Tag: Inspiration

Never let it be said that a Pentecostal would be less than forward thinking. After all, we are continually accused of living in the future with insufficient regard to the present. Our detractors have indicated that we focus on the ‘End of Days’ (escaton) to the exclusion of compassion and social conscience. This can be easily refuted by a factual review of the expenditures and ministries of the major Pentecostal denominations; however that is for another day. Instead I’d like to show just how traditional Pentecost really is.

Recently I was embroiled in an unwanted debate regarding the fact that Evangelicals & Fundamentalists, Protestant Catholics, Roman Catholics, Coptics, Orthodox, and Pentecostals all variously (and contradictorily) claim the succession of the Early Church and the Apostolic Faith. The person in question was clearly trying to create dissension and controversy, so the discussion rapidly devolved into streams of obscure historical references and ancient doctrines.

This often occurs as the ‘so called’ traditional churches generally wish to pull out the ‘bazooka’ of their long history to prove their supremacy. While I like to be as forward thinking as any Pentecostal, let me take a moment to correct some misconceptions.

The common misconception is that the Pentecostal movement began some 250 years ago in Sweden, and spread to England then to the United States — where it found fertile ground spawning new and Evangelical denominations as well as various heretical cults.

This is a view unfortunately espoused even in the official histories of those various ‘Evangelical’ denominations, to their discredit. This is an unfortunate misconception that denies the very real suffering and at time martyrdom of the fathers of the Pentecostal movement.

The modern expression of the Pentecostal movement did in fact have a brief excursion into the Irvingite movement which became the foundation of the modern Baptist Churches, however the Baptist churches and the Irvingite movement are in fact evangelical or, to be more accurate, Calvinist in their origins. As Calvinists they still cling to the belief that God has arbitrarily chosen a few people to save and arbitrarily damns the remainder. Further, they see salvation as a one way door, once you are a believer, no sin, rebellion or outright blasphemy can ever separate you from God.

This view is common to all Evangelicals and is one of the identifying characteristics of that movement. They however are not Pentecostal nor are Pentecostals Calvinist or part of the protestant reformation at all. Nor did we originate in the 18’th century. In fact, we do date back to the early church. We have always been relatively few in number compared to the ‘church’ at large, and our organs of ecclesiastical government have morphed and distorted at times becoming very odd indeed. However, the body of doctrines has come down unchanged from the earliest ministry of the Apostles, and the missions of Paul into the Turkish peninsula.

That claim is made by others, however let’s look at some of the seminal figures.

Bishop William J. Seymour

Bishop Seymour was a young and respected Methodist minister, when he attended a small Bible school in Topeka Kansas. The students at that School were engaged in the practice of tongues, healing, prophecy and other examples of God’s divine inspiration. Most notable was Agnes Ozman a young woman who went on the be the founding Matriarch of the Ohio State branch of the Church of God in Christ, a major Pentecostal denomination. American culture went into the formation of that institution, later renamed Assemblies of God, so that she, as all Heads of state wide branches of AoG are, was called superintendent rather than archbishop, or one of the other terms steeped in feudal tradition that plague other bodies. [The COGC was forcibly divided along racial lines as many southern states made it illegal for whites and blacks to attend services together. The Black branch of the church is larger in the United States and retains the name COGC]

Bishop Seymour however felt no difficulty in accepting the title and from his ministry more than one denomination was formed under his tutelage as patriarch and Apostle.

One might argue, well there is the proof that Pentecost is a late innovation, if it weren’t for the fact that the Methodist church had a Pentecostal origin itself.

Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley was an Anglican priest who founded the Methodist reformation of the Anglican Church in the 18’th century. The Anglican fellowship had undergone many periods of upheaval as the Calvinists and Catholics had variously tried to eliminate one another by fire and by force of arms. This violence was one of the reasons for the colonization of North America by English immigrants. Calvinists fled persecution by Catholics, Baptists fled persecution by Calvinists and finally Methodists fled persecution by Episcopalian reformers.

Wesley was a man with a mission, some might describe him as driven. With the help of his brother John, his children and a personal secretary, Wesley attempted to forge a reconciliation between Aminianism and the Anglican Canon Law. The result, while ostensibly Catholic, is certainly not compatible with the Protestant, Calvinist, or Roman expressions that have historically held sway in the Church of England.

The question is why this discussion of Wesleyan Methodism is anything more than a pedantic and admittedly very shallow historical analysis. Well one might ask. The answer is in the writings of Charles Wesley himself and in those of his close confidents. Wesley taught a faith that at first glance might seem Evangelical. He taught that one must be saved by grace, though faith in Jesus Christ, rather than church affiliation and baptism. However Wesley Espoused the Arminian model that said salvation is a free will act dependent on the cooperation and obedience of the penitent. He also taught in the Arminian tradition that a subsequent work of sanctification must be completed to truly succeed as a believer and to avoid failure and subsequent fall from grace.

Wesley also taught that subsequent to sanctification a ‘third moment’ or third definite work of grace is the fire baptism by the Holy Spirit. Wesley showed scripturally that in order to be empowered for service as a minister of the gospel and an authentic cleric of the church, one must have received this baptism by fire which is accompanied by, as Wesley put it, ‘groanings that cannot be uttered’.

Wesley was a careful man and unwilling to go far in his description or demonstration of said groanings, however he felt they were essential and not optional for every believer and prerequisite for clergy. What we find in the reports by his personal secretary however, show that these groanings are in fact what we in the 21’st century shorthand as tongues. Wesley was in fact a consummate Pentecostal and would have every one of his followers be one as well.

If Wesley was Arminian then who was Arminius?

Jacobus Arminius

Born Jacob Harmenszoon in Oudewater near Utrecht, Arminius was a Dutch reformer who sought to correct the wrong turn the reformation had taken under the influence of Calvin’s successors. Arminius restored the portions of scripture which the Calvinists had chosen to discard in order to support their nihilistic view of humanity and the role of an individual in his own salvation. Falsely accused of various heresies including neo-palagianism, he was acquitted at trial and went on to develop a Restorationist movement that till this day has had at it’s heart the reintegration of doctrine and scripture, previously discarded in order to support misguided or heretical dogma held by the other major branches of the church.

Arminius takes the Pentecostal movement back to the 16’th century and while neither he nor his contemporaries embraced the actual practice of ecstatic gifts, you see it in every branch of his followers, including the Quakers, Shakers, Anabaptists, Methodists, etc. The restoration of discarded scripture, by which I mean scripture intentionally ignored or misinterpreted in order to support dogma, lead to a new revival of the church and an exploration of those things which had been lost to the church at large prior to the renaissance.

Medieval Mystics

Throughout the medieval period we see the church fathers embracing the authentic if somewhat mystical practice of ecstatic prophecy and miraculous gifts, followed unfortunately by the acquisition of the glory of those events not for our savior, but rather to bolster the reputation of the already bloated and corrupt Roman Church. This is what led to the renaissance reformation and subsequent Restorationist Movement which shaped the Dutch Reformed Church.

One might think the age of enlightenment and the renaissance at large was a time where ancient Greek Philosophies were allowed to corrupt secular society and were thus in some way ungodly. Some of the excesses of the period would almost support such a claim. The problem with that belief is that one must question, where did these terribly damaging Greek works — such as Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, etc. ‘ come from.

The answer often spouted erroneously by the uninformed is ‘from the Muslims!’ Many of the inhabitants of the Christian kingdoms of Western China and Northern India fled into Europe to escape the advancing horde of Tartars and their Mongolian slaves. This brought believers, who often carried copies of rare works with them, into the west where they often integrated their own traditions with those of small parishes.

Islamic jihad against southern Europe did in fact bring copies of these works back to a Europe that had been plagued by book burnings and censorship by the Roman church throughout the so called dark ages. In point of fact, many medieval priests were so illiterate that they memorized their Psalters and Office and even bible ‘readings’ — if I dare use that word — because they could not read them and would have been legally prohibited from owning a bible in the first place. This made parishioners more open to influence by older more Biblical faith, that was brought into Europe by the Nestorian Believers, than they would have been if the parish priests had been Biblical scholars themselves.

It was the conundrum faced by the medieval church, educate the priest and he might revolt against unbiblical Dogma on his own. Leave him uneducated and he is vulnerable to persuasion.

So Christians are historically anti-education and there is no connection between the Aristotelian approach to Biblical hermeneutics of the reformation, and the traditional church. Such a conclusion would be quite erroneous.

The Eurasian Steps were home to Christian kingdoms where the sciences as well as the Baptism in the Holy Spirit were kept alive as evidenced by myths of the kingdom of Prestor John.

The Islamic nations of the medieval period and prior to that, were some of the best educated students of science possible at the time. Science, Art, and Literature flourished in ancient Middle-Eastern, Indo-European cultures. That is fact. What is generally overlooked is the coordinate fact that, the teachers and educators of the privileged Muslim governors and caliphs were Jewish civil servants and Christian educators.

These Christian Educators were so deeply integrated into early Islamic regimes that there are references to a monk of the sect common to ancient Iraq in Islamic religious works. The Ancient Christian sect found in these regions has been variously called the Nestorians or Assyrian Christians. This name, Nestorian, is derived from the ancient reformer whose teachings they espouse, Nestorius the Patriarch or Bishop of Constantinople.

Nestorius of Antioch

Nestorius was appointed Bishop of Constantinople by Theodosius the II emperor of Rome. Nestor a devout believer and adherent to biblical Christianity, immediately set about trying to correct some of the heresies concerning Mary that had crept into the church since the council of Chalcedon.

