Bloodspawn-7K

Divided We Stand

2010-01-29T06:10:00.003-06:00

Just some musing this morning:

When we talk about "ideology" in politics, we are mostly talking about two poles of thinking: conservative and progressive. In our thinking about these ideologies, we may find ourselves anywhere between the two extremes of these divergent opinions.

To "conserve" something is to try to preserve it, save it, keep it intact. It looks backward, always. It tries to hold onto something "valuable" in the past and keep it alive.

To "progress" is to move forward. The eye is now fixed on some goal, and is looking to tweak or fix something so that it works better in the future.

Which idea is correct?

In Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address, the body language of Congress was conspicuous. Basically, both sides were expressing their agenda. Conservatives lost big-time in 2008, so they are in the bunker until next year when, if they get the numbers they think they will, they will be able to resurrect the legacy of the Bush years, or something like it. So their mentality is to put things off and do nothing if necessary since there is no way they can agree with anybody across the aisle. So they rarely applaud and, when Obama speaks, they look like they are eating lemon skins.

Progressives were enthusiastic, even though many of them are mad at Obama. He reached out to those rascal pinheads across the aisle and see what he got. Who does he think he is? The Great Physician? Come on, Obama. You were hired to lead. Get with the program (or programs, as the case may be).

As I look at this comic/tragedy, I am thinking, "Why aren't they all seated together - mixed?"

Our nation's been polarized for at least two decades. Both elections, George Bush barely squeaked by. I even called it a "miracle" when he was elected the first time, by a "hanging chad." The analysis on TV always shows the red and blue states at loggerheads.

Now the two parties and Congress are fairly unpopular with an electorate that is "fed up." Fed up with what? Mostly with a stagnant economy that went sour. They woke up one morning in 2007 or 2008 and the sky was falling, houses were foreclosing and 401Ks were being read the last rites. So folks are "mad as hell." And so is Congress. The folks on the other side of the aisle are the problem...of course.

But what is this mass of voters out there thinking? Are they hearkening to the baleful songs of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin? Are they ready to pounce on Pelosi and pound her into political hamburger? And what of the young who don't often yet have entrenched political positions? What are they thinking about a government that is handing them a debt to pay when they have no work? It's a frickin' mess.

But the conservatives and the progressives each hold the absolute answer and the twain shall not meet. Obviously. No matter how skilled the rhetoric of bipartisanship that streams from Obama's silver tongue.

Are the two parties a relic of another age - the passing modern age of absolutes and polarization? Is there any way to reconcile the desires of those who want to hold on to the "secure" monuments of the past and those who are willing to risk creating a new future?

I think there is - at least to a point. There'll always be tension between these two poles. But part of the chasm between them is an endless class war that translates, in philosophy, to the capitalist vs. the socialist (or, in Marx-speak, the bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat - the rich guy versus the poor guy). In history, the rich guy always oppresses until the poor guy rises up and overthrows the machine. The barbarian arrives at the gates.

Democracy is more civil. It works out the kinks in the fabric of society through tedious and patient ironing. We have a system that allows all voices to speak, be heard, and have a voice. This results in a rather noisy cacaphony.

In the Hegelian ping-pong that results, the hopeful movement is always progressive while retaining a healthy conservatism. Checks and balances. Why can't it happen now? It is. But it's messy. But it's the best we have until we find something better. We'll get through this.

I tend to think, these days, that the two great political philosophies of the modern age - liberalism and conservatism - can find common ground. I think the twin theories of the industrial age now doing a segue into the digital age - capitalism and socialism - can link arms without destroying either ideal or its benefits. Am I Pollyanna?

The Disclosure of Christ

2009-12-29T08:21:00.004-06:00

Below are 15 of the 24 verses in the NT that use the Greek word "parousia," which, in our modern translations, are usually rendered "coming." That use may have been a theological conclusion rather than an exact rendering, which might more clearly be "revelation" or even "presence." I inserted the word "disclosure" below as it is another synonym for revelation. When read, with this word inserted instead of "coming," with that word's theological implications, I see these verses taking on a different character.

In the first Matt. 24 verse I also inserted the word "Jewish" in parentheses adjoined to the word "age." A futurist would place the word "church" here; but a preterist reads this as Jewish. That is, Jesus's disclosure to the world replaces God's Jewish emphasis. The disclosure of Jesus renders the old age as past, if not obsolete.

Futurists would see this disclosure of Christ as a future event, which I don't think is totally invalidated by the preterist view. In that case, the full disclosure doesn't occur until the end of this present "church age," instead of the Jewish age. That's why I'm also exploring an added, logical concept suggested here: the parousia is ongoing, or progressive in nature. That is, Jesus was disclosed in the ruination of Jerusalem and in the subsequent history of the church, culminating in the full disclosure at some future date, when all of mankind will actually see him at the resurrection.

. Matt. 24:3 - "And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your disclosure (parousia), and of the end of the (Jewish) age?"
2. Matt. 24:27, 37, 39 - Jesus repeatedly said, "So shall the disclosure (parousia) of the Son of Man be."
3. 1 Cor. 15:23-25 - "But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, after that those who are at Christ's at His disclosure(parousia), then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet."
4. 1 Thes. 2:19 - "For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord at His disclosure (parousia)?"
5. 1 Thes. 3:13 - "So that He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the disclosure(parousia) of our Lord with all His saints."
6. 1 Thes. 4:15-17 - "For we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the disclosure(parousia) of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord."
7. 1 Thes. 5:23 - "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the disclosure (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ."
8. 2 Thes. 2:1 - "Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the disclosure (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him."
9. 2 Thes. 2:8 - "And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His disclosure (parousia)."
10. James 5:7 - "Be patient, therefore, brethren until the disclosure (parousia) of the Lord."
11. James 5:8 - "You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the disclosure (parousia) of the Lord is at hand."
12. 2 Peter 1:16 - "For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and disclosure(parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty."
13. 2 Peter 3:4 - "And saying, "where is the promise of His disclosure (parousia)? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation."
14. 2 Peter 3:12 - "Looking for and hastening the disclosure (parousia) of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning and the elements will melt with intense heat!"
15. 1 John 2:28 - "And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His disclosure (parousia)."

Dogma Blender

2009-03-14T08:11:00.002-05:00

2 Peter 1:19-21 (New King James Version)
19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; 20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 20, above, is rendered in the NIV this way:

20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

As I meditated on this, I was thinking about the problems of interpretation down through history and to the present day. Our own -- or our "private" -- interpretations often become dogma.

Here is the dictionary.com explanation of dogma:

1. a system of principles or tenets, as of a church.
2. a specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down, as by a church: the dogma of the Assumption.
3. prescribed doctrine: political dogma.
4. a settled or established opinion, belief, or principle.

Above, the NIV translation makes the most sense, that Peter is trying to say that the Word of God is not man-made. But I also like the King James rendering because it suggests that prophecy and biblical mystery is enigmatic and not subject to human interpretation -- that is, it does not or should not yield intractable dogmas.

The history of the church is one of trying to establish reliable dogma:
There were the early arguments over the identity and deity of Christ that led to the establishment of the Trinity doctrine; there was the huge split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox; there was the later Protestant Reformation that led to schisms of all kinds and establishment of new dogmas; the ideas that became dogmas like Arminius' and Calvin's teachings; and the rise of dogmatic movements within Pentecostalism, Fundamentalism, and even Evangelicalism -- including the prophecy dialogs that rose from John Nelson Darby. The list of the establishment of competing dogmas is enormous.

In the Wiki article, it says of dogma: The term derives from Greek δόγμα "that which seems to one, opinion or belief" and that from δοκέω (dokeo), "to think, to suppose, to imagine"

Basically, dogma is our suppositions raised to absolutes. These become organization-foundations that are more immovable than God Himself.

But the church is moving into a new milieu ahead: a world of disintegration and reintegration.

I thought of this illustration: If you take a blender and put in various ingredients, then turn it on slowly, the pieces begin to disintegrate before they reintegrate into something else. At the close of the Modern Age, the blender was beginning to be ratcheted up and absolutes began disintegrating. The future -- what we now call post-Modern because we don't know what it will be -- looks to be a reintegrating into a new concoction.

With regard to church dogmas, this pressure places them under intense examination and a resulting disintegration into something else. These dogmata may have institutions behind them, but the dogmas themselves are breaking down. What will emerge is not a new dogma, but an integration of what the faith is, what it really means. It doesn't mean the dissolution of what was past, but a reconstitution that points to what it really is.

We have interpreted scripture until we are blue in the face, so to speak. We have strained it through various grids, tweaking as we went, and even going to war over it. In fact, often, our goal was to establish the complete credibility of our suppositions about the message of Jesus Christ. That would make us secure, and security is not actually faith. What we need more now is the ability to adapt.

The Modern Age was about nationalism and nation-states: the post-Modern world is about globalism. The mindset of the Modern Age was redux and "we-they" thinking: but the new world is "both-and". The blender is a-stirrin'.

Idiot Winds

2009-02-05T05:53:00.002-06:00

The tale of Markopolos vs. Madoff doesn't bode well for
future regulation of financial industries, but it may yield
clues as to how to make the SEC (and others like it) more
effective. Larry Kudlow thinks this guy should head the
SEC -- and I say why not? That would be a very Lincoln-
like thing to do. Here, SEC, is your new boss, your former
biggest nightmare. He is the Eliot Ness of the New
Untouchables.

That said, the dude could become just as frustrated as the
head of such an organization because, though Madoff
should have been obvious, nobody flat cared that much.
He seemed to be making green. He was impregnable.
Still, yes, whoever appoints such people, I'd say Markopolos
is your man.

Where's the Madoff money? At present, 950 million has been
found. That should ease the gobs of investors who used
Madoff a bit. Also, the total lost may be more like 25B, not
the 50B he told his sons.

Markopolos, though, is saying there are 14 more Madoffs out
hiding in the weeds in Europe. Be careful, scammers, there
are also terrorists in them thar hills. Financial terrorists and
human bombs hiding out together -- now that's a potential
threat.

Meanwhile, we're finding out that some of our legislators
are above the law and are exempt from paying the taxes
they exact from us. Shades of Rome in decline!

Apparently, the only thing anybody can agree on in this
new stimulus is to tackle the infrastructure. Then do it!
Get it started. You don't have to start big, especially if it's
all fluff -- a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.

Idiot Wind -- Dylan

Someones got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press

Whoever it is I wish theyd cut it out quick, but when they will I can only guess.

They say I shot a man named gray and took his wife to Italy,

She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.

I cant help it if I'm lucky.

People see me all the time and they just can't remember how to act

Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts.

Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at,

I couldnt believe after all these years, you didnt know me any better than that

Sweet lady.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,

Blowing down the backroads headin south.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,

Youre an idiot, babe.

Its a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning

that might strike

I haven't known peace and quiet for so long

I cant remember what its like.

Theres a lone soldier on the cross,

smoke pourin out of a boxcar door,

You didnt know it, you didnt think it could be done,

in the final end he won the wars

After losin every battle.

I woke up on the roadside,

daydreaming bout the way things sometimes are

Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head

and are makin me see stars.

You hurt the ones that I love best

and cover up the truth with lies.

One day youll be in the ditch, flies buzzin around your eyes,

Blood on your saddle.

Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb,

Blowing through the curtains in your room.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,

You're an idiot, babe.

Its a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny

which broke us apart

You tamed the lion in my cage

but it just wasnt enough to change my heart.

Now everythings a little upside down,

as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped,

Whats good is bad, whats bad is good,

you'll find out when you reach the top

Youre on the bottom.

I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways

had finally made you blind

I cant remember your face anymore,

your mouth has changed,

your eyesDont look into mine.

The priest wore black on the seventh day

and sat stone-faced while the building burned.

I waited for you on the running boards,

near the cypress trees, while the springtime

Turned slowly into autumn.

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,

From the Grand Coulee dam to the capitol.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,

You're an idiot, babe.

Its a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I cant feel you anymore,

I can't even touch the books you've read

Every time I crawl past your door,

I been wishin I was somebody else instead.

Down the highway, down the tracks,

down the road to ecstasy,

I followed you beneath the stars,

hounded by your memory

And all your raging glory.

I been double-crossed now for the very last time

and now I'm finally free,

I kissed goodbye the howling beast

on the borderline which separated you from me.

Youll never know the hurt I suffered

nor the pain I rise above,

And Ill never know the same about you,

your holiness or your kind of love,

And it makes me feel so sorry.

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,

Blowing through the letters that we wrote.

Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,

We're idiots, babe.

Its a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

BTW, the best version of this song, by far, was the live
performance by Dylan with the Rolling Thunder Review

(click on the purple)
on the album "Hard Rain".

Christophobes vs. Homophobes

2008-12-24T06:52:00.001-06:00

You might want to view this video of Rick Warren (click here) for some clarification of his views on the sanctity of heterosexual monogamy. Of course, I agree with him. I also agree that he has the freedom of speech to state his beliefs. What is glaringly absent here (and in much of the heat coming from gays and liberals) is a discussion of the real issue, civil rights. Warren says he loves gays, so his problem is not "homophobia." It is a civil problem. The pressing issue is the question: Do gays have the right to the same civil protections and advantages governing and given to monogamous hetero couples?

Most evangelicals say no, because they are afraid we are redefining marriage and giving state sanction to it, thus offending God. But no state can redefine what God has set in place. The problem we have here is our concept of equality under the law. "Equality" doesn't favor Christians or anybody else, in the civil sense. If people are law-abiding and commit no obvious crimes, they can do what they want under constitutional protection, and should enjoy the rights given them in our secular, pluralist society. That's where the real debate is here. It is not theological, it is political and social.

I don't know if Rick Warren has thoroughly vetted this angle of the debate. It wouldn't seem so. I think many evangelicals entertain the myth that we live in a Christianized society and all laws should be dictated by theological principles. Warren says he loves everybody. I'm sure he does. But actions speak louder than words, and, in this case, the problem is about justice more than biblical morality. Can you have true justice in this world when you create a legally mandated caste system of preferred people and pariahs? Aren't you saying, "I love them, but I don't want to give them any rights?" Isn't that an Old Testament system of sequestering people? Maybe God says, "I don't agree with this, but under the present systems, treat one another with fairness." Is the way to lead gays to Christ to persecute them and place them in leper colonies?

The other problem here is the evidence of science. Christians have branded homosexuality as purely a behavioral problem (free will). Science seems to be finding that they tend to be born that way (predestination). The argument then is resolved, for many, by saying you are genetically predispositioned to have gay preferences and can't help it. Thus, you are a minority that enjoys all civil rights afforded anyone in a democratic/pluralistic society. Theology, in our society, generally fails to trump science, since science is objective (hopefully) and theology is more subjective. We can believe something, but we can't force that belief on everyone else. We Christians need to "deal with it" and focus our attentions on doing the business we are commissioned to do: love our neighbor as ourself.

Thy Will Is Complex

2008-08-10T19:07:00.002-05:00

If It Be Your Will by L. Cohen

If it be your will

That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before

I will speak no more

I shall abide until

I am spoken for

If it be your will

That a voice be true

From this broken hill

I will sing to you

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing

If it be your will

If there is a choice

Let the rivers fill

Let the hills rejoice

Let your mercy spill

On all these burning hearts in hell

If it be your will

To make us well

And draw us near

And bind us tight

All your children here

In their rags of light

In our rags of light

All dressed to kill

And end this night

If it be your will

If it be your will.

Comment: No question, Leonard Cohen was one of the great singer-
songwriter poets. He often wrote, actually, scathing commentaries on
religious belief, particularly Christian. This one seems to plumb the
depths of the problem of predestination. Paul said, "Who has resisted
His will?"

Romans 9:
18 So God does what he wants to do. He shows mercy to one person and makes another stubborn.
19 One of you will say to me, "Then why does God still blame us? Who can oppose what he wants to do?" 20 But you are a mere man. So who are you to talk back to God? Scripture says, "Can what is made say to the one who made it, 'Why did you make me like this?' "—(Isaiah 29:16; 45:9)

So even a skeptic like Cohen can see the problem.

Saving Little Richard

2008-07-30T07:19:00.002-05:00

"If God can save an old homosexual like me, He can save anybody."
~ Little Richard

No doubt what Little Richard is saying here means a lot to him. He is kind of saying, "I've been one bad dude, folks, and God has saved me."

The question that bugged me for a long time was, "What exactly do we mean by the word saved?" I began to notice that what people meant by "being saved" was in the eye of the beholder. The line between the "saved" and the "unsaved" was not easy to find. In the eyes of some, there are not many saved at all. In their eyes, often, the vast majority of the human race is headed for everlasting hellfire and brimstone, and that would likely include poor Little Richard here who has deluded himself. In other words, it was hard for me to pin down what exactly being saved meant.

I finally reconciled this, in my own mind, by observing that, according to scripture, salvation comes by faith and it is a gift of God. But the actual arbiter of this condition was confession: "No man can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." That is, our confession is what identifies that we are followers of Jesus no matter what anybody ~ including other Jesus followers ~ thinks of us. I am not judged by you. My confession, like Little Richard's, is that Jesus has saved me.

But that doesn't go far enough. We've seen the signs in our lifetime that say "Jesus saves." And we saw the graffiti that said He saves green stamps (which nobody saves any more.) The point is, to say "Jesus saves" is an open-ended question: what does He save?

The answer is, He saves or is saving the world. He is in the process of saving this whole thing that has been, like Little Richard, polluted and destroyed. But Christians have tended to deny this. We sift this good news through a screen that says, "Only the righteous will be saved." Yet, there is none righteous, no, not one. That includes you and me and Little Richard too.

So is Jesus saving a part or the whole? And if He is the savior of the whole shebang, what difference does it make if we follow Him? Because, in following Him, we are way ahead of the curve and we are in on a secret. But it is not to remain a secret. The truth is, "Jesus saves it all." We were ruined and Jesus is the savior: that's the good news (or the gospel, if you will.)

The salvation issue becomes uncomplicated and not up to the arbitrary criteria that various persons and leaders might construct from their "private interpretations." This also frees us, as believers, to love our neighbors, our fellow human beings. We are no longer bringing a message of condemnation to the world, condemning everyone who doesn't fit our worldview. What we are really saying is, "Do you see this world? It is passing away. God is replacing it, through Jesus Christ, with a far superior system."

This is fabulous, and hard for many to grasp. In fact, for many it sounds like heresy (a belief that offends God.) I wasn't comfortable with it either. But now I can say to Little Richard: "You're right, bro. God can save anyone. In fact, He has."

I have long said that it was not the birth of Christ but the cross that was the crux of history. Whatever happened before, it all changed when Christ died and rose again. How radically did it change? We don't see it all yet. But, like Paul said, "Every knee shall bow." Wow.

Confessions of a Riffaholic

2008-05-13T07:31:00.001-05:00

Indulge me here (or not): I was thinking about my weaknesses. It mystifies me that people can endure Swing. He don't give a damn about any trumpet-playing band/ It ain't what he calls rock'n'roll...We're the Sultans/ Play Creole... ~ Dire Straits

I don't know whether it was the Kinks or the Who that finally defined, for me, what music was. I still watch the British bands to see if anybody still gets it. I watched The Who documentary the other day about the tragedy that was their journey. But it was defined, for me, in those first four chords of "Can't Explain" or the odd two-chord riff of "You Really Got Me." It was all jellin' at that point back in '65. Even more minimal was the three-note mantra of "Satisfaction." That song was number 1 around the world for a year. It's still on the radio every other day, though it is almost mindless. But that, for me, was the definition of why God made the electric guitar. It seemed like there was no limit to what you could do, and I think Keith Richards has been proof. Even today, one of the best things going has been The White Stripes, with Meg White's monotone thud and Jack's one guitar at gutter-level distortion, working riffs under his tortured singing (Jack works with Loretta Lynn, by the way, famous friends). There is a market for this called "garage band." Jack White is very rich.

I wanted to see it in Christian music, but never did (with the exception of X-Sinner). That kind of energy was somehow considered ungodly. God likes boring. But that approach to music still gets my head banging. It just doesn't seem to get any better.

The other side of the coin was Bob Dylan who was really working a different field (from anybody). He single-handedly revolutionized the lyric and no-one ever topped him. He opened up a whole new world, though, and his copycats are still legion (I'm one of them). He made it possible, lyrically, to go where no man had gone before.

Of course, concerning guitar genius, who was more influential than Hendrix? His acid-influenced blues extravaganzas launched the electric guitar into a new nirvana.

I realize there is greatness outside of rock, but I am still stuck inside of that Mobile. I still listen for that certain something that hit us all back in '65. I didn't mention The Beatles because I think they were actually a rare chemistry that channeled it all into something quite astounding. There are umpteen big rock acts today that are still "Beatleesque" like Jet, the Foo Fighters, The Shins, Panic At The Disco, British Sea Power, and on and on. Lennon, for me, was the hinge-pin, but McCartney is the total genius as was their producer, George Martin. Lennon-McCartney was really the Rodgers and Hammerstein of the rock age.

I don't think it is just some nostalgic yearning for my youth: it was a defining moment in musical evolution. It was an injection of creativity into the musical spectrum that I don't think was rivalled before or has been realized since. I even hear extensions of it in today's Country music. I think we now worship to it. And the anointing landed on those lads and lasses back in '65. Or, as Kiss once sang: "God gave rock 'n' roll to you..." It was amazing to have been there. Thank you, Lord.

So, yes, I am a weak man. I got a rock-hard boogie on my finger and I can't shake it off. The other day I was in the store and I heard the opening chords to "You Really Got Me" and the Chuck Berry solo by Dave Davies and I was transported. I always think: "That's it!" So I am still on that musical quest ~ the search for the next riff exploding into a glorious train-wreck. There is probably something better up ahead somewhere, but I ain't heard it yet.

A few weeks ago, a Kansas rock station sponsored a battle of the bands to see who Kansans thought was the best rock band ever. The laurels finally went to AC/DC. Why? Because they got it. They single-mindedly devoted themselves to THE RIFF. They never backed down. They could hear, from down in Australia, the echoes of The Who and The Kinks, and they threw themselves totally into that zone, really only producing one endless song that reverberates to the ground of the soul, the growling chord that expands into an orchestra of tone and hangs there like a sonic Aurora Borealis.

Historic Population Wipe-outs

2008-04-26T05:38:00.003-05:00

"I'll be right back, Eve. I need to use the restroom."

A recent AP article says this:

Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through mothers — have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.
The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.
Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.
Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

My comment is this: The Genesis text does not easily jibe with these kinds of numbers. We have a biblical chronology in two ancient texts that veers considerably from this scientific speculation. Who is correct, then: ancient scribes who wrote down what they learned from oral tradition or modern scientists skrying the contents of the DNA puzzle? Neither method of dating the human prehistory would seem to be completely accurate; but the emergence of DNA information is certainly intriguing and plays with our assumptions about these things.

