NT Doctrine — Colossians 2

Posted on April 13, 2024 by ehurst

There’s a lot going on in this chapter. Translators note that this passage is loaded with ambiguous phrases, and too many English renderings follow a path that tends to obscure the depth of what Paul is saying.

As previously noted, the biggest issue is denying that Christ is the Son of God. Paul does not distinguish here between the Judaizer attack and the Gnostic one. It may well be that these two groups were working together in this particular region. Paul mentions Laodecia as part of the same community of faith. Even though none of these believers ever encountered the ministry of Paul firsthand, he still carries a heavy burden of concern for them simply because they belong to Christ.

He isn’t arming them for debate. Rather, he is prompting them to make the familial unity of Christians their single greatest defense. Stand together in your faith in Christ! What is this “mystery of Christ”? He conquered the flesh, and passed on to us His power to do so in our own lives. There is no mistaking that the denial of the flesh and this world is crucial to everything Paul says here. This is the real treasury of divine wisdom, not the nonsense cooked up by the philosophers and teachers of Judaism and Gnosticism.

It’s not about reasonable arguments; it’s about taking up your own Cross. This life is one big lie, and we must dismiss it in order to walk with Christ. But having received His Holy Spirit in our souls, we have everything we need to stand firm against any human reason. Paul does not attack erudition itself, but encourages his readers to make sure that the content of that profound knowledge is the truth Jesus taught.

Both Judaism and Gnosticism were rooted in the flesh, and the assumptions that this world is all there is. This is at least part of what Paul means in referring to the Aristotelian logical foundation, using the term “elementary” or “rudimentary” principles of this world. It flatly denies that Jesus could rise from death, because there was no Spirit Realm in which He could wait to reclaim His body, and no spirits to inhabit such a realm.

Starting in verse 9, Paul hammers once again on bold and clear statements of doctrine. There is no useful distinction between Christ and God. When Jesus walked on the earth, it was as much of the very Presence of God as this world could have — God in the flesh. And because He returned to the Father, His Spirit is able to live in all of us at the same time. There is no higher authority, so pay no attention to the Jewish or Gnostic appeals to lesser authorities. The God of Creation lives in us.

Then Paul refers to spiritual circumcision; not just a clipping of some small bit of skin, but detaching our spirits from our fleshly nature. The fleshly nature is not our real selves. The baptism ritual was a declaration of feudal submission to Christ; the symbol was that the flesh dies and our spirits are raised to join Christ in His resurrection.

His voluntary death on the Cross defeated the grip of flesh on our souls. He broke that power by His willingness to pay the awful price. We are no longer captives of our fallen natures. We participate in His life in Heaven. Then Paul shifts to legal terminology, referring to a writ of debt filed as a hostile action against us. That writ was nailed to the Cross and died with His flesh.

In so doing, He confiscated the weapons of every authority, in Heaven and on Earth, rendering them harmless against us. His victory over the fleshly nature put them to shame; all their claims on us were suddenly a laughingstock.

Now that our fleshly natures are dead, there is absolutely no sense in binding the flesh under all the legalistic rules of the Talmud or the ethics of Gnosticism. Why worship angels, when we have direct access to the Creator? This is what holds us together, a bond far stronger than the fleshly birthright claims of Jews. Their silly rules are nothing more than a racist ethnic pretense of belonging to a God that has disowned them. Their self-righteous attitude about their silly rules is all they have.

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Biblical Feudalism 02

Posted on April 12, 2024 by ehurst

Right from the start, I inserted into this discussion that God’s will is inherently tribal as well as feudal.

On the level of the flesh, God has divided us into tribal identities. The intellect rebels at the thought, but the Bible is quite clear on this. God insisted at the Tower of Babel that humanity will be tribal and nationalist. Attempts to pull humanity together into a generic frame of reference is a flat rejection of God Himself. Not only are we to cultivate ethnic differences, but we are to celebrate living in separation from other ethnic identities.

If you imagine the Cross changed that, then you aren’t paying attention to what the New Testament actually says. Don’t inject your preferred intellectual assumptions into the phrase “one in Christ”. We are one in the Spirit, not in the flesh. The task of organizing churches as human entities rests on first being tribal and feudal. The Cross did not dissolve the Father’s command at the Tower of Babel. Churches must be decentralized and tribal-feudal in order to implement Biblical Law.

