It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

Proverbs 25:2

God’s concealing and our searching constitute a monumental and beneficial hide and seek. God is not in the hiding business but neither does he leave his business out in the open. Recall how Yeshua spoke in parables, and how he called the most important revelations mysteries.

Royal Assignment

• God is not opposed to kings; his glory is not opposed to man’s honour
• Neither kings nor commoner can find God by searching
• God’s concealing his business does not put it beyond reach.

Far from being opposites, God and the king are in the business of honouring each other.

There is no need to wax poetic over kabod being aplied to God and man. There is no need to change the translation of dabar when it applies to either God or man.

Conceal = encrypt
Glory and honour; kavode כבוד
Thing and matter; word, dabar דבר

God’s fingerprint is on display in the encryption of his business. If you do no research you are not a king/queen. In nature and the written revelation God is revealing matters, and nothing trivial. Though these are matters are apparently ignored by many, the messages await in their encrypted states the deciphering by our ears, eyes, taste, touch, and intellect. There are two criteria for dealing with God’s encrypted business.

Overwhelmed by choices

Unklike the crooked systems of human governance our choices of getting the glory are simple and transparent. The choices of where a matter lands is binary. The design of the universe has binary distinctions: life and death, good for us and bad for us. Beyond binary is mere diversity: The beginning of our realities had heaven and earth. The consummation of God’s business is a series of heaven-on-earth kind of activities.

Correct Criteria

One must measure everything by heaven and earth. Recall how Yehsua taught using the motif the kingdom of heaven is like. He also made it clear that when heaven initiates change in the earth the subjects are like the wind – one does not know its origin or destination. This means that the revolving explanations of what is or ought to be in the hearts of queens and kings are likely to be a lot of hot air.

The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.

Proverbs 25:3

When we are done seeking out the wise sayings of Solomon, Hezekiah’s men, Agur, and Lemuel we will find that there is not much that informs our great salvation. Solomon has a descendant whose glory and kingdom eclipses anything Solomon came up with or possessed, and the ancient kingdoms under David’s dynasty or not are measured purely by earth, not heaven.

Part 2

Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob, began having dreams of future personal greatness, the first of which he shared with his brothers (Genesis 37:5-8). In the first dream, the brothers were all in the fields, and their sheaves bowed down to Joseph’s upright sheaf. Incredible as this was to the brothers this was not a young boy’s arrogance. The second dream (vs. 9) was also shared with his brothers whose responses are not recorded. When Joseph told his father the dream, Jacob’s reaction was the same as the brothers’: incredulity, and with the added detail of the parents – Jacob and Rachel – (the sun and the moon) in addition to the 11 stars bowing down to Joseph.

Hate the dreamer

The hatred stirred up by the disclosure of these dreams boils up when when Joseph visits them on an errand from the father. The brothers plotted to throw Joseph into a pit, leave him to perish in the pit, then to report to Jacob that a wild animal had attacked and killed Joseph. Reuben, the eldest of the brothers, did not agree with killing Joseph, and he hoped to be able to rescue Joseph from the pit which had little or no water. When he returned to the pit Joseph was gone. The brothers had sold Joseph to traders who were on their way to Egypt. All of this was divinely arranged to begin the 400-year sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt and their salvation in the Exodus.

Thus began a trail of intimidating prophets and kings, and rejecting ledership. Murder continued as a reminder of the fate of those who perished in the wilderness, who rejected Moses as leader in the wilderness journeys, failed to gain entrance to Canaan, and discounted Moses passing the Torch to a non-Levite king-priest. Dreamers then were not only people who received intsruction in their non-waking hours, but they were also the people who dared to attach their faith to the unseen and to the promises given to their ancestor, Abraham.

When the words that flow are hateful, fierce, and unfounded we detect demon influence. The reasons the bigots of our times are not being properly diagnosed and their demons not being sent into the swine or whatever animal happens to be nearby is that there are too many demons. There are probably more demoniac heads of state than we would want to admit, and not enough certified or fake exorcists. Americans live in one huge cage, sharing accommodations with hateful and unclean birds, and I do not need to look any more.

When the preacher spends 10 minutes setting up his spiele and there is no sign that he has taken in the dimensions of the text I tend not to look any more. When the politician says “when you look at…” and there is nothing except more moronic megalomania people tend to stop looking.

When our friends keep turning our attention to symbols and idols we draw the line. We do not need kindergarten when we come of age. Faith – the man Messiah Yeshua – has arrived and maturity is the package. When they tell us that today’s movie is yesterday’s blockbuster we do not need to look any more. Counterfeits, cleverly devised fables deserve no further look.

Where mercy prevails there is no need for sacrifices. Men can be expected to behave like animals, devouring and robbing their neighbors, often in the name of nobility and rightness.

Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.

Hosea 6:1

He himself tears up Israel and will heal her. Forget that line-up that says human behaviour leads to indictment and justice. God takes responsibility for ripping Israel to pieces.

Israel’s flaky goodness

O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.

