Who’s thinking?

eejoseph,

If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?

“Think” can go the way of the dodo because so few are doing it.  The large volume of robotic expressions that dominate the media and our literature today in the 21st century is  shocking.  Society is repeatedly being dragged into silos of politics, religion and apathy by the proven brokers of regional and ancestral pride.  When I say “I think” I hope to mean I have heard, reflected, and repented. All the religions and political ideologies are happy to have people not think even though all are frequently heard saying “I think…”.

Let us all stop talking, start thinking, and see how far down the rabbit holes of the virulent lifestyles of the people whose names are in the limelight we get!

Logs on a hillside shed

eejoseph,

What does your ideal home look like?

My ideal home would be a sprawling log cabin with a few rooms recessed into the earth.  You would see ducts for catching the prevailing winds and eavestroughing all around for catching rain. It would have verandahs on three sides and sit behind a circular fire pit. Its colours would be those of the diverse logs’ bark and wood.  It would look like a shed.

Say nothing about discipleship

eejoseph, , , ,

Theologians and many Christians have been calling Matthew 28:19-20 the Great Commission, and a precious few seem to have given the text a sober reflection.  If you think that all Christians have to go into all the world, doing the thing unveiled in Matthew 28:19-20 you are drinking your soup with your nose.  If you believe that the church exists to make hellbound proselytes then we can call you scribe, Pharisee and hypocrite (Matthew 23:15).  I want to expose the illiterate experts’ juvenile quest for commands to support the obsession for ways to Lord it over God’s people.

Eyeballing the text

The idea that believers can pray and approach Bible reading and acquire optimal accuracy was never a serious  road for anyone desiring the office of a bishop.  Once an aspiring bishop realizes that the church and its literature did not stake out ground in the 19th century the much more effective means of reading and understanding the Bible became attractive.  Bishops of most denominations are required to learn biblical Hebrew and Greek.  Biblical studies are juvenile and shallow as long as translations of the last 400 years are the materials in hand.

Grab a grammar hammer not a seer peer

Not even when the witness is authenticated by signs and wonders the most important knowledge in the pipeline is still the text of the New Testament, and the closer one gets to the early manuscripts the healthier the doctrine.  So when evangelism gets described using a model from the life of Messiah Yeshua we have to initiate a rescue using the grammar of the Greek New Testament.

Parts of speech: participles and imperatives

Imperatives are the forms of verbs that we use to (a) tell someone what to do or (b) ask someone to do something.  There is only one imperative in Matthew 28:19-20, yet all the verbs are treated as imperatives.

  • Go: a participle, a secondary tense in the sentence
  • Teach/disciple: the true grammatical imperative
  • Baptizing: a participle, a secondary tense in the sentence
  • Teaching: a participle, a secondary tense in the sentence

Punctiliar versus Linear

Punctiliar and linear kinds of action are clearly contained in the aorist and present tenses respectively. We make a genuine meme of these two types with a dot “•” and a line ‘-“.  They represent respectively a finished action and an ongoing action. It is a lazy mentality that wants to conflate the verbs of Matthew 28:19-20 into a package that ignores discipling.  That is the avoidance of textual reality that enables a commitment to a kind of evangelism that serves discriminatory practices exactly as James and his Pharisee allies brought to bear on the church as she began her mission to the Gentiles. 

Sign them up

First, by taking the aorist matheteusate as a foil for indoctrination.  The punctiliar action of matheteusate cannot be contained in teaching a prospective convert the doctrines of the apostles. To make a disciple in one action has to be the act of enrollment. We can sign them up or make them just like us and worse.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves”. (Matthew 23:15)

Using the text before understanding its parts

The present participles for baptizing (baptizontes) and teaching (didaskontes) are not simply separate actions from enrolment. Participle 101 tells us that they are verbal nouns.  They define a condition; they also describe something in the same way an adjective does.  how the enrollment proceeds.  The text, after its constituent parts are properly accounted for brings us to a different conclusion than “Teach all nations, baptizing them… teaching them…”. We have to admit that the goal of Christian outreach – the application of heavenly authority (Matthew 28:18) –  is neither baptism nor teaching.

The opening participle should be treated as the fundamental framework in which discipling all nations takes place.  Having gone into the places we are sent we are to make disciples of all nations, by baptizing them and teaching them.

Vocabulary of verse 19

  • Teach is from matheteuô, which does not mean “give lessons”, and it is not describing the kind of things that happens in a classroom. 
  • Baptizing is from baptizô, its meaning is clear
  • Teaching is from didaskô, its meaning is clear from the cognate noun didaskalos

Christian outreach is not grounded in making proselytes, but in opening the door to a relationship with God the Father through faith in  the crucified and risen Christ.  It is futile to teach unbelievers, persons who have not confessed and believed in Christ.  The looming problem with teaching unregenerate persons the priorities of Christ is that they are incapable of receiving or understanding the things of the kingdom.  There are simply too many rabbit holes involved when one teaches the things of God’s Kingdom to someone who is not enrolled as a believer or follower of Christ.

