Author: talyah@ichthusandouroboros

I stand at the disposal of the fame and word of my lord. So I will bring his weapons to bear. The enemy shows no spiritual strength nor true stability in their weapons. Let the storm cover all the lands! -Sharrum-bani (the Sage of the Assembly)

This vision explained is a prologue of significance for the future. Designated by the Most High, the man emerging from the sea to honor a remnant who will rescue and safeguard many others for His ordained and renewed creation signals the disruptive ingress of a long-foretold period of redemption and disclosure. The man’s anomalous yet modest method of overcoming adversaries is without the use of conventional forces or human weapons. Disciplined by his God, instead he rises through innate powers of spirit and truth to introduce a transformative era when the Spirit allows consequences to befall a dark world as evidence of His disdain for peoples’ ego-centric prophecies and polluting dogmas spuing from self-centered political desires and blasphemous religious natures.

The concomitant bewilderment and conflicts among the devolving, tribal peoples choosing disobedient regression into ignorance and greed to destroy creation and murder all life warrant the tumultuous times that lie ahead. They brought it upon themselves, as they were too disordered to know that “there’s dead, then there’s dead.” Nor did they know how, when, or why to strike the strong man. They did not know the man who swam upon the waters and negotiated the storms because they did not know the One who walked on waters, stilled the storms, raised and sent the man. The events plotted in the vision portend substantial revelations embodied by a secondary figure whose emergence from the chaos of gentile passions, symbolized by a man rising from the heart of the sea, demarcates an inflection point in the Creator’s unfolding cosmic narrative.

Παράδος

You learn to know a pilot in a storm. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has ignored the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace in? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.”

A Loyal Instructor’s Thanksgiving to God

I give thanks to You, O Lord, for You have placed me in the bosom of the living and You protect me from all the snares of the pit. Ruthless men curse my life, while I hold fast to Your witness and promise. Theirs’ is the fraudulent council for the congregation of Belial; they refuse to know that my appointment is from You, that by Your mercies You save my life, for my very steps are about You. Their abuse throughout my life is from You, so that You might be honored by the judgment of the wicked, and that You might display Your might against the children of men, for I stand in Your mercy. And I endured mighty men scheming against me, they have surrounded me with all their weapons of war and the tailing birds of prey. Arrows burst forth unceasingly as the blades of their dark works devour all creation with toxic fire. Like the roar of mighty waters is the clamor of their noxious voices, a vile cloudburst, and a murderous downpour to destroy many. Wickedness and blasphemies burst forth to the stars when their waves pile high. As for me, though my heart melts like water, my soul shall hold fast to Your renewing covenant. But as for them, the net that they spread for me will catch their own foot. And snares, which they hid to take my life, they themselves fell into. All-the-while, “my feet stand on solid rock. Far from their congregation I will bless Your name.”

I give thanks to You, O Lord, for Your eye broods over my soul, and You have delivered me from the jealousy of the mediators of lies and from the congregation of those who seek flattery. You have redeemed the soul of the poor one, whom they planned to put to an end, pouring out his blood because he served You. Because they did not know that my steps are directed by You, they appointed me too for shame and scorn in the mouth of all those who seek deceit. But You, my God, have helped the soul of the destitute and the defenseless against ones stronger than he. You have redeemed my soul from the hands of their world’s mighty men. In the midst of their reviling, You have not terrified me, that I might abandon Your service for fear of ruin at the hands of the wicked, or exchange a steadfast mind from You for their selfish delusions. By Your statutes and by the testimonies of holy ones, You established me to strengthen those weak in spirit-life and for the destruction for all offspring of the strong in world-flesh. You shape my tongue according Your teachings and renew a right mind in me. You have washed my hands, feet, and face. You have made my face to shine for You and all Your intimates, with eternal glory together. Even our enemies will know You as the Living God.

Odyssey of the Bailiff

There was an unimpeachable judge who had a big day, actually many big days on the docket approaching quickly, happening everyday in fact. The judge was very disturbed by the nature and type of accounts and testimonies that embodied charges and counter-charges, ridiculous suits and countersuits. But much worse was the heinous denial of accountability by those on the docket who claimed they were free from liability. They even proclaimed that they had an extra-special deal with the judge. Most of those even had the mendacity to say that they knew him personally. But there was just one problem, the judge, who never forgot anyone, didn’t recognize many of them. Much worse, many appealed to familial bonds because of their outward physical appearance, and it was clear, even to one of the judge’s first brothers, that they didn’t know how to look in a mirror nor did they know the judge’s family truth: family members were related only by their inner, soul similarities and obedience to their father, not a litany of superficial acts made with a nod and wink which may have a thousand meanings each, as both those gestures might be born from other motivations and many dark matters.

So the judge, being renowned for his gracious disposition, even among the liars and self-deceived apparently, decided to be gracious yet again. The judge sent out a bailiff into the halls and waiting rooms to better prepare them. He selected a friend, a brother, and a soul who acknowledged his great debt to the judge in obedience to their dad. Most importantly, the elect bailiff physically came from the people who seemed to be most misguided, and he desired nothing more than to exhaust his life, in real and practical ways, among as many other peoples that the judge loved dearly but suffered most at the selfish hands and hateful souls of those who claimed to be holy just as he had, long-ago to the east, when he himself walked the halls and waiting rooms.

Now this perfect judge could only select an imperfect bailiff, as he alone was uniquely perfect among humanity. In fact, it was due to his singularity that he was the judge. So, the bailiff, while not singular, was anomalous in a couple of ways. And for a long time in his youth, the bailiff falsely believed that it was this anomalousity that was the problem, for he had the scares and wounds to prove it, which in turn led to some adjustment disorders from time to time. But through his many dangers, toils, and snares the judge, unbeknown to the bailiff, reformed his agent’s heart and renewed him in order to reveal the true luminosity of the judge to people with dark desires, who fooled themselves with a corrupt world of their own making. It wasn’t what most people wanted to see. And for a longtime, as a young man, the bailiff took it personally to falsely believe that he was actually the real problem.

