God’s kingdom and the other

eejoseph

Does anyone remember Herbert W. Armstrong?  He was for many years a strong voice for Christ on the airwaves preaching the kingdom of God.  He also established a college.  More significantly, Mr. Armstrong travelled the world making contact with leaders and talking with them about the need to order their nations in accordance with God’s written instructions.  I was riveted to his radio broadcast as a teenager until the Christ he was preaching was an unrealistic composite of Levitical and Christian models.  We know there is no levite interest on the ascendancy in the Messianic kingdom. Not a shred of sabbaths, diets, or exclusive tribal supremacy adorns the kingdom of God where Christ is the king.  The content of Mr. Armstrong’s conversation with national leaders is unknown, but we know now that trying to combine God’s old and new arrangements for his people and humanity ends in a disastrous waste, and that kingdom is a balloon that deserves a pin.

David’s Son, king of Israel, is not a levitical priest

Every step in Mr. Armstrong’s forceful teaching was levitical.  He taught that believers should observe the festivals in the statutes of Israel’s commonwealth, and like most other Christians he taught that the Holy Spirit was given to ensure that believers could keep the law of God (the only one we know was that given through Moses).   I speak as a mere mortal when I say that my own devotion to the Lord Christ as the one and only necessary messenger from God has led me to keep the Lord Christ separate from all other authorities.  That means that nothing from the patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings of Israel (or any other nation) can be allowed to shape my views and practices in relation to God’s kingdom.

Holy Spirit witness about the Lord Christ exclusively

The kingdom of God is definitely a future thing.  The kingdom of God was, if you take the Torah as the primary witness, the predicted rule of Christ from David’s throne in Jerusalem.  Most of us believe that, but we do not believe that Christ is without real authority in the world in the present age, nor has he left the Church without his lordship or royal rule.  It is as if Mr Armstrong did not see the full authority of the risen Christ, a  shared authority, I must add (Matthew 28:18, 20b).  I suppose that people who expect to prosper by means of recruiting people to follow Moses cannot be genuine beneficiaries of the Holy Spirit.   The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth that is integral to the Lord Christ, not into everything that ever was said or written.  It is a deep revelation of how impoverished a person can be to think that everything in the Bible is not sufficient for life and godliness.  If all believers need cannot be found in what the Lord Christ said then there is reason to look to the law and even the deluded visions and dreams of our peers. It is a symptom of mental laziness that neglects the apostolic foundation.

The Lord Christ did not give the apostles a testimony about Moses

The Holy Spirit was not going to be an agent of Moses and the prophets, to the contrary, the Holy Spirit was going to be an  exclusive witness of what Christ had said and done.

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”

John 14:26, NASB

Where do these guys get off bullying people to follow Moses and the prophets, as if they had not heard – from Moses himself – who Christ was and the extent of his authority?

Christ witnessed exclusively to his Father’s business

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.”

John 5:19, NASB

Christ exclusively mirrored his Father’s speech

““For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.”

John 12:49, NASB

“Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”

John 14:10, NASB

An impersonal standard of righteousness is a pin-deserving balloon

One would think that from the multitudes running from Christ to Moses that there is no righteousness in the cross.  The centre of the gospel is Yeshua’s  passion and glory (death, burial and resurrection).  It is clear that people who believe that society needs the law of God for morality or justice are ready for a kingdom where they can circumcise, amputate, excommunicate, punish, discriminate and condemn because that is what the Law is for.  Innocent people have been the perennial victims of the levitical system, both in its tabernacle work and in the interpretation of its justice code. A kingdom of priests apart from the revealed righteousness of God in Christ on the cross (Romans 1:16-17) is a recipe for robbery, bribes, and extrajudicial homicide.  Do they believe that the Word of God, as a man, could have been lawless, rebellious, ungodly, sinful,  unholy and profane, patricidal, matricidal or homicidal?  What has the law cleansed or purified in the thousands of years since it was brought in (Romans 5:20, Galatians 3:11, 23)?   We who call Christ Saviour and Lord  can be certain that human hearts are cleansed – purified – before receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:9), and we are sufficiently humble and transparent to confess that we have ways to keep purifying (agnizo, as in 1 John 3:3). 

