Gay Marriage–A Stench in God’s Nostrils

The Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage fulfills perfectly this passage: “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Man’s secular governments have rejected the King of glory. They say, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” Consequently, they do what they think is right and do not consult God their Creator as to His thoughts on marriage (Judges 21: 25; Lk 19: 14).

Yet, they say that Christ was a great teacher. But they will not obey His teachings. Those in favor of gay marriage are judging the issue from their own vantage point. But mankind’s morality comes from God’s viewpoint.

Christ’s Teaching on Marriage

Christ told the corrupted Pharisees, “Have you not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh?”

You secular progressives out there, have you not read in Genesis where “God created man in His own image…male and female created He them” (Gen. 1: 27). That bears repeating. Man was created by God in God’s own image. God fashioned man as a male-female joining. This is a likeness of God and His wife, Wisdom.

Proverbs admonishes, “My son, hear the instruction of thy Father, and forsake not the law of thy Mother (1: 8). Our spiritual Mother is Wisdom, which is the “fear of Yahweh (the LORD). “Fear” is reverential awe of God. And Yahweh possessed our Mother Wisdom “in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was…I was by Him…and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him” (Prov. 8: 22-30).

This is our spiritual Mother speaking to us.  Wisdom is crying out to us to turn away from the evil and to cleave to that which is good. When we are in reverential awe of the great Creator Father, then we will “hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. 8: 13).

God Created Us in This Image–In the Likeness of Himself and Wisdom

Christ continues His teaching on marriage. God in the beginning made them male and female, which is the likeness of our Father and our Mother, Wisdom. “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh….What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” Mankind was to emulate God’s spiritual relationship with our Mother Wisdom (Mt. 19: 4-6).

God has joined together in His likeness only male and female. Not male and male. Not female and female. This is God’s vantage point. This is how He sees it. He created it this way. Gay marriage is an attack on the very heart of God. That is the reason it is so sinful in God’s eyes.

Woe Unto the Pastors Who Lead the Sheep Astray

Those who support homosexual marriage are wringing the nose of God–especially churchianity’s pastors and priests.  They are burning fetid incense. In Christ’s stead they perform gay weddings, which is totally against Christ’s teachings. And now the secular governments of man give political backing to such a stinking affront.

For all this, I fear that a sword is coming on the land. That sword will be permitted by Yahweh Himself. The men of Sodom wanted to have sex with the two angels visiting Lot. Lot told them, “Do not so wickedly…I have two daughters which have not known man; let me bring them out unto you, and do to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing.” The sodomites rushed upon them, and the two angels had to blind them in order to deliver Lot and his family from them. After getting clear of the city, “the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire…” The stench of homosexuality wafted no more, being extinguished by the sulfurous cataclysm that enveloped them (Genesis 19: 1-24).

Judgment is coming upon our nation who has turned away from God, like the children of Israel did in olden times. The things that happened to them are written down to admonish us. When they sinned against Him, He permitted oppression to come upon them.

His judgement may be an economic collapse of the US dollar. Perhaps it will be a war, an asteroid, an earthquake, civil unrest, or all of the above. But this Supreme Court decision is a stench in God’s nostrils. And when He comes to the end of His patience with the evil inclinations of His people, severe judgement will come.

We as a nation and world must repent. But I know that all of us who stand up against this abomination–our words will be rejected, as He foretold. “If they rejected Me, they will reject you.”

Yet, He also said that a remnant will respond and the rest were blinded. We who see, then, must brace ourselves for the rocky days of judgement that shall come. We must examine ourselves and “strengthen the things that remain” to be done.

President Obama has already taken the words “under God” out of the pledge. The gay marriage ruling by the Supreme Court has in effect replaced those words with “against God.”

 

 

How to Love Your Wife As Christ Loves Us

I was having trouble in my marriage.  I asked a wise man, “What do I do?”

“Do you really love her?”

“Yes, I do, but I don’t know how to live with her.  We are always getting into arguments, and we can’t see eye to eye on anything.”  I looked down and cradled my face in my hands.

“There’s no need for all this anxiety and frustration.  There is an answer, but it lies in you and the choice you will have to make.”