What we do have here is the possibility of fluctuations in populations of the developing homo sapien. This means that there were possible near wipe-outs in that long and arduous journey of man. Further, it would be possible that a real flesh-and-blood man named Adam could have come on the scene in one of those population dearths. He would then have provided us with both a symbol of all humanity as embodied in one man and as an actual person whose existence was passed on by oral tradition.

The rest of the story gets a bit murky back there. We can't really count on "facts" at that point, so we are left to speculate. Still, Adam need not be dismissed as a fairy tale.

Old Guys Hacking It

2008-04-03T06:56:00.003-05:00

Can old guys still hack it?

I sampled four new releases and give my two cents worth.

The Rolling Stones are out with a Martin Scorcese film called "Shine a Light". There were no samples, but the album A Bigger Bang proves that the Stones haven't gathered moss. The C. Watts back-beat, the K. Richards riff-machine and the Jagger wail are still intact, so these guys are still good for one of the best rock chemistries ever conceived. I heard "Satisfaction" the other day and still believe it was perhaps the most phenomenal single ever made in that it reigned at number 1 worldwide for a year. Still, I am only mildly interested in seeing these guys or hearing their new stuff. It is mostly just to hear what new riff Richards has cooked up in his telecaster meth-lab.

I recognize REM as another one of those rock chemistries. They also have a new release called Accelerate and, while it is an intriguing bunch of songs and the same sound, it didn't sound like it accelerates enough. REM lyrics, though, are poetry. In that department they beat the Stones, but the Stones never said they were poets. However, Jagger/Richards have delivered some real poetry on occasion. REM is a great band, no doubt.

Van Morrison is back with Keep It Simple, another phenomenal record, I can tell. The guy just has it, and he is an original. There is that voice like hot chocolate that never fails. It gyrates and escalates and swoons and chatters like its own instrument. Morrison is also a spiritual man with faith in Christ and his lyrics often reflect that sensitivity. But he doesn't come across as religious, ever. The fact is, though, that his jazzy, bluesy, Celtic-tinged music is always inspired and fantastic. But it was his output in the '70s that is the most mind-blowing. Age has moved him into smooth, with a bit of a Sinatra feel. And, for me, he still made the number one rock piece of all time with his band Them, it was that 3-chord masterpiece "Gloria." The first real punk song? I think so.

Only one record I might conceivably buy out of this group, though, and that is Moby's new one called Last Night. Years ago I got a copy of his masterpiece Everything Is Wrong and it is, in my estimation, still a brilliant record. There is that driving industrial electronic beat, the repetitious new-age inflected synthesizer, that wailing female black voice, and often cryptic lyrics that make the best Moby stuff a delight, a kind of cerebral voyage. I found a Moby CD called 18 in a garage I was cleaning out the other day, and I had never heard it. It was a good find. Moby is a Christian who is known as a political activist, but the politic is just not obvious on the records. He doesn't come preaching at you. It is sheer artistry in the alchemy of cool disco inferno. You can exercise to this stuff, too. I am a guitar-band, garage-rock kind of guy, but Moby found a niche in my musical universe.

I guess these guys just go to prove, if you got it you got it, and stay with your groove. That's what you are. It pays off.

The Truth Hurts

2008-03-17T18:33:00.002-05:00

The recent book UnChristian, by the Barna group, explores demographics with regard to the church. In recent years, the data has been increasingly negative, especially with regard to the young who are regarded as the hope of the church in the future.

The focus of the studies was on "outsiders." The polling and surveying yielded a fairly consistent picture that provided the six main themes of the PR problem the church is experiencing:

HYPOCRITICAL ~ We tend to project a morally superior attitude and an innacurate, polished image that is "unreal." We tend to think that the church is only for the virtuous and morally pure.

TOO FOCUSED ON CONVERTING PEOPLE ~ Outsiders think we don't really care about them, that they are simply targets. Most of them have tried church and found it wanting.

ANTIHOMOSEXUAL ~ They perceive us as bigoted. They see us as enemies bent on curing them and gaining political leverage against them.

SHELTERED ~ We are perceived as boring, old-fashioned, and out of touch with reality, preferring simplistic answers to the complexities of the world around us. We shy away from the grit and grime that is people's lives.

TOO POLITICAL ~ We are overly motivated by political agendas, promoting only conservative interests and issues.

JUDGMENTAL ~ We are quick to judge, hasty. We seem dishonest in our approach to others. They doubt that we really love them.

From UnChristian, pgs. 29 & 30.

My comment: This book gives teeth to the idea that the church is having a public relations problem in this generation. Some might say, "So what? Preaching the gospel is not about popularity."

But this isn't about Christians becoming "popular." We are 2 billion strong and growing (1/3 of the world's population) so that's a fairly popular religion. What it is about is that the world is shifting and changing, and we aren't changing with it.

I believe the Holy Spirit wants to do what He said in Habbakuk 1: 5 The Lord replies, "Look at the nations. Watch them. Be totally amazed at what you see. I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe. You would not believe it even if someone told you about it.

It is time for the Body of Christ to examine itself to see whether it is actually walking in the faith, displaying the attitude of Christ to the world. The Barna research is a useful read in helping us discern what is wrong. And we can't fix a thing until we know what's wrong. Thanks, Barna.

Trip Album

2008-02-26T13:56:00.007-06:00

LSD was the catalyst of a very creative moment in music history, and particularly rock history. You can read in Jack Kerouac's On The Road how the Beatniks liked to get stoned and listen to jazz. Pot had a way of making music sound sensational. And it could produce a kind of visionary experience, like watching a technicolor movie.

The Beats passed their torch of counterculture exploration on to the hippies in the '60s. For the hippies, the music of choice was not instrumental jazz but rock. In about 1965 an explosion took place. The British Invasion in rock was becoming purloined with psychedelia. I remember when I first started hearing this stuff I was about 15, and I picked up an album by Bob Dylan called Highway 61 Revisited. This record seemed to have arrived from some other planet.

It was the Beatles, though, that fired the shot heard round the world with a brilliant record that is still a classic: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. History has it that Dylan turned the mop-tops onto acid and the mops began to grow out. So did the music.

What happened here? Did LSD do this?

At the time, LSD was still a legal drug (not for long). It's dangerous properties were still not fully understood. But it was known that it could mimic psychosis. What it did was to sort of cause the synapses in the brain to misfire, creating a wondrous world in the user's brain that could either be like heaven or turn into hell. It also seemed to be a kind of catalyst for creativity.

Dylan opened up a new kind of fantasy-fueled lyric which, when put to rock music, was tailor-made for psychedelic excursions on drugs. Along came fantasy albums of all stripes, and colors, and spots, and flowers that grew so incredibly high. These albums became the prize of hungry hippy kids with the mad munchies.

I don't know if the Beatles actually created the single most amazing psychedelic album with Sgt. Pepper's: the Rolling Stones were not going to be left out of the phenomenon, and, with the help of eclectic pioneer Brian Jones, they produced Their Satanic Majesties Request. This album is still fantastic, and the most bizarre creation the Stones ever made. It was their only contribution to psychedelic rock. They went back to making the best rock they ever devised during the Beggar's Banquet period, saying the genre they tried, in competing with the Beatles, was just not their thing. The Beatles didn't stop the psychedelic stuff until they later split up.

TSMR is still amazing. It is so highly textured, so original, one does not need acid to have one's mind completely dismantled and reassembled (i.e. "blown"). It holds up superbly. It should be among the best rock albums of all time, in my opinion. But I may be slightly addled.

Videotape by Radiohead

2008-02-23T11:35:00.002-06:00

Videotape
When I'm at the pearly gates

This will be on my videotape, my videotape

Mephistopheles is just beneath

and he's reaching up to grab me
This is one for the good days

and i have it all here

In red, blue, greenRed, blue, green
You are my center

When i spin away

Out of control on videotape

On videotape

On videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye

Because I can't do it face to face

I'm talking to you after it's too late

From my videotape
No matter what happens now

You shouldn't be afraid

Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.

This Radiohead lyric is from the album that is right at the top of all charts as the best rock album of 2007. They also had the number one album of the '90's, OK Computer. The group is not only phenomenally good, but their style is unique. They actually have an approach to melody that I have never heard anywhere: a kind of haunting, ethereal, slow jazziness to it. Get the picture? You won't waste your bucks buying this album, In Rainbows.

Valentine Thinking

2008-02-11T06:47:00.000-06:00

Love
Romans 12: 9 Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. 10 Love each other deeply. Honor others more than yourselves. 11 Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive. Serve the Lord.
12 When you hope, be joyful. When you suffer, be patient. When you pray, be faithful. 13 Share with God's people who are in need. Welcome others into your homes.
14 Bless those who hurt you. Bless them, and do not call down curses on them. 15 Be joyful with those who are joyful. Be sad with those who are sad. 16 Agree with each other. Don't be proud. Be willing to be a friend of people who aren't considered important. Don't think that you are better than others.
17 Don't pay back evil with evil. Be careful to do what everyone thinks is right. 18 If possible, live in peace with everyone. Do that as much as you can.
19 My friends, don't try to get even. Leave room for God to show his anger. It is written, "I am the One who judges people. I will pay them back,"—(Deuteronomy 32:35) says the Lord. 20 Do just the opposite. Scripture says, "If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. By doing those things, you will pile up burning coals on their heads." —(Proverbs 25:21,22) 21 Don't let evil overcome you. Overcome evil by doing good.

A Valentine for the church, with a message of love.
Verse 9 says, "Hate what is evil." The problem here is that we love to hate what we think is evil, without actually identifying evil or knowing what it really is. Hate is the opposite of love and evil is the opposite of love: so we should hate hate. Osama binLaden "hates" evil, and yet employs it to please God. You can't use any kind of evil or hatred to please God. God is love.

Hatred doesn't belong in Christianity. The minute we hate anybody we have joined sides with evil. Jesus even said we are guilty of murder. But what many Christians think is "hating evil" is really being hyper-conscious of sin. What this tends to do is cause us to focus on sin as our cause. Our cause is not exposing sin: our cause is to love as He loves, which is total. When we love, we overcome sin. Sin is dismantled by love.

We often preach a message of strife, both in the church and to those outside. Why? Because we are focused on being right: we are trying to prove something. We are trying to "get even." But that isn't God's justice: getting even. God is patient, kind, putting up with evil in order to bring redemption to those destroyed by it. His whole operation is based on pulling people up not putting them down.

Verse 10 says, "Love each other deeply." "Each other" is those who believe and those who don't. But this is not what we often see. We often see favoritism for those who are like us and exclusion of those who aren't. It is because we don't really understand what God is like. He doesn't have any favorites.

We should look deep into our hearts and see what festers in there: see if we feel superior to others, see if we are peacemakers or dividers, see if we, in the name of resisting evil, actually promote it.

Happy Valentine's Day.

End Obsessions

2008-02-05T07:42:00.000-06:00

The apocalypse is an epic tragedy, but it's also a fantasy of cleansing and regeneration wherein everything inessential and inauthentic is swept away so that we can build afresh among the ruins. It's a convenient untruth. "I've been struck by the number of New Yorkers who have actually said to me, 'God, it was so much fun watching the city fall apart like that,'" says Weisman. "There is on some level a secret longing that people have, saying 'Let's just give it up. What a mess we've made just by being alive.' We all have this footprint now. We've redefined original sin." TIME magazine, Jan. 17, 2008, "Apocalypse New"

There seems to be, in us, an appetite for the sum of all fears, for judgment day. I realize that I have been a bit obsessive about it through my life. Musing about it has taken up a great deal of my mental space (which is vast and empty).

When I was six, I saw Godzilla (at the movies, not in reality) and was flooded with pleasure with the thought of a gargantuan beast tearing up the world. Also, when I went to school, we would practice "duck and cover" down in the basement, with the teacher telling us that the sirens meant the A-bomb was coming.

We were an "apocalyptic" generation, the baby boomers. Perhaps the hippy thing was the attempt to shed the mad dash of civilization toward self-annihilation. Drop out before it's too late. Do something! Turn on! Blow your mind! Make the world anew with a new mind-set. Hail the Aquarian Age!

Thus, when I entered the strange new world of Christianity, I found this same dynamic there: the fascinating apocalyptic clues and images of incredible cataclysm. Godzilla was alive and well in the Bible.

I haven't seen Cloverfield yet, but I probably will. As the producer, Weismann (quoted above) was saying, there is something perhaps cathartic about it all. We feel helpless in the face of a psychotic universe, a world seemingly drunk on evil and injustice. We all die. The end floods our existence on every level. Life is fragile. And yet we endure, and sometimes even do good things.

In a movie, we view the raging monster from a safe distance. The heroes in the movie generally become the masters of their situation or else the final tombstone of mankind is erected: Rest In Peace. In the end, they are all alike. How many times have we seen a Batman or Superman save the world? It is a kind of Messianic hope in all of us.

The word "apocalypse" does not actually mean "the end of the world." Apokalupsis (Gr.) is actually more like an "epiphany" than the usual visualization of incredible holocaust. Jesus himself is the apocalypse: he is the disclosure of something unbelievably grand in scope. It is he that dissolves the hopelessness, the existential despair, the absurdity, and the lonely fear of a universe gone nuts. It is he that brings justice into the wild injustice of life.

Perhaps it has been wrong for so many in the church to concentrate on the "end of the world." For one thing, the scriptures say also that this is "world without end."

Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. Ephesians 3: 21

We do seem to live in a fragile world today: a world with incredible potential for a massive rupture of all things seemingly secure. Yet we cannot live with that constant sword of Damocles over our heads: the looming blade of annihilation. Jesus said, "The worst that can happen to anyone is they can die", and all of us do that sooner or later. So what if the world ended today?

In a vibrant way, this old world ended almost 2,000 years ago at the cross. The sting of death was removed by the final offering of the Lamb of God. At that moment, all was made aright. All vengeance was satisfied. Ultimate justice was procured. Hardly the end of the world. This is only the beginning.

Obama's Religion

2008-01-29T11:24:00.001-06:00

I'm not offering this as an endorsement of the candidate (below) but just a look into what he believes since he has been railed on in certain sectors of the Christian body. What is more interesting to me is what he is saying here (from Beliefnet.com ):

This is a delicate subject because there's been this smear campaign against you via email, alleging that you're Muslim. But do you think the fact that you attended a majority Muslim school in Indonesia or that your biological father was raised Muslim resonate with someone in the Arab street, a Muslim there?

Let me just sort of be as clear as possible in terms of what that background is. You know, I was raised basically by my mother, who came from a Christian background—small town, white, Midwesterner. But, she was not particularly religious. My father, who I did not know—I spent a month of my life in his presence, otherwise he was a stranger to me—was raised in a household where his father had converted to Islam. But my father, for all practical purposes, was agnostic.

My mother remarried an Indonesian and we moved to Indonesia. But for two years I went to a Catholic school in Indonesia, and then for two years went to a secular school in Indonesia. The majority of children there were Muslim. But it wasn't a religious school. So almost all the facts that have been presented in the scurrilous emails are wrong. And I've been a member of my church now for almost 20 years and have never been a person of the Muslim faith.

Now, having said all that, I absolutely believe that having lived in a country that was majority Muslim for a time and having distant relatives in Africa who are Muslim, that I'm less likely to demonize the Muslim faith and more likely to understand that they are ordinary folks who are trying to figure out how to live their lives and raise their kids and prosper just like anybody else. And I do think that that cultural understanding is something that could be extremely valuable.

I'll really be surprised if Obama makes it, but I like his understanding of Muslims. Many in the church do demonize Muslims, as if they were inferior in God's eyes. Many of these have never once explored actual Islamic teachings or are unaware of what average Muslims are like. They all become stereotyped as terrorists. We need to pray for them instead.

The Religious Jigsaw

2008-01-21T12:40:00.001-06:00

A little slow on the blogs this month. Also, I am still blogging around material found in Brian McLaren's book: Everything Must Change, pg. 91.

McLaren says there is a conventional view of Jesus and an "emerging" view. You have to think of this "emergence" as ongoing to get a correct perspective.

McLaren begins the book building a case for what he calls the imperial narrative. This is the story the world around you is going by because it is enforced by a government, whatever form it takes. You live with that story. That story definitely influences you.

He then goes on to elaborate about some forms of narrative you can adopt in reaction to the imperial narrative you're in:

1. The imperial or dominant narrative: you work for or are in league with the dominating power (in Jesus' day that would be Rome).

2. Counter or revolutionary narratives: you work against the dominant story.

3. The dual narrative: you work for the dominant party by day and another way in private.

4. The withdrawal narrative: you try to get away from the dominant narrative.

Finally, McLaren cites that Jesus came with number 5: an alternative narrative that was none of the above. This alternative was the kingdom of God.

He illustrates the difference between the conventional Jesus narrative and the emerging one by using a picture from his friend Steve Chalke, involving a jigsaw puzzle.

The picture is of a jigsaw puzzle you are trying to use, but someone has put the wrong lid on it. You look at the picture and try to put the pieces together so that they resemble the picture. But it is the wrong picture. Therefore, we do different things to deal with our frustration.

For one thing, we may try to still make the pieces fit our picture. This means we brush some aside and others we may alter to make them fit. And we patiently keep working even though we are greatly frustrated by how the puzzle is going. It gets more, not less, puzzling.

Others throw the whole puzzle out. It is too difficult to do, so they go seek something else to do.

Others still decide that the lid is "orthodoxy". They declare anybody who doesn't accept the lid as is are "heretics" and "apostate."

But there are those who notice the picture on the box doesn't match the pieces in the box. So they question the lid. They assume we are using the wrong lid.

Jesus, then, was a fifth narrative that was truly outside of the imperial narratives. The other four stories in some way relate to the imperial story: people react one way or the other. But the narrative that Jesus brought was a different picture altogether ~ it was a "new and living way."

What we need is a right picture (a correct narrative) by which to put our pieces together.

But suppose your eyes are bad. Then your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light inside you is darkness, then it is very dark! ~ Matt. 6: 23

Upon My Father's Looming Death

2008-01-16T17:14:00.000-06:00

And death shall have no dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Wealth, Poverty, and the Church

2008-01-08T14:18:00.000-06:00

James 5: 1 You rich people, listen to me. Cry and sob, because you will soon be suffering.
2 Your riches have rotted. Moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver have lost their brightness. Their dullness will give witness against you. Your wanting more and more will eat your body like fire. You have stored up riches in these last days.
4 You have even failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields. Their pay is crying out against you. The cries of those who gathered the harvest have reached the ears of the Lord who rules over all.
5 You have lived an easy life on earth. You have given yourselves everything you wanted. You have made yourselves fat like cattle that will soon be butchered. 6 You have judged and murdered people who aren't guilty. And they weren't even opposing you.

Proverbs 22: 2 The Lord made rich people and poor people. That's what they have in common.

There is a great disparity in the world between the rich and the poor, and the gap may be widening. This is even happening in the U.S. Consider some statistics:

1. The richest 1% of the world's population owns 40% of the world's wealth.

2. The richest 5% owns 70%.

3. The assets of the world's 3 richest persons exceeds the combined GDP of the world's 48 poorest countries.

4. In 2000 the world's developed nations contributed 3% of their GDP to aid developing nations. In turn, those nations had to pay back over 6% of their GDP in debt repayment, more than twice what they received. The result was that the developed nations gained from the transaction while the developing nations lost ground.

5. Africa is worse off than it was two decades ago.

6. 1 billion of the earth's poor face a decline in their current living standards.

7. The US is in the bottom 25% of all nations in terms of wealth distribution, and dead last among industrialized nations.

8. In 1960 the average American CEO made 12 times more than the average laborer. Today he/she makes more than 300 times more.

And such statistics go on and on, revealing the sad disparity in our world. And, of course, the rich are richer and getting richer because they work harder than everybody else ~ harder than the miners and the factory workers and the kids in the sweatshops and the field hands. Surely Jesus is proud of their accomplishments.

James, the Lord's brother and apostle in Jerusalem, was tough on the rich. Why? Was he against them having money? Didn't he realize how hard they worked to get their holdings?

I don't think it was that. He was pointing out the injustice of gross inequities, of people and nations hoarding wealth while exploiting the poor. In other parts of his epistle James says, "Isn't it the rich who throw you in jail and stack the cards against you in court?" He was telling the people of the church they were favoring the rich and dishonoring the poor in the way they treated them. He was pointing out hypocrisy and injustice, not just in the world at large, but even among the people of God.

Greed is the source of all evil, according to Proverbs. And greed dwells at the core of our beings. By it we rationalize, create injustice, wage wars, exploit labor, neglect the poor, sequester the rich, bend laws, and ignore our neighbors be they individuals or nations.

When empires do this for too long, the poor rise up, destroy their captors, and then repeat their mistakes. It is like a historical vicious cycle.

In Kenya, at this writing, this is the very dynamic that is taking place. Even men of the same race and color hate each other, kill each other, and the central problem behind it all is greed.

Jesus was the antithesis of greed. He became poor to make us all rich. He identified with the lowest and died with the malefactors with whom he had been compared. It wasn't because he was lazy or rebellious: it was because he was a lover of justice. It was because there were no rich or poor in his kingdom: no disparity between the high and mighty and the rejected and low. Jesus was outside of that whole system.

We say sometimes, "What would Jesus do?" I guess we ask it because we really don't know. We usually think what we are doing is what he would do. He deserves a closer look. Because the church today still favors the rich and even teaches doctrines that encourage us toward greed.

It isn't that we are to all become monastics. We need to understand justice and pursue it, though, because God is just. We need to really seek parity and equity in our churches, in our businesses, in our government, and in our world. We need to defend the downtrodden. We need to demand equality and practice fairness wherever we go. We need to seek to end the systems we create with our greed.

Above statistics taken from Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren.

The End: The 2 Competing Models

2008-01-04T04:48:00.000-06:00

The Bible speaks of the "end times." The fancy word for this is the eschaton. The study of the eschaton is called eschatology.

In the late 1800s, there was a developing eschatology called futurism. This method of understanding scriptures about "the end" developed some widely embraced scenarios for the return of Christ.

1. There will be a global apostasy and revival going on simultaneously.

2. The Jewish temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.

3. The dead and alive in Christ will fly up to heaven in an event called the "rapture."

4. There will be a man who essentially assumes power as a global monarch, who opposes God and poses as the world's savior.

5. He will institute a financial system in which no one can buy or sell without his mark.

6. There will be a tribulation period of seven years that includes cosmic disturbances.

7. There will be the final war of history that will play out at the place called Har-Meggido in Israel.

8. God will send two prophets at that time to torment the earth.

9. Finally, Christ will appear in the clouds on a white horse with an army of resurrected saints to finish the job on earth.

This is a basic scenario that is argued among futurist believers and is constructed from a literal reading of the biblical text, particularly "apocalyptic" verses sprinkled throughout the Bible, but most evident in Daniel and Revelation.

