36. HOW GOD SEE US - THE MIRROR OF OUR SOUL

God Always See Who We Are

We Know Who Truly We Are 

God gave us our own mirror to do that 

- So we can see our soul - 

Only when we are in front of our mirror we can see ourselves. And what we see is how others do.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Yet a book cannot be judged by its cover.

Our eyes are the windows of our souls. When we are happy, our eyes will be beaming and radiating our inner feeling of peace and happiness. When you are sad, one can tell you are because your eyes will show your sadness within so when you are weary or worried as well. And when you are angry, your eyes will be spewing with madness people can easily see.

The mouth can lie but the eyes cannot. Your words and actions would reflects who you really are and you'd be judged. But when you judged you too have already been judged.

The evils in the heart of men easily can be seen through their very eyes. 

People when asking would say to someone, "look at me, or look me in the eyes" for they would want to know if you would be truthful or nice. And they would perceive if you are lying or not for with your shifty eyes they would know outright. 

Yes, deep inside you would know who you are. And that is exactly how God would see you are. 

 Can You See Yourself?

Can one measure or evaluate own soul? 

Yes! God gave us our left hand and right hand. Each hand can do things separately with varying results but if they are used together for the same purpose surely the results are much better and pleasing. And our eyes can lead the hands to accomplish that task. And so with our hearts and minds. There should be oneness in purpose otherwise there will be separations within us.  

At times we would say "am I doing it right?" or perhaps "where did I go wrong?" For us to know the conditions of our souls, we should first examine ourselves. Do we want to go to heaven or to hell? There should only be one answer. But we have an option, to be good or be bad. We can only serve one master, ourselves or God. 

Where are we heading to? Heaven or Hell?

Do we have an option? Yes we do. Do we have a choice? Yes we do. So let's do our own self-evaluation. First let us divide a piece of white blank paper into two columns by drawing a line in the middle from the top to the bottom. You should write in large bold letters 'THINGS I DID WRONG' on top of the first column on the left side of the paper, then on top of the column on the right 'THINGS I DID GOOD'. (e.g. below).

So let's start with the following Seven Capital or Cardinal Sins. You check only the once that applies to you on the left or on the right.

THINGS I DID WRONG	THINGS I DID GOOD
1. Pride (Vanity or ego) 2. Anger 3. List 4. Envy 5. Gluttony 6. Avarice (Greed) 7. Sloth (Laziness)	1. Humility 2. Patience 3. Chastity 4. Meekness and kindness 5. Fasting and abstinence 6. Generosity 7. Diligence

The above is a general example to which you can actually yourself on daily basis. We evaluate ourselves daily. When you have checked the ones on the left then you are not doing the will of God. When you have checked the ones on the right then you are not far from the kingdom of God. 

God equipped us with a conscience plus he gave us the ability of common sense and the gift of free will to do the right thing or the wrong one.

First of all, what is conscience? It is an inner feeling or the voice of our soul viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior. 

"He had a guilty conscience about his desires".  

A lot of times we hear people says "use your common sense." Or "whatever you do just do it right."

Everyday always examine your conscience. Always when you examine your conscience, based it on the Ten Commandments and remember the Sermon of the Mount. 

Did you obey God's Ten Commandments or did you offend God by having offended any of your neighbor. Did you lie? Did you steal or cheat? Did you insult anyone, call him names? Where you so proud that you accuse anyone falsely? And many more....

Understanding the Seven Deadly Sins 

1) Pride: The inordinate love of self — a super-confidence and high esteem in your own abilities also known as vanity. Pride fools you into thinking that you’re the source of your own greatness.

Liking yourself isn't sinful. In fact, it’s healthy and necessary, but when the self-perception no longer conforms to reality, and you begin to think that you’re more important than you actually are, the sin of pride is rearing its ugly head.

Pride is the key to all other sins, because after you believe that you’re more important than you actually are, you compensate for it when others don’t agree with your judgment. You rationalize your behavior and make excuses for lying, cheating, stealing, insulting, ignoring, and such, because no one understands you like you do. In your mind, you’re underestimated by the world.

