Western Democracy

I believe I have had a flash of insight as to western politics. Someone to whose comment I was replying on you tube was expressing disappointment that they elect a leader and he turns out to be a crook. Do they want a messiah? Now that is precisely the problem. What we want is  a God King who will make it rain in season and of course make the trains run on time. And when he does come he will be none other than  the antichrist

No, the matter should not  be a leader, for power corrupts. Rather the matter of politics should be POLICIES promulgated by PARTIES and policed by a politically savvy and active PEOPLE of whom the government is afraid as they know full well that an active populace would vote them out if they break a promise

But again, no, this will not happen, for democracy requires vigilance and work; but this is something modern western man is too lazy or uneducated to do. So the result is that cynicism in the political process becomes justified and the cycle follows that laid out by the Greek Philosophers whereby democracies become tyrannies.

So when this happens we in the West will deserve everything we get.

There is a God King Who is eminently fit to rule, but His rule has been rejected and even when it was professed as real it was subverted by the people who most devoutly expressed claims as to be His most loyal subjects.

Who?

Jesus Christ

A Lesson in Bigotry

I have just received a rather bitter lesson in the nature of religious bigotry.

Getting home from work and checking my youtube recommendations I come across a quote

"The cross shows us a different way of measuring success. Ours is to plant the seeds. God sees to the fruits of our labors. And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and not produce fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus Christ and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, the failure of the cross."

If you will bother to read this without prejudice, and to aid in this I will withhold for now the name of the person saying this, you will see that there is in fact nothing wrong with this.

Humanly speaking the cross was a failure, but divinely speaking it was something else entirely. By no stretch of the imagination can the speaker be said to be saying that the cross was a failure  in its intrinsic essence. He was saying, or at least gave no reason to have us think he was denying, what all Christians know,  namely that it was only apparently so, humanly speaking  To hold any other meaning those hostile to the  speaker have to ignore the phrase "humanly speaking" as well as the very opening of this quote  "The cross shows us a difference way of measuring success".

How can the cross be offering a different measure of success if it was a failure?

I invite you to reread the quote.

Done?

Very well, I will tell you , if you do not know , who said this

It was the current pope. Francis I.

They are saying that the pope is saying the cross was a failure.

Moreover they are screaming blue murder and denouncing him with all self righteous fury

He was not saying this, however. There is nothing wrong  with this quote

In their hatred they have twisted the words that this man uttered in order to make these words something to justify their hatred

This is seen not by appealing to hatred as some kind of a priori, but by simply examining the words spoken. When we do we see that the true statement such as this can only be twisted by motivations such as hatred

A true statement, then,  is twisted into a blasphemy then the speaker is railed at for speaking blasphemy.

This reflects on the evil of those who think that libel is the way to serve truth. It is not, and neither is railing against the perceivedly evil person, for it says in Jude verse  9 that "when the Archangel  Michael was disputing with  Satan over the body of Moses he did not dare bring a slanderous accusation against Satan but said 'the lord rebuke you.'"

To rail even at evil is sin.

To bring false charges against it is open defiance of the Word of God

The arrogance of this filthy underbelly of Protestantism s quite literally a disgrace, as it the warping of minds that such hatred produces.

Even if Catholicism is riddled with heresy to bring false charges against it is only to encourage them in their error.  But alas this is something the anti-Catholic bigot does not care to consider

The Time of Day

I now realize, now that indeed nothing has happened as I expected would be the case as regarding September 23, that I have been far too generous in giving even the time of day to  those fanatics for whom Acts 1:6-8 is simply not good enough.

I listened to them, carefully weighed what they had to say against scripture and of course concluded that they simply did not know what they were talking about.

But I still insisted on examining their ideas.

Some ignored verses like Acts 1:6-8, or insisted that they were not meant for the Church, or that they were only meant for the disciples at the time, or even twisted the Greek to justify this.

They are all contemptible. Even if we set aside for a moment the fact that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, they did not even have scholarly regard for a text which spoke plainly and simply.

They jumped on a bandwagon  for they were so desperate to have the world end when they determined it should, and in my opinion were likely so consumed with hate for the world that they wanted to see it burn, that their burning lust overcame their sense and even their ability to read.

This is not simply a matter of sincere error.

To make predictions where the scripture forbids specific date setting is open defiance of scripture. To insist on doing so is to be deeply backslidden, powerfully estranged from the Holy Spirit who would have spoken to these persons if they were amenable to hearing His still and small voice. But they were not amenable.

They may not be lost because of getting wrong some issue of eschatology but they are in deep danger of loss if they are so estranged from the Spirit as  to be backslidden -  and this separate and distinct from any amount of religious activity they may engage in.

Once Saved Always Saved is a deadly heresy for it does not trust in the Love of Christ, it presumes upon it.  And the difference here is crucial. Thus backsliding is  real danger and those who rashly predicted, and in the name of the Lord Himself to boot, what did not occur, have themselves backslidden, for all their religious zeal.