Namely, the Church at large had already, begun to erroneously refer to the Bishop of Rome as Pope and had begun to refer to Mary the mother of Jesus as the Holy Virgin and as the Mother of God. This proto cult of Mary had begun to form the seed of the present day heresies wherein Mary is deified as ‘co-redemptrix’ and Mother of God, or Queen of Heaven.

Nestor, in trying to stop this insurgency of pagan goddess worship, began to preach apologetically that while Jesus indeed has a unique nature both divine and human, none of his divinity derives in any way from Mary. Essentially he was presenting the Biblical teaching that Mary was blessed by being chosen to carry Jesus to term, but that the divinity of God is in no way parented and thus obligated or submitted to her in any way. Nestor in no way denies the Hypostatic Union, as such a doctrine was itself unformed and not yet Dogma, and there is no evidence that Nestor ever denied this teaching after it was codified.

Nestor was slandered by the cult of Mary who could not conceive that the divinity of God and the hypostatic union could surpass their limited imaginations and that a woman could give birth to that which she did not conceive. Further, he was waylaid by supporters of that cult and prevented from presenting his case to the Council of Ephesus. The Council of Ephesus correctly codified the Dogma regarding the hypostatic union but tainted it with the pagan doctrines of the cult of Mary, beginning a long and dark slide into apostasy and superstitious ignorance by the church hierarchy as a whole.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of Nestor’s innocence comes not from Nestor’s account of the events but from those of his detractors.

“I am astonished that the question should ever have been raised as to whether the Holy Virgin should be called Mother of God, for it really amounts to asking, is her Son God or is he not?” Cyril of Alexandria

Nothing could more poignantly underline the fallacy of the argument against Nestor than this quote. In today’s world we might well think that it is intentionally disingenuous. In all probability, the lack of a classical ‘liberal arts’ education left the Bishop unable to analyze his own dogma and therefore see the fact that he was assuming the conclusion before testing the hypothesis Biblically and defending each of the assumptions apologetically. But even natural science provides a basis for Nestor’s assertions.

The advent of modern fertility treatments, in vitro fertilization, and surrogate pregnancy, have proven that an infant with no biological relationship to the mother, whatever, can in fact be brought to term by a healthy virgin. I want to be clear, THIS IN NO WAY SUGGESTS THAT MARY WAS NOT THE BIOLOGICAL PARENT TO THE CHILD THAT WAS JESUS. What it does is show the scientific validity of believing that not every characteristic of the child must originate with the mother . Every natural human child is half the product of it’s father. The Mother only provides half the physical makeup of the child. The motility and life in sperm shows that only half the spirit of a child originates with it’s father. The union of two opposite lives, an egg and a sperm, create a new synthetic whole. The divinity of Christ’s nature, as Nestor intuited, was in no way derived from or dependent on Mary’s body or her spirit. Mary was a woman. Mary had other sons after Jesus, and they were the offspring of her husband Joseph. None of those were divine in nature or possessed of the hypostatic union.

In his opposition to the Romanization of the church and by subsequently excommunicating* the Roman and the Byzantine churches, Nestor was merely continuing a tradition held by one of his theological influences the apologetics of Tertullian.

* Naturally the Roman church had already pronounced excommunication of Nestor.

Tertullian

Tertullian was a former Roman Lawyer who converted to Christianity late in life. He was made Bishop of North Africa where he served as a vocal force in the synod of Bishops. As an experienced orator he was quite eloquent in his apologetical treatises, although he did on occasion indulge in the unforgivable act of polemic. Tertullian was indeed a Pentecostal in that he practiced and taught the practice of ecstatic ‘charismata’ as a natural outgrowth of the life in the spirit. He is erroneously accused of having converted to Montanism, however his own treatise against Montanus and the heretical practices and dogmas of the Montanists lays such specious accusations to rest.

Such accusations arise from his attempts to reform the Church at large, which had already begun to bend under the pressure of the pagan rulers of Rome. Already the Eucharist was being seen as a magical rite instead of a Seder celebration, recognizing Jesus as the sacrificial Passover lamb. Proto Mariology was in its infancy and the adoption of blasphemous prayer to persons other than God, and the adoption of reliquaries and icons was polluting the church. Because Tertullian was so vocal in his attempts at reform, he was ostracized by the church at large and his own movement developed for a time, before being absorbed by the Roman church at large precipitating the rise of Nestor.

By the reign of Pope Gregory, the upheaval in the Roman Empire and the fall of the dark ages had completely distorted the calendar, and to this day we cannot be certain how many years it has been since the ‘first’ century, or how long it was between the first century and the rise of Tertullian. For this reason among others it is reasonable to believe that the Tertullian mentioned in the epistles is the same Tertullian who later wrote the aforementioned apologetics. This is the position we take until hard archeological evidence, or the return of Christ proves otherwise.

Whether he is in fact the Tertullian of the epistles or another, his Doctrine certainly agrees, in spirit and in letter, with the doctrines of the epistles and of Saul of Tarsi the Apostle Paul.

Paul the Apostle

The Petrine epistles tell us that ‘Brother Paul’ is an authentic emissary of the Church in Jerusalem and that his doctrine is sound. Second Peter says that if anyone doubts that, they have misunderstood the teachings of the church or the Pauline epistles (and I would like to add: or both). Paul wrote, ‘I praise God I speak in tongues more than you all.’ So while he gives many cautions against irresponsible usage of ecstatic gifts, he clearly is not trying to argue they are obsolete.

Paul draws us a very clear picture of grace, of humanity, of Deity, and the proper role of women. There is no doubt after reading Paul that he, and by extension the early church would reject the cult of Mary as heretical and anathema. There is also no doubt he would have rejected as heretical any person or body that prayed to anyone other than to God in the name of Christ. There is no doubt he would reject the notion that the ‘keys of the kingdom’ grant any person or body the authority to prophesy ‘ex cathedra’ and in doing so contradict the clear teachings of the New Testament.

In the letter to the Galatians Paul writes, ‘If anyone, even an angel from heaven or one of [the apostles] teaches any thing contradictory to what has come before, let him be accursed!’ There is no doubt. They were excommunicated a priori.

When you consider the grace and majesty of God’s provision for this later generation it is mind-boggling. That he could use seemingly terrible events such as the schism in the church and the subsequent infidelity of Arabic believers who were swallowed into the infidelity of Islam; even the Islamic Jihad against Europe, and the Mongol invasion, worked to provide the basis for the continual rebirth of authentic Christian faith, in spite of the continued assault by pagans, the heretics and the spirit of Antichrist. The loss of scrolls at Qumran becomes a time capsule for the verification of the validity of the scriptures. The discovery of discarded tax receipts verify the existence of ancient kingdoms that only Bible believers previously recognized. In his mercy, God has protected knowledge so the faithful would have the tools needed when needed. His sovereign hand is in every current of History. He will establish his church where he wills until the end of times. Praise his glorious name.

Fred

Martin Luther posted his thesis many years ago because he believed that the Roman church had become so corrupt that they no longer taught a form of Christianity that reflected the teachings of Jesus and his chosen representatives. Luther’s indictments against the Papacy and its various doctrines were precipitated by the practice of selling indulgences, by priests and nuns who were impious or incapable of keeping the vows forced upon them, and by the thorough lack and even illegality of Biblical scholarship. There were many, many more but these stand out, because they persist.

The Roman church espoused a brand of ‘Christianity’ that needn’t ever confront the man Christ Jesus or his commands to the general population of believers (the body). They preached a message of good works, loyalty to the organization and significant financial contribution — in exchange for which any lifestyle whatsoever, and any infidelity to Christ or one another could be excused simply by punishing oneself in response to the instructions of the priest.

Where Christ commands confess your fault, and failures to each other, the Roman church organized a system of confessing to the professional clergy, for a price, and being punished by that clergy. This lead to an apostasy so corrupt that a child molester, or professional killer could rest secure in the conceit that he was a Christian, and bound for heaven, without any significant cessation of his sinful lifestyle.

Luther sought, like many others in that period, to reform the church and to restore the essential quality of agape, tempered with Justice, that Jesus himself espoused. The Roman Church shares a trait in common with extremist cults in that they see themselves as the only one true expression of Christian faith. His response to this controlling, possessive attitude was to ‘balance’ their excesses with hyperbole of his own.

A component of Salvation that is often overlooked is the question of repentance. Repentance is a word rich in imagery but ill defined among most believers. The common understanding of the word repent is regretting what you’ve done. This is a necessary prerequisite, but it does not constitute repentance.

Let’s look at the Old Testament concept of repentance. In the Old Testament many sins were punished with the death penalty. Capital crimes included murder, rape, adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, slander of God or abuse of his name and magick. Magick included but was not limited to s

During the period that the media called the Cola Wars, two major US manufacturers seemed bent on securing a market share that included 100% of the population of Earth. Sentimental jingles, cultural icons, lasting tag lines were just some of the detritus that precipitated from this ‘war’. Among these were the red and white suit that Santa Claus now wears, a song about Jesus where he is referred to as ‘the real thing’, a new title for generation ‘X’ and ‘the Pepsi’ Spirit’.

In order to promote this soft drink as ‘the choice of a new generation’, a generation that advertising told us was a ‘Pepsi’ generation’, major motion picture stars and music artists were paid enormous sums to deliver heart rending appeals and sing songs designed to stir emotion and create a sense of identity and loyalty. This excess of emotion and devotion to a product was termed by the manufacturer as a ‘spirit’. Americans by and large felt comfortable with that term and the rest is advertising history. This spirit generated by large sums of money was sufficient to motivate one artist so thoroughly that he became a casualty when his hair caught on fire. That raises the stakes high enough that perhaps it isn’t such a great stretch to call it a war.

