2 Thus saith Yahweh, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

The signs of the astronomical heavens have no terrors or tokens for those who submit to‭ ‬Jer.‭ x. ‬2.‭

...What can man know of the immeasurable universe,‭ ‬or the objects of it nearest to him‭? ‬He can know a little,‭ ‬but his knowledge‭—(‬dressed up in imposing technology‭)—‬is apt to seem great when it is small,‭ ‬and accurate when it is mostly a cloud of inference and speculation.‭

Intellectually,‭ ‬he goes off in a balloon till death brings him to the ground.‭ ‬If a man know God,‭ ‬he will know all His works by and bye.‭ ‬The little time and sense he has now is best bestowed in getting and utilising the knowledge which will prove the key of all knowledge and the secret of all wealth and means of all well-being and joy.‭

It is sometimes said:‭ "‬Can't he get the other as well‭?" ‬Answer:‭ ‬He can get a little.‭ ‬If he set himself to get much,‭ ‬he will neglect the knowledge of God,‭ ‬as revealed in the Scriptures‭ (‬and there is no other knowledge,‭ ‬but merely inference‭)‬.‭ ‬Experience shows this to be the case,‭ ‬as best proved by the question:‭ "‬Where is the great man of science who is on terms of ardent and enlightened loyality with him who said,‭

‭'‬This is eternal life,‭ ‬that they might know Thee,‭ ‬the only true God,‭ ‬and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent‭?'"

So little does human knowledge tend in this direction,‭ ‬that enthusiasm for Christ is regarded by all scientific men as an amiable weakness,‭ ‬bordering on mental disorder.‭ ‬Get as much knowledge as you can,‭ ‬my aspiring friend‭; ‬but remember this,‭ ‬there is a knowledge that is a mere feather in the cap at which mortal gawks may open their eyes,‭ ‬but which is of no value to you,‭ ‬and which you may pay all too dear for if it lead you to neglect the counsel of the Holy One of Israel.

The Christadelphian, Sept 1887

The Political Aerial, and the Signs thereof

He "whom Yahweh hath made both Lord and Anointed," or Christ, when executing the work of preaching "the gospel of the kingdom to the poor," upbraided the clergy of his day for their stupidity in not being able to discern "The Signs of the Times." They desired him that he would show them a sign from the heaven; upon which he exclaimed,

"Oh! ye hypocrites, ye know how to discern the face of the heaven, but the signs of the times ye are not able!"

Like the pagans, they sought an omen in the sky—an eclipse, a shooting star, a darkening, or something of the sort. They demanded this upon the principle that Yahweh's signs were in the constellations of the physical universe. True, it is written that God said,

"Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and between the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years."

Every astronomer, and navigator, agriculturist, and business man, knows practically the meaning of this. The use of them for these purposes of life, however, never suggests to them any thing connected with the things of the Kingdom of God, and of the name of Jesus Christ. They who are instructed in these things, would as soon look for their signs (and they have their signs) in a coal pit, where darkness may be felt, as expect to find them in the firmament, or atmosphere, that surrounds our globe.

The signs of the Son of man are not there; and as Jesus told the clerical hypocrites of his day, they who look for them in that direction are "a wicked and adulterous generation," of whose doctrinal leaven men should diligently beware. The heathen, and all whose principles are heathenish, look for signs in the sky as indications of the coming of the Son of man, of an approaching conflagration of the earth, and of a destruction of the world of nations!

"Christian Philosophers (!) are deeply embued with this folly; so that a comet of unusual length and brilliancy of tail will set them all agog for a collision, a shivering of the earth to fragments, and a fiery combustion of the rubbish!

And if the seducing spirits or demoniacs, as Paul appropiately styles teachers of this class, who profess and are generally accounted to be the wise, have such notions, what marvel that the people who have blindly surrendered themselves to their direction, should abandon themselves to the same foolishness.

Children are imbeciles, where men are fools; and they are fools, says Jesus, "who believe not all that the prophets have spoken;" for they have uttered the words of God.

Now, concerning signs in the sky, Yahweh hath commanded his people not to trouble themselves about them. In Jerem. 10:2,

"Thus saith Yahweh, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of the heavens; for the heathen are dismayed at them; for the customs of the people are vain."

An eclipse was enough to postpone an expedition, and to throw an army of veteran idolaters into a panic. ...When the children of Antichrist go stargazing for the signs of God, it is proof positive to all enlightened in the Scriptures, that they are ignorant of the principles of the oracles of truth.

No one "taught of God," looks for his signs among the Pleiades, Orion, Arcturus, and his bands. It is not in the signs and constellations of the universe; but in the sun, moon, and stars of the heavens politic, that he has placed his signs.