Tabernacle and law take a dive

Blood was at the centre of and in the most secret operations in the tabernacle. So when the Jewish people heard the news that a man was the new sacrifice they scoffed. To them no man could be a sacrifice, even though Isaac, Abraham’s son, came within a hair’s breadth of being a burnt offering. What are we to make of Christ being proclaimed as propitiation? Propitiation is not only a concept: it was an object, a process, and a result. Christ is all three: hilasterion, hilaskomai, hilasmos, respectively mercyseat, atoning intervention, and the resulting atonement. There was no blood in the levitical system that suffices to purify people’s minds, pay for their sins, or bring an end to the annual cycle of defilement and uncleanness.

Christ the mercyseat

“whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;  for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Romans 3:25-26, NASB

Christ the priest

“Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation (hilaskomai) for the sins of the people.” (Hebrews 2:17, NASB)

Christ the satisfaction or atonement

“and He Himself is the propitiation (hilasmos) for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2, NASB)

If you feel trapped in an annual cycle, you can find your way out by demanding to see Yeshua the Anointed as the heir of all things of divine origin. If you feel trapped in a weekly cycle, you can begin to break out by giving up the symbols and start wrapping your mind around the reality. All the festivals are mere shadows of holy and eternal things. The fuller meaning of seventh day Sabbath has nothing to do with any 24-hour period, but rather with the rest God gives to those who have died with Christ and are now alive in him. The annual festivals are symbols of the means God uses to gather and keep his people. They are not themselves instruments of grace. Let’s not have a fit over these guys. They have fallen off the bus, fallen from grace, by their insistence that law supercedes God’s grace, mercy and peace. Let’s just be sorry that blindness has a hold on them, barring them from God’s kingdom.

Very presidential

eejoseph

Absconding Bravely with Classified Documents

  • Very presidential? No!
  • Sad
  • Stupid
  • Unnecessary

Groundbreaking idiocy

The world has long been obsessed with anyone who seems wealthy or adventurous.  The world loves a mercenary.  We will kiss a man’s ring even as he tells us that he is prepared to torch our only residence, even as his fingers pluck our last $20 bill from our hands.  The 45th US president has no interest in the vision of the founding fathers of the American Republic.  He has no relationship to the justice apparatus, no inclination to be a public servant, no reverence for the immigrant realities of the Republic, but the “slightly damaged genius” wants to be the object of affection, the wearer of gold medals for everything he’s tried.

Stealing documents is easily proven

The wind is already beginning to blow cold in the northern hemisphere, and the scores of felony charges racking up against the dude of Mar a Lago means rear ends are going to freeze in prison. Pictures, text messages, and surveillance videos can hardly be explained away as political interference and weaponization of government departments. The idiocy is evident when Christians confess that their morality comes from Moses and the prophets, not Yeshua of Nazareth. One cannot put more distance between himself and the seats of power than when he threatens to cancel the American constitution. That is as far from presidential as one can be.

D.A. Willis indicts the badly misfiring 45

eejoseph

Please exhale; the unprincipled loser of money, lawsuits and elections, will earn a well-deserved pretrial stay with his mouth. The insurrectionist repackaged as patriot is naked as a jaybird. All the dire predictions about the demise of the right to free speech is a fig leaf. Americans have been calling Black people names with impunity since they first transported our ancestors to work for free. There is no revisiting of George Washington’s vision, the die is already cast. Americans and a whole lot of other aspiring Nations have missed the boat, because they have thought they could synchronize Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam Zoroastrianism and atheism into a grand experiment where people are perfectly free. This is where we all see that we need a break.

Criminals tend to stick to what they know

When an indicted person shows that he is opposed to the authority that confronts him he is likely to be a person seeking to end all authority but his own. I smell live bait; extreme positions and violence. The grave is not saying no, and the jails will be brimming with slanderers and traitors. Where do we suppose all the patriotic language is leading society? When firearms misfire they need an overhaul, and the armed entity needs to be cautious and less desperate.

Many will be purged, purified and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand

. Daniel 12:10, NASB

Misfires have been known to be suicidal. Where else could a virulent combination of the right to bear arms and freedom of speech lead?

Beauty and the Blues

eejoseph,

What motivates you?

I thought a few words, probably less than five, would answer today’s prompt, but here I am explaining Beauty and the Blues. Motivators show up and disappear a mile a minute. Death, life, peace, war, famine, feast, deceit, honesty, kindness, and brutality have been known to motivate me. They all fall into two categories: comfort and discomfort, or ease and disease. That’s an easy filter that both artificial intelligence and the princes of the world will have major problems using to solve the mystery of slave trade, colonialism, patriotism, homicide, and the human longing for beauty and peace. I think I have a simple motivation continuum for a complicated family.

