Author: eejoseph

Sure Signs of Salvation

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Forgiveness and contrition are inevitable in any approach to wholeness, right?

The Lord is near to those that are of a broken heart; and saves the ones who are of a contrite spirit. Psalms 34:18

The italics in the King James version of this verse of Psalms 34 is a giveaway. The practice of italicising words not in the original text is quite helpful. It tells the reader what is versus what happens

“God is light” is a simple example. “Blessed is the man who does not walk” is a more complex example. Both are intended to describe conditions not events.

You can rely on what God is versus what he does. God is near vs God saves. He is always near. That is what he is. Near. We know he doesn’t always save.

At what point do people not come to God broken or tell God thanks for a sinless day? I cannot imagine.
Hypocrites still come to God whole, grasping at divinity unlawfully. Woe, not help, can be predicted for them until contrition sinks in.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Luke 18:14

Washington the New Wonderland

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People came from far and near to see the Magnificent Temple of Solomon had built to the honor of Yahweh in Jerusalem. Only in that city could one find a people dedicated to a dynamic connection to God.

Whataboutism is not new. It is how we learn. We have used comparison and evaluation to ensure that our understanding is not insular and stunted. It is a well known fact that many Americans know little about their environment outside their town and perhaps their state.

Connecting with what matters asks for respectful attention and not simple acceptance. We can say “I hear you” without meaning that we buy what was said.

Wonderland

It is no wonder that lawmakers work together to create opportunities for the people. But it is, in Washington.
It is no wonder that heads of state lead the charge against the nation’s adversaries. But it is, in Washington.
It is no wonder that data drives the engine of corporate and private life. But it is, in Washington.

Facts and Foxes in HenHouses

We know that it is not only in wonderland do openly bigoted religious and elected personalities not know that words have meanings that do not change.
There are hundreds of little wonderlands across our nations where people have little or no experience of their neighbours’ perennial struggles and lack the courage to cross the street.
Shouting hateful slogans takes little humanity. Shouting cute maxims shows little intelligence.

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, He did not make me; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, He has no understanding? Isaiah 29:16

We have seen how falsehoods repeated often enough (and strategically) have become daily mantras no matter how obvious the venom is or despite the shaky precedents asserted.

The Washington touch

Do not try to imagine why the 45th president is a churlish, despot, megalomaniac, lying, cesspool of greed and prostitution or why the elected representatives are the most potent cowards. In Washington everything turns to dirt at the touch of the masters of hypocrisy and cowardice.

Its wonderland. How many totalitarian regimes does a bigot-in-chief have to court before Washington wakes up and sneezes?

Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god! Habakkuk 1:11

Hopefully it takes one special counsel to uncover just how deeply and for how long Satanic (lies and rebellion) influence have been entrenched in the new wonderland, because they are, like Israel of Isaiah’s days,

  1. A rebellious people,
  2. lying children,
  3. children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord;
  4. who say to the seers, Do not see,
  5. to the prophets, Do not prophesy to us what is right;
  6. speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, Isaiah 30:9-10

Three Chilling Words

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Human. Right. Abuse.
Governments everywhere are expected to be possessed of three characteristics. Humanity. Righteousness. Accountability.
The three are being tested by religious fervour masked as patriotic nationalism.

Canada’s new power

I have never apologized for saying the right thing, and I do not expect the Government of Canada to apologize for having a society where people exercise the right to assemble, express their views, and protest. Canadians do not apologize for wanting the human family to embrace the sanctity of human speech. Some one had to say it.
The Canadian government is doing battle with the Saudi government over Canada’s defence of people whose right to personal expression is depressed. The tempest in the desert centres on the kingdom’s attempt to slow the transition from cruel nepo-despotism to accountable governance for all citizens.

Silence is not appropriate

I cannot imagine anyone not oriented in the Arab world or towards Islam not cheering as women were given the right to drive. A simple thing like personal equality is only news where the notion is taboo. I am certain that the need to speak out against any authority is something the House of Saud recognizes. That need to speak out can be threatened using military equipment bought from the Canadian government, so we have a vital motivation to be heard on this issue.

Saudi Demands

Asking the head of a functioning democracy to apologize for stating the obvious is at least brash and distracting. There is little room here for whataboutism. Human dignity is at risk everywhere and the tardiness of some states is a fitting subject for public discussion. If not brash and distracting the Saudi demand signals the prospect of a nationalism that evokes the manifesto of violent actors and a deadly alliance between unlikely business partners.

When we talk about human our minds go to humane characteristics and ultimately humane treatment of one another.