The Lord Himself appoints the leadership of His Body. Without digging into the details at this point, the net result remains very shaky in human terms, but that’s how He gets things done. It’s all miracles, not human will. A fundamental question is, “Which human is in charge of this body?” It is a feudal family structure, and anyone who wants to join in must be able to play the role of family member.

This means that the new member will make themselves comfortable with whatever exists, and will seek to make the rest comfortable with whatever they bring to the table. Granted, this job is never complete, but it is a fundamental part of the living dynamic that we will all deal with a certain amount of human frustration. And the feudal head of the body is the primary deciding factor. What can he live with? He is appointed by God, not the members. The members join him.

If you cannot tolerate the choices of the leader, then maybe you have been called to lead a body yourself. Or maybe you haven’t found a leader you can tolerate. Or maybe you have some work to do learning how to get along. And it could be something else, but the point here is that conflict is inevitable; it is part of the whole package. The whole mission of the church is wrestling with the inevitable conflict, not pretending that the conflict can ever be vanquished.

No, you cannot make rules to prevent conflict. However, Biblical Law has pointed to some rules for doing conflict. Get this: Human conflict is a given. It is the setting in which human life if lived. It is not just typical; it is the norm. Conflict is essential to living.

Thus, a fundamental question is first deciding what is worthy of raising as essential conflict and what can be shelved for some other time and place. If the human head of the body doesn’t want to deal with something important to you, call on God for guidance first. Then decide if it justifies leaving his covering, because God did not appoint you to destroy any family household of faith. Rebellion is a sin.

By now it should be obvious that if you endeavor to join a covenant family household of faith, bringing with you a strong human ethnic identity could be a primary source of conflict. The basic principle is a two-edged sword: You can and should try to add something to the body. You should not try to change the ethnic climate of the body. If you cannot avoid the urge to redefine the ethnic climate of the body, then you don’t belong there.

And should you find yourself itching to compel some kind of change by leveraging power from outside the body, then you had better repent and stop listening to demons. There is nothing wrong with proliferating small bodies of faith; there is nothing wrong with dividing from each other to create a new witness to divine truth. There is a functional distinction between conflict and hostility. Conflict is inevitable; hostility is rejection of your brothers and sisters.

And the New Testament word “love” (agape) does not mean you must put up with behavior that hinders and disrupts, never mind the source. You can love your brothers and sisters just fine — you can hold them in high regard as a part of God’s treasury — without having to stand in their brand of worship. You shouldn’t condemn what works for someone else, but you can condemn something that departs from the recorded character of God.

And you need not rely on someone outside your covenant family to define the boundaries for what that means.

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Biblical Feudalism 01

Posted on April 11, 2024 by ehurst

If you understand that the only reason we exist in a fallen world is to glorify our Creator, then a major question is, “What should we do?” The Bible as a whole seeks to answer that question by offering examples of how God wanted things done in certain contexts. The biggest problem is getting a grip on the context, because without that, you cannot begin to understand why He said, “do this and not that”.

From beginning to end, the Bible assumes the context of ANE tribal feudalism. God chose this frame of reference. Had there been any point when something He said promoted any other form of human organization, we could say that the feudalism was a historical context. However, there is not a single reference to democracy of any flavor, nor any other political structure. Instead, there is a condemnation of any form of human organization except ANE tribal feudalism.

We must assume that the context for ANE tribal feudalism is Creation itself as a whole. The Cross did not change this. We evaluate all human activity from that perspective. Thus, anything that varies from that model is wrong from the start. If we approach God and His revelation from any other angle, we have failed. The Devil will have won in keeping us from God’s privileged blessings.

It turns out that this model has implications across the whole gamut of questions about what we should do in this life. Our duty to the Creator is to make use of whatever gifts He has granted to promote His ways. Now, while it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend the whole, the Bible itself demonstrates that there are ways to establish indicators of where to look for answers. You can internalize the outline to save time and respond quickly.

Never once in the whole history of biblical events do we see God laying down what we could call an “iron law” in the western absolutist sense. Everything is couched in terms of priorities and context. The flesh definitely prefers to deal in intellectual terms of iron law. That’s part of how the flesh promotes itself, by pulling things down to its own level. But the heart and spirit are designed to operate in terms of personal connection to God. If you cannot avoid thinking of God without thinking of iron law, then you have never met Him.

