1. For example, most translate Heb. 12:5b as: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him” (ESV). But the Greek word translated as “discipline” here is actually the noun παιδεία, which refers to far more than mere “discipline.” The word παιδεία refers to all the education and nurturing required to prepare a child for life. It usually involved personal tutoring, training in the right application of all the principles one was taught, discipline leading to a correct understanding of a pure kind of love with acceptable behaviour, proper nutrition and care for one's body and mind, as well as all else necessary for living a good life. In other words, the word παιδεία describes exactly what God Himself promised to give all His people through His New Covenant salvation in Jesus Christ. So a better translation might be something like this: “My son, do not disregard the teaching and training of the Lord, nor drop out upon His admonishment.”
2. God told us, in Exodus 3:14, that His name is Yahweh, meaning “I AM.” Considering the context of giving this name to His people in Egypt, in a pagan land with a Pharaoh thinking he is a god, and with many other false gods, the main aspect of this name is to indicate that only He is God. He is the one and only Creator of all. He is the God ruling the life-giving Nile. He is the only one who can grant true wisdom and prophecy. He is the only God who sends plagues, causes fertility, brings the light of the sun, and so on. For Israel might be negatively influenced by the Egyptians who thought gods ruled the Nile, the Pharaoh controlled many such things as a god, and frog gods gave men prophecies. However, the name Yahweh also indicates that God is who He is. It means God was not invented by men, with attributes invented by men, like the gods of Egypt. Rather, God is who He chooses to be, and He always chooses to be the same. Churches have invented thousands of gods too, each one differing from the other, each with different attributes and different ways, each one opposing all the other gods preached in all the other churches. For example, some churches say “God is love,” that His main attribute is love. Then each goes on to define this love, through their teachings and actions, each in a completely different way. So each church is actually defining different attributes of love and, thus, different attributes of a god. Each church creates a different god with different attributes. Yet all these churches call each of these man-made gods by the name of the real God, and by the name of “Jesus.” Clearly, the real God is not all these different gods. God is not something men want Him to be, not something men falsely teach that God is. God is who He is, and who He says He is in His Word, when His Word is interpreted in the way God Himself intended His Word to be interpreted, by His Spirit—not interpreted by tricks of man's intellect. God alone can teach us what He is, what His attributes are, what His ways are, and all truth about Himself. And God does this through our close, constant, personal relationship with Him. Just like anyone else, we cannot truly get to know and love the real God by hearing second-hand information about Him, especially since much of that information is false. Rather, we can only truly get to know and truly love the real God by hearing Him personally, by going to Him directly, by frequently conversing with Him and hearing the way He answers all questions and responds to all things.
3. I cannot recommend books about God's attributes, since there are so many false teachings in them. But, if you want to read some, perhaps, one of the better ones to begin with is A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy, since some of what Tozer writes does come straight from his heart, as Jesus taught his spirit. Tozer also wrote a two volume set called The Attributes of God, which also makes some good points. But, although Tozer learned some truth directly from God in his heart, he also taught many doctrines of men. Another fairly good book is Knowing God by J.I. Packer. But the same applies to him. So these books, and others, may help those with some discernment, if they question everything through a prayerful and diligent study of God's Word. Some authors have elect spirits and have learned some things directly from Jesus, although they also do indeed teach many “traditions of men,” the same kinds of false doctrines that Jesus condemned the Pharisees for teaching, doctrines that nullify or alter teachings from God Himself. And I wonder why they feel the need to parrot the teachings from Platonists. For instance, to the prophets and apostles, God was “one Spirit” and three Persons, all at the same time—because God created time, the first day, and was not bound by the limitations of time, so He could be any number of Persons at the same time. But most books simply repeat the same old phrase, saying God is “one substance” but “three subsistences,” as though they knew what this meant. It doesn't mean anything. It is simply Turtullian’s Platonic answer to Aristoteleans, a cold and meaningless expression to appease those who believe in a Platonic kind of god. For those who truly know God, they understand how He relates to our human spirits as three personal Persons, but as one God who is one Spirit—never as three mere “subsistences” made of “one substance.” God's Word tells us “there is ... one Spirit,” and identifies this Spirit as the “one God and Father of all ... in you all” (Eph. 4:4-6). Jesus also identified this Spirit of God in us as the “Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Mat. 10:20). Then Scriptures declare that this same Spirit is Jesus' Spirit. For God sent the “Spirit of His Son into” our hearts (Gal. 4:6). God's Word even calls this Spirit dwelling in us both the “Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ,” at the same time, in the same verse (Rom. 8:9). Also look at how Peter said the revelations of God were given to the prophets by the “Spirit of Christ” (in I Pet. 10-12), but then also called this same Spirit the “Holy Spirit” (in II Pet. 1:21). So we conclude that the one and only Creator God is the Holy Spirit in us, who is also the Spirit of our Father and the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Since God is a Spirit, He is but one Spirit, but relates to us personally as our Father, Brother and Counsellor all at the same time, so He may fulfil the needs of our infantile spirits for a Father, Brother and Counsellor. Our spirits need to personally talk with our Father, but also with our Friend and Brother and High Priest, as well as with our personal Counsellor. Teaching about a Platonic kind of “substance” or “subsistence” does nothing for us and is not what Jesus taught.
