The Alberino Analysis - Earth's Earliest Ages: Episode 2

Thought - Ineffectual Grace

This is from the blog Words from the Crucible:

How broadly and thinly we have partaken of the grace of God, that it is become only a veneer to cover up our sins, and not the power to uproot them utterly from the heart by which they continue to be commited! We consider only what is behind – and that with much triteness – taking no thought as to what death we shall continue to sow, and what hell-fire we may thereby reap. The saving power of the grace of God through faith is not found in its being a doctrine admired, but in being a doctrine lived.

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Romans 6:14-18

The Alberino Analysis - The Book of Enoch

Enoch:  The Seventh from Adam

Anthony the Great: "God's Providence Controls the Universe"

This is from the blog Dover Beach:

“God’s Providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos Who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom, and Providence of God.”

--Anthony the Great

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This is from the blog Words from the Crucible:

“…faith arises from disposition of soul, but dialectic from the skill of its inventors. Wherefore to those who have the inworking through faith, demonstrative argument is needless, or even superfluous. For what we know through faith you attempt to prove through words, and often you are not even able to express what we understand. So the inworking through faith is better and stronger than your professional arguments. We Christians therefore hold the mystery not in the wisdom of Greek arguments, but in the power of faith richly supplied to us by God through Jesus Christ.”


– Antony of Egypt, to the Greeks who came to visit him. (Taken from the account of his life written by Athanatius of Alexandria)

The Church & The Sign Of Jonah

This is from the blog Words from the Crucible:

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”
Matthew 16:4

What the adulterous body of Christ requires is not a revival, but a resurrection. Yet a true resurrection requires the body to be fully dead. That which does not die cannot be raised. We think that we shall save the church by trying to keep her alive, when it is God Himself who seeks to complete her death. For “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” We have before us a choice between the fellowship of man and the fellowship of God. We are so eager to postpone the inevitable, even unto the exclusion of ourselves from glory; but the body of Christ is comprised of those who will die to the elements of this world. Let us therefore abandon all hope in keeping ourselves alive in the world’s eyes, and let the Lord be pleased to crush our idolatrous spirit. The Spirit and power of God is unto those who so humble themselves, and He will raise them up.

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”
1 Corinthians 15:42-45