Hazzard county comes to Washington, DC and Christian radio with a whimper. Crime-fighting, dirt-collecting operatives, constitutional experts and compromised preachers of quasi-righteousness pretend not to see the facts. Impeached boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane have told us that there is no impartial justice. Duh!

One African American Woman of Courage

If any politician deserves a prophetic mantle it is Rep. Maxine Waters. Her truth to power determination is a flag flying high. The 45 they thought would kill American democracy, make bigotry, fascism and nazism acceptable, and make a mockery of truth and decency has jammed and is discovered to be loaded with blanks. The impeached despot had better get busy licking his wounds before he ends up with no memory but his mountain of lies, people he tried to bury, buy their silence, and the many nations who he deemed unworthy of being Americans.

One Despised Mormon

There is always a witness to the truth. It is not surprising that the criminal enterprise of the Republican party and the evangelical mob gets called by a faithful Mormon. When the orange threat announced his run for the presidency Mr. Mitt Romney warned the public: he of Mar a Lago is a con man.

Home for jammed 45s

Peace awaits the impeached president in Moscow, Ankara, Pyongyang, and Manila. Reality awaits him in New York: the exposure of his tax crimes and lawyers pocketing large sums of his ill gotten fortune for all the defence he is going to need. It is permanent winter for the American despot whether he flees north or south. There is nothing but blind testosterone and mob incitement in the world of Republican politics and evangelical theology. They both see that the population as primarily an armed force they can whip into quasi-revolutionary fervour. Boo hoo! Real Christians and genuine representatives of the people do not support – do not support – the denial of immigrant and resident right to life. They do not support the criminalization of murdering blacks, They all must vigorously support outlawing the evil of lying lips, not only to the FBI. They should be busy now calling up the great elector of Russia and get their orders in for the best Russian coats. America’s chill has begun.

Will the real vegan stand up,  grovel in muddy waters, or glory in the gospel? We cannot imagine how anyone can be impressive for Christ by reading a translation of biblical text that is not his own, by reading a commentary also not his own, and by turning God’s grace into works of a lost humanity.

Reading is feeding

Reading is supposed to deliver nutrients. Looking at what we are saying after we have read something helps us discover the measure of our growth. Eating with intent means that knife, fork, spoon, bowl, cups, and chalices are on the table. Reading with intent means we will be aware of the great diversity of significant nutrients in even the tiniest pieces of our literature. “Looking at” must be that part of reading where there is no conscious uncertainty about what is on the page.

If neither the New Testament nor the Old Testament leads us to the law and the prophets predicting their own demise our reading is a shallow effort. Inspiration that ends in theories that the kingdom of God’s grace is based on Israel’s institutions can hardly be trusted.

Ending the authority of Moses and the prophets

Jewish thought and life was exclusively informed and strictly regulated through the Law and the prophetic sayings. The Law contains the primitive partiarchal record and important customs for observation, such as circumcision and the practice of praying (building altars) everywhere. The writer is referring to the entire library of sacred writings when he wrote “all the prophets and the law”. They speak for God, up to John. They speak as final authority up to John.

For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.

Matthew 11:13

There is no vacuum when the Law and the prophets take a back seat. The kingdom takes their place. It becomes the destination. This demands a journey. If Abraham’s fidelity consisted of him leaving his roots (country, kinmdred, and ancestral home) why should any descendant shrink from undertaking a similar journey? Calling people antinomian for looking for moral stability outside of the law of Moses is a kind of character assassination. 

The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

Luke 16:16

The English and Greek are languages that have features so different it is suicidal to think that our best grasp of English (French, Spanish or German) can get Bible readers to what the Bible writers intended. You might as well be staring at a blank wall and expect to see doors and windows appear. Basic or advanced English grammar courses may save the face of a semi-literate clergy but it will not remove distance between most readers of the Bible and the meaning of what the writers wrote.

If the pure diet consists of earth produce the impure would be all the others (including earth produce that we process). The pastor who forgets how to translate the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible is negligent and can lay no claim to being part of pure spiritual nutrition. Feeding people the comments of our several traditions is like settling for red meat when nuts and grains are available.