It was a huge problem, especially for a plurality of those he came out of; but in mid-life, the one dispatched came to realize that it was not his problem. At least it was not his problem to solve. Like the judge before him, the vast majority of his own people rejected him. It is true, no matter the time or how perfect the messenger might be, most people only want what they want. And they are taught to be that way by their own powers that be and idols (along with the fallen powers behind those liars) what to want. And that last bit of information was, is, and will be in the end, the eternal problem for many. They are deluded about who they actually serve. That willful ignorance is not just a personal issue for their sentencing in the docket, it has murderous effects outside the court, in the halls they increasingly darken. It is a reality that most other people see clearly, but the former people’s beloved fallen powers teach them to choose shiny, terminal corruption and a strong suicidal misbelief about who they really are and what they are actually doing.

This caused great pain for the bailiff trip after trip after trip, but in debrief after debrief the judge proved to his officer, in real and demonstratable ways (I mean we’re talking massive and undeniable ways), that this experience had been his too. But being gracious, the training had been elongated in duration and even punctuated by joys that the Instructor never himself enjoyed, at least not yet. Believe me, they had many discussions, some pointed, about which experience was preferable. But in the end, it was the judge who had to be perfect. The bailiff would be the first to admit he was never perfect, often he had celebrated and reveled in those many imperfections with glee, and at these times the judge handed his bailiff over to theirself, released him in love just as he had with his followers who walked with him when he was in the halls and outer courts… So, it was the requirements of character that set the casting, that had always been the plan. Again, the bailiff reasoned a complex problem from a simple solution that it was impossible for him to be perfectly like his benefactor, so what was the dang point of all the suffering?!

The perfect trainer answered that pained question perfectly, after a very, very, very long time. Turns out it wasn’t all about helping or healing or guiding or consoling the people. That was certainly important, but the judge was preparing the bailiff too for a plan that they both knew and discussed often, but as an act of love and grace, had left some plot points to adjust (a kind bump here or challenging nudge there) based on conditions on the ground when the right time came along. In due course, the bailiff’s mind and heart were set right but then his gut had to be renewed too. So all the painful experiences of being handed over to himself that went before, even his exuberance in ignorance that demanded disciplinary action, like the people he came from, was actually a requirement so that he could closely identify with those people, even many more people, who were nothing like them, and therefore woefully ill-prepared for the courtroom. The judge hoped they, like he, would accept it and grow. But even these perfect gifts and indomitable experiences, still evoked concern every time, like a thorn in the spirit, when he met many people, and he met a lot of people… one observer in the halls said this “semi-charmed life” reminded them of Forest Gump, and the court’s man accepted it in stride, after all he too really loved Dr Pepper.

This was the weight of pure Kingdom-life walking along the sunken creosote streets of death in the world. The problem, the issue before the court for those that claim to know the judge personally, is that the bailiff’s experience and desires should have been normative, not anomalous. This sober realization caused even more, but finally, “balanced” concern for the bailiff. So there remained some disturbance but none too much anymore. For what the judge said when investing his ward with implicit trust enabled his brother’s courtly peace and serenity among the outer court chaos and calamities, “remember there’s only one person in the end authorized by me to say ‘all rise.'”

The bailiff took some pleasure in the judge’s reminder because it sounded just like what their father told the bailiff before, when feeling trepidation on a separate but corresponding mission, which the son knew very little about… “Only one priest is authorized by me to announce a couple married for the first time.” Then the bailiff was sent to guide the willing between the old end and the new beginning. It was hard duty, for few would be willing to accept the preparation, but his brother and father said, “if it were easy anyone could do it.” Also both summed-up their support for their man together, that if they could only trust a person with “certain people” and people they liked, then really, they couldn’t trust that person with anyone. But since the bailiff could be trusted with “nobodies” and even enemies, then they could trust their agent with everyone. In memorial, it still makes the bailiff cry, probably always will.

I find great comfort today in the fact that if I am doing what the one Who Is orders, then I can know that I am never alone, no matter what mighty men with their multi-year deals wrapped in golden chains shout out in cruelty from their towers. Lest I forget, I keep a worn box (a large box) of old letters, news clippings, and a few pics around just to reinforce His lesson in my life. The truth of what I said and did, and then what happened, all their cold rains in response. I watched it all. I felt it all. All so now I know, even in my guts, that if you acknowledge soul dependency on the God and follow Jesus as your lord living as an example thankfully as often as you might, and always without contingencies, you will make this passage. We have challenging and chaotic terrain to cover for an appreciable duration. So let us begin: dive, swim, and breathe.

Prescript: As a nobody, I met Derek when he was already a somebody. He treated me most graciously. Since then, he sacrificed his status and reputation among more dubious fruit-inspectors merely for trying to reach people that they use as whipping posts in their religious ceremonies. By living like Jesus, he insulted their gods and the myths they believe to justify their ritual hatred. I understand his sacrificial service, like Christ. They rage at it his sacrifice. Unfortunately, I understand their feelings too, their fruits, as they wear the mark of Cain, for hate is their liturgy to worship in cruelty.

Επεισόδια

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.– Martin Luther

My lord and my God together told me, “When you speak fairly, people will call Us unjust. And when you speak justly, people will call Us unfair. Therefore, let the hard words be Ours, your lips are clean.” I respond simply and always, “let it be.” All that I asked my God and my lord was to make my tongue be as soft as They desire, yet still able to slay dragons, now and forever by Their leave.

Dear readers, some among you may think that I am prosecution for the Court. I am definitively not that. I am defianablely the anti-prosecutor. I am about what any good counsel does before their clients’ days in court. There is a Higher Purpose at work, even if you don’t see it. Our hope is you will see that One Day. So whatever I say here, no matter how much it displeases your tastes or disturbs your feelings, is all to prevent any of you from realizing too late that you served the prosecutor here in the world either out of delusion, selfishness, or in simple willfulness.

