Author: eejoseph

Should never happen

eejoseph,

I addressed what the reader of the English Bibles would find if one performs a search for the phrase “should never” in Solomon’s preacher: flying in the face of a lazy generation.

Solomon’s preacher: flying in the face of a lazy generation

The other result of the word search is in Ezekiel, the 16th verse of the 16th chapter.  This prophet is typically outspoken in his evaluations of the people to whom he brought God’s message.  For example, his book accounts for 32% of the occurrences  of the term harlot, harlotry, or harlotries.  His book accounts for less than 3% of the Old Testament books.  Zeke uses the terms about his own people’s wandering eyes.  It is fruitless for the prophet to mention Israel’s harlotry as a thing that should never happen.  What can anyone, prophet, judge or king, do if a hummingbird sips nectar?

It would be whipping time if a prophet does not tell his people how offensive their transgressions are to God. The prophet whose mantra is chockfull of all the good things that can happen is not worth his salt.

The prophetic priority

Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.

John 5:45, NASB

Solomon’s preacher: flying in the face of a lazy generation

eejoseph

The phrase “should never” appears only twice in the English translations, and a popular song tells people to “never be discouraged” while the facts are that Christ himself was profoundly troubled and needed encouragement in the last hours of his life. There however are lots of verbs with the following meaning:

The phrase “should never” appears only twice in the English translations, even though there are lots of verbs with the following meaning:

  1. let us never
  2. you/they must never
  3. we/I will by no means
  4. they will never 

The first “should never” is not even a command or expectation; it is one of the conclusions from the preacher (of Ecclesiastes).

“When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the task which has been done on the earth (even though one should never sleep day or night),”

Ecclesiastes 8:16, NASB

Three Clauses make up this verse.

  1. “When I gave my heart to know wisdom 
  2. and [gave my heart] to see the task which has been done on the earth
  3. (even though one should never sleep day or night),” (Ecclesiastes 8:16, NASB)
  1. כַּאֲשֶׁ֨ר נָתַ֤תִּי אֶת־לִבִּי֙ לָדַ֣עַת חָכְמָ֔ה
  2.  וְלִרְאוֹת֙ אֶת־הָ֣עִנְיָ֔ן אֲשֶׁ֥ר נַעֲשָׂ֖ה עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ
  3.  כִּ֣י גַ֤ם בַּיּוֹם֙ וּבַלַּ֔יְלָה שֵׁנָ֕ה בְּעֵינָ֖יו אֵינֶ֥נּוּ רֹאֶֽה׃” (Ecclesiastes 8:16, WLC)

The 3rd clause seems to be the preacher’s conclusion that in both day and night (= every 4 hour day) his inner (heart) processes to (a) acquire wisdom and (b) to see [by looking at] the common inyan, business, come up empty-handed.

His conclusion: [my translation]

because indeed daily for sleepy eyes there is no sight.

He was accusing his generation of being busy sleepy heads, unseeing and therefore not wise.  Who is going to dispute the progress of the Israelite kingdom during Solomon’s reign?  The busy sleepyhead is not missing in the modern era. We find them in all the areas of public endeavour and public service. There are employers whose practice is to rob the worker, peace officers and judges who pervert justice, preachers, rabbis, imams, and  prophets who have no master.  If we think the Ecclesiastes preacher is arrogant then consider that lilies of the field and the birds of the sky know their path and follow it, yet they have neither book, prophet nor magic wand. I recommend a pin for that balloon: the idea that busyness is evidence of knowledge or wisdom.

Deny deny

eejoseph

Rabbit holes mark the places where feet of many have tried to lead God’s people. The identity of the human race and the place we occupy in the genuine picture painted by Moses and the prophets. Christ is not trying to save humanity by exercising their minds about creation; that is quite clear. For persons to migrate from hostile and rebellious the frame of reference must include what we are and what we can be. Beware! “Flesh and blood” does not mean spirit.

The living creature who named all the living creatures  was a living creature.

OUT OF THE GROUND; FORMED BY ELOHIM

  • Nephesh chayyah include swarms of marine animals (Genesis 1:20)
  • Nephesh chayyah include human beings (male and female). Then the Lord God formed man “dust from the ground“, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
  • Out of the ground came every beast of field (Genesis 2:19)
  • Out of the ground came every bird of the sky (Genesis 2:19)
  • Beasts and birds are living creatures (Genesis 2:19)

Man is not an animal, huh?

