Religious Thought for the 21st Century

      Through a Republican lens the immediate race to the streets to cry "Not My President", and the calls for the impeachment of Trump are nothing but the response of immature individuals.  Though the call for the impeachment of Donald Trump has been frequent, incessant and immediate, we must not forget that the most active opponents of Obama recurred to the same cries several times during his presidency. We might have forgotten so let me remind you, since sometimes is hard to take a good look at our own selves.  In fact, under Obama a number of Republican congressmen sought to impeach the President. The rationales ranged from the allegation that he was not born in the United States, failure to enforce immigration laws (despite the fact that during this presidency a record-number of people were deported), going on to a possible cover-up after the 2012 Benghazi attack. None of these proposals made it into the Judiciary Committee. The very firs...

From the year 392 A.D., when Christianity acquired the position of the state religion of the Roman Empire, till the year 800 A.D., when Charlemagne was enthroned as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a type of feudalistic system emerged in which western Europe was led by 5 different patriarchates. This time period corresponded providentially to the time of the Judges in Israel. 5 Patriarchates Twelve Tribes of Israel From the time Joshua and Caleb led the Israelites into Canaan until the time Saul became king of Israel, the Jewish people had a feudalistic system in which the different tribes had to unify. For that they had to build a temple as the unifying symbol. The different tribes had a leading figure that functioned as king, chief priest, and prophet. Joshua became the first judge. Other famous ones are Gideon and Samson. Samuel received the calling from God when he was a child. He was the last judge and the one who anointed the first king of Israel. Ongoing conflicts ...

The Prophet Malachi by James Tissot For those who read the previous two posts, they can see that the last period of 400 years is a period that parallels the time from Malachi to Jesus. Both periods are referred to as periods of preparation. What is the preparation for? The first period attempts to demonstrate that the long history of the Jewish people from the time of Joseph until the time of Jesus was a time through which God educated the Jewish nation to prepare themselves to receive the Messiah. The Jewish people would never believe that they were destined to reject God's representative. Their history confirms that claim and repudiates the idea that they were predestined by God's will to reject the Messiah. The period of time from Malachi to Jesus is one in which the Jewish people's desire to receive the promised Savior increased in intensity as they were subjected to foreign powers that disrespected their religious practices and attempted to impose the religi...

  In the above table we have a line of the progress of history according to the biblical texts from the time of Adam to the time Joseph went into Egypt. The numbers below each section represent the numbers of years that passed between the times of each person or specific events. For instance, the first number 1600 represents the time that passed from Adam to Noah, the next number, 400, represents the 400 years from Noah to Abraham. The time slots for Jacob are subdivided into three periods. the first 40 represent the number of years from birth until Jacob went into Haran, the 21 years he spent there follows, and then the final 40 years after he reconciles with Esau until his son Joseph becomes a leader in Egypt. If we look at the next two time periods we find that the number of years follow the same patter though multiplied by 100. This occurs because now we are dealing not with the work of just some individuals and their families but with the entire Israelite people and ...