Author: eejoseph

The megalomania of Christmas

eejoseph

Nativity lecture 2022-2

The solitary figure who, despite kicking his levitical pedigree to the curb, was a public token that a shake-up was coming, was John the Baptist. The few shepherds, one devout man named simeon, a widow named Anna, his parents, and his relatives do not constitute a popular or viral event.

Where are the Royal family conventions? Where is the national rejoicing over the newly arrived king? It is not that the momentous event was unknown, because the birth of the ruler was of profound significance. Micah’s prediction was not obscure to those who handled the sacred texts. “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity” (Micah 5:2, NASB). There seems to be no levitical recognition and interest except to provide the details of where the birth was destined to occur to facilitate Herod’s assassination attempt, and there are no bands of prophets dancing in ecstasy.  A lone devout Israelite and a prophetess in the temple are not a crowd.  They are a far cry from the mob who no would cry “crucify him”

A few shepherds, one devout man named Simeon and a widow named Anna, his parents and his brothers constitute the front seat witnesses in Luke’s account.

The shepherds

Despite the issue is designation is Good Shepherd the references to Shepherd to a few in the nativity narrative. Their privilege is huge.  God’s glory scared them to death, then an angel announced to them what was happening, and they were thrilled. They’re interested in mattress of state is not a parent. They were just minding their sheep .

They acted together

When the angel had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then and see this thing that has happened with the Lord has made known to us.”

Luke 2:15

They acted hastily

They came in a hurry and found their way to marry and joseph, and the baby as he lay in the manger.  Typically human beings like to take the time and confirm what they heard, ensure that they are not hallucinating or sleepwalking, and even traveling precautions are in order. But here, the shepherds were full speed ahead.

They connected what they saw with the angelic announcement

When the shepherds saw what the angel had told them, they made known the statement which had been told them about the child. And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. The shepherds then went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them (Luke 2: 15-20).

Public servant with a small circle

By the time the babe of Bethlehem was ready to return to his glory the crowd who were so scared by the glory of the heavenly messengers may have swelled, but we do not know where they were. The people around Christ with any intimacy was always a small number. 

A predictable outcome

Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’

Matthew 26:31, NASB

The people who were thrilled about the babe who came to sit on David’s throne and were honoured to tell the news with great rejoicing was down the few family members, and John the fisherman. A very private death in public, with only his mother and aunt, and Mary of Magdala, and John. It was not a mall event by any stretch of the imagination.

Therefore the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

John 19:25

Nativity Lecture 2022 -1

eejoseph, ,

A revolution begins in private


The birth of Christ was a big deal, so big that a star appeared in the sky, angels lit up the sky  announcing his birth, and sages from foreign countries east of Judea came to worship the newborn.  This is unprecedented!   Singing angels, ringing bells, gifts for the well-behaved are all empty hype when we compare them to what happened when Christ came into the world and when we compare them to what he came to do.  Throughout  the three and a half years of the Messiah’s life people have found all kinds of trinkets, and the trinketologists have been trying to convince people who are drawn to the the Messiah that the trinkets define and summarize the benefits. It only makes sense to treasure the most dramatic and traumatic events; birth which brings joy in expectation, and death which brings life.

This is the first of three lectures on the birth of Christ


The Nativity’s Revolution Breaks Out in 42 Months


When it dawns on us that the Bethlehem babe was born to die the mega decoration and spending blitz, the holy night proclamation, and the wholesale rejection of monarchy fizzles like the dew on a hot day.  A thin slice of Judean life and the traditions of the chosen people were involved in the drama of the nativity.  David’s family in Bethlehem made no parade or fanfare as the king of the Jews came into the world.  The priests and the officials of the temple had no idea what was happening and had no interest, even when they were asked by Herod the king to investigate the circumstances and manner of the birth of Israel’s King. They could not care less.  The huge crowds that accompanied Yeshua during the three and a half years of his public ministry are  anachronisms, because in both his birth and his death Yeshua was quite alone.

Right to rule and salvation rights

He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 1:11-13, NASB


I am sure that someone will say that the star, the angels and the foreign sages being hip to a cosmic event are regular happenings, or at least happens on the appropriate circumstances.  Even so the government of Judea was moved in a direction  other than welcome and alliance.  Governments outside of Palestine / Judea are headed up by people wanting to have absolute rule over the citizens. Government in Judea was schizophrenic to say the least. Herod was afraid and launched a massacre of babies, while the Romans were fearless and ruthless in keeping the people of Judea under the thumb.  The right to become a child of God was what the birth of Christ was signaling and the record tells us that people did not receive Christ in droves.  Throughout his life people questioned his authority, even after his words and actions came to life in thousands of converted people after the Pentecostal Event there still was no wholesale reception of the king.

Huge crowds in the city square

This year, 2022, we are likely to be treated to the spectacle of huge crowds in the city squares singing carols and celebrating Christmas.  Our churches may be filled on Christmas Eve and there are many churches that put on convincing and spectacular  dramatizations and musicals of the birth of Christ.

