The timing of this thought may very well be uniquely timely. As the globe hurtles towards a date with a pestilence. A virus is threatening to bring humanity’s many inventions to a halt. The world itself has a date with fervent heat and nothing the human mind can consider or imagine offers any relief or solution. God has positioned his king – the one he wants to run things – on Zion, and noone gets away without a kiss.

Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Psalms 2:12

Kissing is not only required it is demanded. You perish if you do not commit your life to the Son. This psalm is a fatal threat to the Jewish people. It is a threat to the church that wants to carve out a space like Israel and wear the name of Jesus like an excuse to return to ancient practices. Law and death, grace and life are our choices.

Repentance does not come like clockwork. It is not observed like a festival. One gets it from God, but committed hypocrites need not apply. You want to keep up the dance about being the new Israel and in full compliance with the whole law of God when you cannot even make sense of the ten commandments?

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Matthew 3:7

Since most of us, including our leaders, are incapable of translating what Peter and John wrote the least we can do is drop the lies in the garbage can or get to the text where there is no question about what the witnesses meant and not fall for that lie about the Spirit replacing the Bible.

The books, the people, and their lives

People in New Testament times were coming out of mass illiteracy. People spoke Aramaic and the Bible was in Hebrew. We see the same phenomenon in Ethiopia where they had Amharic and Geez and in the Roman church where they had Italian and Latin. When a matter arose that needed clarity one consulted the Bible and if there were no readers in the household one asked a scribe to read and interpret what the Bible had to say.   The scribe has largely disappeared.  He is replaced by a robot programmed to recite supposedly good commentary.

Some people have thought that all you need is a mystic or charismatic who falls into a trance and telll you what the Bible says. If the Bible (the sayings of Jesus in particular) is the sure ground on which to build our lives the danger of someone going off into a dream or vision to discover is the equivalent of a nuclear blast. Everything at ground zero dies. Do we still not have to return to the Bible to ascertain the truthfulness of everything that is being sought?

Rest and temple

Racketeering mob

How, for example, could anyone study the second coming of Jesus for over a year and not notice that the event is on an undisclosed timetable? It is virtually impossible. This is sorcery at its finest. To make a splash about an event that is so secret that God the father alone knows is clear evidence of fraud, but to have those 2nd coming rascals correct that error by building a house on the sand, based on two symbols, the temple and the weekly day of rest, is full evidence of racketeering.

Few things are nourishing as reading the Bible and when that fails to satisfy you can be sure God’s left you to your darkness. One can read a hundred books on grace but one only gets grace by God’s wish, not by forcing his hand with paganistic prayers, folk tales of feigned obedience and fake love.

I would rather read my Bible in English than hear a vision or dream. God has made available the pure untranslated message of Christ to all. One does not have to be a scholar to see that extreme confidence and healthy eating are waiting behind the confusion of paraphrases, commentaries and translations. Dreams and visions anyone?

The focus is human life was never “take care care of yourself by any means”. The right to self-defence seems to apply only to imperial powers and rogue nations.

Are we supposed to believe that the First Nations of the world have given up their right to have secure borders? Does justice and progress give a nod to homicide, sorcery, and theft?

Instead of fostering fellowship and the common good the prime goal is “more for me and my clan”. That is why all the so-called democracies, republics, and theocratic states have deteriorated into dens of merchandising magnates and covetous champions.

Some people have been frantically building walls to prevent the truth about their abominable practices from reaching the outside world. It is probably too late for some. They never took the time to see the human race and this planet as our common bond. Despising others never had God’s approval. Putting my nation and people first is a doomed policy. Why did anyone join the rat race? Get out while you can!

After they’ve killed you there’s nothing they can do. These words filled up the gap in the lives of Jewish people who were seeing more than a stream of miscarriages of justice. At the centre of Jewish life there was a wholesale ripoff of the poor and the condemnation of innocent persons in progress. No state can survive the desolation due when death becomes a tool for government.

Be merciful, O LORD, unto your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto your people of Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.

