Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem(3/28/22)[Prayer]

The Holy Scriptures | 3/28/22 | left that other site

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Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

1 John 4

On Denying the Incarnation

4 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit[a] of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

_______________________________________________________

God Bless America.

ML/LTOS

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Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Oh LORD, Our God, How Excellent,
How Wonderful is Your Most Holy Name!
We Lift Up Your Name and Worship You,
For you Alone Are Worthy,
You Alone Are LORD,
You Alone Are The Most HIGH!
LORD of HOSTS,
Ancient of Days,
Lion of Judah,
Rock of Ages,
Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent,
You Know the End from the Beginning and the Beginning From The End.
Righteous and True,
Just and Holy,
There is No Shadow of Turning With You,
Even When We Are Unfaithful, You Remain Faithful,
And Your Laws, Precepts, Judgments,
and Promises are PERFECT.

Let all that has been Concealed
Be Revealed.

Father, We Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem,
According To Your Will and Promise.
We Pray That You Will Forgive The Sins
of Our Own Nation,
and Lead us all to Godly Repentance.
Create in Us Clean Hearts, Oh LORD,
and Renew a Right Spirit Within Us.

This we Pray Together,
As We Await Your Messiah,
Blessed Be He,
To Set Up His Kingdom,
And Make All Things Right.

God Bless America.

ML/LTOS

[DarthVader]

Amen !!! <><

Psalm 116

1 I love the Lord, because he has heard
my voice and my supplications.
2 Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
3 The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
4 Then I called on the name of the Lord:
‘O Lord, I pray, save my life!’

5 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
6 The Lord protects the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
7 Return, O my soul, to your rest,
for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

8 For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
9 I walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
10 I kept my faith, even when I said,
‘I am greatly afflicted’;
11 I said in my consternation,
‘Everyone is a liar.’

12 What shall I return to the Lord
for all his bounty to me?
13 I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
14 I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.
15 Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his faithful ones.
16 O Lord, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the child of your serving-maid.
You have loosed my bonds.
17 I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
and call on the name of the Lord.
18 I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people,
19 in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord!

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Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

1 John 4

On Denying the Incarnation

4 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit[a] of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

Oy! The issues I run into choosing graphics for this thread!

Twelve years ago, when I began posting images I used Google. Everybody used Google, because there was no other choice. Google had a slogan:

"DON'T BE EVIL".

But then it turned out that they were tracking, targeting, and censoring people, so I switched to Bing, which seemed a wee less evil at the time. Hot-Linking was frowned upon so I began collecting images on my own page on a site called "TinyPic". On this wonderful site I was able to crop, enhance, and create my own images, and so I was freed from the influence of Google and Bing. Then TinyPic turned off the lights and I lost 18,000 (not a typo) images. And so, I turned to "DuckDuckGo" which promised not to track, target, or censor its subscribers, I stayed with DDG until just a few weeks ago, when they suddenly "went woke". Now I am on BRAVE.

The switch from DDG happened to coincide with my decision to take all my $$$$ out of a Canadian bank and open a new account in a local Credit Union. This meant changing the routing of my Social Security check and my Rent Payments. To complicate matters, I also have a credit card with the Canadian Bank which will affect my credit if I close it down. But, the collusion between the bank and the Canadian government against the Truckers was the last straw.

So now, I have a new bank and a new search engine, and I am faced with yet another problem. As I mentioned before, Western Art tends to picture the Apostle John as an effeminate youth. I didn't like those pictures, so I avoided them the best I could while posting. But there was another problem. While most icons of John picture him with an Eagle (his symbol) or writing tools (because he wrote FIVE of the New Testament Books), there were quite a few that I rejected because John was holding a wine cup with a snake peeking out of it. I needed to find out what THAT was all about. Was it the Dragon from the Book of Revelation? Did it symbolize the Serpent in the Garden of Eden? What was it? I wasn't going to post a picture I didn't understand.

So I went on to my new search engine and entered some key words, and the answer came right up. The symbol is based upon a story that is not in the Bible, but was very popular in the Early Church.

