Imagine

“And Jehovah saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all day long.”  Genesis 6:5

 

Lennon spoke of imagination:

 

“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…

 

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You, ..

 

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

 

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world… You, ..

 

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”

 

Yet all men can do is only imagine such a scenario, where they are free from the supposed ‘burden’s’ of God.  Where men are free from having to do homage to their Creator, where they are not responsible for their actions, where there is truly no accountability, nor punishment for their sins.  The entire world has jumped aboard imagining that the Most High does not exist or that He is not who He says He is.  Yet as Solomon said, this is nothing new.

 

“That which has been is that which shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.  Is there a thing of which it may be said, See, this is new? It has already been in the days of antiquity, which were before us.”  Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

 

The opening verse says, “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all day long”.  That was prior to the Flood that wiped out all of civilization, except Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, eight people total.  If anyone considers otherwise, their heart is imagining a different history of the earth than what God proclaims. 

 

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. ”  1st Peter 3:18-20

 

If a man ponders on the ways of the world, then it could be considered that indeed there is much imagination in the world today.  This imagination is evil and abominable to God Almighty. 

 

imagination, n.

 

1.) The power or faculty of the mind by which it conceives and forms ideas of things communicated to it by the organs of sense.  Imagination, in its proper sense according to Reid, signifies a lively conception of objects of sight.  It is distinguished from conception as a part from a whole.  “The business of conception,” say Steward, “is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived.  But we have also a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones so as to form new wholes of our own creation.  I shall employ the word imagination to express this power.  I apprehend this to be the proper sense of the word, if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter.”   Imagination might be defined as the will working on the materials of memory; not satisfied with following the order prescribed by nature or suggested by accident, it selects the parts of different conceptions or objects of memory to form a whole more pleasing, more elevated, more sublime, more terrible or more awful than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature.  The term is often employed in a narrow acceptation as synonymous with fancy, which properly is only a lower or slighter development of the imaginative faculty.  In its widest signification, however, imagination is coextensive with invention, furnishing the writer with whatever is most happy and appropriate in language, or vivid and forcible in thought.

 

The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of them at its pleasure, is called its faculty of imagination.  — Taylor

 

2.) Imagine in the mind; conception; idea.

 

Sometimes despair darkens all her imaginations.  — Sir P. Sidney

 

3.) Contrivance; scheme; device; plot.

 

Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.  Lam. i.i.i. 60.

 

4.) An unsolid or fanciful opinion.

 

We are apt to think that space, in itself, is actually boundless; to which imagination the idea of space of itself leads us.  — Locke

 

Webster’s Universities Dictionary of the English Language, Webster, 1942

 

There are false churches all over that imagine to follow God, but instead follow the workings of Satan.  The Roman Catholic church pretends to serve God Almighty and even the Pope pretends to be the vicar of Christ.  The Mormons pretend to have answers and have imagined an entire new book they consider to be part of the Holy Scriptures.  The Jehovah Witnesses imagine that they are the only true believers.  Then you have countless other churches whom imagine Jesus is something that He is not.  These churches imagine that they are serving Jesus, when in reality they are an adversary to the Truth and the true Church of Jesus Christ. 

 

Nowadays people pretend to be women, when they are men and men when they are women.  The imagination of men pretends that it is alright to be with the same sex, they pretend that God didn’t create a man and woman to be united into one.  Even many so-called churches pretend that God allows a sodomite preacher to proclaim His holy Word.

 

“For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is clearly recognized by them, for God has revealed it to them.  For ever since the creation of the world the unseen things of Him are clearly perceived, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they know God, they do not glorify Him as God, nor are thankful, but become vain in their reasonings, and their stupid hearts are darkened.  Professing to be wise, they become foolish, and change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.  Therefore God also gives them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who change the truth of God into the lie, and fear and serve the created things more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.  For this reason God gives them up to vile passions. For even their women change the natural use for what is contrary to nature.  Likewise also the men, abandoning the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men with men performing what is shameful, and receiving the retribution within themselves, the penalty which is fitting for their error.  And even as they do not like to have God in their full true knowledge, God gives them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with every unrighteousness, sexual perversion, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, depravity; whisperers, defamers, haters of God, insolent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, without natural affection, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do them, but also approve of those who practice them.”  Romans 1:18-32

 

“But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.”  Mark 10:6-8

 

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be led astray. Neither prostitutes, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”  1st Corinthians 6:9-10

 

There are indeed those who imagine a world without borders, I’ve met them on occasion.  They pretend that God didn’t setup nations and command them to remain within their borders.  This ideology of the imagination of men’s heart thinks that somehow everyone will be able to get along in one happy hodge-podge of society.  They declare peace, when there is no peace. 

