Look at what the dog vomited and ate

The vast majority of people in North America know that crooked sheriffs, marshals,  judges, deceitful educators and politicians have not given up their views  of  where society should be heading.    Macdonald and Washington have given us starting points no one wants to repeat.  They have given us something to work on.  People know that war (even revolutionary or civil) and genocidal policies against First Nations are evils we want to avoid.  In subtle and overt ways people acknowledge that starting over is God’s way when things go awry, but wanting to redo a revolutionary war, or a nation-building covenant are signs that people have stopped thinking and the story can only be told as another episode of a dog’s enjoyment of his vomit.

No place to hide

17) Terror and pit and snare confront you, O inhabitant of the earth. 18) Then it will be that he who flees the report of disaster will fall into the pit, And he who climbs out of the pit will be caught in the snare; For the windows above are opened, and the foundations of the earth shake.

Isaiah 24:17-18

Would you believe that capitalism sunk the boat of the kingdom of Judah and that xenophobia is a popular and universal waste of human energy?

A nation of immigrants will never accept all cultures because some are shaped by distasteful practices.  Ancient traditions are not good because people have followed them for thousands of years. They need  to be subjected to the scrutiny of impartial minds – a Herculean task in the new alternate truth environment. Nations and families need wise corrections not laws written in stone. 

Nations and families need wise corrections not laws written in stone.

Since people in the United States cannot agree on what a 200 year old constitution says it must be obvious that agreement on interpreting laws that are thousands of years old will be equally unachievable.

Let us make sure we understand the turmoil unfolding in the winter of 2021.  White men who have never admitted that the bloodshed of the American Civil War was over the evil enslavement of Black people are trying to say White people have been oppressed and it is now White people’s turn to be liberated. 

Any way one slices the loaf a lot of White people, especially evangelical Christians, do not want to be humans.  They think they are some kind of new Israel-Judah,

The windows and the foundations

From above and below, as Isaiah says, distress of mind and  clings to the foolish bags of hot air trying keep the quagmire of empire and superiority alive. The fact of people calling themselves Judeo-Christian is proof that conservative views are regurgitated pipedreams. There is no such thing as a second chance in the levitical system; one strike and you are out, veen though that is not God’s way. There is nothing Judeo or Christian about murdering elected representatives of the people in order to satisfy the egos of a wicked businessman and a host of slogan slinging religious people. Assassinations and capital punishment are rejects in the march of civilized peoples, They and sinless Christians are vomit, because it takes sinless people to administer death sentences.

If anything violent breaks out in March the co-conspirators this time will include thousands of religious leaders in Canada and around the world now engaged in circulating vicious lies and promoting illiteracy in their chat groups and zoom conferences. Talk about dinner eaten twice!

Ford’s fraud

Simcoe numbers betray our confidence.  Which part of “stay home” don’t people get?  Another business owner complaining is not a spokesperson for any community. It will not surprise me to discover that the Ontario government encouraged the idea that people outside the GTA were not to be lumped together with people in the GTA.

The news over the last two days has been reflecting the fact that Simcoe Muskoka’s top doctor ‘seriously considering’ another lockdown. I think he’s been paying attention to the science, not the government’s pep talk and gee whiz great job updates.

A businessman’s public plea and claim not to know what is happening does not merely sound like I want to make money and put people at risk; it lacks the community orientation that we say identifies Ontarians and Canadians

Texas breaks like a loser

We often observe human ingenuity and courage most clearly in places where the need is.  All the nations that have preserved their independence and the very identity of their branch of the hunan family deserve medals, but unlike many of the pundits and bandits of public information I know there is one gold medal entity among the states of our times. Texas is indeed fabulous for its industrious people, its innovation in public safety, and its readiness to secede as well as claim national pride in the Union, but global history assures us that giants of every measure break.

Superpower safety and political

Under a winter storm – a thing that all of Canada faces every year – the strawmen behind Texan public safety, politician accountability and solidarity with the citizens show up in high definition.

When the mighty, like Texas, tumble in this way there is little to expect from the threats of redoing the revolutionary war beside the breaking of the rebels.

If a snake did not slither we would pinch ourselves, but when the shards of a broken giant are on the floor we can be certain the buck stops with those who indulge the delusions of a criminal head of state and, perhaps increasingly, the Republican Party.

This land is mine, Pilgrim

Since the Jewish people were aliens and sojourners in Egypt it is disturbing that they have  spared no energy asserting ownership of Canaan and are always ready to treat goyim (Gentiles) as second class citizens, in some cases as evil and without hope.  One does not sell another person’s property and residence is temporary.

Leviticus 25:23 addresses
[ ] no sale of the land and
[ ] the pilgrim status of the Israelite

‘The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me.

Pilgrim profile owned

If anyone was going to say “this land is mine” without raising eyebrows it would be Abraham.  He, standing apart from his descendants in the 21st and century and in New Testament times, stated his position as pilgrim to a Canaanite family.

On the occasion of buying land for a cemetery

“I am a stranger and a sojourner among you; give me a burial site among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

Genesis 23:4

The idea of the Israelite pilgrim is baked into song.   Pilgrim status is not  a secret.

