Author of Life™

Acts 23:12-15

"The next morning some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. More than forty men were involved in this plot. They went to the chief priests and the elders and said, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”

“Thou shalt not kill (Exod 20:13).” God is the Author of Life™ and He can give of take away as He sees fit. When He takes life, He does not murder nor kill because it is His alone, He gave it—existence is a gift from Him to us, and everything on earth (Acts 17:24-25), and only He can restore it. And so it appears clear to me, perhaps fairly recently, that ideas surrounding end-of-life (euthanasia, especially) and beginning-of-life (abortion) can never be in our hands nor in the hands of our fellow humans. Although I could no longer find the article, I read somewhere that these ideas are ultimately secularly already deemed beyond the purview of scientific enquiry (although it lent tremendous support in clarifying what is in-between) and best left to philosophical analysis, and as such, to theology. In any case, the commandments "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and any other commandments, are summed up in this one decree: "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Rom 13:9) The Jewish leadership completely missed the essence of God’s laws given to Moses because of the threat of Christianity with its head evangelist, the Apostle Paul. In the end God decides who gets to exist and our quality of life for the most part. A glimmer of hope we read in Living Life is that, "though God can work through dramatic miracles, He can also work through the people around us to provide protection and to fulfill His plans", we can trust His protection even us we also understand that God has His purposes and being the Author of Life™, He is not in any way obligated to keep a wretch like me living on this Earth, since even the saints of today and in the past, the Apostles, the martyrs, and the Apostle Paul in today's verses, He delivers from evil but when their time came to glorify God in their deaths, they'd simply cry out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, St. Stephen fell asleep (Acts 7:59-60). God has redeemed us, He has redeemed me and I will be used for His Highness's good pleasure and noble purpose.