I am deeply pained that for many of you as this will be the last moment of preparation that I am allowed with you. This is the letter I never wanted to write. It is an agony to me. In times like these I recall what an admiral, a highly decorated and classically educated instructor from the National War College, told me about burdens of service, “Young man, everyone wants to be a captain until it’s time to do captain shit.”

If my lord had done nothing and our Father said nothing, then I was happy to let people figure out things more slowly, even on their own, but that was not their choice. From those that were DOR’d, by their own will, it is my last will and testament for you that many of the multitudes of misled followers will be standing between the Gate and the Alter, ultimately.

For those that misled and continue to mislead, for whatever rationalization you think you have… In sum, all I am free to say directly to you now, apart from my witness today, is that you are without Excuse and free to do as you please. I confess to you now, that all my life I have taken pride in never telling anyone that they had no hope, for better or worse. May God forgive me.

To the least and those who stayed true this far, you have stayed the course for rescue, well done. But the next exercise before you is real and present. I desire nothing more than to remain among you and do what little I might do for you with real love to the point of death. But God help us, that is not His plan, so I may do no other…

Therefore

It was plain for me to see that Americans take their religion seriously. When I arrived there so long ago, I was fascinated with all the churches I came across. And then I found one fellowship serving only by the whole-life healing Power of the Creator, the Spirit of an anonymous God. I was there to introduce all the others to this God so they could worship wisely, not foolishly as idolaters, and to know Who you’re dealing with.

He Is, the God who ordered His good creation and everything in it, this Master of sky, land and sea doesn’t live in swanky edifices or need people building nations in their idea of His image… as if he couldn’t take care of any of that himself! He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him! Starting in the beginning, by his orders, he re-ordered chaos to draw out what he said was good.

He formed all peoples for benediction and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote. He’s very near. We live and move in Him. I can’t get away from Him! One of your poets said it well: ‘We’re the God-created.’ Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think we could hire human wall builders of violence to chisel out their cruel and fallen human beliefs concerning godliness from the world for us, or anyone else, does it?!

God overlooks it as long as you don’t know any better—but that time is past! The Unnamed is now known, and He’s called for a radical life-change but was met by towering rejection. So, He has now set a day when the entire human race will be judged and all things righteousified no matter the cost. And He has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead.

I know that many of you said, “Let’s do this again. We want to hear more.” There’s everything left for you, but that will come later. For those who split at “raising him from the dead,” those who doubted or laughed at me and walked off making jokes, bless you, I’ve told you the truth in the right Spirit, but you are free to go.

Legacy of the World

Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it.

You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to. You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way.

You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that “he’s a fiercely jealous lover.” And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find. It’s common knowledge that “God goes against the willful proud; God gives grace to the willing humble.”

So let God work his will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch him make himself scarce. Say a quiet yes to God and he’ll be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet.

Before Noah and the great flood there was a “lesser flood” and character, Enosh. He is not well-defined and he knew pagans well too, like Melchizedek. Moreover, depending on how you translate an ambiguous Hebrew verb, Enosh either honored God or profaned him. If he worshipped the Most High, then he knew pagans from those who truly honored the one Who is, which is also like Melchizedek, whose name alone presents a gnarly interpretive issue (but that’s for later). The point now is that they are ambiguous by time, space, and interpretation, so that peoples’ faith might grow, knowing that the divinity you honor in reality always manifests in your world. It is the Divine difference that makes all the difference for life.

I can understand that for political utility many today chose to render the verb a certain direction. But the earliest and wisest dragomans debated the issue about Enosh. Fortunately, we do not need to solve that problem today. What is important now is to understand that in Enosh’s day, within the days of Noah, groups began to worship communally the true Name, therefore the spiritual character and true power of God was known to be different, at least to a few. All had faith in those days, but too many had faith in other gods. The story of Enosh and Melchizedek, among other ambiguous ambassadors, is God’s pleasure to highlight the differences between Himself and his people in relief against the backdrop all the fallen gods and their peoples.

“Great right?!” Not so fast goldfish; let us tread in the depth of this key but almost universally overlooked vignette. What we can be certain of, then and now, is that even when God is actually known to people there’s always groups who get God very wrong. As in the beginning, from the advent of communal worship some jugheads are already piling up wrath for themselves by heaping up suffering on others. I know it is a bit of a bummer, but that is the life exercise that we are given, by our master today and our God, from east of Eden to here. Moreover, this plot point aligns perfectly with the course of humanity’s descent from the Garden to Noah. So let us backstroke a bit, to the beginning and lap back and dive down a minute.  

Eve and Adam got together and decided to “re-interpret” (their corrupting the power to revise their recent history) what God clearly told them. Of course, many people, especially those who dislike accountability, want to blame a serpentine creature. Now, the problem is not just that they put their collective wants before God’s by refusing to obey him or even to later own it and repent, which is very human, we’ve all done it and do it. No, spiritually speaking, they had custodial authority, stewardship power, entrusted to them from God to be exercised wisely, rightly, his focused way –over the animal spirits which human flesh was and is connected with, at an intimate level. That connection must be managed purely (knowing good from bad) in whole health for life, not giving into self-will run riot. A human life run on craving kills everything.

Craving more, they chose a lie together, lethal practical theology, because they wanted something God said to avoid in their face. That personal and social human volition, even in the garden, was already so self-centered that all it took was the lowest of creatures to hiss, “Ah, God does not really mean what he said. He really does not want what is best for you. Trust in me instead.” This is how the enemy would reap by rape communion, praise, and worship to himself so that he could kill the people who followed him, steal God’s treasure, and destroy the Garden. The conspirators were cursed and ushered east of Eden, to a time and place where there was a long road just to reach the path to life, which would become even more narrow and difficult, amid the wide world of broad corruptions to death where all creation would suffer for the vanity of humanity, being led by that old fallen serpent and his minions of darkness.