Surely we recognize that Christ taught his disciples by parables, and we can see that immediately after the resurrection of Christ the disciples still had not grasped the meaning of his death and Resurrection.  So we can scratch the evangelism model that says (a) first show people you care by meeting their earthly needs (b) teach them the doctrines of the church and (c) baptize them (=accept them into church membership).  You can see how all of this avoids the critical intersections of Messianic Majesty.  Nothing is said about Christ dying and rising from the dead, or that grace by means of faith alone brings the lost and condemned into the family of God.  If our fishing or reaping evangelism is to have a face of success it cannot be making proselytes twice as bad as the fishers or reapers

Disciple-making Fancy Grade

  • Set him up as a learner: enrol him
  • Baptize him
  • Teach him what Christ  commanded

Death, sin, sting: law

eejoseph, , ,

Animal life, relationships, and even inanimate resources illustrate many important aspects of the kingdom of God.  Satan is represented by a lion and so is God. The law of God/Moses is many things, perhaps reflecting the law’s functions deep in the operations in Israel-Judah.  The law is the truth, an educator, a light, a library of knowledge, but also a prison, a corrector and punisher of the impudent, but the outcomes of these functions are not prominent in Israel’s perverse history.  Even with such an illustrious resume the law is never the agent or channel of righteousness, despite the gallant and creative effort of Psalm 119’s writer(s)

Venom, numbness and unbelief

There are some believers whose consciences are so burned out that they deny that the law is an agent for making sin loom larger than it really is.  They also claim to find righteousness in observing the law, as if Christ has nothing to do with sin and divine justice.  James’ characterization of the law as a participant in liberty is unfortunate, seeing that he makes no reference to the liberty brought about by the Lord and his opinion of kingdom or royal law seems to exclude his famous brother’s passion and glory.

And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law.

Galatians 5:3

It is just pure venom that is affecting the crew that wants to be more Jewish than anyone else.  Their minds are numb, their eyes are dim and they are in a stupour that prevents them from perceiving what God is offering.  There is no division of the law into moral and ritual conventions.  One would have to make the Decalogue a hybrid constitution, (a) pushing a holy day clearly listed as a ritual and festival in Leviticus, (b) human ideals like the 5th command and (c) condemning everyone with the other 8 commands.

No one is getting justified by observing the law

because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:20)

It has to be a kind of insensitivity spell that results in people taking pride in knowing sin.  

  • Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, And Your law is truth. (Psalms 119:142)
  • Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law; (Psalms 94:12)
  • For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light; And reproofs for discipline are the way of life (Proverbs 6:23)
  • “For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 2:7)

Hurtful, harmful, and suicidal

Obedience in full splendour has to be more than a Ten Commandment loyalty.  A person can sit at home perfectly idle, The typical division of the law into binding and non-binding falls into the ditch as soon as the fact emerges that no human being has complied with everything the law says.  

It is folly to insert Christ into the fabulously duplicitous narratives of the sons of Israel.  It is extreme depravity for Christians to adapt the priorities of ancient prophets, theocratic kingdoms for charting the course of the kingdom of grace and the Church.

Obeying the Bible is a terroristic claim

People who press others to obey the Bible have forgotten that God is a person, not a thing.  There is no “thing” from which we derive God’s approval.  It is God himself who provides peace and light.  You cannot replace David’s Lord with a set of instructions and try to make salvation and righteousness come from your own behaviour (commission or omission).  How many people have been mesmerized by a rabbi conflating Messianic revelation with Judaism? Very many.  The church is suffering from delusions of self-sufficiency.  The majority of believers have disconnected themselves from the foundation Christ laid.  The testimony of the apostles and the thunder (the things that must remain undocumented) of the writers of the New Testament are the things that slip by.  What beside Pharisee, hypocrite and moron can we call a person who asserts that God gave Adam and Eve the Ten Commandments in Eden? To fully disengage from the heavenly help that the Holy Spirit brings to believers’ lives we are be8 urged to subscribe to the idea that the Sinai Covenant was in sway before war broke out in heaven.  Sheesh and goodness gracious, man!

The sting of death is sin, and the power (Greek, dunamis, δύναμις) of sin is the law;

Every single religious ‘ism is demonic

eejoseph, , ,

Ism is a suffix that labels an action as a concrete concern. Other forms of this kind of suffix are –ation, –ment, –ission, which we can observe in reform, reformation, atone, atonement, and remit, remission.  An ism does not have to be a movement with negative, depressing or perverted concepts; isms go way beyond negative doomsday predictions. Most have an endless stream of illusions about “fixing the corrupted Church of Christ”.  This makes the isms siblings of Islam, which labels Judaism and Christianity as corrupted.  Isms also come with predictions of persecution, affirmations of their flawless doctrines, and highlighting a host of institutional  and conventions that no-one ever needed to have a relationship with God.

