THE SIMPLE TRUTH

VOL.1 NO.2 © 2002

INTERNET EDITION

IN THIS ISSUE:

WHAT IS YOUR RELIGION?

COMFORTABLE?

THE GOLDEN RECTANGLE

WHAT IS YOUR RELIGION?
by Phil Rishel

Today I'd like to ask you a question: What is your religion, and where did you get it?

When I was a little boy, I was told that Santa Claus would come at night on Christmas Eve and if I had been a good boy, he would bring me presents. Is that true? I was told that if l would pullout my loose tooth and put it under my pillow. the tooth fairy would leave me a dime. Is that true? I was taught that going door to door trick or treating and dressing up like a witch or a devil was a good thing to do. Is that true?

As the years went by I began to question certain things. I guess the first thing I doubted was that Santa could do all those miracles, flying all over the world in one night with billions of toys, even bicycles, in just one bag. We usually had a big ham at Easter dinner. We had a huge Christmas tree with a giant five-pointed star on top. I never saw my parents pray or go to church, but we had a religion. it was a religion because we did it religiously every year.

We also carved pumpkins, painted eggs and decorated our house with little statues of bunnies at Easter. We would put up Santas and reindeer in December. If you would do just the smallest amount of research, you will see clearly that all these things are religious. They are all ancient forms of idol worship, some hundreds and some even thousands of years old. My religion was very pagan, but I didn't know it. My parents and grandparents did all these things, and the whole town I was raised in did them. So that was my religion.

What's your religion? Is it like mine used to be? Maybe you've found out that Santa Claus isn't real and that bunnies don't lay eggs and that witches don't fly on brooms, but has this changed your religion? Let's just say that a Jew, a Catholic, and a Jehovah's Witness all arrived into the Kingdom of God at once. How would St. Peter accommodate each one?

"Well, hello Mr. Smith. Welcome to the Kingdom of God. Now, what religion are you?" "Well, I'm Catholic." "Fine," says St Peter. "Just go down this hall, and take the third door on the left. The Catholics are having a big Easter ham with all the trimmings."

"Well, hello Mr. Jones. Welcome to the Kingdom of God. Tell me, what religion are you?" "Well, I'm Jewish". "Fine, just go down the hall to the first door or the right. All the Jewish people are having the Passover. They've got lots of matzos and wine."

'Well, hello Mr. Brown. Welcome to the Kingdom of God. Tell me, what religion are you?" 'Well, I'm Jehovah's Witness." "Fine, then just go down the hall to the second door on the right. All the Witnesses are having their memorial service".

And let's just say the next guy was a Jamaican (Rasta Man). "Oh fine" says St. Peter "Fifth door on the right. Everyone in there is smoking gange and praising Jesus."

Is this the way the Kingdom of God will be? Will the Buddhists have their big statue and the Hindus worship sacred cows? I think not. God has only one religion for Chinese, Whites, Blacks, Jew and Gentile. Don't fool yourself. Only one religion will be accepted in God's Kingdom and it will be the one, true religion, the religion of God. God will not be interested in what your religion was or what you thought, or how you feel about it

Please open your Bible and read Revelation Chapter 4. Here we have a partial description of Heaven, or at least God's throne. Begin in verse 1 and read all of Chapter 4 and up to the middle of Chapter 5... So, this is a description of God's throne room in Heaven. Do you think that a great God like that has many religions? Do you think the Great Creator God of Heaven changes from one religion to another?

Picture yourself standing in front of that great throne trying to explain how you taught your little children to wait for Santa to come flying from the North Pole with presents. Or how Peter Cotton tail comes hopping down the bunny trail These are ancient pagan teachings folks. And the Great Creator God hates these old religions.

God has only one religion There is only one true religion and that is the religion between the covers of your Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And if you find something in the New Testament that doesn't seem to match the teachings in the Old Testament, you better do some research. And if you pray for understanding, I said if you pray for understanding before you open your Bible to study, you will find no difference between God's Law in the Old Testament (Torah) and the New Testament.

Read Matthew 5:18-19, These are the words of Jesus Christ folks. Not one dot or one crossing of the letter will change until the Kingdom of God comes. And, I might venture to say, even after it comes. God's law hasn't changed one jot or one title and it won't ever change. God's law was perfect and He didn't make a mistake. So it never needed changing and never will. God doesn't change and God's religion doesn't change (Malachi 3:6).

So what is your religion? Is it the same as Peter's? Is it the same as Paul's? What about Abraham's? God was pleased with Abraham's religion. God was pleased with Paul's religion. So their religion must have been in line with God's religion. All the proper ways to worship God are outlined in the Old Testament and repeated in the New. So what is your religion? Is it the same as your Creator God's? You can have the same religion as God's if you want to.