It’s not a question of finding God, but of discovering that the only way you can know Him is in your heart. He will not address your intellect, because it is fallen. He addresses only the heart. And just in case you forgot, that’s “heart” in the sense of your moral will, not in the western sense of “repository of sentiment”. Intellect is not simply useless on its own, but is quite dangerous until it is in subjection to the heart. Again: God can be encountered only in your heart, not in your head.

Once in service to the heart, the intellect can discern a pattern and structure of what constitutes the distinction between good and evil. In our hearts, we do not take our intellects too seriously, because intellect is inherently fallen. It is our equipment, but it not our self. It is untrustworthy and requires constant reinforcement, a constant reminder of its limits.

So, when you people ask questions about how we should do things, the meaning of what is good and evil in human conduct must first come from a heart-level moral reckoning. The heart tells the mind what is good and evil, and the mind then attempts to incorporate that ruling in its structure and implementation. There are limits to the mental ability, and this why the heart must keep reminding the brain that it does not understand fully, and never will.

So, when I use the term “Biblical Law” I refer not to some iron law, but to a structure of thinking that we already know is only an approximation. It reflects the priorities God has revealed in the Bible, and His personal preferences are the real issue. Not only that, but we should expect that, once we get into the task of living by His will, that it turns out His will is alive and active, not static and locked down. There are no propositions, only His Person. His Law is His own heart and character, and you had better keep an active link to His Spirit within you, or you will be wrong before you even start.

It’s not a sequence of events, but a logical sequence that you must first know the record of His preferences (AKA, the Bible) in order to get to know His Person. That is a major part of what biblical feudalism is all about.

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Summer Target

Posted on April 10, 2024 by ehurst

I’m expecting some really big developments by this summer.

Most of you probably already understand my frame of reference. The ultimate rulers of America in particular, and the West in general, are roughly equivalent to the neocons. Their money comes from banking, finance and the military-industrial complex. The latter has allies in medicine, Big Pharma, computer technology, all the various branches of the media, along with academia. In other words, they own everything. They are the de facto government.

Keeping the rubes in line, Big Eva is the whore of this Beast.

By now, you probably realize that our government is determined to have WW3. The don’t want to make it all blatant. Somehow, they imagine they can simply manipulate us into this with some alleged expertise and artistry of deception. They take a lot of pride in what they believe they have accomplished that way. They believe we don’t notice that American troops are already on the ground in places like Ukraine, and have been leading forays into Russian territory as murder squads. Yes, American troops are invading Russia already.

Now, I consider Zionism to be a side project of all this. But that doesn’t prevent us having boots on the ground in Israel, too. However, the Zionists are not exactly the same people as the neocons. The latter more-or-less permit the Zionist project to continue as long as it doesn’t get in the way. The modern State of Israel is expendable. But while it exists, it remains a marvelous weapon of distraction.

Not everyone in our government is on board with all of this, and the dissent over Israel’s war in Gaza is a major feature of the instability that the neocons are trying to use to destroy the US. The globalists are simply a front, allowing ideological organization and motivation for the lackeys of the neocons who lean left. The globalist leaders only imagine they are in charge.

The plans aren’t as precise, nor as tightly scheduled, as conspiracy theorists like to imagine. What the neocons are doing is provoking a whole lot of activism and allowing things to take their natural course. It won’t really matter what the globalists are trying to do; it will eventually fall apart because their agenda is simply not possible. The same with the Zionists — that project will eventually blow up, as well. The whole point is to destroy the West, one way or another.

I don’t believe it’s possible to read the cards currently showing and come up with a coherent image of where things are headed. The intellectual analysis is intentionally confusing. Some of what seems significant is fake, and too much that actually does matter is not yet visible.

Instead, it is a matter of my convictions that things are going to get substantially more insane here in the US, and that some of it will show up this summer. While I rather suspect it will have to do with warfare in places like Ukraine and Gaza, it could be anywhere. I’m expecting the next few months to see some level of military mobilization that cannot be hidden. The neocons are desperate to bomb Iran, so it would seem to involve that.

And I stand by my prophetic warning that God will ensure that any attack on Iran cannot prosper. Nothing specific, mind you, it’s only that the general outcome will be a disaster for America. I don’t doubt our military will do some damage, but the US will end up far worse for getting involved. Our military will be devastated.

The part about Iran is a prophecy; the rest is just my general heart-led convictions about things.

