We’re in a world that hides information if it doesn’t fit the prevailing government narrative, or if it proves what government did was wrong and damaging, or it exposes the real motives of corporations that continue to sell us a bill of goods as “safe and effective,” while understating and even ignoring the multiple millions of people known to be suffering from adverse effects. 

The creativity and ingenuity these “hiders” give to excuses, cover-ups, and lies is formidable. So for someone seeking accurate, up-to-date research and data to enable INFORMED consent, he or she soon discovers it’s a minefield of censorship, accusations of spreading misinformation and hate, being publicly branded as a racist, extremist, terrorist, anti-science activist and conspiracy theorist, or of being a white supremacist Nazi, a threat to the economy, and amazingly even a misogynist.      

You can’t help but be suspicious, therefore, that with all this aggressive vitriol the powers-that-be are trying to hide something. 

But let’s give governments and corporations the benefit of the doubt and assume they have our best interests in mind. They have a problem, however, because what they believe to be in our best interests may not be what we believe or agree to. And that risks protest, panic and even revolution. So I can see why they feel justified in not making their plans too public. 

But they can’t hide what they’re doing forever, because their dream of some sort of global, planet-saving utopia will involve massive change and a lot of people will suffer, as many already are. And that means the hiders have to get even more creative in their cover-ups. 

But give them credit, they are very good at it. History also shows, however, that we’re not that difficult to deceive: I mean, we think celebrities and politicians – and even the media (gasp) – are telling the truth. 

So I accept I can be deceived too – and Jesus did warn us that we could be (Matthew 24:24). But there’s a warning for the hiders too, in Hebrew 4:13, that “there is no creature hidden from God’s sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”      

I wonder how long it will be until God calls the justice systems in our western nations to account. And just so they know what to expect when he does, there’s a Psalm explaining exactly what God is ticked off at – in all judges, including those God assigned as judges in the spirit realm (the meaning of “gods” in Psalm 82:1?) 

Human or spirit, verse 1, “God calls the judges into his courtroom” (The Message). So the first point all judges need to note is: they are not the ultimate authority. They can be called to account by a court far superior to theirs, that “puts all the judges in the dock” (verse 1).

So please picture yourselves, dear judges, in the dock with God presiding as your judge. And he’s not a happy judge either. He yells at you, “Enough,” or perhaps to get the point across more personally: I, God, have had enough of you miserable specimens, because, verse 2, “You’ve corrupted justice long enough.” And fittingly, a revealing book just came out with the title, “Justice corrupted,” describing our present day arrogant judges and lawless prosecutors intimidating and silencing anyone standing in the way of their agenda, including distraught parents speaking up for their children. 

To which God says, “You’re here (all those of you involved in the justice system) to defend the defenceless, to make sure that underdogs get a fair break, to stand up for the powerless, and prosecute all those who exploit them,” verses 3-4.    

“That’s what I commissioned you judges for, each one of you, to be my personal deputies,” verse 6. “But you’ve betrayed your commission,” so – and here comes God’s indictment of these “Ignorant judges,” as he calls them in verse 5 – “you’re now stripped of your rank, busted.” 

To which Asaph, the author of Psalm 82, writes: “O God, give them their just desserts.” Give them what they deserve. Or as another translation phrases verse 8: “Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are your inheritance.” In other words, we’re trusting you, God, to be the judge of those responsible for taking care of us, since all nations are under your jurisdiction.

So thanks for the reminder, Asaph, that God sees all, and there is a point in time when he calls corrupt judges to account. And if not now, then for certain on the day God has set aside in Acts 17:31, “when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed,” the risen Son of God. 

Jesus made some extraordinary claims about himself that, if true, would be good reason for taking him seriously. Like the claim he made in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

Well, if we don’t believe it, do we have good reason not to? Yes, if Jesus was a fictional character from a fake book supposedly written by people who really lived, but didn’t. Because no human being has the power to give people life after they die; or that by simply believing in him means death has no hold over us. Only a delusional, rather sick person would make promises like that.

But there is this person in history who did make promises like that, that if true are well worth taking seriously, because they answer two bothersome questions: “What’s the point of life if it only ends in death?” And “If there is life after death, how do we know there is?” And maybe a third question, “What kind of life is it if, by chance, we do come back to life again?” 

Well, Jesus answered all three: first of all, that life doesn’t end in death. Secondly, we can know there’s life after death because we can experience it in our lives now; and, thirdly, we can know what kind of life we’ll come back to because of the life he came back to after he, as a human just like us, died.

It’s the second of those three points I would challenge first, because how on earth can we experience our life after death now? 