“What choice?”  I look up and he is smiling at me–a smile that hides a secret of the ages, a smile that shields a life-changing truth.  I feel it coming; the problem will be solved soon.

“The first thing that you must realize is that you are reaping a harvest of the seeds you have sown in your garden.  For, you see, your wife is your precious spiritual garden.  Whatever seeds you sow into her, whatever words you speak to her and around her, they shall come up and grow and come to harvest.

“I don’t get it.  She is my garden?”

“Even in the natural sense, do you not sow your earthly seed into the garden of her womb and in nine months you both reap a lovely child.  Is it a great wonder that your words are seeds that will be harvested in her, for good or bad?

“The Law of Harvest says that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.  You are the husbandman of your very own Garden of Eden.  With God’s help, you can make it a garden of delight with joy and peace, or you can make it a garden of misery.”

“Why is it up to me?  She is the one who is so unreasonable.  She needs to change, doesn’t she?”

“Oh yes, she will change.  She already has changed, and she has become in your relationship what you have created in her.  When you express your selfish desires, she languishes and dries up inside for the lack of the water of love that you should supply.  Your sarcasm and cynicism brings forth noxious weeds of doubt in her thoughts toward you.  When you are fearful and anxious, she will be perplexed.  But if you sow selfless love into her heart, she will bear the peaceable fruit of harmony and love for you.

“Your words to her are seeds that fall literally into your wife’s ears and settle in her heart.  And like the Master tells us, the condition of the heart dictates the thoughts that enter her mind and later proceeds out of her mouth.

“If you want to see a wife who blooms in peaceful colors of the rainbow, whose smile draws the butterflies, whose song coos, so that songbirds thrill to hear her–then you have to take responsibility for what your garden is bearing right now and what it will bear in due season.”

“How do I take responsibility?”

“You can start by sincerely apologizing for an unkind word, a careless jab, a thoughtless snarl.  For it is humility that will melt her heart toward you.  Humble yourself and you will win her.  Remain prideful and strong in your own ways, and you will lose her heart, if not her body.

“For we husbands are to love our wives, even as Christ loved all of us.  And how did He love us?  He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.  He gave Himself for us.  Had He not done this, we would all feel lost and hopeless–the way many wives feel in their marriages.

“I do not know how to do this,” I confessed.

“You must seek Him now.  Humble yourself and ask Him for help.  If you cannot express humility to your Creator, you cannot walk humbly toward others on earth.  He will give you the patience to not only reap what you have already sown, but also to replant the peace-yielding seeds of agape love from above.

“Your wife is your gift from God to help you get back to Him.  Embrace your gift and you embrace Him.”

And with that he went his way.  I didn’t get it all then.  But I sincerely tried to put it into practice, and it has made all the difference.         Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Obama Approves Gay Marriage–Uses Jesus’ Words in Error to Justify Stance–Christ Upholds Male Female Marriage ONLY

President Obama needs to stick to his socialist platitudes at his many fundraisers and not be invoking the name of Jesus to justify his approval of gay marriage.  For he has proven that he “neither knows the scriptures nor the power of God.”

He’s even got the audacity to say that if we don’t approve of gay marriage, we don’t love our neighbor (gays) as our selves.  He quotes the golden rule, from Jesus’ own lips:  “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”  And then he stops there, taking it out of context. There is a colon with a clause coming after this, explaining it: “For this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7: 12).

But the great commandment before “love your neighbor as yourself” is this: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”  (Matt. 22: 37-40).

The first and great commandment is to love God  with all our heart, soul, and mind.  That means “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10: 5).  How do we love God this way?  “For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments” (I John 5: 3).  Since Christ is the expressed image of the invisible God, what are His thoughts concerning marriage?

And so to love God and then love our neighbor, we must obey what He commands us to do.  Jesus Christ said that he always kept his Father’s commandments.  So let’s explore what the Word says about marriage, and let’s obey it.  In so doing we prove that we love God and then we can love our neighbor.

God’s thoughts on marriage

Jesus said, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife;  and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10-6-9).

