An example of what happens when old rules attributed to God Almighty, along with newer "Fatwahs" made by His dedicated followers and priests and Imams are truly enforced is now going on in Iraq, as the direct rule of Allah Himself is thought by some to be the greatest good for that country.

And indeed multiple examples of this same type of reasoning can be found in the Koran and Holy Bible. .....A special "covenant".

......"I'm excited today to talk to you about one of the great Biblical ideas, the idea of a covenant, of the covenant.. The Bible talks about covenants 274 times. ..And we're going to go deep into this subject today. ....I want you to leave today as covenant experts.

.....A good way to start off a subject like this is with some Greek words. How many of you have learned your Greek words for the week?.. Well, all right, we're going to do that today.

....If you ingest what the Bible has to say about covenants, if you take this in today, you're going to walk out those doors understanding in a new way how much God loves you! You are going to be amazed again at the depth of God's love for you.

....So here are the Greek words on the board... DIATHEKE and SUNTHEKE.

.....Ordinarily a covenant is an agreement that is entered into by two people. ......Ordinarily when we talk about covenants, we talk about SUNTHEKE... Both parties bring something to the table. ...The covenant depends on conditions that they mutually agree upon, and if either party breaks the conditions, the covenant is void.

....SUNTHEKE always describes an agreement....... Both parties bring something to the table. ...We usually say If you will do something Then I will do something, and we can bargain with each other until we come to an agreement, and then a covenant is made.

.....If you have ever rented an apartment, or bought a house, or bought a car, or purchased groceries, or gotten married, or bribed your children, you know about SUNTHEKE covenants.

......But there's another Biblical word for covenant, and that's DIATHEKE... Now in this covenant there is no bargaining. ....It's more like a will. ...Its more like if you have a rich uncle, and he passes away, and leaves you an inheritance.... Because in this covenant, there is no bargaining.... It's not made on equal terms. ........It's made only by one person, and the other person has the option to accept, or refuse. .......It is much more like a promise, than a bargain. mmSUNTHEKE is a bargain. DIATHEKE is a promise."

......"In the Bible there are all kinds of stories of bargainings, and all kinds of stories of promises. .There's a lot about covenants in your Bible... When we look at the covenants God made, the Greek word that is always used is DIATHEKE. ...Every time. ....Because God and humans are not equal.

......The Biblical sense of a covenant - the whole approach comes from God. ..We did not come up with the terms of the covenant. ...We did not bring things to the bargaining table. ...And we can only accept or refuse the covenant that He extends to us."

.....The Bible makes it clear ... that before the foundations of the world were laid, the God-head got together and made a covenant. And this is called the eternal covenant..... It's called in other places in the Bible the covenant of grace.... The "first"covenant.

.....Psalms 111:9 "He provided redemption for His people......He ordained His covenant forever. ...Holy and awesome is His name.".... He ordained this covenant forever."

....."Now at the very beginning of the earth, in the Garden of Eden, Jesus set the tone of this covenant for us. ....There was only two ways that God could have created a home for Adam and Eve. ......One way was to provide them with all the materials and tell them to fix the garden. .....He could have given then the bare essentials, and told them they had to make a home for themselves.........And that would have been a SUNTHEKE covenant. "I will give you the materials, then you build the home."

.....Or Jesus could have done something very, very different. ....He could have done all the work himself, and at the last minute, on Friday afternoon, He could have created Adam and Eve, and invited them in, to come and enjoy the home that He had created for them. ......And that is what the Bible tells us Jesus did.

.....Jesus right off the bat set the tone for this DIATHEKE covenant that He was offering to them... And we see early on in Genesis 2:2 this covenant is spelled out. ...By the seventh day God had finished the work that He had been doing. ..You notice who had been doing the work?... God! ...And on the seventh day He rested, from all His work..... And God blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done."

...."You read through the Bible, and you see that the Bible is full of stories of God making covenants.... And here are a few of them. .....God made a covenant in Eden.... God made a covenant with Abraham. ...God made a covenant with Moses. ..God made a covenant with David. .......And so on and so on. ....And each of these covenants is part of the eternal covenant. And they are a personal piece of this eternal covenant.... And they are all very interesting, and they each could be made into a sermon, but we won't do that right now.

......Over and over, all through the Bible, we read about God extending this eternal covenant to His children. ..The covenant of grace... Over and over. ...And then we read about His children turning that covenant down. Have you ever turned down a good deal?

.....God offers us this amazing covenant... I will do the work........ I will rescue and redeem you.... I will make you my children. ....I will love you and take care of you. ..This is a DIATHEKE covenant.......... You can't change it. ...You can accept it, though. .......And over and over we read in the Bible that people rejected this offer."

...."Now one of the reasons this was so is back then and now is that we live in a world in which no one else's gods make DIATHEKE covenants... The others were making SUNTHEKE covenants.... If you follow the right rules, then your god will be pleased. ...If you bring costly offerings, then your god will listen..... If you dance and pray and scream, then maybe your god will hear you."

....ERIN MILLER went on to relate these things to Adventist theology, and certain controversies that have raged for many decades in this Church, and of course defended the Ten Commandments as providing necessary guidelines for theological babes and children until they reach the age when they can truly see that Jesus' teachings ask us to live far beyond the simple rules of the Ten Commandments.... Not because God requires us to do this so He can love us, but because we hurt ourselves and each other if we don't live this way.

.....I will be very critical in some ways of ERIN MILLER's sermon, although I liked it, as did her audience... She accomplished what she set out to do, which is to justify Foster Church's resolve to meet people where they are, and lead them towards a better, more productive life, and a more loving relationship with each other... This is intelectually difficult in a church that in it's past history was more Pharisaic and saw God's laws as a SUNTHEKE covenant..... So ERIN followed Saint Paul down a road that leads now and then to oratorical "tricks" and occasional intellectual dishonesty. .....Which we will point out in as kind a manner as possible on the following pages.

......The background of this page is a collage of the circle and flying wings of the Anunaki, or Elohim, the heavenly beings who came from outer space to "create" our world, and the first humans who could talk to each other, obey laws, set up governments, build cities, govern them in a civilized way, and worship the Elohim in temples....ERIN MILLER is not allowed by the traditions and long-standing precedents of her church to admit, even for a second, or even by a hint in her sermons, that the Sumerian Gods existed, long before the Bible was written, and that the Bible stories were adapted from this previous theology......The first civilized and coherent worship on earth.

.....ERIN MILLER is not allowed to preach, or even hint at, the well-known fact now, even to grade school children in the public school system, that half of the Elohim, these original gods, were female... Goddesses.......The God-head must be limited to Three, and these three must all be male, because that's what the Church decided, under Saint Constantine's explicit directions, sixteen centuries ago.... But she can, and does, reject that Constantine, and the Church that Constantine made the religious rulers of his empire, had the authority to change the Sabbath from the seventh day of the week to the first.

......In the end I wll support that there is, indeed, a DIATHEKE covenant in place now between a single God and mankind. .....And that Jesus, His Son, voluntarily was crucified to make this covenant very visible and available to all us Gentiles. ...Although he, and his fellow Essenes knew that Christ's Father God required no blood sacrifices whatsoever, either animal or human.

......And I'm here to tell you that one of these Elohim is still in charge of this earth, as the designated "caretaker" of the human children of the Elohim, and that Jesus Christ, his unique "Son" still has a significant part in finishing what they both started, -- "Father God" and Jesus, the Son of God, 2000 years ago!.............Dr. Bob Holt, md. ............10-19-2004