NT Doctrine — Acts 9:23-43

Posted on February 11, 2023 by ehurst

I cannot improve on my previous commentary.

Where Paul had previously officiated the execution of Stephen, he now took up the work of Stephen himself, debating with the same overpowering logic in the synagogues. To have their chief enforcer now become their chief antagonist was more than the rabbis could accept. They plotted to catch Saul leaving the city so they could kidnap and murder him. But their plans leaked and Saul slipped out of town by means of a house built atop the wall, with a window facing outside, where he was let down in a large basket.

Returning to Jerusalem, Saul had a hard time convincing the church that he was one of them. Here we see the wealthy Cypriot, Barnabas, in action again, vouching for Saul. Saul told the story of his conversion, and his ministry in Damascus. For a time, he remained with the church there, literally carrying on where Stephen left off, debating in the Greek-speaking synagogues of the city. Again, there was a plot to murder Saul, and he was spirited away by the disciples, down to the port of Caesarea, from whence he returned home to Tarsus. However, there was no one else willing to take his place as the whip hand against the followers of Jesus, so the persecution waned somewhat. Thus, for a time, the disciples grew stronger and more numerous in Judea, Galilee and Samaria.

The vessel was prepared. Now it was for Peter to cross that last line with the gospel of Jesus Christ. As the senior shepherd, he visited all the congregations he could find. At one point, he stopped off in Lydda, on the Plain of Sharon, against the foothills northwest of Jerusalem. While there, he encountered Aeneas, a man paralyzed for eight years. After healing the man, the news spread across the Plain of Sharon, and many were moved by this noteworthy miracle to follow Jesus. Just down-slope from Lydda was Joppa, on the coast.

A rather popular woman named Dorcas there was famous for charitable acts. She sickened and died. Jewish custom called for the body to be washed upon death, then a period of mourning for three days before embalming. The disciples there hastily sent word and had Peter brought down. He noted the widows showing off the clothing Dorcas had made for them, as such women seldom could afford to eat, much less clothe themselves. Recalling the way Jesus did things, Peter had the house cleared of guests, then prayed in the quiet privacy before calling Dorcas back to life. He pulled her up from her deathbed and presented her alive again to the Christians there.

As we might expect, this so overwhelmed the community there that they had Peter stay awhile. The time was ripe. We note that Peter stayed in the home of a tanner, a fellow who would be outcast in Jewish society as one who handled animal carcasses, a profession regarded as unclean by Jews. In every way, the old walls of division were broken down, and those who previously had little hope were becoming children of God. The old Israel was passing away, and the New Israel was aborning.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on NT Doctrine — Acts 9:23-43

Cynicism Inducing Item

Posted on February 5, 2023 by ehurst

This is just a little tidbit that reminds us just how evil the US government can be. This time it’s from the Republicans.

Timeline: The DARE Program was born in Los Angeles in 1983, tasking LAPD street officers to show up at local public schools and teach some of what they had learned about the awful effects drug abuse has on people’s lives. Special Agent (DEA) Kiki Camarena was executed in 1985 in Mexico; the Red Ribbon Week program started in 1988 in his name. Right away, the DARE Program began using his name and embraced Red Ribbon Week. The DARE Program was injected into the US Department of Defense about 1989, first as a test pilot program. I was pulled into the program the next year, and the program was massively expanded over the next few years with the DoD.

Back in the late 1980s I was serving in the US Army Military Police in the Netherlands. Orders came down to put one of our patrolmen into the DARE Program. It put an experienced policeman into the school classroom to teach kids how to avoid getting involved in drug abuse. You can bet our station had experience with drug busts; we covered two international borders. The program was just a few years old back then, with big promotion from then President George Bush Sr. I was one of a handful to be in the first wave thrust into the plan to put troops into the DARE Program with Department of Defense Dependent Schools the year after a test run.

I got the job for my unit and went directly to the LAPD for training, where the program was born. I ended up taking the DARE Program to our local AFCENT School (including UK and Canadian kids), another school attached to a remote site in Coevorden, the small airbase at Kleinebrogel in Belgium, and the American Embassy High School in Bonn, Germany (with kids from other countries — Israel, Middle East, India, etc.). I loved doing that work. The kids appeared to think it was a big deal and I got lots of appropriate good vibes from the multiple command and support agencies above my unit. I believe I was the only MP in Europe working with international kids. Generals knew my name, and I had to be very careful setting precedents.