One cannot be close to the Lord the Spirit and falsely predict  anything. To be estranged from the Holy Spirit is the danger; and all who predicted what did not happen are estranged from Him
 
Then of course there is the reputation of the gospel among unbelievers. If one person rejects the gospel because of a failed prediction which had no shred of biblical warrant, then though the person who did this is accountable for his own disinclination to distinguish true from false prediction, yet nevertheless those who gave such the temptation to do so, namely end time fanatics with their obstinate penchant for date setting, will also be judged with ferocity. For it is written "It is inevitable that temptations come, but woe to him through whom they come."  There is nothing in this passage nor the rest of scripture indicating  that we the Church are exempt from this dire warning.

What hellfire preachers love to say to an unbelieving world, usually in hatred, cruelty and arrogance, must be said to the church that gave credence to the folly of Set 23 2015, May 21 2011, 2007, Y2K, 1988 and so on back over, I regret to say, centuries.

What must be said, and God discern my motive for saying it?

REPENT.

As for the title of this piece and my opening paragraph: I have been far too generous in giving the time of day to people who have so little regard for scripture as to use it as a cherry picking resource for their own fantasies, to the detriment of the faith of their weaker brethren and the reputation of the gospel itself

If I have any sense I will cease to give even this aforementioned time of day to any of them.

Their arguments are all the same, cherry picking, word twisting; and this when they know how to present a purportedly rational argument. Some were incapable of even this bare minimum and just bombarded the you tube watcher,  where I found the bulk of this nonsense, with a set of images that proved nothing.

And as always we wonder why the Name of God is so hated these days, and as always we deny that our unbelief, hypocrisy and sheer  dishonest scholarship have anything to do with it.

the 23rd of September 2015

Today is the 23rd of September. In itself this is of no significance. I know this. But various religious extremists have predicted any number of events for this day, in open and arrogant defiance of the Bible which clearly says we are not to set dates.

Some claim that the Antichrist will be revealed for who he is, after having shown their racism and ignorance by insisting it is Obama.

Others say that an asteroid will hit the earth, others that the Rapture will happen whereby they gloatingly say they will be teleported off the earth before 7 years of hell will be unleashed on the rest.

Even others say, and this is true insanity, that a counterfeit alien invasion will happen, and this to force the New World Order

NOTHING WILL happen. None of the arguments they advance as to why this day are valid. So I am going on public record to say so.

But I am also going public to say that as the Bible set no such dates

Therefore to reject Christ because of this failed prediction is itself irrational and even dishonest.
They who defy the Word of God to make unwarranted predictions will damage the reputation of the gospel by their rantings but they are so infatuated by their scheme that they do not care to face the plain fact that the Bible forbids setting dates.

Upon their own heads be it

I will not be fazed by the passing of a non event. I was not bothered when Harold Camping's prediction of May 2011 failed, for I knew before hand that it would.

But my prayer is that some would not have their faith destroyed by trusting these irrational, schadenfreude riddled and heretical predictions wheen thy do not come to pass; and also that others will not think that these failures reflect on a Bible which clearly said no dates were to be set.

However as men are prejudiced against God  and are looking for excuses to both set predictions without warrant and, from other quarters to reject Him when they fail, I am not hopeful that anything other than blasphemy and apostasy will result from this latest round of futility

Subverted Scriptures 2

"The wages of God are eternal life but the free gift of sin is death"

Of course you know this is not what Romans 6:23 actually says, but I have seen it subverted this way many times.

One local street preacher used to appear in our inner city public speaking forum with a booklet. "What do you have to do to be saved?" he asked.

He opened the booklet and it had blank pages.

To be damned you need do nothing.

To those who suggest this is a straw man, well this preacher was a legalist. He was serious about his religion and was a bully who regularly insulted his hearers ("I am here to speak to morons," he used to say). To be so loveless and serious about religion is the very essence of legalism, and the upshot of this is that what came out of such preaching  to be saved one must keep all the commandments of God.

And I certainly believed this. And time and time again I have seen Christians imposing the Law on people, including other Christians, showing they do not believe in the free gift of God.

They call this obedience to Christ yet, as no one keeps the Law and as our efforts therefore do not constitute obedience of the Law it is no such thing. Indeed the letter to the Galatians spells out what error this is

But believing this, as so many of us actually do in our heart of hearts, for all our fervent declarations of faith based righteousness, we hold that the wages of God are eternal life.

Thus the scripture is subverted.

There is a second subversion here.

"The wages of sin are death."

Period.

