History repeats. The saying is popular.  The stories about Daniel and the three Hebrew lads have replayed or are about to be.  So they say.   The election of Israel as recorded in the call of Abraham does not have and does not need a revision or replay.  The levitical priesthood has no fulfillment in the unveiling of global reckoning by God.  The uprooting of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah has no repeat in the career of Yeshua’s church. Even as we watch Africans clamouring to prosper in distant and foreign lands “history repeats” is bad and lazy thinking.

The call of Abraham

Mixing metaphors is always bad.  The church’s rise can only be attributed to Christ.  He builds it by calling the elect into it.  It is he who gives the Holy Spirit to the ones he invites and justifies. The church never depends on a single human agent.  There are no stars who are the approved and accredited workers in the gospel field. Abraham and the patriarchs all had to take leaps of faith to enter into God’s rest. There is no Abraham figure in the church’s Genesis and destiny.  Abraham’s call, his possession of the promises and covenants, and his justification are unique to him.

The Levitical priesthood and the temple

Christians can be found using terms like sanctuary, altar, atonement with little regard to their biblical foundations.  A church building can have a worship area but it is not a holy place, neither is that place a location designed for atonement.   In the same way we find the worship area at home or in the church building having a section designated as an altar.  Biblical altars were not just areas devoted to worship. They were constructed to meet certain specifications and people roasted animals on altars and poured drink offerings on them

The church of God has only episodes of legitimacy unlike the Sinai Covenant.

The church is not like ancient Israel, passing from loyalty to Yahweh to domination by Canaanite Baalism. 

E. E. Joseph

Two survivors of the Exodus reaching Canaan is a failure of faith.  Moses breaking the tablets of the covenant and the whole history of Israelite resistance to God cannot be exemplary.  Having the power to move mountains, kill giants and raise the dead might seem like a continuation of Yeshua’s life, but we will always face the sobering fact that the vital connection to Christ and God is not decided by those kinds of power.

Death via covenant fantasy

It is ever more fascinating to see how many people are in the grip of the delusion that they are in covenant with the God of Abraham in the same way as the descendants of Abraham were through Moses at Sinai.  If, like me, you signed up to be a commandment keeper, you are on death row.  If, like me, you have come to realize that faith in the Crucified is the basis for the new life of unhypocritical love, the fantasy is slain.

The fantasy produces traditions peculiar to several sets of doctrinal badges.  It makes crocodiles who are perpetually in a ravenous death roll, annihilating the lawless outsider Gentile.  The fantasy further commits the fantasizer to become less than farm animals who do not recognize their food source and feeding trough, and servants who do not recognize their master.  Isaiah (1:2-4) was not intoxicated or bewitched.  Neither were the Galilean fishermen, the tax collector, the zealot men who lost their minds when they threw their ancestral tradition under the bus.

Modern Israel’s attempts to claim high moral ground is misleading. Israel, since the Iron age, has given the world more than a few exceptionally sage and courageous women and men, and yet fills the cup of homicidal plots and resistance to the divine will.

Alas, sinful nation, People weighed down with iniquity, Offspring of evildoers, Sons who act corruptly! They have abandoned the Lord, They have despised the Holy One of Israel, They have turned away from Him. (Isaiah 1:4, NASB)

Yahweh is the source whom the people have abandoned and provoked.  Abandoned and provoked are not simple events; they are resultant conditions.

You want to be Israel?  Step up, naked, bruised, bleeding and totally ill.

From the sole of the foot even to the head There is nothing sound in it, Only bruises, welts and raw wounds, Not pressed out or bandaged, Nor softened with oil. (Isaiah 1:6, NASB)

One of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the churches is this idea that we have had a cyclical  parade of reformers in the modern era.  Even  the vaunted Lutheran Reformation is quite a load of bunk.  Whatever shenanigans shenanigans the Church of Rome was pulling in the middle ages  had no determinative effect upon the advance of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If light had disappeared from the church, from the lives of believers in general, joy and peace and security would also have vanished, and that is not the case, and could not be the case. So for all those who want to make a case that they have light for the church we have a surprise for you tha only and deceitful is in the making.

God and good works

Philanthropic ventures are not a diagnostic feature of Christ’s witnesses.  Loving other humans and providing for their needs are commendable except when they are an attempt to access government finances or are hiding places for those for whom the truth of the gospel is a severe challenge.  In simple terms, people who are xenophobic by their tradition and by their culture will be quick to put on a show of doing good deeds for people who are less fortunate.  They do not want the challenge of standing up or standing out for the crucified Lord.  Good works are a deadly snare

What does someone see

You may not have given much thought to taking the Ten Commandments as your moral standard, but surely you can recognize that what a person does is more likely to be seen than anything he refrains from doing.  If good works are the currency we must ask ourselves two questions.  1.  Who benefits? 2.  What do people see?

What does the neighbour see

1. When Elohim is your only God
2. When you neither making nor worshipping idols
3. When you do not use the sacred name in vain
4. When you and your household do not work on the sabbath
5. When you honor your parents
6. When you do not kill
7. When you do not steal
8. When you go not commit adultery
9. When you do not perjure yourself
10. When you do not covet property

Wars make people forget

Conflict has the capacity to disrupt the normal flow of human life.  That disruption touches family relationships, commerce, spiritual enrichment and international alliances.  So what better fabrication can people find than to have people believe that a war is on.  If you are a Christian and you believe that a war is on, then you don’t believe that Christ defeated Satan at the cross and rose from the dead to prove it.   If you believe in Christ and Satan are in conflict today then you do not recognize what Christ means when he says that Hell’s Gates cannot prevail against the church.  How could people be found overwhelmingly conquering in adverse situations of life (Romans 8:35-39) if there is still a war going on between Christ and Satan?  People can be so gullible as to raise questions about their basic capacity to understand simple statements.

The church is not like ancient Israel, passing repeatedly from loyalty to Yahweh to domination by Canaanite Baalism. 

I suppose if people really want to be Israel they can say it often and hope that, like the lies that are shaping the twenty-first century’s opening decades, the fantasy will become true. Israel’s religious and political factions are disturbing realities nobody wants. It is Israel’s status as a chosen people that attracts many observers. We do not want to be hated by all nations. We do nort wanrt to be repeatedly threatened by civil way and wicked kings. We do not want our prophets and wise men to eveluate us as worse tan farm yard anumals, or call us devil seed. We do not want to be scattered all over the planet, or find ourselves on the brink of annihilation. Who dares to say that disturbing religious and political entities are not a pox on our secular lives? Who is to say that wicked kings and civil wars are not repeatedly threatening the future desired by decent people from rising? Since Britain has changed its mind about a prosperous colonial empire we have to recognize that being Israel will accomplish nothing, as surely as Israel has accomplished none of the grand goals of her primary pattriarchs.

Tariff spells FFART, with an appropriate double f, for a hesitant and productive flatulence with an egotistical confession.