Sight or Touch

People ask other people whether they have ever seen Jesus. Well, I reply: Is touch as good as sight? It is even better perhaps because now I know He is living and human. Just what we need for Salvation from our human corruption so we can be righteous and ever be kept that way by this living - ever living and resurrected - human mediator with God.

Swiss Cheese

Nature is mostly in the kingdom of God. Most human souls are pockets devoid of the kingdom. They are trying to pull the kingdom into their void pockets by force. Many are callng on their gods. “Oh my god” they say. Yet they should listen and believe what the Holy Spirit teaches in order to bring the kingdom into their void. They should consider Nature beyond their void. Consider the authoritative One and His teachings and fame. The Anointed One. The Deliverance. Lament the void. Reach beyond the void. Seek the kingdom. Call on the name of the One who grows to fill all voids.

Writings from long ago

The origins of writing as seen in the archaeology are mysterious. There were the strange stone cones used to line temples in Uruk around 3400 BC which had writing on their outward facing ends. This was pictographic writing rather than the cuneiform that developed from it later. It coincided with the start of the leaps in technology that marked the later Chalcolithic Period followed by the first stages of the Early Bronze Age in Mesopotamia. These technologies included metallurgy advances, chemicals used for pigments, and colourful beads of enamel and gemstones and weaponry such as blades and axes and maces. The Book of Enoch writes of these things and where and when they appeared among humans and explains that the originators were angelic rather than human. Why is it interesting? Because it means we who are Book of Enoch readers are reading something holy from the earliest days of writing. An odd thing to be doing? Well, not if you remember how Jesus Christ so often mentioned the contents of this book. You see it was much of it about Himself, the Son of Man. Writings about a Son of Man written not long after writing first appeared among humans and then three thousand or more years later He turns up - Jesus the Christ - saying it is He of whom these writings wrote.

Sharing in Jesus Christ

“Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.” — Jesus Christ (Mark 11:23)

By speaking to the storm and it obeying, you find yourself sharing spiritually in the authority of The Christ, Jesus. He has been doing it thousands, maybe millions, maybe billions of years and once only He was doing this before the Fathee making all things by this powerful speaking. To be united with Jesus Christ is the greatest thing in the Universe.

I rejoice at the wisdom about heavenly things given to the apostles that they would use “Lord” (Greek: kurios) for Jesus rather “God”. They reserve “God” for the Father who is Almighty. Whereas Kurios (Lord) is one who starting small grows to fill a great area. So Jesus became small and constantly grows in greatness. This is why He is called Lord. Distinct from the Father who has always been completely Almighty. We too can grow as we are united with Christ in baptism and learn to do as He does as we receive from God things of power to do. We start as it were small and dead in baptism beneath the water as He was baptised into weakness and even death. Then we grow from there as risen Christ is united with us as we are part of His body. The Father makes us grow as He makes Christ Jesus grow. We do greater and greater things which display Christ’s Lordship until we can control Nature like He controls it. And as Head of the Body He controls us too as we learn submission to His greater authority.

Speaking in Church is not for Everyone

SPEAKING IN CHURCH NOT FOR EVERYONE

About twenty years ago I went to a church where many were allowed speak in meetings but my (now) wife advised me not to speak while still a newcomer there. Someone spoke saying that EVERYONE should speak. I knew this was dangerous because it might encourage women to speak without knowing it was right for them to stay silent in church. So the day of the next meeting I prayed asking God to tell them through others that not everyone should speak in services. That morning service the leader split the attenders into two groups about twenty or thirty in each group. In the group I was in there were three young men who spoke in turn and each said that it was right for some to speak but for others they did best to just listen quietly citing Mary listening at the feet of Jesus. One of these young men spoke so powerfully and prophetically that I asked afterwards who he was. They said he rarely came but was known as a prophet and must have come that day led by God to say this.

The Oath Updated

THE OATH UPDATED

We are fortunate, judging from the Book of Enoch, to live at a time when the Oath behind all the workings of Nature has been updated to include the actual name of the Son of Man, the name which is called in its English form Lord Jesus Christ. So now the Oath is enunciated to include His actual name so we can better understand it that all of Nature is constantly adhering to the authority of the name of Lord Jesus Christ.

I’ve noticed the new enunciation of this Oath including the name Lord Jesus Christ spoken by the Holy Spirit in church meetings through angelic “tongues” with interpretation. So it is clearly of great importance to include it in our lives, learning to live and be saved by it: “Consider the trees how they put forth buds and leaves; they do so by the authoritative power of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A Shadow of Things to Come

The Shedu God 𒀭𒆘

A shadow of things to come. 

The name El Shaddai is mysterious and few understand its origins. God told Moses it was the term about Himself He used to describe Himself to Abraham. Abraham was of Akkadian semitic origins living originally in Ur in what is now modern day Iraq. So Akkadian rather than Hebrew would have been Abraham’s birth tongue and Hebrew was very similar to Akkadian. So what did El Shaddai mean to Abraham? Well a shedu is a fabulous creature in Akkadian lore with the head of a human and the body of an ox and wings - like a Sphynx but ox replacing lion. So it had all-round strength. Hence it represented God being Almighty. El was a syllable added to names or representations of highest heavenly beings - meaning God as we know it today. So when Hebrew was translated into Greek centuries later, when nobody outside the Middle East knew what a shadu was, they took the meaning of Mighty in all kinds of ways which today we say as Almighty to translate this word. So today we have it as God Almighty or Almighty God.

Now the new name God gave Moses to use was Yahweh meaning “yet to come”, “becoming”, “will come to pass”, “will be”. What God truly is was yet to be revealed. Watch this space, God was effectively telling Pharoah, You will see what I am. Be afraid; be very afraid. And what Pharoah saw of God in the plagues shook him to the core and forced him to relinquish his vice-like control of Israel. To Israel they would see their God too and every year celebrate Him in the Passover feast for the joy of hope that what God forever will be could give them. To some a terrible doom and to others an eternal Salvation.

Behold the man

“He breathed His last.”

Does He breathe in His resurrection body and life that continues forever? Whatever He is now, He is man and He is what the Father makes Him.

“When the man comes around.”

Not One and the Same

How unfortunate is the common meaning of the phrase “one and the same”. We can be unified but we are never going to be “one and the same” in the commonly understood meaning. We can be “one” and we can be “the same” but never will we be “one and the same”. If only people would see Father and Son that way.

The Young Son of Man

The Book of 2 Esdras tells us the fuller secret of the Son of Man: why He is called that. He is a young man foreseen in the prophecy. Esdras foresaw the Messiah as coming as a young man into the public eye. Never before had He been made publicly known until He was a young man whose time had come. The one like a son of man. Like somebody’s young son.