in the universe. Because He is Adonai, Yeshua has the right to rule angels and men. Is He your Lord? Are you submitted to His lordship?
God (John 1:1): Yeshua is God - fully God, sharing all the attributes of God. Yeshua is to be acknowledged as God, to be treated as God, to be called God. He is to be obeyed and along with the Father as God, worthy to be worshiped as God.
Immanu-El [God with us] (Matthew 1:23): Yeshua is El - The Strongest One, the Mightiest One - God, and He is with us. The same God who was with us in the garden of Eden, who walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day; the same One who was with us when He visited Abraham; the same One who was with us when He wrestled with Jacob; and was with us in the burning bush; and was with us in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night; and was with us on Mount Sinai; and was with in the Mishkan and the Temple, was with us in Yeshua of Nazareth! In spite of our problems, inadequacies and challenges, and the damage that sin has inflicted on us, God's desire is to be with us, and so the Son of God came from Heaven to Earth, and through the incarnation He joined Himself to a human body, and to human nature, so that He could be with us, and we could be with Him. He truly is Immanuel, God with us, the fullness of God's desire to be with us, and dwell among us. Messiah Yeshua is the true Temple of God, the place where God dwells in this world. If Gods glorious Dwelling Presence could dwell with us in the Temple, in a building of wood and gold, silver and stone, cant He dwell with in a human being, a being that is alive and made in the image of God? Immanuel wants to be with us, and is with us. Do you want to be with Him? Are you with Him?
Names, Titles and Descriptions Emphasizing Messiahs Humanity
Son Of Man (Matthew 26:64): The Son of God, who is fully God as to His nature, is also the Son Of Man. Through the incarnation the Son of God entered into humanity and became a real man. He is fully human, but sinless, good, obedient, faithful, pure, holy, always pleasing His Father, a-joy-and-a-delight-to-His-God kind of human. And He is forever the Son of Man. He has eternally joined Himself to humanity. Even when He died and rose from death, He retained His humanity - glorified humanity, but still humanity. He still has a human nature. He still is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh! He is the perfect man, and our role model, our example, the One we strive to be like, to imitate, to follow.
The Man (John 19:5, 1 Timothy 2:5): Yeshua is Lord, and the great I Am, and God, but He is also man. There is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the Man Messiah Jesus. Because He is fully human, He is able to identify with humanity and thereby save us. Only our Kinsman Redeemer, who is one of us, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, could save us. Angels are different from us, and could not be our redeemers. The blood of bulls and goats, rams and lambs and pigeons could not save us because they are worth less than us. Because the Son of God was willing to become the Son of Man, human beings can be saved and humanity is forever exalted. Behold the Man!
Yeshua (Matthew 1:21): This is the name that the angel instructed Joseph to name the Son of God when He came into this world. You are to give him the name Yeshua because He will save His people from their sins. Yeshua means salvation or the Lord saves. The Messiah was given this name because it tells us the essence of what He came to accomplish. Fallen humanitys greatest need is not salvation from political or economic injustice, or salvation from problems in the environment, but salvation from our sins. We are so fallen, so sinful, so pathetically weak, so spiritually dead, that we are utterly incapable of extracting ourselves from this disaster that we brought upon ourselves. Only the Lord can save us the way we need to be saved, and this salvation He makes possible through Yeshua, and no one else.
Yeshua Of Nazareth (Matthew 26:71): The eternal Son of God came from Heaven to Earth and through the incarnation He became a real human being. He was a real man. He had a real body and a genuine human nature. He lived in time. He lived in history. He lived in a location. He lived in the nation of Israel. He grew up in the city of Nazareth. Matthew 2:23 tells us that Yeshuas family came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene. In Yeshuas time Nazareth was a small town that had a reputation for being rustic, backward, insignificant (see John 1:46). It was looked down upon. Calling someone a Nazarene expressed derision. Someone commented that these words: He shall be called a Nazarene are found nowhere in specific in the Scriptures, yet the thought is contained everywhere in Bible. The Messiah was to be despised, afflicted and rejected. Nazarene was one of the names used to refer to Messianic Jews in the early centuries. They were identified as followers of Yeshua of Nazareth. Following Messiah will cost you something in status and prestige in acceptability in the sight of the world. Are you willing to be identified with the Nazarene? Are you willing to be treated like a Nazarene?
Son Of Abraham (Matthew 1:1) and Abraham's Seed (Galatians 3:16): Yeshua is a direct descendant of Abraham, the father of Israel. Abraham becomes the spiritual father of all who have saving faith. God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him that through him and his descendants the world would be blessed. The Jewish people have indeed brought many great things to the world (the knowledge of the One True and Only God, the Holy Scriptures which can lead us to salvation and successful living, intellectual and scientific discoveries, artistic contributions), but the primary way that God blesses the world is through Yeshua, the Son of Abraham. The Abrahamic covenant, and all the promises and blessings and good things that God has for Jews and Gentile get condensed and focused into one of Abrahams descendants - Yeshua, Abrahams Seed. When we are connected to the Son of Abraham, by knowing Him and placing our confidence in Him, Jews become acceptable sons of Abraham, and Gentiles become the blessed spiritual sons of Abraham. Are you a genuine son of Abraham because you are in a right relationship with Abrahams Seed?
Son Of David (Matthew 1:1): The Lord made a covenant with David that his descendants would have the right to be the kings of the Chosen Nation. Yeshua is a direct descendant of David, both on His fathers side and His mothers side. He was born in the city of David. He is the ultimate heir of the Davidic dynasty, and by covenant has the right to rule over the Jewish people and the nations of the world.
The Root And Offspring Of David (Revelation 22:16): Yeshua is the Root of David. He preceded David. David came from Him. He is David's Lord. He is also the Offspring of David. He is David's son, Davids heir, the Davidic Messiah. He is David's Lord and David's son. He is fully God and He is fully man. This is the last title for Yeshua in the New Testament, and reminds us that Yeshua is forever connected to Israel, David, Jerusalem and the Jewish people! Do you like that and accept that, or do you resent that?
Son Of Joseph (John 1:45): Joseph was a righteous man and a descendant of David. Joseph was in the line of Jeconiah. The problem is that Jeconiahs line was cursed so that his descendants couldnt rule on Davids throne (see Jeremiah 22:24-30). It seems to me that in the time of Zarubbabel, some generations later, that curse was removed (see Haggai 2:23). As the adopted son of Joseph, and also as a descendant of David through Mary, Yeshua has the right to rule on Davids throne. Do you acknowledge Him as your King? Is He ruling on the throne over your life?
The Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45): The Scriptures refer to the first Adam and the last Adam - the first man and the Last Man. First came the natural man - Adam, then came the Spiritual Man - Yeshua. First came the man of Earth, then came the Man from Heaven. First came the one made from Earth, who yielded to sin, and whose body returned to the Earth. Then came the man filled with the Spirit, who resisted sin, whose body was in the Earth for three days, but whose glorified body then returned to Heaven. First we are like Adam, of the Earth, subject to sin and death; then if we are born by the Spirit of God we will become like the Last Adam, the man of the Spirit, overcoming sin and death, destined to live forever. All of us were connected to the first Adam, but if we want to live forever we must be joined to the Last Adam. Have you joined yourself to the Last Adam? Have you made the transition from the first, the natural, the physical, to the Last Adam, the spiritual, the heavenly, the victorious, the eternal Man?
Names, Titles and Descriptions Emphasizing Messiahs Functions
The Word (John 1:1): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The Word existed in the beginning. Yeshua is eternal. The Word was with God. The Father and Son eternally co-existed, eternal in their association, distinct in their persons. The Word was God. Yeshua is God - fully divine, very God of very God. And yet, the Word is distinct from God. It can be said that He was with God, and yet He was God - a distinction of Persons, with a oneness of nature. Without words, we are unable to fully communicate with one another. Words enable us to fully communicate. Words enable us to reveal more of ourselves to others. Word enable us to exchange information. Words enable us to bring clarity to complex situations. Yeshua is the way that the infinite, invisible God, whom no man has ever fully seen, is able to fully and clearly communicate to mankind, and sufficiently reveal Himself and His ways to us. Words bring meaning. Words can bring order. Gods words can create. In the beginning the Creators words brought the universe into existence. Yeshua is the One through whom God brought the universe into existence. He brings meaning and order to a chaotic world. Is He bringing meaning and order to your life?
He is the Word Of God (Revelation 19:13): He is the personification of all that God wants to say to mankind. Yeshua is the final communication of God to mankind. He Himself is an essential part of the message that God wants us to understand. He is the ultimate communicator of truth, the final Prophet, Gods Messenger and Message, the Torah of God in living form. Are you listening to Him above everyone and everything else?
He is the Word Of Life (1 John 1:1): That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched - this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The same eternal Word that gave life to the universe, came among us in Yeshua of Nazareth. Yeshua is Gods ultimate Messenger and is Himself the Message. This Messenger and Message that is life, and gives life, came so very close to us, so that we could readily grasp the Message. The eternal Word left Heaven, and became incarnated, and revealed Himself to us, and was seen and touched by John and others. To know that Yeshua is Gods Messenger and Message, and to trust in and welcome Messiah is to receive life - meaningful life, abundant life, life with God, eternal life. Have you?
The Life (John 11:25, 14:6): Yeshua said: Just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself. Yeshuas Father is Adonai - the One who is who He is, and who will be who He will be, the One who has being, existence, reality, and life in Himself. The life of every creature is given by God. But even though Yeshua was a true man, He is no mere creature. He is the divine Son of God, and the life that Yeshua possesses is the same kind of independent, self-existent, eternal life that God the Father has.
Life is good. It is good to be alive. Normal human beings want to live. We have a very strong desire to live. If we could live in a perfect place, and if we could be perfect, and if we could live there forever, most sane people would want eternal life. But, because we have crossed moral and spiritual boundaries that should not have been crossed, we are dead in our trespasses and sins. We are not fully alive. We are not headed to eternal life but to death. We are in the most desperate need of Gods kind of life. We cant give this kind of life to ourselves.
Many have claimed: follow what I say and you will have a better life. Yeshua claimed something greater - that He is the Source of Life, and is able to give eternal life. Yeshua didnt so much offer religious ideas as He offers Himself. Yeshua is exclusively the Life. Gordon Ainsworth made this observation: By saying I am the Life, Yeshua was saying that every other way leads to death. Rejection of Yeshua is rejection of life. Do you have the Messiah? Do you have the Life?
Prince Of Life (Acts 3:15): A prince is a leader who has great authority. The Son of God has all authority over matters of life and death. He has authority over own life and death, and He has authority over our life and death. The Prince Of Life has the power and authority to give life to others - and He willingly does so for those who know Him and follow Him. Do you?
Living One (Luke 24:5): Yeshua has eternal life in Himself. In Him was and is life. He was always alive. He will always be alive. Even though the Living One died on the cross, death was no match for Him! Death could not keep Him. The grave could not hold Him. He came back to life, never to die again, and able to give eternal life to those who love Him. Do you?