Hosea 6:4

The score so far: shaped by the prophets and put to death by Yahweh’s words.

Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth.
Judgments are like light that exits (and does not return?). Hosea 6:5

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me. Hosea 6:6-7

Dysfunction in surprising places

Gilead appears in the prophets as a place for healing, agricultural abundance, and animal farming, but here Gilead is indicted as the HQ for murder and theft by the priests.

Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood. And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder in the way by consent: for they commit lewdness.

Hosea 6:8-9

Compare this prophetic word in Hosea with the life-giving words of Yeshua. Behold the mercy extended to all humans! Compare a thousand years of animal sacrifices with the day the Lamb of God laid down his life, and behold mercy’s dismantling of the sacrificial system (May. 27:51). Compare the death of sinners under Moses (Hebrews 10:28, 2 Cor. 3:19) with Yeshua’s refusal to condemn the guilty (John 8:11, 3:17) and behold the priority of mercy.

Mercy not killing

Human judgment cannot be trusted with questions of the life and death of human beings. The record shows that we will accuse and condemn innocent people when given the chance. It is not a human trait to forgive offence and we have not stood with God in his demand for mercy. The day of Pentecost confirms that mercy is king and sacrifice has left the building.

Originally published August 2019, updated April 2020

List Jerusalem as a virgin for being declared as Israel’s capital by a corrupt Gentile head of state. List Israel as the witting pawn and manipulator of another superpower. List the role of the United States as powerbroker in the peace and security of the Levant as effectively finished. The vast majority of Israel’s kings were bad actors for rejecting the instructions and mercies of Israel’s rightful monarch, and there can come no good of an alliance that recognizes the proclamations of the king of crap.

American kingdom

Jerusalem is not looking for a king and has political parties like the nations. The ruins of Israel’s heritage tell us that Jerusalem needs a course correction. Israel’s greatest and most loved king bought a threshing floor from a Jebusite (one of the 7 nations that were to have been annihilated) to be the site of the temple. The southern portion of this same tract of land is Zion (proper) and it is there we find the royal palaces and royal tombs. The two locations are distinguished by name and content: Jerusalem with the temple and Zion with the palace. All those tourists to the Holy Land and archaeologists seem to close their eyes to the facts. This is the hallmark of the American kingdom. “What racism, what genocide, what coverup” they ask. I like my truth straight from horse’s mouth, not smeared with European bigotry and ignorance. A republic is a thinly veiled kingdom. In a trice, we could all wake up to a strongman in the US, the EU, Russia or China, telling the world what it needs to do stat.

A place for all to worship and live

The idea that the interests of Israeli citizens are advanced by a United States president whose trademarks are bigotry and xenophobia is all landfill material. Israeli citizens cannot decide the fate of Jerusalem because the pride of being chosen and circumcised cannot be reconciled with the manifest destiny of Jerusalem or even with the house of bread, Bethlehem. Mountainous places of worship are irrelevant. No one since the days of John the Baptist needs a mountain anywhere to worship.

King David, King God

“King” is either David or God.   David’s city is either Bethlehem, his native town and famous for the approved inclusion of Moabites into Israelite life, or David’s city is Zion, captured from the Jebusites and dedicated for royal residences. What happens when David’s house is as God?

Zion has no nationalist future

Israel’s neighbours have a place in the royal city, and the ones that were hostile to Israel are named as native: Rahab Babylon, Philistia, and Tyre.

Fundamental Zionism has taken a U-turn because Jews have been unwilling to embrace the cosmopolitan nature of Zion

The king’s home is not the temple and the myriads of people who will worship in spirit and truth will not be flocking to Jerusalem or Gerazim (the Samaritan holy place).

His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there. And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there. Selah. As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee.

Psalm 87

A Song and Psalm for the sons of Korah.Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

Psalms 48:1-2

Israel has had its share of crappy kings and the United States’ DNA is dominated by a conflicted anti-monarch gene. Americans can pretend all they want but they want a king, a conquering warrior, a wise prophet, and a generous priest in the oval office. Their slogan “God and country” is twin to “Calf and Exodus “.

Racist empires and their wisdom are all rubbish.

The UK, the US, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Belgium are all states with people God wants to save. Not so long ago they were all raping Africa and giving her people a perverted version of the Bible’s promise. Is there a New York or Paris in Africa? Paul the apostle to the Gentile world, told us that all the things he cherished as a Jew turned to rubbish – by comparison – ( σκύβαλα skubala ) when he ran into Messiah. The dream of most people in the world is to get comfortable with Mammon. The American dream is simply that, at any cost, and especially with free labour. No matter what wisdom or cute sayings are in circulation in the United States or Israel the content and purpose is bound to be deceptive and oppressive crap. We’ve forgiven Germany and Japan but the crappy kingdom will never repent. What’s that saying supposed to mean, the one about the ax and the tree? The one John the Baptist used to strike up his audiences? Or can we adopt the popular and truthful saying “We have no king but a foreigner, the emperor of Rome”? Yeah, there is supreme crap passing for truth.