The simple answer given in 1 John 3:14 is that “we know we’ve passed from death to life because we love others as our brothers and sisters.” And added to that in verse 15: “Anyone who doesn’t love is as good as dead.” In other words, “life” in our experience as humans, now and forever, temporary or eternal, comes down to the same thing: where love is, life is. And where love isn’t, life isn’t.  

Experiencing love, then, is experiencing eternal life. So there are probably tons of our fellow humans who, with no knowledge or interest in the Bible or God, are experiencing a taste of eternal life. And if they only knew the kind of love Jesus has, and is quite willing to share with us too, their experience of eternal life would become greater still. Good enough reason, I would think, for taking Jesus seriously.     

Part 9, King Ahaz (Part 8, Feb 24)

Imagine being king Ahaz, terrified at the prospect of powers beyond his control about to destroy his nation – much like some of us may feel today faced with powers beyond our control threatening to wreck our world as well. So is there something in this story of Ahaz that has meaning for us too? 

God, for instance, gave Ahaz clues in children’s names and locations that spelled out clearly what he would do for Ahaz and his nation. One clue being the sign God gave to Ahaz to prove that he, God, could be trusted to deal with Ahaz’s dread and remove what was causing it (Isaiah 7:16), the sign being a child born whose name would be Immanuel (verse 14). 

Well, it didn’t mean much to Ahaz, but another child called Immanuel would be born 700 years later, who would take people’s minds back to this child in Isaiah, because Matthew quotes this verse from Isaiah when applying it to the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:23). So, what might seem like a rather obscure sign in Isaiah for Ahaz, suddenly jumps out of its context as a sign of another Immanuel sent by God – and for the same reason, to rescue and save God’s people.    

And this is where the location – that God had Ahaz meet with Isaiah at – also jumps out of its context for us today. 

The meeting spot was “at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Fuller’s Field,” Isaiah 7:3. So a stream of water flowing down from a Pool meaning ‘the blessing of the most High’ was made use of by ‘fullers’ to wash their woollen cloth clean of all dirt and other debris, and along with some serious pounding turn their cloth into something long lasting, protective against the elements, and a pleasure to wear. 

The message for Ahaz clearly being that God would do all these things for Ahaz to turn him from being a scaredy-cat and a weakling into a strong, confident, and inspiring leader for his people – if, that is, Ahaz believed him. 

Ahaz didn’t, but God didn’t end the story of Ahaz there, because the Immanuel pictured by Isaiah appeared again, yelling out to the crowd at the temple in John 7:38-39, “Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit.” 

A flowing stream of water, eh? Just like the stream of water flowing down from the Upper Pool as a blessing from the Most High for Ahaz. And here it was again. But would we catch the meaning of it?….(part 10, March 10)

Part 1 – Demonic

The word “demonic” describes unexplainable madness. Witness the maniacal weirdos who want to normalize adults being sexually attracted to children; or even worse, normalizing children being sexually attracted to adults. Or drug companies trying to get babies and toddlers injected with an experimental gene changing drug with known adverse affects, some of which will affect those children for the rest of their lives – that children didn’t even need in the first place too. So whose insane idea was that? 

The Old Testament answers that question for us in Psalm 106:37, “They sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons.” The insane idea of sacrificing one’s child, in mind or body, is directly attributable to demons. Because it’s what demons want. Like the young boy “possessed by a spirit” in Mark 9:17, that robbed the poor child of speech and threw him to the ground, mouth foaming, teeth gnashing, and body rigid (verse 18). A spirit did that, a demon, willingly and insanely destroying a child. 

And who on earth would want to destroy a child? It’s an unexplainable madness. It’s the kind of madness that has a lot of people scratching their heads nowadays as to how wrecking children’s lives has become so acceptable. Witness the maniacal weirdos who, with little research into the long-term impact of puberty blockers on children’s fertility and ability to have children of their own, introduce medical interventions for children wishing to gender transition anyway. In other words, throw the kids in the deep end and see what happens. And if the damage turns out to be irreversible….well, demons wouldn’t care about that, would they?  

But didn’t God have children killed too? Yes, to get the point across that there are terrible consequences on the innocent when stupid adults ignore and reject God. And what more proof of that do we need than madmen today committing their nations to war? Because who suffers most? Thousands and millions of children. 

So is there a reason we can pinpoint for such unexplainable madness? There is in Scripture: it’s because “the whole world is under the control of the evil one,” 1 John 5:19 – “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient,” Ephesians 2:2. 

