EU attempting to cap the price of oil.
"When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the centre of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.” Revelation 6
What truth did Jesus bring into the world? Jesus speaks truth even today and what he says reinforces what he meant by "the truth" when he spoke to Pontius Pilate at his trial, saying he had come into the world to testify to the truth. "What is truth?" asked Pilate. Jesus has some truth revealed to him by the Father (such as we see in the book of Revelation) and some is what he knows is true of all that was written as scripture known to himself and others at the time (Bible including Apocrypha and some other books of scripture we have discovered in recent times preserved among Dead Sea Scrolls and by groups such as Ethiopian Beta Israel and Ethiopic Orthodox Church, such as the Book of Enoch), plus the testimony of the miracles God gave him to do and the teachings God gave him to teach and together with teachings he has given him by God since his ascension which the Holy Spirit sometimes reveals to us. In addition, he and the Holy Spirit convert people inwardly so we speak truthfully of what we know and see and we testify of these things truthfully to each other.
Jesus appoints judges just as God appoints judges, and they are humans who use their discretion. God loves to give freedom of decision and freedom to use human understanding. He gives this to Jesus and Jesus in turn gives it to those he appoints and sends.
A Temple is what gives a god a name. The name of the god is tied up with the glory of their temple or temples. If the temple falls, the name of the god is affected because it looks to all around like that god was not able to uphold their name by saving their temple from destruction. The building of a temple affects the impression all who see it have of the glory of the name and reputation of the god to whom the temple is built. With the Jerusalem temple, this is so too. The temple was only built once God had given peace to Jerusalem and then the peace of Jerusalem would affect the permanence of that temple. Now Jesus pointed out really that all this is true of himself too, since God's name would be tied up with Jesus' life and wellbeing and when Jesus died it would look to all around as if God had failed and yet Jesus rising from the dead would demonstrate that God is glorious and able to withstand such a temporary setback and come through and shine. It showed that God is eternal and cannot fail in the long-term. This is the glory the nations would see of the God who raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus is tied inexorably with the glory of his Father who sent him and sends him and works with him forever. Jesus too has a great name, greatest under God, which even underpins Nature.
That eagle is still over the house. Israel has sinned, says God. Back in the mid 1990s in the UK, this was the sign God gave me. The following days, months, years saw its fulfilment as first US spy planes on the news, then police helicopter services, locally called Operation Vulture in my area, then a build up towards cameras in the streets, monitoring of communications and internet use (beware lest they see your browser history), and mass surveillance spreading internationally. The vision of the eagle overhead, black with a white eye, when God’s spirit overwhelmed me one Sunday morning, it eventually showed me generals anxiously discussing war, and trouble on the ground below the eagle, until it culminated in mushroom clouds and bombers and I had to stop the vision. What sin could cause all this? I believed it was lack of love and devotion towards God and wilful turning away from His teachings and embracing of immorality instead. I urged God to let me preach love for God and the words came to me to shout it from the mountain top. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength … and suddenly the spirit added AND VOICE! We need to use our voice to love our God. We should use our voice to lovingly teach His teachings to our neighbours and children and shout it all on social media and wherever we have a voice, whatever voice we have. Let us try to turn this tide of sin, before we see mushroom clouds for real. The eagle is overhead still.
Humans are a creation. Science would never tell you so. Oddly, because Science has no way of knowing whether human beings were ever created by another intelligence, except if one day scientists succeeded in it, yet even then they would probably deny it could ever have happened in the distant past. But if scientists ever created a human and it proved to be dysfunctional they might think of a product withdrawal or recall and scrap the dysfunctional version on a mass scale. Well Bible accounts tell us this is going to happen with the humans God has made. Not all are write-offs. Left unchanged we would be but some can be converted and not need withdrawal, recall and scrapping. Jesus does the fix. He can lead us to conversion and lead us back to our Creator for the necessary fix. Even an upgrade like Jesus had by his own resurrection. God is good. But we are bad and we have to accept the fix.