How stupid would people have to be to fall into the trap of wanting to “unleash the animal spirits” today out of personal desires contrary to God’s, even after we have received God in flesh and written books as references for discernment to navigate the narrow way of our master, the Lord of Life? Well people today, like Adam and Eve, have messed about and they are finding out. The in-group club, the heads, believe they are safe, but that’s the biggest lie. All of the serpent dies, in its last hour from its first moment of madness. The critical point is when it begins consuming its least part, its tail. As its tail dies, its head believes it’s alive for a time. But once it begins on its tail, it can do no other than double down in ever greater stupidity. It is already in terminal descent, and then greedily starts working up to the juicy bits. So paddle with me away from them or they could drown you, and worse, all those you might have rescued.

Cain’s (selfishness) did not take long to accelerate the fallenness of the former generation. He did something as well that is all too human concerning worship, murdered/hated a brother. So, the bitter fruit planted in the hearts of his parents by a scheming animal spirt did not take long to blossom into flesh, the homicide of Abel. We all know this story, yet stunningly, many still refuse to walk in the hard lesson God gave the murderer: “You are your brother’s keeper!” And after we have been given continuous expanding reiterations of this Law, perfected in the New Law of loving your enemy, still most are enthralled by the seductive hiss echoed in the false teachings, the un-Christlike myth of redemptive violence. Just to be sure no body today could be that stupid, Jesus died to self instead, so that we would follow him. The fact that legions of people could pass on such dark doctrines and old lies in their ideas about God is literally re-markable. Yes, by their own acts, like their father Cain, a mark is upon them eternally. If they could only –unlike their father and their guiding spirits –confess, repent, and spend a life making amends, then the Grace of Jesus Christ would heal all their marks and scares, even their genocidal rage.   

Finally, we are back to Enosh. I told you to keep an eye out for those “lesser characters,” especially those like Barnabus or Melchizedek. They maybe ambiguous, but within that undefined space the Spirit has plenty of room to not just change the character, but more important, he can turn the course of human events. But misusing this power in corruption, which is abuse of power and trust for self-gain, can sink souls and cancel the reality of others until they cease to be. The least of these for the wicked become targets of opportunity to hate instead of love (their religion in lieu of the Faith of Jesus Christ), all the while using God’s name religiously for a worldly, “successful,” lifestyle choice. It is a dilemma of delusion that only God’s choice and right consequences might break their thrall to other gods and deformed images of the Most High God. For a few may be still exfiltrated from their seas. But as they persist in corruptions, well… there’s no way anyone can reveal algebra to people if they believe profanely and always that 1 + 1 = “4 more for me!”

Profaners of God en masse, who served the fallen of Hermon in the beginnings, went too far and became so ubiquitous in their inequities that the Creator finally allowed their consequence to befall them in the Day of Nimrod, within the Days of Noah, an irreversible descent into the chaotic depths of the nations. A whole “great people” led by the totemic “strong man,” mapped from the archetypal image of Gilgamesh or Baal, decided that they’d build something, promising to attain the Heights of God, by socio-political action. Like Lucifer I am sure they had an influential, broad, and enmeshed following to soak in status from filthy lucre and expensive oils. They sold their souls to build the tower of their dreams, their utopia, which Goddamned literally. They provided a lying myth to justify a dark ritual, which had already begun in their predecessors. The corrupt preached that whosoever followed them could ignore God’s most obvious commands to build an abomination by violence and selfishness that would assure their place to rule as gods, a special status in the history of world. Well, they enjoyed a season, then a last hour came. I think it is interesting that in all these moments people had to re-cling and refine other teachings, philosophies, and spirits that they desired more over a time, and it was only after they made so many unwise choices habitually that the higher wickedness was allowed to enter into them to insure a global, hard reset because of their dark matters of desire.

Now to Noah, a son of man, a soul born to a human man and a human woman, through whom God kept within His personal counsel on earth. And in this case, He inverted humanity’s dark plot-line, flipped-the-script, or it turned an upside down world upside down (that’s actually right side up, all deference to Luke). What strikes me like a divine blast is the hard work done over a very long period of time, which Noah undertook in faith just to make me possible for Jesus to save. Imagine the patience and endurance the Creator grew and drew out of Noah’s enduring and sacrificial acts of faith, a right proper response to God’s call. Obviously, the man was not perfect but that is not the issue to pond-er today. What counted then, now, and through eternity is the partnership he built with God. By staying on the narrow way of God’s plan, while also shepherding all creatures. He not only survived the rain, but he got to experience the rainbow afterwards.

Can you imagine being entrusted with all the creatures of the world, which God adores, besides the future of humanity, for which He, his unique son, and all the saints sacrificed? That is a most heavy weight, soul-crushing when reflected against the abject religious refusal of the most wicked generation to accept even a small portion of that responsibility today. These are the darkest matters. But hey, they have too much to lose to even help others or be good brother and sister keepers. They much prefer their beloved gilded walls to arks of refuge, which they hate. I can tell you now, that “their truth” will not washout, it can only be destroyed. They are anti-Noahs because they do not know his God, the Creator.      

Now, there were other old stories of these people that pulse tides of good or break bad the waves according to their abyssal preferences and feelings at any given time, even to the point where the Prescence was taken away from them, as God granted to them their gods, when their idolatry and disobedience crossed the Line: the terrain gave way to swallow a people, the generation in the wasteland, and the Departure at the temple to name a few, but all for disobedience. Given this metanarrative, it should come as no surprise that of over two dozen times “religion” appears in the newer stories, only once does it have a neutral value in passing on a faith in the Pauline pastorals, and only once is it desirable and pleasing to God in James. Every other time, “Katie bar the door,” it is pejorative or a cherished devil nearby. But that’s for later, much later unfortunately. Fortunately, many people within these declining generations were counted as righteous, not despite the dark worlds that bounded them, but because they shown brilliantly surviving and loving into their last stormy nights.

Wisdom tells us idolatry is the genesis of sin, and the past is prologue concerning their dark matters. This is doubly true for those who claim to follow God erroneously. History affirms that they have taken self-ascribed license to definitively insult the spirit of Grace habitually. They never had that right. They even stomp on God’s children. It is an abomination before God’s eyes. How could it not be? So now, they are now at liberty to reap what they sowed. I do not condemn them today for they have already marked themselves enough, to my lament.