(Part 2 on Luciferian – Thursday, March 9)

The devil never gives up because of his hate for God’s children. Adam, for instance, was “the son of God,” Luke 3:38, so what was evil’s reaction to that? “A child of God, eh? We’ll see about that,” and went about getting Adam to NOT act like God’s son at all. And it worked, because how could Adam be a true son of God when he neither obeyed God or trusted him?   

Having nailed the first Adam, the devil was at it again to nail the second Adam – by trying to get Jesus not acting like God’s Son too. He tried three ridiculous, but potentially ruinous temptations, two of them prefaced with the snarky, “If you are the Son of God,” Matthew 4:3,6.

The devil’s objective was to prove Jesus wasn’t the Son of God. But why was that so important? Because, John 1:12, “to all who believed him (Jesus) and accepted him (as the Son of God), he (God) gave the right to become his children.” At stake here, therefore, was humans becoming God’s children for believing in Jesus being the Son of God.

But why would the devil not want that happening? Because, John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” Belief in Jesus being the Son of God means that humans will be indestructible. So the devil has to come up with something to stop it.

But how? Well, there was one way of stopping it, because “anyone born of God does not continue to sin,” 1 John 5:18. Bingo, just get Christians sinning, then, because, 1 John 3:10, “Anyone who doesn’t do what’s right isn’t a child of God.” Couldn’t be any clearer, could it? 

So, how to get Christians sinning? There’s a clue for that too, in 1 John 3:7, when John writes, “Dear children, don’t let anyone lead you astray.” Ah, so it’s not getting Christians to commit a blatant and obvious sin, it’s getting us to wander off the path without realizing it. And the devil has all sorts of ways of making that happen, like pride, distraction, delusion, etc., so how can we paltry humans stand up against his cunning? 

Fortunately, John asks and answers that question for us in 1 John 5:5. “Who is it that overcomes the world (and the devil’s cunning use of it against us)?” Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God,” because, verse 11, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” And because we believe that, “This is the assurance we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us,” verse 14. 

So when the devil’s at it again with his ridiculous, but potentially ruinous temptations to lead us astray, we’ve got a Father who very much appreciates our belief in his Son, which he will prove by keeping us on track when we ask him.    

There is no evidence anywhere in the New Testament that church attendance in a church building is required for the proper worship of God. One has to wonder, then, why so much money has been spent on building churches to meet in, especially when Acts 7:48 and 17:24 both say, “the most High does not dwell in temples made with (human) hands.”

On the other hand, doesn’t Hebrews 10:25 say we should “not give up meeting together”? And how can you do that without a building, especially in the middle of winter?

But when the church began there were no official buildings for that first crop of Christians to meet in. And the Holy Spirit didn’t tell them to construct or meet in buildings either. What the Holy Spirit did inspire was the desire to meet together, but how did they do it without a building?

To begin with, in Acts 2:46, they met every day in “the temple courts,” none of which were enclosed buildings. Solomon’s Porch, their most likely place of meeting, was open to the public. So they didn’t feel the need to isolate or lock themselves away in a “consecrated” spot or building. 

So where did the idea of Christians having to meet in consecrated buildings come from? Is it a throwback to the Old Testament, perhaps? David, for instance, wanted a proper building for God to dwell in, which God sanctioned but he never required or commanded it, nor did he command any other building or temple to be built. It was also a God-given custom for the Israelites to meet on specific days at places of his choosing (Deuteronomy 12:11). But Jesus changed all that in John 4:20-24 when he told the Samaritan woman at the well that God was no longer into “holy places” anymore, because “true worshippers” would now be “worshipping the Father in Spirit and in Truth.”

Do Christians no longer need to meet together at all, then? Well, the very meaning of ekklesia, the word for “church” in the New Testament, means getting together to “reason” things out (Acts 18:4,19 and 19:8-10), involving lots of dialogue and discussion, everyone involved (Acts 15:22) – just like the good old days in Acts 2:42 when they all got together to study and discuss the apostles’ teaching.

But how much of that happens in a typical “church service” today? Is it the building, then, that’s become “the church,” or what ekklesia originally meant?  

Jesus said he’d build his church. But are institutions, buildings, doctrines, customs, rituals, disciplines and forms of worship, what define the word “church” in Scripture? 

No, 1 Corinthians 12:27. The church, quite simply, is “the body of Christ.” It is not a body of people, nor a people-created institution, or anything of our making. It is Christ’s body.

But when did Christ ever have a body? 

It’s when “The Word became flesh,” John 1:14. That’s when Christ took on a natural human body so that in that body he could redeem, heal, reconcile and transform all humanity into a new creation, a new humanity. He was the first of this new creation to exist, and now in his resurrected, ascended position beside the Father, he’s re-creating his church in the same image. 