When we talk about right our minds go to God who made all creatures with the authority to think, act, and reflect.

When we talk about accountability our minds go to all of us who need to explain what we have done when asked.

No one should lose their liberty because they stand up for humane treatment of all humans. No one should lose their life because they spoke words with which we disagree. No one should lose their ability to defend themselves when they ask governments to be accountable to the people.

Pardon us all, we cannot apologize

for saying,

“let’s get our Human Rights record right”.

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen… John 3:11a

COULD NOT THIS MAN PREVENT A DEATH?

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John the evangelist alone records the raising the Lazarus from the dead and the miracle is said to be the cause for the establishment to finally make move to arrest and murder the Messiah (John 11:45-54)

An outsider’s observation

(11:37) And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?

The answer is obvious. At least it is to the speakers. Of course he could. He did not. He does not do everything he has the power or authority to do.
Some people are so without any sense of God’s creative genius. There is no need for God to repeat or duplicate any of his provisions for any creature. He does not do for us (a) what he’s done for others (b) what we can do for ourselves ( at least when we are
There are people who, unable to help themselves, dare to throw rocks of faith at every surprise or unexpected turn in life’s road.

No sickness, no death?

Was no one around who believed as Lazarus’ condition worsened? Were there no two agreeing in prayer whose request God would honour?

Just where do we get the idea from that God is trying to stop people from aging, ailing, and dying? God is honourably glorified in any of our circumstances and this story illustrates how he chooses to intervene.

Just when the fishermen, caught in a vicious storm, thought he did not care, found him asleep, and were pretty sure death was knocking, he rescued them.

In the grand scheme

Could this God not have prevented Adam and Eve from slipping out of innocence? We could go down that rabbit hole but we will not. Prevention is not all that it is cracked up to be. An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of bandaids, but a cure is permanent and far more satisfying.

Where is that hypocrite who would like to have taken a crack at preventing human history from unfolding the wonderful way that it has?

What Thinktank? Blah, Blab, Blank

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What authority do Christian preachers have in 2018 when they discard the gospel for clichés and cute and fabulous slogans? When Christ was ready to roll out his church he named his leaders apostles (they were, in effect, his spokespersons, his “prophets”, see Ephesians 2:20, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…). Very little authority remains.

Who speaks for Christ?

To call them prophets would lead to confusion with the prophets of past eras and with the prophetic gift in the church. 1 Cor. 12:28). No church can thrive without the word-ministry of one of either a pastor-teacher (accountable for the flock), or an apostle (someone with missionary accountability), or a prophet (a messenger with a God’s word account) or a teacher, someone with an interpretation account. This means that someone had better be thinking soberly about what is being said.
We are all human and let fly things that we shouldn’t especially when it comes to food… things that are concerned with life and death. People don’t need the fluff or the blah blah blah. They need certainty. People are responsible for the direction and for the safety of the environment in which word of God is studied. There must an awareness that opinions must be stated as such. People don’t want to hear our opinions, don’t want to hear us say “I think”, “I believe”; people want to hear what the biblical writer has written in its clearest version. They want to hear what Paul said in its simplest and even vernacular expression.

We should therefore not expect people to repeat the things we are saying without them hearing what it was that the writer was thinking. We must recognize that it is not mere storytelling that is happening in the gospels and the letters. What we have received is the thinking of the writer. We are trying to digest what the writer thought about a particular aspect of the great salvation.
When we get to the writer’s thought we can then say “… here is what the scripture says”.

So why is there any blah? Why is there so little proper blabbing, and way too many blank shots? Is not the voice of Christ’s chosen writing witnesses sufficient?

God’s will internalized

There is no need to think, no need to search, and therefore no assurance that Yeshua has the words of life. People seem content to adopt the delusion of “law in the heart” and the sinless achievement.

There is little thinking behind the products, offerings and talking points in the Christian “marketplace”. While I report that I keep hearing 30 minute and hour-long presentations in which the blahs are so much more than the blab, I can still say I am satisfied with the crumbs, even when the message ends up, with its numerous contradictions, as a disappointing blank.

A lot of blahs

Let me say first of all of that there is no intention to label people as blanks. There is no dark place that cannot be lit up. We need handles for dealing with expressions which seem to go nowhere. If being a witness means being acquainted with the case on a personal level then we can safely admit that it is in the exchange of findings and views that the truth and the life it brings can be seen and acknowledged.

There have been noble attempts to help people find their way to the life of the sacred text. Answering the important questions that arise in our search for God needs a disciplined approach. The word, the phrase, the sentence, the thoughts, the context, the other biblical sources are pieces we must consider before we take a stand. That discipline vanishes when denominational or organizational traditions take priority. The stories, the blahs, inform us of a drift to tell so much more about both fictional characters and events.