To those who stayed the course, we have a rich history of people, including our master, to instruct us in the Way to make it to the beach, to guide us through any circumstances that may befall us, even to overcome all enemies. But that is for next time, in the first course of Tactics. These few examples above are sufficient to reorient yourselves in the present moment to swim well and make it to shore. To those who do, before we get to the hard part, I leave a most weighty and lovely blessing of peace, delivered by an inspired talent, and another old story, wrapped in another great story, from the shores of a pseudonymous “new world”. And, in appreciation to my wife, it is living proof a great sermon can be delivered in just under 5 minutes, and in a nautical theme.

Hostis Humani Generis

They should have purified their inner lives. From the beginning I said that I was sent for the righteous and those interested in the reality of Jesus’ righteousness. The wicked are free to continue being ever more wicked, while the righteous engage in the work of His Spirit. This numinous Image-embodiment has been more and more obscured in reality across time as “Christians” increasingly fell for other gods, to their promises of status, affluence, and worldly power. These are corruptions rejected by Jesus himself to the face of their promoter, who was brilliant on the outside but sourced on the inside by filth. It has been a long time since the corruption was this great or obvious to clean eyes. Now it is to the point of depravity where the “greatest of people,” supposedly worshipping the Jesus, their trademarked deity, are literally persecuting “the least of these.” Today, a plurality of these villains even support the genocide of God’s people, who look like Jesus and live where Jesus did; he said the most wicked people ever would in these days. So, as a generation, they have been the more than casual; they are the most adulterous, despite the outside of their cups and lips appearing so clean.

It is astonishingly perverse to me, how they preserved the only issue that 16th century Puritan Divines were absolutely wrong about, cultural decline. It is just cultural change, which is exactly that Jesus called us to overcome in the storms of fears and hates from religious elites in all cultures, no matter the time or terrain, according to his lived principles and unique love displayed on His mission, in his every action. We see the greatest hypocrisy in those who scream, “we cannot compromise!” For they have proven to be the greatest punks to the powers that be, both today and across most of church history. After mis-discerning the obvious, then they threw out everything else, which their predecessors were right about. These bent latter-day narcissists turbocharged the political argument for dominance with vain-glorious genocidal apocalypticism for worldly power, as they abandoned spiritual holiness with lived integrity, because it did not suit their Ozempic crazed political-economic appetites. This adulterous desire produced the roughest and fattest beast ever born of gentile bloodlust and avarice in labor for their dark powers.

If they knew what was coming for them, the ones they truly served in cruelty here by proxy, then they wouldn’t be tearing their clothes in the privacy of their prayer closets. No, they’d be out in the streets ripping their flesh and crying out to the skies seeking penance from those they hated. How they got this… bestial… is a long story, even in the best of times I’d just be able to skim the surface. And as I’ve been ordered to not look back but also pass on the message today, cutting the finest of surgical incisions between admonition and judgment, I won’t dwell too long and discuss only parts byway of just a few of my firsthand testimonies and show only some of their poisonous fruits, which they themselves produced to come to such a mortifying end. For someone who knows God through Jesus, the saddest thing about them is that the Prescence leaves them and they cannot even tell the difference. That is the final state of mortification every time around. So, I have no need or desire to revel in their critics’ accusations from the outside, but God help me I cannot lie to the neighbors either. Friend or foe, I lay out my witness at their feet. And no matter what either imposter does, I will return to my Master’s feet. I always go and return at his bidding alone, as pleasing him is my beacon no matter the terrain.

In summary preview, if someone lies to you about who is a honorable citizen today, who a saint really was according to God’s standards from only 90 years ago, or the prayers of a renowned noble countryman 250 years ago… We ask you, how on their unholy scorched earth can they be trusted to speak wisely, or at least somewhat accurately, about our master who lived 2000 years ago? They cannot. We know they can’t even be trusted with toilet paper in a basic humanitarian crisis. Further, I cannot assist anyone who won’t stop lying and destroying what pleases God for their own dissolute desires. I cannot with alcoholics or addicts, so it would be a waste of Breath on people who chose to be even sicker, more destructive, slaves to death. They don’t want to be rescued and don’t care who else their decision destroys. They refuse to accept reality, because if they did, then they’d have to change. And worse, they would have to confront their own moral bankruptcy and couldn’t keep blaming others. Perhaps you can reach some now goldfish, but that doesn’t mean they are ready for the next steps in a rescue. Good luck “giving babies to crazy.” Otherwise, pray and practice so that you might learn to discern those that are ready for rescue from those who will drown you and anyone else they might grip.

I’ve known since the early 80s about this generation. I spent several high school terms to begin a life-long topic of study by reading books about the forces that shaped them and their possible futures (e.g. Fire in the Lake, Megatrends). They would be the richest and most powerful generation of people in world history. And collectively, they could have ensured a better future for the following generations, and a better earth with a once in history stewardship opportunity for the world. But in a plurality, they broke bad the other, easier way. Now they will leave people and planet much worse off, at home and abroad, for the first time in American history, just by looking out for number one, making it all about themselves in bad faith. I had great hope for them. I was a fool for God as I honored the dishonorable among them many times to no avail, until I was called out from them. When the final results came in I was despondent, but only a day or two. I must keep my eyes on the Prize in faithfulness, pressing ever on to Righteousness.

I surrendered the few remaining profane attachments that I shared with them in the summer of ’18. So it was no surprise, because the plans that were discussed ahead of time to best resolve their coming choices had a Tone that I needed time to accept. So, there was always a Plan. The only concern was the time and manner of execution, which is always a dynamic situation. Now it is clear, a cacophonous plurality have ensured that multiple American generations entrusted to them will be poorer, sicker, and die sooner, likewise most the peoples around the world for a time are suffering due to their acts. They’ve commanded that others pay for their spiritual bankruptcy, and support their material desires, and praise them for it. With glee and pleasure this debased people tipped God’s good creation toward life-extinction for their immediate comfort. I won’t lie about it. These are the darkest matters, for future judgment by God alone. But today, it pains me, that they make sure the moniker affixed to them, “The Me Generation,” is prophetic.