The Resurrection (John 11:25): God has placed within us the desire to survive. We want to live. Death seems unnatural. Because of the Fall, and sin, and our continued rebellion against the King of the universe, death dominates humanity. Death is not good. It is frightening. It is unpleasant. It is an adversary to be overcome. The good news is we can have victory over this great adversary! Those who die in a right relationship with God, having atonement based on their faith in God the Father and Messiah the Son, will be brought back to life! They will live again! They will be resurrected and live forever! Without the resurrection, life is shallow and ultimately meaningless. Without the resurrection, life is unfair. Often the wicked are left unpunished, and the innocent and righteous are persecuted, oppressed and never vindicated. For justice to prevail, for the righteous to be vindicated and the wicked punished, we need to be raised back to life!
Yeshua said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Yeshua claimed to be able to raise all of the dead - the God-fearers and the God-ignorers, good and the wicked, to life on the Last Day. And, since He is One who will resurrect the dead, and give eternal life to the righteous, we must place our confidence in Him. He who believes in Me will live even if he dies. Those who place their trust in Him, even if they do die, will be resurrected from death. He continued his words to Martha: And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Every human being - Jew or Gentile, man or woman, who comes to understand that Yeshua is the Messiah, and the Son of God, and the only Savior that God has sent to rescue mankind, will not experience death - not physical death, but the Second Death - Gehenna, Hell, the Lake of Fire, the ultimate separation from God, who is the Source of Life. Yeshua asked Martha, Do you believe this? Do you?
Messiah (John 1:41): In ancient Israel there were three ruling offices - prophet, priest and king. Often prophets, priests and kings were anointed with oil when they began their office. This was a sign of Gods approval and blessing on them and their work. Yeshua is the Anointed One. Yeshua uniquely embodies and combines and fulfills all three offices in one Person. He is the anointed Prophet, anointed Priest and anointed King. He is the greatest of the prophets, the Priest greater than Aaron and the high priests that came from Aaron, and the King greater than David and the other kings of Israel. He was not merely anointed with oil (a symbol of God's Spirit and Gods presence) as were Israel's earthly prophets, priests and kings, but He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God, the reality to whom the oil points! He is the greatest of the prophets, Gods ultimate and supremely authoritative spokesman. We must listen to Him. He is our High Priest, the one and only mediator between God and man, who bring God closer to us, and us closer to God. Our High Priest offers a better sacrifice for us - Himself. He fully and completely atones for us, and perfectly reconciles us to God, and enables us to live forever. He continually and forever intercedes for us, and is able to save us by means of His eternal, indestructible life. Yeshua is the Anointed Ruler sent by God, the descendant of King David and rightful eternal heir to his throne, who is destined to rule with perfect justice over Israel and the nations, bringing salvation, peace, prosperity and righteousness to this Earth, and then to the new Heavens and new Earth. Is He your Messiah? Do you acknowledge that God sent Him and filled Him with the Spirit of God? Is He your prophet? Is God speaking authoritatively through Him to you? Is He your Priest, who brings God closer to you, and you closer to God. Is He your King?
King Of Israel (Mark 15:32) and the King Of The Jews (Matthew 27:37): The kings of Egypt, Assyria, Syria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome controlled the Jewish people at various times, but they were not the rightful kings of Israel.
The Lord did not want the political life of Israel to be like the other nations. He wanted to be the King of Israel. Priests would be in charge of the religious life. Prophets would be raised up as needed to call the people and priests to repent, or to bring a new message from the Lord. If a leader was needed in a crisis, God would raise up a leader. When the people demanded a king, the Lord allowed it, and ultimately chose David and his descendants to be the kings of Israel. As the One who is fully God, Yeshua is the rightful King of Israel. As the Messianic heir of David, Yeshua is also the rightful King of Israel. If you are Jewish, is He your King? Are you His loyal subject?
There is an inherent connection between the King of Israel and the Nation of Israel. Like Israel, Yeshua lived in Egypt and was called out of Egypt. Like Israel, He was tested in the wildness. He is the true Israel. Israel is called God's vine. Messiah is the true vine. Israel was the light to the Nations. Messiah is the Light of the World. Israel is God's son in Torah. Messiah is God's ultimate Son. Israel was God's witness. Yeshua is the ultimate Witness. Israel is Gods Servant. Yeshua is Gods perfect Servant. But the King of Israel, the perfect Israeli, gloriously succeeded where the nation of Israel failed. If you are Jewish, is Yeshua your King?
King Of Kings And Lord Of Lords (Revelation 19:16): Yeshua is not just the King of Israel and the King of the Jews, but the ruler over all the leaders and nations of the world. From Jerusalem He will take over the administration of every nation. He will rule the nations firmly, so that He will be in complete control and His will and His laws will be followed. He will rule with a rod of iron and yet with perfect fairness and justice.
Prince (Acts 5:31) and Master (Luke 8:24): Both prince and master refer to one who wields authority over others. Our Prince leads by right of His position at the right hand of God, and He leads by example. Our Prince is not just a political leader, but a moral and religious and spiritual leader who leads us to repentance and salvation. Is He your prince? Are you following the Master, receiving His orders, following Him where He directs, even if He commands us to go into battle, or experience hardship?
The Head Of The Body, The Church (Colossians 1:18) and Head Over All Things To The Church (Ephesians 1:22): The Son of God is ruler over all things to the called out ones, those men and women, those Jews and Gentiles, who are taken from a dying world and placed into a united and living and eternal community headed by our loving and powerful and glorious Messiah Himself. As the Head Over All Things To The Church we follow Him. We embrace His ways. We study and implement His teachings, He make His will our will. We obey His commands. Just as a head and body are connected, and together form a living being, so Messiah is the head and we are the body. Just as a body cant live without being securely attached to its head, we cant live without the living Messiah who is connected to the Living Father. We must make sure that we are always properly and securely connected to Him - by drawing near directly to Him by faith - not to intermediaries like angels, popes and saints and icons and sacraments.
Rabbi (Matthew 23:8): Rabbi means teacher and Yeshua is the Supreme Rabbi of Israel, and Israel is the teacher of mankind. We need a supreme teacher because we are in deep spiritual darkness. We are confused about reality, truth, salvation and the way to attain eternal life. He taught with beauty, with simplicity and with originality. Yeshua taught with authority. He never quoted other rabbis. Instead He said, "I say unto you, because there was no higher authority to which He could refer! The multitudes were amazed at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes who quoted some other rabbi who depended some other rabbi for his authority.
Our Supreme Teacher turned the worlds values upside down, teaching us: "blessed are the poor, not "blessed are the rich;" "blessed are the gentle" not "blessed are the aggressive and the powerful;" "blessed are the merciful" not "blessed are the conquerors;" and blessed are those who mourn over their own sins, who grieve that humanity is so broken, who are saddened by our alienation from God, and our loss of eternal life - not blessed are those who seek their own personal happiness.
Yeshua is the Supreme Authority on all religious matters. His teaching is the final authority. There is no other religious leader, authority, prophet within Israel or outside of Israel whose teachings supercede His. There is no legitimate church Council whose decrees contradict His. His teaching is in keeping with the prophets of Israel who came before Him, but His teaching surpasses the other prophets of Israel as the light of the sun surpasses the light of the moon in radiant power. Therefore we must learn His teachings, and study them and implement them and give His teachings the highest respect and listen more carefully to Him than to any other human being or institution. Do you?
The Prophet (John 1:25, see Deuteronomy 18:15): A prophet is one who hears clearly from God, and then communicates what he has heard to the rest of us. He is the Lords spokesperson. The Lord, speaking to Moses, promised: I will raise up for the Jewish people a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to My words that the prophet speaks in My name, I myself will call him to account. The Lord promised to speak to the Jewish people though human beings - and specifically through Jewish prophets. From this Torah promise, some Jewish people in the first century were expecting one special prophet - the Prophet, as is seen by this question directed to John from a delegation of priests and Levites sent by the leaders in Jerusalem. They asked him, and said to him, "Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?"
There have been many great prophets in Israels long history, like Moses, David, Jeremiah and Elijah, but there is one prophet - Yeshua, who excels them all! Adolph Saphir, one of the best Messianic Jewish preachers from years past, commenting on Hebrews 1:1-2, wrote the following: God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2).
Yeshua is greater than all of the prophets because He is the prophet in whom is the perfect revelation of God. The ministry of the prophets was a great blessing to mankind, a wonderful gift. Yet let us consider some of the imperfections of these messengers.
The first imperfection of the prophets was that they were sinful men. The prophets were not merely finite and limited in their abilities and their understanding, but they were sinful and fallen. When one of the greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, saw the glory of the Lord, he said: woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. When the prophet Daniel, a man who was greatly loved by God, prayed to God, he confessed that he had sinned and transgressed and acted wickedly. All of the prophets, from the greatest on down, were men full of weaknesses and sin.
Another imperfection of the prophets was that they did not possess the Spirit of God on a continual basis. King David had to pray: take not your Holy Spirit from me. Suddenly, after a long time, the Spirit of God would come upon them and they would prophecy. The Spirit of God did not flow out of them live a continuous river. The word of God came to them from time to time and then left.
Another imperfection of the prophets was that they did not always understand the word of God that they were given! Their own words were often a mystery to them. Their own prophecies were often closed to their understanding. Sometimes they had to search diligently and investigate what the Spirit that was speaking through them meant. They did not fully understand the sufferings and the glory of the Messiah who was to come.
Another imperfection of the prophets was that they were varied in their abilities and gifts. Each prophet had his unique capacities. The manner in which the word of God was given to them was varied. To some God spoke in dreams, to another in visions, to another He spoke in symbols. In the highest position stands Moses. God spoke to him not by dreams or visions or dark speeches, but directly (Numbers 12:6-8).
Another imperfection was that none of them was the goal of the prophecies. All of them, like John the Baptist would testify that "they are not the light. They were only sign posts pointing the way, directing us not to themselves, but to Anointed One who was to come. They could make known to man the will of God, they could give us God's holy commandments, like Moses did, they could bring us prophecies that fill us with the hope of redemption, but they themselves could not redeem us. None but the Most High can save. God alone is our light and our salvation. The Lord alone is our Redeemer!
Another imperfection of the prophets was that there were many of them. One succeeded another. No one prophet was able to contain the whole message that God needed to communicate. Each one had to be supplemented by the revelation given to another.
Abel shows us that a righteous shepherd was to suffer and die. Enoch shows us that the Messiah would walk with God and would be lifted up to the Heavens. Noah shows us that there will be a Comforter who will save not only Himself, but many others, out of the judgment and destruction which sin calls down from a holy God. Moses shows us that Messiah will be a prophet like he was, a leader who was prophet, priest and king. But Moses must be combined with Joshua, for Moses was not able to lead the people of God into the Promised Land. It was Joshua who brought us in and gave us victory. David was a great prophet and king, but we must combine him with Solomon to get the full picture of kingship, of gentleness, sympathy, suffering, glory and extensiveness. Mal-kee-tze-dek was both a priest and a king, but we must combine him with Aaron in order to have the idea of atonement and intercession, as well as blessing and rule.