Part of the propaganda for the DARE Program was to mention Kiki Camarena. It really boosted the attention to the DARE Program. Camarena was a DEA agent who was tortured to death in Mexico while performing what amounted to spying on the drug trade sources there. The Red Ribbon Week is still pushed in schools in his name today.

Now, we need to remind ourselves that President Bush Sr. was head of the CIA before he was Regan’s VP. Then he succeeded Regan as POTUS. In other words, Bush was simply promoted to successively higher offices over the CIA, and still deeply involved the whole time. Well, it turns out Kiki Camarena was tortured and executed by the CIA. It seems the DEA discovered that the CIA was responsible for an awful lot of drugs coming into the US. Think about it: The President that started the DARE Program knew that the execution of that DEA agent was at the hands of his own CIA people when he made an executive order to boost the DARE Program.

Bush Sr. was hardly alone in this. I don’t doubt the program did some good; I saw the results first hand with those kids in the same small community over several years. I’m still proud of my involvement. But tell me that cynicism isn’t justified.

Addenda: If I were boasting, I would include all the awards, and list the hobnobbing names, and all the peripheral accomplishments. I mentioned only enough to give the context of my involvement in the timeline, and to indicate I knew what I was talking about. This thing reached an awful lot of kids. And I’ll tell you that the DARE curriculum is crappy. The only reason the program did any good at all is because of the people. Sometimes a police station would send their best, not simply their most expendable.

Posted in personal | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

NT Doctrine — Acts 9:1-22

Posted on February 4, 2023 by ehurst

Jewish prejudices were being dismantled bit by bit. The Messiah overcame their murderous rejection and unilaterally declared a new Kingdom of Heaven. He opened the door to Diaspora Jews, Samaritans, and the ritually impure Ethiopian Eunuch. Now He’s going to open the door to one of His greatest enemies.

It took Paul a some months to work through the residents of Jerusalem and its suburbs, arresting Christians; the Sanhedrin’s term for the movement at that point was “the Way” (meaning, of Jesus). Then he obtained a broad warrant for similar work in Damascus, with took some time to organize. This brings us up around 35 AD or later.

The entourage would have included some wagons for hauling prisoners and a team of the Temple Guard, mostly mounted on horses. It took a few days to travel east and north to Damascus. Bear in mind that Roman imperial policy was mostly typical of previous empires from farther east, in which each subject nation had at least some judicial authority over their own people throughout the empire. Paul couldn’t touch Gentile Christians, but Jewish Christians were fair game for arrest, trial and prison. Damascus hosted a very large Jewish population, so Paul’s mission was hardly out of the ordinary.

Despite the midday sun, the glory of the Risen Jesus was enough to blind Paul on his horse, and he fell to the ground. For a man who was at least bilingual in Greek and Hebrew Aramaic, it was very significant to him to recognize a Voice speaking to him in the latter. As a Pharisee, he believed in such miraculous events as this. He knew that, at a minimum, this had to be an angel of his God. The notion that he had been persecuting someone from Heaven was enough to rattle Paul; he was stunned at the thought. Learning that this Voice was Jesus ripped away from him everything he knew. Whether he lived or died, he could not imagine resisting at this point. He was conquered, his life the spoils of war.

All he had left at this point was to humbly ask what his new Master required of him.

Paul’s entourage heard the Voice, but saw nothing they could identify. They knew the chief officer of their mission was now totally incapacitated. They could not act without him, as the warrant would name Paul as the executor of the Sanhedrin’s will. They led him into town and had to leave him there and bring the caravan back to Jerusalem.

For about as long as Jesus lay in the grave, Paul was nearly dead himself. This tiny bit part played by Ananias is all we know of him. In obedience to his commission, he went up to the main street cutting through the center of the city, still visible today in the old city. The Lord’s command to Ananias makes clear that suffering was already a normal part of Christian life, and Paul was going to enter into that.

