Teachings of Jesus — John 4:4-26

Posted on March 16, 2019 by ehurst

First, a short reminder: The Samaritans were not “half-breed Jews.” Something like 90% of the original population of the Northern Kingdom had been taken away by Assyria, and replaced with pagan folks from Hamath, and some from Elam and from other places scattered around the Assyrian Empire. They were granted an apostate priest from the old Northern Kingdom to teach them about the local deity, who gave them a very perverted version of the Books of Moses. Mostly what they learned were the rituals and some history. When the Judeans (Southern Kingdom) returned from Babylon, the Samaritans pretended to worship the same god and welcomed them home. When they weren’t allowed to bring their paganized version of worship into the Covenant, they became permanent enemies of Judea. The two had harassed each other for centuries.

Jews in Jesus’ day typically crossed the Jordan somewhere within Judea, hiked along the east bank until they were beyond the northern border of Samaria, then crossed back over into Galilee. They wouldn’t dirty their feet with Samaritan soil. But for reasons not stated, Jesus just had to pass through Samaria. The disciples were with Him. They stopped one day at Jacob’s Well and Jesus took a break. The disciples went into the town near the well to buy some food. They took with them the little animal skin bucket they normally carried that He could have used to draw water, so He was left in the heat of midday without access to the water far below ground level in the well.

Most days the women of the village of Sychar would gather in the cool of the morning to draw their water for the day and to gossip. They likely did it again in the evening. This gal was a social outcast, so she came during the middle of the day. Jesus asked her for a drink. It was a normal request and in the process of giving Him a drink, she commented on how Jewish men seldom spoke civilly with Samaritans unless they wanted something. She would know about that, of course, as we shall see.

Jesus ignored this rude gibe and told her something totally unexpected. She had a way to get water from the well, but He had “living water.” It was a common expression for water springing up from a natural fountain. She was puzzled how He could claim to have such water when He didn’t even have the means to get water from this well. He responded with an even more extravagant claim about how His living water would quench thirst forever.

She was still focused on mundane things, of course. Perhaps it was sarcasm when she said that it would sure be nice to have water bubbling up inside of her so she could just quit bothering with this chore. Jesus needed to prod her into thinking on a different level, so He changed His tack and asked her about her husband. Could she bring him out to meet Jesus? She admitted she had no husband.

Jesus then showed He was hardly your average Jewish man. He seemed to know everything about her already, noting that she had been married and divorced five times already, and was shacking up with yet another man. She was little different from a prostitute. She didn’t argue with Him, but simply noted He must be a prophet, at least. Moving the subject off herself, she asked this prophet a question that must have been annoying her for quite some time. Why do Jews insist on having their Temple in Jerusalem when the Samaritans had been worshiping at Bethel since ancient times? Where is Jehovah’s throne?

His reply was quite unexpected. He said that very soon everyone who actually cared to worship the Heavenly Father would not bother with either location. Granted, the Jews were the original people of God, and their version was correct as far as it went. The Samaritans came late to the game and were fed a bunch of nonsense. But that distinction didn’t matter, because all of that was done. It was already time to make a new distinction. From now on, it was going to be a matter of a higher realm — it was all about the spirit, not the flesh. God was now seeking those who would worship Him in a spirit of earnest commitment. God was not an earthly ruler, but a spirit being and you cannot deal with Him on a lower level. You have to meet Him on the spiritual plane.

She was lost by this. All she could say was something about how, when the promised Messiah came, surely it would all be straightened out. Jesus told her that He was the Messiah. His explanation was the divine truth of things. Here Jesus flatly claims to be the Messiah to a Samaritan, a woman with nothing to lose by believing Him.

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Disguised Worship of Moloch

Posted on March 16, 2019 by ehurst

Yet another offline question: The primary danger in child molestation is not the sex, but the open door to demonic influence. Since demon influence is somewhat communicable, this is a threat to shalom.

