One often hears a great story about salvation in the history of Israel and the proposed global salvation, but it is rare to be able to sink one’s teeth into the juicy fruit of a salvation that was kicking around long before the human race and its ha itat came into being.  Finding something to say about the end of salvation story may seem easy,  due in part to the prophecies that are available to us, but the road without its original genius leads straight into the ditch of infamy.

Matthew 15:11-14, The Blindnesss Exposed by Messianic Teaching about Defilement

11. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” 12. Then the disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?” 13. But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. 14. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

Matthew 15:11-14 (NASB)

There is no need to recycle

• Eve and Adam’s mistake
• The promise of the conquering Seed
• Man’s expulsion from his original home
• The exclusion from immortality
• God’s election of Abraham
• The exodus of the sons of Israel (BY, for bnê yisrael) from Egypt
• The entry of the BY into Canaan
• The choice of David as progenitor of Messiah

There is no reason to look for another Moses because Moses himself turns the keys of understanding of teaching over to Messiah.  There is not another Israel not another Exodus not another selection of the line through which Messiah should come.  The buck has to stop with the One Saviour, the One King, the One Priest appointed by God.  Salvation is not a return to Edenic conditions.  Salvation was always a part of who God is.  One puts the law and Israelite history in first place at the risk of shutting out the precious (the most precious!) promises.

People are eager to dismiss the evidence about the completeness and finality that show up in God’s dealings with Abraham, the Hebrew patriarchs, the Hebrew prophets (essentially God’s messengers from anywhere) and the covenants.  It is not revisable history and there is no attempt by God to have a remix of grace and election.  The choices will always be the same if the biblical framework remains as the reliable source.  Is it time for people to move beyond their ancestry and mediating systems?   There was such a time and it came with an announcement that time had run out.  People seem addicted to rising to the top without acknowledging the bottom.

Ephesians 4:9-10, CHRIST’S ABSOLUTE LORDSHIP

9. (Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10. He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)

The vigilantes who will take up arms to keep Black and Brown people down may surprise us. Their number may not be as high as we may be led to believe. What will not surprise us is the fact that we cl some of them friends today. Most bigots are cowards, small minded bullies and brats, young and old, literate and illiterate, from every religion too. A war between ethnic groups is a foolish idea because ethnicity is a known weak link in the chain of human communities that thrive.

The contenders for “might is right” may include

• Legislative representatives
• Pastors of any ethnicity
• Culturally superior neighbours
• Jealous colleagues at work and play
• Siblings and family members

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The Hitlers and Milosevics of the 21st century will not have Black people as victims of their virulent campaign. The American dream, the Zionist paradise, the holy Islamic republics, and the proud nationalists of Asia have to find another route. People are not giving up their lives for these jaded fantasies. These conflict-torn communities are not thriving, as long as one person is denied due process

George Washington and Sir John A. Macdonald are the founding fathers we seem to want to put in museums.  The thought drives me to put Adam and Eve on the chopping block. Our ancestors deserve a sensitive place in our memories as surely as our parents do. The alternative is to embrace the curse.

How much of old and new?

The generational groove

He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”

Malachi 4:6

We keep hearing the representatives of police services, apoligists for religiius violence, and those who tactics are similar to life-changing police actions say the public’s rejection of police brutalty and criminal behaviour are the work of “one bad apple”. We have also seen how good apples cover up and excuse the actions of the the bad apples. We are so far past one bad apple that denying that the time has come for a disciplined look into police criminality and that it is time to change how police officers are supervised and disciplined is the result of sand-buried heads.

They act outside of law and are treated as above the law. Some individuals actually say and think that they are the law.

Zero-tolerance is neither Christian nor Judaic. We keep saying things like “never again” and “prevention is better than cure” without tallying up the recurrence of every kind of wrongdoing. Do we believe James (2:8) or do we take seriously the centuries of a tabernacle standing as evidence that there was never any covenant compliance?

Maybe we have not taken the exercise of mind power past repeating what pir leadars say. Not me! I draw the line as following the crowd when it comes to life, limb and loyalty. I’d like to think of myself as escaped from the perverse and crooked generation and you can too. They can call us opinionated or elitist but we know we have learned a different Christ from the masses. When they show us a Christ who allies himself with political parties of any ideology or religious persuasion we must believe our eyes.

Those are the really bad apples whose lifestyles and beliefs our Lord cautioned us to avoid.

Why do people think that saying the words on the page or screen is reading?  Maybe you think that saying popular and trending words improve your learning or appearance of being informed.  To make a point people will say “when you look at…” and the poor audience, without access to the mentioned source, is left without a path to a conclusion.  There are far too many people who say “When you look at” when they may not have seen the source and worse, stoking the flames of rank rejection of revelation.

THINGS REVEALED = THE TEXTS

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.

Deuteronomy 29:29

Looking elsewhere is hazardous

Discrimination turned towards understanding

If you want to pretend that the reliable source of divine revelation is a seventeenth century translation of the Bible you are looking at … with glazed eyes.  I know hundreds of people who stand as clergy who think that competence to teach culminates with the gift of gab.  If you can talk you can teach.

The trashing of intellect

When I was a child I thought that English grammar was great, but French and Latin were way more interesting.  They had rules.  When I discovered that meaning was latent in the actual words of the Bible and that what the writer intended was often not produced in the popular translations a whole new world opened up for me.  Translations are still great for public reading, but the only way to be certain of getting past “looking at…” is to look into the written words in their original languages.  Anything else is likely to land you in the ditch with the blind leaders.

Slander the educated and idolize the ignorant

You have bought a good study Bible and you imagine that the insights you have gained from it arise from the witers’ survey of the offerings in the marketplace. That may be true of some but the average study Bible or commentary is created with the original languages as the source. It still amuses me to hear a gospel minister bragging about his low level of formal education. Whatever happened to the quest for excellence?

Let us not fool ourselves with the thought that we can repeat with any confidence the things said by Yeshua’s contemporaries.

Who knew? Who understood?

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?

Mark 12:24

The Spirit will not give you things you can find for yourself. You can learn what to do from day to day but you cannot teach without learning. If you are not a sluggard there is a chance you can still display some nobility by selling a few things and buying the relevant tools so you do not depend on a semi-literate minister’s interpretation of a comment on a comment.

When you look into the facts intending to be guided by them you do not end up suggesting that people follow your application of your discoveries apart from the latent meaning in the words and their unique values as they appear.

What-aboutism

At some point all the opinions we have about what God’s will is are going to be tested by what was actually written. Think about that and challenge yourself to be God’s child, longing for the least watered-down milk from Christ himself.

Unadulterated Nutrition

like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation,

1 Peter 2:2