Humility is the best remedy for pride. Catholicism regards humility as recognizing that talent is really a gift from God.

2) Envy: Resenting another person’s good fortune or joy. Catholicism distinguishes between two kinds of envy:

• Material envy is when you resent others who have more money, talent, strength, beauty, friends, and so on, than you do.
• Spiritual envy is resenting others who progress in holiness, preferring that they stay at or below your level instead of being joyful and happy that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Spiritual envy is far worse and more evil than material envy.

The Church maintains that meekness or kindness can counter envy.

3) Lust: Looking at, imagining, and treating others as mere sex objects to serve your own physical pleasures, rather than as individuals made in the image and likeness of God.

The Catholic Church believes that it’s normal and healthy to be attracted to and to appreciate the opposite sex. That’s not lust, and it’s not considered a sin.

Chastity, the virtue that moderates sexual desire, is the best remedy for lust. Chastity falls under temperance and can help to keep physical pleasure in moderation.

4) Anger: The sudden outburst of emotion — namely hostility — and thoughts about the desire for revenge. You have no control over what angers you, but you do have control over what you do after you become angry. Even if someone does you wrong — robs you, for example — to avoid the sin of anger, you don’t go after the thief yourself, you desire for the police to catch the thief and for a court to sentence her to a fair punishment.

Patience, the virtue that allows you to adapt and endure evil without harboring any destructive feelings, is the best countermeasure for anger.

5) Gluttony: Choosing to over-consume food or alcohol. Enjoying a delightful dinner isn’t sinful, but intentionally overeating to the point where you literally get sick to your stomach is. So, too, having an alcoholic beverage now and then (provided that you don’t suffer from alcoholism) is not sinful in the eyes of the Church. But drinking to the point of drunkenness is.

Legitimate eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, aren’t gluttony. They’re medical conditions that require treatment and care. Gluttony is voluntary and merely requires self-control and moderation.

Periodic fasting, restricting the amount of food you eat, and abstinence, avoiding meat or some favorite food, are the best defenses against gluttony.

6) Greed: The inordinate love of and desire for earthly possessions. Amassing a fortune and trying to accumulate the most stuff is greed, sometimes called avarice. Next to anger, envy, and lust, more crimes have been committed due to greed than any other deadly sin.

Generosity, is the best weapon against greed. Freely giving some of your possessions away, especially to those less fortunate, is considered the perfect antithesis to greed and avarice.

7) Sloth: (sometimes called acedia) is laziness — particularly when it concerns prayer and spiritual life. Sloth is always wanting to rest and relax, with no desire or intention of making a sacrifice or doing something for others. It’s an aversion to work — physical, mental, and spiritual.

The Church says that the evil habit of being inattentive at religious worship services and being careless in fulfilling your religious duties is also a sin of sloth.

Spiritual laziness can only be overcome by practicing the virtue of diligence, which is the habit of keeping focused and paying attention to the work at hand — be it the work of employment or the work of God.

Are you in the right direction?

The Sermon at the Mount

The significance of Jesus' sermon with profound meaning. He was telling us who are blessed.

They are simply stated, but are profound in meaning. They guide. They point. They teach. They show us the values that Christ cares about. These values if followed, can not only bring a believer into a state of peace and happiness, but also right into the Kingdom of God after our journey on this earth is over.
The Latin word for blessed is beatus, from which we get the word beatitude.

The beatitudes are found at Matthew 5: 3-12

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall possess the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

As you read about each of the beatitudes you might look into your own heart and examine your feelings towards them. Are you trying to follow each one of them? I think you will find that you need a rather humble, almost a childlike attitude towards each one of them if you are to be successful in following them. In fact Our Lord mentioned many times about how we needed to become more like children in our attitude and in our thinking towards many of the things in this life. 

Two verses in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew are good examples.

Matthew 18:3 "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 18:4 "Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child, will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

35. WHY PROTESTANT BIBLE HAS ONLY 66 BOOKS?

Why Protestant Bible Missing Seven Books?

