They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I have to say a picture is dirt cheap if you are illiterate.  Think again about watching videos without reference to the language being used and you will conclude that many things people come away with after hearing a speech or watching a video are likely to be off madly in all directions.  It is wasteful and delusional to think that wading through any material with repeating pockets of hot air is going to result in pictures on which we can rely.

Off madly in the wrong direction

I do not just happen to know when people who are quoting Scripture have not gotten the picture.   I can tell when people – rabbis,  pastors and prophets, legislators and friends – are just saying what they see on the page.  A few try to use logic such as the seed dying to propagate a tree to connect their vision with the Saviour’s agenda.  The resurrection of a man four days dead shakes every mindset. There is no logic here.

Others try to place the matter before them in the original setting by referring to Greek and Hebrew words.  That is like the alphabet learning stage of literacy.   What happens when the intention behind the writer’s clauses, sentences and word order has no bearing on the messenger’s main message is nothing short of hollow and shallow.

The past,  present and future singularity

Just nailing down whether a thing has happened,  will happen, is likely or unlikely to happen, is  likely or unlikely to have happened can be ascertained only by getting the picture from the original reading.   Translators of the Bible are notably lazy when it comes to letting the text and its context give the meaning.  It might come as a shock to you that in Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) the same word can mean a) I will build and b) I built? There are only two tenses in Hebrew while we English speakers and philosophers in general claim to have three.  I cannot tell you how many times I have sat and listened as a presenter of God’s messsge darts down rabbit holes and wanders in dry places because he or she has no idea what the writer intended. It is a black hole. Go in and you do not come out. 

Beyond the meaning of English grammar biblical pictures deliver meaning with word concepts. A picture of a lamb in Revelation is not just young sheep: it is eternal, supreme, and atoning love for the human race. When words keep losing their biblical grounding- as SAVE and HEAL do – as as result of shoddy preparation, each listener must exercise diligence to see with one’s own eyes whether one has a sieve or a cup. “The Bible says” is a cheap substitute for “the writer means to say”. How God chooses to deliver meaning is up to Him and the diligence we bring to our quest for enlightenment and edifcation.

What does a discussion of priesthood have to do with Christmas? Nearly everything. At least, from taking Luke’s lead, we have to recognize that Christ had a messenger, who was from a priestly family. Luke begins his narrative with There was … a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife [was] of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth (Luke 1:5). Rushing past this narrative to visit the babe in the manger is too much reaching without the teaching.

A family of priests under scrutiny

The priesthood as Luke knew it was doing the things appointed (Lev. 8:35 and 2 Chronicles 8:14), but He tells of an incident that brings us into the heart of the priesthood where he says nothing about the temple and the priesthood. The incident opens the window on how Messiah’s arrival might affect everything.

And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course, (Luke. 1:8), According to the custom of the priest’s office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. (Luke. 1:9).

A special child in the desert not the temple

The slice of the priesthood we see was a normal life with normal problems. Elizabeth and Zacharias had no children. If you know anything about the priesthood you would know that only the children of a priest’ could serve as priests. Priests needed to have children for the priesthood to continue. The incident reveals that a special child would be born to be a servant of the Most High. The God of Israel chose Elizabeth and Zacharias to be the parents of a son who would be Yahweh’s voice in the desert (Luke 3:4, Isaiah 40:1-3).

But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. (Luke. 1:13) And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, (Luke. 1:14) for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. (Luke. 1:15)

When priesthood was the engine of life

The angel predicted the success of this new arrival, that he was going to “turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (Luke. 1:16), and be the agent for bringing generations together and prepare people for the Lord (vs. 17)

Early priesthood

The priesthood began with Aaron, a man who led the people to worship a golden calf just as the journey from Egypt to Canaan was beginning. The people were at Sinai when they became impatient with Moses being up on the hill conversing with Yahweh. They wanted gods like the ones they knew during the Egyptian bondage, so they asked Aaron to make them gods.

With all the detailed instructions for the work they did for the the people year after year the people had every reason to support their priestly families. The priests had led the way crossing the Jordan (Joshua 3:6ff), capturing Jericho (Joshua 6:6ff), and hearing cases daily.