People who are wrong about the main event, the cross, will err in everything else. One cannot build one’s house on sand (changing law and human will) and expect it to withstand the storm. We cannot say in any shade of honesty that we have searched the Scriptures and have ended up with a horrific mistake such as when the date of the Lord’s return was calculated by the advent movement in the 19th century. Such witnesses are unreliable and all who following their footsteps in pursuing that same goal have lost their credibility. There is no new version of the gospel.

Next: Supreme Blabbing

The Threat of Falsehood

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Separating the facts from the fantasy is a fairly regular routine. No special skills are needed and one does not need a “How to” list from experts. Virtual reality, cosplay and slogans are the main tools of the false forces. No-one should think that a list of ingredients, fine print, very small print, and huge billboards are unrelated to the proliferation of alternate ideas about the real and the false. We have no choice but to put into these categories much of what passes for intelligent and effective Christian doctrine.

There are far too many people opining about things they have not seen. One can watch a lot of videos and read a lot of books, but let us be sure that it is not the quantity of material one consumes but the quality of one’s sources. Real knowledge is arrived at through inquiry. Merely repeating what we have heard does not make something factual or reliable.

Filtering out the false

Critical cautions can come in a dream, from reading the text, or from the behaviour of a beetle. Instruction in the truth is a matter of being alive and eligible. Truth has a destination to which we travel and we do so with our own truth. Incorrect or corroborated statements have no place at all in our growth arrangements.

Source and Sources

Our security comes down to – not walls – openness and deliberate testing of what people are saying. If we have to consider who is speaking before we give yourselves permission to ask the diagnostic questions then we are enmeshed in the deception network.
Dead people are locked in on food and drink, dedicated to Moses and any prophet of their choosing, and we will find them repeating catchy phrases, intimidating converts, and making the same claim as the desolate house Israel-Judah.

The Old Testament is still informative but it is not an authority since John the Baptist. It is pure laziness on the part of interpreters of the gospel to keep slamming audiences and readers with the same old tired mantras of the law and the prophets. Yeshua on the scene meant an urgent and dramatic change was in the making, and with the exception of the disciples as his remnant the Jewish economy became rubbish.

We have lost our credibility when we teach people that the new covenant has the old covenant at its centre. If a person is distracted by the number of pieces of literature they are expected to read in addition to the bible then the answer is to get back the Bible.

No two ways to interpret

The terms of the new covenant says that the new covenant will exclude the words of the old. That there is a new arrangement: no confusion.

For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Hebrews 8:8

That new arrangement veers away: no confusion. The old and the new, the ex and my new spouse, cannot occupy the same space.

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. Hebrews 8:9

Useless Teachers

How many times since becoming an adult have you been told what to think and what to do by someone with no authority over you? It is happening every time someone spouts off about the moral law of God.

And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. Hebrews 8:11

Why do people cling to nonsense like “the Law of His shows God’s character”? Why do we find people who still try to pretend that they are teaching people about the Kingdom of God and His great message of salvation? They have, just like the Hebrews at Sinai, refused to hear the divine voice, and they have refused to accept the death of Christ as the end of the “marriage” to sin, death and the law.

If we are unable to introduce people to Jesus, and if we all unable to find what it was that Jesus taught so that we can teach people to observe, then we understand because people are not looking at Jesus, but looking at Moses and God knows who else. They are probably not even reading the words of Yeshua. Now that’s the place to begin to settle one’s house on the foundation: the very words of Jesus.

The vast majority of teaching experiences that we have seen in the modern era are mere window-dressing: there’s nothing there. No one is really asking any hard questions so no one is really trying to answer them. Those teachers who seem thrilled to keep reciting things that their ancestors have said over the centuries since the apostles died may likely be dead (unsaved and without a calling).

People are afraid to teach what Yeshua taught because his teaching is still a call for radical thought, and we do not need not need to think if the pie-in-the-law and the law-is-the-pie doctrine is our treasure.

Magic Talk and Appointed Speech

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They know the will of God. No exceptions. Who are they? God’s children. They do the will of God. Humanity excepted. Who are they? God’s created works. They void God’s will. The chosen included. Who are they? Religious people.

Teaching is not magical. If we do not read we should not recite. Teaching is not the gift of gab, and if one gets excited about preaching (as announcement) and speaking in tongues then one needs urgently to “scope” this article.