Consider the biblical logic. Whence comes pedophilia? It’s built into Western Civilization, based on the blended pagan mythology of Germanic tribes and Greco-Roman Civilization. It arises from the inherent materialism, which invokes petty hedonistic desires. It worships staying alive in this fallen state, seeking every possible pleasure because there is nothing after this life. Thus, it seeks to retain youth and worships childhood and invests it with all kinds of hedonistic desire, which is why adults desire sex with children. It’s a rare adult in the West who does not harbor such fantasies somewhere in their psychic makeup.

This is not to say there is no pedophilia in other cultures, but that it arises most prominently and most forcefully in the West. In other words, it’s never been this bad.

From a biblical perspective, the danger is how this idolizes anything that isn’t God. If you worship anything or anyone other than our Creator, you are involved in worshiping demons. There is no neutral ground on this — see Deuteronomy 32:16–17 and 1 Corinthians 10:19-21. An adult brings their demonic idolatry to bear on a child, using the inherent authority of adulthood to offer that child as a sacrifice to their demon god. In other words, it’s not all that different from the worship of Moloch. But instead of burning the child to death in the heated arms of the idol built on top of an oven, it’s condemning the child to a life of slavery to the demon god. This means the child carries that demonic presence everywhere they go, and it touches everyone they encounter until they are delivered.

It also perverts every sexual desire of that child. It cripples his/her soul. It adds to the many woes our fallen nature already brings upon us. Truly we know that Christ can heal anything, but it stains our human existence and creates a major hindrance that the child will carry into their adult life. It’s one more temptation they wouldn’t otherwise face, as we know factually from clinical studies that victims of child molestation grow up to be child molesters in the vast majority of cases. It spreads and grows like cancer.

This is why Satan loves pedophilia. It makes his Kingdom of Darkness larger and more prosperous. And just to make all of this even more perverted, he likes the way our society goes into a self-righteous hysterical panic about pedophilia, as if we could all purge our own evil natures by burying it more deeply in denial.

In the Radix Fidem covenant, there is no greater threat to faith and religion than hidden or unconscious idolatry. That is what brings demonic presence into the mix.

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BOHICA

Posted on March 15, 2019 by ehurst

The slaughter in New Zealand is not what it appears, and certainly not what most news outlets and commentators tell you it is. The people who really know will surely not tell us.

We are fallen creatures, incapable of living on this earth in peace. No one should be surprised at the savagery of some. Violence and warfare are inevitable. Even the mere notion that peace is possible is a primary lie of the Devil. Things could surely be better, but peace is not possible. The one hope for any measure of peace is in Biblical Law, that Flaming Sword of the Spirit at the gate of Eden.

Any doctrine that proclaims peace through any other path is a lie.

Ever since God kicked us out of Eden, humans have sought every possible way back except through the Flaming Sword of revelation. They have always demanded God let them back in while continuing to eat from the Forbidden Fruit. It ain’t happening.

We will endure every possible false appeal on the basis of that awful mess in Christchurch. A thousand lying spokesmen will claim everything you can imagine, and some you cannot. Most will be predictable; consider the sources. Nothing will change except oppression will increase, all in the name of things like “safety.”

Just because the American globalist party is fading doesn’t mean the globalist cult is gone. Their false doctrine is what provokes most of the violence in the world today, and it’s only going to get worse. Their confessed agenda is to make things intolerable so that we willingly surrender to their control. But they aren’t working alone, so we can’t blame them for all of it. Lots of cults profit from sorrow and misery.

Keep your expectations low; practice holy cynicism.

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Draper High Water Mark

Posted on March 14, 2019 by ehurst

Today was the first spring day I could get back out on the bike. Winds were a bit high, especially on the return leg, but I managed it. There’s nothing new on the bikeway out at Draper Lake, but after a few days of heavy rain, the water level is now quite high. There is a path under the water between that picnic table and the high spot across the water and to the left a bit. I’ve never seen it underwater like this.