For more than 4000 years, from Adam to John the Baptist, the prophets spoke for God to man. But their revelation of God was only partial. God spoke through dreams and visions, proverbs and poetry, rituals, laws, tabernacle and temple, objects in the temple, sacrifices and ceremonies and holidays, through kings, judges, patriarch and prophets. God used all these ways and some 45 people, but wherever we go, we find the revelation in fragments. No one prophet was able to contain it all. The revelation in all the ages prior to the coming of the Messiah, who came in the fullness of times, was imperfect. Everything was a fragment that contained an aspect of the truth, some part of the treasure, but we must combine them all to see the full and blessed truth to which they pointed - the final prophet - Messiah.
The revelation that comes through the prophets is wonderful. It is true. It is accurate. It reveals many things about God and creation and what He is doing. But the time for fragmentary imperfect revelation had to come to an end. God wanted to speak to us in an ever greater and more wonderful way. To fully express His heart, His mind, His will, His love, His hatred of sin, His mercy, His nature to us the Lord had to come to us Himself. In the person of Yeshua the Messiah, God found a perfect way to communicate Himself, His heart and mind and message, to mankind.
When you read the Tenach you are reading the Word of God. God did communicate through the prophets. They are a great blessing. Knowing their writings brings great advantages. But God wanted to be able to say even more. After 4000 years of prophets and 400 years of silence, in the fulness of time, God sent forth His Son, and in that Son the revelation of God is perfect. The revelation of God is filled up, fulfilled, reaching its perfection and climax. The word which now comes to us by the Son of God, by means of what Yeshua said and did and who He was, is a stronger and more inclusive message than God ever was able to speak through any or all of the prophets.
God has spoken to us by means of His Son. Many people think that when we say that Yeshua is the Son of God it means that He is not God. There is God and there someone else, the Son of God, but not God. Nothing could be further from the truth! When the Scriptures declare that Yeshua is the Son of God, what they are trying to tell us is Messiah is just like His Father. He shares the same nature as God. He shares the same essence as God. He shares the same attributes as God. He is His Father's Son. He is just like His Father.
When the Scriptures teach that Yeshua is God's Son, it means that Yeshua has a special closeness and love with the Father that no one else has. The Son has always been in the heart of the Father. He has always been the special delight and treasure of the Father. He has always been the infinite object of the Father's love. From all eternity the Father has rejoiced and delighted in the Son and shared with Him all His counsel. This beloved One of the Father - He is the true messenger who alone can reveal all the secrets of the Father's heart, who alone tells us all the fullness of the Father's counsels, and who alone reveals all the purposes of the Father's plan.
God has spoken to us by means of His Son. Who is there who knows the mind of God, or is equal to Him? No man knows the Father except for the Son. No man has ever seen the Father at any time. The Only begotten Son of the Father, He is the only one who has fully revealed Him.
The Son is the eternal uncreated Word of God who was with the Father before the foundation of the universe. Yeshua is able to speak the words of God and is the goal of the Word of God because He is the eternal uncreated Word of God. There was from all eternity perfect communication between the Father and the Son. Whether the Father speaks or Yeshua speaks, it is the same voice, it is the same mind. The Son is the true and faithful witness. He speaks about that which He has seen and testifies about what He knows firsthand. He is the prophet who was to come whose mind was adequate to understand and reveal the mind of the Father. He spoke nothing except what He first heard the Father speak.
God has spoken to us by means of His Son. The prophets were many - the Son is one. The prophets were servants - the Son is their Lord. The prophets were created in time. The Son existed from eternity before the creation of the world. The prophets were temporary - the Son lives forever. The Spirit came upon the prophets and then left - the Spirit was always in the Son and He possessed the Spirit without measure. The prophets were imperfect - the Son is perfect, just as the Father is perfect. The prophets were guilty of committing sin. The Son is not merely pure, but able to perfectly cleanse every human being who is guilty of sin. The prophets said: thus says the Lord - Yeshua said: Truly truly I say to you.
The prophets testified that Messiah was coming. Yeshua testified that He was the Messiah and the Kingdom of God was at hand. The prophets pointed to Messiah. Yeshua pointed to Himself. He said about Himself: I am the bread of life. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth and the life. I will give everyone that comes to Me rest and eternal life. The Son of God not only perfectly declared to us the message of God, He is the message. He is the Light, He is the Truth, He is the Life, He is the Way, He is the Goal. The most important things that God has to say to us are found in Yeshua.
God has spoken to us by means of His Son. God, by speaking to us through His Son, shows us how we can become sons of God. The one who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet receives a prophet's reward. The one who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man receives a righteous man's reward.
The one who receives the Son of God as the Son of God will become a son of God himself! In knowing the Son we receive the adoption as sons. We receive eternal sonship. In the Son we know and have the Father. In the Son we are also the children of God.
The apostle John declared that whoever confesses that Yeshua is the Son of God, God abides in Him, and he in God (1 John 4:15). You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God was the thrilling confession of Simon Peter. Yeshua replied to him: flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in Heaven. So great a thing is it for a sinful human being to come to this understanding, that the unique Son of the Father was made flesh and blood and dwelt among us, and died for our salvation, that whenever anyone said: I believe that Yeshua is the Messiah and the Son of God, the apostles said: Come, let us immerse him. What more do we need? He has discovered the secret. God has revealed the life saving secret to his soul. God has come to him. God lives him, and he lives in God. Let us baptize him. Do you know that Yeshua is the Prophet, the Lords supreme and final spokesperson? Are you listening to Him? Are you paying attention not only to His words, but also to Him, and His actions?
The Deliverer (Romans 11:26): We are able to get ourselves out of some problems. Sometimes other agents, like animals, human beings and angels can help us overcome various problems. But neither we ourselves, nor any other agent, can deliver us from our greatest problems - sin and death. To extricate ourselves from those problems we need the help of the Deliverer! We need Messiah to get us out of the Satanic slave-market of sin and death. He alone is able to redeem us from the control of the god of this world, from sin and death, from condemnation and judgment and punishment in the Lake of Fire. And how did the Deliver redeem us? Not with money, not with the blood of animals, but with His very own efforts, His own rejection, suffering, blood and death. Each human being desperately needs deliverance. Is Yeshua your Deliverer?
Savior Of The World (John 4:42): The world, which is made up of fallen men and women, is alienated from our wonderful Creator, who is the Source of life and goodness and blessing. The world of human sinners is lost, ruined, destroyed and headed to death and Hell. It has no hope. The world of sinful human beings is in the most desperate need of deliverance from this deathly dilemma. The world is so fallen, so dead in trespasses and sins, so pathetically weak, that it is totally incapable of saving itself. No ordinary human being - no prophet, no king, no politician, no economist or philosopher, no scientist, and no group of human beings, can rescue us from this disaster. The prophets, priests and kings of Israel could not be the Savior Of The World. Buddha, Mohammed, the great political and economic thinkers, scientists and political leaders could not be our Savior. Yeshua, whose very name means salvation, is the only One who can solve the worlds greatest problems. He alone makes reconciliation with God, peace with God, atonement, deliverance from sin and death, possible. He alone can reconcile the world to the God from whom the world is estranged. He alone can reverse the curse brought about by sin. Only He can triumph over sin, sickness, Satan, death and Hell. He is the only One who can end our alienation and bring us peace - peace with God, peace with one another, peace with nature and creation, and peace within ourselves. He truly is the Savior Of The World! Is He your Savior?
Savior Of All Men (1 Timothy 4:10): It was too small a thing for the Son of God to be only the Savior of little Israel. He also is the Savior Of All Men. He is the Savior Of All Men in the sense that He makes salvation available to human beings, but each man, each woman, by personal faith and repentance, must individually act on that offer of salvation. Have you?
Horn Of Salvation (Luke 1:69): Powerful animals like bulls had horns, so Horn became a symbol for power. Messiah, the Horn Of Salvation, is able to save not just little, not with a meager amount of saving ability, but abundantly and powerfully! He is able to help us now, with all the various problems we face in this life - problems with people, with relationships, marital problems, problems at work, financial pressures, money problems, problems with the kids. He can help us deal with mental and emotional problems. He can save us not just now, but forever, with an eternal salvation! He is able to save not just Israel, but the whole world! His saving power is so great that He will save not only men and women, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, those who had faith before the Cross and those who believed after the cross, but this world, and eventually the entire broken universe! He will end the curse on nature, and one day will create a new and perfect universe, where only the righteous and redeemed live! His saving ability is great! It is infinite! It is eternal! Have you availed yourself of it? Of Him?
Sheep and Shepherd - Sacrifice and Leader
The Lamb (Revelation 5) and the Lamb of God (John 1:36): The greatest of the prophets, John, saw Yeshua coming to him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! The greatest need of fallen, corrupt, headed-towards-the-First-Death-and-the Second-Death-mankind, is to overcome sin and death. To be reconciled to God, receive forgiveness, find atonement, and be restored to real life, Gods life, meaningful life, lasting life, eternal life, it is not enough to simply say, I am sorry. It is not enough to try and live a better life, because the quality of your life can never be good enough. It is not enough to try and be a good person. It is not enough to follow a man-made religious system. The Word of the Lord is clear: without genuine faith in God (a close personal relationship with the Living God), and the shedding of blood of a sacrificial animal at the Temple in Jerusalem, supervised by a descendant of Aaron the brother of Moses, there can be no atonement, no forgiveness and no restoration to life.
According to the Torah, being forgiven was a complicated procedure. If you sinned, first you had to go to travel to the Temple in Jerusalem. Then, you had to find a priest. Then, a bull, goat, lamb, ram or dove had to be killed. The priest had to sprinkle the blood on the bronze altar. Part of the animal's body was then burned. Then, if the sacrifice was done by one who had genuine faith in God, these sacrifices and the shedding of blood brought a measure of atonement - not full and final atonement, but a temporary covering for our sins. Under the Mosaic covenant, with its constantly repeated sacrifices by the priests, there was no ultimate and final forgiveness for sin - only a temporary covering. Aaron and all the priests that descended from him stood before the bronze altar and repeated the same sacrifices, day after day, Sabbath after Sabbath, month after month, holiday after holiday, year after year, century after century. But these continually repeated sacrifices could not fully atone for our sins. If they had completely atoned for our sins, we would have stopped offering them, because they would have done the job. Israel could never say, "It is finished!" From the time of Moses until 70 AD, when the sacrifices stopped, there was a continual shedding of the blood of bulls, goats, lambs and rams, day after day, Sabbath after Sabbath, month after month, holiday after holiday, year after year, century after century - millions upon millions of animals were slaughtered and burned, rivers and rivers of blood were spilled that did not permanently take away our sins. I once calculated the number of animals that were required to be killed, and the total is astounding: 171,000 bulls, 48,000 goats, 55,500 rams, 301,639,500 lambs.
Why couldn't the blood of bulls, goats, lambs, rams and pigeons fully take away our sins? Animal are lower on the Scale of Being. On the Scale of Being, the eternal Creator is the most valuable, followed by man, then animals, then plants, then followed by the inorganic. Therefore one man is more valuable than all the animals in the world, and all the animals in the world could not fully atone for even one human being. But thats OK, because God had a better plan. The Mosaic Covenant, and the Levitical priests, and the Temple in Jerusalem, and the bulls, goats, rams, lambs and pigeons were temporary measures designed to enable God to temporarily cover our sins, until a better solution would come, that would provide perfect and final and full atonement, grant us complete forgiveness of all of our sins, forever reconcile us to God, and bring us eternal life!