Jesus: truly a man. The most special man in all of history, so much so that his name and spirit transcends history, but a man. Now if you think of a god as a non-human entity then Jesus is not that. If you think of a god as someone mighty who can judge the rest of us, then he is that, set aside by God for this and sent into the world for it. Special because this is the one man who is to God the only begotten Son of God. Now among many brothers, but to God this is His one and only son, and we can be sons through him.
What a guy Jesus is. What a guy. Master. Mediator. Friend and Lord. But amenable and humble to treat us like he treated Zacchaeus, despite what Zacchaeus was. And he's got such rich wealth of teachings to give us. Still today, all in line with what he said back then and more besides which the Holy Spirit brings in his name. What a Son, this One Son God has. Making us sons. United with us so we can sin no more like we used to sin.
What are the implications for understanding the Bible of the Unitarian-like view that God is just one person, not a Trinity?
It leaves it more open as to the reason and implications of the plurality of Elohim. Probably God is regarded in a context of His council with sons of God as we see in Job 1. Then that is assumed through scripture.
"Let us make man in our image". God is not a man. God is one, not a plural. So despite rabbinical teachings, this probably means man is made like the sons of God and God - the nature shared by God and the sons of God. Like the angels, in other words, and with qualities the angels share with God Himself. Intellect and speed of thought. Tendency to reason and work out what is to be done, as well as listening for commands to obey. Not like brute beasts.
Abraham would have known the one Jesus called the Father, in particular as the one God. He believed that only this one God, the Almighty, is above all responsible for creation. He met this one God. He heard the voice of this one God and received promises from Him in visions over a period of many decades. If he met others who some would say include the Son of God before the incarnation, he understood that there is just one who is the Almighty God, not all three he met at Mamre. By 'Almighty' his understanding would have been of one God who is stronger than all the others (the Semitic word for Almighty is similar to the word for the mightiest creature, a shedu, a lama or lamassu, like a huge winged lion, like a very powerful angel more powerful than a sphynx, hence 'Al Shaddai'). He would have contrasted this God known personally to him, as much more powerful than any of the gods worshipped around him, king over them all, superior in wisdom and power and love, and ultimately responsible for all creation, even creation that happens through other gods or angels, being highest over all these angels, these gods.
Visions seen by many through the scriptures of the one they called God, even sometimes pagans such as Abimelech and Balaam, but also many Israelites, where they saw someone called God, this would have been the Father. God Himself was seen in visions. And sometimes very, very rarely this same God was seen physically, such as by many Israelites of the Exodus.
True prophets, although not usually directly communicating with God Himself, were always indirectly at least, sometime on rare occasions directly. communicated with by the Father, often as a result of the Father Himself personally speaking something, other times by the Holy Spirit communicating to them the thoughts of God.
Truth. Christ is seen when there is truth.
The killings of civilians who help an enemy army. We see this in Ukraine when Russian troops are forced out of an area and Ukraine soldiers move in. The civilians who helped the Russians often wear the armbands worn by the soldiers. You see in videos how these civilians are killed and their bodies are found in the streets. It all takes me back to the childhood years when I used to read the Bible my parents bought me and I read how King Saul, first king of Israel, was hunting down David who he saw as a rival because God had anointed David to one day be king and David had great popularity after miraculous military success (we all know about David and Goliath, even today, three thousand years later). David entered a town and received help there from civilians including the local priest. When David left and King Saul entered the town, chasing after David, Saul killed all the town's people including the priest because of their help for David. Then a thousand years later, Christ Jesus lived life knowing he had descended from this same David, the David who became Israel's greatest king. Christ knew this same hatred David had suffered would be levelled at Christ. The friends who helped Christ would be in danger of being killed. Christ knew this was his heritage and this would be his badge of honour, that he is descendant of David, yet the Lord of David. When Ukraine events are truthfully reported, then the picture of Christ too becomes clear.
Truth reveals Christ. Christ reveals truth.