Pray that God will lead you to learn His true religion There is only one religion with God. It never has been changed. It's eternal. It's the same religion that Abraham had, and the same that Peter, Paul and the Apostles had. It's a never changing religion from a never changing God. He who hath an ear, let him understand...

COMFORTABLE?
How Does That Fence Feel?
by P. Myers

Get ready, this may be painful! The important thing to remember is that I'm saying this to myself too. This article is adapted from a sermon my husband, Paul, gave at the Feast of 2000. I think we all had our toes stepped on that day! If you look closely, I'm sure you'll find yourself somewhere on "the fence" so to speak.

It is sometimes easy for us to sit on the fence when it comes to certain issues and how uncomfortable those issues can make us around other people who don't have the beliefs we do. Let me explain what I mean: How about the holidays the world celebrates? Have you ever found yourself accepting a gift from someone because you don't want to offend them? Or maybe it's that you just don't feel like explaining to them why you don't want the gift? I have. They might know you don't celebrate Christmas but will tell you it's not a Christmas gift, they just want you to have it. Does this somehow seem to justify it?

We can NOT fit into the world and it's ways. We have been called out to be separate from the world. Jesus tells us that we cannot serve two masters. Like the song says "Stand up for Jesus." That doesn't mean to coast along in neutral. It means stand up for what you believe. We cannot be politically correct and at the same time follow Jesus the way He desires us to. He doesn't want us dangling from the fence, ready to fall. In order that we don't fall, we have to put on the whole armor of God each and every day. We must be in season all of the time, not just sometimes. There are no gray areas.

The Bible tells us that if we stand strong, we will receive a crown of life. The opposite will apply if we do not stand. We must also teach our children to stand up for the Truth. It is so easy for them to get caught up in the world today. It's hard for all of us, but we cannot let Satan take our crown away.

Even he knows scripture and he knows how the Book ends, but we too know how it ends, so be strong brothers and sisters. Jesus will prevail, and with His help, so can we.

THE GOLDEN RECTANGLE
by Frank W. Nelte

If you have an interest in working with numbers and the calendar, then you will be interested in this article. If you are not interested in numbers, please read this anyway as it is an important subject. If you do, it will show you some of the methods people could have used anciently to determine the seasons and the start of the calendar year.

I have been doing some research into what is known as "the Golden Rectangle" or "the Golden Section" or "the Golden Mean" and what is at times even called "the divine proportion" or "the sacred ratio". This is a very special and unique ratio which is found in nature. It has been known since antiquity and is evidenced in art and in architecture. Thus it is seen in the construction of the Parthenon in Greece and in the Great Pyramid at Gizeh (or Giza) in Egypt. It is also seen in some modern constructions, such as the "United Nations Building" in New York, which was built in 1952 ... the ratio of the height of that building to the length of its base is 1.618 : 1. In nature this ratio is also found in natural spirals, like "the nautilus shell", a snail-like sea creature. It is also found in the whorls of a sunflower, the arrangement of leaves on a branch and in the scales on pine cones (which scales also follow what is known as "the Fibonacci sequence").

Simply put, this is a ratio between two lines. The Golden Section divides a straight line in such a way that THE RATIO of the smaller part of the line to the greater part of the line is exactly the same as the ratio of the greater part to the whole line. You can probably find articles about this subject in any number of reference works. For example, Webster's Dictionary states: "golden section n(1875) : a proportion (as one involving a line divided into two segments or the length and width of a rectangle and their sum) in which the ratio of the whole to the larger part is the same as the ratio of the larger part to the smaller."

Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia has the following short article: "GOLDEN SECTION, in mathematics, geometric proportion in which a line is divided, or sectioned, into extreme and mean ratio.V1203301

When a line AB is sectioned at a point C in such a way that AC/AB = CB/AC, the section represents extreme and mean ratio. This ratio has the numerical value 0.618 . . . , which can be derived as follows: If AB = 1, and the length of AC = x, then x/1 = (1 - x)/x. Multiplying both sides of this equation by x gives x2 = 1 - x; therefore, x2 + x - 1 = 0. This equation can be solved by using the quadratic formula (see ALGEBRA), which yields the equation x = (- 1 + square root(5))/2 = 0.6180339. . . .