Deuteronomy 21:8

The United States just murdered another innocent man. The reason Israel has a Muslim house of prayer on it’s most sacred site is her indictment for loving injustice. Justice is hard to find in America. After the Attorney General misleads the Congress over potus45’s trail of criminal behaviour and the Senate leader announces his distaste for impartial justice desolation is certain.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets, and stone them which are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and all of you would not!

Matthew 23:37

A great economy and more millionaires are not signs of health.  Nothing survives a death cult. Guess who is not interested in the international court.

Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

Matthew 23:38

This call at the end of Malachi’s prophecy sounds legitimate from every perspective except one. We understand the progress of Israel undedr Mosaic law and it is not encouraging. We who read this thousands of years later can latch on to messages like this without thinking that they apply to a particular people at a particular time. What were they to remember? What do we remember? If we are looking for the Law of Moses we will find:

• A book, Josh 8:31
• A stone copy, Josh 8:32
• A king who followed it, 2Kgs. 23:25
• A book, Neh. 8:1

There is only one law that we can associate with statutes and judgments as here in Mal. 4:4 . This call can therefore not be a serious shout out to the wider community of people coming to faith in the God of the Bible.

Where would Gentile stakeholders find a place in this design? This call to the Israelites can only find answers in the life of those to whom it was given. Gentiles cannot remember a time when God gave them the Law of Moses, with the statutes and judgments.

What should we do with the Law since we are not required to follow Moses?

But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command [them] to keep the law of Moses. Acts. 15:5 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter. Acts. 15:6 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men [and] brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. Acts. 15:7 And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as [he did] unto us; Acts. 15:8 And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Acts. 15:9 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? Acts. 15:10 But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they. Acts. 15:11

What should we do with the statutes and judgments since we do not need to have any sign that says we belong?

Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, [Ye must] be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no [such] commandment:

Acts. 15:24

Are you the Innuit buying snow from Texans?

Here is undeniable evidence that commandment-keepers are the biggest fraudsters. The man who told Yeshua that he never broke the law and walked away from loving his neighbor is today’s moral trickster, obedient to the end but lost. Like the young and rich questioner in Mark 10 we cover up our nakedness with lies about our faithfulness, and by doing so we ensure that our friends can see that the inheritance remains just out of reach.

You know the commandments, Do not ever commit adultery, Do not ever kill, Do not ever steal, Do not ever bear false witness, Never defraud, Honour your father and mother.

Mark 10:19

The inheritance sought is the missing link

Lots of people pretend that they are obedient like this person. We assume that he was looking for a personal prescription – which he obtained in the end. We assume he misunderstood the saying, “You know the commandments …” We have to assume that he did not hear “Do not ever sleep with another’s… ” Do not ever kill” and so on because he obviously was content to keep living the Jewish lie and to keep telling it.

We have probably mapped out a range of responses to someone dropping a whopper like that on us. We even dare assume that revulsion and distance are the divine reaction to sin. Here was a guy who was winning with his confession of his own faithfulness. The one thing we must come away with from any study of the Law of God is the fact that no one ever kept it.

Eternal life is divine love

Yeshua had a warm feeling about a man who just fatally misread his predicament. We cannot fake it. There are not enough lies to cover our failure to do what God demands.

And there shall be signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity ( απορία aporia ) or the roaring of the sea and the billows;

Luke 21:25

The outbreaks of violence and treachery, man’s inhumanity, the outrages of unrestrained badness in places of responsibility and authority in the second decade of the 21st century are truly nightmarish but the panic and animalistic urges of self-preservation have no leg to stand on. If there is anxiety we need to turn off the taps. If there are a host of troubles for which we have no answer the world does not need the usual news conferences and talking points from bureaucrats and experts.

Aporia tells us of the absence of ways-out. Perplexed people have no answers to the problems they are confronting. Will the perplexed people come to their senses and recognize the one who cued up the events that are grabbing global attention all over the world and has the answers?

The one who has the answers is hated and slandered and people are deserting him in droves. People who see the events unfolding just as Yeshua said should come to their senses and repent. Instead of sobering up, they curse.

20. And the rest of the men which were not killed by [the] plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: 21. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Revelation of John 9:20-21