The priesthood and the monarchy

Moses wrote the law and entrusted it to the priests (Deu. 31:9), who in turn informed the people of their duties and evaluated such cases as were brought to them. So the priests were archivists, teachers, and judges (Deu. 31:9, Malachi 2:7, Deu. 19:17-18). The king was also part of this line of transmission, with the king writing his own copy of the law. “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. (Deut. 17:18)

Then there are the disturbing practices during Eli’s priesthood (1 Samuel 2:12), the mass murder of priests by Saul (1 Samuel 22), and there came a time when the priesthood was so out of touch with reality that a prophet was authorized to post a recognition.

The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ Those who handle the law did not know me; the shepherds transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.

Jer . 2:8

That the priests were part of an assault on Jeremiah is not surprising, given that they knew they were the guardians of Yahweh’s daily interaction with the people. It was inevitable that God would recruit another of his prophets to examine the priesthood.

Priests under scrutiny

On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, (Hag. 2:10) “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: Hag. 2:11

The answer to the questions seal the fate of the Levitical priesthood.

1. Does holiness transfer from the priest’s clothing to bread, soup, wine, oil, or meat?
   1. ‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?’”
   2. The priests answered and said, “No.” Hag. 2:12
2. Does uncleanness transfer from an unclean person to bread, soup, wine, oil, meat?
   1. Then Haggai said, “If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?”
   2. The priests answered and said, “It does become unclean.” Hag. 2:13
3. Then Haggai answered and said,
   1. “So is it with this people,
   2. and with this nation before me, declares the LORD,
   3. and so with every work of their hands.
   4. And what they [the priests and people] offer there is unclean. Hag. 2:14

Typically, any kind of misbehaviour can end with the community balance restored through the ministry of the priest, but not in the case of shedding innocent blood. When lives are destroyed without a cause or because of the abuse of power no forgiveness was possible: the priest was helpless. How often this may have happened can be imagined when we realize that bribes and greed were part of the very human side of being the sole agents for God (Numbers 35:31-32).

and also for the innocent blood that he had shed. For he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD would not pardon. 2 Kings. 24:4

The priesthood examination

Let it be sufficient to say the priesthood is not without convictions for bad behaviour, and as long as the temple still was the place for incense, animal blood, grain and liquid offerings people could feel that there was active benefit from the priesthood. Few people got to see the inner workings of the priesthood and few knew the corruption that the Babe of Bethlehem would grow up to see and denounce (John 2:13-16, Matthew 21:12-13), eventually announcing the desolation of the temple (Matt. 23:38).

A transformed and nourishing priesthood

One priest stands apart in the Bible story: Melchizedek. He was not a Levite and not even a descendant of Abraham. This priest was not going to have anything to do with the temple or the law. As far as we know he would, prefigure the work of David’s Lord, One to be invited to sit at God’s right hand, one who would do for those who got the victory over the devil what Melchizedek did for Abraham.

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.)

Gen. 14:18

This action, coming centuries before the organization of the Aaronic or Levitical priesthood, is a picture of the demise of the ministry organized by Moses. There is an order of forever priests, whose office and work Yahweh is settled on, and a priest who does not die as all other priests have done.

​The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Psalm 110:4

1. And those descendants of Levi who receive the priestly office have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people, that is, from their brothers, though these also are descended from Abraham. Heb. 7:5
2. But this man [Melchizedek/Christ] who does not have his descent from them [the Levites] received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. Heb. 7:6
3. It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. Heb. 7:7
4. In the one case tithes are received by mortal men, but in the other case, by one of whom it is testified that he lives [is beyond death]. Heb. 7:8
5. One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, Heb. 7:9 for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. Heb. 7:10

This simple understanding takes us to Christ, the Son of God, our High Priest,

So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”;

Heb. 5:5

So let us by all means hasten to the manger, and relive the joy the world felt, but let us also recognize that a babe in a manger does not save anyone from sin as the angel announced regarding the baby’s name. To prosper from the babe of Bethlehem one has to realise that he grows up to maturity, thirty years to be precise, of which 18 years are secret, and die so he can change the pattern of priest and levite accustomed to passing people by on the other side. Luke. 10:31-32). The Christ-child grows up to become the kind of priest God wants and authorizes by means of an oath (Hebrews 7:11, 28), a sympathetic priest (Hebrews 4:15, 5:2), priest who defeats death by dying (Hebrews 2:14, 9:16, 7:16, 23), approachable by all humans without distinction (Romans 3:22, 10:12).