In more recent times a method of interpretation has been under construction that is called preterism, which means it views the eschaton as a done deal, a past event. This method takes the same collection of scriptures and applies them to the first century world in which Judaism met its symbolic end with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. At present, this construction looks something like this:

1. The Jewish religion experienced apostasy and the Christian religion surged.

2. The temple destroyed signalled the end of the Jewish age. There will be no new one constructed in the future.

3. The event called "rapture" (from the Greek, harpazo) occurred at that time when there was a spiritual resurrection occurring in the earth through the leavening of Christ. That is still ongoing and ascending.

4. The Antichrist (or "little horn" in Daniel) was fulfilled in Nero and his persecutions.

5. The mark of the beast is the imagery used to describe the Emperor worship of the time.

6. The 3 1/2 years of tribulation occurred at the time of Nero.

7. The war symbolized by Armageddon occurred at the time of Titus sacking Israel.

8. The two witnesses symbolize the two covenants, old and new.

9. Christ's "appearance" is the apocalypse or his revelation in the "saints" or the believing people that would follow in his stead.

The two scenarios are now the primary war that is being waged within the church over the meaning of the eschaton: did it already happen or is it still ahead of us? The resolution of this conflict is important since these ideas, particularly futurism, still influence the world even to the extent of American foreign policy.

The above futurist scenario is what is most suspect. Is it an accurate portrayal of what the Bible says will happen, or is it another imaginary myth that is popularly believed? And popular beliefs don't go away easily.

The real question, for me, is, What will replace it? What does the Bible really say about the future? Does it then give no clue? And are we then to expect there might be no actual physical return of Christ with a physical resurrection?

Does history just play itself out as a script acted by the ascending church until everything ultimately comes under Christ, or do we expect a kind of futurist convulsion in which God says, "Enough is enough," and initiates a quick and final end to things?

I don't see any air-tight conclusions to this conundrum yet. I wonder if there is truth in both scenarios; but the concept of "double-fulfillments" is hard to prove. I do see the possibility that the futurist concepts outlined above could go the way of the hula-hoop. However, the hula hoop is still around, just not as a market phenomenon. Old ideas are like oatmeal, they stick to your ribs.

KA-BOOM ~ American Military Superiority

2007-12-29T12:06:00.000-06:00

This is a picture of a 15,000 kilaton explosion. This is probably the summit of all fears. Below I will work through the data given in Brian McLaren's book Everything Must Change.

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population.....Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity." ~ George Kennon, 1948, one of the American government's leading foreign policy planners of the 20th century.

"So in terms of the suicide machine's three mechanisms, we could say it rather baldly and boldly like this: the purpose of the US security system is to maintain the inequity of US prosperity. Or, put alternatively, to maintain and expand the American Empire." ~ Brian McLaren on the above quote from Everything Must Change, pg. 164.

Let's examine what McLaren is saying in the list below:

1. In the 2006 American military budget, our expeditures were 21 times larger than diplomacy and foreign aid combined.

2. The US is dead last among the most developed nations in terms of foreign aid as a percentage of gross domestic product.

3. 10% of the US military budget reinvested in foreign aid and development could care for the needs of the entire earth's poor.

4. 1/2 of 1% of the US military budget would cut hunger in Africa in half by 2015.

5. The US, Russia, UK, France and China provide 86.7% of the global arms exports (sometimes to their avowed enemies).

6. America produces 53.4 of all the world's weapons.

7. 80% of the top buyers of our weapons are countries we have labeled as undemocratic and rejecting human rights, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

8. In 1999 the US supplied arms to 92% of the conflicts in progress on the planet, often supplying both sides.

9. From 1998 to 2001, the US, Britain, and France earned more from selling arms to developing nations than they gave to those nations in aid.

10. "Every year small arms kill more people than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Many more people are injured, terrorized or driven from their homes by armed violence." ~ Desmond Tutu

11. In the 20th century, 43 million military personnel were killed in war, and 62 million civilians.

12. The US military budget in 2003 was larger than the next fifteen nations combined. By 2006 it had swelled by 49% over its 2000 levels, not including expenses for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

13. Hidden costs not included in the figuring above have to do with the "brain drain" of using the best engineers, scientists, and thinkers developing non-productive assets.

14. In 2004 global military expenses exceeded $1 trillion while serious international terrorist attacks rose from 175 to 655.

15. From 1948 to 1990 the US and USSR amassed about 75,000 nuclear warheads whose combined power was 1 million times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

16. Since 1940 the US spent $5.48 trillion on nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

17. In 1969 one US sub could destroy 160 Soviet cities simultaneously.

18. At the height of MAD, the US was capable of blowing up 10 planets like earth. Even with disarmament we can still blow up several earths.

19. The US presently spends $100 million per day to maintain these systems.

20. Before 2001 the US annual investment in defense was more than 20% of its fiscal budget, over 1/2 trillion dollars, and over half of the national debt ($2.9 out of $5.6 trillion). Since 2001 these figures have exploded.

21. We are now stronger militarily than the next 25 nations combined.

Is this a sobering picture? What the fission are we doing? And what about the church? Do we think this is all a really great idea? Is this indicative of a righteous trajectory for America?

Inner Megalomaniac

2007-12-26T05:28:00.001-06:00

"Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'" ~ Will Smith ruminating

"Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet." ~ Will Smith backpedaling

Hello.

First of all, has anyone ever heard of a black Nazi? It's an oxymoron.

Hitler believed in the ridiculous concept of Aryan (read "white") superiority. Couple that concept with copious amounts of amphetamines and you have the Jewish purge. Hitler was really a religious man with a concept. And a crusade. And everybody wants to be in on a crusade at least once. Does anything else that a person can do produce such a giddy high of self-superiority?

I think this is what Will Smith was saying. Hitler was a man on a mission, bent on fixing the world. He was a do-gooder. So how does doing good turn into a holocaust? Will Smith is presenting a paradox that apparently went over the heads of his many fans.

"Whoa. Will Smith is a Nazi. Imagine that."

Apparently, the one luxury celebrities don't have is the luxury of deep thought. Shame on you, Will. You are an intelligent black man. Don't betray your fans by thinking.

So is it wrong to try to change the world? What is the difference between Hitler and Al Gore? Some people would say nothing. But does anyone believe Al Gore is a monster bent on dominating the world, with the ends justifying the means, in order to save the world? When does saving the world ~ mimicking your favorite superhero ~ become megalomania?

Even more interesting, is there a megalomaniac within each of us that is waiting to break out if only it can find a cause worth dominating the world for? Is there any irony in the idea that we can save the world through destruction? Awareness of that irony may be the only thing that keeps our inner megalomaniacs in check.

Bravo, Will Smith. You are a celebrity with a brain. And you seem to be keeping your inner megalomaniac in check.

Religious Justice

2007-12-24T06:24:00.000-06:00

These boys didn’t get a fair trial. They got picked for wearing black clothes and having long hair. I am fundamentally opposed to the death penalty, and as Lenny Bruce said, "In the halls of justice, all the justice is in the halls." Perhaps, a jury is composed of twelve men and women of average ignorance; and a judge is a lawyer who once knew a politician. In our system of justice, the best client for a lawyer is a scared millionaire. The worst thing in our criminal justice system is to be broke or different.
-Tom Waits

Watching the Larry King Interview of Damien Echols, now on death row from a mob justice conviction for murdering 3 boys in Arkansas over 15 years ago, I was thinking I could see how this kind of thing could happen, that these three guys could be convicted for "Satanic crimes" they did not commit. They were outsiders in a Bible Belt microcosm that was looking for convenient scapegoats.

Tragedies invoke traumas. Senseless murders can so traumatize the victim's loved ones that people who oppose the death penalty can suddenly become avid seekers of someone's execution, as a kind of panacea and vengeance for grief. Also, pull in local bias into the mix ~ the conviction that all kids in black clothes and long hair are Satanists ~ and you have the Salem witch trials deja vu. We should remember that Jesus Christ was executed as a Satanist.

And who was it that plotted Jesus' death? The strictest of religious Jews, the most pious sect among them. The Pharisees wielded political power and influence. They could incite a mob. They could conspire to have their nemesis, Jesus, eradicated. They could even pervert Roman justice to achieve their devious, though outwardly "righteous", ends.

It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens. And today, this famous case of the West Memphis 3 Murders, should be reopened and retried, largely due to new DNA evidence that ties none of the three alleged murderers to the scene. It is entirely possible that the three are innocent, with two serving life sentences and one awaiting lethal injection.

I am someone that people would categorize as "religious", because I have faith in Christ. But it makes me wonder why religion can turn people, even believers in Christ, into something other than what he so evidently was: a man committed to justice. Perhaps I too would become a rabid seeker of vengeance if I found a child close to me murdered: perhaps I would demand to be repaid. Perhaps my trauma would blind me to the fact that I had found innocent young men to pay for a crime they didn't commit in order to satisfy my emotional need for a closure that never comes. Perhaps my personal bias against some outsider would make me feel justified in having them put to death to sate my need for vengeance.

It is really the opposite of how faith should motivate us. Faith puts the painful reality in God's hands even if human justice fails miserably: and it frequently does. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord." It is criminally selfish of us to seek scapegoats to relieve us of our personal pain. All we do is compound the misery by pulling someone else into the black hole of a heinous crime.

As followers of Christ we should value justice, mercy, and kindness, even when seriously wronged. What good does it do to bring the legal hammer down on the innocent? It accomplishes nothing. Yet the Puritans did it. They brought a religious bias into the courtroom and became the new inquisitors, torturing and killing people Christ came to save.

Christ himself was an outsider. And he paid dearly for it.

He told us to clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry: that in so doing we were showing compassion to him. He is saying then that he identified with the outsider. The outsider is now in. He died as an outsider for the outsider. Yet it has been our lot in history to hate the outsider, round him up, put him in prison and even kill him. It makes me think we don't have a clue who Christ really was.

Doing Greater Works Than Jesus

2007-12-21T05:19:00.000-06:00

John 14:12-14 -Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater [works] than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ya shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do [it].

Mat 17:20 - And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Mat 18:18 - Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

From a Tony Campolo piece on "Doing Greater Works":

I was in Haiti. I checked on our missionary work there. We run 75 small schools back in the hills of Haiti. I came to the little Holiday Inn where I always stay and shower and clean up before I board the plane to go home. I left the taxi and was walking to the entrance of the Holiday Inn when I was intercepted by three girls. I call them girls because the oldest could not have been more than 15. And the one in the middle said, "Mister, for $10 I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’ll do it all night long. Do you know what I mean?"
I did know what she meant. I turned to the next one and I said, "What about you, could I have you for $10?"
She said yes. I asked the same of the third girl. She tried to mask her contempt for me with a smile but it’s hard to look sexy when your 15 and hungry. I said, "I’m in room 210, you be up there in just 10 minutes. I have $30 and I’m going to pay for all 3 of you to be with me all night long."

I rushed up to the room, called down to the concierge desk and I said I want every Walt Disney video that you’ve got in stock. I called down to the restaurant and said, do you still make banana splits in this town, because if you do I want banana splits with extra ice cream, extra everything. I want them delicious, I want them huge, I want four of them!

The little girls came and the ice cream came and the videos came and we sat at the edge of the bed and we watched the videos and laughed until about one in the morning. That’s when the last of them fell asleep across the bed. And as I saw those little girls stretched out asleep on the bed, I thought to myself, nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. Tomorrow they will be back on the streets selling their little bodies to dirty, filthy johns because there will always be dirty, filthy johns who for a few dollars will destroy little girls. Nothing’s changed. I didn’t know enough Creole to tell them about the salvation story, but the word of the spirit said this: but for one night, for one night you let them be little girls again.

I know what you’re going to say: "You’re not going to compare that with Jesus walking on water." No, I’m not, for very obvious reasons. If Jesus was to make a decision which is the greater work, walking on water or giving one night of childhood back to 3 little girls who had it robbed from them -- giving one night of joy to 3 little girls that armies had marched over -- which do you think Jesus would consider the greater work, walking on water or ministering to those 3 little girls.

The Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

My comment:
Dr. Campolo represents just one way of looking at the issue of doing greater works. There is a tension in this idea. For instance, there is a teaching that in the final days of the Gentile Age the church will again produce the miracles of Jesus, exactly as he performed them, and even greater (based largely on the scriptures above quoted).

The word "greater" is a translation of the Greek word meizon, which basically means "higher quality." That is, Jesus is saying, "You will do better works than these."

In John 8: 39, Jesus says, "Do the works of Abraham." Abraham did no miracles. "Works" means "deeds." Do the deeds of Abraham. Abraham's deeds were deeds of faith, like leaving the safety of Ur to obey God.

Greater also means the "extended" work of the Spirit through the corporate Body of believers. We too participate in the work of the Father's business through the Spirit given to us. God works with us in our lives as we walk after the Spirit: sometimes miracles happen. They are interventions of all sorts.

We can safely say that God has extended the work of Jesus through the church, and it has been a miraculous journey. We have not yet seen very many believers replicating the actual miracles of Jesus, and certainly no one doing verifiably greater or more astonishing things.

What would happen if people did start doing those things again? Would it shake up the world? Perhaps.

But Dr. Campolo brings up a worthy thought. Would doing those things be greater than simple acts of love, which are themselves miraculous in a world so lacking in compassion and kindness? Those girls in Haiti needed an orphanage.

In James we read: "Pure religion...is caring for the widows and orphans...."

Jesus was just one man, but through his Spirit he became many, a greater company called the church, extending his influence into all the world. It is the destiny of the church to love the world, just as he does.

Tweaking the Eschaton

2007-12-19T18:14:00.000-06:00

I'm just going to copy this straight out of Brian McLaren's new book Everything Must Change. This book may be the most challenging one this guy has written yet. Very thought provoking:

"The phrase 'the second coming of Christ' never actually appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves rethinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. If we believe that Jesus came in peace the first time, but that wasn't his 'real' and decisive coming ~ it was just a kind of warm-up for the real thing ~ then we envision a second coming that will be characterized by violence, killing, domination and eternal torture. This vision reflects a deconversion, a retrun to trust in the power of Pilate, refusing to fight. This eschatological understanding of a violent second coming leads us to believe (as we've said before) that in the end, even God finds it impossible to fix the world apart from violence and coercion; no one should be surprised when those shaped by this theology behave accordingly.......

".......This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John's Apocalypse, are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral. By way of ignorance, they are oblivious to the conventions of Jewish apocalyptic literature in particular, and literature of the oppressed in general. As a result they wrongly ~ one might even say ridiculously ~ interpret obviously metaphorical language as literal."
Everything Must Change, pgs. 144-145.

McLaren is probably the most influential writer in what is called the "emergent" church, a term he says he hates. It is as if he has been given the task to define the direction of the post-modern church, or really the church in the now post-modern era.

Anyone entering into the emergent conversation is in for a wild ride. This whole thing is a real shaking for the universal church which is used to certain conventions of thinking or what McLaren would call "framing narratives." A framing narrative is just a story we go by: a particular way of viewing the scriptures that defines our lives.

I've been talking, in some of my blogs, about one of my favorite (no, obsessive) subjects,eschatology (the study of "last things" or the eschaton). I was spiritually raised in this version of Jesus he calls "ignorant and wrong." The view he is undboubtedly coming from is over in the zone we might call universalist / preterist. To Evangelical ears, this sounds radical, and to some devilish. For many it is tantamount to heresy.

Still, I don't just like this guy, I love him. I don't know of another writer out there that upends my safe little world so much. So we'll be looking at this new book in later blogs, I'm sure.

When I read words like those above from McLaren, I feel schizophrenic, like I have two personalities. One side of me resonates with what he's saying and the other is crying, "No, you can't take the second coming away from me." I have not a sufficient interpretational grid to process that with.

The apocalyptic framing story McLaren is referring to is the picture inspired by Revelation of Jesus returning to earth with ten thousands of his saints to finish up the Middle East battle of Armageddon and reclaim the earth for the future kingdom of God. McLaren's framing story is the very different preterist version that says Jesus' return symbology refers to a past event and was tied in with the first Advent and the end of the age of Judaism.

What intrigues me here is that he is saying, basically, our eschatology could use some tweaking and that we may be using these things irresponsibly. How do we then process all the biblical references to parousia, resurrection, harpazo, and the larger paradigm shift that Jesus inaugurated? Maybe we need another Nicene council: a meeting of diverse Christian minds to rethink the eschaton.

In The Courtroom of Life

2007-12-16T18:33:00.000-06:00

1 Corinthians 6
Lawsuits Among Believers
1If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? 2Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 4Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! 5 I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? 6 But instead, one brother goes to law against another—and this in front of unbelievers!

7The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

~

I want to go beneath the surface of this a little bit. Is there more here than just advice for handling legal matters and one of the most seemingly damning verses in the New Testament? I mean, you could take verse nine and virtually exclude anybody and everybody from the kingdom of God. Are there any immoral people, idolaters, gays, greedy folks, drunks, slanderers, or swindlers in the church? No? Are you in a coma?

First of all, why are the court dockets full? Why is Judge Judy one of the highest-paid performers on TV? Why are there so many lawyers and so many laws? The answer is that offenses abound; and, even more than that, people who want to get even because of offenses abound.

What does it mean to "get even?" It means, "I want justice." I want a fair shake. Nobody takes advantage of me: nobody.

We often join up with a religion because we become concerned about spiritual issues. Then, when we join, we strive to be the best we can at that religion's tenets. When we do, we invest a lot in that effort; and, when we have a lot invested in something, we begin to enforce it. And woe be unto anyone who challenges our position. It can get really savage. Also, that savagery undermines the very reason we sought religion in the first place.

In Christ's teachings, though, we encounter something very opposite to this tendency. He teaches love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and hospitality. In short, He asks us to be very contrary to the tendencies of our own natures.

In the above passage, Paul is talking first about legalities and disputes, then he tells us that the wicked won't inherit the kingdom of God. It almost seems there is no real context here, no connection between the two ideas.

But a closer look would reveal there is a connection. The previous chapter is part of the context here, where Paul deals with immorality in the church and sets up what seems to be a practice that endures to the present day: excommunication. But in the big picture of how Paul deals with these problems, we begin to realize that he was also quick to forgive and accept people back who changed their ways.

A closer examination of Paul's teachings reveals that he was anti-legalistic and into promoting harmony in the church. He was, as a major leader, trying to head off legalistic bickering that we know from history became the denominational and schism-happy situation we see today.

The point, really, of verse nine, is that we are all by the law condemned. Thus, do we take that same law and bully one another and those without, the outsiders? This is an anti-legalistic passage. It isn't saying we don't need to obey the law. It is saying we don't need to take legal judgments and bludgeon everybody.

Actually, this practice of going to law with fellow believers is exactly what we do and have done for centuries. When are we going to quit?

Paul says, "Some of you used to be very wicked yourselves. When did you start becoming so judgmental? When did you start using the law you once broke so frivolously to now bring everyone into line?"

In other words, we are all condemned. But now we are out from under the law because he who fulfilled the law (Jesus) is with us. Our understanding is that he has saved us from our condemnation, and further, he is saving everything he has made. Through Christ he is bringing what he has created back to himself. Who are we to judge?

Paul also says we will sit in judgment, even of angels, so we should be able to judge disputes. The primary thing that ends disputes is mercy, and mercy opens us to understand what brought the offending party to their present situation. How great is the mercy of God through Christ toward us? It knows no bounds.

Mercy rejoices against judgment, and lawsuits are about judgment. However, it is more than legal disputes we are looking at here: it is all contention within the church and even extended to those without. This does not mean we don't seek to understand the truth through dialog. It does mean we are all on the same trajectory and therefore are not enemies over trifles or disputes over words, semantic wrangling.

The church has a long and complicated history of disputes, legal questions, and doctrinal oppositions. Sometimes these things have been so prominent that they actually sidetrack from the work of proclaiming Christ's salvation to the world. This historical dynamic means there is something fundamentally wrong with what we believe Christ has accomplished. We have limited the mercy of God and made it only available to a select few. But His mercy endures forever: it knows no bounds and is certainly not boxed in by our preferences and prejudices. It's time for the church to open her bowels of compassion both to those without and those within.

Iceland USA: Meditation

2007-12-15T12:20:00.000-06:00

Psalm 147: 12

Jerusalem, praise the Lord.

Zion, praise your God.

13 He makes the bars

of your gates stronger.

He blesses the people

who live inside you.

14 He keeps your borders

safe and secure.

He satisfies you

with the finest wheat.

15 He sends his command

to the earth.

His word arrives there quickly.

16 He spreads the snow like wool.

He scatters the frost like ashes.

17 He throws down his hail

like small stones.

No one can stand his icy blast.

18 He gives his command,

and the ice melts.

He stirs up his winds,

and the waters flow.

19 He has made his word known to the people of Jacob.

He has made his laws and rules known to Israel.

20 He hasn't done that for any other nation.

They don't know his laws. Praise the Lord.

Photos courtesy of Leigh Ann Wilbur

A Sound In The Trees

2007-12-14T10:39:00.001-06:00

2 Samuel 5:
23 So David asked the Lord for advice. The Lord answered, "Do not go straight up. Instead, circle around behind them. Attack them in front of the balsam trees. 24 Listen for the sound of marching in the tops of the trees. Then move quickly. The sound will mean that I have gone out in front of you. I will strike down the Philistine army."

I've been remiss about blogging. Actually, suffering from blogger-block and too much going on right now (not to mention ice storms).

I've been discussing the arts and Christianity with some e-mail buddies. Seems the church universal dropped the ball on media. And maybe that was just as well. If we were propagating the wrong message maybe it is best we didn't master the medium. Besides, we weren't interested in the medium as much as the message: and the message has been divisive. How can you divide your audience and expect to win them?

I'm seeing, I think, a glimmer of hope. What would happen if we got the message right? What if the world out there perked up when they heard about Jesus? What if He was no longer the enemy of all reason, the state, and the people? What if He wasn't so monstrous and scary any more? What if it suddenly dawned on people that He is the actual, unadulterated, unmitigated savior of the world? What if what we projected and broadcast to them actually was good news?

I've been blogging much of 2007 and just kind of hashing out my favorite subjects. In the interim I have changed. There has been a spiritual paradigm shift in my whole consciousness. It hasn't changed me on the outside. In fact, I got a little fatter this year staying home a lot and caring for my Dad who, at 93, is in the throes of dimentia.

In fact, dimentia taught me something. It taught me about the value of life. What we accomplish is almost meaningless in relation to this temporal sphere. Whatever my Dad was trying to do in life, whatever gains he tried to make, whatever successes he had, he can't remember them now. His brain is practically dead, even while he lives. And it tells me, when death comes, it all passes away. For him, it has all passed, and he is still alive. He is living testimony that not much of what we do matters.

But Jesus said it does matter. He said, "Lay treasures up in heaven." Well, how do we do that? By giving to Benny Hinn? Benny thinks that's a good idea. The fact is, our lives are on a trajectory and laying up treasures is part of that.