There have been, and are, many lambs, but Yeshua is the unique Lamb that was slain, the Lamb of God and Gods Lamb - the special sacrificial victim who God provided to meet our greatest need - overcoming sin and death, who alone can take away the sin of the world. The sacrifice offered by Yeshua is so much better than all of the millions of animals that died because the sacrifice offered by the Messiah was a willing sacrifice. The sacrifices of the animals werent voluntary. The animals were killed against their wills to obtain their blood. But Yeshua died willingly and voluntarily. The One who was perfect, and needed no sacrifice for Himself, was willing to give His life that we might live - live with Him, live with His Father, live with each other, forever! The sacrifice of Yeshua is so much better because He became one of us. As a man, He can help man. He became a man - a perfect and sinless man, who was always pleasing to His Father. As a man, He is our equal. Therefore He can be our kinsman redeemer. But, Messiah is not only a man who is equal to us, but He is also Immanuel - God with us, and infinitely superior to us. As the One who is fully man and fully God, He is at the very top of the Scale of Being. He is of infinite worth. His sacrifice is of infinite worth.
So, the sacrifice of the One who is fully God and fully Man is infinitely more valuable than all the millions of animals ever slaughtered. Therefor His sacrifice possesses absolute perfection, and never ceasing effectiveness. His sacrifice is eternally powerful and is sufficient for all human beings. His sacrifice accomplished infinite redemption, perfect and full and final and eternal atonement. Almost-sacrificed-Isaac was not Gods Lamb. The prophets of Israel were not qualified to be the Lamb of God; the rabbis who created non-Messianic Judaism, Buddha, Mohammed, Marx or anyone else were not and could not be the Lamb. Do you consider Messiah, the Lamb that was slain, worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing? Are you praising Him, blessing Him, honoring Him, following Him, obeying Him? Behold, take a good very look, pay the closest attention to Yeshua of Nazareth, the Lamb of God, who alone can take away the sin of the world! Your life, your salvation, depends on it!
Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:6-7): Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Messiah our Passover Lamb also has been sacrificed. Passover is a wonderful and true account of the miraculous rescue of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. The Lord had to pressure Pharaoh to let Israel go with ten terrible plagues. The tenth plague was the most severe of all - death of all first-born sons living in the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and of animals. The Lord made it possible for the first-born sons to survive that first Passover. He instructed us to take an unblemished, year-old lamb. We were to kill the lamb and pour its blood into a bowl. Then we applied the blood to the two doorposts and the top of the door of the house where the Passover lamb was to be eaten. God promised that He would go through the land that night, striking all the houses of Egypt. But God would pass over any house where He saw the blood of a spotless lamb applied by faith to the door. The first-born son would be spared from death, and the next day the Jewish people would be redeemed out of Egypt. Then God led us through the wilderness to the promised Land of Israel.
Passover was a prophecy of a greater redemption, a more profound Exodus, and a more excellent Lamb who was to come. Passover was a prediction that God would one day send His Son into the world to be the ultimate sacrifice, to shed His blood on a cross, so that God may "pass over" the sins of those who believe in Messiah. God's plan to redeem not only the Jewish people, but all peoples, is again through a Lamb - the ultimate Sacrifice - the Messiah of Israel, and our Passover Lamb! Its no coincidence that Messiah Yeshua died on Passover. His last supper was a Passover Seder and He died the next day, the first day of Passover - in fulfillment of Passover.
Just as the Jewish people in Egypt applied the blood of a spotless lamb to our doors, we must keep the Passover today by acknowledging our sin and guilt and our inability to save ourselves, and by placing our full confidence in Messiah Yeshua. Each one of us must apply the blood of Yeshua to the doors of our hearts. Then God will pass over our sins and bring us from our Egypts, our bondage to the world, our slavery to sin, our captivity to the flesh and our slavery to the adversary. The Lord will take us by the hand, lead us through the wilderness of this world, to the New Jerusalem. Can you say, Messiah is my Passover Lamb? Even now He is delivering me from sin and death and leading me to the New Jerusalem?
Good Shepherd (John 10:11): A shepherd is one who cares for domestic animals, particularly cows, sheep and goats. He protects the animals and provides for all of their needs. Human beings are like domestic animals - especially sheep. Like sheep, we are stubborn, weak, timid, foolish, pathetic, need endless attention and cause a lot of trouble. There are good shepherds and bad shepherds, good religious leaders and bad religious leaders. Bad religious leaders, who are not fit for their positions of spiritual authority; or who are not morally, spiritually or theologically qualified; or who are in their position for the wrong reasons (they want to take from you, not give to you), can do so much damage. A good leader is like a good shepherd. A good shepherd is gentle and kind, yet strong and brave, intelligent and selfless in his devotion to his sheep. A good leader knows his people, and is intimately involved with them. A good leader knows the needs of his people, and does everything to meet their needs. A good leader feeds his people with truth. A good leader corrects his people when stray or fight. A good leader will go after one of his people who is wandering away, and try to bring him home. A good leader leads with courage. He goes in front where the danger is the greatest. He leads the people himself. He doesn't drive the people in front of himself. A good leader will not abandon his position in times of trouble. He is willing to lay down his life for his people. Messiah is this kind of Good Shepherd. Is He your Leader? Sheep are stupid creatures, but they are smart enough to distinguish their shepherds voice from that of others. Can you? Do you know that Yeshua is the Messiah? Do you hear Him speaking to you through the Holy Scriptures? Can you hear His still, quiet voice speaking to you?
Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4): The Good Shepherd has appointed human leaders - pastors, teachers, rabbis, to take care of us - to feed us with truth, to lead us, to correct us. We need to be able to recognize them, and then submit to their leadership, and follow them. That is part of our duty to the Chief Shepherd who has appointed them. Above them all, leading each one of the sons and daughters of God, is the Chief Shepherd Himself, who is gentle and kind, yet firm and selfless in His devotion to us; providing for all of our needs.
Shepherd And Guardian Of Our Souls (1 Peter 2:25): For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls. In the time of Yeshua, most of the Jewish people, even though we were raised with the knowledge of God and Torah, had been continually straying from God, like sheep wandering away from their Shepherd. We went after man-made teachings, false rabbinic theological systems and materialism. But, the Shepherd And Guardian Of Our Souls went after us. He sought us out! He came from Heaven and lead us back to God, to salvation, to faithfulness to the Scriptures. He taught us the truth. He opened for us the Scriptures, so that we could understand where we were misunderstanding them. He then died to ensure that our lives, our souls, would be kept forever safe. Is Yeshua shepherding and guarding your soul? Have you placed your life into His most able care? If you do, you will find that He will protect your life in this world, and your soul in the Life To Come!
Stone (Matthew 21:42-44): Yeshua said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures, 'The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"... he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. Stone is a material that is solid, heavy and enduring. Stones are used to build houses. Stones are used to erect memorials. Stones are used as weapons. Stones are used to punish serious criminals. Stones are used to bring beauty. Stone - big stone, in the form of hills or mountains, symbolize government.
Just as stones are used for building, so we must build our lives with Messiah. We must get to know Him and His character, values, priorities, will and ways. We must commit ourselves to wholeheartedly follow Him. If we do, our lives will have strength, stability and endurance. They will have the strength to endure in this world, survive in the World To Come! and If we dont build our lives with the Stone, they will be chaotic, confused, unstable and impermanent.
Just as stones may be used as weapons, to protect and to attack, so Messiah is our protector. With all authority given to Him in Heaven and on Earth, He will defend us from all that is truly evil. We need to get close to Him so we can avail ourselves of the maximum amount of the protection He offers. In ancient days, stones were used to punish. The Torah permits death by stoning for the most serious offenses. Messiah will judge and destroy those who deny Him and refuse His gracious offer of salvation. He will attack all that is opposed to the will of God, to righteousness, to us. This Stone will eventually shatter everyone who opposes Him. Every human being, no matter how strong, how rich, how successful, how powerful he thinks he is, if he opposes Yeshua, if he doesnt submit to Messiah, if he doesnt acknowledge and believe that Yeshua of Nazareth is the Messiah that God sent; each human being, if he doesnt serve, follow, obey Yeshua, will fall and be broken to pieces; every human being - Jew or Gentile, who rejects, ignores, opposes or betrays this Stone, will be completely and totally destroyed by Messiah, so that it is if he is scattered like dust with nothing remaining.
Stones were used to make idols, but Yeshua is the unique Son of the true God who will destroy all false religion and those who are engaged in any religion other than the Faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. Are you part of the true Faith?
Big visible formation of stones are called hills or mountains, and they represent government. Daniel 2 records a vision which Daniel interpreted. A stone that was cut without human hands - no ordinary ruler, but someone uniquely sent by God, destroyed the statue that represents human government. Then this special stone grew and became a great mountain that filled the whole Earth. That means that a day is coming when the Son of God, sent by God, whose came the first time with humility, will come again with power and honor and destroy all the governments of the world, and take control of the administration of planet Earth.
Just as stones are used to erect memorials, and placed on graves to remember the dead, so Yeshua is the One we should continually remember. He must constantly be in our thoughts. We should continually remember His coming from Heaven; and His amazing life; and His great teachings; and His miracles; and His rejection and death which atones for sin; and His resurrection; and His coming again; and His eternal saving power, and His love for us.
Some stones are rare and very beautiful. Think of all of the precious and semi-precious gem stones - beautiful diamonds or red rubies, purple amethysts, red garnets, blue topazes and aquamarines, multi-colored opals. Messiah is exceedingly rare, precious and beautiful - in character, in love, in faithfulness, because of His amazing grace. We should always find Him beautiful, alluring, interesting, fascinating, attractive. Do you?
Chief Cornerstone: The cornerstone is large well-shaped stone that is put at the bottom of a building and gives strength to the foundation. Yeshua is the Stone that the builders - the leaders of Israel, tragically rejected. But, God the Supreme Builder, God the Father, overruled their rejection, and made His Son the Chief Cornerstone! Just as the cornerstone gives strength to the foundation and supports the building, it is essential that we build our lives on the reality of the Son of God. It is impossible to have a stable and enduring life apart from Him. It is impossible for eternal life to be established apart from Him. Yeshua is the cornerstone, not just of our own individual lives, but He is the foundation for everything that God is building throughout eternity! The new Heavens and new Earth are built on His reality, His redemption, His salvation, His presence, His leadership, His will, His ways. Are you building your life in this world, and your life in the World To Come, on Yeshua, the Chief Cornerstone?
Firstborn (Hebrews 1:6) and Firstborn Of All Creation (Colossians 1:15) and Beginning Of The Creation Of God (Revelation 3:14): This does not mean that Yeshua had a beginning or is a created being. The Son is eternal. He never had a beginning. He was in the beginning with God. He preceded the creation of the universe. According to Biblical law, the firstborn is the eldest son. He has a special place and special privileges in the family. He becomes the head of the family. He becomes the main heir. The Firstborn and the Firstborn Of All Creation means that Yeshua is older than anything in creation. He is the eldest. He is older than the first Jew. He could truthfully say, Before Abraham was, I am. He is older than humanity. He preceded Adam. He is older than all things. He is older than the primordial waters which were created on the first day. He is older than the first angelic being who came into being and served the eternal God. God has a family. As the Firstborn, Yeshua is our eldest brother. He is in the place of prominence among all the sons and daughter of God. He is the leader of the family of God. Is He your brother? Is He your leader? Really? Truly? As the Firstborn Of All Creation, Yeshua is to be preeminent over all created things - especially those with the ability to think and choose, like angels and men. Is He preeminent over your thoughts, your will?