This picnic table is visible from the road, though, and I’ve seen it underwater before. It’s been a couple of years, and it has been just about a foot deeper at this spot. What’s odd is that today the winds were pretty stiff from the northwest, gradually turning out of the west, and all along the southeastern shore were places where the heavy waves have done some serious erosion.

This shows the depth gauge and it’s not quite at flood stage for Draper Lake. Still, it’s getting close.

This is the smallest point, which is now just an island with a substantial sandbar you can’t see. With the winds so high I believe the lake is closed to boating. The “chop” is almost two feet high out on the open water.

It was a muddy ride in spots, but I ran across some places where water stood on the streets and I got my tires rinsed off pretty nice. I’ll have to clean my shoes by hand, though.

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Just a Hospital for Religious Health

Posted on March 13, 2019 by ehurst

In response to an offline query: We are not asking people to join our covenant. We seek to set people free to find out what covenant God designed them to embrace.

Our covenant is our choice to come together and fellowship in a common expression of faith. This covenant began as the expression of a very narrow minority, outsiders who had nowhere else to go, but in dire need of fellowship and communion. This online parish and covenant remain just that and nothing more. It’s a volunteer association from start to finish, and there is no expression of ill will to anyone who feels it’s time to move on. There is no social pressure at all, because the last thing we want is someone who feels constrained in their pursuit of serving Christ. We already know our path is not for everyone.

Our goal was never to grow in numbers; it still isn’t our goal. We have no budget and no facilities. However, this whole thing rests on conviction, and it is assumed each of us has at least one computer device of one kind or another which we dedicate to our kingdom service. That’s because this covenant presumes a whole human existence dedicated to that kingdom, so the computer devices are simply the nexus of how we connect with each other. Our “facility” is the Internet, which nobody owns.

We are content to remain a small and insignificant association as humans measure such things. What we want most to see is a renewal of people discovering how to be led by a heart of conviction. We have no fear of where their hearts will led them; God has always done a good job of that without any human assistance. All we are doing is sharing our experience because we simply cannot be silent. What you do with that is for you and God to decide. Our goal and our measures of “success” are to see a change in how people of faith go about the business of religion, regardless of their organizational identity.

Again: Radix Fidem is more a meta-religion than a religion, per se. It is a study led by faith on how to be better led by faith. Religion is a human response to faith; we study how to make religion more accurately representative and expressive of faith. In the process, it is impossible for us to ignore our own religious needs, so we seek ways to stay connected in sharing them.

We don’t rob churches of their members. So far we have gathered just a tiny handful of folks who were poorly served by their churches, people who were already on their way out the door. That’s where I came from. Like many people, my membership in church required me to do things I found violating my convictions, and I was forbidden from doing things my convictions demanded of me. So instead of stirring up trouble in that church, I left to find my own way. I had no plans to draw anyone to my path, but people came anyway. They can leave it when their convictions lead them elsewhere. I am on the path I must take to find peace with God. Peace with God is what we want for everyone alive.

We few are proof that existing religious institutions cannot serve everyone. There can be no universal church because God Himself leads people out of such structures. We are pleased to let them ignore us, and we are pleased to work outside their boundaries. There is nothing we need to defend; we are not a problem for anyone who operates in good conscience. But we do claim the divine right to defend our choice by whatever means our faith and convictions compel.

I’ll offer a parable. We are a hospital for religious people. We are wounded, too, but we treat the wounded and discharge them when they feel ready to move on. That a few choose to stay and join the staff (refusing to be discharged) is simply inevitable, and they can still leave when they feel led away. But there will always be a small core of folks who have no other purpose in living except keep this hospital running.

We are Radix Fidem.

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Covenant versus Profit

Posted on March 12, 2019 by ehurst

Let’s do a little biblical analysis. Take a look at how heart-led wisdom can affect how you view things, in the sense that you aren’t restricted by mere logic.