Upon the touch and prayer of Ananias, Paul’s eyes were opened, both literally and spiritually. All the lies of Judaism fell away like scales from his sight. Paul repented in baptism and became a student of the gospel. The message of Stephen was now his message. After some time listening and learning, Paul came out as a champion for the other side. Every Jew in Damascus knew why he had come. That he switched sides so suddenly, and so mightily, was shocking. This in itself was a grand testimony in favor of the message of Jesus.

In no time at all, Paul had stirred up all the Jews in the city.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on NT Doctrine — Acts 9:1-22

Pastoral Note on Resistance

Posted on February 2, 2023 by ehurst

If you regard yourself part of the Radix Fidem community, or consider me your friend, elder and/or pastor, this is an administrative note.

We have seen that, by now, the MSM is grudgingly admitting — just barely — that some of the COVID propaganda was false. On the other hand, the medical system still refuses to admit any part of that, as do significant portions of the government. However, we can all clearly see this was just a test of legal and social leverage to herd us into oppression. It was a poorly disguised attempt to seize a level and extent of control previously forbidden by law.

They are surely going to do it again. Whether it be another faux medical scare or something like the pagan Green idolatry agenda, there is no going back. The next time will be make or break for the globalists; we can all see that. The Radix Fidem way permits resistance.

1. When it comes to medical decisions, we actually encourage resistance. Your convictions will decide for you what form that resistance takes. Insofar as paper forms do any good, I’ll be glad to compose and sign any exemption request you want to make, and will play the role as your religious leader. That’s the least I could do. Furthermore, you need not come up with a specific explanation or reason. Your conscience is all the reason you need. We regard all medical treatment as optional, and that no human government or agency can justify making those decisions for you.

2. And of course, compliance with any pagan agenda, such as the Green earth worshipers, which has now become the official religion of many governments, is most certainly against our stated beliefs. We who are heart-led servants of the Creator are the true stewards of Creation; we recognize no other authority on that.

3. The wokism agenda is pagan, as well. It is foreign to a genuine biblical approach to human morals. The Covenant is not hard to understand; everything outside the Covenant of Christ is pagan by definition.

If the oppressors come up with a new angle, just ask — email me at ehurst@radixfidem.blog

Again: How you resist — tactics and strategy — is for you to decide. We offer no particular constraints, but will gladly advise you if you ask for it. And if you have some good ideas, we’ll be glad to hear them. However, there is no community program on that. Your conscience is your guide. By the same token, don’t expect anything to change. Resistance it not for the sake of changing the way others act, but is simply a testimony to what glorifies our Lord. We resist regardless of the outcomes on the ground.

Posted in administration | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Last Nail

Posted on January 31, 2023 by ehurst

I like this. It took too long to see it published. Be sure you scan the comments, too.

I’ve said in the past that the various disputes between factions in the first few centuries of Church History were almost entirely a matter of asking the wrong questions. Groups of men arrogantly insisted they were fit to rule on things no human could possibly know.

For example, the Nestorian Heresy was simply the matter that Nestorius dared to suggest that Mary was just a standard Jewish mom chosen for a unique task. The task was unique; Mary was not. This whole business of gilding the lily by retroactive declarations of doctrine on things that could not possibly matter was a serious distraction to the actual work of the Great Commission. The controversy over what Nestorius said or didn’t say became in some ways the basis for Mariolatry.

I realize how hard it is to back away from such things, to take a position outside such disputes. It must be really difficult, because the whole range of Christian religious institutions don’t seem to grasp the radical cultural difference between the West and the revelation of God. It doesn’t help that the Hebrew people really struggled with breaking themselves from pagan superstitions. Thus, we have to dig deep into the prophets and learn to think like a real Hebrew when reading the Torah and the New Testament.

Reverence for fallen femininity is pagan. It’s sponsored by Satan. He has a very major ranking demon in charge of it. That demon has been quite faithful and successful, because almost the entire range of Western Christianity is feminist. I realize how difficult it is to get that across because the vast majority of those who defend their churchly position keep trying to redefine feminism so that it doesn’t apply to them.

Let’s jump across a big pile of bullshit: As long as men cannot defeat their own lusts, and they maintain on obsessive interest in getting nooky, they are worshiping demons. The man who is able to keep his lusts nailed to the Cross is a real man.

