Father’s Day

 

by Brandon Gatzke

 

Romans 8: 14For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God…

2 Corinthians 1:3 Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merciful Father, the God from whom all help comes!

The relationship we have with our Father is one of intimacy and familiarity, awe and respect, obedience and delight. Our Father loves to hear us call his name. He takes great delight in us and when we are troubled, he will quiet us with his loving arms. What a privilege it is to be a child of God! (Elizabeth L. Vander Meulen and Barbara D. Malda, His Names Are Wonderful: Getting to Know God Through His Hebrew Names (Baltimore, MD: Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2005), 22)

 

God is called the “Father of our Spirit” in the Epistle of Hebrews. God’s greatest name is the Name of Jesus Christ. The Bible contains within the Old and New Testaments many names for God like “Adonai Rapha” (the Lord our Healer), EL Roi (the God who Sees), EL Hanun (God of Compassion).

God is the Father of our spirits and those who have faith in His Son – the Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.  The word “Father” in Biblical Hebrew consists of two Hebrew letters, the (Aleph) and the (Bet). The Hebrew alphabet is a concrete language and verb-oriented language, much like the Oriental languages where each letter engages the senses and creates a picture in our mind.

Aleph or El is the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet and its picture is that of an “OX Head. The meaning of the Aleph is “strength, power, leader” from the Biblical Hebrew alphabet.  The Aleph numeric value is 1. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet and no vowels. Three of those letters in the alphabet help make up the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet – the Aleph.

The Aleph consists of two “yads” and a “vav.” This reveals three in one, The Word of God says that God is One, and in Genesis, God said before Creating Adam, let us make man in our image and likeness. The word “Our” is plural, revealing a picture of the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. In the same way the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet reveals three letters making one letter.

“Bet” or “Beyt” is the second letter in the Biblical Hebrew alphabet. The meaning of the “Bet” letter is: “house, family, in”. The word picture of the letter is that of a tent floorplan or house.  The family resides at the home or house. We see the Bet letter in the word Bethlehem which means “House of Bread” The numeric value is two for Bet. The Aleph + Beth when brought together means “strength of the house”, or “leader of family”.

As Father’s Day approaches it is my prayer for all the fathers in the Body of Christ around the world to be strengthened by the power of the Spirit of God. Come Ruach Adonai (Spirit of the Lord), for God, you said to the King Zerubbabel that it is not by might nor by power but by my Spirit you shall lead. I pray for every father to be filled with your powerful Holy Spirit and to be Spirit-driven, for strength to lead the family God has given them, with all love and justice, humility and kindness, and wisdom.  We thank you Jesus for all the dads around the world, may they be shown honor this Father’s Day as the Word of God instructs us to honor our father and revere our mother, with the blessing that things go well with them.

Mighty God, You are the All-Powerful. Give strength to every father that is weary and worn down this Father’s Day and the year ahead. Strengthen their family with your Word and your Spirit. I pray for obedience – for fathers to rise up and be the father that God created them to be for their family, and for their families to prosper and be whole with Christ Jesus our Messiah at the center of their family in Jesus’ name, amen

 

The Traitor is the Plague

 

by Susan Snelling

 

Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution specifies that the giving of aid and comfort to the enemy is an element in the crime of Treason. Aid and comfort may consist of substantial assistance or the mere attempt to provide some support; actual help or the success of the enterprise is not relevant.

West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, 2nd ed. (2008), describes aid and comfort in the following manner: “To render assistance or counsel. Any act that deliberately strengthens or tends to strengthen enemies of the United States, or that weakens or tends to weaken the power of the United States to resist and attack such enemies is characterized as aid and comfort.”

 John Bouvier in 1856 in A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Law of the United States, writes, “These words, as they are to be understood in the constitution, have not received a full judicial construction. They import, however, help, support, assistance, countenance, encouragement.”

Bouvier uses the word “countenance” as a verb in his list of behaviors that are included in the description of what constitutes treason. The dictionary says that this usage of countenance means approval or favor, moral support, permit or tolerate. It is our duty as citizens to observe if those who serve in the government or culture influencers are engaged in these behaviors.

Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote: A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

 For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Those are wise words from Cicero, ones that we want to heed. Our Founding Fathers said we are to be vigilant to guard our liberties. We see our liberties undermined and infringed upon through bad leadership who intends ill towards America and its Founding Principles. Such leaders hate God and the very foundation of America that is based on Biblical truths and a covenant with the One True God. These are traitors who advance the destruction of America through policies that do not support the Constitution and that wreck America as a free nation with a free people. They do not want us to self-govern. They want to be the ones who call the shots, who perpetrate their will on the people.

Whereas these actions may not be legally treason (they might be!), and we want to be careful to not throw around that term recklessly, they are traitorous to our Declaration of Independence and those Founding principles; traitorous to that which secures America as a free nation. Through policies and actions that work with our enemies and against us they are traitors of the first order. But it is even more sinister and beguiling than that.

The traitor is like a snake, weaving his trail throughout the culture, laying ideological eggs where he can. The traitor infiltrates the body politic and makes his way throughout Congress, garnering congressional support for his ploys. He damages the halls of Congress where it becomes malleable and weak in his hands, to the point where it will not do its job. He makes his way throughout the rest of government, where it does his bidding for him.

The traitor undermines those pillars of the city – religion and morality. George Washington said, “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” With these pillars undermined by the traitor, and his voice resonating in the government, with the Hollywood and corporate elite, educators du jour, sciences and the arts, and various sundry pundits, media outlets, and billionaire would-be dictators, his sickness spreads until the soul of the nation is rotted. With a rotted soul, the nation falls. The traitor, indeed, is the plague.