Everything He Taught

Posted on November 3, 2022 by ehurst

I’m working with the Radix Fidem community on a new project. Before the window of opportunity closes on Internet publishing, we want offer our message to a wider audience. This won’t be just me writing stuff for a blog; there will be some input from others before publication. We hope to have an account on some of the popular social media services calling attention to the articles.

Given what we believe about the Covenant and its boundaries, we won’t distinguish between evangelism and outreach to churches. The message will be the same, since the vast majority of the human race lives outside the safe haven of the Covenant of Christ. We don’t accept the current usage of terms like “saved” and “lost” and the various definitions offered by mainstream churches.

The gospel message says life sucks, and it’s supposed to suck. This mortal human existence is not what God intended for us, but we have to live with it. We hope to share with people what God says about living in His Creation and how to cope. We promote the idea that humans have limited agency in this life. We didn’t choose to be born in this fallen existence, but we do have some choices about what to do now that we are here.

We recognize that, for reasons we’ll never understand in this life, the majority of the human race will never embrace the gospel message. But we cannot possibly know whom God has chosen to touch and hear the message. We can only know whether we ourselves as individuals are eternal. So the approach we use is to assume everyone we encounter could be someone chosen for Eternity, and we need to set them free to find their divine heritage.

The gospel message is summed up as everything Jesus taught. We hope to do a better job of putting His teaching within the proper context so that people can embrace it more honestly. That message includes drawing boundaries that would serve to minimize and mitigate our temptations and maximize obedience to what Jesus taught.

The best way to spread the gospel is to live it in such a way that others notice the difference. It’s not inherently confrontational, but sometimes that’s a tactic we need to use. Mostly it’s just a matter of letting the differences call attention to themselves. Generally, that’s provocative enough. Our Lord has promised that people with an eternal calling will be drawn to that kind of living. They are the only ones we can help.

It’s not a question whether everyone drawn for any reason has the eternal gift. Nor is it that everyone eternal should be drawn. We embrace those who seek to share in our blessing for whatever reason. The expectations of the Covenant don’t waver. We presume to work with God to awaken convictions and guide the flesh to obedience.

This is what Jesus taught, and what He referred to in the Great Commission. When He mentioned “baptism” it wasn’t so much the ritual He meant, but what it symbolizes: Embracing the revelation to clean up your life. It was Hebrew parallelism with the phrase “teaching them to observe everything that I taught you.” The gospel message includes the orientation and assumptions about reality that arise from the Hebrew culture that Jesus tried to resurrect for His nation. It’s all one package.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Everything He Taught

Can They Hear?

Posted on November 2, 2022 by ehurst

It won’t matter who wins elections now. The system is going to collapse, regardless.

We knew this was coming. How many of us have taken any steps to prepare? Yes, that refers in part to having a stock of supplies and shelf-stable necessities. More importantly, it refers to being ready for a complete shift in your everyday activities.

Do you understand that the current use of the Internet will end? It’s not just the clamping of government and corporate controls in censorship, but the likelihood you simply won’t be able to afford it. With inflation driving up the costs so that you’ll be fighting just to eat, you won’t have anything left to keep that cellphone connected, much less your computers. What will you do when you can’t access the Net? How will you organize and spend the hours of your day?

Daisy Luther talks about how our supply system could grind to a halt. Her emphasis is economic survival, but I’ve not seen too many articles about staying sane when your whole mental orientation rests on something that simply disappears. What Luther talks about will be the cause of that sudden catastrophic change.

Yes, we know that this mess is caused by policies of the ruling elite. They hate us and want to enslave us. They have been planning this for several generations, and they’ve decided the time is now. It’s time for you to stop believing their lies. They’ve kept us enslaved by insisting that elections matter, that you must invest yourself in the system. All the while, they have controlled the outcome. It won’t matter who is elected; all of them are your enemies. That noise about stolen elections is just a cover-up for something even worse.

You get either globalist liberalism or neocon conservatism. What a choice!

While it’s possible, I’m doing what I can to warn people that our online fellowship is about to end. No, I have no idea when. I can’t even give you a set of indicators what to look for. You’ll just have to know it when you see it.