Jesus is giving us in this teaching a definite direction to follow when it comes to marriage.  First, God made us humans “male and female.”  And a man shall “cleave to his wife” and be one flesh.  God created human beings with two genders for a specific purpose.  And it was not so that two men could get together, nor two women.  But “God has joined together” the male and the female to be one flesh.  And Jesus caps off this with this command: What God has “joined together, let not man put asunder,” or man better not separate what I have joined together.  When a man persists in mating with another man, is he not separating himself from a woman, which is contrary to what “God has joined together”?

Now those are Jesus’ own words in everyone’s Bible at home.  They are very clear and succinct.  They are easy to understand.  It is God’s purpose and plan to have male and female be joined together in marriage.  God has done this since the beginning, and Jesus says that God does not want man to separate what He has joined together.  When male joins together with male, and when female joins together with female, they are separating or putting asunder what God has joined together.

Gays are human beings–people with rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   However, according to the Scriptures of Truth, “holy matrimony” or marriage is a spiritual and physical joining together by God of a male and female.  These two become one and are the only two human beings that “God hath joined together” scripturally.  God has not changed His position on this.  He did say, “I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; I change not.”

Marriage between male and female is a moral right granted by the Creator.  It was never granted to those of the same sex.  President Obama is trying to forge gay marriage into a civil right, erroneously basing it as a moral or inalienable right.  “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  According to the Declaration of Independence, it is the Creator that gives the moral or unalienable rights to mankind.  The Creator ordained marriage to a male and female.

This male/female spiritual union is in the internal genetic fabric of human society with roots going back thousands of years, planted there by a purposeful Creator.  That is the reason that “gay marriage” was rejected, first by the Creator and now by the people thirty-two states.  It doesn’t set well in the human heart and psyche because it never was part of the divine plan, according to the scriptures.

I do say this in love: Because of His male/female plan for marriage, the God of the Bible rejects homosexuality in the strongest of terms [See Genesis 19 and Romans 1: 26-27.  I am not going to go on about these rather  obvious passages depicting God’s disgust of homosexuality.  People can read it for themselves, and come to their own decisions.  “Many shall be purified, and made white…But the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand” (Dan. 12: 10).]

But I do not condemn anyone.  I believe that loving our neighbor is telling him the truth of God–in this case, the truth concerning what God’s institution of marriage is.  Mankind did not create marriage, according to Jesus.  Marriage is a spiritual thing, a religious institution, created by God.  And we first need to keep His commandments concerning marriage, thereby showing our love for God.

For this gay marriage controversy is not a political thing, or a sociological thing, or a cultural thing.  It is a spiritual thing.  And it is this: Do we believe that the God of the Bible, the Creator, really exists?  If He does, then are we going to love and obey Him concerning marriage and other things?  Or are we going to act as if He does not exist, and thumb our noses at Him by approving homosexual marriage?  That’s the real spiritual issue before us.  Who will take God’s side in this issue?  Our choice will define us in His eyes.  For “the eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (II Chron. 16: 9).  KWH

Fateful Decisions Determine Who Comes into Existence

It is amazing to realize how personal choices are so fateful–full of fate–not just for the one who chooses a certain path or makes a decision in life, but for those who literally come after them.  In fact, some of our choices actually determine just who comes after us on the planet!

For example, I asked my dad, Scott K. Hancock, who was in his late seventies at the time, “Hey, Dad, you were quite the ladies man in your day.  Was there a woman who you let slip through your fingers?”

He looked at me funny as if to say, Well, my son is in his fifties, and I am about done on earth, so I guess it’s all right to tell it.  “As a matter of fact, there was a girl back in Corsicana, Texas during the War.  Her name was Thelma Mae.  I should have married her, but I didn’t.  I got cold feet and stood her up.  That was a mistake.”  I could tell it was difficult for him to talk about. 

I said, “Yeah, but what about me?  You married Mom and had me right after the War.  If you had married that girl, I would not exist!  This very  conversation we are having right now would not be taking place.”

“I guess you are right,” Dad said, righting himself, withdrawing back into taciturnity, no doubt wondering what had gotten into himself for sharing anything so personal.

