Faith

What juice are people drinking?

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Canadians are rallying today March 19th against the racism hoping to eradicate it.  Meanwhile in the United States an entire party, one of the two that make up the American political system, cannot see racism in America. I do not know whether they have convinced the preachers or whether the preachers have convinced the politicians that it’s better not to mention racism.   I suppose it is treasonous to announce the emancipation of the slaves upon whose labour the economy is based.  In Canada preachers  do not see the evil of  filling people with lies and false hopes, neither do the police believe that white people have been killing First Nations children and women.   Racism will be with us as surely as the poor will be with us until the end of the age. 

Part of the problem or slayer

What is taking society as long as it has to end the scourge of racism may be more than simply not being a part of it.  They will tell us we are crazy for saying that our societies need a makeover.  As courageous and visionary as we think Washington and McDonald to be we have contorted the foundations with our selfish and homicidal views. Israel did it too.  I suppose we in the western hemisphere are fortunate that God did not call us to be the guardians of the mystery of the ages.  We seem to be caught between being selfish and being good neighbours.  No one needs a neighbour like Russia, if you are Ukraine, or like China if you are Taiwan.  The problem of racial discrimination begins in homes where the nextdoor neighbour is devalued; his iron, wood and stone are not as valuable as ours.  Let us not keep up the delusion that automobiles made identically in Canada and the United States have sticker prices disparate by  tens of thousands of dollars.

The end of racism is beyond our telescope

From those who find Hitler attractive, hate Muslims, Jews, Christians, and despise all foreign cultures racism is a necessity, and it is curious that the most costly and highly treasured systems of legislation, jurisprudence and education have been taking little nibbles out of the racism beast for decades (in some cases centuries). Not only is the end of racism beyond our vision, it is beyond the reach of our ropes, hoses and ladders.

A simple faith

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Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

Mark 11:24, NASB

This saying should excite the believer. It will do nothing for the unbeliever. It comes on the axis of a request for faith to continue.

“Have faith in God.”

Mark 11:22n
Ἔχετε πίστιν θεοῦ· targets a faith already in possession.

The disciples, like us, were amazed at the effect of Yeshua’s disappointment over a tree that had no fruit. They heard him curse the fig tree, and seeing the tree the next day was truly eyeopening. It had withered!

On the next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry. Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps He would find anything on it; and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And His disciples were listening. (Mark 11:12-14, NASB)

Being reminded, Peter said to Him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree which You cursed has withered.”

Mark 11:21, NASB

This instruction is not about getting the faith, drumming up the faith, or letting faith rise to get something we want. It speaks about the faith one already has and how, in pursuit of a normal satisfaction, in this case, a fig snack, faith might bring on unimagined consequences. Significantly, Yeshua’s faith did not bring him a fig snack.

Blessing a fruitless tree may produce fruit next time you go looking for a snack.

Like a hen, God.

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America, America, God shed His grace on you, and you’ve pulled your pants down and showed the nations otherwise. There are not a few examples of nations that have squandered their heritage, as they pursued emptiness and utter beastliness.

There has been no shortage of profoundly thoughtful American women and men, no shortage of courageous and strong champions of human ingenuity and philanthropy, but the student of history will not allow us to forget that a plentiful crop of crooked sherrifs, forsworn judges, and brutal and homicidal officers of the law has been reaped every year since the nation won its independence. The theologian will not stand by either and pretend that God has not sent help, and placed incredibly opportunies to benefit all before the nation that calls itself respectable.