I’m not talking about keeping it out of your mind. I’m talking about being able to operate as if satisfying your sexual urges has no priority. At what point of temptation can you no longer keep it in your pants, guys? Do you know your own weaknesses? It doesn’t require castration and feminizing yourself in order to do this right. It means putting up with the hellish howling of your testosterone so that it can be used for something worthy of Christ.

Nor does it mean refusing to deal with women at all. It means recognizing that a major false idol in American society is the vagina, and that the vast majority of the women you encounter will be devoted to that filthy idol. The culture you see around you is so deeply defiled by it that it’s almost impossible for anyone to get an image of what God considers “normal”. Almost the entire range of “Red Pill” manosphere talk is still trapped deeply in talking about how to get nooky on any terms at all, whether ostensibly Christian or otherwise.

How about learning not to give damn? Because as long as we don’t rise above that, damnation is what we have. If you have to compromise with the what the Bible calls idolatry of the vagina in order to get anything done, then you are doing the wrong things.

I won’t attempt to lay down for you what it means to escape the cult of the vagina. You won’t get any details from me. You need to come up with your own details, between you and the Lord. But if you don’t at least spend some time before the Lord in prayer about this, you will never break free from bondage. I will tell you it is a radical departure from American culture in particular, and western culture in general. It means becoming a complete alien being in our world. It means the high probability of doing without nooky for the rest of your life, guys.

What part of yourself have you not yet nailed to the Cross?

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Non-emergent-cy

Posted on January 30, 2023 by ehurst

During the first decade of this century, there was an awful lot of noise among the new generation of Christians about the emergent or emerging church. It’s gone pretty quiet lately, but the people and movement behind that label are still doing their thing.

If you aren’t familiar with the term “emerging church” then you might need to read up on it. This is another of those times when I find that Wikipedia gets it more right than wrong. And you still may not understand it. There’s a lot of subtle nuance and a lot of people outside the professional clergy don’t get it.

To be honest, I blame the emergents for that. They did okay explaining themselves within their own circles, those they emerged from, but not to the wider audience of curious folks outside their ecclesiastical traditions. Sometimes they tried too hard, but they were trying too hard to avoid the lock-in that comes with the traditional verbiage.

At any rate, the question has been asked: Is Radix Fidem any part of the emerging church movement?

No. There are some parallels, but the primary difference is that emergents are very distinctly involved in social action on one level or another. Radix Fidem avoids that very thing. We say that the world cannot be fixed; a critical element is to draw a distinction between ourselves and the rest of the world.

How you and I implement that distinction varies with the context. How different is different enough? I refuse to answer that for you. I can offer a range of suggestions, and tell you what I’m doing, but that is in no wise regulatory for anyone else. That’s one of the ways we are like the emergents, though: We reject centralized control.

I suppose at the root of things, the emerging church is still too western for me. The notion of an obligation to engage the world on its own turf is a western misreading of the Bible. Jesus and His disciples engaged their world in rather specific ways, and very few western readers notice that they distinguished between a presumed covenant society and one with no such presumption. Our western society is most certainly outside of any valid covenant. Thus, the way we engage it must be from a far greater distance than the way emerging church folks do.

But then, the emergents aren’t covenantal at all. That’s the real difference. They are emerging from a context, too much of which they still drag with them. From where I stand, it’s still seems just a branch of the same old traditional western churchianity. We are starting entirely from scratch. We do use some of the same religious terminology, only because it’s part of the language itself. The Hebrew minds of the Apostles were being expressed in Greek; Paul did the best job because he could think with both Hebrew and Greek minds. I’m doing my best to restore as much of the ancient Hebrew mind as possible and express it in English.

The emergent leadership often reference the term “postmodern” as the flavor of their efforts. Some of their work is very energetic, and at times almost frantic. Our work is aimed more at pre-modern, even ancient. We don’t believe the human situation has changed that much, only the broad human perception of it. God is not in a panic about things. Still, if you don’t understand them very well, you might think we are close to them.

Maybe now you’ll get the pun in the title.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

AI: Still Temporal

Posted on January 29, 2023 by ehurst

I’ve said before that the current trends in AI don’t present much of a threat in themselves. Rather, it’s how people use AI that can be dangerous to human existence. The actual technology itself is quite limited, compared to the nightmare visions so popular in our culture.

