Month: November 2021

Been had

eejoseph

If someone tells you that you need one of their books or tracts to enhance your access to God the Father you are about to be had in ways you have not imagined. If Peter or James tried to convince you that they had received the Holy Spirit on account of God’s evaluation of their compliance with the commands, statutes and judgments of the Sinai Covenant, the Palestinian Covenant or the messages of the prophets, you could reasonably conclude that each had lost his mind. Playing out before our eyes in the information age is a hook, line, sinker, and bait tragedy, with government and religious bodies telling us that democracy, law, security, and order are the bedrock of human society. It makes us wonder what planet or substrata of earth people have been to or come from. We are being had especially by religious and political operatives calling themselves conservatives who also want the world to recognize them as lovers of and fighters for freedom, and freedom from government in particular.

Hard line dead line

James had seen Yeshua up close from childhood but he chose to align himself with the Pharisee sect. He sided with them in their attempt to turn the church into to a franchise of the Aaronic kingdom. I affirm, with the eyewitnesses of New Testament times, that Christ’s agenda was not to invite any person to follow Moses or Elijah. James may have thought he could ignore his brother’s conflict with the Jewish authorities and he definitely makes absolutely no case for the atonement that is central to his brother’s identity and mission. He, like many before him, thinks he can impress his audience with a hard line about personal performance. He ends up with a lot of name calling and an unhinged theory about how God justified Abraham, where grace is sidetracked into help for believers.There are few examples of being more misguided about the primacy of grace and faith. We believe that grace is the exclusive portal for all things divine. Killing violators of law or protocols is a devilish idea. Apply that law to everyone and the human race disappears. There are people who say they know when God closes the door on people for whom His Son died, which means we can ignore the duty to forgive – seventy times seven – as taught by Christ himself, and love as he loved. Talk about being more just than God!

Schizophrenic experts

How can anyone be committed to justice by siding with corporations and the rich? How does small government – the stupid mantra of American conservatives – effectively govern a large country? How could strength and security ever emerge when “united” defines a potpourri of racist, xenophobic, misogynist, vote manipulating states? The great deceiver has a lot of people in his grasp who thought that they could line up behind instructions about sacred time, purity and impurity regulations, and the idolatry of types over reality. One of the more stupid things that people embrace in their zeal for things Messianic is the readiness to condemn others for sin. Stop acting surprised at the antics of people who want less government and a majority of judges who cannot accurately interpret their basis law, written in their own language, and is not even four hundred years old.. Stop pretending to be impressed by Webster’s definition of concepts birthed in God’s heart thousands of years ago and written in languages that people in Africa, much of Europe and Asia, and all of America, Australia, Canada, and the islands of the sea have to learn.

It is a noble thing to appreciate every bit of exhortation we receive from any source. We are in a bad place when the exhortation falls off the train and shows no awareness that the popular interpretations of Scripture need urgent attention because those interpretations and a whole lot of official translations are more wrong, elementary, speculative, and designed to entrap than they are accurate.Who has you?

Plan without a context

eejoseph,

There must be a lot of people who think that every Bible prediction has potential for personal gain.  This is why Europeans have travelled far and wide, raped and pillaged every place, including the ones they want to claim as their own.  It is also the reason for seeing a miracle behind every narrative or proclamation.  Even when the rationale for God’s pronouncements are explicit people are still being conned by verse favourites without their contexts.

For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.”

Jeremiah 29:10, NASB

Jeremiah 29:10 is how Yahweh set up his comfort message to the exiled people of Judah.  The plan reveal came next. 

11) ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 12) ‘Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you’

Jeremiah 29:11-12, NASB

Plans need no pretext

The audacity is staggering.  The idea that the unprecedented supervision of Abraham’s erring descendants in exile is a common path for anyone who chooses to latch on to it ranks with the covering cherub’s attempt to overthrow God (Isaiah 14:12-14).  Plans to replace Israel, plans to roll old into new, will not end well. The favorite verse complex has no rebellion,  no treachery,  no prostitution,  no calamity, no repentance, and only a Messianic pretext. It follows the pattern of lazy thinking, and no thinking. We do not simply open our mouths and say whatever the current desire dictates.

We are hopeless if our confidence is in the things we have invented. Our societies do a good job of muddling along. Even when there are bursts of civilized behavior people say the right things and carry on just as before (Jeremiah 7:8-14).  Even so, plans to replace Israel, plans to roll old into new, will not end well. The favorite verse complex has no rebellion, no treachery, no prostitution, no calamity, no repentance, and only a Messianic pretext. It follows the pattern of lazy thinking, and no thinking. We do not simply open our mouths and say whatever the current desire dictates.

Just saying what we are told to say does not bring more kingdom into our lives. Believers are not speaking things into existence. If they were we would all have everything we need, just like when Yahweh said “Let there be light” and “Let earth teem with living creatures” and then created man to have dominion. It is obvious that people are not prevailing in prayer. The law of God is not a condom. Divine law does not prevents sin. How quickly people forget; the law is what defines and powers sinful attitudes and behaviours. The vices we know come from within us. If people say they prefer political constructs, progress without benevolent prudence, and prefer eating and drinking rules, or is because Christ ruling in hearts by faith is not attractive to them. Do they want to confirm that they do not need a Saviour?