It is foolhardy to argue that nations do not deserve a swift rebuking kick. You name the nation: kick. They all need to correct their trajectory, but no, foolish pride prevents them.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it! (Luk 13:34, NASB)

Things you thought you could be taught

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There is a rush to get educated even where ignorance is still a treasure, a haven of innocence. It is not progress when people equate education with the capitalist dream; things can go wrong quickly. Much harm is done too when a certain class is impressed with glitter and imitates the glitter without knowing that glitter is a distraction from gold. Reading is good, and books of all types should be embraced. Let us notice though that faiths with sacred texts for recitation or study have a sense of piety just for reading. One does not know exactly what the reciting (or book) people teach – Christians are the only ones with their quasi-teaching out in the open. Christ is still the inspiring example of godliness, because at s o me point neither you nor I want to end up in the ditch because we insisted on following the greatest of our spiritual forbears due to the fact that they are all broken vessels, with commendations from their friends and no sign of approval from the one who teaches and matures his students without guesswork and with absolutely certainty.

Intimate knowledge of the Lord.

Every two-bit televangelist is publishing confounding lists about success, overcoming, and unlocking kingdom secrets. People who have no interest in elevating Yeshua are selling 5 Steps to a Rich Prayer Life, 7 Principles to a Better Marriage, 4 Steps to Overcoming Sin, and weeklong Study Plans. This is more rubbish than one should come into contact with and they are doing it despite the constitutional premise that God personally teaches the least and the greatest.

And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. Hebrews 8:11

Why do they do it? They want to make merchandise of people and claim them as disciples. To know Christ is to be in possession of life. To know is to have intimacy, not mere familiarity.FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE are the three sure possessions of the believer. No law regulates them, The hundreds of burdens that our leaders have given us are inappropriate and destructive.

Righteousness, peace and joy vs food and drink

It is as if Paul knew that believers would try to elevate food and drink to spiritual responsibility. They are nothing more than the ABCs of being human.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:17

The former arrangement – sin, death, law – made its debut with a food, drink, and washings at the core, and grew to ridiculous proportions. How ridiculous can be seen when Christ set the record straight about defilement. His sayings about the significance of life over the body, life over the clothing, did little to shake his contemporaries, and the extremes or absurdity are reached whn Gentiles adopt the refuse of Judaism as central to Christian discipleship. He also quite plainly stated that there is no defilement from external sources. Neither food, nor drink, nor the filthy behaviours of others, nor illness changes a person and they do not change God’s evaluation. Defilement of this type was treated with “shall be unclean until t he sun sets”, not with any offering of any type, and especially the Israelite was not required to seek atonement.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
1 Corinthians 2:14-15

Review or Receive

The Gospel needs no update.
Yeshua died, was buried, and rose on the 3rd day.
What we need to be saved and live the holy life had not changed since Golgotha.
No reform can review the Gospel and no special insight or vision is needed. Everything beside the gospel is overrated and deceptive rubbish. The Gospel is something we receive and transmit, always with success.

Read, Study, House

eejoseph

I have always believed that diligence yields remarkable results.   It is true that there is a happy benefit in reading the important things, just as there is for hearing and heeding them.  So building on the assurance that a truly diligent experience cannot be equated with the mere reading and reciting of what the Bible has to say we can conclude that a notable outcome is in the making when God’s word – message to humanity – receives the due diligence.  Beyond storytelling, incredible tales of triumph, and confessions of loyalty and obedience is the rich housing of Christ’s message and business in the believer.

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Revelation of John 1:3

Riches housed in the believer!

Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Colossians 3:16

It would  be a serious error to argue that the blessings that accrue from hearing and heeding are of the same value as the benefit that comes from simply reading or reciting.  The word of Christ comes to us from a single source: apostolic witness. There is no evidence that anyone can heed (hear, akouo, ακούω) and keep a grip on what the Lord’s witnesses had to say, and particularly what the only prophetic and summative writing contains.   The Book of Hebrews does for the Mosaic legacy and Christ what the Book  of Revelation does for Christ and history.

Read the words, heed and grasp the contents

The content of scripture is not just words. The kingdom business addressed are the things to be heard and kept. What we read can lead to a curiosity about what was said and on to the contents of the book(s). It is only the diligent who realize that reading is not diligence, and that searching for the bottom line cannot be performed by means of the sometimes accurate commentaries on the too often inaccurate translations and paraphrases.