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Charisma He Gives

Posted on April 9, 2024 by ehurst

There is some sense in which we will, in our resurrected bodies, retain something we gained from our mortal existence. I have no idea how to express this, but there is something we will bring with us from this life into Eternity.

That’s inherent in what Paul wrote about Christ. His short catechism about Jesus in Colossians 1:15-20 was a powerful counter to the Gnostic heresies and the Judaizers and their denial that Christ could be both human and divine. Paul said that all we could know about God was inherent in Jesus. But that He was the firstborn from the dead makes a critical statement that whatever we can expect to see in the Resurrection will echo what Jesus looked like and acted like during that forty days He hung around before Ascension.

What makes it difficult is that we cannot know what part of His post-resurrection body was merely a manifestation of where He was at the time. In the Final Resurrection, we cannot estimate what our glorified bodies will be, but we will have them. What that represents is affirmed in the teaching that only what we do for His glory will follow us into Eternity. Thus, whatever we hope to have there will depend on how thoroughly we dedicate ourselves to His glory here. It’s an added reason to walk in faith. Don’t you want to look your best in Eternity?

It’s impossible to come up with a clinical distinction between flesh and eternal nature. The only clue we have from Scripture is how we must allow the Spirit to reign over our lives through our hearts, not through the intellect. The intellect is part of our fleshly nature, and it always wants to be its own god. We do have the equipment to subject the flesh, but it’s not a status we can achieve. Rather, it’s an ongoing process and something that must be fed in order to grow stronger than the fleshly nature.

Every day we kill just a little bit more of the fleshly nature, until the day we graduate to our rest. It does not require a definitive clinical explanation. The demand for that kind of thing is the flesh itself seeking an excuse to take control and manipulate. We must rely on the ineffable nature of divine truth to keep the flesh on the back foot.

That demand for clinical data, for “propositional truth”, is always a matter of flesh. This is why we reject a lot of so-called historical church orthodoxy. That orthodoxy, starting with early church history and the propositional statements on Christology, are catering to the flesh. It turns theology into a profession with certifications and markers for fleshly consideration, for something that is supposed to deny the flesh. We don’t need factual precision; we need obedience. We need only a functional definition of who Jesus is in order to follow Him.

Elect souls know how to find Him. The only thing we need to teach them is denying the fleshly nature and escaping its manipulations. By refusing to satisfy intellectual curiosity on things, we deny the flesh’s control. Our biggest problem is that the fleshly nature is the very foundation of our Western Civilization. Everything that makes the West “great” in the minds of Western Civilization’s advocates happens to be catering to the flesh and its lust for control, it’s lust for rejecting God’s way of things.

Serving Christ is purely personal. It’s nepotism and playing favorites; it’s unashamedly feudal in making Him Lord. It’s not about the rules; the rules are Him. He is the One living and active and able to slice cleanly between spirit and flesh. And how we learn that in our heads is to recognize the tendencies and where the choices lead. We seek a powerful internal sense of God’s priorities in this life.

Each victory over the flesh, each empowerment of the Spirit in our mortal existence, adds beauty and character to our eternal bodies in the next life. I don’t know about you, but I want all the charisma the Lord will give me.

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Explain When Appropriate

Posted on April 8, 2024 by ehurst

I’ve been asked several times to build out my mythology a little farther. The Doctrine of Election is no myth. It was not understood in the Old Testament, but it was also not foreign to it.

Heiser’s Unseen Realm series lays out with good authority how the Hebrew intellectual traditions viewed the Elohim Council, and some hints of the nature of the dispute that got Lucifer relieved of his duties as God’s Covering Cherub. Collecting all the hints together, we see that Lucifer was the Chief Bodyguard (the nearest term we have for his position). At some point, he became corrupt enough to keep for himself some of the glory due God.

There was a dispute over whether the Devil was justified; we would say he filed an appeal with the Elohim Council. On the one hand, he got confined to a special realm created just for him. It was the Elohim Council God referred to when He said, “let Us” do this or that. Together, they created a special prison for Lucifer. However, based on the rules of how God operates, it seems Lucifer still retains some authority and ranking. This was visible in the narrative of the Fall. Further, he managed to cultivate some allies on God’s Elohim Council.