“I am glad that you didn’t marry her,” I finally said.  And that was about all we said that day, for I had already seen the windows of communication being shuttered over his countenance.  A couple of years later, Dad died.  That was 2002.  We never talked any more about it.

I shared our talk with my wife Linda.  “If Dad had done right, if he had kept his word and promise to Thelma Mae, our kids–all five of them–Danny, Noah, Sara, Hannah, and Joby–would not exist.  And our grandkids–no Cody, Austin, or Baby Katy.  It would be a totally different universe.  Linda, you would have existed, of course, but not you you.  We are the sum total of our experiences, so subtract our 40 years together, and who then would you haver been?”

Linda just looked at me with that quizzical beginning of a smile that said, He’s out there again, but I love him.

“So my Dad’s betrayal of that girl some 65 years ago created a parallel world that permitted nine human beings to exist that would not have existed otherwise.  How can good come out of something bad–something so bad that it would haunt my Dad all those years?” 

Then I thought of God’s foreknowledge.  He knows all things beforehand.  There are no surprises for Him.  And then the scripture, “He puts it into their hearts to fulfill His will.” 

I talked to my Mom about this story, and she filled me in with the details that Dad did not share.

Dad and Thelma Mae had written each other for four years during World War II.  They were betrothed.  She had worked and had saved up, and her trousseau was full.  All was ready with the wedding dress, linens, and fineries.  Even furniture awaited their housewarming.  When Dad did not come back for her–and that without a word–she was heartbroken.

Instead, Dad married my Mom Louise in December 1945 and immediately took off to Califorinia for a brand new start.  I now know the reason for the sudden departure was as much personal as it was for financial considerations.

My Mom told me that a couple of years after their move, my grandmother wrote them a letter.  That would have been about the time, ironically enough, I was born.  She said that Thelma had died.  Mom said she read the letter, and it didn’t say much more than that.  Mom asked Dad who the girl was, and he said, “Oh, it was just a girl he had known back then.”

Mom said that after moving back to Texas in 1955, she had spoken to a woman she met at church in Oak Cliff that had known Dad and all the Hancocks of Kerns, Texas.  She filled Mom in on what had happened to Thelma Mae.  She had died of a broken heart in 1947.  She just wasted away.  Probably took pneumonia because she wouldn’t eat and take care of herself.  She was buried in her white wedding dress, and on her breast was laid my Dad’s 8 x 10 Army photograph and a stack of love letters he had written to her.

Oh, my God.  The sadness that my Daddy endured for the rest of his life–a sadness that paved the way for me and my family’s existence!  How unsearchable are all the ways of this life, for I was born out of a betrayal–possibly the most hurtful of all the sins.  I would not have come into existence had not my father made that fateful choice and its accompanying regret–a remorse that he carred with him to his grave.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Husbands, Be Not Bitter Against Your Wives–Conversations With the Seer

(Formerly in Israel, if a man went to inquire of God, he would say, “Come, let us go to the seer,” because the prophet of today used to be called a Seer.  I Samuel 9: 9)

I barely had enough time to sit down, and before I had spoken a word, the Seer asked, “Troubles with the wife?”

“Yes.  How did you know?”

“The Spirit, if your heart is attuned, picks up on these things.  It’s really not difficult to discern because ‘all things come alike to all.’  We all come up the same way” [1].

“My wife is always bringing me down.  It’s frustrating.  I’ll get a wonderful revelation about God, and I am so enthused, and I try to share it with her, and all she has to say is, ‘Yeah, that’s great, but would you help me, please?  Could you do something around here?  Help straighten up the house.   Check on the kids.’   Things like that.”

The Seer just looked at me as if looking through a window at the wind blowing through a white oak tree.  “We on our spiritual walk back to the Father’s heart must not get too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.”

I looked at him as if he were speaking Chinese.  “What?  What do you mean?”

“It is all about taking the heavenly things like love and mercy, and putting them into action here on earth.  Christ did it and then taught it” [2].

“She makes me mad,” I continued.  “It’s like she deliberately throws on me all this negativity, like a wet blanket.  Instead of rejoicing with me, she just smothers me.  I try to correct her and get her to stop, but that just sets her off and we start fussing and fighting.”