But don’t panic. You should have been spending the past few years reorienting yourself to the kind of face-to-face heart-led ministry that is the essence of the gospel. Don’t prolong your dependence on the Net, as if you have no social life otherwise. I should have been hearing from you how you have been serving the Kingdom in your local community. Be ready to bless.

Accept people where they are, how they are right now. Build barriers to keep sin out, but not sinners. You cannot touch someone if you don’t let them get close to you. Be who the Master says you must be, but that doesn’t include being standoffish. Invest yourself with their needs, because that’s the only way they’ll hear your message.

Posted in eldercraft | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

More Flesh and Law

Posted on October 31, 2022 by ehurst

The flesh remains under the Law.

What grace does is make the Law internal, instead of external. If Christ is the Law for your flesh, then when spirit and Spirit are merged in your soul, the Law for you is internal. Your heart subjected to Christ as Lord delights in righteousness. You learn that obedience is relief from all kinds of oppressing evil.

The Law living in your soul is much harder than the Law applied externally. That’s because the Living Law awakens your convictions. Instead of a broad generality in words of command, your convictions are specific to you alone. It covers a host of things the Law in words cannot address.

Thus, you leave behind the Code of Moses/Noah as you rise to a much higher standard. That standard does not — cannot — transgress the written Code, because the written Code descends from the standard of the Spirit. The written Code is merely an expression of the Spirit. It’s all one thing.

What’s left for you in Romans 6 is to unleash that Living Law to compel obedience on the flesh. Your conscious awareness has the choice to move from the flesh into the heart, the place inside of you that connects flesh and spirit. The wiring is already there; just start sending signals through it.

Yes, the flesh will rebel, but like all things organic and physical, it can be trained to obey as long as the heart and spirit are watching. It can become accustomed to what the heart knows from the grace of God. The longer you do strive for this, the more obedient the flesh becomes, in that it is overwhelmed by grace. We use the Code of Law to help us keep the flesh in line, to ensure we have fully embraced the Covenant.

Which Law restrains your flesh? The written Code has no power of its own. It requires someone to enforce it. The quality of that enforcement depends on whether the enforcer/ruler is led by the Spirit or by his own best estimate of the written Code. As long as someone involved in government can speak from the Spirit, it could in theory work well enough. Though as we see from the history of Israel, it typically doesn’t work too well. Still, there were golden moments in that history when things went rather well.

But if you are ruled from the Spirit/spirit nexus through your heart, then you don’t need government. It’s still there, but you don’t take it too seriously, because you are driven by a much higher moral standard. You have become the Law in that Christ lives in you.

The only question is which Law has jurisdiction over your flesh.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on More Flesh and Law

Flesh and Law

Posted on October 30, 2022 by ehurst

If you are going to cite Romans 6:14, make sure you keep it in the context of the whole chapter, at least. Paul talks about how grace does not set us free to break God’s Law. Rather, grace is a much higher standard.

Jesus told Nicodemas that flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit — that’s the Two Realms doctrine. Your flesh is not the real you; it’s just the baggage you carry around in this mortal existence. For now we see “in a mirror darkly” — the flesh seeks to blind us to what the God says to our spirits. When we ditch these mortal bodies, then we shall see “face to face”.

Your flesh is under Law. If you live in the flesh, then you are under the Law. If you are living in the Spirit, then you are under the far more demanding boundaries of grace. Thus, the code of Biblical Law is not really good enough, but it will get in the right place. It serves at a minimum to make you conscious of fleshly fallen nature, so that you will sense the need to seek His favor. The Biblical Law stands as God’s gift to mankind.

Christ walking in the flesh was still the Law personified, an improvement on the original gift of revelation. Following Him is better than keeping the written Law, because He is a higher Law in Himself. At the same time, He demonstrates that the written code of law was always far more demanding than most flesh could grasp in the first place.

You see, if you really want to understand the codes of Moses and Noah, you must understand them from the heart. You come under a legal obligation to submit your heart to God. Not the western heart of sentiment, but the ANE heart of moral commitment as a feudal servant of God. Western minds cannot comprehend this, because the western mind is hostile to the claim that there is anything above the intellect. So to be western is to be hopeless outside the even the Law, never mind grace.