An article on Zero Hedge talks about how The Sharing Economy Was Always A Scam. It’s long and most of you don’t need to read it. You can probably guess some of what the article suggests. This was a sweet sounding idea marketed in terms of platitudes: efficient use of resources, sharing, rebuilding the human nexus, etc. The article goes on to show how it was all an entrepreneurial ploy to restrict the amount of money going to those involved at the ground level and sucking up a lot of left over excess through management fees.

So all that stuff like Uber and Lyft were designed to short-change the drivers and riders and fatten the companies’ bank accounts. You get robbed and feel good about it. You can find articles that will explain some factors from a social sciences perspective.

First is that folks who actually own the stuff being shared bear a high liability for cheaters of the system. You would think something with an institutional trust management factor would avoid this, but when the nexus of activity is a cellphone app, the weak link is the phone infrastructure.

There are a significant portion of people who are pathological destroyers. They become skillful at gaming the system and destroying for the simple amusement they get from it. They’ll grab a cheap burner phone, create a fake ID for something like AirBnB and rent an accommodation for the sole purpose of destroying it. The destroyers even go so far as to hire proxies who will come across as normal and trustworthy, just to secure access. All it takes is one destroyer in the system to wipe out dozens of resource owners. There is no way to demand compensation from the ghostly destroyers. The system tends to find ways to avoid liability for this, of course, and the horror stories and resulting fall in participants kills the system.

Second is the provocation of anyone whose livelihood rests on the previous system. Taxi companies hate Uber; hotels hate AirBnB, and retailers hate short-term private rentals. Governments hate anything that reduces tax revenue by dodging regulation. This kills the brilliant new ideas for sharing.

Third is that the people who own the resources being shared got into this for the money, not for the community. That sense of human contact is nice, and it can become the thing that keeps you involved, but in the long run, it is still about the money for both the owner and user. There are too many ways rising new technology kills the deal. Why “borrow” a movie DVD when you can stream it for less? The materialistic model calls for getting more for less, and increasing revenue to grow the operation. Once you get into a sharing system, the economics flatten or fall off. It starts to feel like a waste of effort.

And from a heart-led perspective, this is the ultimate failure. We have a Merchant Culture orientation at the heart of American social assumptions. You cannot build a true human trust system on materialism. The only way to invoke trust is to leave the American culture. You have to build a different culture, a different society that draws people together through a power and purpose that is far greater than profit and amassing capital.

Frankly, we treat the human nexus as a mere instrument, the means to what really matters: divine favor. In Biblical Law, the whole purpose of all material goods and services, the sole aim of economic activity, is blessing the covenant family. This is were you find God’s favor. So we don’t grow a company to increase revenue; we increase revenue so we can grow the number of our covenant family involved. We manage the business to fit the size of the family and all profit is dedicated to enriching the whole clan. While we keep the door wide open to folks who will embrace the covenant and grow the family, we want our businesses to restrict the participation of outsiders except as clients and customers.

We are aware of economic factors, but we rely on God’s revelation, not the “dismal science” to guide our decisions. We aren’t looking for commercial opportunities, but pray for guidance in the mission. We accept the idea that the mission might be a business failure on some terms. The goal isn’t profit, but divine glory through obedience and blessings.

We know that you cannot create community through business activity. The community has to exist first, and everything that follows feeds the purpose of the community itself.

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Updating the Political Outlook for 2019

Posted on March 11, 2019 by ehurst

Marxists always bring bloodshed. They already know that they will face resistance, and that armed force is necessary to bring about their revolution. They will use any number of false fronts to get things as far as possible before unveiling naked violent force.

Regular readers will recall that I differentiated between globalists and socialists. The globalists have always been an elite cult devoted to raising again the Tower of Babel (get the symbolism, folks). It’s an idolatry of themselves as the only fit rulers of humanity, but they mask it in various ways. In the US, they pretended to support socialism, the liberal leftism of America. They spawned SJWs, the logical extension of political correctness. But the SJWs gave birth to hard-core tribalism, which is what undercut the globalists. The globalist machinery in the US has been fractured. Now the globalists are fading fast and their threat is virtually gone.

