“To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law;” (1 Corinthians 9:20, NASB)

In the turmoil of the twenty-first centuries’ misanthropic pandemic you would not have guessed that the person who said the words in the citation above was an exemplary Jew. This saying by one of Yeshua’s dedicated messengers is a stiff rebuke to Alice’s wonderful world. People in the modern era have gone to great lengths to show that the law of God (the ten Commandments and all the statutes and judgments) are God’s way.  We know they are not really trying to show even a little integrity when they protest that they are only interested in the moral law. When they hug the seventh-day Sabbath – a manifest festival -as if eternal ife depended on it you know who is in wonderland. Never, never, never, was eternal.life dependent on observance of days, months or years. Paul, a Pharisee, the best of the best, said that these time observances and the whole set of taste not, handle not, and touch not regulations were weak and beggarly rudiments, which have nothing to do with the mature relationship with God.

This is obviously in opposition to Christ saying He is the way, He is the king,  He is the guarantor of salvation, not human obedience. If he is the Way, there is nothing any command can add to the journey. Access to God is not for obedience to law, but for a firm and irrevocable adoption into God’s family, an event by which faith, hope and love come to reside in the pilgrim.

Paul said what he meant and meant what he said

Here in this passage of his letter to the Corinthian Church Paul makes it quite clear there are people who (A) do not have the law of God and (B) are not under it,  whereas those who are more Jewish than the Jews would love to tell us that all the people on the planet have been given the law of Moses as the standard for the kingdom of God and as the guide for their individual nations. Who ever thought that every nation was being invited to be A PECULIAR NATION, HIGHER THAN THE REST, A KINGDOM OF PRIESTS? It is a complete red herring; a filthy rabbit hole. People who reject the essence of Jewishness – all pervading law, covenant, and peculiar promises – cannot say they are the true Jews. Maybe they want us to laugh. What is even worse is the American conviction that their constitution is an improvement on Moses’ rendition of God’s code. Now we know why American progress towards good governance has not even gotten out of the starting blocks. The first judgments after the Ten Commandments are a set of rulings on how to treat slaves or servants. Israel failed to meet the servant treatment standard and so have all other kingdoms, All the talk about law and order today is just a lot of posturing. Israelites (the people of the kingdom of Judah) were also posturing when, as a last minute test, Jeremiah presented them with an escape from judgment: free your servants in compli8ance with the seventh-year release statute. (Jeremiah 34:8-20)

Law is law, and Christ is not Moses

Paul distinguishes law of God from law of Christ, or can they not read? In fact the clamour for high ground with law as the climbing boots is seriously offbase. Commands (Greek entole) are from the root TEL (end) from which we also get teleioo (I perfect), and teleios (perfect or mature, the adjective). Those commands that play no part in the march of faith, repentance and the receipt of the Holy Spirit towards final glorification are of no consequence. Like the clear pronouncement by the One-Who-Knows of defilement not coming from unwashed hands or what what one ingests, some people do not hear. All the “unclean until evening” prescriptions for uncleanness amount to molehills.

They hate Jews

They go so far as to say that the Jews are not really Jews. They are ready to write off Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh. There are even clashing Black and Caucasian theories that send people dancing to down to river to be drowned. The Caucasian theory says that America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the true Israel, based on their amazing rise to wealth and uinfluence in the world., and that there is a suppposed Judeo-Christian basis for the respective bodies of law in these nations. Just so we know they are full of hot air, (A) lies dominate the air waves in political talking points and false advertising by business and (B) no-one observes the 7th day sabbath, which is the sign of the Old Testament God’s covenant with his people.

