NT Doctrine — 1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Posted on November 18, 2023 by ehurst

It was part of the arrogance of Greek philosophy that some would mock Paul’s teaching on the issue of resurrection. They asked how it was possible, and asked sarcastically if Paul could describe what kind of body one would have after rising from the grave. The folly here is the reliance on human wisdom to assess revelation.

Can anyone explain how a seed grows into a plant? At that time in history, the study of biology only got so far as to recognize that a seed must die; it must be completely disconnected from that which gave it life. The form you see when you put it in the soil looks nothing like what springs up. God is the source of all things; what springs from a seed is whatever God determines. Each kind of seed produces something different.

We have no problem recognizing that the flesh of various animals are quite different. Just so, we should easily recognize that our mortal bodies would be different from the eternal ones. With Greek philosophical assumptions making so much of human perfectibility, Paul points out that the concept of “glory” (i.e., perfection) would be quite different for an eternal body. We can’t possibly understand how things work in the heavens in simple terms of sun, moon and stars; we won’t be able to grasp the nature of eternal bodies while still in our mortal frame.

So it is with resurrection: You cannot understand it with your fallen mind. You’ll have to wait until it happens to possess faculties capable of grasping it all. We take this on faith as a revelation from God. It will be different, so different that we cannot imagine — death becomes life, shame becomes glory, weakness becomes power, mortal becomes immortal. The one defines the other. Returning to the image of First versus Last Adam: the first came to life (quoting from Genesis 2:7), but the second gives life.

In God’s plans, it is necessary that we first endure this awful mortal life in order to rise to eternal life. We must be dust before we can be spirit. All of us will be a First Adam before we can join the Last Adam in Heaven. The whole point is the distinction and boundaries between the two. The Heavenly Kingdom will take your reservation, but it will not be yours until you die.

Granted, there will be just a few who don’t have to face death, but we all must change and shed this human form. When Christ returns, those who are still alive will be changed where they stand. That will happen when the heavenly trumpet sounds, and that’s when the dead will also be changed. Paul quotes from Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14, both mocking the power of mortality to hold us imprisoned. The Giver of Life will return and vanquish mortality. There will be no more goading and suffering.

The goad that death uses against us is how powerless we are against our sinful nature. We deserve to die. And the power of our sinful nature points to the presence of moral law in all of Creation, condemning us by a standard we are unable to meet. But God is not going to leave us like this. He has offered a triumph over sin and death through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Don’t be shaken by the doubts of human intellect. God’s promises do not fail. Face the sorrows with aplomb; keep working with overflowing excellence in the assurance that you aren’t wasting effort.

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Strategy for the Coming Wars

Posted on November 15, 2023 by ehurst

In the past, I have written about my perception that the globalists are using the Zionists, while the Zionists are using the globalists. Each intends to steer things to their advantage as the situation develops, and betray the other.

Notice who I’m picking on here. I said Zionists, not neocons nor the Straussians. Those two groups have their own agenda that could overlap with the Zionists from time to time. If you want to know more about the differences between the Zionists, neocons and Straussians, I suggest you read this analysis by Thierry Messan. I’ll warn you that it’s hard to separate neocons and Straussians. The latter is a cult (very nearly identical with The Cult I refer to); the neocons are a political movement that is partly steered by the Straussians. The Zionists include a bunch of American church folks whose voting, political ardor and money are being used by the Straussians and neocons.

The US (whether globalist or Zionist) isn’t actually supporting the modern State of Israel. Rather, they are supporting Netanyahu and the IDF (and related agencies), who is actually an American Jew. He grew up here, went to school here, and went to Israel in order to implement his vision of what should happen. He’s quite happy to see Israel destroyed, but not until he has gotten as close as possible to his neocon vision. Neither the Straussians nor the neocons wanted an Israel in the first place, and would be happy to see it destroyed. Since it exists, they are using Israel to get certain things done.