4. Some may ask why I would say that humanism has been the dominant religion in most parts of the West for more than two millenniums, and is currently the dominant religion of the entire world. Why would I say that Christianity has never been a major religion in the West or in any part of the world? Well, as a religion, humanism worships man. That is, God defines worship as granting one's highest esteem to an entity, making it one's highest priority to serve that entity, allowing it to hold the primary focus of one's thoughts, letting it control one's decisions, actions and destiny. Humanism places more faith in man than in any other entity. It esteems man as man's lord, as the god who determines a man’s destiny, even the destinies of nations. Above all, most humanists seem to worship self as their principal god. Since they serve man as their principal god, they allow man to make all decisions, to create and enforce all laws and principles that govern their lives. But God alone is able to create all laws and principles for mankind to live by. For, in the end, literally all laws have a spiritual foundation. All are based on some principle of just love for one’s fellow man, and all just love is from the spirit alone, never from the flesh. So, although laws govern behaviours of the flesh, they are ultimately all spiritual. Not one law governing man’s behaviour can be based on material considerations alone, since even the principle that life itself is valuable is a totally spiritual concept. Thus, we cannot even make traffic laws to preserve life unless we first decide in our spirits that life is worth preserving. After all, there is no material basis for preserving life. Whether or not matter is found in a living organism, or even exists at all, means nothing to the material world. Only if the material is useful to eternal spirits does it have any real meaning. And, only if it has real meaning can laws be made to preserve it. But the spirits of all men are, at best, extremely immature and unable to fully know and rightly apply real truth. At worst, the spirits of men are outright evil. Therefore, no man can invent laws, but must rely on God to provide us with all laws for all men. Only God's precepts should rule our spirits, as the Lord of our spirits and the Builder of our inner consciences. Then, using the laws He puts inside us, and with prayers for His counsel, we apply those inner laws from God to govern our own lives first. After this, we acknowledge God alone as the Ruler over all men and all creation, serving as His agents, to justly, humbly and equitably apply His right ways for the good of all. Yet, to humanists, any concept of a supernatural god is either entirely eliminated from their thoughts, or else some might allow a man-made concept of some false god to merely supplement their worship of man. Most churches do the latter. Most churches are theistic humanists. They are not secular humanists, but are humanists nonetheless. Even when they claim to believe in a god, man remains their primary object of worship. A secular humanist worships man alone while a theistic humanist worships man as the principal god, but adds a little bit of worship for an invented god or gods that can be manipulated by man. And theistic humanists only want gods they can control through the human will, such as through magic rituals or magic prayers. For, to any humanist, man must remain the principal god ruling over all gods and all decisions in life. Thus, most churches in history have preached doctrines of theistic humanism, seldom the purely theistic doctrines of real Christianity. For a real and biblical Christianity is a true worship of God alone. A real Christian is a priest of God who places all faith in God and has no faith in self, nor faith in any other man or entity. A real Christian trusts God as the only Creator of all laws, as well as the primary Enforcer of principles that govern all lives, certainly the only God who controls and determines all destinies.
5. Middle Platonism was primarily a combination of the doctrines taught by Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, although it also borrowed doctrines from many other sources as well, and had many different sects. The entire foundation of the Roman Catholic church was built upon a muddled version of Middle Platonism and upon the nebulous teachings of Neoplatonism. This corruption began at the end of the first century. Neoplatonism came later, in the third century, and simply adopted the doctrines of Middle Platonism, but systematized them into a religion to supposedly help people “save” themselves. For Neoplatonism was a pagan reaction to the growing religion of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Thus, early “Christianity” influenced Neoplatonism, although Neoplatonism later influenced the false “Christianity” of the Platonic church, which later became the Roman Catholic church. However, even by the beginning of the second century, the church had already entirely abandoned the real Jesus and the apostolic Christianity taught by Jesus, because it adopted a form of Platonism. Thus the real foundation of the Roman Catholic church, and most Protestant churches born out of her, is Middle Platonism, including a host of philosophical and theological teachings by Greco-Roman secular humanists.
