A strange analogy but not the truth

The British and American peoples are neither Israel nor Judah. The late Herbert W. Armstrong, a well-known heretic, posing as a scholar of biblical matters, made a lastng impression on many in the last century when he used to circle the globe assuring people that Christ has a plan for the government of world. Beyond that, Mr. Armstrong was just another White man trying to make the case for white supremacy.  The United States and the United Kingdom are a truly strange phenomenon because they are anything but united, and their roots seldom match their fruits.

There is no case for global Mosaic government

The coming world government will not be based on Levitical conventions, nor on the Sinai Covenant. Who, after carefully examining the wordfs and works of the Anointed King of Israel, Yeshua aof Nazareth, would presume to place the welfare of the entire globe on the juvnile pride in days, months, years, food and drink, and perishable rituals? Not me.

No genuine Christian witness turns the keys of the kingdom over to Moses

Ten Comandments, the observation of days, months, years,  have never been the focus of anyone in the chirch of Jesus Christ except those supposedly converted Jews who thought that the Church was just another sect of Judaism.  The New Testament witnesses to James, the Lord’s brother, leading a faction dominated by Pharisees who harassed the early disciples to become followers of accept circumcision and to adopt the law of Moses as the foundation of the Messianic kindgom. Paul called the whole shebang juvenile rubbish.  They failed, and yet today, two millennia later, we still can still observe the distinction between the Spirit’s leading and the incitement of demons.

Crowned heads and David

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

1 Timothy 4:1-3, NASB

The British and American people speak neither Hebrew, Aramaic, or any related language. They both have denied people the right to marry, particularly interracial marriage, just as Jew-Gentile ordinary interactions were forbidden.  They have not demonstrated any readiness to adopt the best of the Israel’s patriarchal, levitical, or royal traditions.  David never made slaves of foreigners, and he had no delusions of empire.  The British and American peoples have embraced the worst traits of ancient Israel: xenophobia, inhumanity to humans and animals, racism, genocidal traits, and the love of hypocrisy.  All the talk about the Ten Commandments as supreme instruction can never erase the crimes all three have committed.  Their whoredom – sipping at every fountain – is increasingly apparent, and all the hype about keeping the Ten Commandments is a denial of Yeshua’s own teaching about righteousness.  Man’s essential problem is not a legal issue; it is is trust matter.  How do we know?  The solution to sin is not law, but faith in the Son of God.  The key to salvation is not correcting behaviour, but exercising faith and accepting a new layer to hope, interpersonal connections, and reliability.

Salvation is a today and one-by-one thing, not a future government

Mr. Weston’s refried beans dinner of British and American Israelitism and a deadly dabble in politics will remain fringe and cultish.  He and Mr. Armstrong have never demonstrated even the  elementary submission to the sovereignty of Yeshua.  They have failed to connect with the apostles’ witness concerning Yeshua’s death and resurrection.  Who gives a rodent’s rear end if the Scots and Brits sincerely believe that they have a stone from the experience of Jacob?  When His Majesty Charles III takes the throne, it will not matter if an ancient stone is under him but whether the vows he makes to honour God and serve the people are genuine.  Ancient does not make right or ideal.

I smell a rat

I have always wondered why only two provinces have a provincial police force and the rest apparently have been satisfied with Canada’s national force serving as provincial police.  Is it because they wanted to appear above popular scrutiny or is it because a provincial police force allows provincial revenue to be spent on interests that can be artificially labelled as heritage and more important than law enforcement?  I do not know, but, despite the rationales and historic perspectives, I smell a rat. 

Where’s that rodent?

A mass shooting in Nova Scotia opens up a door into the culture of both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Nova Scotia NIMBY attitude.  Who would have thought that Canada’s superlatively picturesque region could be so violated by senseless violence as to have the region terrorized for hours by a lone gunman! “Not in my back yard” is an unfounded pride. If cities can have large budgets for an ever-increasing range of police services I wonder why a province with anti-authority sentiments, such as Alberta, wants us to think that they can have Canada’s national police force covering the needs of such a population. Maybe those provinces with no provincial police force want us to believe that with the federal authority as police force citizens have no need to be concerned about law enforcement going off the rails.