Their passing was unexpected yet also inevitable, like the plot of every good story. It was unexpected by the blind guides but inventible to whomsoever paid sober attention, like history it makes sense but like prophecy a surprise to misbelievers, just Like Jesus’s first coming, preserving consistency by harmonizing the ordained with the volitional for good order overtime in a way only a few true believers foresaw. It is excessively good if you make it to the end. Again, I hope many followers still make it inside the wall, I’d like to see some near the Lamb’s Stand for that most joyous celebration. Most the evil they did in past was out of naïveté, ignorance, and even arrogance… That could be forgiven in their cups in the future, but vile or malicious intent on the inside will not be overlooked today, especially after so many calls to repentance.  Their mode of operation is never admit wrong and always demand acknowledgement, in the currency of praise and privilege exactly like their spiritual father. Their most requested burial song? “I did it my way!” All that is necessary for cults of personality (socially fetishized narcissism adoringly resolved into a single person), but spirituality like cults, they’re antichrists. Paul and Jesus saw this rising problem within of the cups of their followers, so they handed the wicked to the devil, so their insides might be poured out and cups cleaned. Just as our Father did to the previously most favored generation who broke bad to die short of their promised land.

I was considering these same issues in the fall of ’04. I had just left my pleasure dome where I wanted to die, to be delivered onto a beachhead of reality with overwhelming hostilities. So, I set about to reading. I was at half priced books in the village to collect my medicines, the most current books on physics and good books on theology. A rabbi approached me, I am not speaking metaphorically, he turned out to be an important priest and teacher in that neck of the woods back in the noughties. He approached me directly and said, “Excuse me sir but you are obviously a spiritual man, I must ask you something.” I was taken aback, so I thought to explore what he knew or wanted to know. I responded, “I have but One spirit… I believe you encounter us as shalom. If you are interested, I am here to help.” His eyes lit up, so we grabbed some java and copped a squat next to an arch.

I liked him very much, he was honest, knowledgeable, and none too proud because he was willing to sacrifice, to ask hard questions to my face, to grow nearer the truth. He didn’t mess around either, once I had my coffee and he a tea, he led well, “These baby-boomers of yours, are they the most wicked generation of self-proclaimed God-fearers in history? Or was it my former generation who were sent into the wasteland? For no other generations in history have expected to cease working, disobey God, and then only to be served.” We talked about the presupposition of rights assumed by religious people: hubris before God. It was one of the greatest conversations I ever had. It was long, but not nearly long enough for me. It was a blessing in a time of doubt and need, and still it resonates within me to this day, with sober followers of Jesus:

Because humanity is exclusively a gift from God, a person can be fully human without working, but because God gave him humanity partly in order to work, he cannot live as fully human without working. It is, therefore, contrary to the purpose of human life to reduce work to a mere means of subsistence [or retirement from labor]. One should not turn a fundamental aspect of life into a mere means of life. Just as the whole of human life is an end in itself – without, of course, ceasing to be a means to glorify God and benefit the creation – so also must work, as a fundamental dimension of human life, be an end in itself.-Miroslav Volf found in https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/work/work-that-glorifies-god?utm_source=Plough+-+English&utm_campaign=35f63161ba-Dig&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4cbb94afa4-35f63161ba-297225196

God sends enigmatic and odd agents to leave a holy Ebeneezer, a reassurance in review and a stone of help before a hard period of testing. It is God’s witness that you can find Him everywhere, if your house is in order. These apparently unlikely ones are the echoes of God’s holiness resonating in separate beings, which we’ve yet to identify because of their “otherness” that we’ve been taught to see. I take it as God’s encouragement to live in the moment, with and for Him. The one thing that I walked away with from that memorial meeting place, which might be some comfort to many today is this: “Certainly not everyone who died in the desert stayed dead!” Or as I summarized to him “some may beat the rap but none can beat the ride.” Master Shlomo, enjoyed my bit of cracker-barrel wisdom so much that he asked if he could use it in his house. I didn’t know that man long, but I knew enough about him to know that his rhetorical request was the highest compliment he could give. In addition we bet on it, he on his and me on mine. If you see him tell him to reach out, he owes me a dollar. I am sure he’s good for it.

As an anthropologist I have always examined the names and titles people give to themselves and others. As a theologist I am increasingly fascinated with the religious implications of humanity’s self-entitled name calling. Most importantly, these understandings aid me in examining the actual spiritual realities attached to these tongue-made names at a capillary level. Then I might separate the difference between what people say they believe inwardly from what they are actually manifesting outwardly, into our common reality. In this way, I can diagnose the etiology of the fruit that is their lives. I can know these manifestations, either as they arise from the dank abyss as threats or to from above as lights, before any are born into materiality here on the surface. Christians have been crap at this too often, but Christendom is an upside-down desiring machine that concretizes an assurance in the world they commoditize that these two cardinal, oppositional apparitions will always be reversed in value.

Accordingly, Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity was key to my early training on the subject. And it serves as an instrumental model to simplify what is most often a very complex causality field. There is a more direct route to this great and secret view of existence but most people haven’t learned the maths, so we’ll go with the great saint. He was a simple man, which should have made his legacy impossible to exploit. But we saw a horrifying example recently that teaches us to never underestimate political animals’ ability to champion stupidity for profit, both material and ideological.

From these socio-cultural formations, it is only one small step for mankind to make their worlds really dark and religious, as they become libel to one another. Much of the noxius-Politik networking them I was taught, as a child, vectored pathologically by even worse theologies of honor and shame for their utopia, literally nowhere for nowhere men. I could doubt and still understand because one of first scary lessons I learned in real life: that’s okay to follow a snake as long as you remember it is a snake. As a man, a dinner acquaintance of mine who is an Inspired thinker, reaffirmed this reality by teaching me to listen but always with a hermeneutic of suspicion to people when they talk about their version of God. He delighted at my analogous childhood aphorism.