War or not, in terms of consumerism, in terms of the battle for the hearts and minds on men, it was indeed a war. This was not a war between manufacturers of fizzy soft drinks, but between that spirit that motivates the carnal mind of man, and the spirit of the living God.

Now what I find most troubling is that America, which was founded mostly by Christians and where the vast majority claim a Christian heritage, was willing to accept the definition of spirit as a mind set comprised of emotion, belief and loyalty. This is the humanistic, debased state that Biblical and religious education has fallen to.

In Genesis 1 we see that the Ruach `Elohyim hovered like a raptor over the face of the waters. And through this agency the solid land was divided from the seas and the clouds. This picture of hovering as on the wings of an eagle is of course a metaphor. The metaphors go even deeper. The word Ruach which we commonly translate as Spirit throughout the Old Testament is the word for wind or breath. If in English someone fell and began having spasms that made it hard for him to breath, we would say he got the wind knocked out of him. When someone is too talkative it was common to say he was windy. This metaphor is not lost on the educated mind.

The Holy Spirit we so glibly refer to is known in Hebrew as the Ruach, or breath, of God. This is the metaphor for the Holy Spirit. What we see this breath accomplishing is a physical feat, namely the fine tuning of the work of creation. In Genesis two, God speaks the Earth into existence; the Breath of God turns mud into dry land and large bodies of water; God shapes the physical body of man; but it is the breath of God that enters him and gives him life.

This relationship didn’t escape the writer of Ecclesiastes who wrote, ‘and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ (12:7) He wrote this passage is in the greater context of explaining how vain living really is. To paraphrase, ‘the flesh rots, and God reclaims his life giving spirit so what remains of man?’ The writer is posing a question and trying to demonstrate a point that is beyond the scope of this writing, but what he alludes to in order to prove his point. What he takes for granted that the wise student will grasp, is that the life force of a man is not his own. Nor is it his personality or emotions. Rather it is a gift from god at least partly distinct from Mans personal existence. All men possess this gift, whether they choose to serve God or oppose him.

But these and other passages of Scripture show us that the ruach `elohyim is the immanent presence of God, working physical effect on the plenum of time and space. Rather than distant and unreachable, his presence is as near as your next breath. He is also not merely an emotional response to stimulus. Emotion didn’t effect geologic events and emotion doesn’t cause your heart to beat, and your cells to respire instead of remaining complicated chains of inert organic molecules.

A spirit is a life-force, a source of unconscious higher motives, a preconscious intellect, powerful physical force, comforter or tormentor of the conscious mind, a messenger, and the standing invitation by God for you to reform and serve him.

All spirits originate with God, but some oppose him. Those spirits which we refer to as unclean or evil or demonic or anti-Christ not only oppose God, but exist in a perpetual state of rage against humanity. Their primary motivation in existence is the destruction of your relationship with God. It would be foolish to say that we need an evil spirit to guide and inspire every mistake and rebellion. The Bible tells us that when Adam sinned in the garden he tainted the very spirit that is the natural life force of humanity. Being human is cause enough for disobedience and rebellion against God. You are born with the talent and in this issue we all end live up to our potential.

Becoming a ‘child of God’ in the spiritual sense which the Bible proposes, is a metaphor for the regeneration of renewal of the human spirit, by the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. We in the Christian world like to say, Jesus comes to live in your heart. This is a metaphor, for the Ruach `Elohyim condescending to directly communicate on a preconscious level with your spirit. He directly affects change in your life force, cleansing the effects of sin and rebellion from the human spirit within you and begins a relationship of personal interaction with you through this spirit.

Next time you are in church and begin to feel emotionally uplifted, look beyond the emotion into the quiet recesses of your mind. Learn to recognize that nonverbal communication between the Spirit of God and your conscious mind that can only occur when you open yourself to him in praise and worship. Listen with your heart and not your ears. Learn to distinguish between the emotion and the motivator. Therein lays the essence of true communion.

I have been just as thoroughly aware of that self same spirit while the cantors sing the evening prayers. It is just as awesome and real as when the congregation in a Pentecostal church begins to praise and worship God in unison. God inhabits the praises of his people. Let him in. As Jesus put it, let him have supper with you.

Pepsi is a trademark of PepsiCo INC.

I once observed ironically, that it seems that the business of sociology is to define metrics and statistics for scientifically supporting racism and ethnic or religious discrimination. National Geographic has never had a reputation for scientific rigor. Between exploitative photos of African and South American tribes, that seem to be more titillation than observation, and Articles that gloss over and distort the facts, they have provided colorful and fabulous entertainment for the long wait in a doctor’s office or reception area. What they often lack is factual, balanced and peer reviewed study of their subjects. This lack of scholarship has translated into their cable television network.

Several years ago they were invited into a small independent church that claimed to be Pentecostal. This church was a heterodox cult, engaged in practices that do not resemble classical Pentecost in any way. They drink toxic mixtures and handle venomous animals as a part of their normal religious practice. They, like many splinter groups over the years, fell out of the mainstream Restorationist movement because of fatigue or desire for personal power. The reality is that there is no connection between them and other Pentecostals. However, National Geographic has gotten a great deal of mileage out of reusing and recutting this same piece of footage into every exploration of pagan demonic practices they can. They then attempt to somehow imply, without directly making slanderous statements for which they could be held accountable. Instead they have introduced a made up term, Pentecostalism in an attempt to redefine the movement as an aspect of these relatively tiny splinter groups who are not recognized by Pentecostals as being authentic.

Today I witnessed a program where, this tiny backwoods church in Virginia was depicted as normative for Pentecostals, then a few seconds of a larger more characteristic Denominational Pentecostal church was cut in, and an interview with a member of the lager church was cut in after that. While no direct statement was made to this effect, there was a clear attempt by the makers of the film to use backmasking to link the comments of the inexperienced and uneducated member of the mainstream Pentecostal church with the tiny, heterodox cult from Virginia.

In one of my course in college, I did a study of backmasking. Backmasking is a technique where an image or piece of video or a sound bite, is cut into a video or audio stream, in such a way that it masks the shorter and less vibrant item which precedes it. The result is that a viewer or listener tends to blur the two items into a single whole and when this data is recalled later a new meaning and sequence of events is brought to mind. The victim of this manipulation doesn’t remember what was actually broadcast; instead the morphed sequence is stored as a piece of learning.

The point of this exercise is to be able to tell people, libelous or slanderous lies, without leaving a clearly actionable piece of evidence. It’s for this reason that in the past, theaters and other media were prohibited from using back masking techniques to manipulate the consumer.

A classic example is the theatre chain that flashed images of food and drink that was offered by the concession stand in the lobby, during the movie or during the previews. The relatively small period of time that these images appeared at any one instant caused the continuation of the movie to back mask these images. When the frequency of the flashed images became high enough, millions of theater goers were manipulated into buying overpriced popcorn and colas that they would not have otherwise wanted or purchased.

The reason this is a critical issue, is that the network in question is played across the globe. These small programs take on the character of sociological, headline News for many millions of viewers. The intentional misportrayal of Pentecostals amounts to nothing less that a pogrom of religious persecution against Pentecostals on a global scale.

Persecution of the Church, especially the church on the move and successful, is no new thing. Over the last 2000 years, Christians have been the victims of persecution and injustice, more often than not. But it is not something we should passively allow to go unanswered. Pray for guidance, Read your Bible, and realize that fighting against the persecution is not wrestling with flesh and blood. Instead battling this anti-Christian movement is nothing less than your duty. Pickup the mantle, allow the spirit of prophecy to motivate you, shake off the snake and let it be burned in the campfire. If you are committed and don’t dither, it will not harm you (ACT 28:3-6).

A number of denominations and religions that rose out of the Restorationist movement have taken a stance on Judaism that is both heterodox and Anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism is a dangerous position for anyone who claims to be a Christian, not only because Jesus was a Jew, but because 2/3rds of the Christian Canon is composed of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible. Some go so far as to say that Christians, or at least their own sect, have become the new Israel and have replaced the hereditary Jews as the recipients of promises and blessings given to Abraham and the prophets. Paul tells us a very different story in Romans, and there are references that prove that authentic Biblical Judaism, which takes an honest look at the apocalypses of Daniel and Zechariah, and which looks forward to the coming of messiah, was essentially a saving faith in Christ (ROM 11:17-36).

That may sound odd, except that we have this passage in Galatians (Gal 3:6-9) where it is made clear that God revealed to Abraham that a messiah would come from his descendents who would save even the Gentiles. Abraham’s faith in the coming of that messiah and his faith in the Character of God to keep his promises saved Abraham as surely as any penitent kneeling at the prayer bench, confessing and asking to be made a Christian. What’s more Paul shows us that it is belief and not rigid observance that links the descendents of Abraham. This doesn’t precipitate a replacement of the Jewish people but rather an enormous expansion of their ranks.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had in a chicken take away restaurant, recently. This store uses a technique of dry roasting which heats the chicken with hot air. The extreme temperature causes the juices and fat to boil and drip away, leaving behind a heart healthy variation on Southern Fried Chicken. Another patron was complaining about the long wait for service. I made a lame attempt at dry humor, which seemed fitting given the food in question, ‘this way you don’t have to eat the smutz.’