The vegan diet is the Eden model. When the pure diet includes every living thing that moves then the impure diet would include whatever we so label. That follows the flood model. The feeding practices of humans go off in strange directions when the spiritual and the physical come under scrutiny.

Spiritual nutrition has a standard

The words of Christ should not be equated with the words of thieves. Our Lord chose his eyewitnesses and authorized them to deliver his message to the world. Knowing God and what he is saying must come from more than secondhand and sources contemporary to us.

15) Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. 16) They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

Titus 1:15-16

We locate the now time as the days since Christ died. Christ’s death was not because of law. The show of righteousness was intended to liberate, not condemn. The righteousness takes guilty people and declares them acquitted without reference to Law and in declaration of love.

But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

Romans 3:21

The expectation that all things would continue out of loyalty to the patriarchs and to Moses was not realistic. People who scoffed at John the Baptist learned pretty quickly that he was not a sidehow. When asked about who he was he did not waver. People’s interest in the expected king was not misplaced because John was about to tell the crowds that Messiah was a lamb. With the appearance of John (Jesus’s messenger) the law and the prophets are out of business.

Fear all of you not me? says the LORD: will all of you not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?

Jeremiah 5:22

But this people has a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.

Jeremiah 5:23

If righteousness is determined by Mosaic Law then Christ died in vain.

Right is not decided by majority. American wisdom is below farm animal standards. Cute soundbytes will make learned men say anything. Lawyers will say anything in defense of their clients.

Welcome to American nationalism

A Senate of sober deliberation just proved that fascism is on the rise. Common sense never smelled as bad as the Russian and Saudi grip on American and British testicles. Imagine the hallelujahs in church this weekend as the wheels of justice fall off the truck. If that can happen in America what budding democracy can survive?

Hearing another Matthew 28 exhortation to be witnesses to the nations brings trepidation to me. This verse has been a 13-dollar bill for many churches: its savage and less than thoughtful use would frighten Yeshua.

18) Jesus however came near and said to them, “All power in Heaven and over the earth has been given to me. 19)  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations; baptize them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; 20) and teach them to obey every command which I have given you. And remember, I am with you always, day by day, until the Close of the Age.”

Matthew 28:18-20

Checklist for being a witness

• Go: not a travel demand. Every person who had come to Christ had been dispatched into the world. Πορευθεντες (poreuthentes) means having gone.

• Make disciples: “teach” (King James version) confuses the duties. To matheteusate someone is to enrol him for learning. Manthano means I learn. A disciple (a mathetes) is not identified by his accomplishments but by his place in the school.
• People are enrolled through baptism.
• Baptism is to be followed by education or teaching the curriculum that Yeshua published

We cannot accept:

• Teaching before enrollment
• Teaching that people can never understand
• Teaching that is aimed at instant maturity
• Teaching that denies the convert his disciple (learner) status
• Teaching that fudges on committing the disciple to Messianic doctrine exclusively

Teach, teach, baptize, teach.

Pure indoctrination is typically heavy on law and condemnation. Oppressive and misguided groups rely on doctrine that is usually featherweight on grace and philanthropy.

We cannot be witnesses to Christ with teaching that quite literally embarrasses Christ and the apostolic message. No apostle ever said that the Way’s disciples needed to also be Moses’ disciples, but James did. If we claim to have found one that does two problems arise. That apostle is not one who was an eyewitness and that apostle is not committed to hearing Yeshua. “Teach, teach, baptize, teach” results in people who are proud of turning their eyes away from Yeshua so that they can pursue (no one can ever be Israel.2) a reputation as God’s true people.

At least our covenant arrangements should clear the fog. The covenant of the broken body and shed blood is not an invitation to do our part to become God’s people like the Sinai covenant.

follow these rules and you will become a peculiar people, a kingdom of priests

If Yeshua cannot replace patriarchal and Mosaic teaching the divine command to hear the Beloved Son and the prediction of his arrival are mere words.

And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

Mark 9:7

18. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. 19. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

Deuteronomy 18:18-19

17. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 18. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. 19. We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

2 Peter 1:17-19

God’s people are known in the Old Testament as covetous, lying, and incorrigible. They are revolters, stuck in kindergarten, determined to show that the Bible needs their opinions to be reliable. They learn but never acknowledge the truth.