Every human being at one time or another asks questions like, where did I come from, where am I going, and why am I here? Much of our time is spent trying to gain knowledge that would answer these very important questions. One of Americas most noted authors, Napoleon Hill once said, “There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to posses it.” Unfortunately, most have become exhausted in their toil to discover truth which has inevitably robbed them of the passion to discover their destiny, while others are lazy, choosing rather to believe everything but the truth! Some are satisfied with the answers they’ve obtained and some are still in pursuit of them.
Random House unabridged dictionary defines Knowledge: An acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles as from study or investigation; the fact or state of knowing the perception of fact or truth. The knowledge we have perceived to be truth, determines what we believe and the decisions we make as a result of what we choose to believe. What we believe is always a matter of choice. The problem is the knowledge we have based our beliefs on—have been opinion, speculation, or theories. Belief is the confidence we put in the knowledge we have or the knowledge we deem to be truth.
There are things that are instinctively unique to all human beings. To name a few: An innate awareness of the existence of a higher power, the desire to attain to a higher level of consciousness, to control our perspective environment and to live long enough to enjoy the fruit of our labor. Nectar of the gods not only explores the idea that it is possible to unlock our god potential but that the bible contains the keys to achieve god status. Nectar of the gods also explains why having a relationship with the Emperor and Creator of the Universe is the master key. Attaining to a higher level of consciousness, allows us to achieve Man’s highest destiny, to evolve into the supernatural beings we were created to be. So it is crucial for us to understand heavenly things as well as earthly (1 Cor 15: 49), who we are, the potential we have, and what the finished product is supposed to look like.
ON WHOSE AUTHORITY. There are many voices, philosophies, or sources of knowledge that can influence what we believe. If a person on your job tells you that it’s ok for you to take an extra hour for lunch, do you go ahead and take that extra hour or do you ask them, on whose authority? If they respond, “On my authority”, and they are not your supervisor, then taking that extra hour could get you fired! They may not have the authority to allot you an extra hour for lunch.
Should they respond, “On the authority of the supervisor”, your next thought would be: What is the character of this person? Can they be trusted? Are they telling the truth? Does this person have my best interest at heart? The answers to these questions will determine if this person is a reliable source, if you will believe them and what course of action you take next. This person could be telling a lie, be mistaken or they could in fact be stating the truth.
The person could say, “So and so told me that the supervisor said that you could take an extra hour.” In this case, you are dealing with third party information, which requires more investigation. In most cases your probable course of action would be to go directly to the supervisor to verify the information. So the question we must ask ourselves before accepting knowledge or information as truth, what authority does this person possess? How knowledgeable are they concerning the subject at hand? Have they or their ideas been tested or proven?
How do you test a recipe? By following the directions! If the recipe doesn’t come out the way it’s suppose to, then something went wrong. Either the recipe was bad or you didn’t follow the directions. Maybe you didn’t quite understand the directions which is why you didn’t follow the directions—you couldn’t—because you didn’t understand them. The purpose or meaning of a thing can only be defined or described by the person who created it. The creator would be the authority on its purpose, its function, and its potential etc… The creator also creates a demo, or a model (image; Col 1:15, Col 3:10), so that you can understand what it’s suppose to do and what it is suppose to look like (1 John 3: 2). Much like a package of seeds. The seeds are inside and the image of what the seed will produce in on the front. Jesus is the image of God and our example of what we are to look like and conduct ourselves.
Why then have we made people the authority? Can a car tell you or describe to you the purpose for which it was created? No. Only the engineer of the car can tell you all of its functions, its potential and its entire purpose. In order for you to completely understand all of its functions and the entire purpose in which that particular car was created, you must be willing to learn and understand all of the intricate details of every aspect of that car to experience the benefit from the engineers creation.
Having this understanding increases the life of the car and saves you time and money. Unfortunately most of us only want to drive the car, not understand the car or the creator’s intent for it; which is why we put the wrong kind of gas in it, forget to change the oil, rotate the tires, change the spark plugs, or take it in for a tune up.
In the Bible, God is presented as the ultimate personal authority and the source for all authority (Dan 4:34-35; 2:21; 7:13, 14; Rom 13:1). God is the Father of all spirits, the Emperor and Creator of the universe. He goes by lots of names, to name a few: Jehovah, El Shaddai, Elohim, and Adonai etc…. His names all have different meanings that describe His character and who He is.
In the Greek language there are two words used for authority: exousia meaning authority and dunamis meaning power. An example of this would be a police officer. His uniform and badge represent authority (exousia). This means he has a legal right to exercise power (dunamis) over the lawless. Should a lawless citizen desire to challenge His exousia he can pull out his dunamis or gun and back up His legal right to exercise authority over the criminal. So not only does God have the legal right to exercise power over His creation He also has the ability to back it up with an innumerable police force of angels.