The snake monster epitomizes the lowly embodiment among the gentiles (ocean serpents) of not living as a sacrifice to God through Jesus. These dragons sacrifice other humans for their “way of life,” constantly demanding someone else pay with their lives for their serpentine existence . They bear the mark of Cain, always outside the wall, where all the pride of life ends. So, we don’t murder or cancel people swept up in that creatureliness, but simply let them murder themselves like Judas, outside the walls with their blood money mixed in their own entrails. Jesus handed him over to his own personal power-mad financial-theological desires. If any one claims to know God or follow Jesus, they really should live his Way. Peter did well, really well ultimately, after our lord handed him over to his own selfish desires.

The deionizes and animators of these real beasts live by how personalities “affect them,” by feelings and tastes, instead of a commitment to God-given principles without contingencies. Given in God’s Law and Word, honesty is knowing what is true from what is false, not just filling your cup with trademarked filth. Purity’s principle truth is knowing right from wrong, not just a protocol for people’s “naughty bits.” You can not trust anyone who is obsessed with other people’s private business. Obedience is about keeping these things first, then persistence in doing them, not blind faith in whatever local guide vibes with your wants. Our Master identified our Father’s law from the principle he found inside, then he explicated, drew it outward. He viewed people in the same way. In all these things, his embodied hermeneutic expresses truth perfectly to reveal everything unseen.

If you’re just filling your cup religiously with trademarked crap, that is the same as filling to your fleshy stomach only with things that are tasty to your gross appetite. In turn, you violate your inner life as it further perverts, your spiritual appetites, out of bad habits. In fact, all your senses putrefy to the point where Hammurabi’s Code tastes like liberal extremism and the Twelve Tablets of Rome smells too woke. You become children of lawlessness, driven only by the craving for more. Pacta sunt servanda: God keeps covenant even if you don’t. So, if your soul is full of vile filth so is your future, all your future days. But that truth is denied at a great price for some because they always want more, adrift in their self-made chaos.

Lee Atwater to Elon, they led the most promising and blessed generation to make America Apartheid again. Those that followed willingly cannot blame the leaders in Court, but they always do when their worm turns. Instead of being stars, as candles in His hand, they chose to be black holes of worldly desires. And once they reach a given critical mass, God allows them to become nothingness and then annihilates the space they once occupied with Holy fire. The evidence here and there makes for a historic pile of furnace fodder.

A couple of years after this letter, Lee Atwater went to study apartheid politics because he was curious to know why he couldn’t use the n-word anymore in America (https://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/03/lee-atwater-interview-with-alexander-p-lamis-rough-transcript-weekend-reading.html). He returned to institute “the Southern Strategy,” which of course was embraced by blasphemous churches that market their adulterated version of Jesus. My concern, for a time, was to rescue any of his apologists. Now that window of opportunity has closed for me, and I couldn’t reach nearly as many as I hoped. I lamented as his followers multiplied. They actually grew even more virulent and unashamed in the caustic soil of the American “me-first” generation. Worse, they are descending into Judgment in ever increasing numbers everyday at a rate many times that of the daily Russian causalities in Ukraine. The Russians started that war for their “strong man” selfishness too.

America’s foundational sin is racism, which is nothing but a religion worshipping genocide. Usually it is led by a minority political party (e.g. Nazis). But the most abominable sinners are “good folks,” the rank and file who are led into excusing or denying their own sin, yet always pointing out what they blindly see as other peoples’ sins. And by demanding others pay for their sins, they free themselves to refuse dealing with their own mistakes. That’s the spiritual power of antichrists. For we know it was “good Germans” that made Nazis what they became. The problem is not the leaders. The real problem is the plurality of their supporters, specifically their massive reservoir of pride, greed, and fear that they refuse to confess and address. Evermore hate and denial is required to ignore it overtime. So their darkness bloats, putrefies, and festers. It corrupts and destroys everything it touches, especially its owners. This fatal social contagion of worldly desires is then channeled by empowering failed prophecy with all its follow-on corruptions and blasphemous theologies for global pollutions of desecration.

All this unholy filth is ushered in by high ranking, elected government officials. One even lied with the proud devotion of a defrauder’s tongue about a prayer Thomas Jefferson never prayed: https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/johnson-wins-speakership-reads-fake. Devils are always served best with unreliable sources, which manifest wicked rulers. Many people will stay dead because they lie about their sources, the fantastical liars they followed as guiding lights, encouraging their idolatry. Sure, you are free go on trusting the ones who say Jewish space lasers started wildfires and the deep-state directs hurricanes, if that feels good to you, go for it. I am not being jocular, not completely. So please don’t misunderstand me: Like Bonhoeffer, I am not saying I think their lies are errors in judgement, for I know they lie because they are faithful children to their father, the Liar. The outside of his cup once shinned more brightly than any other creature’s, until the terrain gave way beneath him and his followers.

To be clear, God often tells me that A is true, then I’ll reckon how it plays out in various cascades of causalities either up towards order or down into entropy. That is okay, and it is often healthy to walk about in divine mysteries, but when your solution to a problem is making everyone else pay for your sins… From Jesus’ perspective you’re blaspheming, taking his devout hope given in and for sacrificial love and weaponized it with a ministry of disinformation toward alpha-ape self-aggrandizement. This always leads to genocidal remedies and rationalization by apocalyptically driven speculative philosophies, human teachings, not God’s. The global reality of this means that powerful people have become seducers to make future generations of humanity pay for their selfishness today. It’s one thing to get dates and times wrong or mis-reconstruct the nature of the existential manifestation of God’s parousia, but if you’re severing a lie, so that you may rationalize your rejection of Jesus’ explicit commands… Man, you are serving his enemies like a troop of dark-souled surrender monkeys in full flight from reality. You maybe living the dream in service your worldly kings, but that is the orthogonal opposite of the deepest desire of the King.