With the Advent of Christ, mankind is headed for the Kingdom. We who come into this blessed hope in this life are now helping to further that goal of God. But we haven't really realized it or been taught it. Instead, we've been trying to coerce people into Christ. That's different than what Paul meant when he said, "I caught you with guile" or "Knowing the seriousness of God we persuade men." That was King James. The NIV Reader's Version puts it this way:

1 Cor. 5: 11 We know what it means to have respect for the Lord. So we try to help other people to understand it.

How can we help people understand it if we don't really know what it is?

What if we did begin to understand it? What if it suddenly dawned on millions of Christians that we have been preaching a crippled gospel? That would have to come from God for such a time as this, when church credibility and relevance are at an ebb. Then our whole approach to our common faith would take on a radical new look. Suddenly, Jesus would not just be some imaginary monarch to the masses, He would be the hero of history, the fixer of everything.

Do I hear a sound in the balsam trees?

Forgiveness Song

2007-12-08T10:26:00.000-06:00

This is a song I think I wrote in about 1976. The lyrics can be sung over the Bob Marley tune I Shot The Sheriff.

Forgive

//Forgive one another
And don't hold a grudge
Judge not your brother
That you be not judged.

With what measure that you mete
It will be measured to you again
Agree with your adversary quickly
While you are in the way with him.

//Forgive one another....

Why behold the mote that's in your brother's eye
And not the beam that's in your own
Try cleaning up your own back yard
Before you pick at someone else's home.

//Forgive one another....

People who live in glass houses
Should not be throwing stones
Let the man without sin among you
Be the first to cast a stone.

//Forgive one another
And don't hold a grudge
Judge not your brother
That you be not judged.

Global Religion

2007-11-30T15:03:00.000-06:00

The map above depicts the way Christianity is presently dispersed across the globe.

The highest density is seen in South America. In part, that was begun by Catholic missions in past centuries and, more recently, the explosive growth of Pentecostalism among Hispanic peoples.

North America is less densely Christian but still has a healthy believing population as does Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. It is interesting that in Europe, though, in many places, only about 2% still attend church. Also, note the Phillipines, with a high Christian saturation.

Smack dab in the middle of Asia (Russia) is a big dab of green that is probably mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians. The believers, globally, make up about a third of the earth's population at present, with about half of those professing Catholicism.

The vast desert stretches of orange denote a dearth of Christians in these areas dominated by Muslims. Monotheists, then, make up half of the world's population, combining Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Israel is notably centered right in the Middle of this belt of non-Christianity. For Evangelicals, then, this is the final goal of the "Great Commission", the "go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to all nations, then shall the end come" command. How shall this orange belt of unbelief be breached?

We live in a globalist, shrinking world, and an "electronic village." Some have said that the real thing that brought down the former Soviet Union was the Internet. The Internet is presently a vast networking of free information blanketing the globe, and, yes, even the Middle East.

Much of Islam is under theocratic government, not democracy. Theocracies try to screen out all information coming to their peoples that criticize or question these regimes. That is because people tend to follow what they know, and it is a means of control. Once you open up democracy, people then have to sift through information that contradicts what they believe or have been taught to believe. Of course, Muslim leaders don't want to encourage the Western poisons of gambling, pornography, and materialism that would come through the Internet either. But surely one of the biggest problems would be Christian propaganda.

Christianity is Islam's biggest competitor. No matter what denominational form the message comes in, the message of Christ is world-shattering. One of Islam's central tenets is that Islam will win in the end. Allah will triumph. And Christ will return as an Islamist.

Christianity, though, holds that "the meek shall inherit the earth," and interprets the "meek" as those who follow Christ, not Mohammed. We must assume that truth and justice will overtake the earth some day. Will it come from one or the other of the two predominant religious framing narratives of mankind?

The message of Christ actually penetrated the whole earth in the days of the apostles. It began in "Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." But the "uttermost parts" in those days was not what it is now. We are literally standing at the threshold of the moment that the whole earth might hear the good news.

Seven-fold Patterns In Scripture

2007-11-28T18:40:00.000-06:00

"Let us begin our textual comparison with the seven-fold pattern of the creation days. This pattern is repeated seemingly endlessly throughout the book of Revelation. All the apocalyptic events in Revelation are categorized in this same seven-fold structure and what’s more, they mirror the creation order. It is necessary to quote Milton Terry at length here:

"The seven days of the cosmogony are no more to be interpreted literally than are the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the repetitions of "God said" in Genesis suggest some analogies to be found in the sounding of the seven trumpets. At the sounding of the first trumpet the earth was smitten; at the second, the sea; at the third, the rivers and fountains; at the fourth, the sun; at the fifth, the abyss; at the sixth, the armies of Euphrates were set loose, and, at the seventh, "great voices in heaven" announced the advent and reign of the Lord and his Anointed. The days of Genesis are as symbolical as the trumpets of the Apocalypse, and can no more successfully be identified (or shown to correspond) with ascertained aeons of geology and cosmical evolution than can the trumpets with successive historical events.

"Augustine viewed the days of Genesis in much the same way, and modern advocates of the Framework View draw the same parallel Terry does. Lee Irons writes in response to the idea that numbered days must mean literal, chronological 24-hour days:

" 'The fact that the days are numbered need not be taken as evidence of chronological sequence any more than the numbering of the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls in Revelation. The days are numbered to call the reader’s attention to the theological significance of the sabbatical structure of the creation account.' "

from: http://www.truthinliving.org/

The above comes from a Preterist viewpoint. Preterist means that eschatology is defined as the "last days" already took place: they culminated in the 70AD destruction of the temple.

What strikes me here is how this dovetails with my analysis of these things in my book 7K: The Millennial Week. And I am not exactly a Preterist or a Futurist. In my thinking, the two can be blended. There doesn't have to be an endless "we-they" argument going on here.

What all of us are searching for is an understanding of how biblical prophecy applies to us. How do we process these enigmatic, ancient sayings? We know a great many prophecies were fulfilled with Jesus; it seems much harder to conclusively demonstrate that all of them were fulfilled in 70AD. There are some glaring loose ends that seem to escape the sight of devoted Preterists. Likewise, Futurists pooh-pooh everything Preteristic, which is sad. The Preterist view is revealing great truths.

One thing that emerges is mentioned in the writings of Milton Terry above, and it comes from a sensitivity to a kind of mystical Bible code that is right there in scripture itself (but not confined to Genesis and Revelation alone). There are patterns of 7 all over the Bible, some concealed in the text itself.

When we pull these patterns out and lay them over one another, we can begin to see connections revealing the greater plan of God. A literal reading of these things suggest that Jesus' future finishing of the Gentile Age is possibly just ahead of us. Preterists don't seem to give a nod to such an age even existing.

It is interesting that ancient sages ~ both Jewish and Christian ~ subscribed to an idea that has been called the septimillennial theory. This simply meant that the Bible suggested there would be seven millennial (thousand-year) periods before the complete fulfillment of all prophecy. Some of the Jewish scholars divided six of these millennia into three ages of 2,000-years apiece.

The first biblical age, from Adam to Abraham, was called the "age of chaos." The second age was "the age of Law" or of the Jew. The third age was to be "the age of Messiah." Indeed, in 30AD that "age" began, according to both Preterists and Futurists.

I tend to think that what is called the "times of the Gentiles" in the Book of Acts is referring to this third age. And I tend to think that age is near its close, but hesitate to say how soon, though dating would suggest it occurs within the next 23 or so years. However, Preterists help us to take caution with such information lest we encourage people to abandon their responsibilities thinking the Messiah is coming soon.

There is another way to consider the 7,000-year theory so that we don't have to take it literally. It can be thought of as a symbolic picture of the entire plan of God. In scripture, 7 is the perfect number. It is a connective and prophetic number as well. Both Genesis and Revelation reveal the whole plan of God, which is too much to discuss here. But in days to come I hope to go further, and to occasionally pull out some of these amazing connections.

Weak Faith

2007-11-22T12:30:00.000-06:00

1 Corinthians 8:
7 But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.

8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.

10 For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols?

11 So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.

We don't have the problem today of eating food sacrificed to idols; but we do have the problem of "weak faith" and "weak conscience." I want to explore this briefly.

What is "faith?" Is it a means to an end? Some Christian teachers teach that it is. They see faith as something you accumulate and, when you have sufficient faith, then it becomes usable. There is a reason for this idea, since there are numerous verses in the Bible that might suggest this. Some even take this so far as to believe that our words have a creative ability to change things. You speak faith to something and, if your faith is big enough, that thing will obey you. The problem is, it usually doesn't work. The truth is, faith is a small thing, like a mustard seed, that can accomplish big things. Faith is just faith. It is static by itself. But God is dynamic and will respond to faith ~ but not always. Why? Because our motives can be misdirected: greedy, envious, vengeful, proud, to name a few. Or, God does not respond for other reasons: it is not necessary, it is not in his plan, it is not his will.

The real meaning of faith is confidence. Faith does not have any goal, of itself, other than trust. Mature faith is like that of Job who said, "Though God slay me, yet I will trust him." That helps us to understand the testing of faith or "trials of faith." All of us experience this. Our faith really matures more when God isn't answering prayer than when he is.

Results are only one dimension of prayer, and not the most significant. The main goal of prayer is communion and relationship. And it is in this area that faith grows and becomes strong, not weak. Our journey should develop our faith.

So, as we see in Paul's statements above, in our relationships with other believers we have those who have "strong" faith and those who have "weak" faith. There are certain earmarks of weak faith: a legalistic attitude, a lack of understanding and knowledge, and a predisposition to being offended by someone else's actions. Thus, we can see that, in the church today, there is a lot of weak faith, and often in people who have been following Christ a long time. But experiences, even negative ones, should make us stronger.

Strong faith has developed like the muscles of a weight lifter, through exercise. Our faith experiences the pain of development and ultimately gets stronger. Thus, we gain in "knowledge"; that is, we understand God more clearly than our weaker fellow believers. We understand, in the instance above, that food sacrificed to idols is nothing. We don't have a superstition about it. We can eat anything, really, without polluting our spirit.

But, as I said, those with weak faith are easily offended. They compare themselves with those with stronger faith than they and conclude that the stronger person is weaker. Thus they are more easily offended by the stronger person's understanding of his liberty in Christ. So Paul remarks that the stronger person should be careful not to offend the weaker person, possibly derailing their undeveloped conscience and diverting them off the path of faith. This, Paul says, is not the path of love.

Those who lead in the church have to, by virtue of their responsibility, walk more circumspectly than those who don't lead. They may have to not take advantage of certain freedoms they have in order to be patient with those in their care that are developing slowly. But this is also simply a principle. Overly cautious leaders then can fall into the trap of weak faith themselves.

The best mode for all of us, weak or strong, is to develop a transparency and humility that says "we do not yet know what we ought to know." Strong faith is characterized by these things, actually. The person develops to the point they no longer take themselves too seriously. That doesn't mean they don't take God seriously. But they identify with the struggle of life more closely: they understand that no matter how well we develop, we are all in the same boat together. We are all desparately in need of the grace that comes through Christ only.

I think the Body of Christ, the "church", is going through a hard maturing process in these days. There are forces in the world we may not be aware of that are growing us. We have what the world needs and yet the world is rejecting what we exhibit that it doesn't need. The greatest gift we can give anybody is faith in Christ: nothing else can do what that one thing does. Nothing else is so precious. That alone separates us from all other religion, and that alone makes us "holy" or separate. We belong to Christ and he is our new identity.

But we should be aware that faith grows or matures. We should not remain in a static babyhood of legalism and negativity. And we who attain maturity should realize that we have a responsibility to model a mature Christian faith for those who are mired in weak faith yet think of themselves as strong, like a teenager that knows more than his or her parents. Good stuff to think about. But what is Paul's message? "Grow up, Corinthians."

Deep To Deep

2007-11-16T04:53:00.000-06:00

Romans 8: 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

Prayer is talking to God. We cultivate prayer by doing it.

When you have faith in Christ, Christ is in you by His Spirit, and you can access God the Father through the Son. You enjoy a unique audience with God.

Our will and God's will go in two opposing directions. So how do we know God's will in any given situation? By the Spirit.

Psalm 42: 7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

The context of Psalm 42 is prayer. The "deep" is spirit-to-spirit communication. God's Spirit in us connects with God in this interface. In a sense, the Spirit prays through us to the Spirit. It is a mystical communion.

As we delve deeper in this, the informational exchange in prayer divulges information about God's will. The journey of prayer teaches us the way of the Spirit. We learn to "hear" God as well as speak to Him. We graduate from the one-way conversation. We learn to listen to what the Spirit is saying.

There is no more satisfying relationship. And it isn't about how skilled we get at praying. When we talk to each other we give and take information. So those exercised in prayer can learn God's voice through familiarity and listening.

Many, when they first discover God's voice, can easily abuse it. They think everything they hear in their head is God and they say, "God told me." But with continual use, we learn that God is more subtle. We begin to hear Him in others, and even in those who don't know Him. His voice pervades our consciousness and we are more "in touch." We begin to walk in that consciousness and it informs all that we do and say.

Some call this phenomenon "the prophetic" because it is the "Spirit of prophecy" that leads us. That is, the all-knowing God is laying out His will through our lives. One does not have to be sensitive to the prophetic, though, for this to happen. One does not have to have all the right doctrine and go to the right church and have the right politics. But it is divulged when we pray. Prayer is how we walk with God. And it goes on, after awhile, even when we are not speaking words. It becomes fellowship.

This is not about "accuracy." Some in the prophetic circles seek accuracy. But even accuracy exalts self, and causes us to depart from the real function of the Spirit. God isn't trying to impress anybody ~ He can do that easily. He is indwelling us and leading us, step by step. Then the "prophetic" consumes us.

Prayer then advances in stages. We walk into the room. We do our howdies. We ask for some things that concern us and our situation. But, if we persist, the conversation expands and the communion increases. Then we move into relationship and discovery. We become intimate with our Creator.

The Holy Spirit is the mind of Christ in us. He knows the mind of God and the will of God and taps into that through us. We enter into the vast spiritual ocean that is God. As we do, we are being consumed by His fire and subsumed into Him. "Learn of me, " He says. It isn't a competition among believers. It is God with you, in your world, where you are right now.

Losing My Religion

2007-11-13T17:49:00.000-06:00

Life is bigger

It's bigger than you

And you are not me

The lengths that I will go to

The distance in your eyes

Oh no I've said too much

I set it up

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it

Oh no I've said too much

I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisperOf every waking hour

I'mChoosing my confessions

Trying to keep an eye on you

Like a hurt lost and blinded fool

Oh no I've said too much

I set it up

Consider this

The hint of the century

Consider this

The slip that brought me

To my knees failed

What if all these fantasies

Come flailing around

Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream

That was just a dream

Lyrics for: Losing My Religion
From the album: Out Of Time
Songwriters: Buck, Peter, Stipe, Michael, Mills, Mike, Berry, William
Label: Warner Bros.
Genres: 1990s Alternative, 1990s Soft Rock, Adult Alternative, Soft Rock, The Coffeehouse

"Losing my religion" was something people said when they slipped up and cussed publicly. But, think about it. There was an old song that said, "Gimme that ol' time religion." A catchy song, but what did it really mean? Do we want a solid case of religion or not?

Did Jesus come to establish a religion? Obviously he did establish one: we call it "Christianity." And Christendom is known for good, but it is also remembered for many evils perpetrated by religionists in the name of Christ. Could we learn to avoid the bad stuff? Maybe we need to lose our religion, but keep our faith. Maybe if we lost our religion we would love one another.

Attitude Dancing

2007-11-08T16:05:00.000-06:00

In his book Intuitive Leadership, Tim Keel, pastor of a growing Emergent community in Kansas City, presents nine possibilities for transitions to emergence in the church. He speaks of them as changes in posture, meaning "bearing or attitude." That is, these are attitude adjustments. Below, I will touch on these in brief, from page 228-252:

The transitions mentioned are ~

Learning: From Answers to Questions ~ In the Modern Era, the focus was on finding the answers; but the new frontier is asking questions. This shift of focus is from leadership to community. The attitude change is from trying to mold and control the environment we are in to responding to it.

Vulnerability: From the Head to the Heart ~ This is a shift away from an emphasis on being "right." Being right puts us in danger of our knowledge not only filling us with pride, but blinding us to opportunities or placing us in jails of our own making. We learn to listen with the heart as well as the head, and move into the scary seas of a more intuitive approach to God and those around us.

Availability: From Spoken Words to Living Words ~ Our emphasis has been on what we say, how we say it, meanings, and the propaganda power of words. This transition is moving us toward becoming "living epistles, known and read of all men." Our emphasis is on living out God's words more than explaining them, where a picture becomes worth a thousand words.

Stillness: From Preparation to Meditation ~ We have learned to research and present our message. In doing so, we seek to comprehend God. The shift will be to apprehending God, since he is always beyond our comprehension. This creates a needed humility and a heightened awe of God. But it also increases the connectivity between people, and our desperate need of stillness and listening instead of just speaking and activity.

Surrender: From Control to Chaos ~ Ours has been a controlling age in the church, seeking formulas that work and trying to rein in the beast of unpredictability around us. But in Genesis, the Spirit hovers over the chaos of the waters, and out of it comes life. What seems like chaos to us is the creation of new patterns in the bigger picture. The question becomes "how do I respond to what God is doing?" more than "how do I bring the world to order?"

Cultivation: From Programmer to Environmentalist ~ Programming is an emphasis on efficiency, an industrial approach to Christian-making that is an assembly line. The "environmentalist", on the other hand, is sensitive to the ecology around him. The emphasis shifts from producing a product to being open and hospitable.

Trust: From Defensiveness to Creativity ~ This is a shift from independence to dependence on God. The defensive Christian stance has trained us to always be attacking, not just those outside who are different, but each other as well. It is faith as war. And it breeds suspicion. We are constantly worried about what will happen instead of trusting and resting confidently in the midst of the turmoil of change. Our military precision undermines the possibilities of creative change.

Joy: From Work to Play ~ We take ourselves too seriously. We are grim and utilitarian about the Father's business. Like the bumper sticker: "Jesus is coming back: look busy!" But Jesus is the Sabbath. We aren't resting in him. And it shows.

Dependence: From Resolution to Tension ~ We are constantly seeking to resolve controversies and tensions. And we never do. In fact, they seem to breed like rats around us. Depending on God is like being adrift in the sea. There is tension, uncertainty, even overwhelming circumstances everywhere, all the time. Like we hear people say: "Get over it!" Surrender is not just obeying precepts: it is letting go of the need to control everything. Again, in that brooding sea of turmoil, God is orchestrating something. Get used to the rubber-band resolution and tension of life. Be a friend of flux.

I think Pastor Keel is nailing it here, in practical ways. "Behold, I do a new thing," says God. Will we let him? Even more, will we be along for the ride when he does?

Swarm Logic

2007-11-05T17:47:00.000-06:00

swarm logic (SWOHRM law.jik) n. The process by which a large number of unintelligent entities can, by working together without central direction, produce intelligent action.

There is a phenomenon we know as "emergence." It has a potential for amazing creativity. If we look at the world of insects, we see it in a swarm. Tens of thousands of initially dislocated little intelligences suddenly come together in a cloud and begin to move in concert. The otherwise chaotic individuals combine into a force that determines a single outcome.

Presently, the Internet is proving to be a swarming mechanism. Potentially billions of people are becoming interconnected in an unprecedented way. And it has no discernible ultimate direction. It is not known to the participants what will emerge from this massive interactivity, but out of the chaos we have already seen the emergence of creative new possibilities.

In fact, it is the biggest revolution in global thinking since the printing press was unleashed. It will utterly change the way everything is done. But is there a logic to it? Can any of the emergent behavior be predictable? Scientists are looking at these possibilities. Because what if we could control outcomes? What if we could steer toward beneficial new realities?

There is, in the Bible, the always interesting story of the Tower of Babel. It was an early example of human swarming. For some reason, the minds of the people became fused in one unified creative effort. It is also interesting that God decided to crash the party.

Genesis 11:
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

We see here that the swarming had a potential that made nothing impossible. We can only speculate as to why God busted this swarm: perhaps it was a timing issue. Yet it is interesting we have this same emergent potential in the world today. A kind of global mind-meld that makes us wonder: "What will be the outcome?"

But how will this phenomenon of swarming emergence affect the church? Or better, where will it propel the church? It is certain that the times they are a-changing....fast.

In the past, swarms tended to grow around leaders, and I'm not saying that tendency will go away. Consider Pentecostalism that did not arise around strong leadership but around a communal discovery of a long-ignored feature of the original Christian faith: charisma. It developed into a swarm that literally blanketed the earth.

In a way, a swarm is a bit like a baby developing in the womb. Its structure emerges. The church is in pain. Something is in the womb, developing. But we don't see its full shape yet. It is only an embryo.

When this swarm comes together it will be unprecedented in its creativity and impact. But it isn't going to look anything like the structure we are used to. That structure is ready to be demolished, and it will happen before the inexorable path of the coming swarm.

The Golden Compass Is A Person

2007-11-01T14:38:00.000-05:00

I would guess the upcoming movie, to be released around Christmas and called The Golden Compass, will be a blockbuster.

Already, the Catholic League is poised to give the release a hard time. Why? Well, the organization in the story that trumps all evil is called "The Magisterium." This is an obvious reference to Medieval Roman Catholicism.

Add to that the fact that this story is written by an ardent atheist to be in competition with The Chronicles of Narnia. The author simply seems to despise religion and particularly God. Thus, he has produced some anti-God propaganda to help children to not get sucked into the great black hole of religious faith.

That said, I'll probably watch the movie, even though I might have, at my tender age of 58, become overwhelmed by labyrinthine fantasy epics. Still, it is a great opportunity for the wonderful special effects we have become accustomed to. The price tag on this whopper is higher than Waterworld was, over 200 million.

Narnia was a delight, but I haven't watched it again. For one thing, I have not the patience any more to sit through a long, droll build-up in movies, as was the style in C.S. Lewis' day, back when people valued plots and suspense. Today we know better. If you want to make a good movie, cut to the chase, I only have a 7-minute attention span. If you want my dollar, that is.

I have surely been through numerous movies written by atheists: and what about the popularity of Christian-bashing in the movies of the last three decades? You get used to it after awhile. It starts to feel good. Christians make good bad guys (no oxymoron intended).

And, just because this movie is the world's-eye-view of an atheist doesn't mean it isn't spiritual, or that it doesn't have worthwhile things to tell us. I've reached the place I think the church should lash out against its critics less and listen more. They may be trying to tell us something valuable.

It's hard to tell whether protests hinder or propel movies. I call it "negative hype". It can do wonders for one's career. So a bit of Christianized overkill may do the movie good.

I have a motto in my mind, these days, that no matter where you look, you can find substance. It may be that this is going to manifest in this movie. After all, most movies are about good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. These images are always profoundly biblical, no matter who is producing them. God's story is based in these very things.

2007 should possibly be dubbed "the year of the atheist." Numerous atheist-themed books have rocked the bestseller lists, and now we wind up the year with anti-God propaganda for children. So is the country going atheist? Or is it just a fashionable moment for atheism? I would guess the latter.