To clarify, God is not a dictator and does not desire to control man in a negative sense but rather He is also a loving Father that wishes to help us manage and provide for us. God is “The Source”, our “Go to”. That’s if you want to know the truth, if you have a petition, or if you need a miracle. Perhaps there is something you don’t understand. His word overrides all-other-words. His authority is greater than all other authority. So instead of listening to someone with lesser authority, why not go right to the source of all authority and hear what He has to say on everything that pertains to life and godliness. One thing we can always count on with God, there is no guile in Him. We can trust Him to tell us the absolute truth and He always stands by His word. A person who has the truth will and should always point you to the source.
PREVAILING AUTHORITY. It would behoove us to seek our Creator, who is the authority on His creation (Matt 7:29), to teach us, who we are, where we are going and why we are here? There are lies and then there is prevailing truth. The Creator’s ideas, thoughts, knowledge or understanding about His creation would be the prevailing truth.
No other facts will accomplish the Creator’s desire for His creation. If you follow the directions for a lemon meringue pie you will not get a pound cake. So if you want a pound cake you will have to get the recipe for a pound cake. Humans should base their beliefs on prevailing truth rather than opinions, speculations or theories. We must follow God’s recipe on achieving a higher level of consciousness. If you want a sweet life then you must follow the recipe that God provides. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!
So many people desperately want the answers to those three questions we talked about earlier which makes them vulnerable to not only the truth but to lies, perversion, manipulation and deception. Deception keeps us blind to the Creator’s prevailing truths (2 Cor 4: 4). Deception is always based on a small portion of truth. Lies, manipulation and deception all come from one source (John 8:44). That source is the enemy to all mankind. Yes there is a real adversary lurking. He is a spiritual being and he has been around for a very long time which makes him privy to certain things we are not always aware of. He goes by many names. Most know him as Satan. Satan is the Father of lies and he is the source behind stealing, killing and destroying. He is the god of this world and all that is in this world is the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Satan encourages you to go your own way, to become a god without being in right relationship with the Creator God. He desires to manage your life and let you think that you are.
With so many infinite and unknown variables it’s impossible to manage our own life. Satan has his own set of ideas and ways. He is eager to answer life’s many questions for you and give you his method of achieving them through philosophy. Philosophy is the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct; any of three branches, namely natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemology addresses these questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? To what extent is it possible for a given subject or entity to be known? How do we know what we know?
Agnosticism is the view that the true value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable. Fatalism is founded upon 3 principles: 1. Philosophers use this word to refer to the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. Included in this is that man has no power to influence the future or indeed his own actions. 2. That actions are free but nevertheless work toward an inevitable end. 3. That acceptance is appropriate rather than resistance against inevitability. Nihilism or existential Nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value. Moral Nihilism asserts that morality does not inherently exist and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived.
The Metaphysician attempts to clarify the fundamental notions by which people understand the world, e.g. existence, objects, and their properties, space and time, cause and effect and possibility. Satan uses Humanism and other human ideologies to mislead us. Humanism puts humans at the top of the chain. It leaves out the possibility that perhaps there is a God, who created all humans which would clearly put Him at the top of the chain and that He has His own set of interests, values and/or ideas that may or may not contradict with human ideologies. Then there is a recently new ideology known as Surecracy.
Surecracy is a human ideology of Islam thought. Its basis is that man is di-part being as opposed to a tri-part (Christian theology) being; meaning that man has only a mind (intellectual consciousness or thought) and soul (Psycho-moral consciousness) for moral and religious beliefs. When many consider the subject matter of belief to be related to spiritual concepts suggesting that man has a spirit, as well as a mind and soul, this idea is viewed as biased or even wrongfully relating this term to human psycho-moral soul of man. Further explanation of the Surecracy theory is based upon intellectual logic to comprehend its other philosophical points.
From a humanistic perspective that sounds logical but by whose authority do Surecrats base their ideologies on? The bible states that man is a tri-part being in which God is able to communicate to the spirit of man because God Himself is a spirit. So if we were to believe Surecratic ideas, the God of the Holy Bible can not communicate with man because he doesn’t have a spirit though the Bible clearly states the opposite. Well that would suck if that were true because this would prevent man from being able to go straight to the source of creation for anything! According to Surecratic belief, we should not even bother to know or care about God or His will for mankind because it’s impossible for Him to communicate His ideas to man. Which leaves us to interpret God’s will on our own, how dangerous this is as we can certainly see how man interprets the will of Allah.
Only the God’s ideas and ways are superior to all ideology. Satan’s way is a yoke of bondage, destruction and death. So let’s please stop blaming God and everyone else for the bad things that happen. God has given us His truth and the power to overcome this world. The real question to ask is why we allow bad things to happen. The world is filled with Satan’s ideas. He poses himself as an ally to man but his intent is to manipulate and mislead. For if people knew the truth he would lose his self given authority. For he seeks to exalt himself and become the higher power you put your trust in. He is the source of evil. Evil has many forms and shapes. Anything that contradicts the Creator’s truth and will, is evil and opposition to the children of God.