Google has recently whined about how ChatGPT is a threat to their business model. What they mean is that what the Google search engine does — the key to Google’s dominance in the marketplace — could face serious competition from how ChatGPT processes human queries on the Net.

That should be a clue to the constraints on AI. ChatGPT knows only what you tell it. Even if it were unleashed to absorb for itself what’s on the Net, it would still be limited to what the so-called experts think. It has zero ability to assess the accuracy and usefulness of anything. It can only parrot the expertise of humans.

Given the massive effort of evil humans to silence anything outside their very slanted partisan message for the masses, that spells the doom of any hope that this kind of AI can help them take over the human race. There are limits to how far official lies can be pushed before they very obviously break down in mass human awareness. Mass hypnosis has limits.

Granted, the path is still open for someone to code an AI that would operate from a Deep State mindset. That is, let the AI know everything the Deep State already knows, but have it programmed to lie to the public the same way the agents of the Deep State do. But we already have more of that than you might expect. Given how Deep State folks operate — I’ve had glimpses of it in the military — they can get their own version of any tool that exists outside of their immediate control. They already have their own version of ChatGPT.

And it is still limited to the very fallen human understanding of reality.

I’m hardly the only voice warning that our world is fallen. Not the natural world; that’s suffering the folly of human fallen dominance. Human existence in this universe is fallen; we are fallen. Our very existence in mortal form comes with a package of brokenness that makes our aspirations totally false. Everything that humanity as a whole longs to achieve is impossible. AI can never escape those broken urges.

The only way any human can know this is by God’s grace. The awakening to eternal truth rests entirely in God’s initiative. And that grace has one primary effect: It draws us to abandon fallen urges. Granted, most of us do a very poor job of laying hold of the power and drive to escape our fallen nature, but that’s what grace does.

Up to this point, computer hardware itself is incapable of sustaining the kind of computational load necessary for an AI to become sentient, to exercise free will in its own thoughts and wishes. The fundamental design of computer hardware aims at computational accuracy, not creativity. We first need the hardware before we can even look at building the software that can conceive of a free choice to act. Any actual sentience can only be emulated, and that’s what you get with things like ChatGPT. It can fool most people because most people are trapped in their own limited range of concerns.

None of this will prevent evil people from trying to create machine sentience. The image of someone so in love with their fallen capabilities and dreams that they would want to invest that character into what, in theory, could outlast their human mortality is valid as far as it goes. Most of us would lack the ability to discern consciously the difference between the person and the resulting machine output. But your moral convictions should tell you that such an aspiration is doomed one way or another. Something in the machine would be fundamentally short of such a dream.

Worse, it would systematize and lock in the fallen human trust in fleshly abilities. Real humans can be touched by the Spirit, but machines cannot. No machine can ever be heart-led; only God can create that faculty. A man-made contraption cannot connect with Eternity.

If you cling to this life, there is much to fear. Human existence is all you have, and it’s fragile. If you seek the divine route of escape from this world, then you’ll see that AI is just one more aspect of the Fall. It’s time is short.

Posted in sanity | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

NT Doctrine — Acts 8:26-40

Posted on January 28, 2023 by ehurst

The first treasure door had been opened. The gospel message had gone to Samaritans, and it was confirmed that Christ included them in His treasury of souls, because they received the Spirit of Christ. There were more doors to open. At this point, I rely on my previous commentary of this passage.

At the height of his success, Philip was commissioned to a special task. An angel ordered him to take the roads southward, and follow specifically the route between Jerusalem and Gaza. Most of it ran through dry terrain. On that road he met up with a very powerful man in a chariot. He was the Royal Treasurer for a nation we now associate with Nubia, northern Sudan. As a eunuch, this man would not be permitted full conversion to Judaism, but was faithful. Heading home from a worship trip, the man was reading Isaiah aloud. The chariot would have been rather slow moving, with a large entourage on foot for such an official. Philip would have been able to hear what the man was reading, and could simply walk fast to keep pace. Led by the Spirit, Philip did so, and asked if the man understood what he read. They would have conversed in Greek, and Luke quotes the official reading from the Septuagint (Isaiah 53:7-8). The man seized the opportunity for teaching at his own convenience.