Granted, genuine Marxists/socialists are global in their outlook, but they don’t worship at the shrine of Babel. Globalism was Satanism in disguise, but Marxism is a different religion altogether. Satan still likes it, but it’s not overtly his. What we have now is difficult to target because it’s nascent blind socialism shielded by SJWs. It’s a blind socialism because instead of being the cannon fodder for globalists, they are now cannon fodder for the Marxists.

Marxism as a religion will never die until Christ Returns. It’s an extension of some ancient cults, in that it shares the same obsession with materialistic falsehoods and false gods, but now it features the secular state, a concept that didn’t exist in ancient cultures. In essence, the State is the false god they now promote. It replaces both the tribe and the tribal gods of the ancient past.

So you can push aside as a memory how close we came to apocalypse under the globalists. Now the threat is coercive Marxism in the guise of the shallow and ignorant socialism of current US politics. This veiled Marxism will not accept the kind of compromise where each can go their own way and follow their dreams. Marxists must take it all, and whomever they have to kill to get it, they will gleefully slaughter. In their theology, people who do not willfully submit to the obvious good sense of their agenda are people who suffer mental incurable mental illness. They must be put down like old pets.

Don’t underestimate the threat here. Every so-called socialist in current American politics is planning to slaughter something like half of the US population. That’s their fallback plan. They don’t have a genuine revolutionary army, so they are trying very hard to take over the various government agencies, the armed enforcers in particular. They probably dream of gaining control of the military, but I doubt that will happen. Still, they have been secretly conditioning the profession of law enforcement to become brutal and unaccountable to the population. They seized the academic sources behind law enforcement doctrine back in the 1980s and haven’t looked back.

I saw that happen first hand. There was a shift in the professional publications used by law enforcement to project changes in training methods. The rise of the SWAT forces was just a manifestation of this trend. At that time, I knew things were going in a very bad direction and I got out of law enforcement work. There is no way to stop that kind of gigantic lie from the ground level.

If you want to be more precise, the globalists were behind that move, but the Marxists were watching their chance to seize the apparatus, and that time is now. Granted, a great many law enforcement folks would refuse to support socialism once it gets going, but that’s my point: We are headed into unavoidable conflict. This is the early stages of civil war. It will provoke regional and sectarian divides. For example, highly urbanized areas will embrace socialism, while the more rural-oriented parts of the US will rise up in an armed right-wing backlash.

It should be instructive that we can see the majority of the Big Tech favors socialism, while most other Big Business either favors it as well, or don’t care enough either way to resist it. They see a path to profit while pretending to embrace it, if necessary. What will make this so ugly is that the big money (banking included) is with socialism, while the mass of weaponry is held by their enemies. The Marxists won’t get what they want; they will lose massively. But the destruction that comes with this rising conflict will be shocking to see. Because the righties are willing to let the Marxists keep their enclaves, we will see an incredible brutality that would embarrass even old timey Reds in Europe and Russia. The mask of civility in American culture is pretty thin, folks.

It’s quite likely things here will break down with our next war. This coming war — any day now — will go very badly for the US. There are all kinds of reasons, but it boils down to corruption and waste. The embarrassment and shame will provoke partisan recriminations and civil war. Right now, the highest probability for going to war is based on whatever Israel wants, because AIPAC really does run our government.

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A Tool for His Glory

Posted on March 11, 2019 by ehurst

For breakfast this morning I had a slice of gluten free bread (mostly rice flour), a patty of hot breakfast sausage, a slice of uncolored American cheese (it’s white without food coloring), one egg over easy, and a scoop of homemade pinto beans. It was all stacked up and the beans poured over the top. There is nothing miraculous about my diet and I really doubt you should follow my example. The miracle is that I am eating what my convictions tell me within the context.