So why is having prevailing truth so important? To make the best decision you could possibly make. Deception is designed to manipulate you into making the wrong choice. Deception robs us of the opportunity to make the best choice. But so does ignorance. That is why the Creator tells us, “Come unto me all ye that labor (toil) and are heavy laden (riddled with questions that cause spiritual anxiety) and I will give you rest (answers) (Matt 11:28-30, Prov 1:20-33)).” Only God’s prevailing truth gives us the power that we truly seek. It’s not enough to get information from someone who claims to be in authority or who has some authority. Prevailing truth comes from the one who has ultimate authority. Unless we know the person who has all authority, we will never know truth or when someone else is lying to us. God is the one who has prevailing truth because He has ultimate authority.
God is trust worthy. We can bank on what He has said. You can count on God to tell you the truth. God doesn’t lie. God doesn’t lie because He can’t lie. We all remember the movie Bruce Almighty, one of my favorite movies. I think it did a very good job depicting some of the character of God. Do you remember the scene when Bruce asked God, how many fingers did he have behind his back? Eventually God said seven and Bruce tried to prove God wrong by whipping his hand from behind his back and there it was plain as day, seven fingers, on one hand I might add. God’s word is His power, His "creative" power. His Word has the ability to bring itself to pass. This makes it impossible for God to speak a lie. Whatever God says, it happens.
Another example would be, if you walked out of your house and there wasn’t a 3 legged dog in your living room and then God says, “There is a 3 legged dog in your living room,” although there wasn’t one in your living room when you left, there would be one after God says it. What ever God says comes to pass. Once He says it, even He can’t stop it from happening. That’s just the way He is.
Satan tells lies because he doesn’t want people to know the truth. If people knew the truth it would prevent Satan from having authority over them. Truth liberates. Truth empowers. This is why it is so important to know what God has said so that no one can deceive us. Every word that God has spoken has been recorded in Heaven. He also had a few of His words recorded in the Bible so that we wouldn’t be deceived or lied to.
THE POWER OF CHOICE. We try to make choices that will make us happy, choices that will bring us fulfillment. Unfortunately we can see the choices we’ve made in life that didn’t turn out quite the way we expected. Some choices bless us and some of them curse us. The power of choice doesn’t lie in what we choose to wear, where we decide to go, or which job to take but rather it is in what we choose to believe. Because what we believe will determine everything else.
We must first decide what we believe concerning the weightier matters of life before we will ever be truly happy with our other choices. So we have got to answer those questions like, where did I come from, where am I going, and why am I here? These answers provide the framework to every decision we will ever make.
We don’t want other people making choices for us because they may or may not have our best interest at heart. That’s why children are so in a hurry to grow up. They then get to make their own choices and decisions. How many of us would rather go back to living under our parents roof and letting them make the choices for us again, especially the hard ones. It would be great if we knew the consequences of our choices before we made them. With choice comes great responsibility. We didn’t always understand why our parents didn’t want us to touch fire. We did what they said until we decided to disobey them. We clearly understood why, after we were burned.
It was clear; our parents understood the consequences though we didn’t at the time. If we had of just obeyed, and trusted them we would not have suffered. We have come to realize that our parents, all though they were not omnipotent or omniscient they had our best interest at heart. At least most of them did, you get the picture. We did learn a lesson, we learn to respect fire.
Even as children, Satan sometimes trick us into believing that our parents are selfish and we are being deprived of something. We believe that for a short time then most of us realize that was far from the truth. Satan is still tricking us into believing we are being deprived. The reason why God gave us parents in the first place was so we could understand that He is a father to us too. In fact, He’s the best father ever.
Just as our parents told us don’t do this or don’t do that, was because they loved us and they didn’t want us to suffer the consequences of bad choices. We need fire, don’t we? We can’t just do away with it just because it burns and devours. Fire has many benefits especially when we learn to respect it and harness it. So to, the bible is filled with dos and don’ts. God’s children have come to understand the importance of obeying their heavenly father. Many of God’s children have learned the hard way, why the don’ts are there.
What if we could guarantee which choices would be the better choices? What if there was a book that would tell us which choices were bad? What if there was someone who could counsel us about every choice we could possibly make? You say, impossible? I beg to differ, there is such a book and there is such a counselor. The Bible is the book and the Holy Spirit is the counselor.
The power of choice doesn’t lie in the ability to make choices but rather in the choices we make. Right choices will bring authority, wealth and influence. Isn’t that what this is all about anyway? Isn’t it a natural inclination to want authority, wealth and influence? You betcha! God created us this way. Our Heavenly Father wants to empower us to make the right choices. “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the Lord thy God and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwel in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob to give them (Deut 30 19, 20).”
God never meant for us to have to choose between good and evil. If you haven’t read the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis from the bible I encourage you to do so. Satan tricked Eve into disobeying God’s command to not eat of the tree of good and evil. Satan perverted her desire to be like God, when in fact she was already like God; she was just too naive to know it. He tricked her into believing that her heavenly father was depriving her of something. It’s impossible for humans to know which choices are good or evil without knowing the entire scheme of things. The number one thing that pleases God is when we trust Him. He created us to have a relationship with Him. If we knew everything, we would have no need of Him. He has ensured Himself a place in our lives by not telling us everything. Another awesome thing about Jehovah-God is that He gives wisdom to all those who ask (James1:5). God’s Wisdom is the nectar that supplies us with the truth that will conform us into His image thus becoming the Sons of God.