Heir Of All Things (Hebrews 1:2): As the Firstborn, Yeshua is Gods primary heir. Because He is the Son of God, and the Son of Man; because He is the Creator and the Redeemer of all things, Messiah is the inheritor of an everlasting kingdom that encompasses all things. Because of His divine nature, and His perfection and His redemptive sufferings, He is worthy to receive all things. When someone you love receives a nice inheritance, you are happy for him. We will be delighted that Messiah, our Lord and Savior and Elder Brother, will receive all things! When someone receives a generous inheritance, it is nice when he in turn is generous with others, and this is what will happen to us. Out the generosity and the grace of the Father and the Son, the redeemed will share in that kingdom, that blessedness, life, wealth, happiness and authority that Messiah will receive! We become Gods heirs and fellow heirs with Messiah! We will receive a real and amazing inheritance - eternal life in the glorious New Jerusalem; a fabulously rich inheritance, that will make us far wealthier than the richest man who ever lived on Earth; an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance; a lasting inheritance that wont fade away or be used up which we can enjoy forever; a glorious inheritance that is reserved for us to enjoy in perfect health; an inheritance that we will enjoy in the presence of God the Father and Messiah the Son, with the saints and angels. Normally, human beings receive their inheritance when a death takes place. Our inheritance is made possible and comes to us because of the sacrificial and all-sufficient for atonement death of the sinless and perfect Messiah. Are you sure that you are one of Gods heirs, and will share in this amazing inheritance, because you will share it with Messiah, the Heir Of All Things?
Firstborn From The Dead (Revelation 1:5): A few human beings, like Lazarus, have been temporarily raised from the dead, only to die again, but the Man, Messiah Yeshua was the first human being to be raised from the dead and given an immortal body. The Righteous One conquered sin and death. Death could not hold Him! As the Firstborn From The Dead, He is preeminent over the rest of the dead who will be raised. Because He was raised from the dead, those of us who believe in Him and join ourselves to Him by placing our faith in Him, will also be raised from the dead, and receive body that is no longer capable of dying. Do you know that Yeshua is the Firstborn from the dead? Do you believe that He has overcome death, is alive now? Do you have the happiness that comes from knowing that you will be raised from the dead? If you know that Messiah is the Firstborn From The Dead, and that you too will be raised from the dead to be alive forever, are you living your life for life in this world, or for eternal life in the World To Come?
Not only is He preeminent among those who will be raised from the dead, He is in the position of authority over all of the dead. He is the Judge Of The Living And The Dead (Acts 10:42). A time is coming when the Carpenter-Turned-Miracle-Working-Rabbi will raise the dead. At the Time of the End, those who are still alive, and every human being who has ever died - Jew and Gentile, man and woman, good and bad, will hear His voice. The dead will come back to life, and receive a new body. Those who truly loved the God of Israel and were loyal to Him and proved it by consistently doing the right things will receive a glorified body and live forever. But those who ignored the Lord, and didnt serve Him, honor Him or love Him, will appear before the Son of God, the Judge Of The Living And The Dead, at the Great White Throne judgment, where He will call them to account for what they believed and how they acted, and send them to Gehenna - the Lake of Fire.
The Faithful Witness (Revelation 1:5): A witness is one who is called upon to declare what he has seen or heard or knows. For various reasons, not all witnesses are faithful witnesses. Some may not come forward and give the necessary information; if they do come forward, some may withhold information; some may distort the facts or lie. Messiah Yeshua is the faithful witness. He always, in every circumstance, told human beings what is true. He always gave us accurate and reliable information. His information can be completely trusted. When He spoke about the utter lostness of mankind, and His mission to rescue humans beings who believe in Him, and the realities of Heaven and Hell, and His eternal relationship to His Father, and His death to atone for sin, and Himself being the only way to everlasting life, and the peace that comes to those who follow Him, and the certainty of resurrection from the dead for those who follow Him, and the sure hope of eternal life for those who follow Him, we can rely on the truthfulness and the accuracy of what He said.
There can be unpleasant consequences for being a faithful witness. There are situations when people do not want the information of the witness to be revealed. Pressure and threats are applied to intimidate the witness from testifying fully and honestly. In these circumstances, it takes courage to be a faithful witness. It takes love for the truth, and for doing what is right, and for justice. It takes a willingness to be inconvenienced or to suffer. Messiah Yeshua is the Faithful Witness. He never stopped declaring the truth, even when facing powerful opposition. He never gave in to intimidation. He never toned down the message. Each child of God is called upon to be faithful witnesses. What God tells us in a whisper, we are to shout. We are to declare to the world the things we know about the God of Israel, the reliability of the Holy Scriptures, the way of righteousness, the path of salvation through Messiah, the realities of Heaven and Hell and eternal life. May we be faithful witnesses, willing to be inconvenienced, suffer, even die, in order to be like the Faithful Witness!
The Apostle (Hebrews 3:1): Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Yeshua, the Apostle and High Priest whom we confess. An apostle is someone who is sent on a mission to accomplish one or more tasks. Yeshua is the Apostle. That means that the He was sent by the Father on a great mission. He was entrusted to accomplish various tasks - the salvation of ruined humans, which He did by dying; clarification of the Scriptures, which He did by His great teachings; enlarging our understanding of God, which He did by teaching and by His life and death; overcoming sin and death, which He accomplished by dying on the cross and coming back to life; the salvation of Israel; extending the offer of salvation to the Gentiles; ultimately restoring a broken universe and ruling over it. We must faithfully respond to the mission of the Apostle. We must recognize that Yeshua is the Messiah, indeed sent by the Father. To ignore the sentness of the Son is to insult the One who sent Him - the Father. To deny the mission of the Son is to reject the gracious plans of the Father. We must fix our thoughts, focus them, continually attach them to this great Apostle. And, not only His Person, but we must also fix ourselves to His mission. His mission becomes our mission. As the Father sends Him, the Son now sends us to help fulfill His mission. His purposes, His goals, His agenda, must become ours. We are not to fix our thoughts on money, power, fame, success in this world, as the world values success; we are to keep Yeshua constantly in our thoughts, and His mission, and what we are to do to fulfill it.
Servant (Acts 4:27): Shortly after Messiah died and rose again, the apostles gathered together and prayed this prayer to God the Father: For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Yeshua, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur. A servant has limited freedom. He is not independent. He cant do what he wants when he wants. He must do the desires, wishes, wants, will of the one in whose service he is. In His Sonship, Messiah is equal to the Father in nature. In His humanity, He was servant to God the Father. Yeshua was and is always Gods Son, but while He was on Earth He was also Gods holy, anointed, willing, suffering servant. Some are forced to be servants, but Messiah willingly volunteered to be a servant. He continually submitted Himself to serve God. He continually submitted His will to the will of the Father. He always obeyed His Fathers commands, submitted to His will, took instructions from, even if it mean deprivation and suffering, even a painful death. Even though He is the Lord of Glory, and the King of kings, Yeshua did not came to Earth to be served, but to serve God, and to serve us! Think of that! And, He tells us that we must be like Him. We are to seek power to rule over others, and to be served by others, but to serve one another. If the Greatest One humbled Himself and washed the feet of the disciples, so can we!
Light, Stars, Planets
The Light (John 1:5). Because of the Fall of Man, darkness covers the Earth, and a deep darkness overshadows humanity. Darkness is a symbol for spiritual confusion and chaos, alienation from God, sin and death. We do not want to remain in the dark! Light is a symbol of revelation, truth and knowledge, wisdom and understanding, victory and salvation and life and happiness! Messiah is the Light. Yeshua is Pure Wisdom, the Highest Truth, the Source of Victory, Eternal Salvation, and Unending Happiness!
He is the True Light (John 1:9) in contrast to the weaker lights - like the prophets of Israel. The truth that emanates from Yeshua is superior to the prophets of Israel like the light of the sun surpasses the light of the moon in radiant power. The sun shines because of its own radiant energy, while the moon merely reflects the light from the sun. The King of the Jews is the True Light as contrasted to the many false lights that come from the other world religions. The light that they offer is a mixture of truth and error, which in reality makes them part of the darkness.
Messiah is the True Light that gives light to every man. Whatever truth any human being has ultimately comes from Him. But knowing partial truth about God is not enough. Every human being needs to know the pure truth about the Savior that God has sent us, and learn about Yeshua in order to get truth, victory, success and happiness. Whoever knows Him, and believes in Him, and follows Him will never walk in darkness, but will have enough truth that will result in a whole new quality of life now, and everlasting life in the World To Come!
The Jewish Messiah is not just the light of Israel, but is also the Light Of The World (John 8:12). Messiah is the source of wisdom, truth, revelation, understanding, knowledge, victory and salvation, not only for the Jewish people, but for all the peoples of the world! At first, the holy people of Israel were chosen to be a light to the nations. Sadly, all too often, not only did we not shine truth to the world, but we fell into darkness. At the time of the coming of the Light Of The World, we were living in darkness and the shadow of death. We were the first to be blessed the rising of this great light, but that light was intended to spread all the nations of the world. So, if anyone from any nation - Israel or Arabia or India, wants wisdom, truth, victory, salvation, everlasting life, genuine happiness, they must come to Yeshua, believe in Him, trust Him, be confident about who He is and join themself by their faith to the Son of God. Have you?
Have you ever been through a long and difficult night? You worked the graveyard shift, or pulled guard duty, and you were tired? Or, you had to stay up all night with a sick child, or had nightmares? When you have a night that is difficult and frightening, you long for sunrise, because you know things will be better in the light of day. You look forward the light that comes from the rising of the sun, and the dawn of a new day - with the hope of better things? Thats what the coming of the Messiah was like! After centuries spent in chaotic darkness, the Kings arrival was like a glorious, magnificent Sunrise From On High (Luke 1:78). Zechariah said the Messiah is like the rising sun who came to us from Heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to bring us peace.
Are you experiencing that peace? That sense of well-being between you and your Creator? Even though you sin from time to time, you love the Lord, because of His grace and Messiahs atonement, and you know that the Father loves and accepts you? Are you experiencing peace in your soul? Is He shining hope and happiness into you? Do you know Him? Are you committed to following Him for better or for worse?
Messiah is like the sun, which is powerful and beneficial. Without the light of the sun our planet would be a frozen speck in the coldness of space. Without the sun sight would not be possible. Is Messiah giving you life and enabling you to see your way safely to the goal? An eclipse of the sun took place during Messiahs death on the cross. Why? Maybe because the powers of darkness were doing their worst; maybe because the pure and holy Son of God was taking upon Himself the sin of the world; and maybe because the light of the sun was diminished because during that time of suffering, the greatness of the Son of God made its light seem weak by comparison to the eternal magnificence shining for the Sacrificed One! In order to experience eternal life in the New Jerusalem, where the glory of God the Father illumines that great city, and the source of its light is the Messiah who died for us, a person must welcome the Sunrise From On High in this life. Have you?