Thinking is not believing

eejoseph

The things we report are not facts because we report. When we state the opinions of others or affirm our own beliefs we do not establish faith. The gods we seek, worship and create demonstrate the range of human experience and enlightenment. Government and the lack of it have equally brought us to the brink of extinction quite apart from the many gods we revere. As we have seen, there are no yet to be discovered books, visions, dreams or wisdom sayings that will change the direction of earth’s kingdoms and nations. Sounds negative? So does work, play, law, justice, man, woman, feast, famine, birth and death. So let’s keep our thinking and belief strictly in their silos.

Kings will always tax their subjects and leave their children untouched, and fools will always build bigger barns for their own pleasure.

And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect customs or poll-tax, from their sons or from strangers?” (Matthew 17:25b, NASB)

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?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:20-21, NASB)

Heaven’s speaker

eejoseph

There is no ambiguity about who the one from above is, despite all kinds of scrambling to rewrite the record of sacred revelation.  A yes or a no from him is simply yes or no.  No mystery covers his meaning, but the heartless and rebellious are quick to show the one from above as just like or subservient to even the best ones from earth. It is amusing and deadly. 

“He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.” (John 3:31, NASB).

Christ is not one of the prophets

“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven.” (Hebrews 12:25, NASB)

There are far too many Christians who underestimate the authority and the finality of Jesus’s words.  They think nothing of turning to Moses or one of the ancient prophets, or even a contemporary prophet, or even their pastor, or even th parents.  If heaven’s speaker takes Moses to the next level, should he not be more considerate of human hardness of heart, and should he not provide real answers to human rebellion beside death sentences, or should he throw a book at people and hem them in with irreversible condemnation?

Inside scoop

The speaker from heaven has inside information that no one else could possibly have. He can speak of things that he knows which no one else could know. There were many things that he said that had the authorities and the learned people of his day scratching their heads.

1) God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2) in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.”

Hebrews 1:1-2, NASB

The full moon shows us the full bath of light from the sun, once a month, and the event marks the death of Christ as the sacrifice for the sins of humanity, and shows that his mission is indelible. It is written in the sky. The woman who gave birth to Christ has the moon under her feet, and she is bathed in starlight, head to toe. Heaven’s speaker is not moving over for any of these authorities, nor will he be capitulating to Caesar. He is Caesar’s Lord. He is lord of all those who are wielding military, economic and colonial power. When will we learn?

The age of MAGA and mediocrity

eejoseph

I do not know what kind of coincidence shines the spotlight on the number 42 in August 2023.   Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has “42” as the answer to the question ‘life and everything”.  I seriously doubt that Republicans, Democrats, or any other configuration of political and religious entities, will answer life’s most sobering question or questions. Here are the facts. 42% of Americans believe what their religious leaders say. That compares to 71% believing what the lie factory, ex-president 45, produces. The beleaguered 45th president hangs on to 42% as the Republican nominee.  I suspect the universe has conspired to expose the deadly cult into which many across the globe have fallen. Tycoons – moguls and wealthy princes – are posters for mediocrity and short-winded typhoons. Give them enough rope and they quickly quickly hang themselves with criminal ventures.

Being right or real is divorced from religion

The current sinkhole of politics and religion will not give up its victims. The victims have turned off the taps before they finished soaping up their hands. They have made themselves patriots and reluctant martyrs for their cause. The scenario reminds me of the Pharisees in New Testament times who thought they had a Moses follower in Yeshua from Nazareth. The Sadducees did not even think of that potential. The two parties were already aware that Moses, temple, law and levitical priesthood were all heading out the door. Mediocrity and open malice never saved a nation, and yesterday’s greatness is incriminating, across the board.

Assurance of satisfaction

eejoseph,

What do you enjoy most about writing?

Granting that writing fulfills itself where the audience reads, I have to say that writing brings me an ocean of contentment . I get the satisfaction of getting my thoughts into a form that informs readers reliably. My readers get to build their confidence in the common and certified sources of information, without arm-twisting and without rabbit holes and deadly concoctions threatening the integrity of the relationship.

Me and mine

On a purely personal level, and secondary to the writing-reading combination, I can also say that discoveries always await me, and discoveries inspire me to keep learning. Discoveries also come with pointers on how I can creatively express my findings.