Why God Approved and Allowed

By Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie

God has reasons for whatever He allows or approves about whatever happens on earth. Find some of them herein. You could find out why things are the way they are with you and what you could do about them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Nov 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456826673

Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie

Rev Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie can be described as a Paper-pulpit Pastor and Bible Preacher by publication. He is divinely ordained to teach, preach and publish the Gospel of Christ Jesus and has been teaching and preaching since 1994. He began to publish in 2004 and presides over Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie Ministries, that encompasses several arms. He operates Christ Redemption Publications, based in Ibadan, Nigeria. He has been published by other publishers overseas. He makes the working word of God relevant to daily living, to prepare the saints for heaven. He hosts a monthly Bible Seminar every second Sunday at his Nigerian base, Ibadan. His audiences often comment that he gives a realistic interpretation to the word of God in a way they never heard or read previously and that he directs the word of God to where it matters in a man’s life when it matters most. He can be reached on [e-mail] or [e-mail] or 234-7037825522 or 234-8182022262 or 07055989850

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4568-2666-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-2667-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Unless otherwise indicated, scriptures are from the Good News Bible (GNB) also known as Today’s English Version (TEV), King James Version (KJV), New King James Version (NKJV), The Living Bible (TLB), New International Version (NIV), Bible in Basic English (BBE), Contemporary English Version (CEV), World English Bible (WEB) and Modern King James Version (MKJV)

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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Contents

Dedication

Appreciation

Introduction

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4

5

6

7

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12

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Author’s Other Published Titles

Dedication

To My Ejiro Irine

Appreciation

All glory to God that this is available for others to read. Lord, everything in this call and commission is your doing and it is marvellous in

my eyes.

God bless Cletus Okuguni my editorial assistant and Mrs Yvonne Olatunbosun who served as editorial consultant. Rev Soji Oluwasina’s friendship is highly appreciated. May God swell your heavenly account richly, in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.

Introduction

One of my greatest challenges is the concern to have communicated effectively and it makes me sound like repeating myself in the course of expressing myself on any topic. My greatest concern is to communicate effectively once again. One of the greatest commonest complain about leaders and particularly dynamic ones is that of communication. They cannot remain consistent over principles and practices they laid down. And it is a veritable argument against someone in authority when it seems that he or she is not consistent. Unfortunately for leaders, they are not able to give all the reasons why they could not be accused of inconsistence.

II Samuel 12 says that when David learnt that a strong man robbed a weak man of his treasure even when there was no basis for it, he flared up and hastily pronounced death sentence on the strong man. But when he learnt that actually he was the strong man in the story who killed Uriah to have his only wife whereas he had several wives and could have married many more who were not some other persons’ wives, he rescinded his decision.

Interestingly, his tribal pioneer ancestor Judah had done similar thing in Genesis 38. Judah said his daughter-in-law should be burnt to death for getting pregnant illegally but when he found out that he was responsible for it, he rescinded the judgment. Judah allowed Tamar to live only because he found out that he was a culprit of the offence of Tamar. This means that as wicked as the human heart it knows how to waive certain draconian decrees when considered

a necessity.

There is what I have come to term as Spiritually Seeded Soothing Separation Solution, Spiritually Seeded Separation Solution, Spiritually Sponsored Separation Solution, Spiritually Seeded Settlement, Safe Separation Solution, Safe Separation Settlement like the way Genesis 13 recounts that God seemed to have made Lot separate from Abraham and Genesis 19 says that when God saved Lot from Sodom because of Abraham, he never led Lot back to Abraham but to another location distant from Abraham.

Genesis 13 confirms that it was after Lot left Abraham that God returned to re-affirm that the land of Canaan would surely be his and his descendants. It meant that God had been waiting for Abraham to part ways with Lot finally. And if that was the case, it means that God did not want Abraham to have any relative near him in Canaan where he had purposed to bless Abraham and to use this to bless all the nations of the world. This means that all whom God chooses to do spectacular assignments in the world in their lifetime; he prefers to live separately from even their close relatives.

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Concerning God’s authoring of Abraham’s relocation, Genesis 12:1-7, 13:14-18 and Acts 7:2-4 say—

1 And the Lord said to Abram, Go out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house into a land that I will show you.

2 And I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great. And you shall be a blessing.

3 And I will bless those that bless you and curse the one who curses you. And in you shall all families of the earth be blessed.

4 And Abram departed, even as the Lord had spoken to him. And Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gained in Haran. And they went forth to go into the land of Canaan. And they came into the land of Canaan.

6 And Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, unto the Oak of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.

7 And the Lord appeared to Abram and said, I will give this land to your seed. And he built an altar there to the Lord who appeared to him.

14 And after Lot was separated from him, the Lord said to Abram, Lift up your eyes now and look from the place where you are northward and southward, and eastward and westward.

