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!!!!

The Gory Detail

One thing whereby I see that we are not so far removed from the Catholics whom we still affect to despise is our preoccupation with the gory detail of the cross.

Indeed we may even have surpassed the Catholics in this, what with the endless parade of movies about Christ which show, in varying degrees of gruesomeness, the crucifixion.

So we shed a tear, or a million, and wax lyrical about the love which did this for us.

But do we really grasp the significance of the thing?

Let me say that if meditating on that Old Rugged Cross actually achieved anything other than morbid fascination to the carnal minds that attempt it, then Spanish Catholicism of the Late Middle Ages should be the archetype of Christianity as it should be.

But I hear a chorus   of "No" from my readers? Indeed I should hope so.

For all such morbidity produced was religious fanaticism that gave us the Inquisition, and in this day and age such religious fanaticism still makes us barren and unloving and indeed even may lead to the modern fanaticism  of Dominionism. For I ask you - with the world soaked in sermons, videos, religious movies even of relatively sound content, and the like, were the contrary true we should see the visible fruit of it, should we not?.

But still the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because we  are hypocrites. Where are the changed lives? Indeed this  indulgence in what amounts to mere empty religiose emotion produces nothing that lasts and will only encourage hard legalists to reject emotion outright, as I will explore in  my piece "The Hypocrites Charter" in due course

If we are indeed carnal minded, and I submit that our fruit show this, then no amount of spiritual exercises (a term coined by Ignatius Loyola) will be of any value, for I submit that severe treatment of the mind by forced gazing on what we view as traumatic, is  as worthless as severe treatment of the body, which scripture plainly and clearly denounces.

That something is spiritually discerned does not mean it is discerned by the human spirit as opposed to the human mind (an absurd application of that absurd doctrine that Man is made in the image of God by virtue of being a trinity, just as God is). But it does mean such is discerned under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit revealing to us and reasoning with us ("Come Let us reason together," says the Lord)  in the on going personal relationship, One on one, with the Spirit of Christ, who is our Wonderful Counsellor, which is the very core  and essence of discipleship.

But without this partnership with the Holy Spirit under his Lordship and benevolent leading we will get nowhere for we who cannot submit and cannot understand (for so scripture declares) will remain in that state unless the Spirit teach us the significance of the words that we are given to parroting - and indeed, given our carnality, we can do no other with these holy words;

I am not going to go into detail about the hideous cruelty of crucifixion. That is contrary to my point entirely. But suffice to say that after such a study I can  no longer look on the image of the cross at all.  I am not transfixed by a love that did this, I am traumatized by the horror.

The Lord the Spirit tells me that there is no cross in my thinking.

But let me explain this term. By "thinking" I mean emotional thinking. As regards doctrine and intellect I can purvey the Cross with the best of them. But no one, not even intellectuals. live in their heads. Intellectual thought is of no honest conviction if it has not become heart conviction as shown by our way of life, by the Fruit of the Spirit. On this basis it must be said that  I have never grasped the significance of the Cross, and my legalism, which continues over decades of stubborn, fearful and prideful defiance, is the evidence of this as I attempt to save myself,  for to my thinking there is no other way.

And all the effort in the world I have made has not changed this one iota.

I am carnal minded as my fruit is carnal and to me the things of God are still foolishness. I cannot submit.

That some might retort that if I am born again I am in the Spirit (the immediate context of this verse I quote here) I will reply that yes indeed. I am somehow in the Spirit, for all my carnality. I can be brought to submit. But this is quite  a different thing from saying I can simply submit, cold as it were, by simple act of will. Likewise I can be brought to  understand, but not of myself nor of  my attempts at what amount to mere Spiritual Exercises

So I suggest not a forced meditation on visible and external detail, which is valid would have made Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" a spiritual masterpiece as well as a Hollywood blockbuster; and would have made medieval Catholicism the true religion; but  rather a confession of our incomprehension and unbelief as shown by our lives and our efforts to believe

But if we are to become wise we must  first become fools, (I Corinthians  3:18). That is so say we are to admit that we do not understand what we try to understand, so indeed really are fools.

It is more honest and as always it is much, much easier when done under the personal tutelage of the Holy Spirit. And it makes us teachable

 

A prophecy

I believe the Lord has given me a prophecy. Such has not happened in literally decades; and I would rather it did not happen now, but it has come and it behoves me to deliver it

Thus sayeth the Lord

"My children, some are spreading fear and confusion in My church by daring to defy scripture through setting dates for the Second Coming of My Son, The Rapture of the Church, The Great Tribulation, and other such events.

"They speak without wisdom, without warrant and without anointing. I commanded them not.

"Therefore, My children, know and believe that when Sept 23rd this year comes and goes without event, for this is one of the dates they dare set, know that this is as I determined and this I declare before hand that you shall know that I am the Lord, Great YHWH, Holy And Terrible.

"No date pertaining to the End of the Age has proceeded from my Mouth, nor shall it ever, lest my Scriptures be voided.

"Do not fear those who  speak from presumptuous imagination, neither fear to question them and disbelieve them, and moreover do not fear when the date passes  without event, neither think  by such failure  that my Word is invalidated . The only thing invalidated is the presumption of men, as it should be.

"To those who peddle these dates, who sow confusion in My church and disturb such small peace as the Church has I say this:

"Who is it that darkens counsel? Who is it who dares speak when I have forbidden the setting of dates?

"Come before Me in prayer and see whether I am Holy and Terrible or no.

"Come before Me in prayer and assay your case and see whether it will stand in My Holy Presence, as did My servant Job, who repented in dust and ashes.

"And know that if you will repudiate this folly I am rich in mercy and My heart burns to forgive, if you will confess and repent.

"But if you will not repent  then hear that the blood of those who despair and deny the faith when your date setting fails, will be on your shoulders."

Flee to the Throne of Grace, and do it  now.

It is my heart to cry "Adorate Purpurum" and "Proskuneite" which are ancient ritual obseisances before the Emperor.

Amen and Amen

Given in Christchurch New Zealand  this 8:00 pm  the 13 July 2015