All of the rules about approaching God seem to go out the window, because the first distinction between Levite and layman dissolves, and so does the distinction between Israelite and Gentile. A more striking contrast cannot be found between priesthood as it was known and priesthood as touched by the mature Word-made-flesh.

Consequently, he is able to save to the utmost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Heb. 7:25

Religious people have been taking over God’s agenda by insisting that all things continue just as God made them.  The very nature of life insists on progress: movement and development.  The audacity of leaders who wish to recapture past fortunes. is matched by their stupidity.  Change drives the Messianic mission.   The tombs of the great men and women of antiquity are witnesses to God’s appointment for reversing all the oopses, not in the hospitals, but in the graveyards. If the church is a hospital the doctor cannot be Yeshua, because there are far too many people leaving church with fatal illnesses and all the common ailments.

How many quacks will the world of the dead and dying people tolerate ?

Death stalks all of humanity!  The record of God’s interaction with humans in antiquity has death interrupting most things that look like progress.  Most notable are the priesthood, repeatedly performing the cleansing of the people and the tabernacle, 

Salvation is not a cure but life from the dead

If mankind was merely sick there would be no need to interpose the shedding of blood. The life of the Son of God is payment for sin; payment for us missing the mark, for acting in crooked ways, sand for doing The wilderness is a graveyard that testifies that God makes no mistake.  The tombs of the kings and prophets are not mistakes. No leper-cleansing in ancient Israel is not a mistake or injustice. The Lord will be glorified in the dead and the unclean.

The report card, issued by no less than the Rock who followed them, shows a massive failure.

“Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet none of you carries out the Law? Why do you seek to kill Me?”

John 7:19

Would now not be a good time to show that God reverses all situations when we want him to? With covid-19 deaths breaking new ground every day hospitals and cemeteries are the places to be, if you believe that God orders up triumphs every day for everyone. If you believe that life has no limits, let us demonstrate it. Well people have been becoming sick, and sick people have been getting well since God created man. No-one dies who will not rise from the dead. We can skip the pep-talk, positiving thinking preaching of the evengelical juveniles and senile talking heads. There are no oopses that does not have a remedy in God’s Son, but you will not find them in the decaying matter of yesterday nor in the associated funeral services. In the light of Christ’s work as lifegiver the Church is not a hospital but a morgue, and all esle is funeral business.

Your elbow and your rear end seldom have regular contact.  They can only be in the same place with, I think, extreme difficulty.  Mistaking an elbow for a rear end brings into view the depths to which modern discourse has sunk.  There is no fine human being with racist tendencies.  There is no law that gives life.  There is no identification of a Supreme Creator without a steady stream of praise for his saving graces.

Saving grace and the masked saviour

Let us separate the Creator from the rest.  The prayers (Psalms) and the instructions to the Jewish people are witnesses that the Creator has been busy maintaining and repairing his work.

The slightly disguised saviour keeps his work alive.  He is described as majestic and doing wonders.  This is salvation – wholeness and restoration – in God’s  work before the Word becane flesh. Here is Psalm 104 and a panorama of the Creator’s maintenance works, including providing home space.

• (10) He sends forth springs in the valleys; They flow between the mountains; 11) They give drink to every beast of the field; The wild donkeys quench their thirst.
• (12) Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell; They lift up their voices among the branches. 13) He waters the mountains from His upper chambers; The earth is satisfied with the fruit of His works.
• (14) He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth,
• (15) And wine which makes man’s heart glad, So that he may make his face glisten with oil, And food which sustains man’s heart. (16) The trees of the Lord drink their fill, The cedars of Lebanon which He planted,
• (17) Where the birds build their nests, And the stork, whose home is the fir trees. (18) The high mountains are for the wild goats; The cliffs are a refuge for the shephanim.