My companion took this as some sort of religious or racial comment and responded, ‘so … you are Jewish.’ He paused for overly melodramatic emphasis then said ‘too?’ It was an odd manner of speech and took me aback for a moment. Many Yiddish words have entered into the common vernacular of America pop-culture. This is only a natural consequence of the ethnic development of America. More than one fifth of the population has a Jewish heritage. The use of the word smutz (aka smaltz), which refers to congealed chicken fat, was no particular reference to the Jewishness of my companion or of myself.

In that vein I spoke cautiously as I answered, ‘I have the heritage but not the religion.’

Since that conversation with Bob, I have had time to mull over my response, even rehearse some alternative and more provocative answers. The fact is, a Jew from a traditional synagogue — whether Sephardic, Hassidic or Reform — would not recognize me as a Jew. With my Teutonic good looks (see the ironic grin when I say that) I’ve been treated like a jack-booted Nazi by my fellow children of Israel. But as a youth in High-School I have faced the swastika toting neo-Nazi skinheads who called me Jew-Boy and worse. I’ve been assaulted for my genetic heritage which for some ‘anti-Semites’ seems to be written across my features as clearly as the tattoo on the arm of those inmates who survived Auswiczm, Berkenau, Dachau even Belsen.

So, while my answer was honest, the true answer is much more complicated. Am I a Jew? In addition to the political and cultural issues, there is this Jesus, who Paul persecuted and whom I serve. His own testimony was that he did not come to destroy the law but fulfill it. Many readers have chosen to remap the term fulfill into a special term that means, ‘complete and therefore conclude.’ This is not honest scholarship. When those same parties are confronted by the phrase, ‘to fulfill one’s potential’ or ‘fulfill your expectations’ or even ‘fulfill the high calling’ they suddenly see the same construction as meaning complete or exceed and therefore validate. The fulfillment validates the structure or rule that is referred to.

In fulfilling the law, Jesus validated every precept, doctrine and commandment contained therein. He did not do away with the law. In fact, we never see him arguing that a Pharisee or Sadducee should reject the law in order to follow him. Instead, he encourages his critics and followers to set aside the Talmud and the proverbial ‘fence’ around the law because the roles have become unreasonably harsh, and even contradictory to the written Law and Prophets. He encouraged them to embrace the unfiltered Torah with the unfettered mind of a child and internalize or hide it in their hearts. This doesn’t sound like a messiah who has come to lead Israel away from Judaism, but to fulfill it.

Jesus taught a brand or sect of Judaism that was more observant and more mystic, but centered squarely on the Tanakh or Old Covenant. This new Judaism rejected the traditions of men and the musings of philosophers, the magick of the five rabbis (qabbala), and the nihilism of the Sadducees. At the same time, it embraced the critical methods and the relationship with God described in the Midrash.

So how does a Christian reconcile this with Peter’s agreement with Paul that new converts of gentile heritage not be required to keep kosher or even be circumcised? How can these men be teaching the same faith Jesus taught, yet reject the most essential tenets of the religion Jesus practiced? Paul even goes so far as to castigate Jewish believers who have left behind the kosher rule as a part of Christian faith, but then returned to the traditional teachings and practices of the Sephardim. Why would returning to a practice of our Lord and savior be so bad? Wouldn’t it honor him to walk like him? The answer is fairly simple. Yes, it would and does honor Jesus to walk like him and to live the faith and practice that he demonstrated in his short life. And no, it would not honor him to do so by using a rule book constructed from the Torah and the prophets! What honors Jesus is to have sufficient faith in him and his teachings that these rules become a part of our being, through the supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus taught that the spirit of the Law, the underlying rationale and purpose, must become so much a part of the Christian that the technical wording and possible loop-holes are irrelevant. He taught that by possessing the Spirit of God (ruach elohim) bodily, one would necessarily and habitually live and walk the way he did and perform miracles and signs, where such are needed and will not glorify the individual rather than God. Jesus informed us that these future generations would even exceed his own miraculous ministry. It is unlikely that he meant we would be wizards of God-like power as certain televangelists claim or try to demonstrate.

But through humility and faithful servitude to the God of the Bible, we can all perform the miracle of obedience to the tenets and precepts of the Law and the prophets. And in addition come to understand His character and plan of God for humanity.

The greatest miracle of all is to sing:

Jesus is my savior, I shall not be moved.

In his love and favour, I shall not be moved.

Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters,

Lord, I shall not be moved.

but for that song to be true and factual by virtue of one’s grace, peace, charismata, will and fortitude. Not to be implacable or stoic, but rather to be soft hearted, emotional and immutably trenchant. This is the miracle of God’s grace that one can be stubbornly committed and unshakably intransigent on matters of authentic Biblical faith and practice. Even, as in Rome authentic Believers are thrown to the lions for their belief.

But the question was ‘Am I a Jew’? I believe that the Torah and the prophets and even the writings are the word of God (Dabar Adonai) and that they are the infallible rule of faith and practice. That my early ancestor Abraham was an anointed prophet founding a race of prophets and priests through which God works immanently in human history. I believe that in some miraculous way Jesus is the child of the god Abraham served and that Abraham looked forward to the coming of a child from his own offspring who would bring a means of reconciliation between God and man. I believe that the Apostles, including Paul, were prophets of a new Covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus and allowing all people Hebrew and Gentile to become one people natural and adopted; children of Abraham, Isaac and Israel.

I am a Jew and a follower of the way that was taught by Christ Jesus. I am therefore a Christian, a messianic Jew, because if not a Child of Abraham by faith (GAL 3:7) one cannot be a Christian.

<continued>

Jesus asked the Father, ‘If it be your will, let this cup pass from me.’ Flowery language from a loving disciple. In modern vernacular we would likely report his prayer as, ‘Oh God! I don’t want to die like this. If there is anyway way else to do it or someone to take my place, please let it be that way. But if it HAS to go down like this, then I’ll do it, because you want me to.’ People have a way of over poeticizing the humanity of Christ, or any historic figure for that matter. It’s natural to do so, but it causes us to lose sight of the real pain and suffering that happen in the life of God’s people.

In today’s climate of enforced ecumenicism, which flies in the face of God’s word and spits on Christ’s wounds, there is a move toward the stoicism, and nihilism of eastern religion. Nothing is more antithetical to Biblical Christianity, or to faith in God. The patriarchs were men of passion and desire. Jesus was a man who we know could lose his temper and even become violent. Throughout the Bible, prophecy is often couched in graphic language and bitter insults. The sanitized, magical rites and formulae, of eastern mysticism and western ‘High Church’ liturgy are at odds with Biblical imperative and example.

Far from Stoic, the prophets of both Covenants are men who confessed their pains and suffering and asked others to bear with them, just as they bore the pains of others. This is in fact the foundational concept of Godly faith. Bear one another’s burdens. Confess your shortcomings. Ask for help.

Recently I was discussing a practical application of this principle with a cousin of mine. She is married to a former youth pastor, and has been active in the church for most of her life. I told her about a man whose wife had committed adultery with a minister who then advised her as a counselor to leave her husband. I pointed out that The biblical principals in Ephesians and Corinthians clearly indicate that it is the responsibility of the church to censure that woman until she returns to and makes amends with her husband. I pointed out that Jesus said that it was the life spent in a second or third marriage that was the adultery not the wedding ceremony, and that to end her sin she must reconcile with her husband or remain celibate at her first husband’s discretion.

It infuriated my cousin that I would make these statements. When I suggested that repentance is not saying you are sorry, but changing your life course permanently and spending your remaining life making amends for your wrongdoing, she called me bitter. What is really sad is that she went so far as to say I had a ‘spirit of bitterness’.

Now I assure you, I have been slandered quite a bit, since I entered the ministry. But it always troubles me when someone begins criticizing my spirit. I am filled with the spirit of prophecy, the ruach elohim (??? ?????) that we Christians call the Holy Spirit. I am led by him and he has called me to ministry, including compassion ministries. But at minimum I am a Christian, which even my detractors would be forced to acknowledge. To claim that the spirit in me, the Holy Spirit, is a ‘spirit of bitterness’ is to at least approach the act of slandering the Holy Spirit.

I will not deny that the Holy Spirit at times is infused with anger or revulsion, at what he, as Paraclete, is forced to encounter. But to call him a Spirit of Bitterness is walking close to the line of calling him a demonic spirit. For this there is of course no redemption. As Jesus said, if you slander the human it can be forgiven, but because ‘you have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven’ It is impossible that a believer can be possessed of an unclean spirit. ‘No well can give forth both salt water and sweet.’ This is Jesus’ expert opinion on the subject. To disagree is to call to question the deity of Christ. To deny the deity, and for that matter, the infallibility of Christ is to be denied BY Christ. ‘If you deny me before men, I shall deny you before the Father.’

Now the tide of that conversation ended up drifting to the issue of redemption and what saves. Essentially, the only thing that saves is of course the forgiveness of our sins, by the Father in heaven. Where people, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or other Bible based pagan, differ is in how one achieves or receives forgiveness.

For the Christian or Messianic Jew the answer is the perfect sacrifice embodied in the person of Jesus. But there are arguments as to the manner in which one takes a vicarious part in Jesus’ sacrifice.

As in all things, most tend to proof text, fastening onto one or two passages or verses taken out of context in order to prove a position formed before they began to study the scripture. This sort of Eisegesis has lead to the formation of most of the Christian denominations. However taken in toto the bible paints a picture that denies most every formula or paradigm.