Every Christian is a well of salvation, an anointed vessel. If that is where we start our “talk” then we ought to realize that the ministry of teaching is a secondary gift, it being subject to the Holy Spirit, the superlative gift.

Believers do not need any teaching help. The goal of teaching is knowledge, and that we understand as familiarity and intimacy. People anointed by Christ learn his ways without a middle man. In this regard preaching the gospel is called foolishness. Teaching, being second level activity, can have no greater commendation. Things a preacher might say to all that send the mind hurtling are of the same kind as kingdom matters to the unsaved (even though one might be a church member of many decades years).

But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him. 1 John 2:27

Pretty soon, there will be an announcement “Everything is holy” and people who have dedicated their lives to holy food, drink, garments, oil, incense, water, locations, countries, buildings, and land, will find themselves dying in the wilderness.

The diversity sleight of hand miscalculated

The diversity element in the modern social context is designed to dull the voices calling for a radical undoing of the desecration of native life in Australia, Asia, Africa and North America. Israel was commissioned to participate in the reconfiguration of Canaan for Israelite residence. We can see what a severe test it was to enact a genocidal plan. If only the Jewish people and the colonial powers could convince everyone that they do respect all people, that culture is more than food and drink and costume, that male and female are more than simple criteria for discriminating, then we would have a party.

No one but Muslims are on the prowl to for genocide is not true

Muslim needs for the space to grow and be productive in society are not so different from anyone else’s. The growth and participation seems to show up when there is a tragedy or a national observance.

That party is not happening everybody wants a wall. People are duped into thinking that something other than bigotry, fear, malice and poor hospitality is driving people to have a great wall like China, ancient Babylon and Israel. Some bewitching has to have taken place for a once intelligent and connected entity to want to be alone in his room and all the peoples into wall-construction ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Magic talk does not work here

Let’s remind everyone that the current shape of Palestine was funded by Iranian money. It was a Persian government sent the Jews back to rebuild Jerusalem and Judea. Now they are at each other’s throats as if they never were in bed together. Open hostility between the branches of Abraham’s family tree tells us that the so-called family-values touted by religious people are often smokescreens.

I just heard the chief buffoon talk about human remains being laid to rest in sacred American soil. That line may resonate with a certain dark place, but the murder of innocents, the oppression of the poor means, and America’s pride in its racist foundation means there is not one sacred spot in the land. American lives are no more valuable than any other. America is a Russian province as certainly as God gave Israel and Judah into the hands of Assyria and Babylon respectively.

The common interest

Everything is do-able! Is that not what certain Christians have been conditioning themselves to believe?

Everything is respectable! Is that not what certain Christians have been conditioning themselves to believe?

Everything is special! Is that not what certain Christians have been conditioning themselves to believe?

When the powers that be legislate or decree something we evaluate it with God’s instructions and we approve or disapprove. When the powers that be adopt biblical positions what can we expect? Life or death?

After 2000 years we ought to be certain that no-one is speaking human nature, human rights, or human success into existence nor is there anyone soeakung the common human trails out of existence. No-one should be fooled by people who decree things for which God has no decree. A lot of prophetic utterances are utterly ridiculous and contra-cross.

So what happens when we discover that our governments and churches (mosques and synagogues too) are planning to enforce what looks like biblical principles?

If it is biblical law that dominates, will there be executions? Yes, and without Christ’s approval.
Who will decide when the guilty go free? Infallible officers.

Who will give life to the dead?

Speaking in the Maelstrom

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Despite being terrified and knowing that his presence on Mt. Horeb was underwritten by God, his face-to-face God, and that his career needed this encounter. How do we know? He tells us in Hebrews 12:21, Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. Moses hears the memorable sounds, feels the momentous tremors, and, groping in the dark, he opens his mouth.

And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever. When Moses told the words of the people to the Lord, Exodus 19:9

What that was exactly is clear from the following. Exodus 19:18

Now Mount Sinai was

  • wrapped in smoke because
  • the Lord had descended on it in fire.
  • The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and
  • the whole mountain trembled greatly. .

One would think that the right thing to do was to keep quiet especially as the noise increased.

And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder (vs 19)

God answers with thunder! One just can’t win against God. If one is interested in going up for a chat then one needs to be aware that with the volume rising amid tremors, fire, smoke and darkness we can be intimidated or dare to speak and get thunderous answers.

The prayer life of Moses certainly has some sobering elements. If the Psalm, Prayer of Moses, is any indication, Moses may have been afraid but up on Mt. Horeb was where God was and if God is there things will turn out just right. It was home: loud, dark, shaky, and smoky.

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

Psalms 90:1