And this is both rational and scriptural. It is rational, that the signs of a great political revolution should be manifested in the political heavens. The coming of the Son of man is a great political event, and the necessary occasion of a complete overthrow of the existing constitution of the world. If he were merely coming to lead forth his chosen from their graves, and to fly away with them to a transkyanian country, no disturbance of things political need ensue; and no signs political would be seen.

But the resurrection of the saints is only an incident, though an indispensable incident, indeed, of the situation formed. The Son of man comes to settle the celebrated "Eastern Question," which becomes a knot too difficult for the horns of the Gentiles to untie; and which their swords even are not sharp enough to sever.

... He comes to expel the Gentiles out of the country covenanted to Abraham and his Seed; and to set up there a kingdom, that in the hands of its rulers shall subdue Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, in short, all the kingdoms and empires, republics and principalities of the habitable; and overrule them, in all the departments of their affairs, to the glory of the God of heaven, and the benefit of the world.

Such an apocalypse, or revelation, of the Son of man, is therefore a grand political phenomenon; and as its manifestation is made consequent upon the formation of a special and well-defined situation of the political heavens and earth, the signs given of the times of this notable crisis are not in Ursa Major, or Orion's Belt, or over the land of Puritan fanaticism, but in the Political Aerial of the European World

—a world that has its sun, moon, stars, air, earth, mountains, hills, fountains, rivers, and sea; with thunders, lightnings, earthquakes, hailstorms, and tempests; trees, grass, vines, wild beasts, and so forth.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Nov 1860

16 The portion of Jacob is not like them: for he is the former of all things; and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: Yahweh of hosts is his name.

Of Deity Before Manifestation in Flesh

The apostle who had the honour of receiving the Apocalypse for transmission to the servants of the Deity, has called our attention to the consideration of the fountain and origin of life and power in what is commonly called the gospel according to John. He there points us to a certain commencement, and saith,

"In the beginning was ho Logos, and the Logos was with the Theos, and Theos was the Logos."

In the Common Version this reads, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." We may see from this the propriety of God styling himself "the First," "the Beginning," and "He who is and who was." He was from the beginning, whether that beginning be referred to the creation narrated by Moses, or a remoter beginning before ever the earth was; and none but a fool, the Spirit saith, would affirm that God is not.

Though John introduces two words into the text, he is careful to inform us that they are not representative of two Gods contemporary with the beginning, but of one only; for he expressly says that "Theos was the Logos."

In this text, then, there is ONE DEITY, and he is styled THE LOGOS. This word signifies, "the outward form by which the inward thought is expressed and made known; also, the inward thought or reason itself. So that the word comprehends both the ideas of reason and speech." Hence, by John styling Him the Logos, it was equivalent to affirming that he was a reasoner and a revelator: or, as Daniel declared to Nebuchadnezzar, that

"the Elahh in the heavens revealed secrets," even "the deep and secret things."

But was the Deity reason and speech only? In other words, an abstraction independent of substance; or, as some affirm, "without body or parts"? To preserve us from such a supposition, John informs us that "the Logos was with the Theos," Here was companionship and identity -

"the Logos was with the Theos, and Theos was the Logos."

Never was there a conceivable point of time, or eternity, when the one existed without the other.

"Yahweh possessed me," saith the Logos, "in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from olahm (the hidden period) from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the open places, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.

When he prepared the heavens I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the deep; when he established the clouds above; when he strengthened the fountains of the deep; when he gave to the sea his decree that the water should not pass his commandment; when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him as one brought up with him (the Logos was with the Theos): and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights with the sons of men" (Prov. 8:22).

No Logos, then there would be no Theos; and without Theos, the Logos could have no existence. This may be illustrated by the relation of reason, or intelligence and speech, to brain, as affirmed in the proposition, No brain, -- no thought, reason, nor intelligence. Call the brain Theos; and thought, reason, and understanding intelligently expressed, Logos; and the relation and dependence of Theos and Logos, in John's use of the terms, may readily be conceived.

Brain-flesh is substance, or the hypostasis, that underlies thought; so Theos is substance which constitutes the substratum of Logos. Theos is the substance called Spirit; as it is written, "Theos is Spirit;" and he who uttered these words is declared to be himself both substance and spirit.

Eureka 1.2.1.

Of Deity Before Manifestation in Flesh

But why is the Divine Substance called Theos? It is a name taken by the Septuagint translators from the heathen; and from them appropriated by the apostles, who wrote in Greek. The derivations proposed of the word are various. The most probable seems to be that which deduces it from the verb, Hebrew to place, appoint, constitute, ordain.

Phurnutus the Stoic, who wrote in the reign of Nero, says,

"It is probable that (the gods) were so called from Hebrew, position, or placing - for the ancients took those for gods or theoi whom they found to move in a certain regular and constant manner, thinking them the causes of the changes in the air, and of the conservation of the universe; these then are the theoi or gods, which are the disposers (Hebrew) and formers of all things."