The season for life’s most amazing gift


Despite the high level operatives who we might expect to be closely involved in such a seismic  event like the birth of a king, the people who were  at the centre of the nativity were not priests, royals, or prophets.   The arrival of the Saviour-King, listed as the cause for great joy, was noted by a few chosen ones.  We must, however, be aware that God’s gift of a son was intended to exceed the wildest expectations of the Jewish people and bring salvation to all mankind.

Superpowers are mere mortals

eejoseph

Just so we realize how much the world has changed, the book of Chronicles (1:14:16) tells us that David defeated the Philistines from Gezer to Gibeon and that all the nations around became fearful of David. Today we can ask the question who is afraid of the Israeli prime minister and discover that not even the Palestinians, trampled and demoted from being people, are afraid. We can have some confidence that David, now enthroned on high in the person of the great Saving-king, is not being hateful or xenophobic when he pleads for God to put fear into the nations. No matter what wonders of art or warfare the nations possess David, the lad who faced the Philistine giant with a slingshot, would have had no doubt that superpowers in the twenty-first century are mere mortals.

Arise, O Lord, do not let man (enosh) prevail; Let the nations be judged before You.

Put them in fear, O Lord; Let the nations know that they are but men (enosh). Selah.

Psalms 9:19-20, NASB

This is positive proof that there are nations wanting to be more than mere mortals; they want to be treated as decent people have been known to treat God. There is only one God, and all else that people call God are really human inventions. God will definitely trim all the nations to the point where all can see what they really are; nothing to be feared, nothing to be given the respect which should go to God alone.

Witting and unwittting servants of God

Where is Roman imperial power today? It is confined to a disturbing right wing governemnt, stirring memories of papal power, and a major contribution to languages across the globe. We can also see that Greece, Persia and Babylon are smouldering wicks from lamps that truly lit the known world. They all were in contact with Israel’s GOD; all were his unwilling servants, even when one of the heads was conscious of the divine demands and respectful of the divine plan for the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

The kings who want nothing to do with divine supervision hear God’s derisive laugh and mine.

No “God” guides any nation; mortals run the show

American and British interference in Palestine is not due to imperial authority. God did not authorize the Balfour Declaration, and American support for the modern state of Israel, often thought to be a high ground of morality due to the lead undertaken by the United States in prosecution of anti-Jewish racism, fascism and tyranny, is simply bad politics. We can all see that neither US nor UK have prosecuted racism in their own societies to any level deserving global acclaim. Some high ground! Even Israel has open racists and xenophobes. Mere mortals are still in charge of the planet.

The wannabe superpowers

Russia, China, Islamic Repiblics, and the axis of economoc giants do ot stand a cghance of impressing anyone but the gullible that they are something more than mere mortals, and definiotely not superpowers. The lessons learned by Babylon and Rome as they pursued their rles as superpowers do not guide what is left of their empires today. We should expect nothing more than mortal weakness and moral wavering between idols and the true God.

Grasping at sovereignty straws

eejoseph

Premier Smith’s language is extreme, inflammatory and deliberate, and taken alongside her cabinet colleague’s tweeting racist citations from a book amount to proof that Alberta conservatives are sold on insurrectionist and rebellious tactics to get attention and perhaps votes. Premier Smith’s apology is like rubber that fears the road. Alberta is not a victim like the First Nations children who did not come home from school, or were murdered and buried without their parents’ knowledge, or like the murdered and missing Aboriginal women across Canada.

The national leader’s dalliance with protests like the freedom convoy’s blockade of Canada’s capital is chilling evidence of the politics of division. Much of the talk about sovereignty apart from a conscientious recognition of First Nations is polluting the political air and the recent Alberta legislation has criminal overtones.

For more see https://eejoseph.com/2022/11/30/nothing-better-than-carving-out-sovereignty/

Translation alert

eejoseph

“Perish in the way” and “perish from the way” are two different ways in which the translators of the New American Standard Bible and the King James Version – have tried to address the Hebrew text, which has simply weta’bdû derek ותאבדו דרך

To be honest no one perishes in the way, because when one is in the way one is securely in the way, and one that is secure in Jesus does not perish from the way. The answer lies in the identification of those who are being addressed.  Obviously these are the kings of the earth who have set themselves in array against the Lord’s anointed.
So what should the translation be?

Y’all better kiss the son lest Yahweh be angry with you and you perish in spite of [there being] a way.

You might think this translation is strange but it is quite common throughout the Old Testament to see a way being provided and yet people not take advantage of the way. In fact, that opinion is celebrated in several songs where David for the psalmist writes about how good God was in all the different ways and yet people forgot and did their own thing.

Ways not acclaimed

Beware! Bizarro is Bristling

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Forget Solomon as an authority on eternal salvation and all the prophets as having the last word on the operation of God’s kingdom. As long as Christians keep piling up memes and slogans from ancient sources and neglect the root and ground of reality the world will keep getting a picture. If Solomon could have ignored the prevalent and primary tenet of life to which his people subscribed let no one put it beyond a Christian or American evanvelical to respectively speak and act as if the Cross and Resurrection and the declaration of independence and constitution never happened. In the face of all the bizarre things that are being said and done among Christians and by Americans it would appear that like Satan, running out of time, he is angry and is willing to destroy as much as possible of what people call precious faith.