“Oh, you mustn’t try to stop her,” the Seer said.  “Goodness, no.  Never try to prevent someone from doing God’s will.”

“God’s will?”  I asked.  “A wife so earthly minded that she can’t get past the pots and pans and diapers is doing God’s will?”

“They are your pots and pans and your children’s clothes.  Let me explain what is spiritually happening.  God Himself has created your wife exactly the way she is in every respect.  He has made her to be your absolute complement.  She, with all her faults and all her many unappreciated virtues , is exactly what the Great Physician ordered–for you and your perfection.”

“My perfection?” I asked.

“She’s your help meet, isn’t she?” [3].

“Yes.”

“Well, then, she is being a good help meet because she’s helping you meet God.  Look.  She is merely speaking what is in the script written by God–as if He had with a thoughtful quill inked upon her DNA the lines she speaks to help you mature spiritually.  And her reactions to you and her ‘negative’ comments to you about your ways are all ordained, scribed, and orchestrated by God to get a rise out of you.”

“It does that,” I said.  “But she should be honoring her husband and not putting him down all the time.”

“You don’t need a wife that praises your every word or whim.  That would not bring you to perfection.  In fact, it would ruin you for God’s purposes.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“You see,” the Seer continued, “You have many faults that must be purged out of your life before full spiritual maturity comes.  God uses wives to help us grow from a babe in Christ to a young man.  A ‘woman shall be saved in child bearing’ [4].  She not only rears your earthly children, but also helps to rear the spiritual child of God in her life–you, her husband.  She cannot change the way she has been created.  She is saying exactly what the Father has entrusted her to say to you.”

“It just makes me mad,” I said.

“There.  Right there in that thought–that unjust anger is an example of the kind of things that God desires to erase out of your life.  And your wife will continue to bring it out–not to be mean, as you suppose.  She has to.  She doesn’t even realize that God is using her for the purpose of burning out the dross that lurks around your new faith.  Yet, she will continue saying her lines as a faithful player on the stage of life–until you get it.”

“Get what?” I asked, still not understanding the depth of the matter.

“When you finally understand these words I’ve spoken and believed them–then you will have gained several precious life lessons.  Number one.  That God is totally sovereign and in complete control.  He uses anyone and anything He desires to effect a change in one of His chosen ones–one of His elect sons of God.  Two.  God’s ways are not our ways.  We would not perfect us the way He does.  We would much rather sit in the sunshine munching Oreos as the way to make big changes in our life.  Third.  We need to be grateful for God’s love to us.  He has chosen us as His offspring.  He did not have to pick us to reveal Himself in us.  So, just be grateful for your wife and don’t be bitter towards her [5].  God is using her to do a great work in you.”

“It doesn’t seem so great right now,” I said.

“When you receive this truth that I’ve shared with you, you won’t get angry and frustrated with her.  You’ll know the truth that it is all God’s doing, flowing out from His heart of love.  Right now you are buffeted for your own faults [6].  What will you do when you are persecuted unjustly?”

“I don’t know.”

“When it happens, just know that it is still God doing His work of perfection in you.”  The Seer paused.  “But, enough of this now.  Tell me.  What is you wife’s favorite candy bar?”

“Almond Hershey.”

“Tell you what.  Go buy her one.  And with no fanfare, hand it to her and tell her that you love her.”

I did what He said.  And that little gesture generated a smile on her face that said, “He understands.”  But all I understood that day was the magic of chocolate.  She would receive several Almond Hersheys throughout the years.  But it would take decades for me to finally understand and appreciate the message he gave me that day.       Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1. Eccle. 9: 2
2. Acts 1: 1
3. Gen. 2: 18
4. I Tim. 2: 15
5. Col. 3: 19
6. I Peter 2: 20

Flies Floating in the Flask–A Poem

I’ve never met a stranger.

I’ve never lost a friend.

I’ve always tried to endear myself

To the hearts and minds of men.

I’ve used the smile to penetrate

The lonely shell of fear.

And one kind word has opened up

The tragic deafened ear.