When I give personal counsel to you, I can offer two things. First, I can tell you what I would be likely to do in your situation, insofar as you have described it to me. Second, I can tell you some generalities about human behavior and how God has worked in the lives of those I’ve counseled or observed in the past. The idea is not that you should follow my advice, but that you should come to a firm conviction what God wants you to do.

That’s the real miracle. You are the only one who could possibly know what God requires of you. The best I can hope for is to bounce ideas off of you and pray that your own faith is awakened. If I can prod you through some kind of mental exercise until you finally discover your own path, that’s a miracle blessing from God.

Let me remind you: shalom is defined as peace with God. It’s a moving target. What He wants from you today may in one way or another change tomorrow. It’s like my breakfast — I’ll tend to eat pretty much the same thing for long stretches until I start craving something different, perhaps a little less food, or maybe not have time to eat at all because of some priority event that arises. Making up rules only creates false guilt, so I spend a lot of time in prayer so that I can come to a sense of conviction. Our God is a Person and He tells us only as much as we need to know to shine His glory.

Come to me for counsel because the Lord leads you that way. You have no other cause for trusting anything I might say. Even then, your trust should be in the process of obedience, not taking seriously what I tell you.

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Prepare for the Mission

Posted on March 10, 2019 by ehurst

Our plans under the covenant of Radix Fidem have nothing to do with growth in numbers. If that’s going to happen, it must come as a miracle of God. Our mission is to build an identity, even if we are the only ones bearing it.

We are the heart-led people of faith who cling to Biblical Law. If it comes to naught, and the truth dies with us, that’s no shame on our efforts. If we are faithful to what God has called us to do, there is nothing more required of us. The point is not to think too much about the mechanism by which people join us and keep it alive, but to be faithful in sharing it boldly.

It’s not a question of whether this works, but whether it is faithful to our calling. We don’t study how to manipulate people into accepting our message; they have to be driven to it by faith.

Our part is to build a consistent body of understanding about how religion works as a valid expression of that faith. It has to be consistent in the heart, not the particulars of how each of us chooses to express it. This is the key to breaking out of failed Western religion. We must build an understanding that sees through particulars and keeps a coherent spiritual covenant. We have to restore the lost legacy of scholarship that didn’t take the intellect too seriously.

In that legacy, we can build an understanding of how things work. We can afford to build on that foundation a body of experiential lore, and seek to express that lore in ways people can absorb from a different background. We have to be aware that a certain amount of what we do is always contextual and subject to the drift of culture and civilization. Our teaching has to account for that, and our expectations should be flexible enough to see it coming. We must distinguish between fashions of people versus fundamental moral truth.

By keeping those two separate, we are able to hold fast to unchanging truth and directly confront culture when it fails. Aren’t you tired of churches that merely follow the current trends of culture, maybe a few years behind, but always following? We need to lead the way in creating a culture based on divine revelation and ultimate reality.

I am utterly convinced that if we take this mission seriously, there will be growth in numbers and succeeding generations to carry it forward. I’m quite certain God works that way, that He wants to sponsor a New Israel in this world. I assure you that I do not see how it will happen, nor have I any idea what it will look like, but I am driven to start it with my own life here and now.

Some of you have joined me, and I’m really glad to see I’m not alone. I haven’t forgotten how easy it is for this to drift off track, particularly when people make too much of me and what I write. I hate being alone, but adulation makes me feel dirty. The best way you can thank me is to share your own testimony about the truth.

Right now, it’s almost entirely online. Whatever our mission program will be, I’m convinced it will begin this calendar year. Some of you already know you are called to prepare for this. When the world system around us begins to come apart, we need to be ready to jump into the gaps that open up and share this covenant, this heart-led truth we live.