“Man is a spiritual being, composed of body, soul, and spirit” is one popular mantra. The difference between spirit/wind and flesh/bone is graphic. Spiritual (of spirit) and of flesh (πνευματικος and σαρκινος) are even opposites.

“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.” (Romans 7:14, NASB)

Man is an animal, ranking below angels, who we know to be genderless spirit and fire. When we call someone an angel we promote them.

He makes the winds His messengers, Flaming fire His ministers.

Psalms 104:4

What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet,

Psalms 8:4-6

Humans are known to sink below the understanding of animals we recognize.

An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger, But Israel does not know, My people do not understand.

Isaiah 1:3

Waiting for the pin to pop that balloon of human essence is going to take a long time because human pride keeps getting in the way of truth and humility. We tend to challenge ourselves with both lies and truth.

The empty tomb is not a threat

eejoseph,

There was a plot to make Christ’s return from the dead look like a fraud even though the occurrence is not without precedent. People in New Testament times claimed that it was unheard of for blind people to see again, and there is no recorded debate about perfectly fit and worthy men like Elijah, Moses, and Enoch carted off to the grave. There is no doubt whatever that Elisha and Elijah raised a lad to life (2 Kings 32;35 and 1 Kings 17:17-24).   The elephant in the room of death’s demise is a man’s prediction about resurrection.  Christ used both figurative and literal terms to predict his death and resurrection. He talked about Jonah in the sea monster (Matthew 12:40), destroying the temple (John 2:18-22) and in plain language (Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22). The empty tomb that is displayed as the place where the Saviour of the world lay for three days is a threat to those who try to prove that Christ is alive by using logic and inanimate objects, but the actual threat people stuck in unbelief and rebellion face is where the king of Israel sits and not where he is not.

Fighting against God is painful for the fighter and God. He keeps pursuing both the lost and the saved. Christ could have called a legion of angels to prevent his arrest and passion, but it was in the arena of life and death that we see his best combat. The Lord Christ prevented deaths by healing sickness and disease apart from medical practice, and preempted funerals. He even interrupted a funeral cortege.

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When a sick person dies proof of death can be misinterpreted and mishandled. Checking for vital signs is not a modern practice. The ancient world know that breathing was a primary sign of life (Eze. 37:5, (Genesis 2:7, 35:29, Mark 15:37). No technology was necessary to pronounce a person dead. Observers though could say “Oh, she was merely sleeping” or that death’s victim was in an unusual catatonic or comatose state. Observers of that sort are however severely limited when the dead person is in Sheol for four days like Lazarus was. The suffocated, wounded and bleeding Yeshua of Nazareth was taken down from the stake dead.

There are two words in the Nain visit narrative (Luke 7:11-16) that appear nowhere else in the New Testament. A third word appears in this funeral narrative and in Peter’s intervention in Tabitha’s death (Acts 9). Both narratives are Luke’s work and there is no report of carrying out, coffin, or sitting up in the narration of our Lord’s death and resurrection.

  • Carry out, ekkomizo
  • Coffin, soros
  • Sit up, anakathizo

Wait ’til your eyes land on the occupied throne

If we think that an empty tomb speaks loudly we may not be ready for the voice that comes from where the Lamb of God actually sits. There is sheer terror in the hearts of men when they realize what a crude and childish mistake they have made rejecting the cornerstone of God’s kingdom. The officials of the kingdom in antiquity are not automatic participants in God’s kingdom.

“Now therefore, O Lord, the God of Israel, keep with Your servant David my father that which You have promised him, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your sons take heed to their way to walk before Me as you have walked.’”

1 Kings 8:25, NASB

How long will people give credence to theories about God’s kingdom that exclude the clear evidence about who is in charge of human destiny? Perhaps not long, as people all over the globe are waking up to the emptiness of their “cultural” traditions. The eyewitnesses of the outcomes of Christ’s death and rising from the dead were hemmed in by the deeds of the Holy Spirit and the words of the disciples and apostles.

“And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.”