As a former atheist, I don't worry much about atheism. It has been known to do as much harm as any other religion if its adherents become too zealous and dictatorial. In fact, recently I have had Internet conversations with very dedicated atheist scientists, and they are more than amiable. In fact, some of them have jumped from the Christian train, often as a result of offenses or traumas that made them doubt God.

Jesus said to us to love our "enemies". Anybody who hates us qualifies as an enemy. I regard this as an opportunity of discovery. This is a fantastic concept! It causes us to stretch and empathize with those we are most opposite to.

I am of the opinion that the church is often, if not almost universally, adept at drowning out the voices of those it seeks to reach. We are afraid of critics. Perhaps we are so insecure about our own beliefs that we must insulate ourselves from conflicting information. What we do, then, is avoid constructive criticism. What those who are outside the church are saying is, "This is what turns me off about you." My retort: "Wow! What is it? You may be right. Maybe I can fix that."

So I will be a lonely Christian that welcomes this movie. It reminds me of the Harry Potter mania of some years back, when Christians were so livid in opposition to these cool stories.

Is our message anti-world? There is a bit of Gnosticism in that: a kind of dualistic view of the universe. Or should we really be pro-people, trying to love everybody, mingling with the sinners and scorners like Jesus did, and confessing our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, and our faults, identifying with them.

Instead, we are often obviously full of pretense and pride, only driving them away from our ultimate product, salvation. For one thing, after almost 2,000 years, we have not yet sorted out what we believe about what Christ did. Are people going to be drawn to confusion?

We have good news. It trumps anything I've heard from my atheist friends. And that good news is theirs too, whether they like it or not. It's the only good news this world really has.

Oh, by the way, here is a clue: Jesus is the golden compass.

Last Things

2007-10-30T06:51:00.000-05:00

Eschatology is just anytime we are talking about "eschaton" or the "last things." It's actually an easy heading to use for all these ideas.

We study it because it's there. We have two means of figuring out its meaning: is it literal or is it figurative? It has to be one or the other and it can be both.

We view the eschaton through various optional interpretational grids; and if we buy into a certain grid, that is how we see it. That is how we put together our personal scriptural apologetic.

In other words, we construct the meaning of scripture (our arguments) based on our interpretation preference.

Over time ~ over the centuries ~ there have developed four basic ways of seeing the "last things": historicist, preterist, futurist, and idealist.

Here's how they break down in simple terms:

HISTORICIST ~ The "last days" are from the resurrection of Christ to the return, general resurrection, and judgment. The "millennium" is a metaphor for however long this timespan lasts.

PRETERIST ~ The "last days" refers to the end of the Jewish dispensation or period. The Preterist understands "millennium" much the same as the historicist. There are also two options for this aeonic millennium: amillennial and postmillennial (see below).

FUTURIST ~ The "last days" may refer to the Church dispensation but focuses on the last of the last days, that is, the time period just before Christ returns. This view tries to take Bible prophecy literally and tends to construct scenarios about future events based on what the prophetic passages sound like they are saying.

IDEALIST ~ This idealizes the eschaton. The Apocalypse is not a roadmap for theological understanding. It is all a metaphor for the conflict of God and Satan through all history. This interpretation stays outside of the other three: it doesn't suggest punctuations of time. This is a very general and kind of non-prophetic approach.

AMILLENNIAL ~ There is no literal millennium. Any interpretation that basically says all the time from Advent to Advent is the millennium.

POSTMILLENNIAL ~ Same as amillennial, but optimistic. The tendency is to view the Church as somehow swallowing up everything else, marching toward ultimate, complete victory.

PREMILLENNIAL ~ The millennium is literal and therefore future, since it hasn't occurred yet. The tendency here is to see Christ reigning on earth for an actual 1,000 years. That is the most literal possibility. However, "millennium" can also be a metaphor for all the ages to follow Christ's return.

That's it in a nutshell. I see a possibility here that all of this can be homogenized or combined. There are many areas where all these views intersect.

Preterist ~ the Kingdom was set up in men's hearts in the initial years of transition from Jewish paradigm to Christian. Historicist ~ the Kingdom has proceeded throughout the millennia since the paradigm shift. Futurist ~ the Kingdom is going to culminate in future closure. Idealist ~ the Kingdom is the story of it all, from beginning to end.

So eschatology does not have to be a battleground of opposing ideas and one-upmanship. Get that Modernist impulse out of your head. This is not just end-times science and may the best man win. This is a composite picture of the work of God through Christ. We're all tracking on this.

The 10 Cs and Love

2007-10-24T06:22:00.000-05:00

The ten commandments (10Cs) are the foundational law of Judaism and thus all monotheism. There are 5 vertical commands and 5 horizontal, suggesting the cross (+). Below we examine the Big Ten.

I. God is exclusive, the only God.
II. Do not worship idols or other gods.
III. Do not abuse God's name.
IV. Remember the Sabbath day rest.
V. Honor your parents (authority).

I think of these as the "vertical" commands because they are upward, toward God. Most people probably say the fifth commandment is horizontal. I won't quibble. But even honoring parents and authorities is toward God: it is like worship. The promise with Five is that you will live long. This makes sense in the real world. If we are rebellious toward authority and parents, we tend to limit our lives. Also, God is the Divine Parent, and it works down like a heirarchy, restraining evil.

The next five commands are "horizontal": they concern how we relate to others.

VI. Do not murder.
VII. Do not commit adultery.
VIII. Do not steal.
IX. Do not lie about your neighbor.
X. Do not covet what your neighbor has.

All of these are inspired by human greed. So the intent of the commands is to restrain the human instinct of greed. Greed is the opposite of love. If you love your neighbor, you won't kill him, have sex with his wife, steal his car, tell falsehoods about him, or desire his goods. The point of the commands is to generate loving behavior by restraining evil impulses.

Matthew 22: 34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

When we practice love, we keep all the commandments and fulfill the law. Love honors and pursues God and helps its neighbor.

1Cor. 13: 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is patient, kind, not covetous, self-effacing, humble, mannerly, generous, slow to anger, forgiving, pursues the good, is true, protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. This is the goal of the faith-life. If we do this, we won't be breaking God's laws.

Paul shows that we have to graduate beyond the law. Law seeks vengeance for wrongs. These are "childish ways." All the world is involved in law, even Christians. But when we move up to living out the love described above, we become mature. The cross and the 10Cs are about love. God is love. If we practice love, we are like Him

Zodiac and the Bible

2007-10-21T10:37:00.000-05:00

When we observe the heavens we see pictures. The ancients devised a coded representation of the constellations we now call "the Zodiac." Pasting these pictures over the Bible we come up with something like this:

1. VIRGO, the Virgin: Revelation 12: 1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

The virgin is an important symbol in the Bible, as is the "virgin birth." This oxymoron describes both the birth of the Savior and the "bride" that He is seeking.

2. LIBRA, the Scales: Psalm 89: 14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.

God is just. He wields the scales of justice.

3. SCORPIO, the Scorpion: 1 Cor. 15: 55"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"[b] 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord has removed the sting of death. In Revelation 9: 5, 6 there is a description of the sting of the scorpion related to death. Jesus removes that sting when we place our faith in him.

4. SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: Rev. 19: 11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

This constellation features a man-horse firing arrows. It reminds me of this picture of Jesus as a warrior.

5. CAPRICORNUS, the Goat: Matthew 25: 31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

The goat constellation is a picture of a goat with a fish tail. The goat is often a picture of the unbeliever or the wicked. The fish is a picture of the redeemed. The combination speaks of the redemptive power of faith on the unredeemed, to transform us from death to life.

6. AQUARIUS, the Water-bearer: Joel 2: 28 "And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. 29 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days."

The picture of a man pouring out an urn into the sky. It reminds me of the Holy Spirit pouring himself into mankind.

7- PISCES, the Fishes: Mark 6: He also divided the two fish among them all. 42 They all ate and were satisfied, 43 and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. 44 The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.

Two fish reminds me of the multiplication of the fish. This is what Jesus came to do.

8. ARIES, the Ram or Lamb: Revelation 5: 6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.

There is the Lamb figure here, but I am reminded of the ram in the thicket, which also represents the sacrifice on the cross. He is the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world.

9. TAURUS, the Bull: 1 Timothy 5: 18For the Scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain..."

This is the picture of a rushing bull. The church is a bull ox, treading the grain of the harvest.

10. GEMINI, the Twins: Ephesians 2: 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

The twins are united, suggesting unity. This speaks of the power of the cross to unite mankind in God. It is a symbol of peace.

11. CANCER, the Crab: Hebrews 13: 5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

The crab is a tenacious critter, holding on with its claw. Jesus is tenacious with his inheritance, the human race. He never leaves us or forsakes us.

12. LEO, the Lion: Revelation 5: 5 Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals."

The lion is king and Jesus is that lion, the King of kings. There is no beast that can stand before the king of beasts. He will best them all.

Pumpkin Light

2007-10-20T08:10:00.000-05:00

"Bring The Light"
Shot down I stood
Withstood my neighborhood
I got it wrong
But I could
Follow love lest
I learnIt's light
To bring the light
I fought with all my might
With light
Oh bring the light
Light
Bring the light
I never felt so good and right
But tonight
You'll never need another sound
Oh bring the light
Bring the light to me
Here and gone oh
I trustYou'd spit upon my dust
And mix my ash with your blood
A son of God you know you must arrive
In the light
Bring the light
Let's bring the light
Light
Oh bring the light
Light
Bring the light
It's yours not mine
If you just want to survive
Go grab a glimpse of any star
In heaven's high
I never felt so real and loved and alive
No shadows follow me unsung
In the light
Bring the light to me
A flower song, clear and bright
Is it wrong in neon white
To insist you are mine
Standing dumb in the light
Bring the light
Oh bring the light
Bring the light
Light
Bring the light
I never felt so real and right and alive
Don't let them steal you from what's yours by right
LightBring the light
You know there comes a place and time
You can't deny
With every movement shadows cast and align
Bring the light
Bring the light
Bring the light
Let's bring the light

My comment: Smashing Pumpkins latest "Zeitgeist" is, as per their Gothic persona, suitable for Halloween-time. This is a cool song as ear-candy. Interesting lyrics. I like to publish a poem once a month.
[Thanks to Frank Clug (tengaio@hotmail.com) for these lyrics][ www.azlyrics.com ]

Paradise Lost: the Movie

2007-10-16T06:10:00.000-05:00

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.
John Milton (1608 - 1674)
Source: Paradise Lost (Penguin

Rev. 12:
7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.

8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.

9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Scott Derrickson is a screenwriter, producer, and director. He has written and directed the film The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, which was loosely based on a true story about Anneliese Michel, a college freshman who was at one point recognized by the Roman Catholic Church for her demonic possession.[citation needed]
He is currently working with Legendary Pictures to direct a big screen adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost from a script by Stuart Hazeldine. He is also currently writing and directing the adaptation of "Devil's Knot" by Mara Leveritt for Dimension Films.
Derrickson graduated from Biola University La Mirada, CA with a degree in humanities, a degree in communications, and a degree in theological studies. He earned his masters in film production from USC Film School.[1]
Derrickson got his first break into the film industry directing the fifth installment of the Hellraiser series, Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) and writing the screenplay for Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

Variety reports that Scott Derrickson, director and co-writer of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, is attached to direct (and co-write?) a big-screen adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost! The film is being developed by Legendary Pictures, the outfit behind Batman Begins and last year's Superman Returns.

Variety also says: "Paradise Lost," published in 1667, tells the story of Lucifer's failed rebellion in heaven and subsequent role in Adam and Eve's fall from grace.

Scott Derrickson may not be a household name, but you may be familiar with his next project: "Paradise Lost." Yes, that "Paradise Lost," John Milton's epic poem. And he's reportedly got a budget of around $100 million to make it. Not bad for a guy who's best known for the horror films "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and "Hellraiser: Inferno." If horror may seem like an unlikely genre for a Christian filmmaker, Derrickson--raised a fundamentalist, now a self-described "orthodox Christian"--sees it as part and parcel of his faith. "By approaching spiritual issues and religious questions through the window of the horrific or the dark side of life, you suddenly had free reign to deal with spirituality in a way that was not going to be preachy or come off as propaganda," he told Beliefnet in 2005.

My comment: How interesting that we have a Christian making top-notch horror flicks and about to produce a blockbuster movie based on John Milton's masterpiece about the war in heaven. What an opportunity with today's digital possibilities: demons, angels, Adam and Eve, Paradise. I'll be in line to see this. And what is next? Dante's Inferno?

Templar Heretics?

2007-10-14T08:16:00.000-05:00

By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 12, 7:53 PM ET
VATICAN CITY - It's not the Holy Grail, but for fans of "The Da Vinci Code" and its tantalizing story line about the Knights Templar, it could be the next best thing.

Ignored for centuries, documents about the heresy trial of the ancient Christian order discovered in the Vatican's secret archives are being published in a limited edition — with an $8,377 price tag.

They include a 14th-century parchment showing that Pope Clement V initially absolved the Templar leaders of heresy, though he did find them guilty of immorality and planned to reform the order, according to the Vatican archives Web site.

But pressured by King Philip IV of France, Clement later reversed his decision and suppressed the order in 1312.

Who were these noble knights of the Rosy Cross? How vast was their influence? Did it become a conspiracy or something else? Whatever they were, theirs is one of the most fascinating legends in Western history.

We have even inherited the superstition of Friday the 13th through them. That was the day their leader, Jacque Demolay, was put to death in 1312 by a coalition of the Pope and the French King.

My version of the story of the Knights of Solomon's Temple is basically that they were instrumental and revered warriors of the Crusades, who actually, at one time, had occupied the storied Temple Mount, today occupied by the Dome of the Rock, a sure symbol of Islamic victory. It had been one cause of the Crusades to secure the holy mount for the church.

The irony is that these church warriors were later closed down by the church-state itself. The question is, where did those go who escaped the purge? There is little doubt they had to go underground to survive; and it is logical that they would have at least influenced the rising secret societies in Europe. It is also likely that those societies had a marked influence on the revolutions and development of democratic systems that signalled the end of the church-state. It all has the smell of revenge to it.

Now this intriguing piece of history has become popular; and the question of the Templars is receiving public scrutiny. Freemasons and Catholics alike are ferreting for the truth. For instance, the idea is out there that the Shroud of Turin was actually the burial shroud of deMolay, not Christ. And there are the legends of the Grail, and the Merovingian kings, that all seem to commence with the mystery of the Templars. Were they the early entrepreneurs of modern banking? Did they smuggle occult ideas into Europe? Were they toying with ideas of revolution?

The DaVinci Code popularized Templar obsession. Indeed, these boys did generate a great deal of enigma. Many of The Code's ideas have been debunked and Templar history has been defanged: and now it appears the Catholic Church is seeking some exoneration. Still, the mystery is not likely to go away.

Also, the Temple Mount is linked in the minds of many Christian scholars with Bible prophecy. That very mount is still the focus of Middle East tensions today, as Jerusalem becomes again a "cup of trembling" for the world. Did the Knights once possess the Ark of the Covenant? Mysteries abound, still.

Three Doctrines

2007-10-10T19:39:00.000-05:00

The above is a picture called "Doctrine of Signatures" by an artist named Brewer.

1 Tim. 4:1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

2John 9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

Colossians 2: 20Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? 22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. Also Mark 7:7.

Many years ago I realized there are only three types of doctrines (teachings) in the Bible. These are:
1) the doctrines of Christ and the apostles or sound doctrine;
2) the doctrines of men; and
3) doctrines of demons.

"Sound doctrine", then, tends to be any teaching that does not incorporate #2 or #3. Essentially, sound doctrine proceeds from the fulfilling commandment of LOVE. All commandments are complete in actions based on love. For instance, James says, "true religion is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep one's self uncontaminated from the world." If someone is teaching something like this, they are teaching sound doctrine.

In the time of Christ, many Jews were practicing not just the Law of Moses, but many variants based on it that were hatched up by men. These kinds of doctrines are often designed to bring men into bondage to systems of behavior and thought that do not come from God directly. They can be very subtle and sound right, but they aren't necessary. They don't have to be just a bunch of man-made do's and don'ts, though, they can also be ideas constructed from scripture that are from "private interpretation." That is, any doctrine that comes from human reasoning and is declared dogma.

Finally, there is "demonic doctrine." The apostle John, in his epistles, reveals the main test by which we discern spirits. A demon will oppose Christ. John calls it the spirit of antichrist. He says, "Any spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God."

So we can use these things as tools of discernment when we are being confronted by anyone's teachings. First of all, is this doctrine or teaching in opposition to Christ at its core? What premise is it building on? Does it deny Christ in some way? Better back off from it.

What if it is a Christian doctrine, but it teaches you to practice sin, or to keep endless laws that you are not required by the New Testament to practice? Then it is likely a doctrine of men. You are under no compulsion to practice it.

Finally, if it is a Christian doctrine that mirrors the Sermon on the Mount, that urges you to walk beyond the law into the law of the Spirit, then it is acceptable teaching. You can practice it.

If this sounds vague, it is because these are only basic principles to help you to discern what kind of doctrine you are being confronted with. We learn discernment through spiritual exercise: basically, study, prayer, and experience. But this gives us a basis on which to judge what we are hearing.

Apocalypse Revisions

2007-10-06T07:18:00.000-05:00

Below I will look at 4 of the methods of interpreting the book of John's Revelation that developed over church history. To flesh this out, click here.

1) The oldest and probably most influential view is the Past View or Preterist View. Essentially, this says that most of the book of Revelation refers to the Roman Empire: perhaps the most logical view. That is, it can easily be demonstrated from the history of the time it was written. For instance, the "7 kings" can be shown to be directly related to the Imperial Cult of the day.

It seems there can be little doubt this view is valid. The style of the book is "Jewish Apocalyptical" and the imagery corresponds to Rome, the fourth Beast of Daniel's visions. It was under Roman domination that the church was born.

2) The next method of interpretation of the Apocalypse was basically popularized by Augustine. Augustine grew weary of the prognosticators that preceded him: the endless sea of predictions for Jesus' return that he saw as injurious to the church. In order to squelch these fancies, Augustine explained Revelation as Symbolic history.

In other words, Augustine saw Revelation as a proceeding vision. One-thousand year references were not to be taken literally, but applied to the whole of Christian history. That is, Revelation images could be applied to any time in history. But they were to be handled as just that, imagery. This has been the dominant interpretation in Catholicism, so heavily influenced by Augustine.

3) Despite Augustine's efforts, literalists still abounded. These interpreters saw the millennial imagery as pertaining to the current age of the church. They developed means of interpretation now known as the Continuous Historical view. That is, the imagery of Revelation could be applied literally to whatever period of time in which the church found itself.

This method of interpretation persisted from the time of Joachim of Fiore in the 12th century to the mid-19th century. Joachim used the 42 generations of the Gospel genealogies to calculate 1,260 years from the birth of Jesus to his own day as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies, ending with Saladin who defeated the Crusaders. In other words, one could apply scriptural clues to present situations. These methods came to be known as "postmillennial." This mode persisted through the Reformation even until Cotton Mather's time in the Colonial era.

4) The final method of interpretation is the Futurist mode, basically emerging from Calvinist and Reform theology. This was popularized in the late 19th century by the dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and popularized by the successes of the Scofield Bible marginal notes after 1909. It arose because it became difficult to see how the thousand years, if taken literally as in the Continuous Mode of interpretation, could be in the past. Thus developed "premillennialism". That is, everything in Revelation, from chapter 4 on, needed to be interpreted as predictive of future events.

With a literal 1,000-year period posited in the future, the imagery of Revelation needed to be interpreted as "end-time" events surrounding the return of Christ and placing him as reigning during an actualized millennium on the earth. Once again, this urged many inquirers to refigure old guesses as to the dating of the return of Christ, all of them wrong, obviously.

The point is, Revelation is very enigmatic and compels us to desire to unlock its secrets. Even Columbus sailed the ocean blue in response to his millennial interpretations. And still, today, we find there are biblical scholars who tend to fit themselves into one of the four above-mentioned groups of interpreters.

Perhaps it is the frustation we feel with unsolved mysteries. It is the riddle that won't quit. And, of course, there are those who just leave the thing alone. But I never could. It is the most fascinating book of the Bible.

I wonder then if the answer lies in all 4 of the above modes and not in any single one. That is, the document refers definitely to its day, contains mystical reference to the developing age of the church, and culminates somewhere up ahead of us. Again, we are left to spar over literal and figurative interpretations.
May the best man win?

Duelling Duals

2007-10-04T04:49:00.000-05:00

Below is a quote from a study on Hegel:

"Hegel took logic to the next logical level, in what many consider to be a higher intellectual level, claiming an (A) ideology conflicting with its (B) opposite ideology = (C) a new and sometimes better philosophy. The dialectic pits A against B in a constant conflict and resolution, which eventually creates an outcome that may or may not have any resemblance to A and B. According to modern social scientists, C does not have to be a reasonable conclusion, since Hegel's dialectic takes pure reason out of the reasoning."

In the Garden of Eden story we encounter a tree that is said to have the "fruit" of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve is told not to sample it or she will die. So, of course, this "mother of all living" does as she pleases and we are all dead meat because of it. Thank you very much, Mother Eve.

The basic idea is that Eve is innocent until she sinks her incisors into this knowledge, and she is then enlightened to the presence, in the world, of both good and evil. This just has to be an allegory, folks. Perhaps it is the point in time that humanity began to realize that the world around them is malfunctioning: there is evil in the air/

the smell of dragon-gas is there/

coming from the lair.

But good and evil are polar opposites. There is a duel going on in the cosmos, and it consists of these duals. The duals are duelling.

Oriental thinking tries to balance the dualism, and says, basically, that good is not completely good and evil is not utterly evil. Okay. But Occidental folks ~ not by accident ~ have sought to understand how to utilize the cosmic argument to bring about progress. History, if you will.

One guy says, "I believe in apples." Another guy says,"I believe in oranges." They then battle over apples and oranges until they have amalgamated them into apple-orange pie. Is it an improvement? Maybe. Maybe not. But it will now be compared to banana-rhubarb pie, and the virtues and vices of each pie will yield to the new synthesis: apple-rhubarb-orange-banana pie, or some variance thereof.

Now that I have confused you thoroughly, what is the point?

One of the lasting dualities argued in the church is the tension between the realities of predestination and free will. The scriptures talk about them both. So one group focuses its doctrine on predestination and the next group focuses on free will. They come up with somewhat radically different prescriptions for how to live.

Knowledge is confusing, enlightening as it may be. This is why Solomon said,"In much knowledge is much grief." But he was listening to 700 wives talking; and they were all just like their mother Eve.

But, according to Hegel, all history is a progression of arguments resolving to sin-thesis (synthesis). The thesis and the antithesis (the duals duelling) resolve to the sin-thesis. In other words, we can't help but sin.