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Teachings of Jesus — John 3:1-12

Posted on March 9, 2019 by ehurst

A case can be made for thinking that the dialog of Jesus ends at verse 12 and John continues on with commentary. John recorded his gospel in good school-boy Greek, a language that has few of the punctuation marks we take for granted. There are no quotation marks to indicate where Jesus stops talking. There is a noticeable shift in voice, as if John is trying to explain why he included this conversation. He also refers to Jesus as already in Heaven. We have no other record of Jesus talking quite like that. At any rate, the passage starting with verse 13 takes off on a different subject.

Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was familiar with rabbinical teaching. While not necessarily a Pharisee himself, he could not avoid knowing what the Pharisees taught. He surely knew that the Pharisees struggled with the healing miracles in conjunction with a teaching that rejected their intellectual approach and Talmudic traditions. This was the nature of his question to Jesus. It was obvious the miracles came from God, but after a couple of centuries of legalistic traditions and doctrine, there was a real conflict for the Pharisaical mind.

Jesus skips over a lot of verbiage in His replay. His answer assumes Nicodemus understands all of that stuff. The reason the Pharisees don’t understand how God could bless what Jesus taught with miracles is because they are materialistic in their orientation. The term Jesus uses is “fleshly.” He refers to something Nicodemus should have understood, a common reference to ritual ablution with a matching change of heart — born of water and of Spirit. This was a longstanding teaching among Pharisees, that someone could be moved to genuine repentance and seek a departure from past sinful living. This is what John the Baptist had been doing, and it was no mystery to anyone, as baptism was a very ancient ritual in Old Testament religion.

Indeed, Ezekiel 36:25-27 describes this very thing, and it is still recognized in Talmudic teaching today. This is what Jesus refers to and there was no good reason for Nicodemus to be obtuse about this. John translates this Aramaic conversation into Greek and distinctly uses the phrase “born from above” or “born from eternity.” It’s possible that in the Aramaic of that day, the actual word could be more ambiguous, perhaps even two different dialects, since Jesus had grown up in Galilee and scholars suggest this very word for “above” was used differently between Judea and Galilee. Either way, we can see that Nicodemus is missing the point.

So Nicodemus seized upon the reference to seeing the Kingdom of God and chased that around, forgetting the common reference to a radical change of heart. Would the Messiah demand some kind of second birth? Jesus explains His use of the terminology, demanding that Nicodemus pull back from literalism and think mystically. A kingdom rooted in Heaven cannot be built on fleshly nature. Such a kingdom would be rooted in the Spirit Realm, and requires a spiritual connection. So just being human isn’t enough, regardless of how educated and legally just. It requires a spiritual birth; all of that other stuff means nothing without it.

Then Jesus uses a parable about wind — you can tell when it’s present, but you can’t tell where it comes from or where it’s going. People born of the Spirit will have a source and a goal that is incomprehensible to people who don’t have that spiritual birth. Nicodemus is totally lost at that point, simply because it is just so foreign to his daily conversation as a member of the Sanhedrin. They were all talking about a regime change with the coming of Messiah, and tried to define all things they could know about the Messiah before He showed up, and this body of teaching was radically different from what Jesus was saying. What a disappointment it would be for everyone hoping to see the Romans and Herodian Dynasty driven out! Jesus was suggesting the Messiah would be a mystical king, focused on otherworldly concerns.

This is what Nicodemus means when he asks how such a thing could be. Jesus sounds like someone despairing for His nation. How could a member of the Sanhedrin, responsible for teaching the whole nation, have lost track of this critical moral truth? How could someone just forget two millennia of mysticism like that?

Jesus goes on to raise a critical issue. In the presence of hundreds of witnesses, the Spirit of God descended on Jesus at His baptism, and the voice of Jehovah thundered from Heaven His endorsement of Jesus’ ministry. Yet the Sanhedrin rejected the possibility that Jesus was commissioned by God. If they can’t handle concrete factual evidence on that scale, how are they going to react when Jesus reveals something about the Spirit Realm?

Eventually Nicodemus does catch on, publicly supporting Jesus at the trial before the Sanhedrin, and in funding the expensive spices for His burial.

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