Domenic Marbaniang

And they took it and struck it with the edge of the sword -- its king, all its cities, and all the people who [were] in it; he left none remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon, but utterly destroyed it and all the people who [were] in it. (Josh 10:37) References to war and killings in the Bible look extremely offensive to modern pacifists. Nevertheless, the God of the Bible Himself engages in war and killings as a way of executing justice and righteousness. Execution of justice involves employment of violent measures. The first human mass annihilation was through the Great Flood through which only Noah and those with him survived. Following that, human government was instituted so that "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed" (Gen.9:6), and a promise was given that the world will never be again destroyed by a global flood. However, the present world is reserved for judgment by fire (2Pet.3:7). Meanwhile, divine justice is locally e...

Zeno and Kant fall in a tradition of philosophers who  recognize the conflict between reason and experience and its bearing on concepts of reality. Zeno's paradoxes and the Kantian antinomies highlight the same. The failure of most acclaimed solutions to these is due to a failure to recognize this fundamental dichotomy which is a problem that connects the topic of perception in both philosophy and psychology. The psychological experience of space and time, for instance, seems to conflict with the conclusions of reason. Those who employ mathematics or variant non-common-sense-hypotheses as solutions end up in asserting either reason or experience as one in favor against the other. Also, while there have been critics who claim to have rebutted Kant's arguments in favor of his antinomies, these rebuttals seem to only have addressed a strawman: the real issue remains untouched. In cases of those who choose one part of the antinomy against the other, the resultant concept of the u...

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Christ's priesthood preceded that of the Levites. Even Levi gave tithes to Melchizedek through Abraham (Heb.7:9-10) He being God incarnated as Man is the only perfect Mediator (1Tim.2:5, Heb.2:9,10,14) The levites could not be permanent because they died, but Jesus lives for ever and has a permanent priesthood (Heb. 7:23-24) The levites had to offer sacrifices for their own sins, but Christ is the sinless and perfect High Priest of God (Heb.7:26-27) The levites served in a man made tabernacle, but He entered into the heavenly one, not made with human hands (Heb.8:5; 9:11) Sacrifices were necessary to purify the copies of heavenly things on earth (tabernacle and instruments), but the heavenly things could only be purified with a better sacrifice, i.e. of Jesus (Heb.9:23) The OT ceremonies were only temporary, till Jesus came (Heb.9:10) The OT ceremonies were only external, but Christ works within us (Heb.9:10) The levites offered blood of animals; but Jesus offered Himself (H...

Published in REVIVE, Nov 2018 “You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matt.6:24) Life is a  bundle of choices. We are confronted daily with choices between good and evil, truth and falsehood, faith and unbelief, the broad way and the narrow way. The choices we make today determine the kind of future we will experience. Among life’s many choices of the day, the one that every believer faces on a more deceptive scale is the choice between serving God or serving mammon. Sadly, many believers do not realize that while they think they are serving God, most of their services are actually being consumed by God’s arch-enemy, mammon. The word “mammon” refers to the idolization of money and wealth to supplant the place of God. While it may be true that “money answers everything” (Eccl.10:19), in the sense that most of our basic requirements can be bought with money, it is false to assume that money is everything. In fact, the Bible tells us that...

We may define volitional memory as the memory of a will or decisive encoding to do an action. Let's suppose: 1. At time x, Oscar has the goal A and decides to reach it by act B 2. At time y, Oscar decides to change the plan and reach A by act C OR, At time y, Oscar decides to change the plan and reach D by act C 3. However, at time z, Oscar only remembers #1 and goes about reaching goal A by act B. Only later does he realize that there was a memory error. This may happen when at time z, Oscar may have another engagement that perhaps eats up the memory space of the most recent time y, and the brain is forced to retrieve elements of time x in order to facilitate action. This is just an hypothesis, though this form of memory loss is a reality. Similarly, 1. At time x, Oscar knows a set of decision things A. 2. At time y, Oscar knows a set of decision things B in addition to set A. 3. At ti me z, Oscar only remembers A. Any ideas?

The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd. (Eccl 12:11) ~All truth is God's truth. Truth always sets free. Truth is consistent and coherent. Truth is not bound to any religion or culture, it is above all of them. Truth is one. It is like the sun that shines over all. The True Shepherd guides us into truth.

When a man seeks his own glory, And his ego stands in between, Then faith can't be his life's story And miracles are never seen. To that man whose heart is meek Faith comes simple as to a child. He fears no failure, his faith's not weak God works through him, be mild or wild. © 2018

The Cross poses a choice: either we are crucified with Him or are the crucifiers of Him. They who turn away, crucify Him afresh. They who are crucified live as crucified. There is the fact of death, there is the act of death. As we have been put to death with Him to live by His Spirit, so we are to put to death the deeds of flesh by the Spirit.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Eccl.12:7 All throughout the book, the preacher reminds us that everything is ephemeral, transitory, and vanishing like a vapor. However, towards the end of the book, at the point where he describes how the strong human gets weaker, ultimately falling to the ground, he mentions that there is one part of man that isn't a vapor after all: the spirit of man. It is certainly foolish to ignore the spirit and focus all attention on things that are intrinsically vaporish and perishing. Jesus asked what would it profit if a man gained the whole world but lost his on soul. Nothing. Therefore, we are reminded to remember our creator in the days of our youth. ..

Take, for instance, the account of the miracle of water into wine in John 2. There are at least three approaches to this: The believer: He believes the miracle happened.. The agnostic: He doesn't know if a miracle happened and would like to know more. The non-believer: He believes miracles are metaphysically impossible. When it comes to the story of creation , there is not even the option of comparing a previous record of water in the pots vs later record of wine. It's like one only has the wine at hand to investigate if it was changed into wine from water a few moments ago, and no record or evidences beyond that. In such case, a naturalist will only attempt to find ways in which the wine came into existence. That is what the evolutionists are doing. Progressive creationists are a problematic intrusion in that they claim to believe in miracles but are unwilling to accept that the water was made wine just a few moments ago. So, they accept all the possible explanations of th...

There are many who join the crowd, There is one who stands apart, And, what force can ever assail That one man against the world! A million-man army upon one man Like a crashing wave may fiercely fall, Some will vanish like sea-side sand But he stands like rock who knows his call. Do you know your sacred call ?

Excerpt from Epistemics of Divine Reality (AAHE Thesis 2007, Google 2009, Lulu 2011) The Advaitin Search for Unity in Diversity Advaita philosophy is deeply religious and epistemologically based. The chief problem is ignorance and the way to ultimate liberation is by realization of Truth. Advaita means non-dual and refers to the doctrine that reality is ultimately non-dual in nature and all plurality and diversity manifest in nature is only illusory. Liberation consists in the dissolution of the knower-known duality. To quote from the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad: Because when there is duality, as it were, then one smells something, one sees something, one hears something, one speaks something, one thinks something, one knows something. (But) when to the knower of Brahman everything has become the Self, then what should one smell and through what, what should one see and through what, what should one hear and through what, what should one speak and through what, what should one thi...