You can get a much better idea of the “Big Plan” here at Unz Review. While I might waffle on some of the details, I believe that Michael Hudson and Ben Norton are on the money. You can watch the video, but Hudson is not a gifted speaker. Reading the transcript below the video is actually likely to be faster.

If the US can just get someone to react, like Hezbollah, then it will justify attacking Iran, because every effort to support the Palestinians is uniformly blamed on Iran in the MSM. You’d have to know a lot about the conflicts between Shiites, Sunnis and Alawites to realize just how ludicrous are such claims in some cases. And if our government can get Iran to block the Straight of Hormuz, it grants the US full control of energy for the just about the whole world.

As Hudson notes, the US is trying to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, and wants to fight China to the last resident of Taiwan, and to fight Iran to the last Israeli. The destruction would leave the US government globalists in charge — or so they think. The neocons and Straussians would get what they want: Let the globalists do the dirty work, and then let them take the fall via some kind of courts system.

I’ve oversimplified it just a bit, so if you want to understand better, check out the article on Unz Review.

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NT Doctrine — 1 Corinthians 15:1-34

Posted on November 11, 2023 by ehurst

There is one fundamental and radical difference between the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman culture: The former asserted that a separate spirit realm existed, whereas the latter asserted that this world is all there is. If you can get it through your head that there is an eternal realm separate and distinct from this world, then there are certain obvious logical consequences of that belief. Paul struggled against the Corinthian mental habits of their old pagan assumptions.

This passage begins with Paul restating an outline of the gospel message. This is the message that gives any church it’s whole identity. The format of the message is rather like some of the Greek mythology, a story of some key figure who experienced and/or accomplished certain things. In this case, we have Christ who died as the sacrifice for the sins of humanity. It was prophesied long before in the Hebrew Scriptures. His body was buried and on the third day He rose again, also predicted in those same Scriptures. He appeared to Peter, and then the rest of the Twelve. Later, He appeared alive to a huge crowd of some 500 followers, most of whom were still living. The implication is that you could at that moment go back and interview them as to what they witnessed personally.

Next, Jesus appeared to His brother James, and some others who had become apostles. Lastly, as if Paul had been born at the wrong time, Jesus also appeared to him after He ascended. Jesus is still alive! Paul goes on to testify of his unworthiness, and how he had to play catch up by working harder than everyone else who knew Jesus in the flesh. But this gospel message became the standard, the core of what all the other apostles preached. Would they prefer to ignore Paul? Fine, any other Christian apostle would teach the same thing. This story was still being shared as factual, historical events, wherever one might find His followers.

So, how is it that some of the church members in Corinth still insisted that humans cannot rise from the dead? Note: Because the Greek language lacks actual words for the whole concept, Paul uses common Greek terms figuratively. The word for “resurrection” actually means to rise from sitting or lying down. But he’s consistent, because he refers to believers who die as “asleep”, instead of using the Greek term associated with passing into the mythical Underworld. However, he’s quite blunt in saying that if dead bodies do not rise, then Christ is not risen and the whole gospel message is a lie.

There is no reason to continue as a church, and Paul can just go home and retire to an easy life.

But no, Christ is alive. He is the first fruit from the harvest of souls that have merely fallen asleep. Then Paul launches into symbolism playing the image of Adam off against Christ. Adam symbolizes our human fleshly existence, and Christ symbolizes our eternal spiritual destiny. Christ is then compared to an Ancient Near Eastern royal heir who went out to conquer and pacify the rebels in His Father’s realm, and will then return triumphant with the tokens of their allegiance or destruction.

Don’t miss the point here: This is a somewhat veiled reference to the rebellious angelic beings who have been leading mankind astray since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Once Jesus has humbled these beings through His army of followers, He will signal to His Father the completion of All Things. This, too, was prophesied, as Paul quotes Psalm 8.

This faithful Son will then surrender all things at His Father’s feet, presenting to the Father a fully united realm under His authority. The last rebel to be brought to heel will be death itself. That is, the mere fact of human mortality will be ended. We will all be revealed in our true eternal natures.