Bizarre for Christ to lose a patient

Thankfully the procedures and outcomes of salvation are not stated in terms of a doctor patient relationships. If they were we would be able to see that Christ loses a patient, or more to the facts of the matter that he never loses a patient. Since salvation is concerned with life and death we are not ever in a position to say that someone to whom he gave life has died, or that someone whom he found was lost.

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

John 10:27-29, NASB

Wanna keep going back to elementary school?

Islam, for example, tells the story of God as if Israel never happened or is irrelevant.

“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?” (Galatians 4:9, NASB)

The weak ( ptocha, πτωχα,  impoverishing ) and elementary conventions of the world…listed in what follows 

10) You observe days and months and seasons and years. 11) I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.

Galatians 4:10-11

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)–in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

Colossians 2:20-23, NASB

All the talk about commandments, revival of the levitical kingdon, and festival observance amounts to a counterfeit, like Bizarro, the Superman with an evil heart.

Word of God and language

Which part of new do we not understand when the scripture says New Creation?

The “people” in legislation is like “language” in documents. One ignores either at great risk and often to one’s demise. Christian leaders are not at liberty to follow personal feelings, individual ideas, or temporal needs when the meaning of scripture is at stake. Even when they call themselves law-abiding or persons of law and order the outcomes of their speeches are usually criminal. The cross can never be irrelevant and law will only be set aside when the privileged feel aggrieved.  The study of words cannot be replaced by miracles and temporal success. We do not know how much time passed from Lucifer’s first rebellious thoughts to his forceful expulsion from heaven, but we know that the time it takes to become a person with the law inside is a few months. Neglected language study is like wanting to overthrow God, and those who will be the enemies of the church are the people who ignored the call to sell everything for the kingdom’s sake and refused to become as children, by grasping the benefit of learning a new language. The counterfeit Christian, the counterfeit superman, the unwise sage, the illiterate scholar, are all about to be exposed and the prospect is extreme anger fueled by the devil

What can save the nations?

eejoseph,

Measures for rescuing a nation from self-immolation may include bringing sword, famine or pestilence on it, and it is better that leaders opt for supernatural chastisement than for human interventions.   It is humans, we should remember, who share country, relatives, and an ancestral roots with us who are bent of destroying what is left of the shares benefits of citizenship.  The rot that is eating away at most societies is of domestic origin.  Immigrants and foreigners are mostly convenient scapegoats.  There is neither spiritual atonement nor legislative relief that can save a decaying nation.

Doing good things for our neighbours is not evangelism

Three activities that distinguish the Lord’s tour of Galilee: teaching (disaskein), preaching the gospel of the kingdom (kerussein to euaggelion tes basileias = euaggelizomai), and healing sickness and disease of every type (therapeuôn pasan noson kai pasan malakian). European and Americans circling the globe with their compassion for impoverished people are a sad and delusioned lot. Africans and Asians are interested in an open apology for the still unacknowledged rape of their heritages. Yeshua must be wondering how dare these capitalist xenophobes connect themselves with his kingdom.

Long distance love

The pillar and ground of the truth is the church, where the one and only message is the sovereignty of God Incarnate. No-one is eternally impressed by the many publications and prayers (usually long and repetitive) of unrepentant preachers. They cannot cover the distance between themselves and the Saviour of the world with good deeds. God’s love has a different stamp, and it does net take long to recognize that the vast majority of people doing evangelism are dedicated to touching Yeshua with a ten-foot pole, or as the saying goes, “with their lips”. The gods of all the nations are mostly invented fables, but Christ is the door to reality and destiny. If people want more of the same, let them have it. That would not be an authentic Messianic follow.

The “Spirit is on me” phenomena

This narrative covers a phenomenon that is exclusive to the Lord’s proclamation.  No-one, before or since, has had a similar tour.  His work that saves his people from their sin is still not in sight.  The story of the Son of man giving his life as a ransom woud have been utterly fantastic.  The announcement of good news (see Luke 4:18-19) was a welcome broadcast, and no-one ever refused to receive a cleansed leper, or slammed the door on a dead and buried loved one returning from the grave, or a terminally ill acquaintance relieved of the illness or disease. The Spirit of God had a fingerprint in New Testament time that has not been repeated. No-one in the centuries since the ascension of Christ has been a part of a similar tour, or even seen the regularity of healing, reversal of death, and the release of people from demonic posession and injury.

Saving the nations is distinct from conversations about Moses, the patriarchs and the prophets

This first tour and all the others are introductory.  They introduce the people to the kingdom of God and the features that distinguish it from the patriarchal, levitical and prophetic lines of caring for the people. They introduce the people to a new way of thinking about God and God’s kingdom. His signature operation comes at the end of the three and a half years of public ministry.  When we get around to telling people that Christ died for sinners because sinners is what we all are, and have no hope of fixing the problem apart from HIM forking over, all by himself, the appropriate currency towards the transaction, I am sure the world will have an accurate picture of what it takes save the nations.