Let's examine why the Protestant Bible do not include the Seven Books they call Appropical

The missing 7 books are The Deuterocanonical books: 

1. Baruch, 
2. Judith, 
3. Wisdom, 
4. Ecclesiasticus/Sirach, 
5. 1 Maccabees 
6. 2 Maccabees, and 
7. Tobit. 

These have always been in the Bible. Why did the Jews of 90 A.D. take them out? Why did Protestants in 1530 A.D. follow their lead and also take them out? By what authority did either group censure the Word of God?

For example the book of wisdom says on beginning with Wisdom 2:12 Let us therefore lie in wait for the just, because he is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life. 13 He boasteth that he hath the knowledge of God, and calleth himself the son of God. 14 He is become a censurer of our thoughts. 15 He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for his life is not like other men' s, and his ways are very different. 16 We are esteemed by him as triflers, and he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and he preferreth the latter end of the just, and glorieth that he hath God for his father. 17 Let us see then if his words be true, and let us prove what shall happen to him, and we shall know what his end shall be. 18 For if he be the true son of God, he will defend him, and will deliver him from the hands of his enemies. 19 Let us examine him by outrages and tortures, that we may know his meekness and try his patience. 20 Let us condemn him to a most shameful death: for there shall be respect had unto him by his words. 21 These things they thought, and were deceived: for their own malice blinded them. 22 And they knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for the wages of justice, nor esteemed the honour of holy souls. 23 For God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his own likeness he made him. 24 But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world: 25 And they follow him that are of his side.

Where the Jews jealous of the Christians? Was it envy that caused them to remove and probably destroyed these biblical 7 Old Testament books?

Protestants, Catholics, and most Orthodox agree now that the New Testament should consist at least of the 27 Books (Matthew through Revelation/Apocalypse) that the Catholic Church determined were canonical, but the Protestant Old Testament is lacking 7 entire books, 3 chapters of Daniel and 6 chapters of Esther, leaving them with 66 incomplete books while Catholic Bibles have 73 books. How did this come to be?

Luther wanted to remove the Epistle of James, Esther, Hebrews, Jude and Revelation. 

Calvin and Zwingli also both had problems with the Book of Revelation, the former calling it "unintelligible" and forbidding the pastors in Geneva to interpret it, the latter calling it "unbiblical". 

The Syrian (Nestorian) Church has only 22 books in the New Testament while the Ethiopian Church has 8 "extra." The first edition of the King James Version of the Bible included the "Apocryphal" (ie, Deuterocanonical) Books.

The 7 books removed from Protestant Bibles are known by Catholics as the "Deuterocanonical Books" (as opposed to the "Protocanonical Books" that are not in dispute), and by Protestants as the "Apocrypha."

By the way, "Masoretic texts" refers to translations of the Old Testament made by rabbis between the 6th and 10th centuries; the phrase doesn't refer to ancient texts in the Hebrew language. I mention this because, apparently, some people think that the Masoretic texts are the "original texts" and that, simply because they are in Hebrew, they are superior.

In any case, the Latin Church in no way ignored the post-Temple rabbinical texts. Some Old Testament translations of the canon used by the Latin Church were also based in part on rabbinical translations, for example St. Jerome's 5th c. Latin translation of the Bible called the Vulgate.

Some Protestants claim that the "Apocrypha" (i.e., the Deuterocanonical Books) are not quoted in the New Testament so, therefore, they are not canonical. First, this isn't true; see Relevant Scripture below. Second, going by that standard of proof, we'd have to throw out Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Obadiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah because none of these Old Testament Books are quoted in the New Testament.

Many non-Catholic Christians like to accuse Catholics of "adding" Books to the Bible at the 16th c. Council of Trent. This is absolutely, 100% false. This Council, among other things, simply affirmed the ancient accepted books in the face of Protestant tinkering. How could Luther have relegated the deuterocanonical books to an appendix if they hadn't already been accepted in the first place? The Gutenberg Bible was printed in 1454 -- and it included the deuterocanonical Books. How could the Church have "added" them at the Council of Trent that began 91 years later? I defy any Protestant to find a Bible in existence before 1525 that looked like a modern Protestant Bible! Most Protestant Bibles included the deuterocanonical Books until about 1815, when the British and Foreign Bible Society discontinued the practice! And note that Jews in other parts of the world who weren't around to hear the Council of Jamnia's decision in A.D. 100 include to this day those "extra" 7 books in their canon. Do some research on the canon used by Ethiopian Jewry.

