PREFACE
This book could possibly affect your concept of life, death, and the hereafter. If you take the time to read through these pages of information you will see this life of living, learning, and accumulated experiences is by design.
Our lives will end with death. Whether by accident, war, murder, suicide, disease, or old age, we will die! It is an event that was caused soon after the first humans appeared on the planet. We are near the end of 6,000 years of mankind’s records of living and learning from life’s experiences after the first humans appear. The records and history of mankind and events accumulated over six millenniums provide a treasure chest of information to create this personal journey of finding answers for why I was born. There is one book of records that helps me make sense of all the others: The Bible.
Our own opinions and our own sense of what God is telling us throughout the bible can deceive us, unless we believe there a higher power that can be present in our discernment of the scriptures. Emerging from the pages of the Bible, the Holy Spirit becomes the guiding knowledge. The propensity of the Holy Spirit reveals intrinsic truths from the Bible as we open our spiritual minds to the information. When individuals allow the Spirit of God to speak to them from the Bible, they are delivered from the confusion created by carnal men and poor translation. The more we humbly believe, the more united we become with our Creator and His purpose for our mortality.
Believing and receiving the world of God creates an distracted spirit within us for understanding the things of God. When the believing takes place, you will see the Bible does not support many of the mainstream beliefs of churches. Don’t get mad at me; get into this book and see what I have discovered to be hidden from people by centuries of false teachings and manipulation of information promoting certain religious behavior. There is a plan in the Bible that is a different gospel from what mainstream churches promote. Bold words for a common man to write in a book, you may think. I say they are words no less bold than the inspiration of thousands of witnesses down through history who have lived and died, sharing the inner spirit of their life and their encounter with the Invisible Creator God. The lives they lived are expressed through drawings, hieroglyphic paintings, scrolls of parchment, cave walls, stories, mythology, history books, and the Bible.
There is a phrase familiar to most people: Those who do not consider history are condemned to repeat it. I have found this to be a profound statement of consistent truth as I have studied and observed the behavior of mankind. I am a human being experiencing the successes and failures of this life.
I confused my understanding of this life with rebellion, hypocrisy, lying, cheating, and stealing my way through the daily struggle for happiness. Life’s experiences are a progression of accumulated knowledge, coupled with creative instincts endowed upon our brain’s potential to advance ourselves as created human beings, occupying the time and chance conditions of the planet we live upon. We must exert as much effort in how we live as we exert in discovery of the intended way of life. Our lives will someday answer to our learning. It is crucial what we retain as values for living the life that is intended by our Creator. This book is a straightforward presentation of collected facts and information from the many authors of many different books of history, science, and theological commentaries. Because there is no way I can cover all the many events and encounters of human history for the last 6,000 years, I will only cite the various people and events that have affected me in the autumn of my life after years of mistakes, fear, being deceived, and clinging to my own stubborn pride about religious beliefs and the subject of Life and Death. I will present the information available to me through books written by people who make it their life’s work to compile and process information of ancient history, history, and science.
My story reveals the many choices mankind is allowed, through free moral agency of our spirit, soul, and body. It is not my intent to debate the Bible, medical science, and the documented histories of the events of mankind that are available to anyone who can read. I wish to simply create the story that I found through my personal years of research and desire to figure out why I was even born It is the result of reading hundreds of books over a span of nearly 40 years, trying to sort out the confusion mankind created in this life where we had no choice in the fact that we are born and are alive.
The story may appear arrogant and presumptuous at times; this is because it challenges some beliefs held in worldwide acceptance by Christian religions. Challenging the centuries-old, predigested doctrines for religious teaching is not a new thing. The Protestant Reformation is proof of the desire to be free of man-made traditions about God and how to live life.
I claim only the organization of a few of the billions, of bits of information from history, medical science, and the use the Bible as a guide to give motive and reason to the things of science and history. I do not attempt to debate or argue the many differences of opinions that are available to choose from. My life of living through thousands of experiences is not much different from anyone who has wondered why they are born or have thoughts about death.
I share this story because it is information that helped me to start believing in something that is special to the spirit in us that knows we are born into this world for a purpose greater than we limit ourselves to think. I have no letters of abbreviation indicating a doctorate, only the name bestowed upon me by my parents. However, I find no evidence in the Bible requiring such acknowledgments for Biblical interpretation. My only credentials are a belief in a Creator God and a heartfelt desire to understand what the intended purpose for me being born into this world.
My journey in search of truth has taught me to respect the Bible above all the books ever written. This book outlines the core beliefs of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and other religions under the X-ray of what the Bible tells us. This book is not an attack on religions and churches. There is valid truth taught in all churches. This book is my researching from history, science, and the Bible as a timeline guide. It is a comparison with what mainstream Christian churches teach about our destiny and what the Bible says about the purpose of mankind and its destiny. I have attended churches all my life, listening to preachers proclaim the Gospel. Upon personal research I find they do not preach the complete Gospel. Jesus warned us this would happen.
The religions and cults of this world offer many choices for a person to believe. Our choices with what we learn and prove to be true about God’s Plan for mankind will determine our destiny. There is a reason we are born, and our destiny is not wings, a halo, and a rocking chair. Our destiny is more than the heaven and hell concepts adopted by most religions. Satan does not want us to understand what our true destiny is! He has gone to extreme efforts down through time to diminish our potential as human beings made in the image of God.
We are, of all the things we discover on this planet and in the universe, God’s most important and precious creation. Our eternal destiny is set by God, and God chooses why, when, where, how, and which of two destinies we will inherit.