The passage was known even then among Jews as a puzzling text about the Messiah. Philip pointed out that it was fulfilled in Jesus. For a eunuch who had struggled to find a path to embrace the God of Israel to now hear that he was welcomed as a full member of Christ was clearly joy beyond words to him. Philip’s message would have been an obvious call to repent and embrace Jesus as the final offering for all sins. The eunuch signaled his readiness to be baptized, showing that he understood the meaning of the Jewish ritual of repentance [and cleansing in order to stand before the Lord]. Once the act was complete, the eunuch was free to serve Christ as he had never been under ritual laws, and Philip was snatched away to a city some 20 miles (32km) north, called Azotus. Preaching all the way, Philip simply continued up the coastal highway through Joppa, as far as Caesarea.

Thus Luke shows that the command of Christ was fulfilled by stages. Once the Jewish leaders had made their final rejection of the Messiah, it was time to carry the Word farther. First came the Samaritans. Jesus had already preached among them, but now it was no longer mere repentance, but the power and presence of God Himself in every man who repents. The final stage of carrying the Word out to the larger world of Gentiles required a two-pronged approach. It needed the one man best fitted for the task, which was none of the Twelve, yet the senior Apostle must be the first to cross the barrier and bring the Spirit among Gentiles.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , | Comments Off on NT Doctrine — Acts 8:26-40

Ride Photos 21

Posted on January 25, 2023 by ehurst

Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County are supposed to be working on replacing some damage to the bridge over Crutcho Creek on Midwest Boulevard. I noted some two years ago when the road was blocked off that there never was any significant damage to the bridge, just that the guardrail was bent over. The contract has been let, I believe, and the repair should begin sometime during the 2023 calendar year. Meanwhile, I’ve been riding across the bridge ever since it was first closed. The system of barriers went from temporary safety striped wood on metal frames to K-rails, AKA Jersey Barriers. And then more K-rails were added, but it was never enough to hinder bicycle access, just make it a little more annoying.

A couple of weeks ago, I found one of the K-rails on the south end of the roadblock had been moved and a large chunk broken off (1st image). Notice on the ground the drag marks where the rail had been pushed. Off to the right of this, there was an oil trail running into the ditch, and the drag marks where a large vehicle had been removed. Stop and think about what kind of speed that vehicle was going to break a K-rail and move it that far. Worse, the vehicle would have been traveling in the opposite lane to strike at that angle.

For whatever reason, the K-rail was replaced with standing stripe barriers mounted in the asphalt surface of the road itself. The one that the car had to hit first before it hit the K-rail is still lying on the ground; this is three new ones. It was a little interesting to use my old traffic investigation skills to discern what had happened. And of course, it had no effect on my passage through this road block.

I’ve noted in the past that the geographical name of Draper Lake is East Elm Creek Reservoir. Draper is the name for the recreational feature and the large land confiscation to form a park. The reservoir sits astride East Elm Creek, filling a rather large network of feeder creeks that had created a rather wide and deep canyon. While riding on the bikeway around the lake the other day, it occurred to wonder if I could find the original creek bed below the dam. Lo and behold — it’s still there. What may be hard to tell is that a small bridge crosses the creek, right about where it makes a sharp right-angle turn out from under the dam. At one end of the bridge is a large culvert, of which only the bare end is visible, running straight back under the packed earth dam.

For people who are curious, the concrete companies that make Jersey Barriers have several different styles of that size, various lengths, and then multiple other sizes. For example, the Colorado Barrier is 5 feet high, the Alaska Barrier is 10 feet tall, and the Texas Barrier 6’8″. While I was serving in the Military Police we had to know what to call the ones commonly used by the military worldwide.

Posted in photography | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

NT-Doctrine — Acts 8:1-25

Posted on January 21, 2023 by ehurst

Jesus said that Peter had the keys to His Kingdom, in the sense that it was Peter’s mission to open up the treasury of souls to Jesus. Peter was slow to recognize that the treasury included Gentiles, as well. His Jewish prejudices died slowly, but his caution was not wrong. Peter’s role was to recognize when the Lord laid claim to His new treasures.

Stephen hinted at something that he did not get to say to the Sanhedrin. The accusation against him was that he said the Covenant of Moses had been retired, and that the Presence of God was no longer bound to the Temple. He said this in so many words during his recitation of Hebrew history. He accused the ruling council of resisting the Holy Spirit of God, implying that it was time to move beyond the national boundaries, since the nation had rejected the Messiah and His gospel message of bringing into His Kingdom the Gentiles.