Who is being observed? The rodent or the lab assistant?

As a result of the inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass shooting we are hearing that the RCMP cannot be trusted because of political entanglements. We are hearing that the RCMP cannot be trusted because of Interpol ising culture that does not really help the citizens. Is the rodent being observed or is the rodent the researcher? Should we not have expected the RCMP to be on watch to prevent crime, and what shall we say has become of the cop-on-the-beat safeguarding citizens in their homes and in their communities? Maybe you do not smell a rat, but the absence of a clear narrative from law enforcement about how thousands of children disappeared while in the care of religious and educational organizations and women disappearing from our communities amounts to a smell one can hardly ignore. Maybe you smell a a fish? Carrion of some sort?

People can change

Egyptians are building no pyramids in the twenty-first century and they still depend on the waters of the Nile. The Fertile Crescent is no longer a place where a man can migrate his 300 plus family and livestock to a new country thousands of kilometres away. The Iraqi people, the successors of the great and golden Babylonians, live in a world where any thoughts of being in charge of the world as far as their boots could reach has to be a result of a mental illness. The Chinese people are still scared of the outside world, making the national army the living version of the famous terra cotta figurines. Across the globe tribalism, greed and political buffoonery are keeping people from acting as humans, and spilling innocent blood. People can change and the conclusion rests on the transition between the changed and the changer.

The inhumanity of people rides a conquering horse

Can people change?

People can change the environment and landscape more decisively than they can change their minds. The will power to change behaviour is a shallow pool and saying yes to the contents of a viral and even noble video does not change the composition of the human heart. People are still liars, selfish, rebellion-prone, proud and stuck in their traditional silos. People change from squirming infants, to precocious juveniles, to focused adults right before our eyes. “People change” ought to be observed first in families, then in villages, then in cities, then in nations. Something else is riding a conquering horse in the arena of people change. It is nevertheless a rare thing indeed for people to change themselves from inhumane beings headed for the grave. To quote from a two-term and unsullied American president’s campaign slogan, “Yes, we can”.

Don’t believe the miraculous flakes on TV

No one is swimming in an ocean of miracles, even with a tiny bit of faith.  Copeland’s a rich moron who is quite likely to be a stranger to Christ. Popoff is a scammer exposed as such multiple times. Pastor Schuller is the only American minister with a television program showing any signs of growth in grace and Messianic knowledge.  What a straight path he has cut away from his dad’s “possibility gospel”!    If the passage of time as saved persons does not bring us to the undisputed preeminence of Yeshua I do not know what will.  I have met people who have been disciples for two years who are more disciplined than pastors who have decades of stories of amazing visions and miracles.  The more we look at the Risen Christ the more we should be able to separate him from thieves and robbers.  Thinking biblically is just not a thing these days.  The truth of the Gospel is the opposite of racism, misogyny and xenophobia, and gospel truth, the man Messiah Yeshua, has not even one voice in the wilderness calling American and Canadian society on their crimes, the same crimes –  racism, misogyny and xenophobia – that first century people observed in the assault on the Church’s freedom from Mosaic law and Jewish tradition.  With people like Mike Pence and Jim Jordan parading as principled Christians, Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham posing as caring human beings, we know we have caught the raindrop ascending; our eyes are popping.  Snowflakes and flaky people love it where the air is warm.

“The Truth of the Gospel” is Christ’s anti-racism indictment

You have to be literate exclusively on a King James version level to not connect the phrase “gospel truth” with the racist practices of people like James (of the general letter in the New Testament) and the host of Jews who faked conversion while clinging to the delusion that “Gentiles need Moses”.  Bible teachers who churn out books, study guides disguised as insightful commentary, and stories of miracles, evidently do not recognize the value of Greek and Hebrew texts.  The only way to make oneself a true disciple of the Apostles is to be able to sit with their words as written or to admit that that is where the intimacy with them  lies, not in the arguments in a commentary but in proper exegesis of what the apostles wrote.  I do not want to try to explain why there are so many heretics these days except to say there is a broad road leading to destruction and most religious people or believers have little interest and therefore no diligence in showing themselves to be accurate interpreters of the Gospel.  Indeed, when the gospel is said to revolve around the Sinai Covenant we know that fabrications  and hypocrisy are more important than what Christ and his chosen witnesses taught.