That’s why the church is called the body of Christ. It’s of the same bodily humanity he is, restored in the image of God. Jesus was the first to accomplish this in his own human body, and now through his church he’s establishing the new humanity of the future.

The church, then, is the earthly reality of this new humanity. That’s why Jesus preached the Kingdom of God wherever he went, because the new humanity had begun, first in his own human body and then in his church body, starting with the apostles and continuing in all those the Spirit unites to Christ after that. 

The church, therefore, is the means by which the Kingdom of God, the new creation and the new humanity, are making their way into all the world, so that every human being eventually has the chance to share in it. And those who are sharing it already are the church.

The church, then, is living proof that what God sent Jesus to this Earth for is actually happening. God sent Jesus to live the new humanity. So that’s what Jesus did, and still does. He lived the new humanity in his own human body first, and now he re-lives it through the centuries in his church body. And those in whom he’s re-living it are the church, regardless of whether they attend a people-created building, or not, because the church is the body of Christ, not a human creation.

Digital ID is a worldwide electronic data management platform designed to know everything about us. It tracks our medical history, social media posts, bank accounts, credit cards, taxes, voting, shopping history, internet search history, and where we go, live, and work, etc. 

Putting aside concerns about invasion of privacy, fraud, identity theft, abuse of personal data, and governments seeking to control every move and transaction we make – and, of course, whoever administers the digital ID most likely making a right old mess of things (as usual) – I can see the need for a global “knowing” about people for security and ease of interaction. But can anyone be truly trusted with such personal information about us, and can they really know who we truly are and what makes us tick? 

I’m glad, then, that God does, because he surely knows everything there is to know about us that needs to be known, and he certainly isn’t going to abuse it. I can have absolute confidence that he will gear whatever he knows about me for my benefit. Which the writer of Psalm 139 obviously felt too, because in verse 1 he’s thrilled that God knows him. At least someone knows who he truly is and what makes him tick. And it’s not scary to him either. He knows he’s in the hands of a loving, kind and extremely wise data management platform. 

“O Lord,” he cries out, “you have searched me and you know me.” Well, at least someone has the time and ability to do that, because who else do we know who can do it? We can putter through years of marriage and friendships and know bits about each other – but a deliberate, investigative, full-blooded search to know everything? 

And who but God can know every time “I sit down and get up,” verse 2, and what I’m up to when I’m still or moving around, as well? He’s got it all tracked to the last detail. He even knows “my thoughts from afar.” No electronic ID system necessary, no data tracking mechanism, no microchip in my brain to detect what I’m thinking, no spy in the sky or hidden cameras in phone, TV or computer watching my every move, and no sound detectors in flowerpots and light fixtures to hear my every word. But God: well, he knows “all my ways,” verse 3, and even what I’m thinking before I’ve even thunked it, verse 4. 

It’s quite a system God’s got, the dream, I imagine, of any well meaning globalists seeking to protect us from harm, and help us work together more effectively. But God’s already set it up, and it’s working perfectly, so why not tap into it instead?   

In John 17:9 Jesus makes the rather startling statement, “I pray not for the world.” It seems to fly in the face of John 3:16, that “God so loved the world,” and verse 17, that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Why, then, would Jesus not pray for the world he was sent to save?

Because – as Jesus himself explains in verse 19 – “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.” Why bother praying for people who love being evil, have no interest in being saved from evil, don’t want anything to do with Jesus, whose minds are tightly shut against any glimmer of light entering in case their “evil deeds are exposed,” verse 20? It’s like talking to, or praying for, a brick wall.

But – as Jesus also explains in John 17:6 – in amongst all those brick walls the Father had selected a few people “out of the world” and “you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.” It was in the Father’s plan to have some people recognize “that everything you (Father) have given me comes from you,” so that when Jesus gave them the words the Father had given him they would accept them, verse 8, and  know “with certainty that I came from you,” and “that you sent me.” And these are the people Jesus was praying for in verse 9: “I pray for them, I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.”

This is where Jesus’ attention was concentrated; it was totally on revealing his Father and his Father’s words to those whom his Father had chosen. Jesus acknowledged that it was just to these select few that the Father had granted him the authority to “give eternal life to” (verse 2), and just in the minds of these few that the brick wall of rejecting him had been broken down, and just these few that the Father had sent him to teach. And this alone was “the work” the Father had given him to do (verse 4), to teach and pray for those the Father had given him at that time.

Jesus also acknowledged in verse 20 that his work of teaching and praying for those his Father selected would continue through the centuries, because this was the way the whole world would come to “believe that you have sent me” – not by Jesus praying for the world, but by praying for his disciples.