This is what made them so very angry. They were already going to execute him one way or another, but his final moment of vision compelled them to hurry things along. Paul was very pleased with this execution. This Pharisee had a gift from strategic thinking, seeing clearly the implications of where things were going. Furthermore, being from Cilicia, Paul was almost certainly a member of the Freedmen Synagogue, since there were a good number of Cilician Jews there. He had heard Stephen preaching that this message had to go out into all the world.

It was the inclusion of the Gentiles that always triggered a Jewish revulsion. The idea that Jesus was the Messiah was a matter of debate; His power and resurrection was too well established in the Sanhedrin already. The need to reform laws and the way the Sanhedrin had ruled was something they could have agreed to discuss. Keep in mind that it was half Sadducee and half Pharisee, and the former did not endorse the oral traditions of the latter. But the very notion of including the Gentiles in anything that they regarded as an internal Jewish matter was wholly unthinkable. It was a bitter spite that went beyond mere racism; Gentiles weren’t actually human in their minds. Stephen’s emphasis on taking the gospel to those who spoke Greek was already too close to this.

So, while Paul did not participate in the hasty execution of Stephen, he got his turn later, driving out the members of the church most easily identified — the ones who spoke Greek. Getting rid of them would reduce the threat that they might start agitating for opening up the Temple grounds to Gentiles and pull down the existing ruling regime. The local Hebrew Apostles were left alone, because their kind could blend in more easily. But when the dragnet was unleashed in the city, there could be no legal dispute about whose jurisdiction these Hebrew-speaking believers were under. The Greek-speaking Christian Jews might have offer legal challenges on that score. Paul knew this all too well with his own Roman citizenship.

Stephen was buried and duly mourned, and then the church scattered across the region. And wherever they went, they preached the gospel of Jesus. Among the remaining six Greek-speaking elders, Philip was no slacker. He fled into the Samaritan territory and began preaching. The effects were off the charts, as it seemed most of the residents embraced his message. The miracles Philip performed gave the message a real punch. The whole city was celebrating.

In times past, Samaria had been plagued by a magician named Simon. The context indicates this man was a fraud, using trickery that looked like magic among people who lacked any significant science education. Simon himself probably didn’t really understand some of his tricks, and might have believed they were real magic. In those days there was a very busy market in such secrets, and this man had obviously invested quite a bit in his lore of tricks. He made it all back by taking fees for his “work” that made him a local celebrity, treated like nobility.

This Simon was touched by Philip’s message and embraced Jesus as the Messiah. If anyone recognized that the miracles were real, it was Simon the Magician. But it was the duty of Simon Peter to ensure that His Lord was actually present in these people. He would have remembered that time Jesus had ministered among the Samaritans starting with that encounter at Jacob’s Well. Keep in mind that the Samaritans had the Torah with a tiny few edits, and actually possessed a genuine piety most Jews couldn’t surpass. Jesus spoke well of them.

So when Peter with John’s help came to investigate, they began laying hands on the new Samaritan Christians to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Did they really belong to Jesus? This is what Jesus meant about Peter holding the keys; he assisted the risen Messiah in claiming His treasures. If they could receive the Holy Spirit, there was no sense denying that they were part of the Kingdom of the Heaven. It was not that the physical contact was necessary, but that the Lord needed His Apostles to directly experience the progression He had prophesied, that the gospel would go to the Jews first, then the Samaritans and then Gentiles in general.

Simon the Magician mistook this as something that fell into the business with which he had long experience. Would the Apostles sell him the secret to this wonderful magic, so he could keep his business model alive and actually do some good? Peter’s rebuke was wholly justified, and actually fairly gentle, all things considered. The former magician had a long way to go to understand his place in this Messianic Kingdom, and such a warning was necessary to jar him awake. Peter warned him against the temptation to be bitter about the loss of his former profession.

Once it was clear that Philip had done the right thing in preaching to the Samaritans, he with Peter and John worked the entire circuit of towns and villages in Samaria. Then they returned to Jerusalem.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on NT-Doctrine — Acts 8:1-25