25 September 2022
My wife's health has stabilized for now. Thank you for your prayers.
Some of you have offered strong encouragement for me to continue this blog. I was just venting; I never expected to draw so much interest. It hasn't gone to my head. I still insist it's the message, not me. I guess I'm stunned at how hungry people are for something that seems so obvious to me. I should think more of you could come up with this stuff on your own. What I offer here should be no more than confirmation of things already nibbling at the edge of your moral awareness.
It's hard to keep track of all the threats to the communications status quo. The elite censorship of the Net is tightening. The economic and political situation in general is becoming more chaotic, and we may all find Net access increasingly unaffordable. A Carrington Event would return us to 19th Century living. And on it goes; we can't predict when everything we know has changed. There's an urgency to sharing a message that is of interest to only a scattered few around the world.
But I'm not trying to lead, only to provoke. I am by no means competent to nail down the details for you. I've done my best to share examples of what my convictions demand, but the whole point was to get you used to sensing your own convictions. And I'm hardly the sole expert on what the ancient Hebrew perspective on faith was, but you know that a major emphasis here is that we are accountable to God for approaching Him according to His revelation.
The key element is that we must become aware of the major differences between our western heritage and that of the ancient Hebrew. Sometimes I choke with exasperation on how religious leaders just mindlessly assume their intellectual foundations are the same as what Jesus held. There simply is no excuse for that. Maybe you would expect that from a country hick preacher who never darkened the door of any college, but it's not okay for denominational leaders to pander to such. Still, it's not a question of intellectual development, but of simple awareness that we stand in a very corrupt and anti-Christian culture.
To the degree that church stuff is western, to that degree it perverts to gospel message. So the only possible reform or correction is to recover -- as much as possible -- the ancient Hebrew intellectual approach that Jesus manifested in His ministry. A critical element in what He did was to call His people back to a simpler outlook that hearkened back to the faith of their forefathers, and more to the point, the missionary call of Israel at Mount Sinai: "You shall be a kingdom of priests". When we follow Jesus, we are the revelation of God and His will for fallen mankind.
So I keep hammering on the faith of the Covenant, and I carefully portray the continuity between the Covenant of Moses and that of Christ. The western obsession with distinguishing between "law versus gospel" is not biblical. The national identity of Israel was ended, but the New Covenant in Christ is simply a translation of the ancient faith and obedience into a new format. The history of Israel proves that, if the revelation of God is going to bring us back to Eden, it cannot come via a law imposed externally. It must come from a law born in our hearts. We must turn that Flaming Sword at the Gate of Eden on ourselves before we can use it; we must nail the flesh to the Cross.
Thus, we are not a kingdom of fallen men, as Israel was, but a Covenant nation of hearts awakened to the Spirit. If we cannot find the Law of God written in our souls -- AKA, convictions -- then no law of any kind will do us any good.
God chose to reveal Himself in that people, that time, that place. He built that nation as the living revelation; He created the context so that the packaging was part of the message. They rejected His election of them. More to the point, they rejected the terms of that election, the inherent obligations. We have been granted the privilege of taking up their mission and covenant identity. That identity comes with a whole raft of intellectual assumptions about reality (AKA, Creation). Thus, the real hindrance to faith is rediscovering the intellectual heritage of the ancient Hebrews, and recognizing how radically different it is from ours today. That's a big mountain to climb.
The prophetic angle of this blog is simply making the call to climb it. I can share with you what I've discovered on my climb, but by no means do you have to take my path. Only your convictions can get you started on the climb, and they will guide your track up the slope. At some point, you'll have to meet with God in the cloud of His Presence and learn to read the tablets inscribed by His finger on your own heart.
This is not a movement. I'm just trying to reawaken faith itself. Sure, I hope it changes the mainstream churches, but that would be only a side-effect, not the goal. It would be just as well if people left those mainstream churches and just started doing something else entirely to express their faith. What really matters is that people start thinking differently about faith and religion.
What's left is that we learn to associate with each other on the grounds of how similar our calling and convictions make us, and for as long as they keep us close. To the degree my experience sounds like yours, we can walk together in our missions. If not, keep on trucking; you don't need my help. The Bible portrays faith as a Promised Land that we each explore and conquer, together as much as possible, and sometimes quite isolated from each other because of what He has granted to us.
The biggest favor you can do for me is to get moving on your own path, whatever that might be.
Addenda: Over and over again, whatever "Jewish" indicates is entirely different from what "Hebrew" means. The Judean government and religious leadership departed the Covenant long before Jesus came to walk among them. That was a major element in Jesus' message, calling His people back to the ancient Hebrew Covenant. We ape neither in how we obey God's Law; we ignore Judaism as a threat and we use the ancient Hebrew way as a contextual model. We are under the Code of Noah insofar as we have a law. Indeed, we regard Moses as a specific implementation of Noah. Moses gives us clues to things like the meaning of shalom as the symbol of Covenant promises. What God did for Israel is an image of what He will do for anyone who embraces the Covenant of Christ as a community of faith.
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