 

“When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”  Deuteronomy 32:8

 

“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell everywhere on the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings”…  Acts 17:26

 

” Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, Peace! when there is no peace”…  Ezekiel 13:10a

 

Lennon did get it right when he declared Hell below.  Man can imagine that there is not a Hell beneath the earth somewhere and he can imagine that there is “only sky” above us, but it is just the evilness of man’s heart, the wicked imaginations that proceed forth.  For indeed there is a Hell below and a Heaven above. 

 

“The wicked shall be turned away into Sheol, all the nations that forget God.”  Psalms 9:17

 

“The way of life is upward to the wise, so that he may turn away from Sheol below.”  Proverbs 15:24

 

“Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the recesses of the Pit. ”  Isaiah 14:15

 

“ No one has ascended to Heaven but He who came down from Heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in Heaven.”  John 3:13

 

The atheist imagines that there is no God and the evolutionist imagine that there is no Creator. 

 

“The fool has said in his heart, There is no God! They are corrupt; they have done abominable works, there is no one who does good.  Jehovah looked down from Heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there were any who understood and sought God.  They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, no, not one.”  Psalms 14:1-3

 

What is required, what is the way it is supposed to be.  What God proclaimed to man through His Word is what He said, simple as that.  There is indeed a God, the Creator, the Most High who sent His Son, Jesus Christ into the world that man might be Saved through His Blood.  The world, the stars, the moon, the sun, the planets, the mountains, oceans, plains, woodlands, marshes, lakes, rivers, streams, these things were created by the Creator.  Only someone not wanting the Truth, rejecting God in their heart would esteem to imagine otherwise. 

 

Then you have countless people who do believe in God, yet they devise religions that are contrary to His Word.  Why?  So that they can imagine that they can still do what they want without the consequences of going to Hell, without truly rectifying themselves through believing into Christ, repenting of their sins, they go on in the hardness of their hearts and the wickedness of their imaginations serving not Jesus, our Lord and Savior, but a false Jesus that is not the Jesus of the bible. 

 

Stop pretending that there is no God, stop pretending to serve a false Christ.  Understand that the line will soon be drawn in the sand and those who are truly Saved will be home with the Lord and those whose hearts are full of imagination will find themselves LEFT BEHIND! 

 

You can imagine there is no God, you can imagine that the Flood was a fairy tale, you can imagine that Jesus was just a good ‘prophet’ but not really the Son of God, you can imagine that Jesus is something that He is not, you can imagine that the Holy Scriptures say things that they do not, you can imagine that Jonah and the whale is a fictional story or that Job did not exist, you can imagine that Samson was not a real person, you can imagine that the book of Revelation is simply allegory and nothing else, you can imagine that there is a different way to Heaven rather than the Way laid out in the Word, you can imagine all of these things and indeed endless more, but I imagine that you will have nothing but sorrow and regret as you stand before the holy and Almighty God when He justly judges you and casts you into the Lake of Fire for eternity. 

 

“And they said, There is no hope; but we will walk after our own thoughts, and we will each one do according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.”  Jeremiah 18:12

 

“They speak to those who despise Me, promising, Jehovah has said, You shall have peace! And they say to everyone who walks after the stubbornness of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you!  For who has stood in the counsel of Jehovah, and has perceived and heard His Word? Who has paid attention to His Word and heeded it?  Behold, a tempest from Jehovah has gone forth in fury, a whirling tempest. It shall whirl upon the head of the wicked.  The anger of Jehovah shall not turn back, until He has executed and until He has fulfilled the purposes of His heart; in the latter days you shall diligently consider it with understanding.”  Jeremiah 23:17-20

 

There, in the Lake of Fire, there will be no more imagination, it will be real.  There will be no imagining of hope or a good afterlife or of there not being a God who says what He means.  What there will be is weeping and gnashing of teeth as generations and generations of mankind whose wicked imaginations in their hearts lead them straight away from God and on the wide path, straight to Hell. 

 

“The wicked shall see and be indignant; he shall gnash his teeth and melt away; the desire of the wicked shall perish.”  Psalms 112:10

 

The time to stop imagining something that is not and realize that there is still time, to stop pretending, to stop ignoring, to stop what you are doing and seek Jehovah while He may still be found is now!  Stop playing around with your soul, that God created and consider His mercy in sending His Son Jesus and providing Salvation to all who will receive it. 

 

Stop imagining falsehood!

 

Amen!