That fiery furnace in Daniel 3. The height of the neo-Babylonian Empire and three Hebrews in exile were being punished for refusing to bow to a statue of the King of kings, Nebuchadnezzar. Wow, did he the king get a fright. It wasn't the three men who were thrown into a fiery furnace who suffered but the guards who threw them in who died. Reminds me of sanctions. The three men were in that furnace. In ancient Hebrew lore, probably true. (Jasher and Midrash) Abraham their patriarch ancestor had been treated the same way by the first old Babylon emperor Nimrod and survived. This was a thing. God protecting in fire was a thing for which God was known. God Himself revealed His imperviousness to fire when He spoke to Moses from a burning bush because the presence of God kept the bush from being consumed by the fire, so it seemed. How this should encourage us too. Fear of God is key to survival in the direst situation. The three men in Babylon feared God more they feared the Emperor King and more than they feared fire and death. They would rather, they explained to the king, have suffered death than sin against their God and they knew God could save them but did not know that He WOULD save them, yet they would not sin against Him by bowing to a statue of the king. In this case God did save them. An angel from God, some say the spirit of Jesus Son of God before Jesus became flesh, whatever it was, God provided it, and it surrounded them with protection against such raging fire that the fire had killed the men who threw them in there. The angel of God, the LORD, surrounded these men who feared their God, and Nebuchadnezzar wrote a decree about it found there in Daniel 3, that said no other god had ever saved like this God who saved those who feared and worshipped this God. This angel sent by God had even been seen by the king there amidst the men in that furnace, and by guards guarding it. We today can have that same angel surrounding us if we fear this true God, this One True God. The Holy Spirit sent in Jesus Christ's name by this One True God the Father who sent Jesus tells us this. The Psalm says it clearly too: The angel of the LORD surrounds those who fear Him.
God says in our times "Israel has sinned" but this Israel is not meaning the country we call the State of Israel but rather the people everywhere who are covenanted to God, especially those who are brought to God through Jesus Christ. I was awakened to this sinful state of those covenanted to God and alerted to it in the mid and late 1990s. It was a time when churches were starting to be influenced by liberal church thinkers, authors and leaders who politicised the gospel and downplayed traditional doctrines. Many started to leave these liberal churches and yet the liberalisation continued and we started to see the introduction of the neo-liberal concepts such as gay marriage and ordination of openly gay clergy. The Bible was being reinterpreted along the lines of the previous century when people were claiming that scientific analysis could be applied to scriptures to 'discover' things previous church generations would have regarded as heresy, such as a notion that the scriptures were heavily edited to combine various strands which never originally said what these combined texts ended up saying and are passed down to us today. Now we see countries in Christendom such as Russia starting to reject this excessive departure from tradition and a turning back to traditions such as those concerning the family and leadership. What went wrong? It is good to use our intellect to examine what we are taught and 'kick the tyres' so-to-speak. Yes, Jesus taught his followers to know all the scriptures available in those times, not just the five books of Moses upheld by the Sadducees. Yet there is a limit. The morals we hold dear are a compass and a guide in our search for truth, not a hindrance to be set aside. The second Psalm tells of the folly of the nations saying "Let us throw off their shackles" when talking about the faithful of God. The sin has now been done and cannot be undone and we might be heading to a third world war over it. But if we start to hold to teachings given by God and teach these to our children we might just escape the worst of it.
How do we stay sane in a world of vicious propaganda which might kill us or make us do deranged things? A serious problem. Jesus Christ had visions of our plight even in biblical gospel times and his main mission given by God was to help us stay sane and not be deceived by all this propaganda and lies, which he ultimately attributed to the devil. His solution is valid today and effective today: to hold to the words of life and truth and spirit which he taught. Now the Holy Spirit in believers continues this ministry, bringing teachings from Jesus today. Believe in Jesus and keep his words in the back of your mind to counter the lies and brainwashing hate-filled propaganda. Keep his teachings until you can understand them well enough to let them guide your actions in obedience. God be with you as you do so. If we all do this we are truly brothers in him.