The Law is the gateway to grace. It was so when “the Law” was Moses for Israel and Noah for Gentiles, and it’s still true now that “the Law” is Christ. You are obliged to fall on your face before Jesus as your feudal Master before you receive the touch of grace in your heart. That fancy phrase “saved by faith” means feudal submission to Christ — “faith” as a word means commitment, submission, trust, obedience.

The entire human race is obliged to the Law of Christ before they can claim the blessings of spiritual birth. In practice, there’s an awful lot of church folks who appear to be caught between spiritual death and birth. I refer to that as “spiritually stillborn” — they were brought into the Spirit Realm, but have never moved or acted spiritually alive. That’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 6: Don’t cling to the fleshly existence when you are supposed to be born into the Spirit Realm. If you think the Law was tough in the flesh, grace is even tougher in the spirit.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

NT Doctrine — Matthew 27:45-66 and John 19:28-42

Posted on October 29, 2022 by ehurst

John tells us that, rather early in the process, Jesus asked him to assume custody of His mother, Mary. It should be obvious that Jesus didn’t trust His own siblings with the task because they didn’t believe in Him, and John clearly did. The parallel passages are in Mark 15:33-47 and Luke 23:44-56.

By the time Jesus was actually hung on the crossbeam, it was close to noon. Not long after, the sky grew exceedingly dark. None of the Gospels offer a geophysical reason, only that it was enough to be disturbing. This continued for three hours.

At about 3PM, Jesus called out audibly a quote from Psalm 22, lamenting that He had been abandoned by the divine Presence. He spoke in Aramaic, and the Hellenized Jews nearby thought He was calling for Elijah. This was yet another reason to mock Him.

Then Jesus groaned that He was thirsty. He needed to wet this throat so He could cry out in full voice. So the soldiers standing there stuck a sponge into a jug of their low-grade vinegary wine, and then poked a reed into it because His face was just out of reach of their hands. Once He had sucked up some of the wine, He was able to make the official declaration that He had completed this part of His mission. His last words were to resign His spirit into the Father’s hands. Then He collapsed into obvious death.

Apparently the Father agreed with this assessment, because at that point there was an earthquake. Tombs in the area opened up and dead people were resuscitated, walking back into town to find their friends and families. Matthew refers to them as “saints” — pious people of faith.

Most importantly, though, was that the earthquake broke the beam in the Temple from which hung the veil separating the larger open chamber — where the Bread of Presence was stacked, the Menorah stood, and the altar for incense — from the inner chamber called the Holy of Holies. Something about the way that beam broke was able to cause the veil to rip and expose that inner chamber. God Himself was announcing that people could now routinely come into His Presence. The whole ritual system was finished.

There was a Roman centurion there to command the three squads that had escorted the condemned men to Golgotha. With the darkness, earthquakes and resuscitated bodies walking around, it was obvious to Him that Jesus was what He claimed to be, the Son of God. Further, the omens convinced him that Jesus was utterly innocent of any crime.

At least part of the crowd went away striking their chests in the symbol of repentance and deep regret at whatever part they may have played in all of this. We are told that among those women whom Jesus had advised earlier to save their tears, women who lived in Jerusalem but had followed Him a good bit as disciples, those standing there included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and Matthew, and the unnamed mother of James and John.

John reminds us that this was the Day of Preparation for the Passover. Keep in mind that any bodies that bounced out of the graves that weren’t resuscitated could not be reburied until the day after the Passover. But it was simply unacceptable that these men should be left hanging there so close to the Temple during Passover. So the Sanhedrin went and petitioned Pilate to have the soldiers break the legs of these condemned men so they would not be able to keep pushing up to breathe, but go ahead and die by asphyxiation before sundown. Then they wanted to bodies removed.

So the order came down and the soldiers used a heavy blunt weapon and broke the shins of the crucified men. It was a hard job, and the bones might not break with the first blow. The other two went first, but when the soldiers came to Jesus, He appeared to be dead already. As a test, they poked his rib-cage with one of their pilum. After the blood loss from that awful beating, and the sustained racing heartbeat that follows from loss of blood pressure, the lymph system would have flooded the tissues around the heart and lungs. Romans might not have known as much about medicine as we do today, but soldiers who beat and executed a lot of prisoners recognized that separation of blood and lymph was all the proof they needed that Jesus was dead.

John notes that he was there to witness this first hand. He associates this with two prophecies, that none of the Messiah’s bones would be broken, and that they would gaze mournfully upon the Messiah whom they had speared.