15 For all the land which you see I will give to you, and to your seed forever.

16 And I will make your seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can count the dust of the earth, then shall your seed also be counted.

17 Rise up and walk through the land, in the length of it and in the breadth of it, for I will give it to you.

18 And Abram moved his tent and came and lived in the oaks of Mamre, which is in Hebron. And he built an altar to the Lord there.

2 And he said, Men, brothers, and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.

3 And He said to him, Go out from your land and from your kindred, and come into a land which I shall show you.

4 Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, he moved into this land in which you now dwell. (MKJV)

God seemed to mean that the only way He would accept Abraham as a trusted friend was for him never to cleave to his relatives more than to Him. This agrees with God’s demand for man to love Him more than his parents, children, relatives and anything else. He hates anyone that shares his or her love with any other. It is a fundamental criterion for loving and walking with God.

This leads to what I call Same Source, Separate Songs or Stories. God sent them into the world with their siblings and relatives but meant them to have different histories, experiences, endeavours and activities, and therefore to live in different locations, etc. There are many relatives and even siblings who are not friends because God ordained and approved it.

Genesis 25:19-33 says that before birth, God ordained that twin brothers named Esau and Jacob would not be best of friends. When born and brought up, their natures differed distinctly. While one liked the outdoor life, the other was a quiet and indoor-natured personality. The younger was ordained to be greater. It was a case of Older but cannot be Greater. It is only natural that the older would not enjoy sharing the same neighbourhood with the younger, where everyone would see him subject to his younger brother.

Therefore, God who ordained the younger to be greater ordained along with it the fact that they would live separately. When God allowed Esau to insist until his father approved that he could free himself from his younger brother’s superiority, God meant that he meant them to live separately because after freeing himself from the younger brother’s superiority, it is only natural for him to live separate from his younger brother.

Then, Genesis 33 confirms that by the time Jacob returned from his twenty-year sojourn in Laban’s home, Esau had gotten so very rich at home in Canaan that Jacob could not say he had become richer than Esau. Genesis 35:27-29 and 36:1-8 say that after the death and burial of their father, when it was time for the chief inheritor to be made known by possessing and occupying their traditional family house at the expense of the other person, it was Esau who had been there with their father since the time Jacob left for Laban’s home that had to relocate to a place later described as the land of Edom or Seir which were other names for Esau and his descendants.

Meanwhile, instructively, Deuteronomy 2 says that God allocated this land to them so they could leave the land of Canaan for Abraham’s descendants by Jacob also known as Israel. Therefore, this is God sponsored separation between two persons He sent into the world as twin brothers. And considering that Zechariah 11:4-14 says—

4 For so says the Lord my God: Feed the flock of the slaughter, 5 those buying them kill them, and hold themselves not guilty. And those who sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich; and their shepherds do not pity them. 6 For I will never again pity the people of the land, says the Lord; but lo, I will make the men come out, each one into his neighbor’s hand and into his king’s hand. And they shall strike the land, and I will not deliver out of their hand. 7 And I fed the flock of slaughter, even the poor of the flock. And I took two staffs for myself; the one I called Kindness, and the other I called Union. And I fed the flock. 8 I also cut off three shepherds in one month; and my soul was impatient with them, and their soul also despised me. 9 And I said, I will not feed you; that which dies, let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off. And those left, let them eat, each woman her neighbor’s flesh. 10 And I took my staff Kindness, and broke it apart, to break My covenant which I had made with all the peoples. 11 And it was broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock who were watching Me knew that it was the word of the Lord. 12 And I said to them, If it is good, give My price; and if not, let it go. So they weighed My price thirty pieces of silver. 13 And the Lord said to me, Throw it to the potter, the magnificent price at which I was valued by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord. 14 Then I broke My other staff Union apart, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. (MKJV)

It can be boldly said that there are several and even uncountable Heaven Hatched Hatred amongst men that we do not understand as humans. If the High Priests, Pharisees, Sadducees and other religious leaders did not hate Jesus to the point of death because of envy and jealousy, He would not have been killed, and if he had not been killed, he would not have gone to the headquarters of Satan to dislodge him and his cohorts. Carnally, they thought that they hated him for envy and jealousy, but God was only using the seed of envy and jealousy in them to help Him send Jesus to the place He meant to use Him to carryout His final assignment on earth for

mankind’s benefit.

When Jephthah’s siblings hated him and he left their father’s house and hometown to live among his maternal relatives, it was a bitter pill for him to swallow. But while there he was able to repackage himself and was recalled by their larger society to return to lead them in the defeat of their Ammonite oppressors and become their national leader. This is a classic example of Success Securing Separation or Separation Secured Success. It means that while he lived separated from his siblings he was about to do the things that secured him success in his lifetime. The resentment sent him to where he determined to achieve and prove his resenters wrong.