Other flakes pretending to be warriors

There is a crude attempt to appear devoted to inclusiveness by television personalities.  They are ordinary employees of media enterprises, who will, for example,  say what authorized people have said, and then they get experts to tell their audiences  what events mean.  They are not even allowed to be critical because if they do we end up with the Fox spectacle.  When television and radio news anchors become critical they expose fascism, misogyny, genocidal tendencies,  open racism, and the class biases that have plagued societies from day one.  Democracies do not have to convince or please every critic, because we know that the prevalent criticisms, including the parliamentary ones,  in the short histories of Canada and the United States have kept the civic society needle at a meagre 33%.  We are not going to tally up the things we have in common and arrive at a thriving society.  Do we suppose that Jews and Palestinians cannot find enough common threads to live in peace? That may be the case, and American politicians are rightly not convinced that white people have enough in common with black and brown people.

“More that unites human beings than divides them” is a blind man’s guide

Pastors lose their credibility for not knowing where their parishioners live

“Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command.”

1 Chronicles 12:32

The whiplash from men like MacArthur and Stanley is homicidal.  They are killing us respectively with their warrior mentality and sweet Jesus morality. Real humility is not a value we find in the absolute standard of Mosaic Law.  You can’t be a follower of Christ and cling to a morality that is not cruciform.  There is no glory to God from people who have less than perfect bodies, occupations, and families. You can quickly find them railing against murderers, unfaithful spouses and homosexuals, but we have yet to hear a single word  from them about lying politicians and crooked and perverse religious leaders.  Is it because they hope to create a new America that parallels the Islamic states with ruthless destruction of wrongdoers? It surely seems that way.  With judges who will look the other way when racism, inequality of economic opportunity, misogyny and xenophobia prevail, America is more like the Israel and the Judah Yahweh sent into exile for their lip service and hypocrisy.  The times that interest American pastors are the good old days of slavery,  racism and unrestrained homicide, the days when they can sit in resplendent hypocrisy in church beside people about whom they care little.

Physician! Heal yourself!

One thing is certain: pastoral ministry has not shown itself trusted by God with healing powers over sickness and disease.  Not even a headache comes to church for healing.  Then again, how does one prove a headache? Proof of healing power can easily be focused on jails and hospitals.  Shall I mention the morgues and funeral homes? How is it that so few are healed of greed, mental laziness, lying lips,  and cowardice.  I am sure you have wondered why a healing or a revelation seems to come with Baalistic chanting, bodies trembling, and falling to the ground. Wonder we must, because none of the Biblical signs occurred with the charismatic or pentecostal dramatics. Whatever happened to mustard seed size faith? Whatever happened to “speak the word”? How many organs does God have to heal before people recognize that healing, unlike blood-bought salvation, is temporary and often without evidence.

The power we dream of and the corruption we court

For the proof of religious impotence we need to look no further than the last presidency of the United States, the 45th, where the spectacle of every half-blind Tom, Dick, and Harry can be ordained as gospel ministers who care only about tithes and offerings, stupid political slogans, foolish and robotic support for the state of Israel and greedy alliances with broken nations in the Middle East and Asia.  Look no further than the State of Israel where today law is a complete sham, and none of the kingdom things prescribed and pursued apply to the government. They are neither law-abiding, compassionate nor gracious.  Corporate entities are not people and we know why Republican types want to see the IRS defanged. Those “disciples” of Christ affirming the Ten Commandments as the rock of their Christian experience can only be verified as the guardians of the failed traditions of the patriarchs, the prophets and hardcore followers of the scribes and Pharisees of New Testament times.