Apparently things were wrapped up and only a handful of soldiers stood guard to avoid any last moment rescues.

Collating the parallel passages, we learn that as twilight approached, one of the Sanhedrin came to claim the body of Jesus. He was named Joseph, from Arimathea (AKA Ramathaim), and had dissented from the others regarding Jesus. Pilate wondered if Jesus was really dead by now, and queried the centurion who had been there. Sure enough, Jesus died early in the process, so Pilate released the body to him. Joseph was quite wealthy with servants to help him. They extracted the nails and took the body down, taking it to Joseph’s own tomb, which was obviously not yet in use. He was wealthy enough to afford one of the few places left for sale in Jerusalem where a traditional Hebrew tomb could be built. He could also afford the workers to carve out a space in the rock.

Joining him there was Nicodemas, the one who had met Jesus at night for a private interview. He brought with him a large roll of fabric and sufficient aromatic spices in a mixture of gum Arabic to perform a standard embalming ritual. They washed and wrapped the body of Jesus from the toes to the armpits, slathering the cloth with the gummy mixture. The arms were brought down to the side and the wrapping started again at the hands and went up to the neck. This whole process would leave the body encased in a husk that would dry hard in a matter of hours. They finished with a large flat piece of cloth wrapped around His head.

This use of a freshly carved tomb constituted a proper ritual offering to God, something not yet used for any other purpose. The men and their servants finished just in time to avoid breaking the high Sabbath of the Passover. They rolled a heavy stone against the opening of the tomb to discourage thieves who might be hoping to find expensive trinkets normally buried with wealthy people.

Those three women who witnessed the death had also followed Joseph to the tomb, watched the men and their servants prepare the body, and carefully noted the location in a common garden shared among several tombs. When they left, they gathered their own stock of burial spices and oils, but then had to get home for the Sabbath.

Sometime early during the day of Passover, the same council that condemned Jesus met with Pilate and warned him that He had prophesied He would rise in three days. They asked that Pilate would secure the tomb so that the disciples could not steal the body and claim that Jesus had risen. Pilate agreed that this would be a problem, so he ordered up a squad of guards, and one of them carried a Roman seal. It would consist of something bearing Roman government symbols, including a bit of clay or wax that could be packed around the edge of the stone to seal it against the opening. It would be stamped with a seal that nobody could mistake. Breaking the seal would mean the death penalty.

So a guard was posted on the sealed tomb for the next few days.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on NT Doctrine — Matthew 27:45-66 and John 19:28-42

Sex and Biblical Law

Posted on October 29, 2022 by ehurst

Lots of noise over at Jack’s blog. It’s the comment section where so much of it can be heard. If you can’t or won’t wade through the comments, I won’t blame you. But by the same token, I will share with you only my take on the basic issue of discussion. And rather than adding to the clutter there, I’m making it a post here. (Yes, there’s some crap there.)

I’ve said this before: It is a sin for wives to deny sex to their husbands. I’ve said that taking it by some limited force is fully justified under Biblical Law. You’ll have to make up your own mind if you want to take that path men, and how you do it. But technically speaking, it’s justified in God’s eyes to claim your divine feudal privilege. Further, her denial of your sexual desires for her justifies divorce, and your church should stand with you.

This should be taught in every church pulpit around the world.

Along with this is a very good explanation: If a wife decides that sex is transactional — a means for coercing concessions from her man — then she is nothing more than a prostitute, adulteress. If she does not willingly accede to her husband’s claims on her body, if she has not already vowed to sacrifice that body on the altar before the Lord, then she is not actually a wife, just a concubine. She has none of the divine feudal privileges of a wife.

The man is also bound by the same law. Your wife, by God’s Law, owns your body. A man cannot take his sexual desires elsewhere, lest he become in God’s eyes a mere “dog” (the OT term) — a man who has sex for money. He forfeits his moral and spiritual headship and defiles everyone and everything he touches.

We talk about it this way because, as long as you do not walk in the grace of God, then you are bound under His Law. If you do walk in His grace, you have no argument with His Law. Psalm 119 says His Law is your delight.