Actually, that is SYN-thesis. Syn means "together" and thesis means something like "to posit" or "place." To place together: to put the two things together. Now, if we put good and evil together, what have we got? We have the world as we know it. You see? "Know." Gnosis. The knowledge of good and evil.

I'd better not teach philosophy. I will ruin thousands of years of knowledge accumulations.

Anyway, when we come to God, God is UNO. One. He is not polarized like the church is. He is not polarized like His creation is: duelling over duals. He is not confused like we are. But then, He didn't eat that apple.

So, if you pit two football teams against each other, one wins. Is that a synthesis? It is a resolution. Then they hammer it out all season and, at Super Bowl, the best man wins. But what actually happened? A lot of advertising dollars were spent and more goods were sold everywhere. But was there any real resolution? Did the long arduous battle mean anything?

So Solomon, the wisest king, got to the end of all this and said,"It all vexes me." Killjoy.

But God, in all this, emerges as non-dual. That means He ain't divided up. He is in control of the whole mess. For, to Him, it ain't a mess. For Him it makes sense. He understands the synthesis: where all the theses are going.

So what are we all arguing about? Well, we're processing information, the knowledge of good and evil. We are making sense of it all.

Doesn't that make sense?

Three Strategies

2007-10-02T07:13:00.000-05:00

Luke 4: 1Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
3The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."
4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'"
5The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
8Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"
9The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down from here. 10For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"
12Jesus answered, "It says: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
13When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

John 10: 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.....

The history of the church is similar to the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. In the early centuries the church was under intense persecution only to later arise to a position of state authority and finally into a period of division. In the earliest days, the demonic strategy was simply to kill; but it didn't work. The church only expanded under persecution.

In the second phase of church history, the church rose to a position of temporal power, wedded to the state through most of the Middle Ages. In her hubris, the church was in the position to steal, requiring power and money to build the kingdom on earth. But she became corrupt and despised.

In the third stage, the church has seen the demonic strategy of division to destroy her original unity. And in these three ways the church, during the nearly 2 millennia of her existence, has been compromised and opposed by her archenemy, the one that Jesus, above, identified as a "thief."

In the wilderness, we see the Devil use similar techniques against Jesus: 1) to steal, "It will all be yours" (it was already His); 2) to kill Himself in a suicidal leap; and 3) to potentially destroy by using His miraculous power, symbolized by changing the stone into food ~ the third period of the church falling into endless divisions ~ moving from the rock of unity to perishable disunity.

To the temptation to steal, Jesus answered, "Serve God only." To the threat of killing, the Savior said, "Do not test God." And Jesus said,"Life is more than bread," to the strategy to destroy by division. It is not what we have or what we eat that sustains us.

No weapon formed against the church has prospered. Isaiah 54: 16, 17 says,

"See, it is I who created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges a weapon fit for its work. And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc; no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me," declares the LORD."

Those weapons that were forged against the church have failed to destroy her. They have only served to make her stronger. She is about to be vindicated.

Rapture: Literal or Figurative?

2007-10-01T04:39:00.000-05:00

I THESSALONIANS 4:16-17"For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."

I CORINTHIANS 15:51-53"Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ... for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

I'm going to resolve a controversy here in less than a minute. Wish me luck.

The scene is usually something like this: The world is careening toward Armageddon and the Antichrist is about to be revealed to the world. Suddenly, millions of Christians around the world, along with those long dead who pop out of their graves, fly up like rockets to meet their Lord. Then, depending on who you ask, they stay up in heaven with the Lord for 7 years or else come right back with Him. In both cases, they fight the final world battle with Him, and, of course, win.

Another spin on these scriptures is that they are simply a metaphorical picture of a spiritual reality. There is no physical resurrection going on here; this is just a picture of what takes place when Christ comes into His people, whether as a past event or an ongoing feature of the unfolding of God's plan in the church.

When we arrive at the mysteries in scripture, we have two basic approaches to interpretation: literal or figurative. One way we can sometimes clarify which is the best approach is by considering context. We can also examine original Greek meanings of the words being used in the passage.

Whenever we approach these mysteries, we may actually have an agenda, or at least a preference as to how we think the interpretation should be conducted. But whenever we become exclusively either literal or figurative in our approach, we are probably just digging our own nice little comfortable cubby to live in. We are also creating a stand-off with our fellow believers who prefer a different kind of cubby-hole. Stand-offs have a way of escalating into full-scale wars and private encampments that sometimes develop into movements and then denominations.

I am finding that in most cases, mysteries yield to BOTH basic approaches, again, literal and figurative. There is no reason to suppose that either the literal or figurative explanations of the "rapture" are the last word. There are good reasons to believe it is a literal future event: even though literalists often get too head-strong about their particular imaginary scenarios. There are also good reasons to apply these verses in a more figurative way, gleaning meaning from them, but careful not to get too dogmatic about symbolism as the ONLY true approach here. Please.

In the end, we are straining to have the last word, and in doing so alienating the other guy who is trying to nail it down. Who cares and what does it matter? We end up straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

I usually say to those who want to press the futurist rapture,"Hey, you could die at any moment. Is that IMMINENT enough for you?" My personal rapture will come when I pass on. And it won't cause any divisions in the church.

Paul maintained that he was revealing these things to COMFORT the saints, who at that time were under extremes of persecution. Living the Christian life was no walk in the park.

Basically, yes, Christ in us right now is a kind of rapture, and we ought to focus on the here and now. But we are also looking toward a clear, future change, and an amazing transformation of all creation. We needn't get too anal about possible interpretations. We can all be friends.

For the figurative argument on rapture, click this.

Ahmadinejad Magic Show

2007-09-25T07:21:00.000-05:00

"The provocations of his New York visit are an integral part of his domestic political strategy, which depends on his ability to hold America's national attention with an unapologetically nationalist message about Iran's nuclear rights, lecturing them about God and their aim to run the world." ~ Tony Karon, TIME

Ahmadinejad's visit to New York invokes, for me, memories of Kruschev pounding his shoe on the U.N. podium back in the '50's saying, "We will bury you!"

Of course, there was no mistaking Kruschev's message: but Ahmadinejad is a bit more subtle in his conciliatory rhetoric. You get the feeling you are watching an elusive doppleganger of the man from Iran. There is a cognitive disconnect here: an illusion. This is the Ahmadinejad Magic Show.

He may be the next candidate for Antichrist in some Christian circles ~ the man of peace, fooling the world into thinking he is a savior of sorts.

Politicians and world leaders can develop chimerical personas: appearing as one thing in one place and as another somewhere else, shape-shifting. It's real shifty. Ahmadinejad seems to be learning these Ninja secrets.

He was under fire from questioners about the Holocaust, 9-11, Israel, nuclear research, and his country's known executions of homosexuals. It is obvious that he is evasive on these issues, derailing difficult questions using a shield of innocence and deflecting the accusations to some other target. He is also using global news to position himself for the next elections in Iran where more moderate leaders are waiting in the wings for his job.

Won't it confuse Iranians, though, the way he lambasts Israel and announces the annihilation of Jews in his homeland; and the way he has threatened the deployment of nuclear weapons, only to show the West this completely contradictory face? In the end, we may simply be looking at another political opportunist; but that is not to say he isn't dangerous.

And there is the possibility that he will amend his thinking as some leaders have done in the past. A visit to America can be impressive. A man used to running an oppressive Islamic regime can be inoculated with a small dose of freedom and actually desire that for his own people.

Islam, and particularly its more radical forms, is a legalistic religion. In fact, it gains some of its vigor from a kind of nationalistic pride in being better than everybody else. These are people who are subjected to a kind of rigorous religious discipline that has certain psychological effects on people: they view themselves as morally excellent and sacrificially good. They are close to Allah. It is a recipe for megalomania.

It is also a recipe for hypocrisy. People just aren't that morally upright in all ways. So the Arab women put on their burqas in the daylight but come home and experiment with Western fashion. There is always that outward show but an inward tendency to the very degeneracy they pretend to despise. This is just the dynamic of any imposed legalistic system of religion. It breeds hypocrites.

And political leaders are often hypocrites by profession. Discerning people have just had a taste of that served to them by Ahmadinejad. It is like meeting a charming psychotic. Maybe he will just disappear off the scene before we learn to pronounce his name. What was it again? Abracadabra?

Mosaic Sex Laws

2007-09-23T08:55:00.000-05:00

Apparently, this chapter of Leviticus is still read at least in some Jewish celebrations of Yom Kippur, which occurs on September 22nd this year. Gay Jews have complained, but some Jews say it should still be read as a general call to sexual purity and responsibility:

Unlawful Sexual Relations

Leviticus 18:1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'I am the LORD your God. 3 You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. 4 You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. 5 Keep my decrees and laws, for whoever obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.
6 " 'No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.
7 " 'Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.
8 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife; that would dishonor your father.
9 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.
10 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter; that would dishonor you.
11 " 'Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife, born to your father; she is your sister.
12 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister; she is your father's close relative.
13 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your mother's sister, because she is your mother's close relative.
14 " 'Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt.
15 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son's wife; do not have relations with her.
16 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.
17 " 'Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.
18 " 'Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.
19 " 'Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.
20 " 'Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her.
21 " 'Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
22 " 'Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
23 " 'Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
24 " 'Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, 27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. 28 And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
29 " 'Everyone who does any of these detestable things—such persons must be cut off from their people. 30 Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God.' "

Strapped For Cash

2007-09-20T06:21:00.000-05:00

Cashless society by 2012, says Visa chief
By Tim Webb
Published: 11 March 2007

Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years, according to the chief executive of Visa Europe.
Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.
Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned.
Visa Europe briefed the British Retail Consortium last month on new "contactless" cards that can be waved in front of a scanner to make small payments.
However, the consortium dismissed this vision and claimed that card processing fees, which regulators are investigating, are still too high.
One member of the consurtium said that the estimated "interchange" fee charged to retailers amounts to some 4p for each transaction.
Nick Mourant, treasurer at Tesco, said: "There is a duopoly between Mastercard and Visa in the UK. Their setting of fees is anti-competitive."

Rev. 13:16 He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

We are less than five years away from the end of the Mayan calendar. In 2012, the world is not likely to end, but cash could. But it's a sticky problem. Still, Europe is likely to get there first.

The global money supply still has a mysterious underground that exists beneath the watchful gaze of governments: paper money. But the exorcism of cash might transfer power from governments to financial institutions. So the conversion of economies to cashless is a road fraught with certain perils.

The mysterious verse from the Apocalypse, cited above, is technologically possible today. And what lies on the horizon of human invention when the nanochip kicks in? As in the sci-fi movie The Minority Report, the potential exists to keep close tabs on every human alive.

The verse above places this "mark" in the "right hand" or "forehead". The Greek word for forehead there is "the area of the eyes." Today we have scanning machines that can read the patterns of the hand and the iris, something which is unique to every person. Great potential here.

Could a world dictator arise someday and utilize this technology to control world economy? Or is this verse just referring in cryptic fashion to the Roman emperors of the time it was written, who required everyone to worship the emperor?

The word "beast" or "creature" used in the ancient apocalyptic literature did refer to empires, as in the four beasts of Daniel which represented Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Or is this beast more representative of the general fallen nature of man? Is this mark just a figurative one?

It should be noted that the word "beast" in Revelation 13 also seems to refer to an individual, in the biblical manner of connecting rulers to governments. This idea fuels futurist speculation that this beast refers to a coming false messiah, fleshed out by passages in Daniel about the "Little Horn."

Whatever it is, the cashless world is a tempting apple. It might even become necessity to wire the world for digital monetary transaction. Fitting that Europe, the site of the old Roman Empire, would be at the forefront of this transformation. That would seem to line up with many futurist predictions based on biblical prophecy.

The Elder Explosion

2007-09-18T11:18:00.000-05:00

World's oldest man turns 112
2 hours, 8 minutes ago

The world's oldest man celebrated his 112th birthday Tuesday with a healthy Japanese breakfast of rice, miso soup and seaweed, saying he wanted to live forever.

Tomoji Tanabe, who has been the world's oldest man since January this year, lives with his son and family in Japan's southern prefecture of Miyazaki. He keeps a diary and reads the newspaper every day.

"I want to live indefinitely. I don't want to die," he said as he marked his birthday, Kyodo News reported.

Tanabe, a teetotaller who has repeatedly said that avoiding alcohol is a secret of his longevity, was given a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records by the mayor of his local municipality in June.

Japan has the largest population of centenarians in the world. The number of Japanese aged at least 100 years old is expected to top 30,000 by the end of September, the health ministry said in a recent report.

The Japanese people's renowned longevity is often attributed to eating the country's traditional healthy food, despite the hectic lifestyle many lead in the big cities.

But the longevity is also presenting a headache as the country has one of the lowest birthrates, raising fears of a future demographic crisis as a smaller pool of workers supports a mass of elderly.

Is America aware of this?
The same situation is just ahead of us.
The baby boomers could live even longer than their parents. And already, company pensions are in jeopardy, insurance is a mess, and health care is reaching critical mass. Add to that the difficulty in knowing whether Social Security has the chutzpah to survive the event of the elderly pig moving through the python.
I've said before, The only likely pill we will be able to swallow is European-style socialization. That is, we tax the young to pay for the missing pensions, the lack of insurance, the underfed 401Ks, and the SSA shortfalls. And the move away from the present poorly administered juggernaut of insurance can't be easy either. Will there be government jobs for all the hungry insurance agents who will have to settle for lower pay?

Hillary is already opening up the health care can of worms. And the angry rhetoric will fly. And Congress will resort to fisticuffs. And the stock markets will reel and rock. And taxes will go up, up, up.

Don't kid yourself: this shift is already here. The insurance companies are just operating a socialistic program at a huge cost, with insurance people skimming the cream off the rising costs of health care. That's not to say that this is doom. But it isn't going to be a gentle hiccup, either. When it's over, Europe may be way ahead of the game, leading, instead of America.

Seven Virtues And History

2007-09-15T12:33:00.000-05:00

2 Peter 1:5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

Using my method of laying patterns of seven over one another, I will explore these 3 verses for blog brevity.

The four biblical millennia suggest a full seven when we view all human history as an addendum to faith. Thus, when compared to Peter's seven virtues here, we have the chart revealed below:

Adam's millennium ~ goodness
Noah's millennium ~ knowledge
Abraham's millennium ~ self-control
Solomon's millennium ~ perseverance
Apostle's millennium ~ godliness
Reformational millennium ~ brotherly kindness
Kingdom millennium ~ love.

Day One is the work day when God says "Let there be light." The worlds are framed by FAITH, by the Word of God. This is a day of GOODNESS, that begins millennially with the Garden of Eden. God saw what He was doing and behold, it was very good.

Day Two is the division of sky and water. It is the millennium of the flood and the final emergence of the man of faith, Abraham. The KNOWLEDGE of the Lord is being revealed.

Day Three is the day of the revealing of dry land and vegetation. It is the millennium of the beginning of the Jewish Age, when the Jews come into their promised land. It is the day when God reveals His Law, SELF-CONTROL.

Day Four is the Genesis 1 is the day of the great lights: the stars, the moon, and the sun. It is the millennium of the Temple and the Jewish tenuous hold on their inheritance. They attempt to PERSEVERE in the face of opposing empires. The millennium ends with John the Baptist (the moon) revealing the Messiah Yeshua (the sun).

Day Five is the genesis of fish and birds. It is the millennium of the spread of Christianity and the message of the cross. GODLINESS is the key word here. The symbol of the early church is the fish. The birds of the air carry the good news.

Day Six is the day of beasts and man. It is the final millennium of God establishing His Son's dominion. The keyword is BROTHERLY KINDNESS. This is the emergence of the unified assembly of the faithful who will inherit the earth.

Day Seven is the day of rest. It is the millennium of peace under the Prince of Peace, Yeshua. The keyword here, from Peter's ascending virtues, is the greatest of all learned virtues: LOVE.

Faith is the ground of our life experience. It is the foundation we build upon. To our faith we add these ascending virtue. We go through stages as the Holy Spirit guides us. We should check to see if we are lacking in any of the things Peter mentioned, and then seek to incorporate them into our lives.

Two Fools In One

2007-09-11T11:45:00.000-05:00

Psalm 14: 1 The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

If you are an atheist (and I once was) then Christianity is quite a puzzle. You are vexed that such an absurd religion could be so widely and broadly accepted and influence history so greatly. Some atheist scholars have delved so deeply into the "myth" of Christianity that they have grounds to dismiss the idea that Jesus ever even existed.

The essays on this thesis are massive and hard to wade through, so, in the interest of simplicity, I wanted to hone the argument down to its basics, so we could look at it in a New York minute.

I'll use an essay written in 1997 by Jim Walker entitled "Did a Historical Jesus Exist?" Here are the basic arguments he uses (and I found these to be typical):

1 ~ There is no historical evidence that Jesus even existed.
2 ~ No one knows who wrote the 4 gospels or when.
3 ~ Similarly, the authorship and validity of the epistles is in question.
4 ~ Later church officials probably tampered with the material.
5 ~ There is no mention of Jesus in the original documents of the historians of his time, including Josephus.
6 ~ No relics of the church have been substantiated.
7 ~ Christian historians work with scant or even nonexistent evidence.
8 ~ Contradictions within the gospels themselves.
9 ~ The fact that Jesus fits the ancient mythological archetype of the God-man myth.
10 ~ The idea that Jesus could have been invented to fullfill the Jewish Messianic prophecies.

Most of the essays I looked at tended to repeat or embellish these basic suggestions.

Atheists are indeed a frustrated lot: outnumbered in a world of idiots who believe preposterous and unfounded religious myths.

But it is interesting to me that the God-man in question, Jesus of Nazareth, did not write anything down nor did God see to it that we would now have a reliable historical person to believe in. On the basis of reason and the scientific approach to history, none of the monotheist religions which claim adherents from half of the world's population have a leg to stand on. Monotheism, in that sense, is monomythology.

Why is this?

My conversion to Christ from atheism was based on a miracle that occurred in response to my first real prayer. One moment I was high-flying on acid and the next I was stone-cold sober with no interest in drugs from henceforth. But this is a dubious testimony: purely my own experience and a possible self-deception.

Untold millions of people have zillions of "experiences" with God. So what? the skeptic would say. Raw empiricism would say, "Just the facts, ma'am."

And I would have to agree with that assessment. Experience proves nothing. The church has no proof to offer: no arks, no ossuaries, no shrouds, no goblets, no shards from the cross.
And who would believe them anyway?

All the church has is faith. And apparently that is all God wants us to stand on. It is faith that connects us to God. It is faith that turns an unbeliever into a believer. It is faith that separates the men from the boys.

In the end, an atheist has to come through the same faith-door everybody else does when they discover the reality of the Son of God. And even a C.S. Lewis cannot convince them empirically.

So I have been twice a fool in my life: I was a fool who said there is no God who became a fool for Christ. Whose fool are you?

1 Cor. 4: 10We are fools for Christ ~ Paul.

The Sin of Sodom

2007-09-05T15:59:00.000-05:00

On the Christian segment of the three-part series on CNN, "God's Warriors", Ron Luce, teen-focused evangelist, was featured. He was bringing a political message to the kids in San Francisco, telling them to get involved in their culture. He was met with a furious cadre of homosexuals demonstrating against him, basically charging him with hate-mongering.

At one time in America, homosexuality floated blissfully below the radar of media and politics. Then came the '60's sex revolution and that began to change. Over the decades to follow, gays were outing themselves with a new passion. Finally came the bombshell: gay-marriage. This became one of the major political themes of the right and the left: responding to gay rights as civil rights.

Fundamentalist Christians are called that because they take the Bible seriously. And for decades, churches had regularly heard sermons about "Sodomites." Even anal sex is deemed "sodomy." It is also an illegal behavior that nobody gets busted for.

And don't forget AIDS blossoming on the American scene. At first it was primarily found among male gays. Obviously, God's judgment on Sodomites.

One of the fundamental and primary scriptures that deals with homosexuality is found in Genesis 19. This chapter tells how two angels visit Lot, Abraham's nephew, and tell him to take his wife and two daughters and flee Sodom. God is about to burn the city to the ground. But Lot is met at the door by a crowd of men wanting to rape not his daughters but the two male messengers (angels). They aren't even interested in his daughters. (Ironically, this story ends with the daughters committing incest on their sleeping father).

Because of the obvious perversion found abundantly in Sodom, the name has become famous and is now attached to homosexual practices. Also, in the minds of many fundamentalist Christians, it has engendered a kind of fear and paranoia about homosexuals. They see America on a slippery slope toward judgment as the popularity of and permissiveness toward gays flourishes.

It would be nice if America just repented of all this and got right with God. If we all would just turn to Christ, things would get better. God would heal us and prosper us and so forth. But since people don't make a practice of repenting, the next best thing is to make them conform to God's standards by passing laws, and law-passing is political stuff. Like the sodomy law. Very useful.

Meanwhile, the Left protests, "Stay out of our bedrooms you bunch of prudes."
An effective comment, actually. And so the battle lines form and the gays move to the blue states.

Actually, the scriptures do not specifically cite homosexuality as the "sin of Sodom."

Ezekiel 16: 49 " 'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

The sins of Sodom listed sound vaguely like the American church in many ways: arrogant, overfed, unconcerned, not helping the poor. But doing detestable things sounds like it could be homosexuality that is being described (unless you are gay and think one man's poison is another man's tea). Basically, though, sexual misdeeds (like all misdeeds) contribute to the decadence and destruction of a culture.

Jesus identified sexual abuses with just thinking about it. If you commit adultery in your head you've done it with your body, so to speak. In other words, everybody in the world is guilty. And if every body's guilty, who is better than anybody else? You may be a mental homosexual who goes to church and even condemns physical homosexuals. This is often called "hypocrisy." But everybody is some kind of hypocrite whether in church or out (and whether in the closet or out).

That said, what's a fundamentalist to do? What if our government not only stops condemning gay marriage but starts to help them out? After all, these are committed relationships. Neither Sam nor George is thinking seriously about having an affair with Melvin, so it's monogamous, dude.

Fundamentalists are now wrestling with the problem of how to hate the sin and love the sinner. Do you put a sign out front: GAYS WELCOME? Do you let them teach Sunday School, sing in the choir (usually falsetto), and make their quiche for pot luck? Do they get to dance before the Lord like they do on the street, with their bodies as their message-boards? Do they get to teach your children? Teach them what? "Hey, kids, God says anything goes."

So fundamentalists have opted to fight, and some, like the Phelps clan in Topeka, Kansas are on caffeine about this. No, they're on speed.

But Jesus also showed the crowd of Jews ready to stone the adulteress that they were phonies before God. They might as well stone themselves, because they are all guilty of the same thing. But to the adulteress He said, "I forgive you, but stop it."

This is a toughy, but we have to humble ourselves before the gays. We have to say, "We've singled you out, and we're sorry." After all, they freaked us out. They started making noise about injustice. Hey, if you can give blacks equal rights you can accept us also.