Paul reminds the Corinthians of a ritual practice they had been observing — “baptism for the dead”. It shouldn’t be a mystery. It’s another element of the Old Testament that belongs in the New. Even today, Jews recognize the sacred duty to their dead kin in preparing their bodies for burial. Of course, this makes one ritually impure, requiring a ritual washing (Hebrew mikvah, Greek baptizo) in order to restore that purity. It’s a very mystical thing in Judaism even now.

It was the same for early Christians. We still love them even if they are dead. The original doctrine in the Old Testament was that the body would be reused in the Resurrection. Christ didn’t leave His body in the grave, nor will you and I. It will be reconstituted regardless of what happens to the remains. If we honor a fellow believer who died by handling their remains with respect for a body they’ll need again, we should be willing to take a bath before coming back to church. Without a hope of resurrection, there’s no point to such honor, nor ritual bathing. We could just toss the bodies out with the garbage and be done with it.

Paul then goes on to mention how he is at risk of being killed every day. If there is no resurrection, why bother? That fracas at Ephesus, where Paul felt like a gladiator facing wild beasts? He would reap none of the glory, nor any purse for his survivors. What would be the point if there was not at least some hope of eternal life?

Paul quotes a very popular philosophy in suggesting they all should just eat, drink and be merry, because they could die at any moment and that would be the end of it. This was apparently a big thing in Corinth. Skipping across a lot of thoughts that should be obvious in this context, Paul quotes a famous Greek poet (Menander) and warns that hanging out with that kind of people would destroy any hope for moral goodness in this life.

Too many members of the Corinthian church were dragging around their old philosophical assumptions, as if God had never touched their lives. They didn’t seem to know Jehovah at all. It was not a utilitarian question of coming to church to feel good about yourself. If that’s all you got from it, stay away. We are sacrificing this life, which is worth less than nothing, in favor of an eternal existence beyond words on the other side of the grave.

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Random Photos 15

Posted on November 11, 2023 by ehurst

Just a few random shots from recent rides.

I recall seeing this place gutted a few years ago. I believe there was an outbuilding removed, because the yard wasn’t this large. Sometime since then, the place was rebuilt and is now occupied again. This is part of the old wealthy neighborhood just north of our Downtown OKC. Some of the biggest bigshots in city and state government live in this area in historic homes built when OKC was just a small town.

When we moved a couple of miles south, my habitual routes changed, of course. I used to run west on Reno Avenue to Vickie and then north to NE 4th Street to get to the link up of several bikeways. This is a picture of NE 4th looking westward toward Downtown OKC. I was standing on the bridge over Cherry Creek and the colors of the trees as they just began changing struck me. In the distance, the street turns sharp right to cross railroad tracks, so it appears to end on those tracks.

The prolonged lower water levels at Draper Lake have changed the flora significantly along the shore. There are new growth grasses and shrubs were previously it was bare shoreline. This is a cove along the bikeway route on the eastern shore of the lake. In years past, I could dismount here and walk down to the water’s edge. On this day, I would have had to wade through a lot of dry undergrowth to get even close to the water. So many things have changed due to low water levels. It’s not even the same lake.

The same Draper bikeway drops below the dam, coming from the eastern shore. The fall colors hit just over the past week in these parts. The dominance of scrub oak means the colors are muted, since they go from green almost directly to brown. There are several species of oak in Central Oklahoma, so there are slight variations in the brown, ranging from almost yellow to a deep purple-brown. However, the grass put on its winter coat last week, and very little green is left except in the wettest areas, or among the shorter grasses.

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What Humanity Deserves

Posted on November 7, 2023 by ehurst

Even folks who follow my writings struggle with getting a clear image in their minds: We are fallen creatures. In our present mortal form, the default divine justice is a short miserable life and a lingering painful death. That’s you and me and every human living on this planet. That some escape this is a miracle.