In His grace, you aren’t too worried about this world and this life. You have no trouble with sacrificing the various parts of your fleshly existence to divine purposes. Marriage is not a social construct; it did not arise from mere human evolution, either biological or social. Marriage is part of God’s provision for the pain of having lost our oneness with Him in the Fall. His Law controls all the ins and outs of what marriage is and does.

Your feelings don’t mean shit.

Yes, we would expect people of grace to cultivate romance and strong emotional bonding, but grace is the foundation. Your emotions are just some flag waving that may or may not mean anything. Emotions are just a manifestation of our fleshly existence, and your flesh is not really you. It’s just the assigned baggage you bear for under the Curse of the Fall. We should all be eager to shed this fleshly mortal existence. But until that day comes, whenever it is God decides it’s time to bring you Home, you have a duty to live in such a way as to glorify Him. And that means demonstrating His moral truth through obeying His Law.

Posted in religion | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Draper Point 10 Again

Posted on October 27, 2022 by ehurst

Today I visited Point 10, the second longest trail ride among Draper Lake’s points. As you might expect, the trail is half the fun. It’s not just going out to visit a remote site; it’s a great workout pedaling along through the forest. This primary trail snakes along the eastern side of the point.

I was wrong about this purple flower. I was looking for it in the wrong place, maybe 50 yards off. This is the original photo paired with what it looked like today. Not only did it turn gray, but the gray is a fuzz that is easily blown away in high winds. It lost a couple of wads while I was watching, because the breeze was pretty stiff today.

The trail out to Point 10 is relentlessly wooded until you get to this one spot. The majority of Draper Lake area is thickly wooded with mostly varieties of oak with some elm here and there. The obvious reason for this gap is the huge bedrock formation. If you observe Draper from a satellite image, you’ll see just a few of these dotted around the place.

From the trail I spotted a thicket of cedars. There aren’t many cedar thickets around the lake, only a lot of singles or twins scattered around the area. During warmer weather it smells wonderful, but then, it’s too buggy to come out here in the summer months. Today was just around 60°F (16C).

To be honest, I didn’t even recognize Point 10 at low water. It’s exceedingly wide because the rock formations are thick and only slightly sloped. At normal water level, this would all be invisible except the parts where greenery grows up on the small bluff shoreline along the right side of the image. Normally Point 10 looks like a a tiny jutting point of land with a natural stone boat ramp in the middle.

For Draper Lake, this is really high waves. The stiff breeze I mentioned earlier is pushing the water from the south right up against Point 10, which faces south. Further, because of how the rocks lay under the water here, the waves run up from two different directions, with the waves combining to make a constant roar. It was very loud today, and I sat there for a good while just listening.

This just shows how big the rock formation is here on Point 10. All of this is hidden at the normal water level. I spotted a few propeller tracks where boats came across without knowing what was under them. I’d say Point 10 is easily the largest expanse of rock I’ve seen this year.

Even more interesting is this very large patch of black sandstone. This is not exactly rare, but rare in this quantity. It’s considerably harder than the red sandstone, but is also more brittle. It was once quite popular to come out the Draper and hunt for this stuff because it makes a very unusual stone for gardens. That was back in the days when the shore road was well maintained, which stopped in the mid-1980s as I understand it.

This caught my eye: These trees are uniformly cut off right about the normal water level. That’s how low the level has gotten. With the recent heavy rains, the water level should drop no farther for Draper Lake. If we get a wet fall, it should come back up. There is some discussion among city officials about ways to bring it back up to normal without draining the lake the feeds it, in the southern part of the state.

Posted in photography | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Draper Point 10 Again

GOP Lawsuit versus Google

Posted on October 25, 2022 by ehurst

This is going to fail: RNC Sues Google over Email Spam Filters.

Let’s start with my background. I used to be a registered Republican voter, and somewhat activist, many years ago. I remain sympathetic to conservative policies simply because that has historically given me more religious freedom than progressive policies. Progressives are far more likely to hate my faith; conservatives tend to “live and let live”. What started my departure from the GOP was not my drift toward Christian Mysticism. Rather, it was the repulsive corruption of GOP political machinery that disappointed me to the point I was open to a more mystical understanding of things.