Most whites love having blacks in their congregations now. We have become a fairly black-friendly culture. But is homosexuality the same thing? In a secular, post-Christian, pluralistic political system, can we continue to prosecute those who practice alternative sex? And how far do we go with it? Will the pedophiles and rapists be lining up for equal rights next?

It's a sticky mess. Do we just stop taking a stand for righteousness? But there is a higher righteousness, and that is love. That has to do with how you treat both your acceptable neighbors and your unacceptable enemies. If America identifies with Sodom, can we stop it politically? Prohibition didn't sink alcoholism. What about the really big Sodom problems: arrogance, obesity, unconcern, and ignoring the poor. At least the Liberals give lip-service to the poor, while the Christian right are often wrongly seen as greed-balls.

Believe me, fundamentalists are processing all this. They are "vexed" like Lot was in Sodom. Some are even now saying we have lost the culture: we can't hope to set up a Christian theocracy in America. So how do we live out Jesus in Sodom? Like He did. We try to love unconditionally. And we hold the line in ourselves.

Homosexuals and pedophiles are obviously already in the church organization. Sometimes they are our leaders. They either come in that way or they develop into it. And the sparks fly. But God is saying something to us. May He grant that we hear Him clearly. Will we become the storm-troopers the Liberals fear, crashing into bedrooms with machine guns, our chests adorned with crosses? Or will we learn how Jesus would handle the problem?

Ego Vehicle

2007-09-02T16:22:00.000-05:00

Drawing by Saul Steinberg

Ego Vehicle

You're only half-fake
And the other half
Is more than I can take
When you speak
It's like
Fuzz cascading down
I'd like to put you on
A porcupine
And run you out of town
You walk
As if a bus
Just hit you broadside
You live so far
Out in the toolies
You'll never have to hide.
It's very hard
To make you make sense
You act as if you
Were born on a picket fence.
And even if it seems
Inconsequential
If I'm not mistaken
You are the essential
Ego vehicle.

When your full moon
Turns into a swan
And bursts into girdles
Resplendent in the dawn
When your ace-in-the-hole
Races like a rat
And your Madonna-in-blue
Starts to get fat
Brace yourself because
The curtain's coming down
And when the confusion passes
There will be no sound
Don't carress your nervousness
It won't pay you back
Twice in every lifetime
Or once on every track.
Apes don't act like humans
Martians don't exist
When it all boils down
It's really just a trick
All your fancy cars
And escapades in light
Won't hold a candle
To eons of fright
So build your mausoleums
But don't forget the girl
Who gave you barnacles
When you gave her the world.
And even if it seems
Inconsequential
If I'm not mistaken
You are the essential
Ego vehicle. (1977)

This song is, of course, just nonsense, but it stuck in my head over the years. It was actually written in reference to a pseudo-prophet I once knew who had bilked many people. That accounts for some of the anger in the song.

The Flyslayer

2007-09-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

The Flyslayer

Ecclesiastes 10: 1 As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

I don't remember when I first realized the talent, but I was very young. Part of it was because I saw them as arch-enemies. One had to develop strategies. One had to be keen-eyed and fiercely disciplined. One had to have lightning reflexes and deadly aim.

Also, the tools had to be of a high-caliber: flexible, sturdy, light, and simple. You won't be a good hunter if you're using a spatula, a rolled-up newspaper, or your wife's vase. However, these items may do in a pinch.

So I found the better weapons and holstered them. You don't ever know when the prey will show up: although they tend to surge in the late Summer.

Understand that you can't destroy them in mid-flight/
Wait for them to alight.

Do not go for the wide swath, the long arc, in your decisive blow. Instead, stealthily draw near to the victim. Hold the weapon no more than two feet from the unsuspecting, soon-to-be mangled carcass. Visualize victory.

Keep your eye on the fly. Don't look at your hand. Your hand will do what your eye tells it.

Then swat! Don't hold back. Use all the pressure and force you can muster.

You will hear a smack and not be sure you got him. Look on the floor. There it lies, stiff, distorted, and with its little legs now pointing crookedly heavenward. The pest has gone to its long home.

This is no time for sentimentality. Develop a hard practicality. You haven't killed an insect, you have saved your cuisine and your sanity. Don't give up until the last bzzzz is silenced.

Remember, your weapon, the swatter, is now contaminated. Don't leave it laying on the table where you eat ~ Oprah will disapprove.

Finally, look at the carnage around you. You can't just leave it there. You have to employ a broom or vacuum to remove the ghastly remains of war. Leave no fly unburied. Deal with the reality.

You are now on your way to extermination greatness. You will be proud that people can distinguish your digs from the local landfill. You may even find gainful employment as a flyslayer. The best are able to pull down six-figure incomes. People will pay good money for the peace of mind it brings them.

Be proud of your calling. You are not a common murderer. You are a member of that great and noble profession of warriors who rid the world of its vermin.
Don't weep for the little larvae. Simply remember the motto of the fly:

DON'T WORRY. WE'LL MAKE MORE.

Job security.

Momma T's Struggle

2007-08-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

A recent article on the new book on Mother Teresa says:

The depth of her doubts could be viewed by nonbelievers and skeptics as more evidence of the emptiness of religious belief. But Roman Catholic scholars and supporters of the woman who toiled in Calcutta's slums and called herself 'a pencil in God's hand' argue that her struggles make her more accessible and her work all the more remarkable.

"It shows that she wasn't a plaster-of-Paris saint who never had a doubt about God or the ultimate meaning of life," said the Rev. Richard McBrien, a University of Notre Dame theology professor and author of "Lives of the Saints." "This can only enhance her reputation as a saintly person with people who aren't easily impressed with pious stories. Those who think otherwise have a lot of learning to do about the complexities of life and about the nature of faith."

The struggle of faith is sometimes called "The Dark Night of the Soul", this from wikipedia:

The term and metaphysicality of the phrase "dark night of the soul" are taken from the writings of the Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross, a Carmelite priest in the 16th century. Dark Night of the Soul is the name of both a poem, and a commentary on that poem, and are among the Carmelite priest's most famous writings. They tell of his mystic development and the stages he went through on his quest for holiness.

The "dark night" could generally be described as a letting go of our ego's hold on the psyche, making room for change that can bring about a complete transformation of a person's way of defining his/her self and their relationship to God. The interim period can be frightening, hence the perceived "darkness".

Rather than being a negative event, the dark night is believed by mystics and others to be a blessing in disguise where the individual extends from a state of contemplative prayer to an inability to pray. Particularly in Christianity, it is seen as a severe test of one's faith.

Mother Teresa makes it hard for someone to be anti-Catholic (which I'm not). Perhaps more than any other single Christian in the 20th Century, she demonstrated a life sold out to God and to her particular gift of mercy. Hers was a tough row to hoe, even if she did sometimes garner legitimate criticisms.

This revelation about her journey through doubt is actually a testament of faith. Some of the most daring and risk-taking missionaries faced these things. Depression and doubt are not necessarily demonic. Often depression is more like a physical ailment. But just like men fighting in real-world combat, those who engage in spiritual combat face shell-shock and post-war trauma.

The journey into darkness is often where one finds God hiding.

Psalm 97: 2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

This speaks of the mystery of God. He dwells in the thick darkness.
And sometimes, maybe even often, it is in our darkest passages that we find Him more poignantly.

How odd, that faith would spring from the very dark soil of doubt.

But where else is your faith more tested?

We hear teachers speak of "demonstrating faith" or "doing miracles" as the great proof of faith. But what greater demonstration than Job in the pits of despair who cried, "Though skinworms devour my flesh, yet will I praise Him."

Clinical depression is another matter, but the dark night of the soul turns out to be an opportunity. One emerges more blessed than ever before.

A long journey through darkness, as with Mother Teresa, may the more identify her undying hope, love, and faith.

Revolution of Hope

2007-08-25T20:49:00.000-05:00

Brian McLaren and his gang do a music video. A little amateurish, but who likes polished? The song is interesting lyrically and its message. Let the revolution begin.

Fugitive From Sin

2007-08-24T12:57:00.000-05:00

Fugitive From Sin

(1976)

From the dust I came
One thing's for sure I'm goin' back again
Same way I came
And every passing hour
I'm constantly wrestling with an unseen power
Warring for my soul.

Wading through a swamp of serpents
Across a scorpion desert
Over a mountain of midnight terrors
Through a stormy sea of no passage
Chills crawling over my skin
I'm a fugitive from sin.

Groping for a ray of light
Pushing my way, straining for sight
With all of my might
Hoping for relief
But what I find seems all too brief
I fall in a heap.

Climbing like a mountain-goat
Pushing like a pachyderm
Kicking like a crazy man
Hunted in the Amazon
Wondering if I can win
Heading for a tailspin
Chills crawling over my skin
I'm a fugitive from sin.

My lungs about to burst
Black-out dizzy, lips cracked from thirst
And getting worse
Knowing somehow I'll find it
Though I'm walking lame, seeing blind,
And falling behind.

Running through a forest aflame
With a pack of dogs at my heels
Vultures waiting up in the sky
With my pulse getting hard to feel
I can't hear above the noise and the din
Don't know where to go
Forgot where I've been
Wondering if I can win
Heading for a tailspin
Chills crawling over my skin ~
I'm a fugitive from sin.

I wrote this as a song when I was in my twenties. It tries to describe the conflict involved in learning to walk contrary to the flesh. But I've always liked the imagery of it. It has a cool tune to it as well.

After Two Days

2007-08-22T18:22:00.000-05:00

Hosea 6:
1 "Come, let us return to the LORD.

He has torn us to pieces

but he will heal us;

he has injured us

but he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us;

on the third day he will restore us,

that we may live in his presence.
3 Let us acknowledge the LORD;

let us press on to acknowledge him.

As surely as the sun rises,

he will appear;

he will come to us like the winter rains,

like the spring rains that water the earth."

John 2:
18Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"
19Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
20The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Hosea was one of the minor prophets in Israel who was trying to revive the people from their apostasy. Verse 2 above mentions 3 "days." "Within two days, God says, I will revive you. On the third day I will raise you up."

2 Peter 3: 8 says, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." Also Psalm 90:4.

Back in the days of Hosea, and continuing on into Peter's day, there was a belief that history would last 7 millennial days. The idea went that there had been 2,000 years from Adam to Abraham they called the "age of chaos." There would be 2,000 more years that were the "age of law." Then there would be 2,000 years of an "age of the Messiah." These rabbis thought Messiah would come, then, at about the time of Jesus. He did come, but many didn't recognize him.

According to this reckoning, a day was equal to 1,000 years, and Jesus arrived right at the close of 4,000 years from Adam (using biblical chronologies). So we see that Jesus said, "After two days He would raise up the temple," but he was speaking in veiled terms: he meant his own body.

There are two "bodies" in scripture with regard to Christ. One is his own body and one is the corporate body, the church. He raised his own body after two literal days when he came out of the grave that Sunday morning. He will raise his church also, we may reason, after two millennial days.

In Acts 1 we see that Jesus rose into the heavens, presumably in 30AD, the most likely year for that event. Ten days later the church was born on the feast of Pentecost. If we add 2,000 years (2 days) to that birthday, we have 2030AD as the possible end of the Gentile Age, or what the Jews had called the "Age of Messiah."

Is this a prophetic key? It won't be too long until we know.

The Name That Divides

2007-08-21T06:40:00.000-05:00

OrlandoSentinel.com
OTHER VIEWS
Start using 'Allah' instead of 'God'?
Kathleen Parker
Washington Post Writer's Group
August 19, 2007
WASHINGTON

It was bound to happen -- and it seems fitting that a cleric named Tiny would think of it.Roman Catholic Bishop Tiny Muskens of the Netherlands has decided that the way to ease Muslim-Everybody Else tensions is to start using "Allah" instead of "God."

Noting that God does not care what we call him, Muskens thought, why not yield a little to Muslim ways?Or would that be submit, the literal meaning of "Islam"?........

Contrary to Hooper's one-God claim, Christians and Muslims don't really worship the same God. Although both religions are monotheistic -- and if there's just one God, there's just one God -- Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God and Muslims think otherwise.That's not a small doctrinal difference.

In fact, at the risk of exhausting the obvious, Christianity doesn't exist without, um, Christ. Of course we could rewrite the Apostle's Creed to include Muhammad: "I believe in Allah the Father Almighty . . . and in Muhammad, his favorite prophet . . ."The possibilities are infinite, really. Alternatively, we could pretend to be sane and suggest that everybody go to his or her own house of worship, pray to his or her own version of the Creator, and otherwise get a grip......

Given that European Muslims are procreating at three times the rate of non-Muslims -- and given the "logarithmic rate" of growth of jihadist ideology in the U.S., according to a new report by the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division -- it may be sooner than that.Peace be upon us.
Kathleen Parker can be reached at kparker@kparker.com.
Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel

My comment:

Bishop Muskin's heart is in the right place, no doubt. And, in terms of God identification, the Muslim worships the God of Abraham, the father through Hagar of the Arab race. So Jew and Muslim, in that sense, serve the same God. So why can't we all just get along?

Throw Jesus into the mix, as Parker suggests above, and you've got problems. Jews do not regard him as their savior and Muslims regard him as a savior, but demote him from the position accorded him in the New Testament as Lord of the cosmos. These are "monotheists" all, but Jesus is the wild card.

Thus it is that Mohammed nods to Jews and Christians as "people of the book," and they are redeemable as long as they submit to Allah. So, Ms. Parker suggests, is this peacemaking or submission on the part of the retiring Bishop?

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, said he didn't come to bring peace but division into this world. And that he has done. His claims are so outrageous that they are either true or he has buffaloed billions into believing in a myth. There is no compromise on this issue of Jesus' identity as lone savior. And perhaps millions of Christians have given their lives for that reason alone: they would not compromise that distinction, that Jesus is the only name that saves. Jesus is the only religion worth a hoot.

Jesus also taught "blessed are the peacemakers." So how do we "make peace" when just the mention of Jesus' superiority brings division? The key is another Jesus principle: "Pray for your enemies." It is hard to hate someone you are concerned about. It is even harder to hate when you do good to those who oppose and hate you. They are disarmed by it.

In this world, democracy is the most we can hope for to help people who disagree sharply live together in a state of constant truce. Solomon said, "A soft answer turns away wrath." Living with violence is so ugly we all should want to avoid it. And we often do, with a kind of live and let live philosophy. But sooner or later, the dragon of war will rear its head.

Formerly Christian Europe, now in a state of apostasy, is becoming a Muslim stronghold. Christians living there face a real dilemma. They face extinction. Will the Muslims ~ indeed can they ~ compromise the goal of their faith which, according to Mohammed, is ultimate theocratic occupation of the world?

Kathleen Parker touches on a very sensitive issue here. When are we making peace and when are we compromising? In Africa, Muslims and Christians shoot at one another. Is civil war on the horizon in Europe? Tough decisions are coming for both the Muslim and the "infidel."

Tabernacle Secrets

2007-08-18T06:56:00.000-05:00

The above picture was retrieved from this web address.

Exodus 25: (New International Version)
40 See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.

Examining the picture above shows that the Tabernacle of Moses has certain dimensions. These dimensions may be significant.

Moses' design was given to him by God. This was the foundation of Jewish worship, and it is divinely inspired. But it was more than just a kind of Jewish liturgy that was being introduced ~ it was a great big prophetic picture. That is, it was a huge object lesson teaching about something important and still future. It was meant even to instruct the Jews through its symbolism: so they would recognize their Messiah when He came.

For us, today, it is a detailed picture of Jesus: even down to the fact that the furniture was arranged in the form of a cross. It also predicts, seemingly, the times and seasons. And there is increasing interest in the church in these things, for a good reason.

Biblical history in our universities is now just a curiosity. Academics give far more credence to their own constructions of history that are based on Archaeology. For this reason, Christians who insist on taking the Bible at face value struggle with the representations of history that are given in our classrooms.

But when we are considering a prophetic picture given by God, the scriptures have long provided a valid concept of history that is more mystical and metaphysical. When we take the ancient chronologies given in the Masoretic text we are confronted with a picture of Old Testament history that spans precisely 4,000 years. These 4 millennia were divided up into 2 periods of 2K each by ancient Jewish scholars. By this, they understood there were to be 3 ages of man in God's cosmology: the age of Adam, the age of Moses (or the Law), and the age of the Messiah.

When we look at the Tabernacle of Moses, we see this reflected. We see three compartments with specific dimensions. These dimensions are thought by some to relate to significant time-frames in Jewish and Gentile history.

Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt in about 1500BC. The dimensions of the outer court of the tabernacle is 1500 cubic cubits (15 x 10 x 10 ).

The inner court or Holy Place has the dimension of 2,000 (20 x 10 x 10). Christian scholars sometimes interpret this as the "Church Age": from first advent to second advent. Does it have to turn out exact? No. But at present we have not necessarily reached 2,000 years. The church has only existed since its birth in 30AD. It is possible this age is about over.

The final dimensions of the Holy of Holies is 10 x 10 x 10 or 1,000. This seems to many to represent the idea of a "millennial reign" of the Savior here on earth. But many scholars do not buy that possibility and rule it out as being a too literal take on the scriptures. Other ways of looking at the picture emerge. There is no final agreement on these things.

The point of all this may not be to find a key that unlocks sealed secrets, like the exact date of the Lord's return. But there still emerges, even in the tabernacle design, a generalized picture of the plan of God for mankind. It is useful as an object lesson about the Messiah and His ultimate mission.

The Jews were a prophetic people, guided by prophets and "types and shadows". God gave them the law, the feasts, the Temple and even the picture of the seminal creation "week" revealed in Genesis. All of these things pointed to Jesus and His ultimate purpose. Today we are beginning to access the truths contained in the Jewish religion, the heavenly pattern that predicts the whole work of God from day 1 to the Sabbath and beyond. And the Tabernacle turns out to be a beautiful gem, loaded with divine information.

Leaving Flatland

2007-08-15T07:14:00.000-05:00

I recently saw that psychologist/philosopher Ken Wilber was on Brian McLaren's reading list, and I thought I'd take a look at him. To boil Wilber down to blog simplicity is to do him disservice. His wide popularity is for a reason. He makes a lot of sense. But how in the world does he relate to Christianity?

Wilber's ideas are what I would call "holistic evolution." He has charted or graphed what he believes are the four directions of evolution, that boil down to 3 directions: I, it, and we. You can't grasp this in a blog, and could barely squeeze it in to the space provided.

So what would be McLaren's interest in this guy (McLaren knows how to stay in hot water with the Christian community)? Emergent Christians are processing what I would call the Big Story, something I am also interested in doing with the 7K metaphor. McLaren calls it "the story we find ourselves in." His approach is different than mine; and he would probably find some of my theology a bit antique. But maybe not, because he appreciates how things fit together, as well as all forms of theological exploration. My approach is to pull up something ancient and see how it predicts where we are at now. Wilber does something similar, but in a different vein.

Age_____Characteristic____Psychology______Worldview
5-9 mo._Adualism_________Psychosis_______Archaic
<2yrs._emotional_________borderline______magic>
4____Conceptual_________Neurotic_______Mythic
6____Moral/Conventional__Script pathology__Prejudice
11___Worldcentric______Identity Crisis_____Modern 15+__Integrated________________________Post-modern

Just to explain Wilber's concept outlined above: We move up through the stages of life. This may relate to stages of growth in faith as well. But Wilber touches on the psychological states in each step of life from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. And there are characteristics that tend to mark each stage. For instance, the first stage of life, babyhood, is marked by "adualism." In other words, babies don't differentiate anything in their surroundings: it is too new.

If a trauma occurs at this stage of life, it can produce psychosis later on. The psychotic is then sort of riveted to this undifferentiated approach to the world around him. This stage of life has not been resolved. The natural maturation process has been broken.

This also relates to the "we", to societies. The earliest societies were archaic. The religion we get from these primitives is called "animism." It is the belief that all things have souls, basically. It is a worldview that is adual: it doesn't differentiate. It is totally unsophisticated. Today we find it in the most basic tribal systems in Africa, Australia, South America, and Washington DC (just kidding).

So Wilber traces this development up through the stages of this growth or progress or evolution as we actually see it in persons and history. He looks at all these processes as a whole, how they relate, and what they tell us.

We end up with societies reaching the place we are at now: high integration and post-modernism. What he calls the "flatland" of modernism is passing away. But Wilber is not content with present post-modernism because it is even more negative, still dwelling in "flatland", which is devoid of what he calls "Spirit."

When a person reaches adulthood, they have hopefully become integrated. Life has educated them to the point they can function. But modernism, even in the church, has in many ways sucked "spirit" out of society. We are utterly fragmented and shattered. Post-modernism reflects this utter fragmentation. All absolutes become suspect. The laws of the universe unravel when we get to the core. All we have left is what we believe from our own perspectives. And in the big picture even that is suspect.

In the church and religion in general (particularly monotheist) this paradigm shift creates a panic reaction from those who have embraced their modernistic reductionism. They erect a big stop sign to tell their followers "go no further." This tactic is a mistake. But it will create a crisis. 9-11 is a symbol of this. The world is polarized between the modern and post-modern at this moment. Fundamentalism is quaking and not wanting to give up its security blanket.

What this means for Christians is that they must change. The church needs to seek integration, wholeness. The church needs to humble itself in the face of these forces. The church still has the answer. But the modern equations and formulas will no longer suffice. They will lose their pontency. They will not be enough.

Basically, Wilber is trying to leave Flatland without losing what was good about it. He is hoping for a kind of psychological leap to occur in mankind, an integrating of the spiritual dimension into the social fabric. He has a vision of wholeness.

He wouldn't be thinking that the church has to get there first. But it does. Because the church has the answer: not in its seemingly endless versions of how to do Christianity, but in the One it is pointing to. Wilber wouldn't see it this way, of course; but he is trying to unlock truth, and he is looking at these things in ways most of us don't, certainly. He brings to the table an understanding of how the cuisine of history is finally shaping up in the oven, and what is lacking to make it a gourmet's delight.

Texas: Religious Executions?

2007-08-13T15:59:00.000-05:00

Religion, culture behind Texas execution tally
By Ed Stoddard Sun Aug 12, 7:57 PM ET

DALLAS (Reuters) - Texas will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.

"In Texas you have all the elements lined up. Public support, a governor that supports it and supportive courts," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

"If any of those things are hesitant then the process slows down," said Dieter. "With all cylinders working as in Texas it produces a lot of executions."

BIBLE BELT INFLUENCE
Like his predecessor, Governor Perry is a devout Christian, highlighting one key factor in Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling -- the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.

This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture. "A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God. And they see sanction for that in the Old Testament especially," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Not everyone agrees on capital punishment. Sometimes people are against it, but when they become victims of a sordid crime they then demand it. Even in our nearly foolproof system of twelve-person juries, the innocent can go to their death and the guilty can go free. It is hard to mete out justice in this life.