There are no innocent Israelis or Palestinians. Children are not born innocent; they are born with no moral development. The doctrine of Age of Accountability is a man made lie inserted into western Christian religion. We are born into this mortal world under a Curse of death.

Without any apology, I will stand with Scripture and assert that there some born Elect, and some born destined to eternity in the Lake of Fire. We cannot possibly comprehend how that came about, but it is the Word of God, and we are obliged to walk in it. Moral development does not change your eternal status. Furthermore, the same Scripture warns that some factors of our lives here are also under divine predestination. Some humans are chosen for a highly deprived existence, such as the Palestinians, some Third World nations, and people with significant disabilities. Others are granted more pleasant conditions. God chooses; you are responsible to Him for how you deal with His choices.

What moral development can change is how you deal with His choices. Within the range of what God grants to you, you can make the most of the life you have. How long you live, how prosperous you may be, and whether you are at peace with the end when it comes — relative outcomes are the variables. The Covenant of Christ is how you stake your claim in the relative blessings. The only use we have for this life is glorifying the Creator and seizing however much peace He offers us in our individual context.

Get this: While it may not be good human justice, that massive numbers of people (including children) are slaughtered is good divine justice. In just a couple of decades, most of the human race will be wiped out. It’s coming. What we face now in terms of political and economic collapse does not compare to the coming slaughter of humanity at the hands of God. Yes, it is grim and ugly, but that is our reality. God does not share our emotional reactions to the stupidity and evil we see in this world. He has His own way of looking at it, and our best hope is to seek His viewpoint.

Our best hope for dealing with the war in Israel is to stand back and let God do His work. I cannot help you turn off your emotional reactions. That’s between you and God, but I will not listen to any impassioned plea to make any activist noises in support of one thing or another. What I will do is condemn the common human response to what God has decreed and declared. You want change? Embrace Christ as the Living Law of God. Whatever change that brings is all you can possibly ask.

Now, if you really insist on doing more than your own individual redemption, then get busy organizing a covenant community. God will not sponsor your activities that take place outside of Biblical Law. You cannot claim to stand for the Lord without those boundaries. Once you have a valid covenant nation, then you can seek the Lord for various ways to protect and defend them. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are under any valid Covenant covering. Their fates are not your concern.

Addenda: Are there Christians in Gaza? Maybe. I don’t have to accept anyone’s claim at face value. I am commanded to be discerning about that. The Parable of the Good Samaritan clarifies the issue of who is my “neighbor” — which is a Hebrew term for “covenant brother/sister”. If they act like Christians in accordance with Biblical Law, then they would pay more attention to what Jesus told His disciples to do regarding the coming Roman siege of Jerusalem. Genuine followers of Christ should have left Gaza already, or have already accepted their fate and are at peace with God. Christ flatly denied that human political considerations meant anything to His Kingdom. I will not make common cause with those who do not obey His Word.

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NT Doctrine — 1 Corinthians 14

Posted on November 4, 2023 by ehurst

Let’s remind ourselves once more that the earliest churches were all patterned on Jewish synagogues. That is, churches were simply Christian synagogues. The men sat down front and could interact with the speaker. Women sat in the back half of the audience, typically with the children. The church at Corinth was not small; it could not be an informal meeting as you might have with only a couple dozen present. Thus, the Corinthian church needed to understand what “formal” should look like in a Christian synagogue. Some of the guidance in this chapter reflects the needs of a formal meeting.

The anthropology of the Ancient Near East was uncommon in Asia Minor and Europe. The former believed that our spirits were trapped in fleshly bodies, whereas the latter typically denied the existence of eternal spirits. There’s no doubt Paul had correctly taught them, but they still had mental reflexes toward the old pagan assumptions. The teaching in this chapter reemphasizes the Hebrew assumptions; what he writes here makes no sense otherwise.