Flaky people on television are mostly idolaters. They are convinced that God and their country are equals. They do not read. They are only great at reciting. There is no morality more impressive than loving one’s neighbour. Once we shove their own books up in their face they will close their eyes, as if literature is a blinding light or a nauseating mess they are afraid to look at. As for those who are always selling a book or a study guide I have to say even an experienced man like Charles Stanley and an apparently informed teacher like John MacArthur are often caught respectively spinning literally incredible webs of hate and Mosaic morality. All the “power of faith” sycophants are using their mouth and anus like the rest of us, growing old and are grave-bound. I have been watching these guys for decades and their failure to put Yeshua first is hard to miss. “Jesus” is always a tack-on, a tombstone on their Solomonic wisdom and Mosaic heartlessness. I have to imagine that churches in Canada and the United States are also full of flaky people posing as rocky characters. They ain’t no Simon Peter. They ain’t no John bar-Zebedee.

Sundown and moonrise

The day Christ died was a Passover.  He did not die over a period of seven days.  He was, according to the eyewitnesses to his life, the Paschal Lamb. His herald announced him as God’s Lamb (John 1:29). The man from Nazareth was the Paschal Lamb. Passover or Pesach is a single day, and it corresponds astronomically to the day/night the Sons of Israel departed Egypt with Joseph’s bones.  It is an annul sign or feast. Christians have tagged the Sunday that follows the first  full moon after the spring equinox. Then they backtrack try to Friday and call that Good Friday. If there is such a thing as holy time it will be marked by supernatural means. Passover is always the 14th day of Nisan, and coincides with the full moon of the first month. The day Christ died people are likely to have seen the sun disappear around 3pm, and the full moon rise shortly after sunset.

Still miles apart

If you lived in ancient Israel, the first and last days of each month would feature a moon like the first two in the set (above). In the middle of month, around the fourteenth day, the sky moon would be full. The moon and sun have assigned tasks of marking off day, night, signs, and seasons (Genesis 1:14). So, since the moon is essential for calculating when to keep the Passover Feast, Despite sharing two common sets of books harmony is hard to find. Good Friday, Ramadan and Passover are unlikely bedfellows.

Messiah is not diplomatic about festivals and hoopla

Jews and Christians are still miles apart over what Passover means.  The violence on Temple Mount shows the galaxies between Jews and Muslims.   Maybe Arabs and the Jewish people will do business and exchange vacation spots but sitting down to celebrate life and divine revelation together is next to impossible. Of course there are many ways to express cultural solidarity, such as folk lore, traditional and regional practices. Spiritual enlightenment and divine revelation are not possible grounds for harmony between mosque, synagogue and church. The sun has set and the moon is now fully exposed as not a “great” source of light. All the patriarchs, prophets and kings are losers, and if you ask Yeshua, he will tell you that they are all guilty of posing with someone else’s property.

Clearly not mud; what gives?

He who dwells …shall abide cannot be talking about the same action.  Yashab is clearly resident, and lûn is definitely stay overnight.  The person who is currently using the divine hiding place –  the seter, סתר – as dwelling place or, frankly, home,  will [try to] make himself stay overnight.  It is obvious that the seter is not the usual residence: it is the place where one takes cover, or hides.  Perhaps “bunker” is another way to think of the secret place or shelter.  The shadow of El Shaddai is also both a substantial permanent cover and a temporary refuge.  Compare the wings of a bird as the place where fledglings find protection (Deuteronomy 32:11  and Matthew 23:37).  “Abide” seems to be unrealistic when both places are incidental locations of refuge.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Psalms 91:1

The temporary and permanent elements of “shadow” are evident

  • A ROOF IS A SHADOW/ SHADE. “Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof.” (Genesis 19:8, NASB).  Lot had offered his house for an overnight stay, saying, “Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, and SPEND THE NIGHT, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” They said however, “No, but we shall SPEND THE NIGHT in the square.” (Genesis 19:2, NASB)
  • A TREE PROVIDES SHADE.  ‘All the birds of the heavens nested in its boughs, And under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth, And all great nations lived under its shade.” (Ezekiel 31:6, NASB)
  • WINGS PROVIDE SHADOW/SHELTER “How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.” (Psalms 36:7, NASB)
  • YAHWEH HIMSELF IS THE BELIEVER’S SHADE. The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade on your right hand.” (Psalms 121:5, NASB)
  • THE Divine SHADOW IS A SOURCE OF HOPE  “Those who live in his shadow Will again raise grain, And they will blossom like the vine. His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon.” (Hosea 14:7, NASB)

