Author: eejoseph

Jesus is not a terrorist

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For many Christians the quality of life is supposed to revolve around, be rooted in, and reflect the person and mission of Christ. It should come as no surprise that the public face of Christianity is a mishmash of sects, each one pushing some line of unique discovery or unique virtue. The stimulation that creates this chaos comes from pursuing right opinion, and from self-help and self-justifying drives. It is a silo of fear and uncertainty that makes the way to life a terroristic proposition with multiple erroneous opinion.

Doctrine Marketplace

There is a marketplace behind having the right opinion. There was a time when the word catholic meant “with it” or “according to the whole” or simply “the one”. That was before the Roman Church had a pope and cardinals, before the Churches began having councils to defend the gospel as it appeared in the writings passed down from the early witnesses to be able to coalesce around the right opinion. There is a right opinion. Some of us think that the talking points coming out of the familiar sources – such as a vision, dream, or quasi-commentary – are the final word. Every generation tries to establish its place in God’s house based on the contemporary findings – whatever the leaders say they have found – instead of the original unchangeable Christ Event. Contrary to popular opinion, the theological camps into which believers put themselves are pure fictition and the product of laziness. The Bible does not contain seeds of division. If we find that we are not saying and doing the same things as the apostles and Jesus should that not stimulate us to get back to their examle and work? The Church is one and she has nothing to sell. She is the benefactor and preacher of a divine excellence that exceeds law and prophets.

Miraculous help and self-help

A popular set places primary value on faith defying doctrines. If we believe that a doctrine related to our believing should have a practice or obligation attached what action do we attach to believing in God’s son. But what is one to do and what are the benefits of believing that Christ was born of a virgin? What is the benefit of embracing the Bible’s reliability? It is obvious that no salvation comes from believing either of these. These defy faith because neither is operative in redeeming our lives or making us eligible to receive the Holy Spirit. They certainly align with James’ “faith without works is dead” polemic. Just eat the right food and make sure you know and keep all of God’s commandments, statutes and judgments. Peter’s experience with James and the evident end of the Mosaic order stated clearly in Hebrews and by no less a witness than John the Baptist. You see how dangerous is “faith without works is dead”.

Navel gazing

Another source of stimulation is the need to self-justify. We succumb to peer pressure to show that we have the right level of new life, as if everyone who receives the word seed produces at the same rate. If you allow the anxieties and luxuries of this life – food, drink and property for example – to dominate your production mandate you must expect a choking out of maturity. Nothing you do can show Christ’s perfection. We only approach maturity.

If you do not care that we have documents to decide Christian matters you should go home and call on the name of the Lord (for salvation!), and end the terrorising of people to perform Christ’s business without his Spirit and the words he spoke as the foundation of life and security. Seedbed types are only 4: roadside, rocks, thorny patch, good dirt. You cannot pick a doctrine or two and label yourself “good ground”. Anybody can refrain from stealing and lying; one does not need the Spirit to do those things or to pause on Saturday.

I got this, they say

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

Matt. 7:26

What dope are you pushing?

  1. Vision defines truth. Right opinion will never be discovered by vision. The truth we need to know is right there in plain sight, in Greek and Hebrew. The vast majority do not care that their pastor is clueless about the meaning of the text. Is your teacher getting his messages from commentaries and the vast resources on the internet, or is there a living connection with the Spirit and the original texts?
  2. Imitating Israel-Judah. The right relationship will not lead to opinions that openly connect us with the primary interests of Moses and Judaism. It is a most shameful thing to see Christians doing their best to be like ancient Israel.
  3. Jesus is in partnership with the prophets. The authentic Jesus is a Jew but he is not a follower of Moses. He eclipses Moses and Moses knew it was coming.

If there are any messengers that stand apart from all others in Abraham’s family there would be two that fill the screen: Moses and Elijah. These two appear in a conversation with Jesus with only three witnesses, Peter James and John. The topic of the conversation was Jesus’ imminent decease.

