Author: eejoseph

I admire civil servants

eejoseph,

What profession do you admire most and why?

Civil servants are the face, hands and feet of government. They put themselves at our disposal before they see us. Who would not admire such devotion? Uninformed agitators, ungrateful manipulators and pork-barrelers.

Ignorant people call them names and some may deserve it, but civil servants serve us even on the holidays. Civil servants do their work regardless of who forms the government, regardless of what we look like, regardless of how uninformed we are, and they are happiest when we leave with a smile they caused.

Conquests that honour Christ

eejoseph

Christ was victorious in the most unusual ways.  First and foremost, He died to give life to the lost. He was punished as innocent to free the guilty.  He became human to give humans access to divine attributes.  These three prominent features of the mission are sacrificial. The concept of blood covers them.  These days the blood of Christ gets thrown not only into the redemption and remission of sin operations but at every desire the believer wants fulfilled. The fact that we have eternal life does not mean that we are invincible.  We actually suffer, run into disappointment, experience bereavement and loss, make mistakes, exercise poor judgment, and act without love, faith or hope.  The list of supposed blood-wrought solutions is long, and all the conquests believers claim do not honour the Anointed.

Pleading the blood of Christ just became a fix-all


The blood of Christ is irrelevant to an exam for which we did not study.  The death and resurrection of Christ are not functional for adjusting our financial situation.  The blood of Christ does not avail to dedicate a baby, buy a house or sell a car. What’s next? Is someone seriously going to plead Christ’s blood for their government for their political campaigns?

Christian victory is real


Make no mistake!  The agents of victory are many, but all are subsequent to the redemption by blood.  Let me list a few to remind us and affirm that blood does not replace any of them.

Agents of victory

  • Supreme power.  “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:1, KJVA)
  • Force of arms.  “And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.” (Numbers 13:30, KJVA)
  • God’s favour.  “By this I know that You are pleased with me, Because my enemy does not shout in triumph over me.” (Psalms 41:11, NASB)

Divine armour for life’s warfare

  1. BELT OF TRUTH
  2. BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
  3. GOSPEL SHOES OF PEACE
  4. SHIELD OF FAITH
  5. HELMET OF SALVATION
  6. SWORD OF THE SPIRIT
  7. PRAYER AND PETITION
  8. BEING ON THE ALERT
  9. PERSEVERANCE AND PETITION (Ephesians 6:14-18, NASB)

End the blood abuse

Blood is known to be an agent of atonement and reconciliation, and in the levitical system it is clear that the blood of animals did not remove the chasm between Yahweh and the people.  If blood, all by itself, does not accomplish atonement as the genesis of all benediction then the dedication of the apostles and their early disciples is all badly misplaced. None of them applied Christ’s blood to anything beside remission, redemption and cleansing. Forgive me, but capitalism and commerce are not targets of eternal love. Since we overcome by Lamb’s blood and by our own testimony (Revelation 12:11) it stands to reason that the testimony arises from our use of the other agents of victory made available because of the Lamb’s blood.

For a penny: trips to the landfill

eejoseph,

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

On sale:

Guaranteed one-way trips to the landfill.

  • alliances between religion and politics
  • religious republics
  • thinly disguised plots to break
  • cheer-evoking slogans that will in a court of law end in contempt and conviction

Today’s Special: free excoriation of bishops, imams, rabbis, philosophers and gurus who abuse their own books and insult the common decency.

What law supercedes Christ?

eejoseph,

After coming to Christ for salvation and recognizing him additionally as Creator, and after making their hallelujah about the Holy Spirit as guardian and guide people are still talking about conforming to law as the final sentence in divine judgment.  It is madness that drives this kind of rebellion.  They are neither psychotic, intoxicated nor drugged, but something has got a hold of them. We know it as the spirit – not a demon – of unbelief and intransigence.  More recently we have seen the bondage manifested in primitive cultures getting recognition from the powers that squashed them.