Their books and their wolves

There may be more than five reform minded groups that arose in the last five hundred years, each one proclaiming that obedience is greater than faith, that the Bible is insufficient, and that the Jewish experience and priorities are paramount.   But make no mistake, wolves and shepherds (elders, bishops and pastors) have been around since Paul was making missionary journeys.  See Acts 20 where he predicted how quickly that the church would be exposed to des.  The wolfish isms of the religious world have their own books; hundreds of books.  Islam claims to have the book of books.  Muslims also propose that their perfect book is a miracle.  They assert that their book is evidence of God’s priorities.  Most books endorsed by the isms are likely to be misleading. These groups are terrified when people ask “Does the Bible say what is in your books?”. They shake in their boots when believers begin to consult lexicons and dictionaries.  The isms are so entrenched in their own propaganda that the pastors (elders and bishops) neglect the study of the apostolic doctrine and consequently the certainty of Christian mysteries is no longer a factor.

Wannabisraelism

The televangelists and the adept proselytizers can do no better than the writer of Psalm 119. They speak out of both sides of their mouths. They say that the law is the only way to know sin, and they say that keeping the law is their best showing of righteousness. They say that when God invited Peter to “Rise kill and eat” the unclean Gentiles were not properly represented by unclean animals. The division of the Church today into ethnic and national groups in the 21st century is a symptom of partiality and xenophobia just as the Church under James and his Pharisee allies was a symptom of resistance to the truth of the Gospel.  They are all angling to be like the sons of Israel.  The religious movements that have shaped Christianity are all trying to be the tip of the spear in a theocratic state.  The more extreme versions of reformation Christianity are actually trying to be Israel not be like Israel. This raises the massive mountain of nonsense about how does the law of Moses become the primary law of Canada United States or Australia or Kenya.  The law of Moses has not even become central to churches much less any state on the planet.  Jewish people (and their American allies) seem to want to be violent fascists more than they want to follow Moses, and we suspect that is because Moses and the prophets have all their fingers pointing to the son of David. Who wants the son of David more than the scribes, Pharisees and elders of the people?  It is quite certain that the more any nation embraces Judaism in any form the more the nations become like the kingdom of Israel, incapable of producing a single good leader.  All of Israel’s kings were rascals and rogues.

Foundations of love need no reform

Nothing but catastrophe, deceit, and elitism have resulted from the efforts of the reformers and the restorers of the Church.  They reject the foundation of the church; the apostolic witnesses.  They swerve out of the way of the Cross of Christ and his Right Hand Seat.  They’re all heretics.  Paul saw them coming.  In his days the problem was graphically impressed on Timothy: people choosing genealogy and ignorant talking points about the law versus love, good conscience, and sincere faith.

As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions. (1 Timothy 1:3-7)

The isms of the religious are many

The earliest and most recent isms to arise among people of faith have a striking relationship to Pharisee propositions. Pharisees can say they agree that Gentiles need neither circumcision nor the law to be saved, and then they nonchalantly add that those same Gentiles need to observe ritual purity and prove that they are not involved in sexual improprieties.  Our modern Pharisees and disciples of Moses will go right ahead with the weak and beggarly elementary things (Galatians 4:4-11). Now that  Republicanism is blindly putting itself forward as the western version of Hezbollah, religious isms and political isms are both in the abyss. 

Here come the American Gestapo

Nothing is more abhorrent than criminals and homicidal maniacs like the 45th and 47th president of the United States and the PM of Israel trying to pass themselves as paragons of justice and equity.  The isms of religion are manifesting in politics.  They are all about getting rid of truth, people they disapprove of, and the genuine guardians of civic society.  Here comes the American gestapo, lining up with Jewish and Russian tyranny.  This is the ultimate greatness of America in the image of Hitler, Stalin and every king of the kingdom of Israel.  Criminals will never end crime; not felonious Donald Trump, not genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu, not Chairman Xi of the People’s Republic of China, and not Putin of Russia.  To this wall of shame we must add the walking dead evangelical heavyweights and their extremist siblings.  The isms will have lots of air time, lots of time to declare their support for the authoritarianism that has long twinkled in the eyes of western punk-prophets. The isms of our times will make lots of idolatrous pronouncements and get no help from the God of grace.

The terrors of tariff in the age of transparent trade

eejoseph

The premier of Ontario wants the Canadian government to respond to American tariffs with equivalent tariffs.  If Mr Ford can rally his provincial premier colleagues to his view of “tariff for tariff” Canadians would be affirming the abject poverty of mind and robotic politics that define conservative parties all over the globe.  Ford went to the USA to make a deal, and what did he accomplish?  He went all over American air and who bought his kiss-ass line?