And long before Phurnutus, Herodotus had written that the Pelasgi, the ancient inhabitants of Greece,

"called them theoi, because the gods had disposed or placed in order all things and all countries."

Theos, then, in the singular, may reasonably be supposed to have been adopted by the sacred writers of the New Testament, as an appropriate designation for the Divine Substance, as the disposer and "former of all things;" especially as he claims to be so in Jer. 10:16. With a softer pronunciation, that is, by changing th into d, and o into u, the Romans borrowed this word from the Greeks, and called it Deus, from which we derive our word Deity.

In my translation I have used this word wherever Theos occurs in the original, except in two places in which the word "God" will be found for the sake of the metre (ch. 4:9, 10).

Deity, then, declares the Divine Substance to be the Disposer and Former of all things; a truth which the Spirit in the scriptures is careful to place prominently before the minds of men. A few instances will show this.

"This people (Israel) I formed for myself. I am Yahweh that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens ALONE; that spreadeth abroad the earth by MYSELF. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I, Yahweh, do all these things. I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.

Thus saith Yahweh, He the Elohim that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, he created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I, Yahweh; and none else" (Isaiah 43:21; 45:7,12,18).

He is truly "the Former of all things," alone and by himself; hence his title of THE DEITY, which suggests this great truth to all who are acquainted with him.

As to the Anglo-Saxon word "God," it is a term that may be applied to any one of goodness and authority without profanity. God is a contraction of the word Good. Hence, God signifies the Good One; and was perhaps suggested to our ancestors by the saying of Jesus, that "there is none good but the Theos," or Deity. But the Deity has not chosen to designate himself by this term. The idea of goodness is not contained in the word Theos; and therefore I do not use it as its representative.

And here it may be remarked that the seventy Israelites who translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek for the king of Egypt, used the word Theos as equivalent for Hebrew Ail, and Hebrew Elohim; the first a noun singular; and the last, plural. By so doing, the true import of a multitude of passages was obscured. This defect of the Septuagint has been transferred to the English Version by rendering them indiscriminately God, which does not at all express the signification of the Hebrew terms.

Theos comes nearer to these than God; for a being might be good, but far from mighty for the formation of all things; but he could not be Theos, the Disposer and Former of all things, without being AIL in the almightiest sense of the word. The Seventy, however, erred in not respecting the Hebrew distinction of singular and plural. In adopting Theos for Ail, they ought to have written theoi for Elohim in the plural. But they did this evil that good might come; at least, so it is said.

"The Seventy," says Parkhurst,

"have constantly (very few passages excepted) translated the plural name elohim, when used for the true God, by the singular Theos, never by the plural, theoi. In so doing one may at first sight think them blamable.

But let it be considered that, at the time the Septuagint translation was made, the Greek idolatry was the fashionable superstition, especially in Egypt under the Ptolemys, and that, according to this, their gods were regarded as Demons, that is, intelligent beings totally separate and distinct from each other; and that consequently, had the Greek translators rendered the name Elohim by the plural Theoi, they would thereby have given the grecizing heathen an idea of the true God, inconsistent with the Unity of the Divine Essence, and conformable to their own polytheistic notions; whereas, by translating it Theos in the singular, they inculcated the grand point (with the heathen, I mean) of God's unity, and at the same time did not deny a plurality of agents or persons in the Divine Nature; since the Greeks called the whole substance of their God the Heavens, in the singular, as well as in the plural."

Eureka 1.2.1.

23 O Yahweh, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

Man, by nature, is out of the way of understanding. His inclinations and predelections are sinwards. Apart from divine guidance the mind of man inevitably works in a way baneful to himself and displeasing to God.

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."

Man is a strange phenomenon. Though wonderful in his construction, and endowed with high moral faculties, he is the cause of all the evil that obtains. God made man upright, but he has "sought out many inventions." Through rebellion at the outset of his career he became mentally and physically deranged, and alienated from divine favour and intercourse.

In his present condition the scriptures define him as unclean, unsanctified, unjustified, unholy, dead in sins, as without

"hope, and without God in the world" (1 Corinthians 6:11; Ephesians 2:5–12.)

And in this condition he must remain unless he avail himself of God's loving and merciful means of reconciliation, viz., union with Christ, the appointed

"fountain" for "sin and for uncleanness" (Acts 2:38, 39; Eph. 2:13; Gal. 3:26, 29).

There is no middle ground, a man must either be in Christ or without Christ. If the latter, then his position is that described in the terms just quoted—a position to which the statement (uninspired, but true) applies,

"God heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth his will, him he heareth."

Bro AT Jannaway - Worship in relation to the Alien