Jesus Christ is history's most famous example of the results of mob justice, of scapegoating to appease offended communities, of trials gone awry, and of religious hypocrisy in the seat of power. Never was there a more innocent victim of capital punishment. And what an awful death it was.

Joseph, in the Old Testament, was also an innocent man sent to prison for rape. He is also a symbol of resurrection, in that he came back to rule and reign after he was rejected by his brethren and accused falsely and placed in prison (symbolic of burial).

Jesus' accusers were not vile and wicked men: they were priests. They watched him with concern because he was doing something new, and something they interpreted as threatening their power-base. Since he was doing nothing they could condemn him for before the people, they sought to corner him in his words. It was there they found the reason to have him executed: he was a blasphemer, because he made himself into God.

The article above links evangelical/ fundamentalists with a voracious appetite for capital punishment. These people not only see executing the evil perpetrators of heinous crimes as benefiting society but as biblical. It is like an ethnic cleansing of the worst elements.

The problem is when eye-for-an-eye goes awry. Many Muslim societies are what we call "theocratic": ruled by a religious elite. So effective is their legal system that crime is curtailed to a high degree. If you rape, you are castrated. If you steal, you lose a limb. And this same Hammurabi thinking goes for the evil nations outside Islam. Some Muslims feel these infidels too need to be punished, even destroyed, like America for instance.

And the church, too, once put on an inquisition, not to mention the Crusades. The thinking is the same. And how often did innocent men and women die to placate a bloodthirsty but "righteous" cause?

The answers don't come easy. Religious men, like wicked men, are sometimes prone to violence and brutality. And who is more blind than the fanatic? Too often, in this world, the ends justify the means. And who defines what those ends are? How sad it is if righteous causes turn into brutal machinery. Jesus made a glaring example of this problem.

I'm not trying to hang high the Texas tendency to possible overkill. It is odd that the rest of the nation is tending to the other direction. Even Texas may be backing off. And the evangelical-right no doubt means well. There is that odd coupling of anti-abortion with pro-capital-punishment, though. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what the reasoning is.

But there was no reasoning on that crucial day in 30AD, either ~ when the Savior was nailed to a crude cross. Of course, his death was hardly by lethal injection: lethal suffering is a better term. Can societies find a better alternative? Some would say, better to err on the side of incarceration. Human life is salvageable. Many people see the error of their ways in prison: others (like Charles Manson) are so psychotic they are beyond being penitent. And we have seen even serial killers seriously change their tune.

The questions remain: Is society better served by exterminating its vermin? Is justice better served by liquidating humans who may never have had a chance in the first place? Who is actually guilty in all of this: those who perpetrate the crimes or those who looked the other way when the criminal was growing up? In the end, all of us are guilty. So do we approach these problems with compassion or an attitude of vengeance? Sadly, sometimes, the church seems bent on using the sword, or the guillotine, or the firing squad. Odd, since so many in that great institution lost their lives as Jesus did, at the hands of a "justice" system gone mad.

144K

2007-08-10T07:21:00.000-05:00

Revelation 14
The Lamb and the 144,000
1Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads.
2And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps.
3And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.
4These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb.
5No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.

Dissecting the book of Revelation ~ peering into the guts of it ~ can be like a sport. It can be very rewarding and equally frustrating. I have been processing this book for almost 40 years. It may be one of the single most influential writings of all time. And it wasn't unanimously accepted into the Bible canon.

I believe it definitely belongs there: but it is like a delicacy, it should be savoured with respect and even awe. Crackpots and psychos have run off with it and created misery and mayhem. It is a book that strangely invites the weird and wacky to exploit its fearsome images.

Above is an enigmatic passage that has invited many varied interpretations. At the core of the vision is this very precise number, 144K. It is a number that immediately divulges the obvious multiplication of 12, a number that symbolizes congregation in the Bible. There were 12 patriarchs over the tribes of Israel and there were 12 apostles chosen to birth the seminal church. Why twelve in both cases?

The most literal, futuristic interpreters of this passage say that there will be precisely 144,000 Jewish evangelists declaring the gospel to the world just before Jesus returns.
According to Revelation 7, it sounds like these are "sealed" Jews: 12,000 from each tribe. The rest of the chapter describes a "multitude no man can number" of worshippers of the Lamb of God (Jesus).

Much of the Apocalypse of John is, however, symbolic and metaphor-drenched. It is a vision that actually resists literalism as the correct approach to plumbing its depths. And its symbolism relates well to the time it was written (varied estimates say it was penned between 60AD and 95AD). However it is to be understood, it is a book of drama and pageant that is highly controversial, and it is about revealing the end of the story of human (some say only Jewish) history that culminates in the complete revelation of the Messiah.

To me, there are clues within the immediate text that identify this congregation:
1. They have the Father's name written on their foreheads.
2. They know a new song that only they have learned.
3. They were not defiled with women.
4. They follow the Lamb only.
5. They were purchased.
6. They do not lie and are blameless.

No literal or representational group of humans in history has such a pedigree. There is no order or denomination or group of saints that could claim to fit these impossible standards ~ especially number 6. There are no blameless and utterly true human beings. The best of us have sinned. Even the apostle Paul confessed to the evil that was resident with him and that he was "chiefest of sinners."

The only way we can fit any group of people into these criteria is through faith. That is, this is a symbolic representation of the historical assembly of believers through history, from Adam through Abraham to the last Christian standing when the dust settles. Who is sealed? Who sings a unique song of worship? Who is considered virginal by God? What group follows only the Lamb? What people can be considered guileless and blameless in the court of history? The obvious answer: no one.

The key is that these were "purchased." They didn't earn this status. These are the multitudes who through history cleaved to faith in the one who died for them. Some saw him by revelation as yet to be introduced ~ they preceded Jesus in history ~ like David, Elijah, the prophets. And the rest of us know who He was by revelation, when our eyes are opened to the meaning of the cross. From that day in our lives forward, we follow Him everywhere.

There may be more to this: I don't know. But that is the bottom line here. That is what is readily visible in scanning this passage. And that is enough. And how beautiful it is.

How To Not Be NaiEve

2007-08-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"):

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,

which translates to:

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

As we go through life we encounter a lot of information. Most of us have probably been swindled at some time or other. Or we carved out a path in life based on faulty information. Or we repeated something we heard only to find out it was false. Or we even lied to someone, or deliberately deceived someone, maybe to protect ourselves or make us look good in a situation.

And even in the world of ideas we encounter theories we find suspect. Many people cultivate an attitude of "healthy skepticism" about everything. It is a way of protecting oneself from the damages of wrong information.

There are three tried and true methods of confronting information that can help us to be careful about what we believe:

1. Find the simplest explanation.
2. Consider the source.
3. How likely is it?

Number 1 ~ The simplest explanation (Ockham's Razor) is the bedrock of Modernism and science. In fact, it has brought us into an age of skepticism so complete that nothing can stand before this steamroller. We can question anything, even God, and arrive at nothing.

Still, it is a very useful tool in arriving at truth. Strip the problem down to its simplest explanation and work from there.

Number 2 ~ What credentials does the person have who is making the assertion? If a garbage collector is telling me I have appendicitis, his information is highly suspect. But if a doctor, trained to detect and isolate health problems, tells me I have it, I need to listen. Or, if I need advice on the stock market, I shouldn't go and ask an artist (especially a con-artist).

Number 3 ~ What is the likelihood that what I am being told is the truth? Is it likely that Chicken Little is telling the truth when he says, "The sky is falling."

Can we still get into trouble using these simple tools? Sure. Our world is rife with potential for mishap. But, in a world where knowledge and information are coming at us like a freight train out of control, we can sure beat a straighter path by staying alert and using these tools. It's OK to question information.

In the story of Adam and Eve, Eve had an opportunity to use discernment when the serpent gave her testable information. The simplest explanation was that the info the serpent was giving was incorrect. Weighed against what God said, it did not stack up.

And who was telling her this? A snake. How trustworthy are snakes? And how likely was it that she would become like God simply by eating the fruit?

Her name should have been nai-Eve. But some sources have it that she was a blond. If those sources are correct.

Still, the blond assertion makes sense. Why? Well, we all know blonds are dumb, right?

Moral of the story: Never listen to a snake before you've gotten dressed.

The Jewish Messiah

2007-08-04T06:58:00.000-05:00

Messiah in the Prophets

Most of the textual requirements concerning the messiah, what he will do, and what will be done during his reign are located within the Book of Isaiah, although requirements are mentioned in other prophets as well.

1. The Sanhedrin will be re-established (Isaiah 1:26)
2. Once he is King, leaders of other nations will look to him for guidance. (Isaiah 2:4)
3. The whole world will worship the One God of Israel (Isaiah 2:17)
4. He will be descended from King David (Isaiah 11:1) via King Solomon (1 Chron. 22:8-10)
5. The Moshiach will be a man of this world, an observant Jew with "fear of God" (Isaiah 11:2)
6. Evil and tyranny will not be able to stand before his leadership (Isaiah 11:4)
7. Knowledge of God will fill the world (Isaiah 11:9)
8. He will include and attract people from all cultures and nations (Isaiah 11:10)
9. All Israelites will be returned to their homeland (Isaiah 11:12)
10. Death will be swallowed up forever (Isaiah 25:8)
11. There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease (Isaiah 25:8)
12. All of the dead will rise again (Isaiah 26:19)
13. The Jewish people will experience eternal joy and gladness (Isaiah 51:11)
14. He will be a messenger of peace (Isaiah 52:7)
15. Nations will end up recognizing the wrongs they did to Israel (Isaiah 52:13-53:5)
16. For My House shall be called a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:3-7)
17. The peoples of the world will turn to the Jews for spiritual guidance (Zechariah 8:23)
18. The ruined cities of Israel will be restored (Ezekiel 16:55)
19. Weapons of war will be destroyed (Ezekiel 39:9)
20. The Temple will be rebuilt (Ezekiel 40) resuming many of the suspended mitzvot
21. He will then perfect the entire world to serve God together (Zephaniah 3:9)
22. Jews will know the Torah without Study (Jeremiah 31:33)
23. He will give you all the desires of your heart (Psalms 37:4)
24. He will take the barren land and make it abundant and fruitful (Isaiah 51:3, Amos 9:13-15, Ezekiel 36:29-30, Isaiah 11:6-9)

I want to look briefly at the subject of the Jewish concept of the Messiah as noted above. I am using the Wikipedia reference above, but trying to simplify it below for a quick blog overview:

1. The Jewish Messiah will be a Jewish king of the lineage of David who will rule in the "Messianic Age."
2. Jewish denominations disagree on the particulars, mostly over whether the Messiah is a single person or more of a symbol for an era of peace in the future.
3. The Talmud teaches two phases of a Messianic Era still future:
A first period into which Jews will be led by their Messiah to an era of peace and the construction of the Third Temple, which will be built supernaturally by God. The second period will be one of a supernatural existence where everyone will know God in a physical and visual sense.

I believe with full faith in the coming of the Messiah. And even though he tarries, with all that, I await his arrival with every day. ~ Orthodox requirement.

Hasidic Jews believe they can hasten the Messiah's arrival by their devotions and actions.
Conservative Judaism believes they must live in a way that will usher in the Messianic Age, but do not know whether the Messiah will be an actual person or whether he is a symbol of redemption.
Reform Jews believe all Jews must work toward a kind of Messianic Utopia, but they don't generally believe in a Messiah.
Some Jews embrace the ideas of Maimonides that their Messiah will stand up and restore the ancient Davidic Kingdom with its temple, laws, offerings, Sabbatical years and Jubilees. He also mentions that in the Torah Balaam prophesied of the "two anointed ones": the original King David and his final successor who saves Israel in the end. This second David will rebuild the destroyed Temple.
To Maimonides, Jesus and Mohammed were impostor Messiahs intended to pave the way for the true King of Israel who will reveal all the secret meanings to the Jews.

Jesus = God

2007-08-01T07:06:00.000-05:00

John 1:1 - "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John 1:14 - "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

John 5:18 - "For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God."

John 8:24 - "I said therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins."
Note: In the Greek, "He" is not there.

Below are more scriptures that reveal the Deity is Christ. And I don't believe this list is exhaustive. In fact, this is the main message of all scripture. But it gives you an idea.

John 8:58 - "Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.'"
Exodus 3:14 - "And God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM'; and He said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’"

John 10:30-33 - "I and the Father are one." 31The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. 32Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" 33The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God."

John 20:28 - "Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"

Col. 2:9 - "For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form."

Phil. 2:5-8 - "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, 11and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, (is God)to the glory of God the Father."

Heb. 1:8 - "But of the Son He says, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom."

Quoted from Psalm 45:6, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Thy kingdom."

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. 1 Timothy 3:16

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14 (written: 712 BC (Before Christ)

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Matthew 1:23

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder: and his name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 (written: 712 BC (Before Christ)

In the beginning was the Word (the Logos or Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

The Jews answered him [Jesus], saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. John 10:33

When many were about to stone Jesus for blasphemy (John 10:30-39), He said to them that said he blasphemed "because I said, I am the Son of God?" (John 10:36).You call Me Teacher and Lord (God); and ye say well; for so I Am. John 13:13

But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I Am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power (the full power of God), and coming in the clouds of heaven. Mark 14:61-62

The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Psalm 110:1

he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? John 14:9 Thus we can say that Jesus is the Father, or Jehovah, or God.

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. John 17:5 Again, God = Jesus.

And Thomas answered and said unto him [Jesus], My Lord and my God. John 20:28

...lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2 Corinthians 4:4

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Colossians 1:14-17 "Him" who? Obviously Jesus.

...who [Jesus] is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; 1 Timothy 6:15

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Hebrews 1:2-3

But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Hebrews 1:8

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Titus 2:13 Can it be said any plainer than that?

And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? (Luke 5:21).

Rev. 19:13 And he (Jesus) was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

The Book of Colossians:
The entire context of Colossians 1:15-27 is filled with superlatives in its description of the Lord Jesus as the "image of the invisible God, the first begetter [or according to Erasmus ''original bringer forth''] of every creature."
The Apostle Paul lauds the Son of God as Creator of all things (v.16) and describes Him as existing "before all things" and as the one by whom "all things consist" (v.17). This is in perfect harmony with the entire picture Scripture paints of the Eternal Word of God (John 1:1), who was made flesh (John 1:14) and of whom it was written: "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3). The writer of Hebrews also pointed out that God's Son "[upholds] all things by the word of his power" (Hebrews 1:3) and that He is Deity in all its fullness, even as Paul wrote to the Colossians: "For...in him should all fullness (of God) dwell" (Colossians 1:19) This is an analysis by the author of the website from which I lifted some of this list. To access other sites of this nature go to the keywords "God is Jesus."

My conclusion: From both Old and New Testament scriptures we can safely conclude that Jesus is the Alpha and Omega ~ that is, He was, is, and always will be God. There is no other.

Bible Numerology

2007-07-28T18:47:00.000-05:00

An interesting study on numbers as used in the Bible

To be used as a reference to my comments below.

1 refers to the unity in the Godhead and is the number of unity. It signifies beginnings and is, in that way, related to the number 8, which starts a thing over. So it reveals that something is new.

2 brings to mind the Father and the Son. Two also has to do with choice. As at the tree of knowledge.
There are two paths or two ways we can choose. It is used in scripture repeatedly to signify "witness."

3 is always a figure of strength and corresponds to 1 in reference to the triune nature of the Godhead.
It is also a figure of resurrection (after "three days" he rose again). It is significant in how it interacts with other numbers derived from it.

4 has to do with all directions in most numerology. For instance, "the four winds." It is global or even cosmic in scope. The cross, having four sides, illustrates the universality and global reach of salvation.

5 in Ephesians stands for church government. This number suggests spiritual governing (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers) and involves nurturing or feeding the flock (Jesus takes 5 loaves and feeds 5,000).

6 stands for man, obviously, and imperfected man at that. Man as "fallen" or not yet at the ideal. It also stands for work, as in 6 days of work. When day 7 arrives the work is over.

7 stands for a number of things like rest and perfection. It is the number of God. It is the ideal, the final perfected state of man. It has the connotation of glory to it, or glorified persons. It also completes a cycle and contains everything. Within the number 7 all is finished and brought to completion.

8 reverts back to 1, like the first day of the week. It is about new beginnings. Eight souls were saved by water in the ark and began the new day.

9 seems to be associated with manifestation, as in traits, like the fruit of the Spirit or the listed charisma. Jesus also uses "99" to denote the status quo, urging his disciples to leave the 99 and go after the 1 stray.

10 is the whole. It signifies a totality. For instance, there are 2 tablets with 5 laws apiece, so there is an agreement (of the horizontal and vertical laws) which govern (5) the people of God as 10, as being complete in themselves. The two (witness) tablets of 5 (government) gives the entire scope of the law. It is the whole counsel of God.

11 would be ten + 1, of course, or a number combining the whole and God, but it doesn't find a particular use in Bible symbology. The original 12 disciples were pared down to 11 until the Book of Acts. It was incomplete in that sense. So, it could be a number of incompleteness that, when combined with 6, for instance, becomes 66 and multiplied by 10 = 666. We then have the number of the incomplete man, fallen and imperfect and his history or existence being completed in six days.

12 stands for the ecclesia, the congegration and the fathers: 12 Jewish fathers, 12 apostles and 12 tribes, or the 144,000 (12 x 12 x 100, which is 10 x 10).

12 + 1 is the foundation or seminal grouping as in Jesus and the 12. 13 is a foundational number. For instance, Arthur and his 12 knights is based on the symbology of the original 13. There is no use of the number as such in the NT.

40 is an important number that denotes testing or a period of examination. 40 days or years in the wilderness. Even its extension to 4,000 is significant in that, biblically speaking, 4 millennia is the testing period from Adam to Jesus in history. 4 (cosmos) x 10 (wholeness) would indicate the completion of a task, in this sense. 40 x 50 (Jubilee, Pentecost) is 2,000, the apparent number of years in a biblical "age."

49 is 7 x 7 which completes a larger cycle than the week. Jesus uses the number in illustrating forgiveness. We forgive 70 x 7, that is, utterly and irrevocably.

50 is the number of Jubilee, denoting restoration and newness of life. The captives are set free. The most significant symbol in this regard is the Jewish Feast of Pentecost which becomes the very day the church was born in 30AD.

1,000 is 10 x 10 x 10, an extension of the whole, or the whole picture. It can be used figuratively or literally. 7 x 1000 seems to be a picture of the whole plan of God, or His entire enterprise focusing on Jesus Christ.

Most other significant numbers one encounters in scripture probably link with these numbers. These are the basic numbers one encounters regularly and my take on their prophetic and symbolic application. I'm sure there's more.

Aliyah & The Disappearing Jew

2007-07-27T11:13:00.000-05:00

Netanyahu: No future for Diaspora Jewry
Gil Hoffman, THE JERUSALEM POST
Oct. 6, 2006

Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu questioned the future of Diaspora Jewry in a closed-door meeting with American contributors to the IDF's Nahal haredi program on Thursday morning.
He warned that assimilation and intermarriage would threaten the future of Diaspora Jewry and said the Nahal haredi program was the answer to the rifts inside Israeli society. Netanyahu told participants to do everything possible to prevent assimilation in their communities, but said Israel is what is keeping the Jewish people together.
What's new on JPost.com
"There is no future for Jews in the Diaspora, because of assimilation and intermarriage," Netanyahu said, according to participants. "The only future for the Jews is in Israel. The only hope for the Jewish people in the Diaspora is Israel."

In this prophecy, Jeremiah said: "And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph [Ephraim], and I will bring them again [to the Holy Land] to place them; for I have mercy on them: and they shall be as though I had not cast them off: for I am the Lord their God, and I will hear them" (Zechariah 10:6).

My comments: There are about 15 million Jews in the world today. Consider that the Holocaust exterminated 6 million to get a perspective on this. Jews make up, right now, 0.3 % of the world's population. There aren't enough of them to fill up Los Angeles or Cairo.

What's more, they are headed for extinction through inter-breeding. That is, the purity of the Jewish race, the thoroughbreds, has been seriously compromised through marrying Gentiles in the nations to which they were dispersed. Jews have, of course, suffered enough in this world: but they really face an uncertain future unless they get their act together. Netanyahu, I think, believes this. He is calling for aliyah, or a return to Israel. This at a time when Jews have been leaving Israel.

America is the world's chief stronghold of genuine Jews. Some argue they are doing fine in their dispersion. Others worry that the purity of the race is seriously compromised.

It may be that this waning of the Jew is one of the clearest indications of the lateness of the hour, of the finality of the eschaton, or the "end of the age." We certainly live in a moment like no other in history, with forces and circumstances in the world that seem to be pulling us inexorably toward the fulfillment of some of the unfinished business of ancient prophecies.

America In Prophecy?

2007-07-26T05:19:00.000-05:00

Isaiah 18 (NIV)
A Prophecy Against Cush
1 Woe to the land of whirring wings [a]

along the rivers of Cush, [b]
2 which sends envoys by sea

in papyrus boats over the water.

Go, swift messengers,

to a people tall and smooth-skinned,

to a people feared far and wide,

an aggressive nation of strange speech,

whose land is divided by rivers.
3 All you people of the world,

you who live on the earth,

when a banner is raised on the mountains,

you will see it,

and when a trumpet sounds,

you will hear it.
4 This is what the LORD says to me:

"I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place,

like shimmering heat in the sunshine,

like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest."
5 For, before the harvest, when the blossom is gone

and the flower becomes a ripening grape,

he will cut off the shoots with pruning knives,

and cut down and take away the spreading branches.
6 They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey

and to the wild animals;

the birds will feed on them all summer,

the wild animals all winter.
7 At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD Almighty

from a people tall and smooth-skinned,

from a people feared far and wide,

an aggressive nation of strange speech,

whose land is divided by rivers—

the gifts will be brought to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the LORD Almighty.
Footnotes:
Isaiah 18:1 Or of locusts
Isaiah 18:1 That is, the upper Nile region
The highlighted words are the ones thought by some to refer to America.

"A people tall and smooth-skinned" could describe Americans, perhaps more than any nation in history. Unless you want to include Scandinavians.

"To a people feared far and wide" would definitely describe America and our military technology.

"An aggressive nation of strange speech"...We have been aggressive, certainly. The Soviets called us "Yankee imperialists." "Strange speech" could also refer to English, since it would not have been known in the world of Isaiah.

"Whose land is divided by rivers" could also be America, that is prominently divided by the Mississippi, a river that has nurtured our nation and the world.

"When a banner is raised on the mountains" could refer to the very recognizable American flag. "Mountains" can refer, in scripture, to governments and nations. Our flag has flown in many nations.

"At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD Almighty" by this nation. At what time? Possible clues are in verses 5 and 6: cryptic references to Armageddon. And what gift might America bring to the Lord? Would she come to the defense of Israel?

By the way, the rivers of "Cush" do not refer to Ethiopia, but Babylon, as evidenced by numerous scriptures about Cush. We are talking about Persia, and specifically the area of the Persian Gulf, that is, Iraq and Iran.