In other words, I am now anti-activist because of activist immorality. Again, I still wish that conservatives ran the country, but I know for certain that the Republican Party will not let that happen any more than the Democratic Party would. The political system in the US is wholly satanic regardless of which ideology you prefer. The ethnic Jewish agenda rules above both major parties. Both the globalist and neocon agendas are different covers for the same Jewish elite. The centerpiece of that agenda is to completely remove white people and their culture — northern European ethnicity — from the earth. That is because, in the main, white people are best equipped and most likely to resist Jewish attempts to enslave all Gentiles.

(It’s the culture, not the color. However, the cultural differences do arise from genetic predisposition. I don’t defend white culture by any means, only note the facts. The Jewish leadership is not stupid, just evil.)

This is the long tail of where I ended up today. I came to see that as part of my disappointment with the intractable lying and manipulation coming from the Republican party leadership. When I started searching for answers while sharpening my heart-led awareness, this is where it brought me. I hate the politicians, not the dreams of the people used to manipulate them. The honest truth is that nobody represents the interests of the conservative American middle-class voters.

People who pay attention to Google and her technology uniformly agree that Gmail filtering is almost entirely user controlled. The reason GOP fundraising emails end up in the spam folder is because recipients have marked such messages as “spam”. This lawsuit is going to blow up in their faces.

And people who pay attention to how spammers (“email marketers”) operate will tell you that trying to unsubscribe is utterly irresponsible. The global mass of systems administrators will tell you that spammers are a criminal bunch. The standard has always been: If you did not voluntarily subscribe, you should not be required to unsubscribe. If you try to unsubscribe, you will be punished by even more obtrusive and frantic efforts. Those efforts include a whole range of tricks to dump into your inbox an exponentially higher amount of spam designed to overwhelm filtering and other measures. I have been the victim of outright computer crimes because I dared to complain to someone’s provider about online harassment, to include spam.

Yes, there are demons on the Internet. Most of that spam and harassment came from folks who espoused conservative social and political ideology.

Google is more leftist, and has a lot of their own demons, but we need to point out the actual evil that Google does, not because you simply don’t like the outcomes. The technology world is loaded with evil, but there is nothing to gain from bogus lawsuits over things Google is not doing. The GOP fundraisers wallow in moral sewage and wonder why everyone says they stink. They fleece the people and only pretend to care about their real needs. They represent the very utterly worst of middle-class materialistic greed. Whatever evil we might see from the globalists and their Progressive activists in the streets is more elitist. Capitalism and communism are simply two wings of the same materialistic vulture.

Posted in sanity | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Prayer Request: Mission Work

Posted on October 23, 2022 by ehurst

I’m not asking for advice; I’m just sharing a burden.

Over the years that I’ve been promoting the Radix Fidem message, I’ve often been disappointed at how few seem to interact with it. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still utterly certain that the message is far more important than me. I’m not trying to get attention for myself. I actually don’t like that. I’d be glad to see this message promoted by others, and I don’t care what name they give it and don’t feel any need for credit.

This precious treasure is too rich to keep to just us few. It makes people morally wealthy, and we get to share in that. It’s more of what makes this life worth living.

But there’s another element to that odd sense that something’s coming up short. In the midst of praying that the Father would touch more people with this message, I also tend to feel like I’m just not doing enough. I keep wondering if there was something I could do differently. This message doesn’t consume enough of my time for me to feel like I’m performing my duty.

Thus, a part of what I’m praying about is that I want God to consume more of my time with His work. It seems to me that I have too much leisure, and I’m trying to fill it with things that may or may not contribute to the message. I keep looking for ways to use that time for more direct ministry action. I want a job; I don’t actually want to be retired.

At the same time, I want that work to be in ministry. I’ve spent plenty of time working on things that supported human activities in general, things that offered an economic return — for others at least, if not so much for me. None of that work ever offered much moral fulfillment. Indeed, it often left me feeling morally dirty and defiled. So I don’t want any more of that kind of work. I want work that directly glorifies His name.

Now that I’m on the threshold of receiving Social Security alongside my VA Disability, I can afford to ignore the pay aspect of work. Of course, my physical disabilities do limit my options. I’d be very happy to volunteer for plain old labor helping out in missions projects, but I simply cannot do enough of that to fit into any existing programs. I can stand on my feet only for short periods of time. I’ve already tried to volunteer for less labor intensive stuff, offering to fix computers for free, but there’s no market for that.