You can learn self-sacrificing love, so pursue it consciously, but spiritual gifts are rooted outside the conscious awareness. The only thing you can learn is to rein in the flesh and compel it to submit to the process. The gift of prophecy requires the cooperation of the conscious mind, but it is aimed outside the mind. Praying in tongues bypasses the conscious mind, but stays inside yourself. You can turn it off, but you cannot inspect the contents at all. The Corinthians were all excited about this ecstatic utterance thing that gave such an emotional boost, but did no one else any good, for the most part. There’s nothing wrong with praying in tongues, but prophets are much more useful to the rest of the church body.

Paul uses a parable of musical instruments to represent the tongue. If you don’t know how to play one, all you make is noise. There is no skill in esoteric tongues. But a skillful player can make instruments speak, as it were. The same tongue in prophecy is a blessing to everyone. If tongues is all you have when you come to the church meeting, then pray that you or someone else can interpret so everyone gets to share the gift.

Nor is this an either/or kind of thing. Paul prayed and sang in tongues outside of his conscious control, and then prayed and sang with his conscious will. In the end, it’s better to say just a few words of inspired prophecy than to natter all night in tongues. We keep coming back to the question of what the purpose of gathering at church meetings is. It’s a family time together. Do we let the kids hog all the attention, yacking interminably about all the things special to them? No, we need some time for adults who will seek to build up each other.

Paul quotes from Isaiah 28. In that passage, the prophet warned the nation’s leaders that they didn’t somehow graduate from the Covenant. Any prophets who called for the nation to return were mocked as being childish. God said, “Since they won’t hear my Word, would they prefer to hear invaders speaking a language they don’t know at all?” How does that apply here?

The nation’s leaders did not believe. The invading forces speaking in a foreign language were a sign, a warning from God for them. That’s how God operates. Christians speaking in languages they could not have possibly learned would be impressive to unbelievers, but it should have been rather common in the church. Do that outside of the church meetings. Speaking a word of prophecy was God’s love letter to those inclined to listen; it was not a gift for strangers’ consumption. When the church gathers, don’t act like excited children showing off new toys. Act like mature adults savoring the voice of God that they can understand.

When a seeker comes to the church meeting, they don’t need a bunch of ecstatic demonstrations. They’ll think you are on drugs. But if everyone testifies of God’s Word, there is a much better chance they will hear something that touches them, because they’ll understand the words. If the Lord is going to convict them, He’ll do it through a message that hits them between the eyes to get to their hearts.

So, in the formal setting of the large Corinthian church, keep the demonstration of tongues to a minimum, and even then, only with an interpretation so everyone is blessed. Otherwise, keep your tongue in your mouth. If some would like to test their gifts of prophecy, keep it few, and let the mature evaluate. Don’t let someone drone on and on. If someone is speaking a word and someone else gets a sudden inspiration, let the first one wrap it up and the new word can be shared.

Whatever they do, Corinth must conform to the standards. Women do not speak up in large church gatherings. It’s not that they cannot share their gifts, but that they cannot jump up and ask questions during the teaching sessions. They can ask their male covering when they get home. Women cannot teach men, and in synagogue traditions, questions were often a means to making a teaching point. This restriction is explained elsewhere; it’s from God, not from sentimental customs dreamed up by mere men.

Apparently the Corinthians balked at this. They kept forgetting they were being welcomed into a blessing that belonged first to the Hebrew people and was rooted in the ancient eastern world where God first revealed Himself. God chose that context and affirmed certain aspects of it as consistent with His divine nature. The gospel did not originate in Corinth with Corinthian customs. People who considered themselves spiritually mature should be the first to uphold this standard.

To sum up, Paul said they should pray for gifts of prophecy, yet not forbid anyone speaking in tongues at church. Just keep the meeting in good order.

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The Harvest Has Come

Posted on November 3, 2023 by ehurst

I believe it’s time to restate some things people so easily forget.