It must be obvious that without the king and sacrifice facets of the Messianic heritage most propositions and all the speculation about life and home are questionable pretexts. The plans in Jeremiah 29 only makes sense when exile and calamity have taken place, and calamity, for too many believers, can always be waved away by our exercise of faith. That is the rationale for a life free from troubles and crosses, and a likely demonic pretext.

Famine and Fearmongering

eejoseph

The famine that has restructured our ideas about rights and privileges is now being complicated by attempts to reduce the pressures through massive violent campaigns.  It is a waste of time to trust in the expansion of European powers and the rise of new nations are signs of nobility and civic perfection.  Unity was never in the barn and the philanthropy everyone seems to want to put at the centre of their  thinking are mere clouds of deceptions. There is not going to be less insecurity and fear in the world, and the emergence of calls for justice is not a bandwagon for the fearful.

Now it came about in the days when the vigilantes governed, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of West Virginia in America went to sojourn in the land of England with his wife and his two sons.

Spoof of Ruth 1:1

Curfews (unrelated to the pandemic), troops deployed to dominate cities where protests are happening are heartless and foolish reactions.  They certainly have no right to be called policy.   America’s unfinished revolution keeps coming back to embarrass those of us who have a brain and a hope to live left.

Moabite Ruth became mama #1 in Bethlehem. That cannot happen in America or Britain.  God got his way in ancient Bethlehem because he softened the hearts of the people to accept foreigners.  Just look at America and the United Kingdom today.  They do not seem to be united except to oppress the poor and foreigners.

No shame attaches to the blindness of xenophobia, the idolizing of wealthy persons,  the rejection of science and theology.   Law and the love of money has taken over the thoughts and desires of people who would love to bd called God’s people and Christians.

Why was there a famine in the land where judges governed?

Guess who fears the Messianic message

Centuries of a caucasian Jesus, a mindless recitation of favorite Bible verses, the creation of a Judeo-Christian monster, and a fear of anything that gets too close to the apostles, is hunger enough.

Things you thought you could be taught

eejoseph

There is a rush to get educated even where ignorance is still a treasure, a haven of innocence. It is not progress when people equate education with the capitalist dream; things can go wrong quickly. Much harm is done too when a certain class is impressed with glitter and imitates the glitter without knowing that glitter is a distraction from gold. Reading is good, and books of all types should be embraced. Let us notice though that faiths with sacred texts for recitation or study have a sense of piety just for reading. One does not know exactly what the reciting (or book) people teach – Christians are the only ones with their quasi-teaching out in the open. Christ is still the inspiring example of godliness, because at s o me point neither you nor I want to end up in the ditch because we insisted on following the greatest of our spiritual forbears due to the fact that they are all broken vessels, with commendations from their friends and no sign of approval from the one who teaches and matures his students without guesswork and with absolutely certainty.

Intimate knowledge of the Lord.

Every two-bit televangelist is publishing confounding lists about success, overcoming, and unlocking kingdom secrets. People who have no interest in elevating Yeshua are selling 5 Steps to a Rich Prayer Life, 7 Principles to a Better Marriage, 4 Steps to Overcoming Sin, and weeklong Study Plans. This is more rubbish than one should come into contact with and they are doing it despite the constitutional premise that God personally teaches the least and the greatest.

And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. Hebrews 8:11

Why do they do it? They want to make merchandise of people and claim them as disciples. To know Christ is to be in possession of life. To know is to have intimacy, not mere familiarity.FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE are the three sure possessions of the believer. No law regulates them, The hundreds of burdens that our leaders have given us are inappropriate and destructive.

Righteousness, peace and joy vs food and drink

It is as if Paul knew that believers would try to elevate food and drink to spiritual responsibility. They are nothing more than the ABCs of being human.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:17

The former arrangement – sin, death, law – made its debut with a food, drink, and washings at the core, and grew to ridiculous proportions. How ridiculous can be seen when Christ set the record straight about defilement. His sayings about the significance of life over the body, life over the clothing, did little to shake his contemporaries, and the extremes or absurdity are reached whn Gentiles adopt the refuse of Judaism as central to Christian discipleship. He also quite plainly stated that there is no defilement from external sources. Neither food, nor drink, nor the filthy behaviours of others, nor illness changes a person and they do not change God’s evaluation. Defilement of this type was treated with “shall be unclean until t he sun sets”, not with any offering of any type, and especially the Israelite was not required to seek atonement.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
1 Corinthians 2:14-15

Review or Receive

The Gospel needs no update.
Yeshua died, was buried, and rose on the 3rd day.
What we need to be saved and live the holy life had not changed since Golgotha.
No reform can review the Gospel and no special insight or vision is needed. Everything beside the gospel is overrated and deceptive rubbish. The Gospel is something we receive and transmit, always with success.