David procured and perfected profitable personal relationship while he was alone with their father’s flocks while his older siblings who clustered at home did not attain such level of relationship with God. There are oppositions orchestrated by God to compel individuals to depend on Him to give them success and victory. Opposition made Nehemiah depend on God to complete the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem in a record time of 52 days. There are many things people are doing to you that God approved because of what He is determined to do with you, which would make you laugh last over those people opposing you initially. As we know the famous stories, Sarah laughed last just as Hannah did over Peninnah.

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When Genesis 16:5-14 and 21:9-13 say—

5 Then Sarai said to Abram, It’s your fault that Hagar despises me. I myself gave her to you, and ever since she found out that she was pregnant, she has despised me. May the Lord judge which of us is right, you or me! 6 Abram answered, Very well, she is your slave and under your control; do whatever you want with her. Then Sarai treated Hagar so cruelly that she ran away. 7 The angel of the Lord met Hagar at a spring in the desert on the road to Shur 8 and said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She answered, I am running away from my mistress. 9 He said, Go back to her and be her slave. 10 Then he said, I will give you so many descendants that no one will be able to count them. 11 You are going to have a son, and you will name him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your cry of distress. 12 But your son will live like a wild donkey; he will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. He will live apart from all his relatives. 13 Hagar asked herself, Have I really seen God and lived to tell about it? So she called the Lord, who had spoken to her, A God Who Sees. 14 That is why people call the well between Kadesh and Bered The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.

9 One day Ishmael, whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, was playing with Sarah’s son Isaac. 10 Sarah saw them and said to Abraham, Send this slave girl and her son away. The son of this woman must not get any part of your wealth, which my son Isaac should inherit. 11 This troubled Abraham very much, because Ishmael also was his son. 12 But God said to Abraham, Don’t be worried about the boy and your slave Hagar. Do whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that you will have the descendants I have promised. 13 I will also give many children to the son of the slave girl, so that they will become a nation. He too is your son. 14 Early the next morning Abraham gave Hagar some food and a leather bag full of water. He put the child on her back and sent her away. She left and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. (TEV)

Genesis 16:12c above means what I call, Spiritually Separated Siblings typified by what Genesis 25:19-24 says about Isaac’s twin sons Esau and Jacob. It strongly suggests that God approved Sarah’s request concerning sending Hagar and Ishmael away because God foreordained that Ishmael and his descendants would live apart from Isaac and his descendants. What a misfortune for their father Abraham.

For Sarah the mother of Isaac, she was most comfortable with God’s decision on this matter but for Abraham who is the reason Ishmael and Isaac are related, it was a very bitter experience. It is worse because he was famous for obeying God and in fact making his sons and descendants obey God. It meant that he would have to obey God on something that he naturally abhorred should happen to his children and descendants. All things being equal, an average parent likes harmony between his children, not separation.

The other thing we shall not concentrate on here is the fact that this case strongly suggests that it is not all the children of the same parents that God meant or sent into the world to live together harmoniously in their lifetime. Then, we remember the fact that Genesis 12 and 24:1-10 confirm that God meant Abraham to live apart from his place of birth and therefore, from relatives. So what do we say, it started since the time of Abraham.

But in fact, Genesis 11:27-31 and Acts 7:2-5 confirm that it was Abraham’s father named Terah who started it all. Whether God authored Terah’s movement from his native land of birth to Canaan before he resettled in Haran and died there is another subject altogether. Perhaps, it was God’s idea for his eldest son Abraham that the radar of his spirit-man perceived and he set out in response to it before he died half way there.

The core reason God decided that Abraham must leave his hometown before He would bless him to become a blessing to the rest of the world, we are not told expressly. God can do all things, so He should not find it difficult to bless Abraham in his hometown of Mesopotamia. But we should say for reasons best known to Him, He decided that Abraham must relocate away from home before he could enjoy His manifold blessings. It was not just leaving home but his relatives. When he parted ways with Lot, the last of them, God returned to reiterate the spectacular blessing in Canaan.

But then we can take some risk to say that perhaps, as Judges 7:2 suggests, that if God had blessed him in his hometown he might have thought that he would have prospered at home without God’s help. Secondly, considering that Ezekiel 5:5 confirms that Jerusalem is the central city of the whole earth. It meant that as God promised that He would bless him and his descendants to be a blessing to the world, God led Abraham to Mount Moriah where the Temple was built later on so that from there he would reflect God’s goodness, greatness, and glory to the rest of the earth on His behalf.

Considering that Genesis 20:11-12 confirms that he married his father’s daughter and he was the only son of his father that turned their father into his father-in-law in his lifetime, and Leviticus 18:9 and 20:17 and Deuteronomy 27:22 which say that whoever marries his sister shall be driven away from their native land which their incestuous marriage had polluted, this could be adduced as another reason. We can not say that God made