American politicians in power in 2025 have no heart.  They have been reduced to angry, racist, liars, faking fidelity to the American constitution without addressing its preamble.  The Republicans never will and Ford’s party is the Canadian counterpart to the GOP.  Might Ford be stirring up the pot for a protracted conflict between Canada and the United States of America?

Outside the camp, prostitutes, refuse, and saviours

eejoseph, ,

If you thought that the Jewish people had an open mind to the Canaanites, you should think again. Yahweh saved the sons of Israel from committing genocide by gradually reducing the “Canaanite” population. 

The King of Israel spared no effort to preserve his name and to ensure the preservation of the people, and more specifically, by leaving a remnant who would become functional parts of the Kingdom of Israel and judah. Case in point is the deal made with Rahab The prostitute from jericho. The people who had Moses for a leader would not have accepted a foreigner in their camp, and neither did those who had Joshua as leader. The place known as outside the camp in ancient Israel was a place where refuse and ritually unclean persons were quarantined.

Reproached revised

The father of the 12 tribes was a converted man: he disavowed his cons and the violence of his sons and made peace with his mortal enemy, his twin brother Esau.  The spark of his nobility which prevented him from returning to Padan Aram as Abraham and Isaac had done to preserve the family line showed up later in David’s generosity to the survivor of Saul’s family.

David said to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show kindness to you for the sake of your father Jonathan, and will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul; and you shall eat at my table regularly.” (2 Samuel 9:7)

Both Israel and David carved out a spot on the family tree that severely challenged the sons of Israel. 

You can’t eat here; no debate

  • So, let us go out, over and over
  • to Him (leave the gates of Jacob, temple and high court)
  • outside the camp (in that place where broken and rejected things reside}
  • bearing His reproach; what a great honour it is that believers are in line to bear our Lord’s disgrace

10. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. 11. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp. 12. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. 13. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. (Hebrews 13:10-13)

You, my frenemy, with your life of victory and prosperity, your great-again delusion, your unprecedented prostitution, your boldface idolatries, your weekly weekend miracles, and international crimes, will find little comfort in the presence of the Nazarene. You, so saturated with your chosen people wannabism, cannot eat here.  The stone the builders refused was destined to become the saviour and king. The journey out to the reproach district begins with out-of-the-box eating.

13. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” 14. But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” (Acts 10:13-14). Opening his mouth, Peter said:  “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality” (Acts 10:34)

Herein lies the nuts and bolts of daily cross-bearing.  It is engaging the observers of our lives in the spectacular exits of the God who died.  You think your rules and regulations are mysterious and wonderful? Try going out to God, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.

So Many Versions of the Bible!

eejoseph

Which translation of the Bible should I choose? At least two. The choices are many. Since the reason for reading is to understand what God has said and done the version should be in your mother tongue. The Bible is available in the popular languages of our times: English, French, Spanish, all the languages of Europe, many African tongues, at least one Caribbean dialect, and the host of Asian languages.

Some translations are popular for different reasons. The King James  tops the list in the English speaking world among older readers. It seems almost poetic and creative,  because, among other things, it changes word order, for example, “Then cometh Jesus” where English speaking people should expect “Then Jesus comes”. 

King James

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. (Matthew 26:36).

New American Standard Bible

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” (Matthew 26:36)

The Greek reads: then comes with them Jesus to a place called Gethsemane…

Here is the King James version following the Greek word order.

Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. (Mark 7:1)

Here is the New American Standard Bible ordering the Greek for smooth modern English.

The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, (Mark 7:1, NASB)

The certified advantage and disadvantage of giving up the King James version

When you read the King James version you will encounter the words “ye”, “you”, “thee” and “thou”.  This is a feature of English from 400 years ago that distinguishes you (plural) from you (singular). Invaluable!  On the other hand when you pick one of the modern translations you acquire a superior text.  All the translations since the 17th century were produced using much older Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, except for the New King James version.  Perhaps this is just another piece of the barbarity of the people of England.  They prefer ignorance to enlightenment.  With any of the modern translations in your hand you are closer to having the documents written by our fathers the apostles and chosen witnesses of our Lord and Saviour. 

Believer diligence to discover the truth

With any modern translation in hand and a trusted lexicon or dictionary of Bible words, you will be able to discover the meaning of the words used by the writers of the Sacred Texts.

A resource that combines a modern translation with the Hebrew and Greek words is the Hebrew-Greek Word Study Bible by Spiros Zodhiates.  If your hunger persists then you are on your way to read both the Hebrew and Greek texts directly.

I recommend a study Bible because it will provide you with valuable insights and information.  Ask your bookstore for one by a single author.  Charles Ryrie comes to mind as a committed Bible teacher. 

May God’s grace assist you.