Some historians assert that the properties of the golden section aided the Pythagoreans in discovering irrational numbers, actually their geometric equivalents -- incommensurable lines. It is certain, however, that since antiquity many philosophers, artists, and mathematicians have been intrigued by the golden section, which Renaissance writers called the divine proportion. It is widely accepted that a rectangle with sides in this ratio exhibits a special beauty." (end of quote)

If you design a building to be a rectangle in such a way that, when viewed from above, the sides reflect "the Golden Rectangle", then the length of this building will be 1.618033989 times longer than the width. And the width will be exactly 0.618033989 times the length. (An example of such a drawing would be a width of 5000 millimeters and a length of 8090 millimeters ... something I tried on my computer CAD program.)

This is THE ONLY RATIO where the same decimal fraction multiplied by "itself plus one" is equal to one. That is: 0.618033989 multiplied by 1.618033989 is equal to one (actually it is equal to 1.000000001 ... an error of one billionth of one unit). That is why you may see that this ratio is given as "0.618033989" or it may be given as "1.618033989". (These fractions are frequently abbreviated as 0.618 and as 1.618.) This is because the ratio of 0.618 : 1 is exactly the same as the ratio of 1 : 1.618. This is not true for any other number. It is truly unique. Okay, so much for the mathematics. Now here is what is interesting.

Suppose you design a rectangular building with the sides exhibiting this "Golden Rectangle" ratio. Now suppose you have the longer two sides running from due east to due west, and the shorter two sides running from due north to due south. Now supposing you look out of one of the south-facing windows on the longer side of this building (assuming you are outside of the tropics in the northern hemisphere!) ... you would see the sun rise each morning to your left (i.e. in the east), and it would set every evening to your right (i.e. in the west).

As the seasons progressed from summer to autumn and winter, so you would notice the sun rising further south each day than before and also setting further south than the day before (the days are getting shorter). And as the seasons progressed from the winter solstice towards spring and summer, so you would notice that the sun would again rise further east than the day before and it would also set further west than the day before (the days are getting longer).

Now let's suppose this building has a flat roof with a flagpole at each of the four corners. And let's suppose that you watch the sunrises and the sunsets from the top of this roof. Here is what you could see:

As the sun rises in the east, so the flagpole on the south-eastern corner of the roof will cast a shadow across the roof. And as the sun sets in the west, so the flagpole on the south-western corner of the roof will cast a shadow across the roof.

Now at the summer solstice the sun is over the Tropic of Cancer, twenty-three-and-one-half degrees north of the equator. At the winter solstice the sun is over the Tropic of Capricorn, twenty-three-and-one-half degrees south of the equator. And at the spring equinox and the autumn equinox the sun is directly over the equator.

Now let's get back to our "Golden Rectangle" building. Supposing you draw two straight lines on the flat roof, joining the diagonally opposite flagpoles ... join the south-east corner to the north-west corner, and join the south-west corner to the north-east corner. The diagonal lines will form acute angles with the longer sides that runs from east to west. All four acute angles formed in this way will be identical. If you measure this angle, you'll find that it is between thirty-one degrees and thirty-two degrees. For precise calculations each degree is further sub-divided into sixty equal parts, called "minutes". Precise measurement of this angle will show that it is equal to 31 degrees and about 45 minutes (though it is easy to obtain readings that may fluctuate by as much as "20 minutes", which is after all only one third of ONE degree ... drawing your diagonal line from the one side of your two-inch thick flagpole instead of drawing it from the precise middle of that two-inch thick flagpole is sufficient to cause these kinds of fluctuations in the fractions of one degree for a roof with a diagonal line of about 100 feet in length.

So we now know that the diagonal lines on the roof of our "Golden Rectangle" building will form angles of about thirty-one-and-three-quarter degrees with the straight line joining the two southern most corners of the building.

Now let's look at two particular days in the year ... the spring or vernal equinox (March 21) and the autumn equinox (September 23). On those two days the sun is directly over the equator. So how could you possibly achieve the following:

On these two equinox days you want the sun to rise in the east in such a way that the flagpole on the south-eastern corner of your roof casts a shadow STRAIGHT TO THE DIAGONALLY OPPOSITE FLAGPOLE at the north-western corner of the roof. And then you also want the sun to set in such a way that the flagpole on the south-western corner of the roof casts a shadow STRAIGHT TO THE DIAGONALLY OPPOSITE FLAGPOLE on the north-eastern corner of the roof. In other words, on those two days you want the sun to rise and also to set at an angle of thirty-one-and-three-quarter degrees to your building.

How could you possibly achieve this feat? Remember that the ratio of the length to the width of your roof is fixed by the "Golden Rectangle" ratio, and you cannot change this.

There is ONLY ONE WAY that you could achieve this feat ... that at the very start of spring, and again at the very start of autumn, the sun rises precisely diagonally across your building with the "divine proportions" and it also sets precisely diagonally across your building on those same evenings. Without any kind of calendar at all you would in this way know PRECISELY which day is the start of spring and which day is the start of autumn. And remember, this "divine ratio" has been known at least since the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt.