As part of this dispute with God, Heiser speculates that Lucifer objected to how God made humans and how He chose to handle them. It seems that Lucifer was incensed that we were granted such high privileges and such a generous situation so close to God. Something about that question makes it part of the original case of Jehovah v. Lucifer. At any rate, the Devil gains the title of “Satan” by how he seduced the humans into accepting his path for them. His position is wholly adversarial against us, and that’s what that title means. Humans were shifted from their eternal form and confined to a form Satan could manage. It includes the confinement of the space-time continuum and all that means in Hebrew mythos.

As we move forward in time, we see that God at some point parceled out the nations to His satraps on the Elohim Council at the Tower of Babel. Heiser points out how this is not just speculation, but clearly an image in the Old Testament itself. Later, God upbraids them for doing such a poor job of managing the nations, having misled the humans by presenting themselves as deities, rather in concert with the Devil’s contention that they deserve some worship and glory for themselves.

So, within this ongoing dispute with Lucifer and his allies on the Elohim Council, God sets out to build His own nation from scratch to show them how it’s done. That would be Israel, of course. But there is a secret in this plan. First, God establishes the broad principle of covenant. This principle includes a way of protecting His interests in His nation, and limiting interference from His erstwhile competitors on the Elohim Council. Something in this arrangement contributes to His proof, His argument against the Devil and his allies.

But there was a secret hidden in this whole covenant thing. Paul refers to this several times as the “mystery of the gospel”. God had planned all along to send a Messiah to clarify the covenant, but the Messiah came to open the Covenant to everyone, not just His own nation. You see, the whole covenant thing didn’t work as a human government; that much was clear from the history of Israel. Too many of the people involved refused to operate in faith. As Jesus explained to Nicodemas, the Covenant presumes the necessity of spiritual birth, and it wasn’t happening to the whole nation.

The Covenant Nation of Israel was a controlled experiment of sorts, a showcase of something we cannot comprehend fully. The Covenant appeared on the surface to be doable for fallen humans, but God’s Chosen Nation was easily the most cantankerous people ever born. Any other nation would have been far more compliant, but God was trying to prove something. From within this difficult nation He would bring a Messiah, His own Son.

God had planned all along to simply give faith to a certain portion of the human race, those whom He had elected from the beginning, even before Satan was placed in confinement. The secret was that the Elect would come from every nation, not just His own nation of Israel. God would initiate a new reign under His Son, the Messiah He had promised at the Fall. And the basis for identity in this Messianic “nation” would be divine election. God states clearly in the Bible that He will eventually win this dispute by humiliating His opponents.

That much is given via scholarship in the Scripture. There’s more, but that’s enough outline to explain the rest of my speculations.

My point here is that the underlying model of our humanity is two-fold. There is this fallen shell in which we exist, and it is tied to the Devil’s realm. But there is a separate entity that is eternal, and it belongs in Eden. What is so hard to swallow is that some majority of those living in the Fallen Realm lack an eternal component. It will never be there; they belong to this realm. The Elect are not superior; we are no different on the fleshly level. It’s all the same flesh and fleshly nature. Flesh is Satan’s property as part of his realm.

One does not become Damned (someone with no eternal component) because of something they do to lose their eternal nature. They never had it in the first place. They are merely flesh, period.

The Damned will cease to exist when this world is dissolved. We will shed that part of us and continue to exist in our eternal form. It is this eternal nature that separates us from the others. That eternal nature is capable of having its say in our internal processes. Without it, no human can accept the message about Eternity. We might be able to offer enough clinical data to make it intellectually plausible, but no one is going to actually buy into it wholly because they don’t have the necessary minimum prerequisites.

The interaction between the Elect and the Damned is critical to God’s proof. So, the means by which we spread the gospel are informational, but it is much more. The data is just the carrier for the living truth. The only people out there capable of receiving the message are people with an eternal nature already existing inside of them. They will recognize the hidden truth in what we share. It is not a human decision on any level; it is entirely a divine miracle. We don’t persuade people to accept Christ. We cannot. God doesn’t work that way. We can only awaken their elect nature if it’s already there, and it simply is not there for the majority.

While we get some mileage out of various verbal transmissions, the most powerful message is how we live. The Elect are known to Satan, and are experiencing hassles in life that generally don’t afflict the spiritually dead people around them. How we live in the face of that kind of pressure is a signal they cannot ignore. There comes a point in the life of each Elect when God will use our testimony to awaken the call.

