When Paul Potts sang “Nessun Dorma” in his first audition on Britain’s Got Talent in 2007, it captured the world’s attention, but it wasn’t just because he was a working man who had incandescent talent. It was because it was God’s announcement of the Great Awakening. It is not a stretch to say that because it is how He works. God throws signs into the earth when He is about to do something, and if He uses people for that, they seldom know it. Giacomo Puccini didn’t know what he was composing when he wrote the opera Turandot in the early 1920s before his death, and Paul Potts didn’t know his audition would become the clarion call to begin a generational sea change. “Nessun Dorma” means “No one (be) asleep,” and the climax towards the end of the song is a declaration of the victory that will come at dawn. That is the very zeitgeist that has been developing and gaining momentum to replace lies and darkness since the announcement was made. The dual message of the song is: “Wake up!” (because) “Victory is certainly coming with the dawn!” (It seems significant that President Trump had it sung from the White House balcony during a public event.)
It should be noted that the signs God gives are missed by the majority of people. They are for those who have eyes to see them, but they become memes that embed His message even into the consciousness of those who have yet to see. Of course, not all events or mysterious happenings are signs from God, and it is a mistake to chase after them, but if you have sharp spiritual senses and keep your eyes open you will see them when they come. Trump is a prime example of a sign the sleeping missed. His very name was a signal that the trumpets were sounding in heaven, and that God was on the move to undo His enemies on the earth.
God is about Love. That is what he motivates with. Not fear. The Word of God isn't a test. Its life and the guide to navigating a world that the devil has dominion over for the time being.
God is Love, love casteth out fear and COVERS the multitude of sin. Again, God is love.
Amen for this. So so tired of the idea that the loving God - our Creator - is so mean and petulant and small-minded that He would use fear against us. That He would NEED to use fear against us!
Using fear to control and manipulate people is a human characteristic, one that's been used with great success by religions, media and government. It's the go-to device for every wannabe tyrant that's ever existed.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Desire to chime in on this. The conceptualization that God is sovereign and therefore controls everything is deeply flawed, imo.
Consider a kingdom where there is a sovereign person. Individuals, families, groups etc, in the kingdom STILL have choices, still make decisions and still shape and affect the life and direction of the kingdom.
Consider a family, where the parent (Father, or Father/Mother, etc) is sovereign. The children and other family members still have choices, still make decisions, and still affect the life and journey of that family.
Sovereign means, in its truest sense, to maintain and hold the line of correctness. To uphold the law, and the rights, of those in the realm. Not to control them.
As Creator, God mainstains and upholds the laws by which He created the universe. He keeps those laws and principles in tact, and ensures that all those within the realm he is sovereign to are, eventually held accountable to those laws and principles. But the choices we who are conscious in the universe make, these are NOT decided by God.
What so many fail to truly grasp is the nature of Love. Can you make a marriage of love based on... a test? a demand? a threat? a punishment? No. A relationship of love, i.le. a marriage of love requires mutual commitment, made of the free will of each party, free from coercion.
Why dd God create? In order to manifest and bring into being a true marriage of love. By Who? By Creator and created, by parent and child, between God Himself and humanity, his children. God's children were created in such was that we ourselves are part of God, share in God's essential divine nature, which also includes having the capacity for choice, decision, and commitment, just as God does.
That's what the Word is for: to show to us and teach us HOW to build that relationship (marriage) of love between Him and Us.
The Command in the Garden was NOT a test, NOT a threat, and NOT a predestined result in the sense that Adam and Eve had no choice. They did; because if they didn't, then even when they grew to full maturity as God's children, their unity with God would NOT have been one of love, between parent and child, but between master and servant, or controller and robot.
The commandment in the Garden was guidance given by the responsible parent, and the results of being unfaithful and NOT believing in that commandment, and violating it, were more horrible than God ever wanted to imagine.
The war against evil has taken so, so long because humanity has been given the opportunity again and again and again, to make the RIGHT choice, and reject evil.
Just one note:
I disagree, and would like to offer a different view:
Using fear to control and manipulate people is FALLEN characteristic, of the fallen nature of the fallen angel, inherited by Eve and then Adam when they fell by uniting with the fallen angel willingly, by choice.
Human characteristics are in fact divine characteristics, inherited from our Father. But we are also, sadly, vessels of fallen, corrupted characteristics or nature, that we inherited from the Devil through our ancestors and then us being 'reborn' into the devil's lineage at the Fall.
We are called by our Father to separate out this fallen nature, raise up our true original nature from Him, and through that True Nature achieve full sovereignty over ourselves.
We only think of the baser natures and fallen characteristics as "human" because we have fallen so far as to think we are somehow separate from God. But this is also what God shows us through Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of true and original human nature, without any trace of the fallen nature inherited by our fallen lineages, and this is why we must be 'reborn' through Christ; we must be reborn back to God's lineage, first in spirit, by uniting with Christ's victory on the Cross, and then in the flesh, at the Second Coming.
Beautifully thoughtful.
Don't be foolish enough to deny or ignore the duality of God's nature. Yes, God is love but His love is not ours. If you honestly believe that mere love negates sin and it's consequences, you're in for a bad time.
Love is but one of God's attributes, which include holiness, righteousness, justice, etc.