Biblical Law stands on the character of the Lawgiver. His Law is an expression of Himself. In truth, Jesus Christ is the Living Law of God. The words in the Bible are merely a contextual reflection of who Jesus is. There is no such thing as “propositional truth”. The concept of “truth” is Jesus the person, and He is a Person with all the same personality and dynamics as a human, but without the flaws. The Bible defines “perfection” not as stasis or immutability, but in terms of maturity and predictability of response.

The most important point is that you not see Him in stasis, but living and approachable. It’s not that you are permitted approach Him, but that you are commanded to do so — on His terms. And you cannot approach Him without feudal submission. The words “He is Lord” should indicate to you that you must come as His vassal. Otherwise, you have not come to Him at all. Face down, mortal.

If humans come up with laws and governments without His permit, then they are not valid. It’s not a question of the particular government, but the established requirements of Biblical Law. By definition, democratic governments are invalid. By Biblical Law, the starting point is that no government has any business poking around in your personal life unless that government is related to you by blood or covenant. Any other government is damned.

We don’t regard them with contempt, but with pity. They are fighting God.

Yes, Romans 13 says we should avoid provoking even damned governments. But if you keep reading in that same chapter past the first few verses, Paul says that your sacrificial compassion for others is the whole of your obligation. The image is giving human governments the worldly things they demand, but ignoring any demand that encroaches on God’s turf. You’ll say inside yourself: “Fine, is this what you really want? Take it; my Lord shall provide all my needs.” You play along with the situation until it crosses certain boundaries; your first loyalty on earth is God and His invisible spiritual Kingdom, your covenant brothers and sisters.

Once any human government crosses that invisible boundary, it becomes a matter of conviction how you respond. The broad teaching of Scripture is to avoid confrontation, unless there is a specific prophetic message you must deliver. The default is to play along, as that’s our testimony of divine patience with fools. I hope you understand that God’s patience is longer than the typical human lifespan. However, there are moments when He might provoke your spirit to address folly as folly for His glory.

The point: The US government has never for one moment met God’s approval. It is by no means a covenant government. This is not a covenant nation. You should never expect any government policy or action to meet with God’s approval, except wholly by random accident. The US government is under the dominion of Satan and his ilk. It is inherently evil, so don’t be surprised when our government does stupid things. All the citizens who swear allegiance to this government have forfeited their lives to the recompense of that folly.

American society has never been Christian by any biblical definition. People who suggest that Christianity had any strong influence in US history, those people have no clue about what “following Christ” means. It’s not enough to be sentimentally attached to Christ; you must obey His Living Word. It’s not enough to implement by human logic the words in any English translation of the Bible. You must understand it from the Hebrew mystical angle in which it was written. American Christianity clearly does not understand His Word, much less obey it.

In the Bible, there is a reference to “in that day” — it refers to a Day of Wrath. God is coming for an inspection visit, much like the day He came to inspect Sodom and Gomorrah. The context is different, but the moral reality is the same. At no point during the coming months should you rejoice at anything our government, nor any single government official, says or does. They are uniformly under the same judgment of wrath, and only a very public repentance can represent a blessing of any kind. I don’t see that happening.

I shouldn’t have to explain that the modern State of Israel is a satanic abomination to God. It’s sole purpose is to confuse and deceive, to lead the nations to destruction. An awful lot of God’s Elect have been deceived, quite successfully. This is a time of apocalypse. It will be rather slow up until the moment it all breaks apart. Because the resources and people involved are massive beyond comprehension, it will take a little time to hit the ground.

It is quite likely that some parts of this country will not suffer nearly as much as others. Where you live may not see much of the effects because it doesn’t depend too much on the viability of the system. Count that as a blessing of divine favor. But it’s hard to imagine that life will simply go on as before. This is not like those times in the past when some small part of the system broke. This time, the whole thing is going to break. If not the humans, then the demonic beings in charge of human governments have decreed destruction for this system. The harvest has come; the fruits of rejecting Biblical Law are ripe.