This is why we admonish each other to walk in the power of faith before speaking. Show it first, then explain it when appropriate.

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Stages, Levels, and Code

Posted on April 7, 2024 by ehurst

With some questions, I need to wait a while before I can address them. The last thing I want to do is establish something as doctrine when it’s just my personal opinion. When we talk about something connected with the Spirit Realm, all we have are guesses and estimates based on the few things the Bible hints at.

The doctrine of Divine Election has yielded tons of speculation from far better thinkers and writers than me. Still, I’m not sure I can go with what these smarter people have said. Some of the implications have taken me in a different direction. What follows is not doctrine, but my personal mythology, my guesses that seems to bring me peace for the time being. You are encouraged to come up with your own answers. These are things on which we need not agree.

Spiritual birth is confined to the Elect. We are the only ones whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. There are plenty of folks out there who are elected and don’t know it yet. I don’t know if Jesus was including all the Elect in His comment about rejoicing that our names are there, but He certainly included those spiritually born. They were simply waiting for the gift of the Spirit. Whatever people got from the Lord prior to the Resurrection, it included spiritual birth, but not the full gift of the Spirit of Jesus living inside. Now, the Divine Presence is the single critical marker of the regenerate Elect.

What happens to those who die without spiritual birth? I’m going to assume that their conscious awareness lives on in a temporary condition until Jesus returns. Jesus indicates it’s not a pleasant situation for the unregenerate, but the Elect are resting. We have the English word “Hell” to indicate one, and Jesus referred to “Paradise” for the other. On Judgment Day, everyone will be pulled out of their storage place. This world and everything that belongs to it will end. Anyone who isn’t Elect will then be dissolved. I don’t believe that “Hell” will continue after that. The Elect will go back to Eden, whatever that means.

Yes, I believe in a two-stage destiny. As long as this fallen realm exists, we remain in the first stage. Once it’s over, the second stage is an entirely different kind of thing. I’m sure evangelicals will gasp and think I’m crazy. That’s okay; they’ve been treating me that way for a long time.

But in the end, those who are not Elect are part of a big drama that we cannot comprehend in our current state. They are part of this world, part of the punishment, accouterments of the prison, and not subject to eternal connections. The Elect don’t get the same deal everyone else does. We often catch a much rougher ride here in the Devil’s realm. He knows who we are.

There are limits on what he can do. However, the failure of most spiritually born folks to actually embrace the Covenant means they aren’t taking full advantage of that protection. It’s not simply a matter of the Code of Covenant Law; the covering of Christ is based on your heart’s commitment (faith) and your obedience.

Some failures of obedience will have permanent consequences, leaving gaps in the moral hedge for the rest of your life. Other failures can be mitigated to insignificance. It’s a part of Covenant studies to learn what does and doesn’t have lifelong effects. But the non-elect belong to Satan along with the rest of this world, and it’s really a matter of his agenda who experiences what. The consequences on some levels still hit them, but they aren’t likely to notice it in those terms. Some levels of the Law Code work regardless; they are woven into the fabric of this fallen world.

It’s complicated, but because the mainstream has ignored the Covenant and how it works, we have no solid tradition of recognizing priorities and levels. How these things break out into teaching has been a major effort behind this blog.

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NT Doctrine — Colossians 1

Posted on April 6, 2024 by ehurst

Colossae was nestled in the Lycus Valley, running between two high mountain ranges, not too far from Laodicea. Paul passed through this area because the main highway ran through both, but didn’t preach in any of the cities. One of Colossae’s leading citizens, Epaphras, converted to Christianity in Ephesus. The man brought this gospel back to his hometown, and a church grew there. He came to visit Paul somewhat early under Roman house arrest. Epaphras eventually came back to his hometown with a letter for the church in the company of Onesimus with a letter for Philemon.

This was part of the old Phrygian Kingdom, and the Cult of Cybele. The temple of Diana in Ephesus was actually the new name for the old temple of Cybele. The worship there was little changed with the new name. The Greek invasion brought another layer of philosophical assumptions and religious belief to the Lycus Valley, but the old Phrygian scholarship was still very strong. The Jewish population wasn’t that large, and they were known to be somewhat paganized. Despite this, the Judaizers were very active in the region once their campaign began. If not the birthplace of Gnosticism, the valley was certainly one of the strongest centers for it. The Judaizers contributed much to Gnosticism.