Jesus and the Apostles he taught can be resolved into the following paradigm if ALL the New Testament is taken in and digested before an opinion is formed:

Salvation

1) Show remorse for your past life. Recognize the depraved state of your soul as an illness that needs a cure.

2) Accept on faith that Jesus is the son of God and that his words, works and teachings are infallible. Accept his teaching that his death is a propitiation for your past life of sin and will empower you to live a Godly life.

3) Change the course of your life permanently so that those things which were disobedient to Biblical Morality are no longer a part of your life. Dedicate your life to correcting the wrong you have done (i.e. thieves become philanthropists, killers become defenders of life, home wreckers and adulterers become those who mend marriages starting with their own, etc).

4) Seek an ever more profound relationship with God that grows deeper passing through stages until it surpasses the recorded instructions of the Apostles and develops a momentum that carries you through your entire life.

Most Church in the evangelical community focus on steps 1 and 2 completely ignoring 3 and 4. Most in the Catholic community seek to achieve Steps 3 and 4 without performing the prerequisite steps. The result in either case is disastrous. The latter leads to seed that is sown on stony ground, the former leads to seed sown on thorny (fallow) soil.

I’ve heard the term cheap grace bandied about, the idea is to illustrate that grace needs to be respected and not taken for granted. Most often it is the Catholic community criticizing the process of handing out Church membership to anyone who recites a prayer of salvation, followed by nothing more than the warning that if you disobey you can always ask daddy Jesus to forgive you and the worst that can happen is that you will have some hardship to try and correct your behavior if you are unrepentant.

The term thrown about by the Evangelical community is Works Righteousness. They equate repentance with trying to earn salvation. They point out polemically that you can’t earn your salvation so any works are meaningless. James of course dealt decisively with that fallacy.

Where the Romans pass out freedom from responsibility as long as you perform a penance assigned by the priest, the Evangelical passes out freedom from responsibility without any requirement, except that you quash the niggling doubt produced by your conscience trying to tell you that you have sinned. In either case no real change in course is made and people go on quenching the Holy Spirit and offending the son of God, calling him to public shame.

Of course there is forgiveness of sin after we have become Christians, but it is not achieved by merely reciting a canned prayer of remorse, nor by performing a feat in honor of God.

It is achieved by honestly approaching the Father and confessing our faults, by faith using the power granted to us by the Holy Spirit to not sin and thereby not continuing to perform the sinful acts of which the Holy Spirit has thus far convicted us. And by making amends to those we have wronged.

Someone said once that that statement should be amended to say, ‘if you can’. The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit has been granted to you as a believer to act in prophetic ways, to resist sin and to repent. If you believe that Faith can bring healing and faith can bring prosperity, but you don’t believe Faith can empower you to make amends to those you have harmed by your sin, you are a Pagan. You do not define faith as trusting in the power and character of God to make possible what he has required of you.

In my last installment I referred to relationship between the constitution and the government of the United States as that between a Bible and the faithful of a religious order. Part of that was intended to illustrate the parallels between the Will of the People and the Will of the Lord. Like the constitution the Bible is the written or codified Will of God. People have for a great while been questioning how to know the will of God on various important issues, but seem to be adrift in a sea of confusion regarding how to find out that will. But that is the very reason we were given the Bible. The bible is a living dynamic code for living and for developing doctrines whereby one can be assured of Godliness. If you follow not merely the specific rules and regulations contained in the Bible but internalize the principals and intentions of those laws, you will naturally be in the will of God. Finding God’s will on most subjects is merely a matter of honestly reading the word, and not rebelling against the parts that you find too hard to accept. When you recognize God’s authority by becoming compliant, and obedient to the authority of God, instead of using the Bible to find loopholes to make your sins or adulteries acceptable, you will find you know the heart and mind of God not just his will.

Does this mean you can always find God’s will in the Bible? No, there are some extreme circumstances where you cannot, simply because they are extreme. For those situations, you must have been filled with the spirit in the Pentecostal Fire Baptism, because it is the process whereby the heart and mind of the Pentecostal is directly informed by the Spirit of God by which you find those answers. Someone who is not initiate might say, ‘Well God may tell that one thing and this other one something else. After all it’s all subjective.’ No it isn’t subjective at all. When the will of God and his prophetic utterances are being made, it is purely and objective experience. The speaker is lead to speak, but in a Pentecostal Congregation there will be others who are spirit filled. When God speaks they all know, and they all are witness to the truth or falsity of the prophecy. In addition, a true prophecy is never in contradiction to the body of the cannon. It may provide answers to a specific circumstance that was not codified in the cannon, by God is self consistent and prophetic utterance will agree with the principals of the cannon.

Secondly, when an individual is seeking God’s will for that individual’s role in a difficult circumstance, that individual is the one God is most like to inform. What God conveys to that individual will be different than what he conveys to another, because they are not the same person and they have different lives to lead. However, when it is truly God speaking, it will be consistent with Biblical principle, and Spirit Filled believers will usually recognize the character of the communication.

Now in the last musing I pointed out that the only license and mandate that the US government has to exist or operate is the codified will of the people in the written Constitution. This is paralleled in the church by the fact that the only license or mandate that a religious institution can rely on, or ultimately needs to have, is the written Will of God in the Bible. When a Church or other Christian Religious organization argues against Biblical imperative, or Biblical Authority, such and organization has rejected the only license that they have. In the software world there is a large body of software called ‘Open Source Software’ or ‘Free Software’. The core of all this freedom is the Gnu Public License (GPL) which protects the authorship of the software while making the source freely available to the public. It doesn’t necessarily mean free of charge. I bring this up because a key passage in that document states, ‘You are not required to accept the terms of this license, but apart from it you have no other right to use or possess the software.’ That applies here because similarly if you reject the constitution, you have no other right to govern; make laws or enforce them, and if you reject the Bible, you have no other authority to govern the church; make doctrines and bylaws within it; or enforce inclusion or exclusion of members or other clergy. One immutable tenet of the Bible is that there is no other name under heaven [than Jesus], where by men might be saved. Reject that, state that all roads lead to God, preach universal salvation and ecumenicism that bridges the boundaries between biblical faith and world religions, and you have rejected the only mandate that might lend authority to you and to your organization. Make no mistake; God will deal with those who mock his word or his Spirit.

<continued>

Recently the flurry in the public sector and the media has become a real snow job. As a result many of the traditional roles of clergy and church organizations have become obfuscated. It might seem odd for a Messianic Jewish or Christian institution such as WEAP to make statements about Civil or criminal law in the United States. It might seem odd to quote from legal documents such as the United States Constitution. But it shouldn’t. The United States was formed by Religious individuals who sought a place to build a better life than was possible under the remnants of European Colonialism and Feudal, totalitarian traditions. Many of the residents of the early colonies were there, initially, to escape persecution under State established Roman Catholic, or Anglican, or Protestant Churches that violated their deeply held beliefs. Whenever this nation has since engaged in a shameful behavior it has been built on the foundation of religious dogma or anti religious (religious free zone) propaganda. Whatever we have done that is noble, good and resides in history as a ‘shinning moment’ has always been precipitated by the grass-roots move of Christian people.

When Pennsylvania allowed Roman Catholics to escape execution by the Presbyterian Pilgrims in New England, it was the Quaker beliefs of the Pennsylvania Colonists that motivated the compassionate movement. When the Methodist movement built the underground railway and brought the Abolitionist movement to a crisis point it was their deeply held Christian Faith that sustained them and empowered them. And when the United States finally Entered World Wars I and II it was largely in response to the religious conviction that Totalitarian regimes that attempt to Conquer Europe and persecute, or prosecute the Jews, remain our responsibility to eliminate. It was Christian Faith and the recognition of the spirit of Anti-Christ in the person of Hitler that prompted this intervention.

Why then are we afraid to speak out and to affect change now? It is the Biblical imperative that we be compelling in proselytizing the world, That we ‘be bold’ and ‘strong’ for the Lord our God is with us, and to ‘go out into the [public and dangerous places] and compel’ those we find there to come to our way of faith. Further it is our heritage and legacy to take countries that oppose our beliefs and convert them so that they cease to be antagonistic. How is it that in the United States we have allowed a Satanically inspired doctrine of false egalitarianism to persuade us to stand idly by and take away our God given and Constitutionally guaranteed Right to be and to persuade others to follow?

The first question is do we in fact have those rights under the constitution? The following are Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America:

ARTICLE [I.]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Article I makes the doctrine of a Religious Free Zone a ludicrous farce. Since religious opinion is an essential part of the make-up of the psyche of every human, it is ludicrous on the basis of practicality. But, beyond that, The Constitution forbids the establishment of Laws governing religion. Some so called scholars have argued that it is forbidding the establishment of a particular national religion. That is not so. The article doesn’t say congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of a national religion. It says, ‘Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion.’ A modern 21st century writer would have said the same sentence as follows:

Congress shall make no law regarding religious establishments.

If you doubt my reading of the passage, simply take it in its natural context and look at the second clause in the sentence. ‘or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ powerful words. If you use Standard English construction to make this clause more readable it says, Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religious establishments. In other words the Constitution — which is the Bible of the US legislature, Courts and Executive Branch ‘ says it is illegal for the legislature to make any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Taken in conjunction with the first clause (as it was written), it make laws regarding what are acceptable religions and therefore free to exercise, illegal abuses of power. Further, gag laws designed to make it illegal for a Church or other religious institution to maintain its tax-free status, while engaging in social and political activism are equally illegal. To further enforce the illegality of such laws it says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. What that means is simple. No one has the legal authority, even if they have the power, to tell you that you can’t publicly announce your feelings on any subject or regarding any person on the basis that your words are ‘hate, sedition, destructive, delusional, or otherwise socially, personally or politically objectionable.’