Messiah is like the sun that shines during the day. He is also the Bright Morning Star (Revelation 2:28 and 22:16, also 2 Peter 1:19) which shines at night. The Morning Star is not actually a star, but a planet - Venus. Except for the sun and the moon, the second planet from the sun shines brighter than any other object in the sky. For three hours after sunset and three hours before sunrise, Venus stands out in the darkness of the night sky. Before the dawning of a new day, Venus is one of the last things visible in the night sky. The Son of God is like the brightness emanating from the second planet. Messiah is like that light that is shining in the dark. Before the dawning of a new day of light and hope and happiness, while it is still dark, Messiah is already visible, and shining brightly, letting us know that even in the night, there is light and truth and salvation; letting us know that even more light - day - is about to arrive, because He is about to return. Messiah is visible and accessible for those with the ability to see spiritual truth, night or day!
A star was associated with His arrival. Around the time of His birth, a special star appeared and wise men from the east had the wisdom to understand that the Prince of Heaven had come to Earth. They kept their eyes on that special star, and it lead them to Bethlehem, the House of Bread, and the city of David, and stopped over the place where the child Yeshua was, directing those wise men to the one who is the Light of the World. Wise men still seek Him. Do you?
Ruler Of Gods Creation (Revelation 3:14):
The Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14):
The Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5):
The Author And Perfecter Of Faith (Hebrews 12:2):
The Chosen One (Luke 9:35):
The Way, The Truth, And The Life (John 14:6):
The Door (John 10:7):
Advocate, Counsel For The Defense (1 John 2:1):
Lion Of Judah (Revelation 5:5):
The Bridegroom (John 3:29):
The Bread Of God (John 6:33):
The Bread Out Of Heaven (John 6:32):
The Bread Of Life (John 6:35):
The True Vine (John 15:1):
The Expected One (Luke 7:19):
God's Mystery (Colossians 2:2):
King Of Kings And Lord Of Lords (Revelation 19:16):
The Way, The Truth, And The Life (John 14:6):
The Image Of The Invisible God (Colossians 1:15):
Holy One (Acts 3:14):
Righteous One (Acts 3:14):
The Faithful And True One (Revelation 19:11):
The Amen (Revelation 3:14):
The Alpha And The Omega (Revelation 22:13):
The First And The Last (Revelation 22:13):
The Beginning And The End (Revelation 22:13):
The Power Of God (1 Corinthians 1:24):
The Wisdom Of God (1 Corinthians 1:24):
NEW TESTAMENT NAMES, TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS FOR GOD THE FATHER
Father (Matthew 6:9):
Abba: [Daddy] (Romans 8:15):
God The Father (2 Timothy 1:2):
Father Of Our Lord Yeshua The Messiah (Colossians 1:3):
The Father Of Lights (James 1:17):
The Father Of Glory (Ephesians 1:17):
The Father Of Spirits (Hebrews 12:9):
Father of Mercies (2 Corinthians 1:3):
God (Elohim) (2 Corinthians 9:7):
The God Of Our Fathers [Elohay Avotaynu] (Acts 7:32):
The God Of Abraham, Isaac And Jacob [Elohay Avraham, Yitzchak v'Yaakov] (Acts 7:32):
God Of All Comfort [Elohay Kol HaNechamah] (2 Corinthians 1:3):
God Of Peace [Elohay Shalom] (Hebrews 13:20):
The God Of Glory [Elohay Kavod] (Acts 7:2):
The Living God [Elohay Chaiyim] (2 Corinthians 3:3, 6:16):
The God Of Israel [Elohay Yisrael] (Matthew 15:31):
Lord God [YHVH Elohim] (Acts 3:22):
Lord God of Israel [YHVH Elohay Yisrael] (Luke 1:68):
Lord Almighty [YHVH Shaddai] (2 Corinthians 6:18):
The Almighty [Shaddai] (Revelation 1:8):
Power [Ha Gevurah] (Mark 14:62):
The Creator [HaBoray] (Romans 1:25, 1 Peter 4:19):
The Most High God [El Elyon] (Hebrews 7:1):
The Divine Nature (Romans 1:20, 2 Peter 1:4):
Lord Of Armies: [YHVH Tz'vaot] (James 5:4):
The Majestic Glory (2 Peter 1:17):
The Majesty (Hebrews 1:3):
The King Of The Nations (Revelation 15:3):
The Lawgiver And Judge (James 4:12):
The Eternal Immortal Invisible King (1 Timothy 1:17):
Sovereign (1 Timothy 6:15):
Heaven (Matthew 21:25):
A Consuming Fire (Hebrews 12:29):
NEW TESTAMENT NAMES, TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS
FOR THE SPIRIT OF GOD
The Spirit (Romans 2:29):
The Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16):
The Holy Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:30):
The Holy Spirit Of Promise (Ephesians 1:13):
The Spirit of the Living God (2 Corinthians 3:3):
The Spirit Of The Lord (Luke 4:18):
The Eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14):
The Spirit Of Truth (John 15:26):
The Spirit Of Yeshua (Acts 16:7):
The Spirit Of Yeshua The Messiah (Philippians 1:19):
The Spirit Of Messiah (Romans 8:9):
The Spirit Of God (Romans 8:9):
Helper or Comforter (John 14:26):
The Holy Spirit is compared to:
Clothing (Luke 24:49): Because He clothes us with power from on high.
A Dove (Matthew 3:16): Because the dove is a symbol of purity, peace, and flies in the heavens and was used as a sacrifice for the poor.
A Pledge, Earnest Money (2 Corinthians 1:22): Because He is the pledge and the downpayment of our inheritance.
A Seal (Ephesians 1:13): Because a seal protects, makes secure, and demonstrates ownership.
Fire (Acts 2:3): Because fire separates the impure from the pure, it cleanses and purifies.
Oil (Acts 10:38): Because oil was used for anointing, for healing, for nourishment and burned to give light.
Water (John 7:38): Because water is simple yet mysterious. It is tasteless, formless, colorless, transparent, and buoyant. It can hold up a huge ship. It is used for transportation. The Holy Spirit holds us up and transports us through this world to the World To Come. Water cleanses and refreshes. With water there is life, growth, and fruitfulness. Without water there are deserts.
Wind (John 3:8): Because we can't see the wind but we can see its results. Just as the winds blows wherever it wants, so God's Spirit is sovereign. He gives gifts as He wills. Wind can be powerful like a tornado or hurricane, or be a cool refreshing breeze.
Breath: (John 20:22). Without breath we die. God's Breath gives us life. We have life and intimacy with God due to His indwelling Spirit.
Wine: Because we are not to be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18).
Written by
Rabbi Loren Jacobs
Congregation Shema Yisrael
P.O. Box 804
Southfield MI 48037
248-593-5150
www.shema.com
Shema777@aol.com
The God of Infinite Majesty by John Paul II
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The God of Infinite MajestyGeneral Audience — August 7, 1985
"We believe that this unique God is absolutely one in his infinitely holy essence as in all of his perfections, in his omnipotence, in his infinite love, in his providence, in his will and in his love. He is he who is, as he himself revealed to Moses. He is Love, as the apostle John teaches us. These two names, Being and Love, ineffably express the divine reality of him who wished to make himself known to us, and who inhabiting inaccessible light is in himself above every name, above all things and above every created intelligence" [1] .
Pope Paul VI spoke these words on the 1900th anniversary of the martyrdom of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, June 30, 1968, during the profession of faith called the Credo of the People of God. They express in a more extended way than the ancient creeds, but still concisely and synthetically, that truth about God which the Church professes from the beginning of the creed: "I believe in God." He is the God who has revealed himself, the God of our faith. His name, "I am who I am," revealed to Moses from within the burning bush at the foot of Mount Horeb, re-echoes still in the creed of today. Paul VI united this name—the name "Being"—with the name "Love" (according to the expression of the First Letter of St. John). These two names express the truth about God in the most essential way. We must still have recourse to them when, asking ourselves about the essence of God, we seek to answer the question: who is God?
Paul VI made reference to the name of God, "I am who I am," which is found in the Book of Exodus. Following the doctrinal and theological tradition of many centuries, he saw in it the revelation of God as "Being"—subsisting Being, which expresses, in the language of the philosophy of being (ontology or metaphysics) used by St. Thomas Aquinas, the essence of God. One must add that the strictly linguistic interpretation of the words "I am who I am" reveals other possible meanings to which we shall refer later. Paul VI's words make sufficiently evident that the Church, in replying to the question "Who is God?" continues to take as a starting point "being" (esse), in line with the centuries-old theological and patristic tradition. Nor can it be seen in what other way one could formulate a tenable and understandable reply.
The word with which God reveals himself by expressing himself in "the terminology of being," indicates a special coming together between the language of revelation and the language of that human knowledge of reality which from antiquity was called "first philosophy." The language of this philosophy enables one to approach, in some way, the name of God as "Being." However—as one of the most distinguished representatives of the Thomistic school of our time observes, echoing St. Thomas Aquinas himself (cf. Contra Gentes, 1, cc. 14, 30)—even making use of this language we can at most "mouth" this revealed name which expresses the essence of God (cf. E. Gilson, Le Thomisme, Paris 1944, ed. Vrin, pp. 33, 35, 41, 155-156). Human language does not suffice to express adequately and exhaustively the "Who is" of God! Our concepts and our words in regard to God serve only to say what he is not, rather than what he is [2] .
"I am who I am." The God who replied to Moses with these words is also "the Creator of heaven and of earth." Anticipating here for a moment what we shall say in successive catecheses in regard to the revealed truth about creation, it is opportune to note that according to the common interpretation, the word "create" means "to call into being from non-being," that is, from "nothingness." To be created means not to possess in oneself the source, the reason of one's being, but to receive it "from another." This is synthetically expressed in the Latin phrase ens ab alio. He who creates—the Creator—possesses existence in himself and from himself (ens a se).
To be pertains to his substance: his essence is to be. He is subsisting being (esse subsistens). Precisely for this reason he cannot not be, he is "necessary" being. Differing from God who is "necessary being," the things which receive existence from him, that is, creatures, are able not to be. Being does not constitute their essence; they are "contingent" beings.
These considerations regarding the revealed truth about the creation of the world help us to understand God as "Being." They help also to link this Being with the reply received by Moses to the question about the name of God: "I am who I am." In the light of these reflections the solemn words heard by St. Catherine of Siena acquire full clarity: "You are who are not, I am who am" [3] . This is the essence of God, the name of God, read in depth in the faith inspired by his self-revelation, confirmed in the light of the radical truth contained in the concept of creation.
When we refer to God it would be fitting to write that "I Am" and that "He Is" in capitals, reserving the lower case for creatures. This would also signify a correct way of reflecting on God according to the categories of "being."
Inasmuch as he is "ipsum Esse Subsistens"—that is the absolute fullness of Being and therefore of every perfection—God is completely transcendent in regard to the world. By his essence, by his divinity, he "goes beyond" and infinitely "surpasses" everything created—both every single creature, however perfect, and the ensemble of creation, the visible and invisible beings.
It is clear then that the God of our faith, he who is, is the God of infinite majesty. This majesty is the glory of the divine Being, the glory of the name of God, many times celebrated in Sacred Scripture.