The biggest threat to Christian faith in Colossae was the many direct philosophical attacks on the divinity of Jesus, so Paul’s letter seeks to more firmly assert it. The first half of this chapter is devoted to greetings, Paul’s thanksgiving for the church and his prayer for them. This prayer ends with an emphasis on the centrality of Christ.

We note that verses 15-20 read like a hymn or poem, structured in Greek to be memorized and quoted often. It is a very dense statement of doctrine. The word “firstborn” is used twice. First, He was alive and mature before any part of Creation existed, and also had authority over it. Indeed, He was the agent of Creation. Paul pointedly declares that not a single authority in existence escapes Jesus’ dominion, simply because He made them, and they exist only for His convenience.

Not only does He precede all of Creation, but He holds it all together. The system remains intact only as long as He wants it so.

It’s only natural that He is the Head of His Body, the church. He is also the firstborn from the dead, the forerunner of the resurrection to come for all His saints. If we do not follow Him, we aren’t even on the path. The Father was pleased for the fullness of His own power and authority to be expressed in the Son.

Finally, the Father chose Him as the agent of reconciliation. By embracing Jesus as Lord, we make peace with God from the Fall. And while we could not possibly comprehend what it means, Jesus is also the agent of peace for beings in Heaven who have offended God.

At the conclusion of this lyrical statement of faith, Paul goes on to remind the Colossians that the same reconciliation includes them. They were once completely off the rails morally, and their lives portrayed it. But because of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the Elect can be presented before the Father as cleansed from the Fall. The Covenant is now open to them. They can exercise covenant privileges by remaining firm in their faith.

Paul refers to the mystery kept from the various authorities for centuries. This was God’s plan to nominate and then call the Elect from every nation on earth, something of which the Elohim Council had no awareness. Once it was done via the Cross and resurrection, it was too late for them to protest. The power of Election and faith carries them through trials, same as Paul.

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Rejoicing at Revelation

Posted on April 3, 2024 by ehurst

When you recognize the clear statements in the Bible on Divine Election, the implications are enormous. There stands this vast network based on the false Decision Theology that dominates religion talk, and it’s all a lie. We do not convince sinners to repent; God doesn’t work that way. We simply embrace those whom the Lord Himself moves to repentance.

We embrace them and do our best to help them transition to thinking about the divine destiny inherent in God’s calling on their lives. That destiny is, as often stated here, aligning with Jehovah’s agenda for humans. That agenda is what we are made for; we have no other reason for existing. Once our spirits are awakened, there is no going back.

Our spirits and hearts know, but the difficulty is getting our minds to play along. A lifetime of crap we’ve been fed by the various fallen influences in our world is a major barrier to walking in that destiny. While it says this is the highest privilege a human could have, Scripture also describes it as taking up your cross. It’s not something we could sell if we tried. Nobody in their fleshly mind is going to embrace their own demise.

And yet, that is precisely what the gospel is all about. It appeals only to those whom the Holy Spirit has already placed under conviction. Unless they sense the need, even if inchoate, of ditching this foul existence, they will not embrace the Cross.

And if they do not embrace the Cross from the start, they have lied to themselves. They do that if we lie to them about what the gospel offers. I’ve experienced some of the greatest joys and wonders while walking with Christ, but those came from increments of self-death, surrendering yet another part of my fleshly existence. The Cross is not just for Jesus taking our place, but He was showing the path we must take.

Christian religious leaders have a vast burden of shame for having sold the gospel short. All that crap about how Jesus makes this life better? No, He makes this life end. He calls us to the next life. This life is worth nothing. The only question is learning how to make the last dregs of this life count for something eternal.

What will they do when the centuries of fleshly prosperity end? The coming apocalypse will see an exodus from the churches because the bulk of the membership are not self-aware Elect, just hapless victims misled to believe they were “born-again” and that the church way of life was a gateway to Heaven. Notice how I worded that. They may be Elect, but they are not aware of it in that sense. They have been led down a false path of making the most of this life in the human sense. They’ve been taught that Jesus died to give us more of this world.

Very soon, this will all come apart. The illusion will be stripped away as God pours out His wrath on the earth. That stuff is going to splash all over His children, too. What distinguishes us is that we know it’s coming, and that it is wholly justified. Many of us will lose everything, the same as everyone else. There is no avoiding it; preppers don’t understand that God intends for us to walk through Hell, too. But we will be rejoicing at the revelation of our Father.

