Then Paul stood before the people of a certain city and said; Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious for as I was passing through and considered the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription on it. TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing Him, I proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, DOES NOT DWELL IN TEMPLES MADE BY HANDS OF MEN. NOR IS HE WORSHIPED WITH THE HANDS OF MEN AS IF HE NEEDED ANYTHING. SINCE HE GIVES TO ALL LIFE, BREATH AND ALL THINGS. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined THEIR PRE APPOINTED TIMES AND THE BOUNDARIES OF THEIR DWELLINGS, SO THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD IN THE HOPE THAT THEY MIGHT GROPE FOR HIM AND FIND HIM, THOUGH HE IS NOT FAR FROM EACH ONE OF US, FOR IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING, AS ALSO SOME OF YOUR OWN POETS HAVE SAID; FOR WE ARE ALSO HIS OFFSPRING. Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and mans devising. TRULY THESE TIMES OF IGNORANCE GOD OVERLOOKED BUT NOW COMMANDS ALL MEN EVERYWHERE TO REPENT BECAUSE HE HAS APPOINTED A DAY ON WHICH HE WILL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS BY THE MAN WHOM HE ORDAINED. HE HAS GIVEN ASSURANCE OF THIS TO ALL BY RAISING HIM FROM THE DEAD. AND WHEN THEY HEARD OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, SOME MOCKED, WHILE OTHERS SAID, WE WILL HEAR YOU AGAIN ON THIS MATTER. Paul departed and some men joined him and others did not. COMMENTARY: It is as true now as it was in the time the scripture was written that men worship which is to say obey a God whom they do not know for they have searched for God in the futility of their thinking uninformed by vision of the unseen things over which God rules referred to as the kingdom of heaven. Throughout time artists, poets and musicians have sought to manifest images of God but this is not how one can receive the truth of God that they might worship Him in the spirit of truth. There is no church, nor temple nor holy place where God dwells except in the hearts and minds of a man who have endured what they must to receive the word leading to the grace of God through faith for faith comes by hearing the word or testimony of a man who has been know the mystery of God through the display of great and amazing signs causing men to wonder or turn their minds to grop for an invisible God who loves man so entirely that He would manifest His evidence and substance to them and through this evidence and substance renew the knowledge in which their mind reasons that they may judge those in the world who hope in God and reconcile the ways of God with the rational affairs of men continuing in the great history of God revealing himself to men since the call of God to Adam culminating with the resurrection of Jesus His servant and son who was raised from the dead and in whom the scripture was fulfilled which prophesied that He would be spitefully used, beaten, denied, judged in the sin of the world who seeing the signs of God in Him for the prophet of God is given to appear as God through the remarkable things he does and the meekness, kindness and love which he showed to those who betrayed, denied, shamed and killed him. And God raised him that those who killed Him would repent of their understanding of the way to the love of God in themselves.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 11:35:15 +0000
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