• 

• 

Four layers of Lamb adoration from all creatures

And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

Revelation of John 5:13

The person responsible for creating the universe also holds it together according to Colossians 1:16.

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him.

Colossians 1:17 continues to testify to Christ’s eminence.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

People confusing elbow with rear end is the result of mutation, deformation and a brutal approach to knowledge.   Fine human beings are going to have God’s attributes: mercy, generosity,  justice, and the absence of deceit and homicidal desires.  Saving the best for last in word or deed works only when the last is the indisputable best.  Securing that achievement calls for associating the message or action with the one and only Saviour who is also the one and only Creator.

If you thought that ethical standards were merely a matter of keeping one, four, six, ten, or 6 hundred orders spoken by God or his servants now is not a bad time to think kindly about the testing the ancient Hebrews had to wrestle with. Diet, clothing, and tangible things are the least of God’s ideas for making people holy.

Joel 3:5-8

5) Since you have taken My silver and My gold, brought My precious treasures to your temples, 6) and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory,

7) behold, I am going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and return your recompense on your head. 8) Also I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a distant nation,” for the Lord has spoken.

God approves human trafficking?

7) behold, I am going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and return your recompense on your head. 8) Also I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a distant nation,” for the Lord has spoken.

Joel 3:7-8

Why, oh why do the slave traders, the chosen nations, and their prophets think that they have divine permission to traffic in human souls and will not face the music? God has always done things humans are not alliwed to do.

Traffic in humans is indictable and recommended as a life lesson for the traders.

People in the third millennium after Samuel’s jaw-dropping verdict on Eli’s house do experience an ear-tingling boost towards seeing what Yahweh sees. That is us, pretending to enjoy all kinds of ground-breaking developments, firsts in scientific discoveries, exciting expressions in the arts, and wilder horizons in physical esthetics, all the while trampling all over our own ancestral treasures, while having no contemporary distinction. Our communities, cultural, religious and political, have endured attacks and tolerated efforts to erase our footprints. At some point this generation has to reckon with our ghosts of heroic bad guys and juvenile grown-ups. The gatekeepers of religion and politics have some tough rowing to do after spending about three decades of backpedalling the historic message of the Son of Man. Alas, we live in the generation like Christs, crooked and perverse, like Eli’s, unheeding and greedy, and like Timothy’s, still crooked and perverse, and in for an ear-tingling.

[from Paul and Timothy] … that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world…

Letter to the Philippians. 2:15

Prime Ministers, Presidents, and Stable Geniuses, Take Note:
a. your houses may be touched by Yahweh’s disgust
b. you may never see the way your house is piling up vomit-worthy practices and theories.

We are not all ears and need to be in our crooked generation

The ear-tingling threat is aimed at rebuking pride in the priesthood’s unique function and endurance. Considering that within a few years of Yeshua going back to glory the Church was under attack by a Jewish-leaning party, led by James and the Pharisees it is not out of character to find people who have tuned out Christ’s message nodding their heads and saying “yes, yes”. By the end of Paul’s ministry he was warning about people in the leadership devoted to injuring believers and encouraging alertness (Acts (20:31), saying, “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them“. (Acts 20:29-30). No-one is asking you to forget that you have eyes, fingers, and a nose, but since God’s Son is the new Speaker a lot more ear needs to be given to him and less to the prophets and lawgivers.

Matthew 17:5 (compare Mark. 9:7 and Luke. 9:35) and Hebrews 1:2, confirm the need to have all ears tuned in to Yeshua.

11) The Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. 12) In that day I will carry out against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.