"O Lord, our God,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (Ps 8:2)
"For you are great and do wondrous things,
you alone are God" (Ps 86:10).
"There is none like you, O Lord..." (Jer 10:6).
Before the God of immense glory we cannot but bend the knee in an attitude of humble and joyous adoration, repeating with the liturgy in the song of the Te Deum: "Pleni sunt caeli et terra maiestatis gloriae tuae.... Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur Ecclesia: Patrem immensae maiestati." "The heavens and the earth are filled with your majesty and glory...and to the ends of the earth your holy Church proclaims her faith in you—Father, whose majesty is boundless."
[1] Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, VI; 1968; 302
[2] cf. Summa Theologica 1, q. 12, a. 12
[3] S. Catherine, Legenda major, 1, 10
Allow me to live my sonship in you.
Allow me, in you, to be the Father's beloved Son,
the Son in whom He takes delight.You allow Me to live my sonship in you
when you believe in me
and when you open yourself humbly and confidently
to the Gift of the Holy Spirit.You allow me to live my sonship in you
when you love me
and when your single great desire is to be united to me,
and to participate in all the sentiments and dispositions
of my Filial Heart.
These are communicated to you by the Holy Spirit,
for it is the work of the Holy Spirit
to perfect the filial spirit in souls
by uniting them to me.Too often my Father is forgotten.
He is acknowledged as God,
but His Fatherhood remains unknown,
and it was to reveal His Fatherhood
that I came into the world.I prayed to Him, saying "Father"
so that souls in every age until the end of time
might learn from me
how to address the living God
with the confidence and tender affection of sons.Learn to trust in my Father,
for to trust in Him is to believe in His love for you.
To trust in Him is to walk in imitation of me.
To trust in Him is to obey the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
who schools souls,
not in a servile fear,
nor in a heartless execution of rites,
but in a filial abandonment to the Father's love.Nothing delights the Heart of the Father more
than the abandonment to Him
of a soul who believes in His love
and trusts Him with all things great and small.My Father is unknown even now,
after two thousand years,
and because He is unknown,
souls continue to live in fear, in bondage, and in darkness.Yes, a soul that has not learned to call God "Father"
is still in darkness and in the shadow of death.
Such a soul suffers the cold chill of alienation
from my Father's Heart.Much of the suffering and scandal
that wounds and disfigures my priests
could have been avoided
had they been taught in their formative years
how immense a grace it is
to live as sons cherished by my Father at every moment.My desire is that every priest of mine
should pass entirely into the grace of Divine Filiation;
should pray to the Father as I prayed to Him
during my earthly life;
and should rest secure and joyful in my Father's tender love,
never despairing of His mercy.The grace to address my Father as "Father"
is conferred in Baptism,
but it is wonderfully perfected in ordination to my priesthood.
In a very real sense,
a man is ordained a priest
to stand at the altar
and pronounce that most sacred name: "Father".So long as there are priests to stand at my altars
and to say "Father",
there will be a remedy for the bitterness
that so poisons the world We created.
The name of "Father" pronounced by my priests at the altar
introduces a divine sweetness
into the harshness and bitterness
that so mark your life
in this vale of tears.When, standing at the altar,
a priest says "Father",
it is the beginning of a new creation,
it is the restoration to sonhood
of souls held in the bondage of slavery and fear.
It is the opening of the Kingdom upon earth.
It causes immense joy among the angels in heaven.Be conscious of this when,
vested in the sacred adornments of my priesthood,
you stand at the altar
and say that one word that makes all else possible:
"Father"."Father" on the lips of a priest
is "Father" on my lips.
The Father hears and receives the filial utterances of His priests
calling Him by the Name
that glorifies Him above all other names,
-- because it is the Name by which I address Him --
with an ineffable joy,
with a divine delight
that causes jubilation among the Angels
and exultation among all my saints.From In Sinu Iesu, The Journal of A Priest
BENEDICT XVI
ANGELUS
Courtyard of the Papal Summer Residence, Castel GandolfoSunday, 17 July 2011
(Video)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Gospel parables are brief accounts that Jesus uses to proclaim the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. Using imagery from situations of daily life, the Lord “wants to show us the real ground of all things.... He shows us... the God who acts, who intervenes in our lives, and wants to take us by the hand” (Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, English edition, Doubleday, 2007, p. 192).
With this kind of discourse the divine Teacher invites us to recognize first of all the primacy of God the Father: Wherever he is absent, nothing can be good. He is a crucial priority for all things. Kingdom of Heaven means, in fact, lordship of God and this means that his will must be adopted as the guiding criterion of our existence.
The subject of this Sunday's Gospel is, precisely, the Kingdom of Heaven. “Heaven” should not be understood only in the sense that it towers above us, because this infinite space also takes the form of human interiority. Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a field of wheat to enable us to understand that something small and hidden has been sown within us which, nevertheless, has an irrepressible vital force. In spite of all obstacles, the seed will develop and the fruit will ripen. This fruit will only be good if the terrain of life is cultivated in accordance with the divine will.
For this reason in the Parable of the Weeds [tares] among the good Wheat (Mt 13:24-30). Jesus warns us that, after the owner had scattered the seed, “while men were sleeping, his enemy” intervened and sowed weeds among the wheat. This means that we must be ready to preserve the grace received from the day of our Baptism, continuing to nourish faith in the Lord that prevents evil from taking root. St Augustine commenting on the parable noted “many are at first tares but then become good grain”, and he added: “if these, when they are wicked, are not endured with patience they would not attain their praiseworthy transformation” (Quaest. septend. in Ev. sec. Matth., 12, 4: PL 35, 1371).
Dear friends, the Book of Wisdom — from which today's First Reading is taken — emphasizes this dimension of the divine Being and states: “Neither is there any god besides you, whose care is for all men.... For your strength is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all” (Wis 12:13, 16). And Psalm 86 [85] confirms it: “You, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you” (v. 5).
Hence if we are children of such a great and good Father, let us seek to be like him! This was the aim Jesus set himself with his preaching; indeed, he said to those who were listening to him: “You... must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). Let us turn with trust to Mary, whom we invoked yesterday with the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel so that she may help us to follow Jesus faithfully, and so live as true children of God.
After the Angelus :
I offer a warm welcome to the English-speaking visitors gathered for this Angelus prayer, including the pilgrims from Meath, Ireland, and from Nazareth, the home of Jesus. Today’s Gospel encourages us to let the good seed of God’s word bear fruit in our lives and to trust in his mysterious plan for the growth of the Kingdom. Let us work for an abundant harvest of holiness in the Church and ask to be found among Christ’s righteous ones on the Day of Judgement. Upon all of you I invoke the Lord’s abundant blessings of joy and peace!
I wish you all a good Sunday, thank you. May the Lord bless you.
Appeal of the Holy Father
for the peoples of the Horn of AfricaDear Friends, to start with: an appeal.
I am following with deep concern the news from the region of the Horn of Africa and, in particular, Somalia, stricken by a very severe drought followed in certain areas by torrential rain which are causing a humanitarian catastrophe. Countless people are fleeing from that terrible famine in search of food and help. I hope that international mobilization will be stepped up so as to send aid without delay to these brothers and sisters of ours already harshly tried, including a great many children. May these suffering peoples not lack our solidarity and the material support of all people of good will.
© Copyright 2011 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
FATHER of our Lord Jesus Christ
and my FATHER,
FATHER from whom all fatherhood takes its name
in heaven and on earth,
I adore Thee.FATHER of infinite majesty,
I come to Thee
through the pierced Heart of Thine Only-Begotten Son.Look upon His adorable Face,
and for the sake of the love that Thou seest upon It,
cast me not away from Thy presence
and forgive me all my sins.When Thou lookest upon the Face of Thy Son,
see there my face;
and when Thou lookest upon me,
deign to see His.I dare to pray thus
because Thou, Father, hast given me to Thy Son,
and because Thy Son hath given me to Thee.Most merciful FATHER,
remove from my heart
every lack of confidence in Thy love for me,
every doubt,
every fear of being forsaken,
or cruelly punished,
or turned away.Fill me instead with a spirit of trust in Thee,
with confidence in Thy paternal love,
and with a humble security
that nothing will be able to shake or trouble.FATHER, I willingly abandon every plan of my own devising,
and offer myself to Thee
for the fulfillment of Thy perfect plan,
the plan conceived in love,
that is Thine.I lay aside my will,
twisted by sin
and so often in conflict with Thy Will,
to enter with all my heart
into the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemani:
FATHER, not my will, but Thine be done.By the inpouring of the Holy Ghost,
banish from my soul
all fear and insecurity,
all doubt and cowardice.
Fill me, instead, with a filial piety:
one that is confident, and tender, and unwavering.To Thy mercy
I surrender my past
with its burden of sin.
To Thy glory
I offer the present moment
in thanksgiving and in praise.
To Thy sweet providence,
I entrust the future
and all it holds.Thou art my FATHER
and Thou hast made me Thine own adopted son.
Grant that I may live, henceforth,
in the grace of this divine adoption,
by casting myself upon Thy paternal Heart,
and by experiencing
through Jesus,
with Jesus,
and in Jesus
what it is to have a FATHER Who is God,
and a GOD Who is Father.
Amen.
Hymn to God the Father by John Donne
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
Discover this poem’s context and related poetry, articles, and media.
Poet John Donne 1572–1631
POET’S REGION England
SCHOOL / PERIOD Renaissance
Subjects Religion, Living, Disappointment & Failure, Faith & Doubt, Christianity, Death, God & the Divine
Poetic Terms Refrain
John Donne's standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest writers of English prose, is now assured. However, it has been confirmed only in the present century. The history of Donne's reputation is the most remarkable of any major writer in English; no other body of great poetry has fallen so far from favor for so long and been generally condemned as inept and crude. In Donne's own day his poetry was highly prized . . .
Poems by John Donne
- More poems by John Donne (49 poems)
- A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- A Valediction: of Weeping
- Air and Angels
- An Anatomy of the World
- Break of Day
- Elegy IX: The Autumnal
- Elegy V: His Picture
- Elegy VII: Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love
- Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
- Holy Sonnets: At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
- Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God
- Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
- Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly
- Holy Sonnets: If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
- Holy Sonnets: Show me dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear
- Holy Sonnets: Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
- Holy Sonnets: This is my play's last scene
- Holy Sonnets: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
- Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness
- Love's Alchemy
- Love's Deity
- Love's Growth
- Lovers' Infiniteness
- Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary
- Satire III
- Song: Go and catch a falling star
- Song: Sweetest love, I do not go
- The Anniversary
- The Apparition
- The Bait
- The Calm
- The Canonization
- The Dream
- The Ecstasy
- The Expiration
- The Flea
- The Funeral
- The Good-Morrow
- The Indifferent
- The Relic
- The Sun Rising
- The Triple Fool
- To His Mistress Going to Bed
- Woman's Constancy
God our Father: Consecration and Feast Day for the Father of All Mankind (St Andrews Productions). This is VERY good, please read and take to heart.
General Audience on God the Father by John Paul II
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God the Almighty FatherGeneral Audience — September 18, 1985
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth...."