I did this. I never ended the sentence, forgetting that the free gift of God is eternal life and that this eternal  life is not just conversion, but the whole thing,   including discipleship, as much a gift of grace as anything else lest we fall away into the Law trying to pay for it. This gift, the whole of eternal life is delivered in personal relationship with the Hoy Spirit, without Whom there is only impossible law and despair to any sensitive (so many are not) to this. But instead I thought, emotionally, of course  that as the wages of sin were death and with no free gift as in sight, I had to stop sinning. And as Romans 8 says, this is outright impossible

Oh, I could quote the entire passage, but what I focused on was not a matter of my forced determination, and being carnal minded I missed the second part of this dictum and it took the Spirit Himself to show this to me just recently

As with just about everything what we truly believed is shown by our spontaneous living, our careless words, by our lives.

If we are carnal of fruit we are carnal of mind and all of us subvert the scriptures time and time again.

It will take gracious conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit to reveal to u what our deceitful hearts have wrought, as it will take his persuasion, as loving Counsellor, to lead us to repent of it

The relationship is the thing.

Always

Subverted Scriptures 1

This may become a series.

Many scriptures are subverted. Twisted. And gross heresy results

"Work out your salvation in fear and trembling" it says in Philippians 2:12.

If this verse is misunderstood even only slightly it becomes subverted, turning into  "live a life of painful struggle beset with constant terror, devoid of rest, a vale of tears."

This I did and this I have seen done and preached, as for example by my original pastor who preached that the Christian life was "blood sweat and tears."

So it was blood sweat and tears for the Hebrew slaves in Egypt

But it is still the case that His joke is easy, His burden is light. And  peace, not the fear and trembling commonly understood to be invoked here, is the proper Godly response, along with the joy which is our strength

Biblical logic demands that this opening passage be interpreted in a way other than the plainly intuitive.

I will reword the passage to make an exegetical point

"Let  God's saving activity in your life be made manifest (work out)  in reverential awe of the gravity of sin and the seriousness of the situation and of your own infirmity (in fear and trembling)

"for", and I add the context, verse 13  "it is God who is at work in you to will and do His good pleasure"

The issue is personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. Without this is either easy believism, which does not live under grace, merely falsely invokes it , thus still denies it; or legalism, a complete forsaking of Him for the Law, as Paul in Galatians rebuked.

We are striving by force of sweated will? Then we have forsaken him for Law. We are afraid, and indeed will be if we have any sensitivity of conscience? (I was utterly terrified). Then we do not trust Him and do not rest in Him.

I certainly have done this latter, for my besetting sin is legalism.

But His mercy in One on one conversation continues

Imperator!!

I have been fascinated by the Roman Emperors for decades Some years ago. I got out, among a host of others over the years,   a book on them from the library called "Chronicle of Roman Emperors" by Chris Scarre.

One thing it does is spells out the meaning and significance of their names and titles, and for each one
gives a full list of them all at various times, at birth, on adoption, on accession,
whenever else some more were added, and finally at death.

For example

Tiberius caesar, divi Augusti filius, Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, tribuniciae
potestatis XXXIIX, imperator VIII, Consul V.

and

Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Germanicus Sarmaticus,
Pontifex Maximus, Tribuniciae potestatis XXXIV, Imperator X, Consul III, Pater
Patriae.


I discovered that the number of times they were accorded the accolade imperator (literally commander but a paean of praise to said commander, a salutation, in short)  was counted in the list, as well as  the number of years they held the tribunician power .

As an exercise, as I have long held God Almighty to be Emperor, I tried this, namely the Imperial Titles of Jesus Christ, King of Kings (ie Emperor)


Imperator Caesar Divus Dominus Deus Iesus Christus Augustus Rex, divi Domini
Deii Augusti Patris filius, (lit son of the Divine Dominus Deus Augustus Pater)
Peccatoricus, Moricus (conqueror of sin and death, pardon the bad latin) and then on
His return Germanicus, Britannicus, Americanus, Sinicus ie victory title for every every
nation of the earth conquered), Pontifex Magnus Maximus, Tribuniciae potestatis
MCMLXVII, (ie years since resurrection) Imperator times without number, Consul
MCMLXVII, Filius Patris, Magister Militum, Proconsul (ie holding Proconsular
Imperium, cannot be gainsayed).


A word about the Tribunician  veto, which is the point of this post

As the tribune of the plebs the holder of the potestatis had the right to veto any legislation.  The office arose  in response to the Plebian Secessions  whereby the pled, tired of being exploited by the rich, left Rome en masse, not only once but twice back when Rome was merely a city state . Their Tribune, having the Tribunician Power (lat potestas) could veto legislation as part of the checks and balances that made the Roman Republic last so long.

When the Republic fell apart the Emperor took the title as part of the fiction that he was a guardian of  the Republic.
\
Now, to idealize this for my point:

He, Jesus the Emperor, has the right to veto the death sentence on me, as he represents
the plebs, of which I am one.

And so He has done

My excitement at the time of writing this, quite  few years ago now was profound. If I idealise the reality of the tribunate of the plebs and use it as a metaphor, the Divine Emperor the Son of God is For me not against me.


So I shouted to him the soldiers accolade IM PER A TOR!! IM PER A TOR!!!!