What’s more, one of the primary motivators in the Revolution against British tyranny over the United States, was the premise that those in power and governance were above the law and that any speech designed to incite people to act to remove the authority or the power of that person was a violation of the law and punishable by imprisonment or worse. The sedition acts passed in parliament were a sort of straw that broke the camel’s back. Many, who would otherwise have been complacent under British rule and taxation without redress of grievances against the monarchy that imposed those taxes, saw that this measure was intolerable to a free people. The central theme in the creation of the United States was that of the freedom to be, and say what you like, without threat from the Judiciary, tax collectors or enforcement officers.

The following three amendments further guarantee the protection of the people from the establishment of norms or prejudice whereby a group or individual can be kept from expressing his or they’re personal or religious beliefs even if those beliefs are rightly opposed and reviled by the general population of the community; a community that has the equally guaranteed opportunity to speak out in opposition.

ARTICLE [IX.]

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

ARTICLE [X.]

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

ARTICLE XIV.

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This clearly makes religion the power and purview of the private citizens of the United States rather than legislators, Jurists or enforcement officers. The history of the Christian church establishes an immutable precedent for involvement in political issues being a basic tenet of the Faith. More importantly we have examples of the Apostle Paul appealing to his civil rights under Roman Law in order to escape unfair prosecution. Still more significant is Jesus command that we be ‘Salt and Light’ to kill the ‘germs and mildew’ that build up society. The natural corruption that rises as a result of man’s sinful nature affects every aspect of human existence and this includes political, legislative, executive and legal institutions.

But what we have here is a recognition and codification of Machiavelli’s precept that, ‘those who are governed are governed by the will of the governed.’

Every government ultimately derives it authority from the consent of the people, whether that authority is elicited by fear of retribution or by an enlightened active system of franchise and representation. The Constitution of the United States, takes the latter approach reserving what authority is not vested in the Federal government by that document, or in the States by that document or the constitutions of those states and commonwealths, for the people. The Constitution expressly states that the people retain all authority that they have not specifically delegated. The legislature are not the people, they are a branch of the government. The courts are not the people; they are branches of their respective governments.

The people of the United States are Sovereign. Our government serves us in the way that theoretically the government of Great Britain serves the Monarchy. The difference is that we are a vital and active ruler. The government has power of its own because it has grown so massive and because we have allowed it to do so. But the authority to wield that power is delegated by the people, from the people. The government does not have the legal and legitimate authority to govern or to pass laws that contravene the will of the people. Nor does the Judiciary have the right to set precedents and contravene the constitution or the will of the people. They do have the power because they have linked with the law enforcement agencies, crossing the boundary between branches and eliminating some of the checks and balances that we the people in OUR wisdom chose to establish in order to prevent the abuse of power that we have witnessed in every nation across the globe.

Our Judiciary has obfuscated the law behind legal jargon and polemic until the common citizen has no idea what is being said. They have established precedents and use these as if they themselves are a separate body of law. And, on the basis of these precedents, they contravene the will of the people by ‘interpreting’ the constitution. The constitution is a simply worded and direct document lacking obscurity or shading. It was written to be accessible to the common man because it is the written will of those common men. It is not a contract; it is a license to exist and to practice, issued to the congress, the president and the Supreme Court by the people of the United States. Aside from the provisions in it there exists no authority to govern, only the power to impose the will of a minority or an individual.

What’s more they have endorsed wholesale, a doctrine that religious expression is not inviolate but must be judged, by them, against the precepts of human psychology. Recently a minister from a full gospel church was illegally arrested and tried, for praying for a child to be released from demons. Now the doctrines relating to unclean spiritual beings, fallen from God’s grace are never dwelt on in great detail because ideally a man filled with the spirit of God and placed in a position to pray for a demoniac is typically going to have a high success rate. However, during the course of the service the child became violent and died.

Now the death was clearly due to the use of traditional Roman Catholic Exorcism and not Pentecostal Power, but the precedent for exorcism goes back at least to the first century, and was practiced by Jesus and by his disciples. It falls under the ‘these works and even greater” directive given by our Lord. But court TV had the audacity to call an ‘expert’ commentator to evaluate the trial. We’ll give this commentator the pseudonym, Peter Byblow. Byblow had no expertise in the subject whatsoever. He is a JD and therefore a qualified lawyer, and he is a psychiatrist and therefore a medical doctor and a psychologist. what he is not is 1) a Christian, 2) a person inhabited bodily by the spirit with the exhibition of miraculous gifts and fruit, or 3) a person gifted with discerning of Spirits and healing. He had no basis on which to form an informed opinion on the ethics, practice or qualifications of the minister in question. In addition, his choice to equate the influence of the Holy Spirit ( ???????? ), to a drug or other mind altering ailment that interferes with competency, is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. he committed the same sin that certain of the Sephardim committed when they accused Jesus himself of being Demon Possessed. They committed the unpardonable sin from which you can never be saved or forgiven. Byblow repeatedly stated that the Minister should plead insanity because ‘he was under the influence of God and as a result didn’t know right from wrong.’ Last time I checked God was the author of the final authority on what is right and what is wrong. If that minister was operating ‘under the influence of God’ then everything he did was right by definition; end of case lets move on to the next item on the docket.

No, the issue of the ethics and the application of that minister is a purely religious matter and not for the court to hold any authority over. The issues that were ignored in that case were the lethal drugs prescribed by the psychiatrist who was seeing the boy and the truly violent histrionics that the boy was prone to experience. When the mother was asked, how did the boy typically let people know he did not want or like something, the answer was ‘by hitting, biting and scratching.’ So the courts theory was that the preacher had offended the demon and that because it caused the boy to hit bite and scratch him that he was responsible for the death of that boy and a murderer. I’m sickened by this sort of depraved cynicism, when the victim of violence is held responsible when the attacker dies; but more importantly when a minister is accused of murder because he is praying. This cannot be tolerated.

But a psychiatrist said that religion is being crazy. Doesn’t that mean that we don’t have the right to practice our religion? Of course not. Psychology is an opposing religion. Psychology dates back to before Jesus time. It was begun in the western world by philosophers who argued as to the nature of the human soul and how that soul creates mental ability in the human. The early arguments all attribute the soul to one form or another of Ancient Greek God. To be blunt they thought the mind was a figment of the mind of Zeus or Apollo or Diana. ‘The biblical word soul or Psyche is the basis of the word Psychology. Psychology is the study of the soul. It is no more science than Dianetics or pyramid power.

Psychiatry takes the issue into a whole new arena. We are forbidden in the Bible from practicing sorcery. Everyone says, ‘oh yeah got it,’ and moves on because we all know that sorcerers are Mickey Mouse wearing a long pointed hat and robe covered in stars and moons, right? Wrong. The biblical word for sorcery is pharmachia, from which we get our modern words Pharmacy, Pharmacist, and pharmaceuticals. Sorcery is the attempt to use herbs or synthetic drugs to alter the mind of man, or soul, and thereby heal or alter reality. A psychiatrist, by using psychoactive (Psyche-Activ ‘ Soul moving) drugs such as depressants, stimulants, antidepressants and hormones to alter the mental state of patients, even if done for the patient’s own good is a religious activity. Further it is one forbidden to Christians and is itself potentially lethal.

‘We the People, of the United States of America, in order to ” This is the only mandate by which any agency has authority within the territorial United States. When that is forgotten, we are no better than the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Roman Catholic Spain or any other totalitarian, partisan government. Our history bears this out, in the forced march of my ancestors from Georgia to Oklahoma, in the rape of the Black Hills and in the squalor present on most reservations alleviated only by the creation of tourist traps and casinos.

So how does this affect you? It affects you when they tell you that your children must have a scientific education that is free of religious creation myths, or that they the school have the authority to present a myth that they have approved as an alternative. It affects you when the Schools teach your kids how to have sex, ‘safely’. To an immature mind ‘safe’ means acceptable and encouraged. They take it as a license and the natural barriers to premature sexual activity by underdeveloped juveniles rises dramatically. It affects you when you have to raise your grand children so that your child can finish her education. It affects you when your child is taught that the faith that you and your family have held for generations isn’t wrong, or mistaken, but a sign of mental illness. It affects you when your taxes are raised by initiatives that you not only are given no vote on, but aren’t even informed of, because it’s a ‘national security’ issue. It affects you when private data protected by the constitution is made available without a warrant to a shadowy government agency that answers to no one except the executive branch of the United States government, in order to protect you from weapons of mass destruction that never existed. It affects you when the charities and religious institutions that you give donations to are required by the IRS to report the size and purpose of your donation in order to keep their doors open, becoming agents of the government reporting your assets to that government. It affects you when policies that the vast majority of you oppose, such as same sex marriage, abortion of a viable human baby by pulling the baby out of the uterus feet first then decapitating that baby, or gag orders making it illegal for your clergy to evaluate the issues you face in daily life and the political arena from a religious perspective in order to help you make an informed choice, are slipped in as “departmental policies” of the IRS or the Department of Homeland Security.

This is the Orwellian Brave New World Order decreed by George Herbert Walker Bush and this is the kinder, gentler America that this family has perpetrated. Does that mean I am endorsing his opponents? Not in the slightest. I’m simply pointing out that it takes more than just showing up to vote in order to be a responsible citizen. You need to be a careful elector, informed by your religious faith and guided by your instinctive desire to live in freedom not bound by tyranny, however expedient. And I am pointing out that the corollary to Machiavelli is that you don’t deserve any better government than you tolerate through complacency and a feeling of false security. Paul pointed out repeatedly that compromise is a synonym for corruption and that the Christian must recognize that he stands apart from the world and has a moral obligation to work in the world to effect change. This is a part of your obligation, as a Jew or a Christian.

Lately the various governments of the United States have been quarreling with the people over the issues of the right to marry. On the one hand we have several states pressing the people to accept that a legal union between consenting adults of legal age and the same sex must defined as a marriage and that persons with this status must be accepted by those who find this immoral and distasteful. Others have been pressing to establish state constitutional amendments to define marriage as one man one woman legally contracted to share property and liability but free to abandon the relationship and divide the assets, burden the man with the majority of liabilities and assign custody of all dependents on the woman (any variations on this sort of division are difficult if not impossible to achieve and are viewed as abnormal). A business partnership between vending machine attendants is more binding and given more respect and credibility by the state.

What this demonstrates most clearly is 1) the disastrous effects of the states usurping the authority of God and the Bible and 2) the sly two pronged attack mode that the devil prefers.

The first issue arises from the fact that the state, in order to stamp out the Mormon heresy in the 19’Th century, began instituting laws against marriage of one man with more than one woman. Many would now try to revise this history to say it was an aspect of the equal rights movement, called the woman’s suffrage movement that was in full motion at the time. That is of course an eisegetical approach, attempting to impose 21’st century ideals and motives on 19’Th century law makers.

The ‘Church of Christ’ movement, localized primarily in the Midwest, of the early 19’th century spawned many tiny sects and sub movements all of whom were focused on the goal of revising Christianity as a whole to more accurately reflect the beliefs and practices of the 1’st century Christians. Some of these groups grew tired of the hard work of reconstruction and clustered around a particular cult leader and spun off to practice the limited degree of restored gospel that they had so far recovered. In the vacuum of a more complete, ‘full gospel’ paradigm, the personal superstitions and unscholarly interpretations of the Bible by members and cult leaders were substituted for those aspects that were missing.

Often, this lead to the adoption of completely heterodox teachings that were as divergent from the Apostolic succession as the traditional dogmas that abounded in the established churches that these people had come from. In many cases such as Joseph Smith this entailed a blending of Judaism and the mangled Qabbalah held by the Freemasons, with a limited portion of the full gospel. The result of this amalgam is so heterodox that there is limited potential for scholarly discussion of Biblical principals. This group has so badly reframed the Bible that every third word seems to be a weighty metaphor to them. Sadly this lead to outrage and even violence in Ohio and Illinois which galvanized the cult and lead many to make the perilous journey to the Utah region of Norte California, which at the time was a Mexican state that had just won its independence as a sovereign nation.

One of the peculiarities of the Mormon cult was that they believed that a man should emulate the Old Testament patriarchs in establishing large tribes by marring multiple wives and having many sons. This was done to increase their numbers, as well as reinforcing their heterodox belief that they had replaced the biological Jews and that the promises of the Old Covenant accrue only to the members of the Latter Day Saints organizations.

The United States saw the Mormon sub movement as a very different entity from the Church of Christ movement that had spawned them. The State and even federal government viewed the Mormons as a potential source of danger to the Union and even a source of terrorism. Whether this was a reasonable interpretation of events at the time is debatable with strong arguments on both sides, but at any rate, the government began to seek ways to legally censure them while not infringing on the rights of the restorations movement as a whole. One of the most notable was to attack the polygyny of the group. First, Polygyny, marriage of one man to multiple wives, was reinvented as polygamy. Polygamy is a term taken from the words of Christ to describe those who divorce a spouse for frivolous reasons and remarry to replace his or her spouse with someone more attractive physically, socially, financially, etc. Interestingly the term polygamy is genderless but it is emotionally charged and inflammatory. The clear intent was to turn an aspect of poor judgment and poor Biblical scholarship, into a crime that must be punished. So the states began to enact laws governing marriage and establishing rules for who could marry. This had little or no effect on the majority of Mormons who, living in Utah, were beyond the reach of the states although the federal government eventually did have authority over them.

The problem is that marriage is both a foundational human behavior and the purview of religious and philosophical thinkers. It is not the place of the state to establish religion, and in so much as the various states, and even the federal government interfere in marriage practices by establishing rules for excluding certain unions from consideration as a valid marriage, they are establishing rules for what is an invalid religion. The natural corollary is that by invalidating a religion you are implicitly ‘establishing’ the multitude of other religions. While this is not establishing a national Church, it is in fact establishing a religious ecumenicism and is a clear violation of the constitutional bar against blending religion and state.

It was the blending of religion and state that allowed the Christians in Rome to be fed to the lions, it was this evil that lead to the killing of Jew and Christians under the Spanish inquisition, and it was just this thinking that lead the Presbyterians to America to escape the COE and lead these Presbyterians to burn talented bakers and craftsmen at the stake in America.

The government must never be allowed to establish rules for what constitutes a valid religion because this always leads to persecution of the innocent and to tyranny. This is the fundamental doctrine of the separation of church and state. Not to protect the state from religion, but the protect religion from legislators and enforcement officers. The first prong of Satan’s typical attack is to distort pervert legitimate authority to act illegitimately. The second prong is inevitably to incite an immoral minority to rebel and destabilize social norms so that a society becomes unstable and more vulnerable to the primary attack. Hitler did this my increasing the tension in the Balkan and Bohemian states, through propaganda intended to emphasize the distinction between subcultures in those states. He preached a “cultural mosaic” where all subcultures must fight for separate and “equal” distinction. At the same time he preached a fictional homogeneity of the Germanic tribes in Western Europe and Poland.

So then we visit an aspect of the second prong of Satan’s attack on America, homosexual marriage. Very little could be more oxymoronic. The homosexual male American is a member of the most promiscuous group in the United States. Until the threat of HIV was demonstrated to be most concentrated among this population it was considered normative for a male homosexual in this country to have over 1000 separate sexual partners during his active sexual lifetime. (Marriage and Family Relations, classroom lectures, by Dr. Jiwan Mackey, Nov. 1989) This came from censes and from sociological studies conducted in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The concept of homosexual unions that are committed, exclusive and survive one or more of the partners is a contradiction in terms.

One argument that comes in opposition of this assertion is that heterosexual couples do not practice exclusivity, the relationship doesn’t outlive one of the spouses and the commitment of these couples is debatable as a result. And it has been argued that the homosexual relationship might well outlive the spouses because of the risk of AIDS due to HIV. My own opinion is that such an argument is cynical and cheapens the very real suffering of the AIDS patient who has been lead into a risky and sinful lifestyle, only to suffer an excruciating death. For the so-called proponents of the rights of this fatally ill person, to use his illness as a hammer to win an argument, with cynical disregard to the feelings and suffering he is experiencing is indicative of the quality of the argument itself. Truth and rightness seldom produce such callousness and callow inhumanity in their proponents.

Further cracks in the argument appear when it is confronted by scripture. God’s opinion is on record. Homosexuality is an abomination before God. The term abomination is an interesting euphemism that has been lost on its readers for far too long. Simply put it means something that is so foul-smelling and putrid, and so unseemly to look at, that it causes nauseousness and vomiting.

When the scriptures state that homosexuality is an abomination to God, they are stating that this sin not only upsets God but revolts him as well. Since marriage is the God ordained union of souls often blessed by the witness of a religious figure, such as a rabbi or priest, it is being called particularly to God’s attention and figuratively thrust into his face. Is it really wise to thrust something he finds disgusting into God’s face?

Under the rule of the Old Covenant, when a particular family who were not a properly consecrated priests burned the sacred incense it so incensed God that he caused the earth to swallow them in a fissure. That was merely a case of the wrong person doing the right thing in a religious context. Homosexual marriage is merely another example of the wrong people engaging in the right thing. The two prongs of Satan’s attack make opportunity for one another. They work in tandem, nudging the pendulum of popular opinion as it swings.

This issue would not even have arisen if it were not for the Government assuming illegitimate authority in determining what in fact constitutes a marriage. By assuming the authority to grant or prevent divorce, by assuming the authority to establish or disestablish marriages and by assuming the authority to determine that the partners in a marriage are less liable to one another than the partners in a business, the government has assumed the authority to establish or disestablish those things that are facets and tenets of religious dogma. Simply put the government has established defacto religion.

What is God’s word on Marriage? Does the religious institution then, have the right to determine who may marry? Can one only be married if they have been certified by a church or synagogue? Again the Biblical testimony on the subject is very different from American public policy as well as western religious tradition.

To quote The New Jewish Wedding, by Anita Diamant (‘ 1985 by the author) she states on page 71:

‘To the Midrashic imagination the whole Torah is a Ketubbah [(covenant)] ‘ a marriage contract — between God and the people of Israel.’

This picture of the relationship between God and man was only exceeded by the picture of parenthood in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ use of the Midrash and the Midrashic view of Godly relationship makes the role of marriage a central factor not only of authentic Judaism but of authentic Christianity. To cheapen or degrade the marriage of two people to nothing more than a legal formula practiced for tradition or pragmatism is to likewise cheapen the Role of God’s work in the lives of his chosen people and the lives of those who serve him. By rejecting the solemnity and sacrosanct nature of marriage one rejects the grace of God by proxy.

So then, one might assume that an authentic marriage must be established by an authentic religious institution. The religious history (heilsgeschichte) of the Bible says no. When Abraham and Sarai his wife left Iraq and traveled to Palestine in search of religious freedom from the oppressive weight of Zoroastrian idolatry, they had no established religious authority to rely on for sealing a marriage. Abraham was himself a prophet and this made him a religious authority, but the Jewish traditions indicate that it was not seemly that an immediate family member be the only witness to the union.

To quote Diamant on page 107, ‘A marriage can be valid without a rabbi [and by extension without a priest] but not without witnesses’a witness gives permanence to human activities that are transitory.’ What these witnesses testify to is the contract or ketubbah that defines the quid pro quo, or exchange of value for value that occurs in a marriage. And the witnesses make denying the contract or fudging the terms later on more difficult. This makes a marriage a community transaction in that it involves the credibility and lives of more than just the couple. The couple owes it to the witnesses to meet the terms of the contract, verbal or written that stands between the couple. Failure to remain committed to the marriage is a failure to remain faithful to the people who witnessed the marriage. Where God has been called to witness, this is a most disturbing failure.

As a result of this principal Isaac was married to an Iraqi woman whom he had never met, and Jacob was married to two Iraqi women whom he purchased from their father with 14 years of labor. In every generation the record shows the patriarchs and prophets marrying without benefit of any religious authority, but divorce was strictly governed and managed by religious authority. The authority of the Bible not of the religious figure was the ruling authority in the dissolution of a marriage. The Get or writ of Divorce was the prerogative of a husband, but the legal circumstances where a Get can be drafted are strictly governed by the Mosaic Law.

Moses the law-giver gave us laws governing sexuality and divorce, monetary matters and personal behavior. There are laws governing whom a priest may marry and when, But there is a glaring omission. There is no law governing how a marriage ceremony shall be conducted. There is no law governing the age of the couple and there is no law governing the proof of marriage, except that the woman must use her huppah to document her virginity and place that proof in the care of her parents against the eventuality that her husband might claim she had not been a virgin before the marriage, therefore invalidating the marriage.

What does this tell us? Marriage is a reflection of our theology. If we are frivolous enough to believe that divorce is an option, then we are also frivolous enough to reject God’s grace on a whim. We must approach marriage with the long view toward living in an exclusive partnership for the remainder of our lives, without securing a ‘way out if it doesn’t work out.’ Our view of marriage is a reflection of our view toward relationship with God so if we are harboring an escape clause we are not fully committed to God and he says that an incomplete commitment to him is more abominable than rejecting him. Commitment to God and to marriage must be similarly fanatical to the degree of lifelong permanence. Lesser commitment is inadequate, unhealthy and lacks authenticity.

Marriage is like our relationship with God – it is easy to enter, difficult to get out of, and it is impossible to regain if we ever completely end it. Marriage is the purview of the family and the community, but consists of an exclusive contract anatomically gifting one’s whole being for the duration that both partners shall live. A marriage amendment can only worsen the situation in America. Unless it is carefully worded so it will only serve to further undermine the social infrastructure and further the end of anti-American systems at work in this country:

Every natural person shall have the right to marry any other person of the opposite sex, so long as 1) both parties have reached the age of majority, 2) neither party is under the age of majority or if under the age of majority has entered puberty and has received permission to marry from the parents or guardians of record, and 3) the female party to that marriage is not currently married and 4) neither party is transgendered through surgery or any other means.

Marriage shall be narrowly defined as the exclusive, contractual; sexual, social and emotional partnership of a man with a woman that once embarked upon cannot be disbanded without the issuance of a divorce by the offended party in the case where the offending party has engaged in illicit sexual activity with a person or multiple persons to whom that offending party is not married. No party to a marriage taking place within the territorial United States, its possessions or protectorates, may marry any other person if they have a surviving spouse from an existing marriage or from a marriage that has been disbanded for any reason other than infidelity by that other spouse.

No person who has been divorced for reason of his or her own sexual infidelity shall be eligible to remarry. No person who has divorced another person or been divorced for any cause other than sexual infidelity shall be eligible for remarriage after divorce so long as the other party in the divorce shall remain alive.

No license or other legal documentation, other than a written contract signed by both parties to the marriage and witnessed by two or more natural persons who are not members of the immediate family of either party to the marriage shall be required to establish a marriage. No church or religious institution that objects to the validity of the marriage on purely religious grounds shall be forced to recognize the marriage.

Any other amendment would end up violating the religious tenets of the Church and, more importantly, the Bible. It would clearly interfere with the free unimpeded practice of religion. And it would violate the First Amendment protection for the free and unimpeded practice of religion.

Many times I have been confronted by those who choose to take an alternative approach to Bible study. There are those who reject the Bible’s own clear imperatives, in favor of a critical method that tries to reinvent the scripture as a mythopoeic body of wisdom which lacks divine infallibility. There are those who approach it with the absurd intent of reading a gender specific defense into Bible. There are those who selectively literalize obscure passages while seeing clear imperatives as nothing more than a metaphor. However, the most destructive of all are those who see the whole scripture as a system of arcane allegories. These are the most dangerous because they rape the precious word of God of some of its most sacred and intensely beautiful language, in order to defend dogmas, behaviors and practices that are in direct rebellion against the very scripture they presume to represent.

These are they who are constantly rambling about this interpretation or that interpretation of a passage. When confronted by a clear imperative such as thou shalt not Steal, such a scholar will tend to respond, ‘that’s your interpretation, I have a different interpretation.’ Common sense would clearly dictate that such a passage is not allegorical, but these false teachers have long since left sense behind.

We see in Jesus the perfect exegesis (Critical explanation or analysis of a text) because the New Testament proclaims him as the representative, literal embodiment of the Holy Spirit (רוח אלהים). For this reason when we see him apply Midrash to old testament passages such as the Isaiah Immanuel texts, we see more than one thing. Yes we see King Y’Shuah, the cabinetmaker’s son, naming himself anointed rescuer of Israel. We see Jesus born to the Diaspora living in Syria naming himself King and Lord of his fellow Jews. And we see his friends and neighbors attempting to execute him as a blasphemer for what they perceive as hubris from the rich man’s bastard son. But we see more if we are a careful and honest student.

We also can see Jesus himself using and thereby validating, or as we say in Pentecostal circles consecrating, the use of a Midrashic exegetical method. While he does validate the body of work called the Midrash, he does make it a valid place to look for advice in Christian exegesis. Secondly we see him applying a particular form of Midrash that was peculiar to the Essenes and their sympathizers among the Sephardim or Pharisees. We see Jesus sitting in the presence of the congregation and stating that he is the fulfillment of the Son of God prophecies held so precious by the Essenes. In fact the book of John begins with a tract against kabala and proceeds to prove Jesus as the Anointed One of God, the Son of God and the Son of Man. For those who have some background in Mystery Religion, These terms can take on special significance and John repeatedly hits those buttons and demonstrates that the correct meaning and application is Jesus, rather that the allegorical applications that such men and women are prone to affect.

What we see in Jesus is a literal application of even the most obscure, predictive or apocalyptic foretelling in the Bible. We see a very literal application of imperative passages wherein God speaks to man through a prophet ordering behavior and practice. And lastly we see Jesus accepting idiomatic passages in the existing text as idiom rather than over literalizing these and, thereby losing the meaning and intent of the author.

In other words, Jesus clearly viewed the prophets and writers of the first covenant as being sane, rational men who had a rational body of information and knowledge to communicate, who spoke in an old-fashioned dialect, but who spoke the simple literal truth of their teachings. It boggles the mind that any honest student of Christ could decide to place his own understanding and enlightenment above that of our Lord and Savior.

Nothing I have referred to here has ruled out the legitimate use of allegory by writers of the first or second covenants. Jesus clearly used allegory when he spoke the parables; a parable is by definition allegorical. And similarly there are allegories in the old testament. But it is foolish to take major portions, for instance whole chapters of Genesis and attempt to claim the author was telling an allegory. Such thinking is in fact hubris. But most especially, it is ethnocentric discrimination.

To assume that only a post modern, University educated, exegetically liberal mind, engaging in eisegesis (forcing ones own image into the text) can possibly have real and authoritative knowledge of processes and systems that have never been witnessed by mortal man, is the same sin that Lucifer committed. This is to claim that you are more competent than the God you profess. Now I’ll grant you that there are those who are atheist and who never the less claim to be Biblical scholars, such people are saddest of all. As the Bible repeatedly points out in both covenants, one cannot begin to understand the import, intent or exegesis of the Bible until one is initiated into the service of God. That is to say, you can’t begin to understand the Bible until you have become a Jew according to the Biblical pattern, or have become a Christian according to the Biblical pattern.

In Zechariah (avahodesh or zecharijahu) chapter 4, the prophet refers to two trees giving forth sacred oil to fuel the menorot (candlesticks) that stand in the presence of almighty God the King of all creation. In revelation we again see there are two trees that stand for the two covenants between God and man. There is only one way to serve God and that is through honest childlike trust in his revealed word and acceptance of his love and most importantly his sovereignty. God has made two covenants with man, and as the Apostle Paul wrote, the gifts and callings of the Lord are never rescinded. Return to the simple Gospel; reject the overpowering and foolish philosophies and traditions of Men. God himself has plainly explained himself. Read his word. Trust his character. Only in God is there any hope for peace, joy, or understanding. Bless the Holy name of the Lord and bless his faithful believers.