To comfort, yes, to comfort all–

That is my cry; that is my call.

But something still keeps nagging me

Like flies that float within the flask.

A fleeting question on the wind

Stops long enough to ask,

Physician, why not heal yourself?

What’s all these words you say?

Go home and weep yourself to sleep.

Your wife left you today.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Forgiveness–How to Love Your Wife As Christ Loved the Church

As men, we are admonished to “love our wives as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it.”  We are to love our wives in the same manner that Christ loves all of His followers.  How does He love us all?  He forgives.  No matter the faults that we have done–He  has a forgiving heart toward us.

We are also admonished “to be not bitter” against our wives.  Men become bitter toward their wives when they do not forgive them.

But some man will ask, Forgive them of what?  Forgive them for just being human.  Forgive them for not being perfect perfect.  But we men have a problem doing this.  We hold on to small grudges and little snide attitudes.  We puff up and become indignant towards them.  We expect them to make the first move toward reconciliation.

But the biblical love is a forgiving love and is unconditional.  We should not love our wives because they love us first.  That is not loving our wives the way Christ loved all of us.  He loved us when we were unlovable.

This kind of love is, of course, not the “love” born from our original carnal nature.  This love is the “love from above”–the agape love, and women are wired by their Creator to respond to it.  In fact, this is the only kind of love that will reach them.

The Divine Relationship in Husband and Wife

There is a divine ratio and proportion going on here.                                               Husbands :  Wives ::  Christ : the body of Christ (His church, us)          Husbands are to love their wives the way Christ loves us.

And so we must look to why we, the body of Christ (the church), love God.  “We love God because He first loved us.”  We didn’t wake up one morning and decide that we were going to love God.  No.  He loved us first and gave Himself for us.  Christ laid down His mortal life, thereby expressing the greatest love a man can show another.  It was only then that we could be changed from a selfish, non-loving individual into one who loves another.

In like manner, God demands that we love our wives unconditionally.  We love them first by forgiving them of any perceived shortcomings or wrongs towards us.  We forgive their imperfections, both outward and inward.

We are asked by God to love them as He loves us by using great patience in waiting and hoping for the harvest of reciprocal love, joy and peace.

Yes, this is difficult to do on our own strength.  It takes faith in God’s power, for we do not have it within ourselves to love our wives the way Christ loves us all.  Again, that love is from above and not from the earthly nature we are born with.

We can only get it from God.  This kind of forgiveness and love cannot be obtained through the usual means available to man.  It must be asked for from Him who is LOVE.  For “God is love.”  He, therefore, is the only One who has what He is asking us to dispense to another.

Man’s Problem in Forgiving and Loving

It takes humility to approach the altar of Divine Love and ask God to channel His Essence through us to our wives.  To say to Him, Please help me love her with the forgiveness that yields sweet acceptance–the way You have accepted us into Your Presence.  I cannot do this on my own; my heart is too small.  I know this now.  Help me.  Flow Love through me to her.  Thank You.      KWH

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Apples of Gold–Missing the Wife of My Youth

I am like an ancient apple tree

That knows innately April is nigh.

The sap still wants to rise,

But no white blossoms smile at passersby,

Enticing them to breathe our joy

And taste the promise of our love.

The sun still frowns, begrudging a ray or two.

So come back soon and with you bring the latter rain,

That the  storehouse of every heart

May overflow with  apples of gold.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden–The True Story

     Their cries cut through the trees of the garden.  “Help us, please!  Don’t cast us away.  Please forgive us, for we’ve sinned against you.  We are sorry.  We want it to be like it was before.  Don’t forsake us!”  Thus Adam and Eve did moan their fate after their sin and banishment by God from Eden.  Where once they walked in splendid innocence with their Creator in paradise, they had found themselves in solitary anguish, awash in tears of guilt and shame. 

     And what really had they done to bring such swift retribution by the hand that yesterday had been so kind?  Yes, they yielded to temptation and disobeyed the only commandment that God had given them, albeit through the auspices of one smooth character.  For the serpent had convinced them that they needed the knowledge of good and evil, that experiencing this knowledge was the road to real wisdom.  And so they partook and sinned.  Why was the anguish and alienation of this sin the direct fruit of their gaining knowledge?  The transformation from happy innocents to sin-guilty initiates took place because it was supposed to take place; it was in the master plan of the Creator.