WHAT IS THAT WAY? THAT WAY IS TO BUILD YOUR HOUSE WITH THIS "GOLDEN RECTANGLE" RATIO EXACTLY THIRTY-ONE AND THREE QUARTER DEGREES NORTH OF THE EQUATOR!

So are you now guessing the answer to the puzzle?

You see, JERUSALEM is PRECISELY thirty-one-and-three-quarter degrees north of the equator. In the 1911 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the article "Jerusalem" it is stated that Jerusalem lies "31 degrees and 47 minutes" north of the equator and "35 degrees and 15 minutes" east of Greenwich. Those "31 degrees and 47 minutes" are the precise angle that the diagonal line across a "Golden Rectangle" forms. Keep in mind that each "minute" of one degree of latitude is only about 2024 yards (with only very minor fluctuations to this figure). So any city will automatically cover "several minutes" of one degree of latitude.

There is no other latitude anywhere in the northern hemisphere where this would be true. The Great Pyramid is slightly further south than Jerusalem, as are all other notable buildings in Egypt. And while a building with the "Golden Rectangle" dimensions that is perhaps one or two degrees further south or further north than "31 degrees and 47 minutes" will appear to achieve almost the same effect (of the sun rising and setting diagonally across the building at the equinoxes), this will not be perfectly achieved ... it will only be an approximation.

THE LOCATION OF JERUSALEM, WHEN COMBINED WITH "THE GOLDEN RECTANGLE", IS PERFECT TO VISUALLY SHOW THE DAYS WHICH START THE SEASONS OF SPRING AND AUTUMN!

A large rectangle, in the proportions of the "Golden Rectangle", drawn on the ground or etched into a flat rock, with "flagpoles" at the four corners, if done in the area of Jerusalem, could achieve exactly the same result ... to unmistakably identify the start of spring and the start of autumn by the shadows cast across this rectangle at sunrise and at sunset on those particular days.

Fifty miles further south or further north than Jerusalem this would not have been as precise as it is with the location that Jerusalem does have.

So I believe the location of Jerusalem at exactly thirty-one-and-three-quarter degrees north of the equator, when combined with the absolutely unique "Golden Rectangle" ratio, shows God's divine guidance and selection. Neither the Egyptians nor the Greeks, both of whom were knowledgeable in mathematics, got it so perfectly as did Jerusalem ... they didn't have the choice of placing their towns at exactly thirty-one-and-three-quarter degrees north of the equator. And even the site of ancient Babylon is "close to this latitude" but not exact ... Babylon was about one degree further north than Jerusalem. But Jerusalem's location is PERFECT when evaluated against the "divine proportion". As God has repeatedly stated in the Bible, Jerusalem is the city HE selected!

And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant may have a light alway before me in JERUSALEM, THE CITY WHICH I HAVE CHOSEN ME TO PUT MY NAME THERE. (1 Kings 11:36 AV)

The "Golden Rectangle" ratio is unique amongst ratios, and it is found commonly throughout God's creation to display beauty and perfection. Man has copied this ratio since antiquity to create shapes and designs that are pleasing and attractive to the eye.

The above method of using shadows cast diagonally across a rectangle at sunrise and at sunset to identify the two equinox days in the year can be used at any latitude with rectangles of different proportions. But a rectangle with the proportions of "THE GOLDEN SECTION" will ONLY achieve this result at the precise latitude of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, if we really understand it, has the perfect location. Its selection by God is proof of God's existence and guidance. God's annual Feasts and Holy Days all occur in the spring and in the autumn. And "the Golden Rectangle", known at least since the time that the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt (i.e. before Israel entered the Promised Land), when used in the area of Jerusalem, gives an absolutely reliable indication of the start of spring (and also of the start of autumn). All that was then needed was to take THE FIRST NEW MOON THAT COINCIDED WITH OR THAT FOLLOWED THE START OF SPRING and to pronounce that to be the first new moon (i.e. the start of the first month) of the year. You don't need to know anything about any "sequence of leap years within a 19-year cycle". You only need to know very precisely when spring starts.

Recall that houses typically had flat roofs in biblical times. It would have been very easy to set up a model of "the Golden Rectangle" on some section of such a flat roof, and to carefully monitor the start of spring. This could also be done at any latitude with rectangles of different proportions, but Jerusalem was set apart because only there could you reliably use a rectangle with the "divine proportions" to achieve this goal.

So is this perhaps another indication that we should really use Jerusalem in determining the calendar we use for the Feasts and Holy Days, rather than relying on when the new moons occur at OUR different specific locations around the world (as some people are doing)?