There is debate as to whether the Council of Jamnia actually "closed" the Jewish canon because debate continued among Jews for hundreds of years afterward as to which books should be included or excluded. Even into the 3rd century A.D., controversy surrounded Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ruth, Esther, and others.

The Council of Jamnia?

Now we have to back up a bit: around A.D. 90-100, after the Temple fell, a rabbinical school was formed by Johanan ben Zakkai. The "Council of Jamnia" (also called "Jabneh" or "Javneh") is the name given to the decisions made by this pharisaic school. I repeat: the gathering at Jamnia was a Jewish, not a Christian, "council" consisting of Pharisees some 40 years after the Resurrection of our Lord. At that time, Jews were being scattered, and the very existence of Jewry per the Pharisees' vision of "Jewry" was being threatened. At this time, too, Christianity was growing and threatening that same Jewish identity, resulting in severe persecution of Christians by Jews. In reaction to these things and to the fact that "Nazarenes" (i.e., "Christians", who at that time were overwhelmingly Hebrew) used the Septuagint to proselytize other Jews, Zakkai convened the Jamnian school with the goals of safeguarding Hillel's Oral Law, deciding the Jewish canon (which had theretofore been, and possibly even afterward remained 5, an open canon!), and preventing the disappearance of Jewry into the Diaspora of the Christian and Roman worlds. So, circling their wagons, they threw out the Septuagint that they had endorsed for almost 400 years. Note that at the time of Christ, most Jews spoke Aramaic, Latin (the official language of the area), and/or Greek (the lingua franca at that time), not Hebrew, which was a sacred language used by priests for the Hebrew liturgy. In any case, a new Greek translation was created by Aquila -- but one without the ancient Septuagint's language that proved more difficult for the Jews to defend against when being evangelized by the Christians, the point being that any idea that a book "had" to have been written in Hebrew to be "Biblical" wasn't the issue.

Moving the story along: in other words, the Protestant "Reformers" decided against the canon held dear by the Apostles in favor of a canon determined by Pharisees some 40 years after Jesus rose from the dead -- the same Pharisees who denied the Truths of the entire New Testament, even accusing the "Nazarenes" of stealing Jesus' body from the tomb and lying to the world! (Interestingly, it was Zakkai's successor, Gamaliel, who forced the "Nazarenes" out of the synagogues. Gamaliel also made it obligatory for Jews to pray the "Prayer of Eighteen Petitions," the 12th petition, which is still prayed today, known as the birkat, being "For apostates may there be no hope, and may the Nazarenes and heretics suddenly perish.")

And do you know why the Book of Maccabees was thrown out by the Jewish Council? Because the Council was conducted under the auspices of the Flavian Roman Emperors and they decided that that particuar book, which tells of the Maccabean Revolt, might be inflammatory and incite rebellion by the Jews. So, all those Protestant Bibles are lacking the Book of Maccabees, which speaks clearly of praying for the dead, because a pagan emperor pressured the Pharisees, around 40 years after the Resurrection of Christ, to exclude it. And lest anyone is still tempted to think that it was the "Roman Church" that came up with these books and that they were not written by pre-Christ Jews (an assertion I've actually read at "Messianic" websites), Jews in other parts of the world who didn't get news of the Council of Jamnia's decisions still use those "extra" 7 books to this very day (research the canon used by Ethiopian Jewry).

So why does the Catholic Bible have 73 books, while the Protestant Bible has only 66 books?  Some protestants believe that the Catholic Church added 7 books to the Bible at the Council of Trent in response to Luther’s Reformation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. More on and click here The Bible - 73 or 66 Books?