John, as you know, was commissioned by Christ to take care of Mary till the time that she would pass on. (Different Faith Traditions interpret Mary's "passing on" differently, so we will leave it at that.) This meant that he would have spent most of his time in Jerusalem, and, indeed, except for a few trips to Samaria and other local places, the Bible seems to confirm that. It is presumed that John was exiled to Patmos after Mary's passing, and that he grew old and died a natural death. But, just because John died of Old Age doesn't mean that the Powers-That-Be weren't out to kill him. And that's where the snake comes in.

According to legend, John was visiting Ephesus when an enemy slipped some poison into his cup of wine. As John said the traditional Jewish Blessing over his cup of wine, all the poison got consolidated into a nasty little green snake and slithered out of his cup. He was thus saved from assassination by the Power of God.

Snakes appear in Scripture in a number of places. There is, of course, the serpent in the garden, who starts poisoning things from the beginning. But then there is also the Snake on the Staff (Nehushtan) that Moses raised up to bring healing to the Israelites. Nehushtan was later destroyed because it had become an idol and a snare to the Israelites. They were worshipping the image rather than the True Healer.

Then we have Paul's snakebite incident in the Book of Acts. Here, Paul was bitten by a poisonous snake, only to shake it off and be healed instantly. In John's Book of Revelation, the Enemy of Our Souls is pictured as a Dragon, which is a type of serpent as well. He is even indentified as "That Old Serpent, the Deceiver of Mankind."

So now you know what the snake is all about in the John Pictures. I am not hesitant to post them anymore.

As John said, we need to "Test The Spirits", and if a story or image goes against the Word of God, we should reject it. I continue to reject the girly-man pictures of John. As for the snake pictures, if we realize that the picture is just an Apocryphal Story of a Legend, then it's OK, as long as we recognize it as such.

(P.S. I wonder if the Wine Blessing works on Polonium?)

Come and Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS

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As many of my images are Stained Glass, I should have titled today’s Devotional as “Snakes on a Pane”. (ducking)

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Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Thank You, DarthVader, For Your Prayers and Wonderful Psalm For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS

[Hebrews 11:6]

In heaven, will there be a roped-off area for punning?

Thanks for the explanation of John's snake-in-a-cup. And thanks most especially for your faithfulness to Scripture. And finally:

AMEN!

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As I get more and more into the hebrew Bible, I am finding a lot of “Wordplay”. So, if I end up in the roped-off area, I will be neighbors with Isaiah, David, and Zechariah.

Not a bad neighborhood! :-)

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Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Thank You, Hebrews 11:6, For Your Prayers For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS

[Hebrews 11:6]

Good company enhances good character.

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Indeed! ;-)

[NEWwoman]

Amen, left that other site

Good lesson.

Joining in prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem and for our beloved America.

[etabeta]

My prayers always. God bless.

(Traditionally, from the 11th c. on, John was always depicted not so much as effeminate but rather an idealized view of youth)

[TianaHighrider]

God Bless and Prayers up ❤ 🙏

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While I agree with the intent of the artists, the unfortunate results are that conspiracy theorists like Dan Brown and others interpret the "eternally youthful" John as a Woman, usually Mary Magdelene.

Oscar Wilde tackled the problem of an artist trying to depict idealized youthfulness in his novel "The Picture of Dorian Grey". As we know, that didn't turn out too well. The subject of the painting stayed ideal, while the painting itself showed the consequences of sin. It was an interesting twist on an old theme.

This could be one of the reasons God forbade any artistic pictures of HIM, as they would always fall short. I even cringe a little at Michaelangelo's depiction of the Father in his Sistine Chapel Ceiling. I would have liked The Creation of Adam better with just the hands. But that's just me! :-)

I LOVE discussing Fine Art with you. You are so well-informed about it. :-)

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Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Thank You, Etabeta, For Your Prayers For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS

[left that other site]

Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Thank You, NEWwoman, For Your Prayers For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS

[left that other site]

Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Thank You, TianaHighrider, For Your Prayers For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS

[Hiskid]

Amen

[left that other site]

Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Thank You, Hiskid, For Your Prayers For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS