I posted this over on the Blog earlier today. I thought it might pertain:
Fundamentalists don’t believe in God & JC directly. Their relationship to Them is:
Person > Bible > God & JC
Catholics tend to be more like:
Person > Priesthood > God & JC
Congregationalists tend to rely on the congregational consensus:
Person > Congregation > God & JC
Individualists have a more direct relationship with nothing between themselves and God & JC:
Person > God & JC
We have four different relational setups working here:
Person > Bible > God & JC
Person > Priesthood > God & JC
Person > Congregation > God & JC
Person > God & JC
All four of these setups can be right, and all four can be wrong. They can also all be right together and wrong together as well.
It seems like the best we can do is put the truth first and seek it diligently. Seek the truth whether we win, lose, or break even. Either way, we will win, because we will have the truth.
I can’t believe that God and the Truth are two separate things, even if some ideas from the bible, the priesthood, the congregation, or individuals are wrong or just misplaced.
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People can’t see it on the Blog yet because the comment is still waiting for moderation. I’m not saying that I know or that this covers everything. I’m just putting ideas out there for people to look at and think about and that might help in making sense of things.
Helen said:
In the Gospels, Jesus is reported to have gone to the synagogues a lot, and that it was his “custom”.
He talked and preached primarily to the Jewish people during his earthly ministry.
He seems to know good portions of the Jewish law and the Torah.
That he was Jewish is so obvious one would be dumbstruck in reading the outlandish claim that he wasn’t if one weren’t aware of why it is being made.
What I find interesting is not the claim, which no serious scholar entertains, but whether there are any who make it who aren’t antisemitic, excepting dansanta2003, of course, who assures us, despite his rabid ranting and raving, he is not.
“What is concerning is the two point three/four billion Christians in this world of eight billion people.
It should be a different world!
Salt that has lost its savor?”
“maybe Christians are too fundamentalistic, and that is the problem?”
What’s involved in a Xtian being “too fundamentalistic”?
DavidFord
What’s involved in a Xtian being “too fundamentalistic”?
Things like having to believe in:
A God that requires a human sacrifice (for any reason).
That we are all so sinful that we all deserve the death penalty. (Idk what made a person deserving of the death penalty back in the 1st century, but I have a pretty good idea what constitutes it now in the US and in the West).
That women aren’t equal and should have the same amount of say, voice, and influence as men.
A flat earth that was created 6000 years ago.
That only two people were living on Earth and in Mesopotamia 6000 years ago, when the archaeological evidence clearly proves and shows otherwise.
A sun that revolves around the earth.
The emblematic cannibalism that is suggested in the eucharist.
That Paul of Tarsus, someone who never met Jesus during his earthly ministry and who only actually quotes Jesus like 3 times, is right all that time and is always speaking and conveying the word of God.
That the entire bible is entirely and nothing but the word of God.
That a married person can’t say “no” to their spouse at any time. This includes when they may have really, really good reasons for saying no. (Things like not wanting another child, not being able to afford another child, having a heart condition, having an injury or an illness, not wanting to take the real risks involved in pregnancy and childbirth, being totally disgusted and turned off by their spouse…. I’m sure there is more that could be added here).
That fear, instead of awe & love, is the right attitude and relationship that we should have towards God.
Talking snakes
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I could go on, there’s more. But this is enough to make the point for right now.
Thanks for reading
Stephen said
His disciples said to him: “On what day will the kingdom come?” “It will not come when it is expected. No one will say: ‘See, it is here!’ or: ‘Look, it is there!’ but the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it.”
– Gospel of Thomas Saying 113
Great finding, because the Nabataeans use double names (embracing the host culture) and are all over the world at this point. Soon, Phillip the Arab will be the Emperor of Rome, and he is said to be the first emperor to practice the ancestor cult of Christianity.
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Phillip the Arab, Marcus Julius Philippus, comes from Arabia Petraea, the territories the Romans acquired from Nabataea, and Petra was the capital at the time of Nabataean King Malichus (a name meaning King, which is the anointed one.)
The Nabataeans are a path people, it is only their Kingdom that had people embedded all over the world.
It stacks meanings.
I wonder why bi-culturalism seems less easy to grasp, it’s a little like the idea of holding “two thoughts at once.”
“I’ve always felt that it was JC and/or God who has found me a half-decent place to live.
It’s the one thing I have really asked for over the years. …
Perhaps also, we really need to ask for the things we need”
Mark 4 (NIV)
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35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples,
“Let us go over to the other side.”
36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.
There were also other boats with him.
37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.
38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.
The disciples woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves,
“Quiet!
Be still!”
Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples,
“Why are you so afraid?
Do you still have no faith?”
41 They were terrified and asked each other,
“Who is this?
Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
Frederick Dodson, _You Can Heal Anyone_ (2022), 137pp., on 17
The most amazing part of this verse is that Jesus was expecting his students to be able to stop the storm.
It’s mind-boggling how most “Christian” churches teach the exact opposite of this.
They teach that you cannot stop the storm; only God can stop it.
But Jesus taught that humans are equipped to do it.
He expected it of them and got frustrated when they wouldn’t exercise their powers.
…
In John 14:12, we read:
“Most assuredly, I say to you,
he who believes in Me,
the works that I do he will do also;
and greater works than these will he do.”
If I were to teach this in church I’d be kicked out of most churches for being a heretic.
That’s how corrupted “religion” is.
Yes, believe it or not, this Bible verse, quoting Jesus says YOU can do it.
And that is my experience, too.
YOU are equipped with powers, by birth.
You have more than you know, more than you use.
“Perhaps also, we really need to ask for the things we need”
Gatekeeping in my Neighborhood
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Several years ago, my family was in a tough way and needed to find a home to rent. We made two lists: things we needed in a home, and things we wanted in a home. Through a series of miracles, financial and otherwise, we actually _purchased_ a house that had everything on both lists. We were elated.
But the elation was short-lived. Our home had everything that we knew to ask for, but there were some things we didn’t know to ask for. In our first week living there, I learned of three drug dealers on our block. I watched drug deals go down at the front door of the house across the street while my kids played in my yard. They knew about that dealer, and they told me about the other two dealers on the block, and which houses they lived in.
This was absolutely not OK with me. I talked to the authorities, and they told me about the standards of evidence that they needed in order to intervene. I talked to other neighbors, and they shook their heads and “tsk tsk’d”.
Then I talked to God. More precisely, I _whined_ at God. “God, why is this going on? This isn’t right! Make it _stop_!”
It seemed as if he let me vent for a while, and when I paused to catch my breath, He interrupted. “So what are you going to do about it, Son?” Hunh? That stopped my whining immediately. Once my head stopped spinning, I asked more intelligently, “Uh… what _can_ I do?”
He gave me some prayer strategies: some specific ways to address the situation in prayer, rather than through legal means, social means, or whining. The specific strategies aren’t important except that they involved me obeying Him, and they involved me making some particular declarations over my neighborhood. Throughout the process, God used the metaphor of a gatekeeper with me: the one who decides who can come in and who cannot.
So I obeyed: I prayed the things He said to pray for, the way He said to pray it. It was odd stuff, so I did it in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning: I didn’t want someone calling the cops on me! Fundamentally, the decree to the “gates” was: “Welcome in the Holy Spirit, and the human spirits of the people who live here, and their legitimate guests. Keep out every other spirit, human or demonic.”
Suffice it to say: it worked. Within 30 days, the three dealers were gone. The one across the street sold the house to a family with a daughter the same age as my daughter. The other two just picked up and left, leaving empty houses. All three houses were soon remodeled.
I was _stunned_. I don’t think I’ve ever seen prayer answered in more detail than I did in this adventure: first our house, then the removal of the drug dealers. Life was good!
Then my next door neighbor invited a woman to live with him. She brought guests: two silicon implants for him, two full-blooded wolves for herself, and a host of demonic co-habitants. Life was no longer good.
I called every government agency I could think of that might have some authority with wolves: federal, state, and local agents told me time and time again: “No sir, wolves don’t belong in a residential neighborhood, but yes sir, she does have the necessary permits for them. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
I ignored the time that they lunged from the back of her Toyota pickup and nearly ate me. But when they tried to eat my daughter (they didn’t succeed, but just barely – she was unscathed), I confronted the neighbor: politely, gently, because he was a wimpy little guy and I didn’t want to intimidate him. But the wimpy little guy got big and snarly when I suggested that the wolves shouldn’t live there: he cussed me up one side and down the other in his rage, and vowed in no uncertain terms that they were not leaving, not today, not ever!
Hokay! That’s not going to work!
So I tried prayer. Again, I whined at God; again, He interrupted, but more quickly this time. “What are you going to do about it?” Again my slack-jawed “Hunh?” Then He went on, “You’re my representative in that neighborhood. It’s up to you. What’s _your_ decision? Do they stay or do they go?”
That floored me. I didn’t have a theology to deal with that kind of a question, but I didn’t hesitate. The wolves wanted to eat my daughter, and God was saying that it was up to me? “Heck no! They cannot stay. They have to go!” and I knew I was speaking with the authority of a judge announcing a decree.
That very weekend, they moved out. No explanation. The guy that cussed me out and shouted that they were staying, took their wolf-house down himself, packed it into the Toyota truck and moved it away. We never saw the wolves again, or their owner with the implants, except once, and the Police arrived _en masse_ with drawn weapons to make sure that didn’t happen again. No explanation for that either.
Since then, I’ve tried to exercise this authority in other ways, and when I felt that I was following God’s leading rather than my own, I have found that things often unnaturally change.
I have also found that I need to increase my skill in wielding this power: I watched a porn shop close after I made some decrees, only to be followed by another in its place, and that one was more firmly rooted (though it has a “going out of business!” sign on it regularly). A pagan worship center was closed, only to open up again a couple of blocks away.
These are curious stories, and true ones, but what’s the purpose?
I have developed a couple of guiding principles from these events, and the others that surrounded them (this was an _interesting_ season in my life!):
1) God delegates authority to His representatives in an area. (My “area” of influence was only a couple of blocks; others’ territory may be smaller or larger.)
2) He takes that delegated authority _very_ seriously. When He gives authority, He means it.
I guess there’s a third principle:
3) I probably ought to _exercise_ the authority that I’ve been given, and I probably ought to exercise it for good purpose.
I know I’m nothing special. May I suggest these principles for the life of the church in this season? May I suggest these principles for you?
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hat tip
Praying Medic, _Spiritual Warfare Made Simple_ (2026), 195pp., on 143
That anecdote reminds me of the excellent
Charles Kraft, _I Give You Authority: Practicing the Authority Jesus Gave Us_ (2012), 347pp.
Nice post, David.
I wouldn’t call you a heretic.
I disagree with the article about social distancing and precautions during a pandemic, however.
Dale Allison, one of the people who Bart had speaking at last year’s NINT meeting, probably wouldn’t call you a heretic either.
I’ve been wondering if we really have to ask for things so we know what is really going on here. Who is the Source and who is the recipient, so to speak. Idk, but I have been wondering and questioning about this.
Thanks for the post.
Hi David,
Your last post came in before my last one. – I hadn’t seen it.
It reminded me of neighbors of my own. The third one in a row, all doing drugs. The first ones got evicted, the second one died, the ones that are there now, I am actually praying for.
They have children, and I really do think they have potential if they could just get off the stuff. I even had a conversation with one of them about getting off the “supplements” and going with God’s and JC’s Spirit.
I don’t get involved with them too much, however.
Maybe I can pray for them a bit more, and things will be better for all of us.
DavidFord said
“Jesus Was Not a Jew”
What makes somebody qualify as being a Jew?
Ethnicity, of course. The religion is the same with the ethnicity of the peoples. Always was. The idea that the same race or same ethnicity can have other religion and religion is something that you “pick” or “chose” during lifetime whichever you would like, is a very modern artificial construction. Kind of like democracy if you’re thinking about it.
DavidFord said
“don’t seem to have any issues presenting two very strong contradictory statements:
a) that Jesus was a failed prophet who said he will be crowned a king during those people’s lifetimes and
b) the gospels that are saying that are written after all those people died.
Wouldn’t you find this peculiar? I certainly find so. Someone is lying intentionally”
Some people haven’t thought things through, and end up making contradictory statements unintentionally.
What are the exact words of somebody making both claims a) and b)?
Correct, but definitely not “world renown scholars”. These people have an academic and scholastic background, they learned languages, they studied history, the Bible, the ancient literature, other scholars, read and wrote scientific articles, wrote books. They are professionals in the field.
I can’t give you the exact words without making a time consuming effort. Get yourself the exact words from the transcripts of Bart’s podcasts. Look on youtube something like “how Jesus became God” or “Jesus never said he was God”.
Helen Young said
In the Gospels, Jesus is reported to have gone to the synagogues a lot, and that it was his “custom”.
He talked and preached primarily to the Jewish people during his earthly ministry.
He seems to know good portions of the Jewish law and the Torah.
1. Correct, but that is simple because those were the gathering places. There was nowhere else to preach.
2. That is a speculation based on the constructed image of the “historical Jesus”. Jesus was a Galilean, thus very likely started to speak towards his fellow Galileans. All of Jesus’ apostles were Israelites, from Galilee, but one. Judah, the Iscariot, and it is not a coincidence that his name is literally Judah, being the betrayer. You might make the mistake of convoluting Israelites with Jews. Judah (the Jews) was just one tribe out of the entire family of the Israelites. Jesus was an Israelite, not a Jew.
3. Again, it is not the Jewish law. Which is actually the Torah.
The 5 books of Moses = the Mosaic Law = Pentateuch for Greeks = Torah. Same thing.
At best you can call it the Hebrew Law.
Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, none of these were Jews. They were Hebrews. This is the lineage:
Abraham → Isaac → Jacob (Israel) → Judah
Before Judah being born, there were no “jews”.
I understand that you might be confused, as some crooked people from academia exploit this confusion.
It’s akin to say: the religion of the Americans suffered a great change after Columbus discovered America. We can distinguish 2 periods in the Americans history: before Columbus and after Columbus.
But that’s ridiculous, because there were no Americans and no Christianity before Columbus in US, there were some Natives with folk religions, and they got replaced by a totally different population and religion after Columbus.
The Jews weren’t even speaking Hebrew, they were speaking Aramaic.
DavidFord said
Did C.S. Lewis “defame Jesus and… present him as a failed… prophet”?
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Your grok link starts with History of the use of the phrase “cat ladies” and then a preoccupation for genocides. Show me your internet history and I’ll tell you what’s on your mind, lol.
Lewis continues:
“It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.”
First of all, C. S. Lewis was not a Bible scholar. Second, he was a mediocre writer. Third, he was Irish, and Irish aren’t the sharpest forks in a drawer.
I don’t really care what C.S. Lewis thinks and says.
As I said, I find it very suspicious that the gospel authors were writing their gospels after those people died and yet were still writing that Jesus will come in their lifetime; thus, I conclude, this isn’t a literal passage, it has to have some other deeper meaning, and for the third time, I do not know which one it is, neither I can speculate, besides the Highlander argument, which John himself introduces.
Helen Young said
Another possibility is that there are people living and scattered among us who are, in some sense, in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Sometimes I feel like I can see parts of the KoH in different people. But I definitely don’t see the whole thing.
Perhaps part of it is my own perception, and parts of it is where different people are at.
These are correct interpretations. Jesus was speaking about a Kingdom of God (of Heaven in Matthew’s gospel) where people will be resurrected [in body] and live eternally with Jesus as their king on a restored earth (restored creation).
These concepts, aside Daniel, are never to be found in the religion or belief of ancient Jews. The ancient Jews were expecting an earthly king to lead them all and rule the earth physically. For them, “life eternal” simply means that the Jews will live on, for generation to generation, multiplying and conquering the earth. It did not include an individual resurrection. The episode when Jesus argues with the Sadducees is exemplary here: it explicitly said that Sadducees do not believe in resurrection.
Modern Jews reworked the same exact idea and they believe the same thing; then, they copied from the Christians (yes, correct) the idea of living in Heaven eternally, but most of them the vast majority, don’t quite believe in it. This is quote from a writing that describes perfectly what they believe:
Others teach that the Kingdom of God is purely earthly, and that it will be a political and social structure enforced on earth for a thousand years at the return of Jesus Christ with His saints to rule and reign. This theory has been popularized by the Scofield Bible. To these the Kingdom of God is the restored kingdom of Israel fulfilling the Davidic covenant. Jesus offered this kingdom to the Jews, but they refused; therefore Christ withdrew His offer and postponed it until a future time when they would accept Him as their King. When that day comes, they say, Jesus will come back and set His feet upon the mount of olives. His saints with Him, He will come to the eastern gate of Jerusalem. Having been sealed up for centuries, this gate will be opened for Him to pass through into the city. He will then set up His headquarters in a building, sit on a throne, and be crowned King. His Kingdom will then be established. People from all nations will journey to Jerusalem to see Jesus—in person—and to worship Him in a millennial temple there. From Jerusalem the Kingdom will expand to rule over all nations. The nations will quit fighting—will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and there will follow a thousand years of unparalleled peace, blessing, prosperity, and righteousness.
this is not only learn in their schools, but also was an idea that they tried to push unto Christians, via the Scofield Bible, which is a bible created by the Jews, very much jewish, to brainwashed Christians. People like Bart Ehrman peddle the same false idea, that it is ultimately a jewish creation to lead Christians on the path of Atheism. For Bart, Jesus is a clumsy Jew, a fanatical man, who believed he was crowned King on earth by God, he never called himself God, but only the son of God, and then… he died, like everyone else, and that his followers, instead to drop this ridiculous cult, they went even more and cope with it and embellished the things so much that they started a new religion.
Dansanta
Helen Young said
In the Gospels, Jesus is reported to have gone to the synagogues a lot, and that it was his “custom”.
He talked and preached primarily to the Jewish people during his earthly ministry.
He seems to know good portions of the Jewish law and the Torah.
1. Correct, but that is simple because those were the gathering places. There was nowhere else to preach.
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If Jesus wasn’t Jewish, why would he go around preaching and talking to only or mostly the Jews? Why wouldn’t he go somewhere else and start talking to other people?
Also, Paul stated that Jesus was born under the Law.
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