A psalmist and his ancestors

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am a stranger with You, A sojourner like all my fathers.

Psalms 39:12

Ownership affirmed

We have thought that the status of Jerusalem was going to be a pattern for the cities and towns based on the choices and experiences of the patriarchs.

  • Abraham in Egypt and Canaan
  • Isaac and Jacob lived in tents in Canaan
  • Jacob took his family to live in Egypt

The apostolic vision of pilgrimage

The Alien Experience

In Acts 7:6 the entire family is acquainted with the foreigner experience.  In 7:29 Moses is on the run from Egypt.  In Ephesians 2 Paul addresses all believers as “no longer strangers or aliens” due to their faith in Christ.  This is equivalent to a sojourner (ger, גר) acquiring the rights  and obligations of a native-born person (an izrach אזרח). Peter also positions all believers as aliens and strangers, this world or age being their temporary home. 

When Peter calls his readers pilgrims it is a sweeping identification of God’s people in every age.  Who in a right frame of mind wants to be stuck in one little corner when the region, the planet, and the universe has unimaginable places to visit and govern? 

The promise of land to Abraham never seemed more relevant when dispersed Jews faced annihilation in the 20th century.  Iran continues to threaten the Jewish people and the ancestors of the Iranians were the only people (nation!) who turned the Jewish people into a mob with orders to plunder the Persian (ancient Iranians) people.

Esther 8:10-12 reminds us extreme reversals in God’s justice scheme.

He wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, and sealed it with the king’s signet ring, and sent letters by couriers on horses, riding on steeds sired by the royal stud. 11) In them the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoil, 12) on one day in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month (that is, the month Adar).

Esther 8:10-12

Did the seven Caananite nations see themselves as first nations with inalienable rights and permanent homelands?

The owner meets the tenants

The beef with the status quo in New Testament times was clear from the beginning of the Messianic mission.  John’s work was a stinging rebuke of the contemporary talking points and Yeshua laid out a similar case towards the end of his life.  The parable of the landowner, the vineyard and the vinegrowers was a contributor to hostility that crested in our Lord’s passion.

The vineyard parable

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.

Matthew 21:33

The vineyard analogy is as old as Isaiah (chapter 5) and the measures by the owner stand out.

Isaiah 5:5-6 and a trash-worthy vineyard


5) “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. 6) “I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned or hoed, But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.”

The response to the parable is surprising and ostrich-like. It is one thing to understand and another to agree and get in line behind the Owner.

Matthew 21:45

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them.

Matthew 21:45

The scenes of the parable (verses 34 to 41)

  • 34) When the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce.
  • 35) The vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third.
  • 36) Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them.
  • 37) But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
  • 38) But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’
  • 39) They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
  • 40) Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?”
  • 41) They said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.”

Not mine but yours

Passion for the land is easily misplaced.  Land can easily become a thing in the rearview mirror. It is true that at some point residence becomes permanent but not in the absence of a faith with purely political, geographic, and physical produce. Memory can be as short as a lifetime but pinning ones spiritual and physical security on a particular piece of earth is shortsighted and wickedly resistant. Residence in the Holy Land will change again apart from Jewish ideas of ownership and promise. Ultimately, when that change comes everyone, Gentiles and Jews, will confess, “This land is Yours, King of the nations”.

Sorry sobriety

Knowledge without the word is merchandising nonsense and the multiplication of grace is not a subject of ongoing knowledge. It is a sad and sorry alley to be in and there are many backing into it because of a soundbyte.

Grace is multiplied

2. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3. seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

2 Peter 1:2-3

“Be multiplied” is the aorist tense, passive voice, and optative mood of plethuno, πληθυνω, I multiply.  There is one way that this verse is addressing a practical processs of acquiring knowledge of God or Bible content, and that way is the fevered production of confused minds.

Off madly interpreting

One of the verified crazy and unlikely ways to rightly divide – correctly handle – the text of the Bible is that of using the existing divisions Old and New Testaments.  Conclusions of this sort are elementary and shortsighted.   If one thinks that the Messianic doctrine was plastered over every page of the Hebrew Bible we must understand how our Lord’s contemporaries so profoundly missed it and having seen his marvelous work and heard his gracious words. Let me suggest that occasions for the correct handling of the Bible’s message happen in the verse and the the sentence.

Exhibit A

Yahweh is my light and my salvation even when I am stumbling in fear.

Do our thoughts stop being ours when they range far from God’s? Do we suppose that we have God’s thoughts and ways?

Exhibit B

Psalms 28:7

The Lord is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart exults, And with my song I shall thank Him.

Consider the following two landmarks.

  • God lives in unapproachable light and that is why the ancients presumed that one dies on seeing God. 
  • There was never a time when God was not Life, Salvation, Shield and Strength

Or maybe we want to believe in a God who changes?

Presence of God trashed

God’s promise to “never leave or forsake” is polluted by people who think they can exploit through teaching what the perceived or expected blessing might be. God’s presence is not a prophylactic, neither is the whole body of law. God goes to bars, racist churches, and loves unhinged television teachers.