The Black version of a neo or true Israel seems to be based entirely on skin colour. They quote Solomon (?) as saying “I am black”, and Moses’ marriage to an Ethiopian, and the wooly head of the God in the visions of Daniel and John (in the book of Revelation). There is also a theory that the ark of the covenant is now in its rightful place, Ethiopia, in the hands of Black people, based on material from the Kebra Negest, a book narrating the relationship between Israel’s king Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

One family, war or peace

What is really disturbing is that few of these theorists have the ability to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures especially. not because it is hard, but because it clearly sets the tone for a unity of Abraham’s flesh descendants and Abraham’s Gentile descendants on the basis of faith in what God has done. Israel did not inherit the land of Canaan because of the Law, but because of God’s oath to Abraham. The madness will only get worse: war on temple mount, Islam against Judaism, Christianity claiming the priority ,meanwhile the God of peace and mercy watches with horror as humanity corrupts the few remaining beacons of decency.

“Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” (Psalms 95:6, NASB)

How many times have we said these words – worship, bow down and kneel- standing erect, without so much as a genuflect? To be accurate, the three actions call for ducking, lowering ourselves. Gee! I thought that we learned to do that for our parents, even after we leave the nest and have our own families.

Is it legit to say we are doing the three in the SPIRIT?

The sight of mother or father always brings a barek, barek, bend the knee, bend the knee!. Even when we come to conscientiously disagree with them we bless – honour – our parents, often with head bowed. This generation is definitely cursed: for failing to reckon honestly with ancestral contribution to our times and our own wholehearted response to the river of life. Is that not what Malachi reports from Yahweh’s mouth?

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.

Malachi 4:5-6, NASB

If we have not taken John the Baptist seriously responding to the Lord will hardly show up on our radar.

Human anger and vengeance is ignoble, juvenile and abominable. Do not, please, ask the people who are vigorously keeping peace from breaking out between Indians and Pakistanis, former African slaves in the disapora and former colonists, First Nations and the interloper entities such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and a host of South and central American nations to do anything noble in the search for justice. They love vengeance and cruelty. The problem is global: versions of the Hitler Nazis are appearing with a flourish. Versions of the Taliban are on the rise in the United States, and if I am reading the religious hopefuls correctly, all they want to do is impose either chaotic pluralism, misogynist and male chauvinist regimes, all ready to shut up anyone with a different view of the world. If the number of people jailed for crimes they did not commit and the number of people killed in their places of worship do not convince the angry and the aggrieved to pipe down and stick a pin in their malice.

We will not change our minds

The fixtures of American politics and religion (mostly Christianity) are people with minds of stone. Senators who do not know what impartial justice looks like, governors who lie about police bravery, and state legislators who are dead set on oppressing women, killing school children, will not change their minds. They are what the Bible calls reprobate silver. They have consciences that are dead. If I did not believe in God I would say they were incorrigible. The difference bewen the 44th and the 45th president is so stark that one has to be either an avowed denier of facts, typical a Republican governor, rogue bishop, crooked sheriff or corrupt mayor, or a simply a person lacking humanity and literacy, not to see how evil can get itself into power and serve as a magnet gathering the ugliest attitudes and sentiments to pose as a righteous rage. It must be clear that most of the players on the international scene simply are eager to have their own version of London, New York, Paris and Washington, all the while claiming to be proud nationalists and keepers of the peace. Frankly I do not know see the benefit of any nation emulating Beijing, Moscow, Delhi, Pyongyang, Washington and Jerusalem. Judaism of New Testament times was wholly intolerant of the Way, and no one needs to be reminded of the kinds of freedoms afforded people in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia.

A vast criminal enterprise

A vast criminal enterprise, backed up by pardons and lifelong appointments is the only way to define the revolution that almost prevailed. It began with the likes of Gerry Falwell, a host of Christian psychologists, false prophets amd apostles and illiterate persons posing as pastors, and the supreme court stacked with perjured jurists. If there had not been a violent revolution to end English tyranny there would be no United States, and such a beast, haviving been created, what beside the nobility and decency of humanuty can prevent the United States from descending into malicious anger, bloodshed and cyclical tyranny? Nothing.