I’m asking you to pray with me that the Lord would put me to work in this message that weighs so heavily on my soul.

Posted in prayer | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

NT Doctrine — Matthew 27:27-44

Posted on October 22, 2022 by ehurst

The parallel passages are found in Mark 15:16-32, Luke 23:26-43, and John 19:17-24.

The crown of thorns was actually acanthus, a flowering bush with prickly leaves. We can’t tell if the purple robe was the one Antipas had put on Him or something kept in the fortress for Roman use. The Roman soldiers on duty in this fortress were mostly conscripts from Syria. The mutual contempt between Syrians and Jews is well known historically. We can’t tell if Matthew and Mark refer to a second round of the soldiers mocking Jesus, but they eventually place Him in custody of a squad of four appointed to escort every condemned man. The cross beam was already prepared, but Jesus was unable to carry it very far.

A man named Simon was coming into town from the opposite direction. He was a Diaspora Jew from Cyrene, a major city with a large Jewish community, now in ruins standing on the shore in modern Libya, toward the eastern end of the coastline. It’s quite likely Simon was chosen in part because he was a large fellow, but also because he was the only one coming against the flow of traffic surrounding this procession. Mark notes that this man had two sons known to his audience, where he composed his Gospel in Rome: Alexander and Rufus. At any rate, this Simon was forced to carry the crossbeam, since Jesus was half dead already.

I suppose this is as good of a place as any to note that there is no Gospel record that Jesus fell at any time on the route. There’s a lot of pious nonsense about this scene. The Gospels don’t linger much over the details. We have no conclusive evidence indicating where Golgotha stood, except that it was outside the city limits of that time. The place for crucifixion would offer permanently fixed upright posts or even a framework atop a high spot that would be prominently visible as a warning to others. There would have been skeletal remains scattered around, since victims with no one to claim the body were left there until the carrion eaters consumed their flesh.

Luke does record that Jesus had a word for the weeping women from His entourage of disciples who lived in Jerusalem. Keep in mind that Jesus had already gotten past His sorrow in the garden, so He encouraged the women to save the weeping for their own coming trials. He reminds them of the coming destruction of the city. If the Jewish leaders could be so hateful and barbaric under God’s patience, how will they treat the people when divine wrath comes on them?

The victims of crucifixion were offered a painkilling mixture. It was composed of the cheap wine supplied to the soldiers in their rations. It would have been the latter end of a batch coming out of the grape vat, with the dregs and not much sugar. When fermented it was more like vinegar than wine. Mixed into this was myrrh, which had an analgesic effect. Jesus refused His drink. There were two other actual criminals sentenced to die on the same day. Jesus was placed in the middle between them, fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 53:12.

During the process, Jesus prayed out loud that His Father would forgive the soldiers, since they had no idea who He really was. Having to guard these convicts until they were dead was a dreary duty for the soldiers, but they were permitted to plunder their victims, since crucifixion required they be naked. John notes they decided to cast lots for His seamless outer robe, instead of dividing the fabric among themselves. This fulfilled another prophecy (Psalms 22:18).

There was a bit of fuss over the charge mounted above Jesus’ head; the Sanhedrin weren’t happy. Pilate had mocked them by writing that Jesus /was/ the King of the Jews, not merely that He had claimed to be. For this, the accompanying soldiers mocked Jesus. The Jewish leadership witnessing His death recounted some of His parabolic statements, twisting them to have a literal meaning. One of the criminals hanging beside Jesus, despite his own misery, joined in this mockery, but the other insisted Jesus was an innocent man. Luke notes the latter asked Jesus for eternal mercy, and Jesus promised they would be in Heaven that same day.

It cost the men a bit of effort to speak at all. We have very few historical details and a mass of mythology obscuring the process of crucifixion. Our best guess is that the men were hung in such a way as to lean far forward, nearly choking from the position of their arms and shoulders above and behind them. Their feet were affixed, most likely nailed from the side through the heel bones, with their knees bent somewhat. They could push up with their legs against the pain of the spikes to catch their breath, but eventually slumped back down with exhaustion, only to nearly asphyxiate again. There’s no reason to assume they were positioned very high off the ground.

The Romans had developed an exceptionally torturous form of death that took hours, even days if the victims were particularly hardy.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on NT Doctrine — Matthew 27:27-44