1 Samuel 3:11-12

Bishops and entire faith communities supporting Nazism cannot deny they want a fuhrer

God’s voice, deposited in the Son of Man, has neither disguise nor partner, alternate perspectives nor partisan versions. If the news about what Eli’s sons were doing at the sacred tent broke today about a prominent figure in the nation or church (such as Eli was) we would be inundated by follow-up stories about one bad apple and the exceptional nature of the misbehaviour. Just as then, we would be smug in the zone of “we’re not that bad”. That smugness might last a few decades or even centuries, but eventually the truth has to come out. The whole of Judah, and the capital itself falls under intense scrutiny from on high. It must be the absence of a political template in either Judaism or Christianity that brings us to cherry pick aspects of the public face of Judaism and Christianity and call that Judeo-Christian. It must be also that we do not understand the essential nature of civic power and its interactions with the spiritual world. Exactly how many actions do we need to see from political leaders to convince us that an abominable like the Nazi leader of the 1930s and 1940s is practically always just around the corner. There cannot be any wisdom in even hinting at a solidarity between the Church and any of the parties all along the spectrum, no matter how like-minded they may seem. The fact that governments avenge injustice and punish evildoers does not make them partners we want to be lumped up with. I can see how religious leaders can think themselves in good company obeying every leader. Shopping for a Fuhrer among the hundreds of lawyer-pastors and pastor-lawyers just imploded on the choice of a failed mobster.

Jerusalem and Judah cleaned up by an ear-tingling act

If God insists that bad behaviour will have public attention and consequences it gets it, and no organization is exempt. All the positive thinking and agreement in prayer combined will not change the course or steer the vessel around God’s clean-up acts. You cannot positive-think or pray yourself (or anyone else) out of God’s plan and intervention.

12) therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am bringing such calamity on Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle. 13) I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.

2 Kings 21:12-13

Jerusalem’s Tingle

and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold I am about to bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle.

Jeremiah 19:3

Exemptions to the Lord’s ear- tingling acts are nonexistent.   Everyone who hears of the holy city’s fortune will experience the tingle.

News for Samuel and Jeremiah

We in the twenty-first century are seeing reversals in leadership, many of which we may feel justified in attributing to God, but God’s hand in politics is now the fuel for idolatry and utter treachery. Those who have studiously denounced protest against government misbehavior have tried other backdoor methods of sneaking a religious agenda into politics. Failure is guaranteed if the Church is going to try to duplicate the state’s programs for improving the lives of church members without an equally vigrous strategy for affecting the lives of all without distinction. The familiar smells of the catastrophic moral failures of New Testament times and the gross darkness linger here in my slice of Turtle Island.

Who needs heroic magnates and perfecly physically fit humans in every other seat?

A Senate or Supreme Court packed with religous vigilantes will result in the same thing; an immoral, paranoid, and appallingly unstable society, deluded by chosen status and plagued by the love of money and the corrupt use of power, even though the duration of these conditions is at most less than a decade. If one of the political parties or religious groups had a superior claim – like the Jewish claim to Canaan as inheritance through the promises to Abraham – it does not take more than a year to figure out who that might be, because that (70 weeks, or 1.34 years) is exactly how much time the nation of priests has to get its act together. Whatever they call themselves – liberal, conservative, centrist or extreme, ancient or modern, religious or atheist – has not helped any of them to rise to acceptance as the right one for society.

“It is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men And knowledge to men of understanding.

Daniel 2:21

Idols of state and people

There are so many intense distractions that have become commonplace that when people do and say the things God wants we are surprised and even outraged. When we do the opposite of what he wants we commend ourselves as obedient and triumphant. A lot of the passionate and uninformed messaging and whispering that have made their way into the public discourse are not responsible for any redemptive directions. The leaders who enjoy public elevation are complete juveniles, cowardly spiritual novices, fomentors of civic unrest and discontent disguised as moral outrage against the very things society does not need: hero-worship, business models dominating spiritual processes, and religious leaders prostituting themselves with secular theories and powers.

Kings, pastors, rabbis and imams

Who would have thought that God gives the reins to people like Pharoah, Saul, David, Solomon, Ezra, Herod, Caiaphas, kings , pastors, rabbis and imams, and takes them out in due season?

He does not expect us to think of what might happen or might have happened but about what happens when humans fall into the intoxicating influence.of secular and political power. We cannot be too careful avoiding the entanglements of what seems like real life nor ensuring that the no-one convinces us that the ABCs are the final report we need to hear and believe.