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Another Dose of Holy Cynicism

Posted on October 31, 2023 by ehurst

You aren’t cynical enough.

Most of my readers will understand that globalism is a false religion. What some may not realize is that a great many globalist leaders are cynically using it for their own enrichment. In other words, the sleazy corruption of the Bidens is so common that it constitutes the rule, not the exception. Almost everyone you point to as a globalist leader is actually just a thug using it as a false front, riding it like a horse they will abandon once they’ve gotten their hands on the prize money.

If you read the alt-media avidly, you may not realize that, in this vein, both Putin and Xi are globalists. They both have published solemn documents declaring their loyalty to the globalist vision, and committing their respective countries to promoting the globalist dream. They aren’t good guys at all. Rather, they are simply far more likely to succeed than the western globalists.

When I tell you that Russia will win in Ukraine, it’s not because I’m not a fan of Russia. It’s simply the obvious conclusion based on the situation. It will not make the world a better place; it will merely give the economic opportunities to countries that have suffered under western domination. In other words, the only thing that changes is who gets the loot.

The alt-media is no better than the MSM. Each is cheering on their own benefactors. The payments may be delivered in odd ways, but it’s all about that sponsorship. The trick when reading them is to keep track of what the media of any flavor is going to lie about, and pay attention to the stuff on which they are less likely to deceive. Know where they are coming from.

For example, Brandon Smith at Alt-Market. He wants to save America. He might be willing to accept saving only a portion of the real-estate, but he is very much a fan of the Enlightenment vision of Classical Liberalism (i.e., libertarianism), which is materialistic and greedy as Hell itself. It’s the dream of a middle-class America and an idealistic culture that never really was. He is not a Christian by any definition.

Yet, in a recent article, he correctly identifies why the COVID takeover of the country failed — the conservatives weren’t on board, and they outnumber the progressives. However, he warns, this crap in the Middle East is very much a conservative thing, and they would not hesitate to back martial law in support of mobilizing the nation to support Israel. He rightly decries this, but for a lot of wrong reasons.

In pursuit of this WW3, you’ll see a lot of former champions of free speech suddenly promote silencing anyone who dares to be non-Zionist. I don’t know if their censorship agitation will succeed, but they will try. As you surely know, Radix Fidem is not Zionist. I’m prepared to see this blog shut down by outside forces. I’m still watching the situation, looking for champions with leverage to keep the Net open to everyone.

I don’t expect much. Rather, I have faith that my Father will provide what suits Him and His glory, and we will embrace it as His will. There is still so very much to do.

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NT Doctrine — 1 Corinthians 13

Posted on October 28, 2023 by ehurst

One thing Paul never had to say to the church at Corinth was that they were free from the Law. This was probably the one teaching they understood best. Unfortunately, it became the excuse for an awful lot of extreme behavior. In the chapters leading up to this, he had been hammering them for taking their liberties too far. He wanted them to learn self-constraint for the sake of our witness. Thus, he gives them a motive they cannot ignore: sacrificial compassion. In this context, that’s the meaning of the Greek word agape.

It should be obvious that the Corinthians got hung up on speaking in tongues, much as Charismatics do today. Thus, Paul starts off mentioning that gift, and notes that without sacrificial compassion, it’s just noise. Also similar to our day, they made much of prophecy and words of wisdom and knowledge, and he even throws in miracles. Those gifts without compassion make you useless to the Kingdom of Heaven. Even people who really do understand that our lives in this world are not worth much can miss the point. Suffering and sacrifice itself is not a virtue; it has to come from compassion.

How do we recognize love? It puts up with a lot of crap, tries to be useful, and does not covet what God gives others. Love doesn’t talk about itself or inflate its social reputation. It is not rude or defensive, and is not easily offended or resentful. It does not snicker at the misfortune of others but celebrates when someone finally figures things out. Compassion will do what it takes, covers the costs, trusts God to work through circumstances, and never quits.