(for the Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. (Hebrews 7:19, NASB)

Maturity does not distinguish legal arrangements

All the evidence one needs about the empires and their client states is in. Even those who like to tout national independence and millennia of family ties are naked and defenceless. The vast majority of humans seem to revel in their tribal footprint, and a few foolishly try to make their pedigree the global standard. History does not corroborate any island or continent as the epitome of integrity. Especially in the pristine and primitive communities we can find no concept of supremacy. It is high time we stop pretending that our ethics and our laws are the same thing. The planet cannot survive another debacle of the innocent suffering for the guilty, or men parading as masters of their people with the deliberate exclusion of women. We are doomed as long as money talks and the collective business of the masses remains outside the priority circle. Lipservice to the golden rule or any other social contract trails in the dust because the law – the standard – of Christ towers above them all.

Heritage shmearitage

eejoseph

We have always suspected that the conservative government of Ontario was only interested in military privilege and money in the pockets of big corporations, so we never believed that the Ford government was ever interested in preserving Ontario’s Green Belt as a national Heritage. Now Ontario’s auditor general is revealing that the Ford government favoured developers in its plan to supposedly ease the housing crunch. Will any one be sanctioned for violating a sacred trust like the conservation of Ontario’s moraine? Toronto’s mayor may have seen this coming as he resigned earlier in 2023. Ford will smear the campaign to preserve green space, but his sneering at Ontarians for not buying his housing “plan at any cost” will soon end. Conservatives care about the bottom line at the bank and in the market. Their attitude borders on institutional corruption. The sacred land is a mere commodity. We do not expect Ford to even acknowledge what the auditor says. When there is no more green space he will not be around and the wealth conservatives are trying to build will be useless bits of paper or data. The greenbelt is real heritage deserving protection from the Tory bulldozers.

No cogent defence

eejoseph
Prison-bound golden boy

Practically everyone except the hardcore pipe dreamer knows that criminality defines nearly every Republican, evangelical, and conservative venture.  Neither surprise,  perplexity, nor puzzle results from reading the evidence amassing from investigations of the perfect political right. Flirting with racism, redrawing political boundaries to strip voting rights from Black voters, and claiming that the Republican or any party does not lose elections, have no defence in a court of law, unless it is a court in the wild west, Russia, China, or the Jim Crow south.

Jouvert Antigua

eejoseph

August 7 marks the jubilation of freed people.  The story says that the original Freedom Day 1, August 01, 1834, found the freed population in church.   People have carved out a few hours around the dawn of the first Monday in August as a time of mas in the streets (perhaps to be another sacred mass) with the people completely free to express themselves. It is a dawn festival, marking the opening of the day, the age of freedom from colonial bondage. 

Joo-vay (jour ouvert) puts on display mobile musicians, dancing, colourful costumes and songs giving life to the cultures the slaves had been denied for centuries, and a lot of skimpily dressed men and women. If there is one festival that dispersed Africans should not give up it is Jouvert.

Opening act: the tree planted

eejoseph

The song that hits our ears when we open the Hebrew songbook is not a childish pipedream. It has become so for the stuck-in-kindergarten class.  Like when Yeshua begins to talk about his death – serpent lifted up in the desert – the crowd thins out, so the opening song, Psalm 1, strikes at the pride of the simple and the rebellious; the spiritually juvenile. The description of the happy man’s delight vs the result of ungodly counsel does not seem to be as interesting as the tree planted.  If I knew how a tree planted in the perfect place could not be fruitful and under what circumstances its leaves can wither I would tell. 

Tree, vineyard, garden 🏡

If God so arranged the ancient peoples’ many latent problems so as not to impede the fulfillment of his promises to Abraham,  I cannot think of a path for the maxing out of promises for all humanity that does not end in success.  God finishes what he starts, and because some people did not reach the promised land, there is no reason to believe that God is any less in control of the agenda.  Can the happy man be like a tree planted by the roadside, on a stony ground, or among the thorns?

Aborted Gardening

When the seed connects you are set

Every believer or concert knows beyond a shadow of a doubt when regeneration has happened. It is never “Oh, now I understand”. It is obvious that all the doctrines we pump into people do not constitute the life-giving turning point over which God is sovereign. The church has always had God’s authoritative Spirit to certify the message of salvation. There is not another Spirit for teaching the converts. There are battalions of believers who are doubting God’s planting.