And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah (Luke. 9:30) who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem

Luke 9:31

Jesus’ departure is the topic of the conversation Why is that important? Two men, known to be dead, talking with Jesus IN GLORY, went right over the disciples’ head. The two men were talking about something they had no previous knowledge of. Neither of them had preached the Christ event with any familiarity. Christ’s decease still baffles people who accept Christ as Saviour but follow him as an inferior to the prophets. Christ’s departure brings the ancient economies – patriarchal, Mosaic, judges, monarchic, and prophetic – to their intended purposes. People should not expect practices from these eras to rise to the top of the Messianic agenda.

The mild mannered ignorant terrorist

There are Christian leaders learning to speak Hebrew, not interpret it. They will say whatever comes to mind and then try to build a defence of it by any means, including God can do the impossible – whatever he wants. These are the people who reject the fact that God does things in accordance with arrangements (covenants) designed for the time and that explains why Christ is Lord of all, becoming the sole shaper of the thoughts we need to harbour. One cannot say “I am saved” and in the next breath “but I need to suck up that thing I just vomited”.

If we are not thoughtful about Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus in glory about Jesus’ death we will deny that Jesus and the two men represent today and yesterday. They represent the disreputable practice of killing people and he the saving of lives? Their messages bow out; his message stands up.

We have been taught to fear God – properly understood as reverence, a deep respect – when the operative element in the kingdom of God is love: love we perceive coming from God, and love we deliver to our fellowman. Fear however was what saturated the giving of the law; fear dominates the outcomes of compliance. If loving God rises to its highest point in keeping the Law then the love without hypocrisy will never be real for us. We can only become islands of self-righteousness like the people of New Testament times. They terrorized both Jew and Gentile with no resolution of the human problem. Let’s face it: gold, silver, animal blood, and other corruptible things are not God’s paths to peace.



There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

1 John 4:18

Who has seen the crocodile weeping?

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Pretty things grab our attention and we do not easily forget the beauty. Useless things do too, and we are equally at a loss to drag ourselves away from the fables of the greatness of any state or country. The bigot in the White House knows that nobody but his 33% believes that he has a heart. Where are the voices of a person like Ben Carson, a man of faith who says he has a relationship with God and subscribes to the highest standards of moral excellence? They have not see the crocodile death-rolling day and night in the swamp, threatening civilians with the mlitary, and weeping over the lack of prey.

Law and order is a dead horse

Which pulpit is sounding the alarm this Sunday morning against police brutality? The fact that the framers of the American Constitution designed laws to put spirituality under the rug while they claim to be champions of the inalienable rights of every human being is what has kept Black people impoverished and oppressed. Many will tell you protesting is evil, but their voices have not been heard either in heaven or on earth protesting the bigotry in Israel, the UK, the USA, India, and Pakistan. We have not heard a word from the apostles and prophets of the 21st century calling out the suppression of human dignity in Tibet, South Sudan, Saudia Arabia, or Nigeria. They would rather distract people with phony miracles – things that happen every day and without request – and terrorize people with the Law of God – a childish and condemnatory foundation.

The pulpits of the 1/3 should be taking their crumbs of pride in colonial and imperial greatness and their heartless slogans about loyalty and patriotism to the outhouse or the White House. It is undoubtedly the deep from which all kinds of evildoing emerge. Law and order from the best tree has not created even brotherly love. Which religion allows women to be raped, shamed, and killed by vigilantees? Which nation state has closed doors to migrants and refugees, restricts the movements of visitors, looks the other way when minorities are assaulted, fails to respond when Mexicans, impoverished citzens and residents are publicly shamed, and killed by vigilantee officers of the law.

Let us, especially those of us who never stood up publicly against racism and bigotry, not presume that we can tell the oppressed of the world to be quiet, stay off the streets, and not raise the shout every day and every night. Curfews and states of emergency for our health sake and to stop the looting are all part of the same corrupt mechanisms that are still creating characters like Boss Hogg (a fictional character whose crookedness is on display in the public service), Lindsey Graham, Billy Graham, Mitch McConnell, Ted (Mc)Cruz, Devon Nunez, Kenneth Copeland, and John Hagee, and conspire to be silent at the horrific murder by a known police officer and three of his colleagues of George Floyd. This is not merely “sad”.

Who is weeping over Mr. Floyd’s murder?

