Christians, unlike a host of loud witnesses to God’s grace to humanity, place great emphasis on pursuing a likeness to God.  All humans are like God apart from faith and tradition, but Christians who follow the apostolic standard see the attributes of God as attractive values.  We are not interested, despite the widespread slogans about obedience, loyalty and allegiance, in merely following rules and regulations as juveniles are expected to.  There is no loyalty path in the Divine personality.  To whom would God be loyal and who might we say gives him orders?  God’s incomparable designation would disappear if a creature of his receives all of God’s attributes.  So let it be settled, once and all, that while we cannot be omnipresent, eternal and omniscient, we content to be merciful, impartial and ruthlessly gracious in judgment and grateful in adversity.

Divine Attributes shared and retained exclusive

The number of people who seem to want to be godly without being like God is increasing. As the prophet said a long time ago, “Sheol is never satisfied”, meaning that the people in the grip of deceit and hypocrisy and on the broad road of condemn are an increasing majority.

“Therefore Sheol has enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure; And Jerusalem’s splendor, her multitude, her din of revelry and the jubilant within her, descend into it.” (Isaiah 5:14, NASB)

““Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man, So that he does not stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, And he is like death, never satisfied. He also gathers to himself all nations And collects to himself all peoples.”

(Habakkuk 2:5, NASB)

““Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.”

(Matthew 7:13, NASB)

“Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, Nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied.”

(Proverbs 27:20, NASB)

Foolish obedience slogans

To what advantage does anyone say that they are keeping God’s commandments when the focus of their commitment remains locked in on irrelevant statutes from the Sinai Covenant and festivals (either the weekly sabbath or any of the annual festal holy days). One has to suppose that they are willing to keep the sabbath – have no fun, do no work – and avoid contamination with sick, injured, and sinful people, just as the high level people in the parable of the Good Samaritan did. There is no “next” or “now” in their grasp of divine character what connects with eternity. Living as if all things continue as from the beginning of human history or the beginning of Israelite experience is myopic. Moses has to be be discarded. If no-one reviews and replaces him in our view of biblical reality we remain juvenile and enslaved. Put that in your obedience and righteousness pipe, smoke it and continue choking.

On the escalator down

From the moment the devil saw that decent and honest men were willing to commit themselves to equality and justice he influenced some men to spell out the obvious in such a way that rights could be interpreted as all people are decent and honest because they have rights. Like the spiral into treachery that we observed in the golden calf festival at Mount Sinai while Moses was conversing with Yahweh, the American experiment has been on a downhill tumble, protected and promoted by the racist, fascist, insurrectionist (states’ rights advocates), less government or wild west armed insurgents, and armed quasi-patriots. The image of a falling populace has found reinforcement in the downward escalator ride by the now disgraced 45th president beginning his campaign for president. Down on their knees before a hollow mogul, down into thoughtless mantras, down into illiteracy and apathy. Sadly heading downward too is the bison’s plight of endangerment, a fitting metaphor for the disappearance of people like the founders of the American nation.

Find the truth and still be lost

They do not even have the good sense to actually be informed. They think that once they can latch on to a practice like sabbath-keeping or animosity against sinners they will seem strong and intimate with the true God. The lesson of hypocrisy is not quickly learned. The glory of God , as it relates to human behaviour and attitudes, is illustrated in the story of Jonah, a man who displayed an incredibly ignorance of who God was. The glory of God, as it relates to God’s decisive acts, also comes from the Jonah story. The Lord Christ offered his contemporaries one sign, though they wanted many. He said that his resurrection from the dead after three days would suffice. If we think that our generation is not adulterous, crooked and perverse we are using less than one one to observe our times. We cannot be like God without imitating his primary witness. If we ever become exactly what God is he will cease to be God. Beware the satanic delusion

James Robison was probably once a preacher of the Gospel.  He most likely was a pastor and ordained minister.  Today he is the poster boy for the marketing of useless trivia alongside the charitable work he is evidently more comfortable doing.  No one is ever saved by supporting the poor directly or by finding agencies that do.  Today he is hawking a book which, he claims will secure global freedom.

Blasphemy, filthy lucre and greed

What happened to the Bible?  Is it so hijacked by the people who like to wave it around and make solemn statements with their hands on it without caring about what is on its pages?  The definitive guide to Israel was written in Greek 2000 years ago, but most people are too local language biased to take the time to read the Bible in its splendour.  I used to watch with curiosity and excitement as James and his wife pour their hearts out to needy people across the ocean. I usually got turned off by his guests purporting to teach some kingdom principle or other fantastic elementary process that believers need. The world will need Israel and Judaism when Israel is a welcoming place for Egyptians, Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, and Black people. You can only slander the God of Abraham and Yeshua by pushing a narrative that has Israel – of any age – as the solution to global captivity and oppression. It is not possible.

The truth slips right of our fingers

Which part of “Time’s up” do people not get?  A desolate house stands on Temple Mount not because of antisemitism or because Islam is a proper revision of Mosaic Judaism, but because it  was so decreed Israel’s king, the one that arrived on a donkey. Seventy years of captivity pales into insignificance alongside the 19 centuries-long shut down of levitical operations. Time is not stretchable. God’s looking the other way has an end. Justice is not a revolving door of rituals; at some point everyone’s account becomes due. Freedom is a thing the sons of Israel are required to remember. I cannot imagine anyone cherishing freedom apart from a bondage experience. Yet the contemporaries of our Lord Yeshua debated with him that the sons of Israel were never in bondage to anyone.

They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

John 8:33

Men and women who are committed to justice without cultural trash are hard to find. If the threat of eviction is still reverberating in Judea and Samaria then it is ostensibly because the crimes in the temple continue in the political arena, because today, in the 21st century, scribes and Pharisees can no longer with ease or the threat of violence silence the truth or dampen the thirst for biblical knowledge. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of all nations, and his worshippers from all over the world are not umbilically connected to Jerusalem or Gerizim, to Moses, the patriarchal traditions, or the wisdom of Solomon. There is one greater than David and Solomon. So let’s send the books and videos packing, because they do not prioritize the weightier matters of the Law, nor recognize that the blood of bills and goats is useless and irrelevant. Let the children sing and dance their “Hosanna to the son of David” who alone sets people genuinely free.