We allow ourselves to be distracted by people who have no intention of getting to the business of Christ’s word, the richness of which is not a ton of commands, but is comprised of total wisdom, teaching and admonition, and grateful singing in the heart to God.

Sorry sobriety

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Knowledge without the word is merchandising nonsense and the multiplication of grace is not a subject of ongoing knowledge. It is a sad and sorry alley to be in and there are many backing into it because of a soundbyte.

Grace is multiplied

2. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3. seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

2 Peter 1:2-3

“Be multiplied” is the aorist tense, passive voice, and optative mood of plethuno, πληθυνω, I multiply.  There is one way that this verse is addressing a practical processs of acquiring knowledge of God or Bible content, and that way is the fevered production of confused minds.

Swimming in the shallow end

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Is it possible that this intellectual enterprise – populated by many whose testimony concerning the Lord Yeshua I have personally witnessed, and by many who remain unknown to me – has the diagnostics of Isaiah 29? It is not strange to me that what is advertised as nourishment turns out to be a dangerous diet. It is not wierd that there are people wanting to put their deep end diving into matters of the mind on public view who are actually swimming in the shallow end of the pool of redemptive matters.

Since when is it not noble to be one-track? We are in good company when our eye is single. This could be the kind of evidence that convinces people that the final hours of grace are indeed unfolding. Truth is not anything that fits the scenario we desire. Paul could retreat to the crucified Yeshua and John could was consistent in preaching repentance and the imminent kingdom of God.

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

1Cor. 1:23 (KJV)

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

1Cor. 2:2 (KJV)

Hate speech is fine: perhaps accepted as animated opinion, but criminal.

A Christian worldview and Judeo-Christian entities

There is no heroic alliance between the Messiah and any government. The god of this world is Satan. There is no heavenly government – no matter what their religious claim may be – therefore it is an abomination to slap a divine label on any government. The fact that there are Christians in the legislatures across the globe does not make the governments Christian. Jews and Christians recognize humanitarian values and on that basis are able to work together, but it is a either a coward or a novice who thinks that committed followers of Moses can be committed followers of Yeshua the Messiah. We say,  without reservation, that the buck stops with Yeshua on all matters. Judeo-worldview should be happening all over the globe since it had a massive headstart. Both testaments confirm that the disciples of Moses were present all over the known world from in Bible times, with some success. The Jewish people have preserved the Bible for the world, but that way of life is attractive to fewer and fewer people. A Christian (or Judeo-Christian) worldview is a view that comes from observing , for example, that legislation across the nations have elements from Mosaic Law. Theories about secular government are fair game and I know that the paths of Christ and Caesar are on a collision course.

Tell us you are not Jerusalem

Isaiah 28:14-15

14) Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, O scoffers, Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, 15) Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we have made a pact. The overwhelming scourge will not reach us when it passes by, For we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception.”

Matthew 6:24

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Tell yourself that this cannot happen in the 20th century

Sleeping on the job

The Lord has poured over you a spirit of deep sleep, He has shut your eyes, the prophets; And He has covered your heads, the seers.

Isaiah 29:10

I am a witness to the parade of shallow diving

Here is why discussion and genuine education is in the dump. Does it surprise you that people love little milky soundbytes instead of hard food? Do you think you know what excellence looks like?

VISION! Do not talk about it, coreect your way

11) The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to the one who is literate, saying, “Please read this,” he will say, “I cannot, for it is sealed.” 12) Then the book will be given to the one who is illiterate, saying, “Please read this.” And he will say, “I cannot read.”

Isaiah 29:11-12

We have seen Isaiah 28 and 29 play out in New Testament times and I am not taken by surprise when the faith of Christ is ignored in personal responsibility and then shot like an arrow into the secular world to create the appearance of an exalted nation. The only secular government sanctioned by the Sacted Text is the Levitical model. Its best expression comes in the reign of Solomon. His unique gift was wisdom to govern. His success did not include compliance with the primary proposition in Mosaic instruction. He worshipped the gods of the neighbouring nations.