A pure church is one that comes together by divine power, not by human marketing.

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Great Privilege and Expectation

Posted on April 2, 2024 by ehurst

The Word of God is Jesus Christ. In-depth studies of Hebrew lore that stood prior to His birth shows that the Hebrew scholars believed that God’s Word in the Unseen Realm was always a manifestation of His will, an entity that was separate in some sense, but still Him. It defies words and exceeds human mental grasp; the discussion in Hebrew lore rested more on the necessity of practical use. In practice, God’s Word acted separately from Him, yet consistent with Jehovah’s divine moral character.

One of the best explanations is found in the copious footnotes and extra material posted online from Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s various books, starting with the Unseen Realm. His point is that the Word, once expressed, takes on a life of its own. This is actually necessary, since God’s own Presence would dissolve our fallen reality. He sends His Word into our world as the highest possible manifestation of His personality. It’s very personal.

If you are determined to study this for yourself, I’ll offer some links:

There is no precis for this question. I’m not going to chase it down for you because, if you don’t read it in context, you’ll miss too much of the necessary background. It’s a graduate level course of study in itself. My point here is that the Bible as a book is not actually “the Word of God” but a record of His Word. The Word Himself is a living being; the Bible is a written record. It came from fallible humans and has been handled and kept by them. It is not perfect in our western absolutist sense of factual detail. That whole idea is asking the wrong question. Rather, we are obliged by faith to take in the broad sweep of the Bible’s message and hold ourselves accountable to what it demands of us as a whole.

Perfection in the message is not a concern, obviously. The real issue is not a matter of human performance, but genuinely loving and submitting to our Creator. He isn’t paying that kind of attention to the details of performance. He wants your heart.

The real issue is the Person of Jesus Christ living in your soul. The flesh is fallen and untrustworthy — indeed, somewhat hostile to this invasive Presence — but can be disciplined. The intellect provided by the fleshly nature is the servant here, working to organize and implement what the Spirit of Christ demands. We can use our minds to serve a divine purpose, so long as we keep in front of us that the mind cannot be wholly trusted.

We can construct for our use a sort of Biblical Law, a mental organization of the message of the Bible. It’s for sure that no two of us would come up with the same results, nor should we expect it. There is no such thing as “propositional truth” in a fake realm of existence. This world is not ultimate reality by any means, but a provisional place with a very limited shelf-life.

Pretend for a moment that we could persuade the whole world to take seriously the need for constructing a Biblical Law, and that we could come up with a substantial agreement on the content. It would not change the fate of this world. This world will still be destroyed when Christ returns. It would still not be worth clinging to this life. A valid Biblical Law starts with a foundation of dismissing this mortal existence as of no great value. The Bible is inherently otherworldly.

If we could bring the whole world under a valid Biblical Law, it would not change that some of us are Elect and eternal, and the majority are eternally doomed. Election stood before mortals were born and mankind populated the earth. Nothing any human can do will change their individual eternal identity. God has chosen not to explain any of this, only to declare it as so.

The whole issue for the Elect is to recognize their election and embrace what is implied by it. We are supposed to live by His Word in order to glorify Him. The whole back story of politics in God’s courts in Heaven explains that our world exists for one purpose: This world is the proof of God’s contention with the rebellious Elohim Council members regarding the Devil. The Devil was confined to this world because he tried to scrape off some of the glory due God. Some of the Elohim Council sided with the Devil. You and I exist in our human form solely to glorify Him and prove His point that all glory is due Him, and no one else.

None of our dreams and goals in human ambition mean a damned thing. It will all be consumed in fire at the Return of Christ. We are nothing more than a proof, a modeling of truth, a simulation to demonstrate something way more important than our puny existence. The only thing we can possibly take with us into Eternity is divine favor, and that favor does not fall on anything rooted in human concerns. This world is trash, and the only treasure is what is inside our souls.

That treasure consists of our desire to please God. Nothing else matters; it is all — at best — mere packaging for carrying around our commitment to Him. It is critical to keep this in mind when we face the rising tribulation of God’s wrath on our world. It’s here and it’s only going to get worse. Somewhere out there ahead of us is a day when His wrath will be spent, but that will come after a majority of the world’s population is dead. It’s a great privilege to watch His hand at work.

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