A Treasure Hunter!
Finding treasure takes time, coordination, purpose, and persistence
I came to Medium to share treasures. Treasures are of different types, and they come from various places.
I spent a couple of years searching for Forrest Fenn's hidden treasure, but didn't find it. In the first year I made 4 trips to Montana to search in the Yellowstone region where it seemed there were clues to be found from Forrest's poem. I did find treasures though, new friends, adventures in the mountains, and a wife.
Fenn created a poem in which were many hints and supposedly 9 clues to the location of his treasure. The final location has not yet been revealed, so the challenge to understand the poem and it's curious riddle continues to exist. It's a difficult challenge any way you slice it.
The most valuable treasures
The most valuable treasures I have found are from the Bible. It's the most unusual and powerful book in existence, and I'm speaking from my experience, not from theory. You have to read and study the book, and accept that God is the author because there's no other way to put His Word to the test in your life.
That's where the book really counts, in one's life. If you get to know Jesus Christ from the Bible, your life will change because you will be building a relationship with Him. Yes, He alone has the time and the capability to be communicating simultaneously with 5 billion people at once and not ever get anyone confused with anyone else!
You can't put God or the Bible under a microscope or a test tube, but you can read, study, and pray that He will reveal Himself to you in the best and most positive way. He has promised, and He will deliver. His book delivers so many treasures because it deals with the whole spectrum of God's qualities, along with the record of His doings with other humans, prophecy of what He's yet to do, and the assurance from history that His prophecies are accurate and valuable.
My study has led me to discover many parallel stories and teachings, principles of right doing and of Truth, patterns and symbols which contain deep meaning, and all of it is a love story for humanity, from the source who made us. What could be better than having a conversation with our Creator? Then to discover that not only does He want that, He offers that you and I can literally be His children and be Royalty in the greater Universe forever!
Readers on Medium are from all backgrounds. Some are Christian and most are likely skeptics of one sort or another. To all these I can only offer my best effort to share from my own experiences and study in the Bible. I ask daily for God's blessing to help me understand and be able to express the wonders I find in that Bible.
To the many Christians here, I thank you for your stories, your faith, and your belief and love to God. Please enjoy the materials I share here with an eye to understanding our Creator more and more each day. He is truly coming back to this earth and very soon. He's given us this assurance, along with a host of “prophecy” which when understood in the symbolism He used to write it, tells us that He's “even at the door.” Our time to accept his love, and learn how to love Him completely is now. All too soon the prophesied storms of trouble ahead will develop out of the smaller storms we observe today. We need to be completely in God's camp when that time comes for there won't be safety anywhere else.
I know with certainty that God planned and authored that book, the Bible, working through many hundreds of human beings across several thousand years. That's what makes it authentic, reveals it's power, and proves God to be the genuine author and authority. He writes on the clay of our hearts and lives, like He formed us from the clay of this earth in the beginning. In response we become inspired to share from His revealed treasures so that others can join and participate in the value.
How am I so certain? God claims to be all knowing, so it would seem He knows there will be critics who don't trust things they are told, and who can blame them? But there's a difference to God's voice, and that's the key here. You must listen to the Holy Spirit's prompting in your mind and your heart and learn to recognize that specific voice of God which always speaks in harmony with the Bible. You, and all humans have had the experience of hearing His voice at times in our lives. Most have discarded it and ignored it till they hardly remember hearing it, and they don't trust it.
God invites us to “reason” with Him. He connects that invitation to a promise to change things in your life with great improvement if you will cooperate with Him.
Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
As if that wasn't enough, God made sure to embed codes, symbols, patterns, and stories told in parallel many times over. These thread their way through the entire Bible from start to finish. God has created a linked, golden chain of Truth, it is doctrine as God teaches it, as differentiated from the teaching of men which sounds good but isn't, and which differs from the biblical teachings rightly understood.
We can know the understanding of key doctrines because it will agree with these patterns, symbols, and principles. It will be found repeated in many parallel passages and enlarged upon with greater and greater detail. Every key doctrine that is really important is verified throughout these networks of interlocking golden chains of Truth.
Likewise we can recognize doctrines which come from human traditions because while it might seem there is agreement in one place, it will be contradicted in the context or by other statements or patterns elsewhere. We seek to understand Truth as God wants us to know it, and He will help us to gain understanding as we compare scripture with scripture, and dig below the surface reading of the stories.
It is my goal here to story by story, tell of these chains of Truth that crisscross the Bible. I want to share the many parallel stories that repeat the same information, but offer additional details. I want to draw up the patterns that God has given us and show how they fit into His Word in such a way as to verify God's meaning with certainty. After reviewing dozens of these examples, I can only conclude that truly this is God's Word, designed and authored by God because He is all knowing across all of time. He knows who is living today and who is studying His Word. He knows if we search for Truth or only seek things that sound nice.
There does exist an enemy to God, who is also the enemy of humanity too. That enemy seeks the death and destruction of humanity because he wants to destroy anything which God has blessed and built. He is the enemy of God's law and though he offers various glittering treasures to humanity, they are fools gold and glass diamonds intended merely to trap us in error and prevent us from knowing God's Word.
God made sure we have access to His Word, so it's up to us to know and understand the Truth as God intended it. Up to us because we can study His clues, and navigate with His help. In this world we will encounter all sorts of substitutes and deceitful lies which seek to derail us from following God. But God even calls for the atheists and agnostics to get together with Him to reason these things out.
Many atheists ask, “why should I bother?” The answer lies in the experience of finding God and getting acquainted with Him. If I were to deny that you have a mother, what would be your answer? Why, of course you have a mother, because for part of your life you were raised by her (hopefully). If not her, by someone equally loving and caring. But we have no doubt about the existence of our mothers! Someone who knows God has no doubt that He exists and that His Word is Truth. No amount of “science” can trap God or cut off a slice to examine Him under a microscope. But God does reveal Himself very positively if you seek Truth.
The best part of that is that by learning His Truth, we gain the opportunity to live forever and travel freely across the galaxies of the universe, looking, seeing, learning, and gaining understanding of many of God's actions, plans, and most of all about the extent of His love.
The bottom line is that the Bible is a love story, about how much God loves us. He has every aspect of wooing our love that can be imagined, somewhere tucked away with the other many treasures in the Bible.
I hope many of you will return here to read as I continue to write and publish one story at a time, to reveal many of these treasures for you to examine and obtain for your gain. If you're a skeptic, that's fine, at least be entertained as I attempt to share from my experience. None of God's story is theoretical, it's solid. I may discuss many theoretical things along the way because they are useful, interesting, and a part of science. But God's Truth is not subject to the “option” of “it might not exist.” His Truth exists even if we don't understand it.
Science could be described as that body of knowledge which we have gained as we struggled to understand the reality which is all around us. It has often been faulty as we continue to learn and seek deeper answers. God's knowledge is already complete, He knows science and uses it all the time.
Access to heaven doesn't involve a knowledge test, but the knowledge God can provide in the Bible is useful to help us get acquainted with Him, and if you're part of His family, then you're name is on the list in the Book of Life. Knowledge will continue to be learned in heaven for millions of years, but getting to know Jesus as our Creator and Savior is possible today, and it's required for us to obtain Life.
There's only one other option should we turn away from the opportunity for life. Death is the only option available from a human resource angle. It is and has been all around us throughout our history. It's all we can see for our future given the worldly view. God gives us heaven's view so we can know there is a better option. That's the voice of love inviting us upward to join and live with Him forever.