Their Fall Was Not an Accident

     However, conventional wisdom teaches that the Fall in Eden was an accident, that somehow the experimenting Creator had the wrong mix of variables present and things went bad. A deadly accident occurred unforeseen by the Architect, and his prototype house fell down.  Now He would have to change His original plan in order to fix what He did not get right at the first.  That does not sound like the omnipotent and omniscient Being the ancient Hebrew writers portrayed their God to be.  In fact, the Genesis account shows a Creator with an acute and meticulous hand, setting everything in perfect order.  “And he saw that it was good…it was good…it was good.”  

     It was good at every phase of creation.  Are we to believe that a smooth talking serpent figure, made also by God (3:1), could accidentally appear in Eden to thwart the plan of the Almighty?   This is not the case of the farmer fretting about the fox in the henhouse.  This is the Creator of the fox, the hens, and the henhouse.  He knew the vulnerability of Adam and Eve because He made them that way, and He created the serpent to be a lying seductive trickster.  In effect, God had put the fox in the henhouse, for he certainly would not have been there without God’s tacit approval.  

     Furthermore, the serpent lied to Eve and enticed her to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Some writers such as Garrison Russell in SonPlacing propose that the serpent was a man and was the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  “Trees” are types of men throughout the Hebrew literary tradition (Daniel 4 with Nebuchadnezzar as the “tree whose branches reached the heavens”).  Since when does a white oak or an ancient apple tree “know” anything?  The Hebrew prophets continually rant against idol makers who carve their gods from the dumb stump of a tree, “that can neither hear nor see.”   Also, the Savior, “who was the expressed image of the invisible God” of creation, called the Pharisees of His day, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers.”  

     And so they both partook and were initiated into a carefully prepared hothouse of emotions, “and the eyes of them both were opened.”  And the first thing that they “knew”—the first jewel of knowledge taken from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was that “they knew they were naked.”  To be frank, they became aware that their genitals were exposed and opened to the world.  And the first action that they took after gaining this knowledge was that “they sewed fig leaves together” to cover the shame of their nakedness. 

       And like the picador enters right on cue for the second act of the bullfight ballet, they heard Yahweh’s voice as He called out to them in the garden (“YHWH,” the tetragrammaton, the Hebrew name of the Creator, translated “LORD” in most translations).  “Where are you?” was the rhetorical question spoken by the All-Knowing.  Adam responded,  “I was afraid, because I was naked; and hid myself.”

      Wait a minute, Adam.  “Naked” was not even in your vocabulary before all this knowledge you just gained.  “Who told thee that thou wast naked?”  God asked.  Somebody has been talking about sex to you, haven’t they?   Did he tell you about getting naked? 

       And then Adam blames the woman, and the woman blames the serpent.  Yet all this does not surprise Yahweh in the least.  For it was all in His plan and purpose for mankind to sin and to suffer that vacuum of fear, alienation, sin, and shame.  For then mankind would need someone to save them from this abyss of depravity.  They would need a Savior.

       He set them up to fall in order to save them?  The irony is rich in this mother lode of wisdom.   God’s nature is love, for “God is love.”  But He could not express the perfection of His essence unless He had something to forgive.  He would incarnate Himself later in history and provide Himself as the Lamb sacrifice for Adam’s sin.  This is alluded to in Genesis 3:15.  Speaking to the serpent, He said that He would put hatred between the serpent and his offspring and Eve and her offspring.  As almost universally accepted, Eve’s offspring is Christ, who would “bruise the head” of the serpent, thus “destroying the works of the devil.”  And yet, the serpent’s offspring would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, indicating the death of the Lamb at the hands of the Romans and Pharisees and his subsequent resurrection. 