Acts 2:30-31, NASB

God’s business is now in the hands of a caring God, far from the ravages of self-centred priests, prophets, patriarchs and wise men, because “the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation of John 7:17, NASB)

The ninth hour of Pesach 2022

eejoseph

Scripture records that the Lord Christ breathed his last at around the ninth hour of Passover.  This year, in the Eastern Time zone, the moon hits full at 1455, 2:55pm.  Amazing coincidence?  Not if one believes that there are sacred seasons throughout the year.  The whole day is sacred.  The full moon of Nisan, falling on the fourteenth day, has always been a significant season.  The moon is full then it isn’t.  Some time during this day, millions will remember that the price for human redemption was paid in full.

There was no other way to conceive of the Lamb of God laying down his life and taking up again without an eternal “mark this date”.  Before he  created the world God had marked the calendar of His Son’s amazing act of saving love.

“Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;” [season <- moed, and for seasons ולמועדים ulĕmoedim]

Genesis 1:14, NASB 

Seasons are appointed times, marked by both the sun and the moon, and Moses announces a set of them which we have come to know as festivals in Leviticus 23.  Again this year, Good Friday is over when Passover actually begins.  It is another example of how tradition poses as biblical fact. Please take a moment to recall and give a loud hosannah with reference to the Son of David, whether or not the bread and wine of the covenant are present.

Healing university

eejoseph

Sons of Sceva are practically everywhere and there ought to be a law to protect people against abominable merchandising such as is popular on North American television.  If you want to be healed you go to a doctor.  Then again you can just use your words in respectful and urgent prayer. You might even be one of the few people to whom God has given the power to speak basic and daily needs into existence, even when there are means within human reach.  The options for medical cures are quite clear.  God has been saying no to prayers for miraculous “healings” since Israel was a nation and there are no lessons necessary for access to the heavenly Father’s power to make people whole. It is worth finding out what on earth could a healing university be under the auspices of the Lord Christ and his apostles.

Treatment vs examination

A magical masquerade mime was present in the leprosy “treatment” in the levitical system.  Compared to what the Lord Christ did for lepers (Mark 1:40-45) we have to think of the distance separating the priest from the leper during his examination (Leviticus 13:3,5,6,8,25,30,32,34, and 14:3). You can see he had to do a lot of looking. The human body has always been the beneficiary of divine healing on request.

“O Lord my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.” [crying to God is the way things are, and he repeatedly heals…]

Psalms 30:2, NASB

The wounding of the sons of Sceva

11)  God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12) so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out. 13) But also some of the Jewish exorcists, who went from place to place, attempted to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, “I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” 14) Seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15) And the evil spirit answered and said to them, “I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” 16) And the man, in whom was the evil spirit, leaped on them and subdued all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.” (Acts 19:11-16, NASB)

“And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke 4:27, NASB)

There may be oral traditions of even thousands of cleansed lepers, but these are absent from our sources of authority.  Leprosy is a picture of sin we probably do not want to make too much of, since their cleansing by the Lord Christ and his disciples was evidence for the last and greatest prophet that God’s kingdom had arrived (Luke 7:22)

God is not obligated to make anyone’s body like a baby’s and he definitely is not handing out glorious bodies before the time (Hebrews 11:39, Acts 7:5).  On the other hand God never ignores or fails to answer genuine cries for mercy and pardon.

“But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him.”

Acts 7:5, NASB

It was no accident that I heard a merchantelevangelist offer access to God’s healing power by means of his forty-eight lesson drug deal. I naturally had to say something to warn people about this kind of masquerade.  One has to be in the grip of a reality other than God’s kingdom, as we have seen it unveiled in the documented work of the Lord Christ, to believe in and waste time on a forty-eight lesson masquerade from a merchantelevangelist. What next will they try to sell believers?

Impartial justice, like Mitch McConnell’s in the senate

eejoseph

The lovers of truth know that everything that is called “God” may give people comfort or at least a place to hide, but God cannot be reduced to a shifting panorama of political expediency and religious superiority. When the morality of Islam, Judaism and Christianity combined create the new society we will know that justice has no more masks. Presently, there is no evidence that the warring parties in anyone’s politics will form such a coalition. However, when the goals of decency and simple justice allow people to create good government we may all be dead, but the ever-living disciples of the man called The Way know that McConnell’s commitment to do the will of the accused 45th president ranks with the lowest and most acrid and deadly examples of smoke without fire.

Said McConnell, “Everything I do during this, I will be coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position…” (from the Atlantic, citing McConnell on Fox network). I suppose a great Christian leader can coordinate his journey along the way of the kingdom of God with the fallen angels. That kind of justice simply does not cut it.