God who has revealed himself, the God of our faith, is an infinitely perfect spirit. We spoke of this in the previous catechesis. As an infinitely perfect spirit he is the absolute fullness of Truth and Goodness, and he desires to give himself. Goodness extends itself: bonum est diffusivum sui (Summa Theol., I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 2).
The creeds express in a certain sense this truth about God viewed as the infinite fullness of goodness. They do this by affirming that God is the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. It is fitting to examine here in the light of revelation that which in God corresponds to the mystery of creation, even though we shall deal with the truth about creation somewhat later.
The Church professes that God is omnipotent ("I believe in God, the Father Almighty") inasmuch as he is an infinitely perfect spirit. God is also omniscient, that is, his knowledge penetrates everything.
This omnipotent and omniscient God has the power to create, to call into being from non-being, from nothingness. We read in the Book of Genesis 18:14: "Is anything impossible for the Lord?"
The Book of Wisdom (11:21) states: "For it is always in your power to show great strength, and who can withstand the might of your arm?" The Book of Esther professes the same faith in the words: "Lord, King who rules over the universe, all things are in your power and there is no one who can oppose you" (Esther 4:17b). The Archangel Gabriel will say to Mary of Nazareth at the Annunciation: "With God nothing is impossible" (Lk 1:37).
God, who reveals himself by the mouth of the prophets, is omnipotent. These truths run deeply through the whole of revelation, beginning with the first words of the Book of Genesis: "God said: 'Let there be...'" (Gen 1:3). The creative act is manifested as the all-powerful word of God: "For he spoke, and it came to be..." (Ps 33:9). By creating everything from nothing, being from non-being, God reveals himself as the infinite fullness of goodness which extends itself. He who is, Subsisting Being, infinitely perfect Being, in a certain sense gives himself in that "is," by calling into existence outside of himself the visible and invisible cosmos—the created beings. By creating things he begins the history of the universe. By creating man as male and female he begins the history of humanity. As Creator he is the Lord of history. "There are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one" (1 Cor 12:6).
The God who reveals himself as Creator, and so as Lord of the history of the world and of humanity, is the omnipotent God, the living God.... According to the First Vatican Council: "The Church believes and acknowledges that there exists one only living and true God, creator and Lord of heaven and earth, omnipotent" (DS 3001). This God, a spirit infinitely perfect and omniscient, is absolutely free and sovereign even in regard to the very act of creation. He is first of all Lord of his own will in the work of creation if he is the Lord of all that he creates. He creates because he wills to create. He creates because this is in accordance with his infinite wisdom. In creating he acts with the inscrutable fullness of his liberty, under the impulse of eternal love.
The text of the First Vatican Council's Constitution Dei Filius, already quoted on several occasions, emphasizes God's absolute liberty in creation and in his every action. God is "most happy in himself and of himself." He possesses the complete fullness of goodness and happiness in himself and of himself. He does not call the world into existence in order to complete or integrate the goodness which he is. He creates solely and exclusively for the purpose of bestowing the goodness of a manifold existence on the world of invisible and visible creatures. It is a multiple and varied participation of the unique, infinite, eternal good, which is identical with the very Being of God.
God is absolutely free and sovereign in the work of creation. He remains fundamentally independent of the created universe. This does not in any way imply that he is indifferent in regard to creatures. Rather, he guides them as Eternal Wisdom, Love and Omnipotent Providence.
Sacred Scripture sets out the fact that in this work God is alone. The prophet Isaiah declares "I am the Lord, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth—who was with me?" (Is 44:24). God's sovereign liberty and his paternal omnipotence stand out in his "solitude" in the work of creation.
"The God who formed and created the earth and established it, did not create it as a chaos, but formed it to be inhabited" (Is 45:18).
The Church professes from the very beginning her faith in the "Almighty Father," creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. She does so in the light of the self-revelation of God who "spoke by the prophets and in these last days...by his Son" (Heb 1:1-2). This omnipotent God is also omniscient and omnipresent. Or better, one could say that, as an infinitely perfect spirit, God is simultaneously Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence.
God is first of all present to himself—in his One and Triune Divinity. He is also present in the universe which he has created. His presence is a consequence of the work of creation by means of his creative power (per potentiam), which makes present his transcendental Essence itself (per essentiam). This presence surpasses the world, penetrates it and keeps it in existence. The same can be repeated of God's presence through his knowledge, as the infinite glance which sees, penetrates and scrutinizes everything (per visionem or per scientiam). Finally, God is present in a special way in human history, which is also the history of salvation. This is (if one may say so) the most "personal" presence of God—his presence through grace, which humanity received in its fullness in Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 1:16-17). We shall speak of this last mystery of the faith in a proximate catechesis.
"O Lord, you search me and you know me..." (Ps 139:1).
Let us profess together with the entire People of God present in every part of the world, while we repeat the inspired words of this Psalm, our faith in the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of God who is our Creator, Father and Providence! "In him...we live, and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
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God Is the Father of All HumanityGeneral Audience — October 16, 1985
"You are my son, today I have begotten you" (Ps 2:7).
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews went back to the Old Testament for the purpose of making intelligible the full truth of the fatherhood of God which has been revealed in Jesus Christ (cf. Heb 1:4-14). He quoted, among others, the passage just read from the second Psalm, and also a similar phrase from the Book of Samuel: "I will be his father, and he shall be my son" (2 Sam 7:14).
They are prophetic words. God is speaking to David about his descendant. While in the Old Testament context these words seem to refer only to adoptive sonship, by analogy with human fatherhood and sonship, the New Testament reveals their authentic and definitive significance. They speak of the Son who is of the same substance of the Father, of the Son who is truly generated from the Father. They speak also of the real fatherhood of God, of a fatherhood to which belongs the generation of the Son consubstantial with the Father. They speak of God who is Father in the highest and most authentic meaning of the word. They speak of God who eternally generates the eternal Word, the Word consubstantial with the Father. God is Father in the ineffable mystery of his divinity, in regard to the Word.
"You are my son, today I have begotten you."
The adverb "today" speaks of eternity. It is the "today" of the intimate life of God. It is the "today" of eternity, the "today" of the Most Holy and ineffable Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is eternal love and eternally consubstantial with the Father and the Son.
The mystery of the divine paternity within the Trinity was not yet explicitly revealed in the Old Testament. However, the whole context of the Old Covenant was rich with allusions to God's fatherhood in a moral and analogical sense. Thus God is revealed as Father of his people, Israel, when he commands Moses to ask for their liberation from Egypt: "The Lord says: Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you 'Let my son go...'" (Ex 4:22-23).
This is a fatherhood of choice, on the basis of the covenant, and is rooted in the mystery of creation. Isaiah wrote: "Yet, Lord, you are our Father; we are clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand" (Is 64:8; 63:16).
This fatherhood does not regard only the chosen people. It reaches every person and surpasses the bond existing with earthly parents. Here are some texts: "For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up" (Ps 27:10). "As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him" (Ps 103:13). "The Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights" (Prov 3:12). The analogical character of the fatherhood of God is evident in the texts just quoted. It is the Lord to whom the prayer is directed: "O Lord, Father and Ruler of my life, do not abandon me to their counsel, and let me not fall because of them.... O Lord, Father and God of my life, do not leave me at the mercy of brazen looks" (Sir 23:1-4). He again says in the same light: "If the righteous man is God's son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries" (Wis 2:18).
God's fatherhood is manifested in merciful love, both in regard to Israel and to individuals. We read, for example, in Jeremiah: "With weeping they had departed, and with consolations I will lead them back...for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born" (Jer 31:9).
Numerous passages in the Old Testament present the merciful love of the God of the covenant. Here are some of them:
"But you are merciful to all, for you can do all things,
and you overlook men's sin, that they may repent....
You spare all things, for they are yours,
O Lord who loves the living" (Wis 11:23-26).
"I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you" (Jer 31:3).
In Isaiah we meet moving testimonies of care and affection:
"But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me.'
Can a woman forget her child...?
Even if she forget, yet I will not forget you"
(Is 49:14-15; cf. also 54:10).
It is significant that in the passages of the prophet Isaiah God's fatherhood is enriched with allusions inspired by motherhood (cf. Dives in Misericordia, note 52).
Jesus frequently announced, in the fullness of the Messianic times, God's fatherhood in regard to humanity by linking it with the numerous expressions contained in the Old Testament. Thus it expresses divine providence in regard to creatures, especially man: "Your heavenly Father feeds them..." (Mt 6:26; cf. Lk 12:24); "Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all" (Mt 6:32; cf. Lk 12:30). Jesus sought to make the divine mercy understood by presenting as proper to God the welcoming reception of the father for the prodigal son (cf. Lk 15:11-32). He exhorted those who heard his word: "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Lk 6:36).
To conclude, we can say that, through Jesus, God is not only "the father of Israel, the Father of mankind," but "our Father." We shall speak more about this in the next catechesis.
God Shows Himself a Father to Israel - January 20, 1999
The Merciful and Forgiving Love of the Father - February 17, 1999
Jesus' Experience of God as Father and His Intimate Relationship with Him - March 3, 1999
Jesus' Relationship with the Father, Which Reveals the Mystery of the Trinity - March 10, 1999
Jesus' Living Knowledge of God the Father - March 17, 1999
God the Father's Providential Love - March 24, 1999
God the Father's Love is Demanding - April 7, 1999
Christian Response to Modern Atheism - April 14, 1999
Dialogue is Part of Church's Saving Mission - April 21, 1999
Dialogue with Muslims: “Together with Us Adore the One, Merciful God" - May 5, 1999
Dialogue with the Great World Religions - May 19, 1999
Humanity's Journey to the Father - May 26, 1999
Passing Through Death to Meet the Father - June 2, 1999
The Merciful Nature of God's Judgment - July 7, 1999
Heaven: A Living, Personal Relationship with the Holy Trinity - July 21, 1999
Hell: Personal and Free Rejection of the Father' s Love - July 28, 1999
Purgatory: Purification in Preparation for Full Beatitude - August 4, 1999
The Christian Life: A Pilgrimage to the House of the Father - August 11, 1999
Conversion and Deliverance from Evil - August 18, 1999
Conversion and the Meaning of Personal and Social Sin - August 25, 1999
Conversion and the Recognition of Historical Sin - September 1, 1999
Conversion, Forgiveness, and the Father's Mercy - September 8, 1999
Reconciliation and the Journey to the Father - September 15, 1999
Reconciliation is the Father's Gift - September 22, 1999
Jesus: the Great "Indulgence" of the Father - September 29, 1999
The Father: Mystery of Infinite Charity - October 6, 1999
Love of God and True Christian Charity - October 13, 1999
Love of God Entails Love of Neighbor - October 20, 1999
Love of God and Preferential Love for the Poor - October 27, 1999
The Time of Jubilee - November 3, 1999
The Fatherhood of God and the Dignity of Women - November 24, 1999
Rediscovering the Family in the Light of Divine Fatherhood - December 1, 1999
God the Father: Source Upon Which We Build a Civilization of Love - December 15, 1999
Article on establishing a feast day dedicated to God the Father, by Padre Raniero Cantalamessa - the Preacher to the Papal Household.
The Divine Heart of God the Father on Pinterest
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A good blog on God the Father from a Catholic standpoint.
The Great Circle of Love
Don't worry, we won't post anything.
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