        Yahweh’s plan was all along to reproduce Himself.  The law of “each seed bears its own kind” attests to this.  He likens Himself to the Seed, the Word.  But in order to reproduce Himself, He would have to create a need in mankind for Him.  Innocent fleshy robots have no need of a Savior, and Yahweh is the Savior (“I, even I, am YHWH, and beside me there is no Savior,” Isaiah 43:11).

 Adam and Eve’s shameful fall into sin and despair was carefully choreographed by a loving Creator.  He set them up to Fall so that they would have a need for His forgiving love.  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).  He would become Immanuel, “God with us,” coming “to take away the sins of the world.”  This would fulfill the Edenic promise of Genesis 3:15.  As in the parable of the creditor and the two debtors in Luke 7:41-48, the one who owed the most when the debt was forgiven, was the one who loved the most.  Hence, sin and guilt entered the equation so that forgiveness could come, yielding gratefulness and love in the heart of the forgiven.  Each seed (love and forgiveness) bears its own kind (gratefulness and love).      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Husbands, Love Your Wives–Your Garden of Eden

     I was having trouble in my marriage.  I asked a wise man, “What do I do?”

     “Do you really love her?”

     “Yes, I do, but I don’t know how to live with her.  We are always getting into arguments, and we can’t see eye to eye on anything.”  I looked down and cradled my face in my hands. 

     “There’s no need for all this anxiety and frustration.  There is an answer, but it lies in you and the choice you will have to make.”

     “What choice?”  I look up and he is smiling at me–a smile that hides a secret of the ages, a smile that shields a life-changing truth.  I feel it coming; the problem will be solved soon.

     “The first thing that you must realize is that you are reaping a harvest of the seeds you have sown in your garden.  For, you see, your wife is your precious spiritual garden.  Whatever seeds you sow into her, whatever words you speak to her and around her, they shall come up and grow and come to harvest. 

     “I don’t get it.  She is my garden?”

     “Even in the natural sense, do you not sow your earthly seed into the garden of her womb and in nine months you both reap a lovely child.  Is it a great wonder that your words are seeds that will be harvested in her, for good or bad?

     “The Law of Harvest says that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.  You are the husbandman of your very own Garden of Eden.  With God’s help, you can make it a garden of delight with joy and peace, or you can make it a garden of misery.”

     “Why is it up to me?  She is the one who is so unreasonable.  She needs to change, doesn’t she?” 

     “Oh yes, she will change.  She already has changed, and she has become in your relationship what you have created in her.  When you express your selfish desires, she languishes and dries up inside for the lack of the water of love that you should supply.  Your sarcasm and cynicism brings forth noxious weeds of doubt in her thoughts toward you.  When you are fearful and anxious, she will be perplexed.  But if you sow selfless love into her heart, she will bear the peaceable fruit of harmony and love for you.

     “Your words to her are seeds that fall literally into your wife’s ears and settle in her heart.  And like the Master tells us, the condition of the heart dictates the thoughts that enter her mind and later proceeds out of her mouth.

     “If you want to see a wife who blooms in peaceful colors of the rainbow, whose smile draws the butterflies, whose song coos, so that songbirds thrill to hear her–then you have to take responsibility for what your garden is bearing right now and what it will bear in due season.”

     “How do I take responsibility?”

     “You can start by sincerely apologizing for an unkind word, a careless jab, a thoughtless snarl.  For it is humility that will melt her heart toward you.  Humble yourself and you will win her.  Remain prideful and strong in your own ways, and you will lose her heart, if not her body.

     “For we husbands are to love our wives, even as Christ loved all of us.  And how did He love us?  He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.  He gave Himself for us.  Had He not done this, we would all feel lost and hopeless–the way many wives feel in their marriages. 

     “I do not know how to do this,” I confessed.

     “You must seek Him now.  Humble yourself and ask Him for help.  If you cannot express humility to your Creator, you cannot walk humbly toward others on earth.  He will give you the patience to not only reap what you have already sown, but also to replant the peace-yielding seeds of agape love from above.

     “Your wife is your gift from God to help you get back to Him.  Embrace your gift and you embrace Him.” 

     And with that he went his way.  I didn’t get it all then.  But I sincerely tried to put it into practice, and it has made all the difference.         Kenneth Wayne Hancock