When I look into many of the popular sayings in the Bible I particularly like finding a reason to say “Hey, what’s going on here?” Well, this “dwelling” and “abiding” in Psalm 91 looks kind of fishy and at least your curiosity has to be aroused seeing synonyms like DWELL and ABIDE appearing in this song from the 10th century BC.  Neither dwell nor abide are 21st century usage.  Now it is clear that ABIDING for lûn could not be the intended meaning over against dwelling (yashab), because abiding is really the overnight experience rather than a daytime homey experience.  When strangers arrive in the daytime one offers them shelter, footcare and food (Genesis 18:1ff).  When strangers arrive in the nighttime one offers them shelter, footcare,  food and a sleepover (Genesis 19:1ff).  If DWELLING in Psalm 91 is residing then a sleepover – ABIDING –  is nothing.  The reflexive stem (hithpael) of the verb tells us that the person who experiences a daytime welcome and secretive hospitality will make himself a sleepover guest.

“HE WHO DWELLS in the shelter of the Most High WILL ABIDE in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Psalms 91:1

Walk right in, sit right down, sleep over if you wish

From a homey and sheltering welcome to a sleepover seems to be a better transition and a certified improvement over dwelling and abiding.

A tiny mind indeed

That a large volume of almost 1000 pages can be reduced to 100 pages and be called someone’s mind is shocking to me.  When I realized how few speeches by His Imperial Majesty were available a generation later I had to question how we can say we love humanity and education. The book of sayings I knew was a university publication.  That book was the size of my English version of the Mishnah.   A tiny booklet titled “The Wise Mind of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie” shows how impoverished the Pan-African or Rastafarian can be.  The book I knew contained complete speeches.  The contents of that book were a  huge mine of imperial majesty and it is the book I credit with  a most important passage for a dispersed African.

When I was a young Rastafarian I had access to a book of speeches by his Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I.  At the time I was wading through this large volume I had already been reading the Bible regularly and was particularly doing so in those late teenage years.  The book helped to transform me into a committed and passionate pan-africanist, but it also brought me to my faith and my love of writing. 

A volume in circulation

In any case this book was borrowed from one or two mentors and beloved brothers in those days, either one brother Haile or brother King Frank-I.  The book did its rounds, reaching even the semi-literate brothers. The man I met from gobbling up that book was a person of unusual depth of fatherliness, a man of wisdom and displaying the capacity to care tenderly.  The book gave the benefit of context – date and occasion – and fulsome speeches, not merely handpicked sentences. I cannot believe that a tiny booklet can be a healthy source of the wisdom of the highest crowned head of his times. There has to be more, lest we think of this giant of humanity, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, as a tiny mind indeed.

Ford’s frantic fraud

Ontario’s premier is banking for the votes of business and we should not underestimate the proportion of votes that accrue to a party going all out to opt out of Canada’s constitution, health system, and land and environmental sustainability vision.  Every single initiative of the Conservative government had the smell of a drug deal, with a caring soundbyte out front and repeated often. Thanks to an alert and  brave Canadian Mr. Ford’s brazen raiding of the federal purse is out in the open.   His plot to unravel the fabric of Canada’s unique national consensus began with his conferences with the Atlantic premiers, ostensibly coordinating demands for health funding.

Thank you, Brave Canadian, Ms Cooper.  For a necessary medical procedure, she ended up paying fees of nearly $1200.  Believe it folks!  There is a network of medical practitioners and their staff lining up to pick the pockets of Ontarians, all in the name of providing alternate locations for medical procedures to reduce wait times. Thanks to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, we have seen the tip of the iceberg.  The urgency for sending land developers into the Greater Toronto Area’s Greenbelt is that there is a shortage of homes.  The Federal government’s commitment to the right of workers to strike is just too much for a party pledged to stand with business entities. The Premier’s insincerity comes forth, like a leaky faucet, drip, drip, drip.