Does not our passion deserve the label lipservice?

Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,

Isaiah 29:13

I know of no serious interpreter of the gospel who has proposed that any nation adopt the governance model of ancient Israel and you cannot find a coherent set of rules for government in the teaching of the apostles. I have not seen any nation, ancient or modern, that has adopted the content of the Old Testament (the Law, Prophets, and Writings).

Political inventions of any stripe by Christians is a dereliction of duty. The call to hallow the divine name, to depend on Him for daily sustenance, to forgive are not government business. We know what judges do to our loved ones in accordance with secular law. We know what officers of the law have been doing to innocent people.

Our dinner was once waste

Where does the idea of righteous nation come from? Can there be biblical government without a king, or more precisely, can there be biblical government without a priest-king? Let the arrival of the Christ-child inform your answer. We can also let the modern state of Israel and the host of nations giving up the idea of monarchy or those jurisdictions making the monarch ceremonial guide our feet into the contemporary political situations.

Due to what people were consuming for guidance God evaluated the table as ineffective.

Deadly Intoxication and Poor Nutrition

7) And these also reel with wine and stagger from strong drink: The priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, They are confused by wine, they stagger from strong drink; They reel while having visions, They totter when rendering judgment. 8) For all the tables are full of filthy vomit, without a single clean place.

Isaiah 28:7-8

The half-cocked leadership

14) Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, O scoffers, Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, 15) Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we have made a pact. The overwhelming scourge will not reach us when it passes by, For we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception.”

Isaiah 28:14-15

Excuse me for kissing the sky when it comes to taking refuge in the Rock of Ages. Christian people do not fake respect for men and when they say they know anything we can be sure it is not secondhand. News is news, truth is truth, but truth seekers have reliable means of getting to the core.

The believer is Jerusalem

It is in the believer that God has chosen to live. The privileges and obligations of the believer can only be exported to a corporate entity at the risk of wasting the pearls. If there were to be a corporate entity (secular by default) composed entirely of Christians it would suffer defeat because of discrimination and nepotism,  especially if it were Levitical. Alliances between the holy city and other similar entities formed the basis for a curse and for the indictment of harlotry. We do well to take cues from these early developments and warnings.

Cursed for relying on human help



Thus says the Lord, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the Lord.

Jeremiah 17:5

An expectation of good government has to be rooted in the person and work of the Lord Yeshua and Daniel predicts a spectacular inauguration.

Raging prostitution, popular among the chosen



Their deeds will not allow them To return to their God. For a spirit of harlotry is within them, And they do not know the Lord.

Hosea 5:4

Christ’s government

Yeshua needs no help in setting up his government. There is no believer preparation for his reign except to simply live their lives as witnesses to the cross. For now, believers experience the kingdom of God in our participation in the daily work of the ministry. The kingdom comes every day as we submit to our pastors and every good thing.

Without (human) hands

34) You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. 35) Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:34-35

ALL THE NATIONS

For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality.”

Revelation of John 18:3

No Christian or other government in sight

And the nations were enraged, and Your wrath came, and the time came for the dead to be judged, and the time to reward Your bond-servants the prophets and the saints and those who fear Your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.”

Revelation of John 11:18

Let me be mad, a sold out fan, for holding up to the light of the gospel all the theories of government, progress, and excellence.

Home is where the idols are big

eejoseph

If your leaders are followers of big things they are far from the kingdom of God. Big impresses and traps the foolish.

Rooting out the fools

Luke 12:16-21

16) And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. 17) And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ 18) Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19) And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ 20) But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ 21) So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Luke’s gospel

Big follies not in the news

  • Law
  • Socialism
  • Religious politics
  • Evangelical fundamentalism
  • Racial purity
  • Christian government
  • Compassionate corporations

Stop being deceived by mega corporations,  mega  churches, mindblowing inventions, artificial intelligence, and megalomaniacs.