November 4th 2022. UK seems to be getting a warning now from Russia which some are interpreting to mean the UK is getting closer to being actually at war with Russia. The warning seems to be pointing out the UK's evident role in provocations. Of course only an unprovoked attack triggers the NATO article allowing NATO countries to be called in to help. UK must be foolishly thinking USA is in it with us. The UK must think it will win and get a return on the huge investment it would entail to engage a superpower in actual war (or effectively war). Maybe it is eyeing the natural resources in Ukraine and even maybe those in Russia thinking it could get a share. Oh dear. oh dear. Thinking this is politicians blindly leading the blind: Then I remember the biblical passages about how evil spirits led kings into fighting wars these kings would only lose - as punishment from God. They might seem to be mad, our leaders, but the reality is that it is not just the mind that gets unhealthy but our spirit can get cranky too and we can be given badness at a spirit level as punishment by God, and this bad spirited state of unhealthiness can indeed lead leaders into losing battles. Oh dear, oh dear. It could be worse than madness and inner blindness.
The UK blindly follows blind leaders in various walks of life. These leaders have personality issues which compel them to get the minutiae 'right' in a way that hardly matters while they make huge mistakes that can even cost people their lives. The people like to have leaders who are like themselves and largely the people are similarly dysfunctional so these leaders are a comfort to their egos and they just keep on following them. Others in turn follow these people, others such as their clients, their children, people in their care, and they all go off towards the nearest cliff, oblivious to their folly and predicament. Such is what I notice about the UK which matches the teachings and warnings of that great teacher Jesus Christ. He taught that the desk workers and administrative function people, in his time they were called scribes and Sadducees, were what he called hypocrites who strained out the gnat but swallowed the camel and were blind guides so people should leave them, not follow them. This seems to be the problem today with a nation that is made largely of desk job workers guiding, managing, advising everyone else, so all together walk into a ditch, oblivious to what is actually up ahead as they do what seems 'right' to them without actually looking where it leads. The outcome is going to end badly for the UK and for the blind countries taking the lead from the UK and the West in general.
Communion is a sacred rite in Christian denominations but is quite varied in how it is practiced. The first time I took communion in a Catholic Church I had just professed to a street evangelist in the church my need to receive afresh the message of Christ having been crucified for me. He had been preaching it in the shopping centre and I went with him into this nearby church building which was Catholic. We went to the front row and there he prayed for me, out loud, and then asked me to pray aloud. The gospel message had sunk in so much that it was as if I had never heard it before, even though I had been in a church all my life and had been a leader in Christian circles. I knew my biggest sin had been a compulsion to lie and give a better that true impression of myself. Now as I prayed aloud, there was a power in my voice I never knew before or since, but as soon as I started to revert to my lying, self-exalting way of speaking in the prayer, the power went away. When I prayed humbly and honestly it came back. This went on a few minutes maybe. I think the voice I had when filled with the heavenly power must have resounded in the church and people nearby were having a service. The evangelist took me to join the service just in time for communion. Now it was like taking my first communion even though I had been baptised and taken communion many times before. This was new, a new me. The lying habit was getting broken. I had a resolve to please heaven’s power by keeping the fellowship of the power by only telling the truth. I was given both bread and wine. This is a bit unusual for some. Sometimes both bread and wine is protected in its sanctity by only being offered in exceptional circumstances in some Catholic churches under some bishops. I did not know this till recently. My profession that moment earlier meant that this was an exceptional circumstance anyway as I was under special holy influence and had not sinned wilfully against it so I was free to receive both bread and wine, both body and blood of Christ. It is clear to me now as I learn about Catholic communion. In Eastern Orthodox and in Protestant churches the bread and wine are usually given. That is what I had been used to. It is all a depiction of the crucifixion of Lord Jesus Christ. The power in my inner being which affected my voice and taught me honest speech was in response to my open acceptance of a simple message from heaven “Christ died for you” and my hope in response to it of cleansing from my sins. The power continued a day or so longer and kept teaching me until my lying habit was broken. It gradually faded over coming days but my habit changed by then to one of persistence in speaking truthfully. Heaven has a language of truth. Lies, said Jesus, are the language of the devil. The message of the cross brings power to switch language and learn to speak only truth despite having been compelled to lie previously. Such is God’s power. Power is in the gospel message Christ died for you. He did. It is hope for you, if you simply receive it. The Communion depicts this sacrificial death for sins, shedding body and blood in Christ’s crucifixion. Heaven has come to us. God has supplied a mediator, who is a lamb sacrificed to take away the sins of the world, yours and mine. Let us keep the feast in holiness.