Compassion outlasts human life. All those gifts of the Spirit will end with this world. The best we can hope for in this life is always lagging behind the potential. We will always struggle and come up short, but somewhere out there is a fully developed spiritual condition that we shoot for. It’s as if we are children; there’s only so much we can even understand, much less do. When the day of redemption comes, the Lord will make us spiritual adults. Or maybe it’s like seeing God only through a mirror, looking around a corner. Someday, we will see Him face to face.

This life cannot measure up, nor can we. The whole point is to know the Lord as clearly as He surely knows us. In this life we have been granted faith, confidence and compassion to carry us through to The End. The most powerful gift is that loving self-sacrifice that nailed Christ to the Cross.

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Whence Antisemitism

Posted on October 27, 2023 by ehurst

Someone asked a much more involved question than the title, but it works out about the same. Here goes.

Inasmuch as covenant believers deal with the outside world, we start with the essential idea that we are going to treat them all the same. White, black, red, brown, yellow — whatever, it doesn’t matter. What matters is faith in Christ and His Word. Everyone else is on the same level of damnation. They need Jesus. And that includes Jews, as far as we are concerned. They are most assuredly outside the Covenant of Christ, and no other covenant matters. In Christ, all your human identities are nailed to the Cross. We stop being white, black, red, brown or yellow. And Jews who embrace the Messiah stop being Jews.

Christ pays the debt of all your human sin. You owe no further debt but to show His divine compassion. Naturally, we tend to repay those imaginary debts because that’s how we testify of our Lord’s greatness, showing that we put no great value on the things of this world. And we forgive others who might owe us things on the human level. But in Christ, you and I have no debt to Jews for anything that happened to them in the past. Jesus paid that debt; they are the ones who refuse His blood redemption.

The whole purpose of the ADL is that Jews are not the same as everyone else. They are superior, not to be held to the same standard as Gentiles. They deserve a higher privilege, to be free to get away with things Gentiles do not get away with. The whole meaning of “antisemitism” is treating Jews as equals, holding them to the same standard as the rest of humanity. Jews assert that they alone are human; Gentiles are not human, not equal to them at all. We are animals.

Now, when anyone demands special treatment, such that they assert they are not equal, but superior — to the degree they make that demand, so much do they forfeit equal treatment. Now it becomes morally obligatory to treat them with special contempt. They have evinced a will, and likely a plan, to subject the rest of the world to their dreams of being special. They are a threat by their own admission.

Jews cry out to be treated equal when they have a disadvantage. Once they have any advantage at all, it becomes “antisemitism” to demand equality with them.

In the Covenant of Christ, we generally avoid getting involved in human politics. We let God handle that stuff, and I can assure you, He has passed all of that off to lesser beings. When Christ closed up the Mosaic Covenant on the Cross, that was the end of God’s poking around in human political affairs. For example, this being a fallen world, Satan is the lord of all fallen humans, by default. That means that all human politics is run by Satan. Since Jews, along with the rest of the world, are not serving the Messiah, all of their political engagement in human affairs is under the authority of Satan. They only think they are special.

So, we make no plans to get involved in the human conflicts between Jews and Gentiles. Let them kill each other all they like; there’s nothing we can do to change the value system of fallen mankind, and that includes Jews. Only the divine miracle of redemption, on the basis of Election, can raise your conscious awareness to that higher level of eternal affairs. Not only do we have zero commission from God to get involved, but we are pointedly warned not to.

But because of their peculiar insistence on being regarded as superior, we always treat Jews with suspicion. We are always watchful, expecting them to come up with something that will insult and degrade our Lord, the Messiah they rejected. I’m not suggesting hatred for them, but cynicism. And it’s holy cynicism. We give them room to act more like Christ, or to at least be treated the same as all the other cursed fallen humans. Once they demonstrate any sense of superiority, they warrant keeping a watchful distance. Exclude them from anything that really matters, because they carry the defilement of serving their true master.

And we’ll do the same for any other ethnic identity.

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