6. The sources I am using here are A History of Christian Thought and The Story of Christianity, both by Justo Gonzalez. Another is The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis, a very revealing little book, which talks about the lives, loves, superstitions, beliefs, practices and literature of Medieval times. However, almost all histories of the church and most books about theology also provide a wealth of information about Platonism in the church.
7. People laugh when creationists say the earth has only existed for less than six thousand years. But make no mistake, they do not laugh because there is overwhelming scientific evidence to prove it is millions of years old. In reality, the opposite is true. If you look at literally all the truly scientific and conclusive methods of estimating the age of the earth—many of which can be found on various web sites that argue for the creation theory—they all indicate that the earth is less than 20,000 years old, and very well could be less than 6,000 years old. Only false, unscientific, very-questionable dating methods are used by evolutionists to supposedly “prove” that the earth is millions of years old. You may find information about this in books by (Dr.) Henry Morris and his son, (Dr.) Jonathan Sarfati, (Dr.) Ken Ham and many others. Evolution is a religious doctrine of humanists and they rely entirely upon the radiometric dating methods, which are only able to produce pure fiction, but that fiction supports their blind faith in evolutionary religious doctrines. For instance, according to radiometric dating systems, some fossil tree stumps and limbs seem to have been formed millions of years after the sedimentary rock surrounding them. But, of course, this is utterly impossible, since the rock must have formed by sediment flowing around an existing tree stump, burying it, eventually hardening into rock. Also, radiometric dating systems applied to numerous unlabelled samples of rocks formed within the last 200 hundred years (and some formed within 20 years), were all mistakenly dated at millions of years old. For example, in about the year 2000, radiometric dating systems claimed that unlabelled samples of volcanic rocks formed during the eruption of Mount St. Helens (in 1980) were more than three million years old. Surely such extreme and obvious errors prove the total unreliability of radiometric dating systems. Anyone without totally blind faith in the religion of humanism can clearly see that there is no limit to the margin of error for these dating systems. Yet, how did humanists respond to these embarrassing facts? They simply decided that they would never again test any more unlabelled samples. They would simply outlaw any scientific, double-blind testing of their dating systems so they could continue to propagate their lying propaganda. From then on, everyone had to send them an estimate of approximately how old the sample was, and where it was found. Only then would they allow that sample to be tested by their radiometric dating systems, to “confirm” the date that one had already assumed for the sample. For how could they possibly allow any kind of scientific “double-blind” method to determine the accuracy of their dating systems, since it would expose the ridiculous inaccuracy of their dating systems to the public. And, without the support of their radiometric dating systems, their religious doctrines of evolution would collapse. Why are their radiometric dating systems so unreliable? It is because they merely measure the current amount of radioactive material in any sample, then calculate the sample's age according to how much original radioactive material is assumed to have deteriorated into that residual amount over the centuries. Therefore, they assume they know how much of the original amount of radioactive material existed in a sample at the time of its formation. But how? In almost all cases, they cannot possibly know that. So they simply base all their data on a totally blind and unfounded guess of the original amount of radioactive substance in a sample. Consequently, their calculations of a sample's age are total fiction. Only estimates of the dates of some organic substances formed within a few thousand years can be even remotely close to the truth. For in these more recent organic materials, the original levels of radioactive carbon can be guessed fairly well, since we can assume that the conditions producing radioactive carbon in organic substances were similar to those that exist today. But, even so, conditions currently exist where the levels of radioactive materials are not what they are expected to be in some organic substances produced today. And different atmospheric conditions in past millenniums may have been very different than they are today, in ways that caused much lower levels of radioactive carbon to form in organic substances. And, after a period of a few thousand years, substances can be contaminated or quantities of radioactive carbon can become too small to measure accurately. Thus, radiometric measurements might be slightly useful for perfectly sealed organic substances formed within a few thousand years, but are completely unreliable after that. In fact, radiometric dating systems are even so unreliable for the past three millenniums that most Archaeologists refuse to rely on them for dating anything. Even recent samples bear a wide margin of error, which is why archaeologists do not trust these methods. Then we must realize that all radiometric dating systems are totally useless for dating inorganic samples. For the testers can only make completely unqualified assumptions about the original levels of radioactive substances of any kind in any inorganic samples. Of course, to supposedly verify the accuracy of their guesses, they also measure the amounts of the substances that the radioactive materials become after decaying. So, if radioactive potassium (40K) eventually decays into non- radioactive argon (40Ar), they measure the amounts of both substances in a rock sample. Then they say the amount of non-radioactive material substance (40Ar) existing in the sample proves that their guess about the original quantity of radioactive substance (40K) was correct. But, of course, that is nonsense. For the kinds of substances which radioactive materials decay into are very common (argon, lead, etc.), and the bulk of these non-radioactive substances occur naturally in all samples. Therefore, a completely unknown amount of both radioactive and non-radioactive substances existed in each sample at the moment of its formation, and most of the non-radioactive substances were not formed through radioactive decay, as they like to claim. Consequently, their “proof” of age through radiometric dating systems proves absolutely nothing! The actual amount of the common non-radioactive substances formed by radioactive decay cannot possibly be known, not in the slightest. So all their “proof” is just a hoax, and they make their dating method sound artificially “scientific.” Also, if their radiometric dating systems dated several unlabelled samples from one lava flow that occurred a week ago, they would not only say all these samples were millions of years old, but they would also conclude that each of these samples came from a different lava flow, and that all these various lava flows occurred at different times spanning millions of years—even though all the samples were formed by one lava flow in one day only one week before they were sent to the lab. They would conclude different dates, varied by millions of years, because each sample would have different levels of radioactive and non-radioactive substances in them. So, since evolutionists depend entirely upon the fiction produced by these radiometric dating systems, they have literally zero evidence to prove that the earth is millions of years old. Also, evolutionists not only use totally unreliable data from radiometric dating systems, but they further adjust and “fudge” that data, in very dishonest ways, before they publish their so-called “scientific” findings based on that fictitious data. After all, if they did not practice these dishonest methods, they could only publish a mass of very contradictory, confusing dates derived from their extremely unreliable radiometric dating systems. And these conflicting dates would make any kind of consistent theory of evolution impossible. Meanwhile, all real scientific evidence for the age of the earth proves it to be very young, far less than twenty thousand years old. Consequently, when people laugh at the theory that the earth is only about six thousand years old, it is entirely due to ignorance, because they have been thoroughly duped by the effective marketing of the religious doctrines of humanism, doctrines called the “big bang theory” and “evolution.” Still, most scientists appear so confident about their lies that no one questions them. And others in humanistic institutions like universities dare not express any lack of faith in these entirely religious doctrines of the “big bang” or “evolution,” due to social and political pressure. For humanists have always engaged in the practice of forcing their opinions on others through narrow-minded censorship the overt persecution of their opponents. They have never tolerated real scientific evidence or pure logic, whenever it has opposed their core doctrines. Today, we exist in a similar situation to the time when the majority of humanistic scholars and universities believed that all the planets and all the stars revolved around the earth, when these same humanistic institutions taught the doctrines of Middle Platonism. No one dared to question their humanistic theories, borrowed from the ancient, pagan, Greek and Roman secular humanists. For all the highest ranking experts in the field of education were humanists, who demanded that their humanistic doctrines be accepted as fact. For their ignorant arrogance had to be defended, even through brutal, unjust violence. So, to begin with, it was the secular humanists in Athens, Alexandria and other Roman educational centres who coerced everyone into believing these doctrines. Then the theistic humanists of the church carried on this practice of forcing people to believe their humanistic fiction. And anyone who thought otherwise was jeered at, persecuted, and called an irrational, unscientific, ignorant fool. They even tortured and killed some opponents. Now evolutionists have become the majority through their unscrupulous marketing techniques. So they too jeer at and persecute anyone opposing them, although their current humanistic doctrines are just as irrational as their former humanistic doctrines. Evolution is no more rational than saying the earth stands motionless at the centre of the universe. And some evolutionists in humanistic states, such as Communist countries, still torture and kill their opponents to this day. Even in our “free” nations, humanism is taking over and gradually gaining the power to censor, to suppress freedom of speech and thought, to stifle the truth and oppress those who speak the truth. Yet how can any rational, honest man believe their religious doctrines? Beginning with their doctrine of the “big bang,” how can any logical person believe that a material “cosmic egg,” smaller than a subatomic particle, with “infinite mass,” contained all time and space within it but existed outside of time and space? How could such a particle create the entire universe? I suppose someone thought they were smart when they came up with the idea. But it is not rational at all. Think about it. After someone realized the universe was expanding, he asked himself, “At what point did it begin to expand?” Then this foolish soul truncated his thought process and arbitrarily concluded that the universe must have begun to expand from a very small point the size of a subatomic particle. Why? There was no logical reason to stop at that arbitrary size. Why did he not say the universe expanded from absolutely nothing, or from an object the size of a grapefruit, or from a sphere the size of our sun, or from any other size or shape of an object containing infinite mass but existing outside of time and space? All suc