Sad is what happens when your mom dies of old age. Sad is what happens when you slice your finger open in the kitchen. Sad is what happens when the bigot in the White House sits like a puppy beside Russian leader Putin and defends none of America’s distinctive aspiratins and achievements. The murder of Mr. Floyd is not “sad”. What the police and the Department of Justice have been doing is protecting and covering up for the so-called “bad apples” in the police force. One bad apple does not spoil the whole bunch? What about three bad apples in the Executive Branch, the Department of Justice, and the Senate? The tears of the crocodile, its thoughts and prayers are all crumbs that no-one appreciates.

I dare the American preachers and their congregations to lead a sober prayer, not only for peace (peace is the only reason we pray for those in authority), but for a swift end to the Republican notions of impartial justice and the presidential idea of “fine people”.

Tell the crocodile he can stop weeping. We got his game!

Culture of lies

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False things are popular in every culture. The names we give to things we are fond of usually mask what the thing really is. What was righteous purity is really racism. Prophets were always broken vessels. Zeal for the law always leads to callous murders.

Remember the sinless stone-throwers

Most preachers in the USA and Canada will tell you the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and Americans was allowed by biblical precedent. The theft of the land from First Nations is not a problem because Israel had a similar experience with a mandate to annihilate the native populations. They want the law but not the Sabbath. They want the statutes and judgments to address murder, state executions and theft but not lies and gluttony.

Remember this whopper

We were never enslaved.

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32. and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33. They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

John 8:31-33

Police Reform is Extremely Important

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Ask a lion to eat oatmeal for breakfast lunch and dinner and you insult and destroy his leonine glory

What would the world be like if the violence by police officers never assisted corruption in government? In Canada racial profiling is still a treasured tool for police services. They are deliberately skewing crime statistics to seek the idea that”White people are good people”. The incestuous and child molesting statistics are not a social problem.

Looting at the king’s command

How much the thirst for justice motivates modern nations can be seen in the Jewish experience in Persia and the modern attempts to dictate how people should process.



10) He wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, and sealed it with the king’s signet ring, and sent letters by couriers on horses, riding on steeds sired by the royal stud. 11) In them the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoil, 12) on one day in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month (that is, the month Adar).

Esther 8:10-12

Batons and whistles have morphed into repeating pistols and tasers. Those who are not the victims of racism must stand out as militants for its end.

The extent to which we resolve issues by force and secure the population by deadly means is the critical part of a reformed police services and the renewal – however slight – of civic society. Let us be resolute: Israel, the E.U. and the Islamic Republics hold up no standard for us to follow.

No greater standard

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We do not want a government telling us what to believe.  That sentiment may have launched both the boldest civic venture and the most fragile environment for life.  It is a religious divide that created the American mindset.  The founders were afraid of religous tyranny and many of them, being neither Christian nor Jew, saw no problem with the right to free speech and the right to bear arms.  Now we know that the right to honest leadership and access to truthful data would have been better choices.

Vicious Violence of Law Enforcement

Public service has been taking it’s time to sanitize itself from discrimination.  Church, synagogue and mosque have been dens of abuse.   People confuse God’s will for the human race with their culture.   God does not care who your parents are or what ancient practice you find worthy of attention.   In fact, the most disturbing developments in civic society is the attempt to combine the spiritual and secular livestreams.  Its failure stares us down as we look at the failed Islamic states, the decline of Christianity as a force in government and the rise of popular trashy maxims to the level of truth.

If lies are not immoral everywhere they are moral everywhere.

They never learn

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Killing Black people just ran into the trumpets of Joshua in Minneapolis. Even with a graphic video of a cold-blooded murder of an unarmed citizen by a police officer as three of his police colleagues hear the victim repeatedly pleading for his life. Homicide is not one of those outrages of which they say “never again” because the lesson they have not learned is the humane treatment of all people. Where does that resistance come from?

A culture of lies and violence

The tradition of talking mighty things and hiding behind “we have a long way to go” and the good deeds done to one’s friends does not cut it. They are wallowing in past shame and call it greatness. They have learned nothing since 1776.

Their webs will not become clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with their works; Their works are works of iniquity, And an act of violence is in their hands.


Isaiah 59:6



46) “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, 47) who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.”

Luke 20:46-47