The cult leaders profane a beatific metaphor of hope for the assembly of saints. They commoditize as a militant political action plan and operationalized it for themselves and a rationalized genocidal justification, all toward their powers’ global extinction event. They know nothing of Holiness. You’d think after so many of their lies have been demonstrated false, as a dark marketing technique that never delivers, that they’d become a little more circumspect. You would think that, but instead in extreme pride like a snake, they are swallowing their own tail. Let me put it plainly: Hear me, all gentiles! If you are trusting in a flying Jew to sweep you up bodily into the sky, so you might be spared all the consequences of explicitly ignoring his Father’s directives in your life choices, while your god stomps his feet below to kill everyone that you hate, then you are not trusting the Truth. It is a social pathology. For in reality, you are believing in Baal, mounted in the clouds making war on earth for a seven year cycle of chaotic destruction for a falsely promised period of fertility afterward. Is it any wonder you chose worldly leaders that fit the fixed patterns of your gods? Like trusting in Azazael, who promises to “drunks at the end of the bar, dreaming that they’ll be magically plucked up to some high position of authority,” you need to sober up before it is too late and let God change your lifestyle in belief and deed.

The eisegesis mapped from pagan mythic cycles is wrong from the beginning as the adherents start and end with themselves. They decontextualize a Holy narrative entirely, turning the root metaphors into an turbid sea of semantics for their gain, their ideological windfall or financial harvest. Their tongues sow the whirlwind. Their methods of interpretation wreak with paranoia, pareidolia, and pipe dreams. All Cain-like ego defense desires to rationalize their murderous rituals. Their dys-metaphoria is death. If you want to live, then start living like Jesus did, not the way that feels good to you and burying your head in the sand with a bunch of people who are sick like you. Apocalyptic cults have long proven themselves enemies of truth and allies with fallen spirits in lying since Hermon, because they deny any accountability to anything else, apart from their desirously crafted gods. Therefore, they are enemies to God and his desires for humanity in the extreme. This is the opposite of Jesus’ example in every way, apart from lip service.

I don’t want to get pedantic because it would take a book to explain the root issue, but in brief: The substance of this myth is to justify the in-group’s ritual of genocide. In essence, it is tribal paganism magnified to it’s utmost through the propaganda of nationalism, the quintessential form of this is the Roman Empire where Christianity converted into Christendom through the mediation of a corrupt priesthood operating on pagan myths. Frasier’s The Golden Bough (a racist work) is the book that lays it out first, ironically. There are two other presentations that illustrate it unironically, as tragedies: a novel that sets it in Modernity is The Heart of Darkness and a film that exposes the pagan myth of redemptive violence within the ideology of militant American nationalism, Apocalypse Now. The root of this mythic cycle is buried in a dying god or gods, which must be killed in order to bring about new life. It is arguably the basis for most early agrarian societies and the later fertility cults they worshiped, and through subterranean ideology it invisibly guides most bad “Christian” theology to this day by unconsciously mipmapping the metaphoric codes in people’s minds, even those who desire to follow Jesus today, at a level that most have never seen.

To be sure, Jesus uses agrarian models as metaphors, parabolically in the parlance of that day, but not as an eschatological escape plan that he worked out with Baal. So too, I believe Paul sees it in the idolatry of his day as well, when he augmented the Jewish cosmology with Jesus. He did not make an “end-times” map compromised with unholy mythic rationales for gentile rituals. So, today to wed the New Covenant and the renewed spiritual array of forces that Jesus inaugurated by sending his Spirit to violence of any sort upon another, for faith or to deface the face of God in creation for raw greed, well that’s just tribalism blaspheming the Holy Name. This subterranean mythic syncretism is also the shady support for the cult of “the third temple.” We’ll turn that table later if necessary, but suffice to say now: Jesus Christ and whomsoever follows his example of obedience to our Father in Spirit and Truth are the Third Temple, where we die daily to ourselves in service to others. Ezekiel and the Revelator make this claim explicitly. Therefore, any stirring of hatreds or sowing of violence to “please him” will be rejected out of Hand. Oh, I know it makes for easier sale and consumption of your religion because it is metaphorically imitating common dark philosophies. But Paul and Jesus wanted to free all from that claptrap, for it literally leads to death. And the adoration of a specific fictive kinship group, either material or ideological, which religious folks are all about… Well, that is just worshipping the creature not the Creator too.

It is these types of idolatrous myths that the gentiles have always wantonly wanted more of to justify their bloodlust and greed. So these fallen teachings are nothing more than syncretism thorough pagan faith back to primitive sympathetic magic, which is always ultimately the search for a social rationale to kill your neighbor or enslave them. Paul calls them fools without wisdom. We’ll dialogue about the desirous rhizomes of pagan myth in Movement and in Fire, after Tactics. It is enough for you now to know that this mythic paganism has already obscured the truth about heaven and hell, Kingdom and world, too widely. For your soul’s sake do not let it be the way you “follow Jesus,” because if you do then you are not. He died once for all, so his followers could be free of those murderous fates and their death bondage. This pan-worldly religion is simply an arcane political economy of material desires circulating fake gods and hand-made idols and their attendant myths like currency. It is the opposite of loving your enemy or serving those who can do nothing for you, which is living sacrificially for Jesus. Jesus is about dying for your enemy. Killing your enemy is the bestial mark of primal hate, the indelible impression on hearts devoted to all fallen gods.

Empire or nation-building is humanity’s most spectacular cultural manifesto of primal hate for pride, to make themselves great and powerful. But it actually inflicts its worst destructive effects domestically. Their twisted souls seem incapable of developing a life based on honesty, so they cannot grow into a righteously True faith based on Spiritual probity. If they had encountered the truth of Jesus in reality, I’d like to think that wouldn’t be as big a problem, but still, many rejected him to his face. Most nowadays were sold the artificial product easiest to consume and called it truth, a handmade counterfeit caplet that’s easiest to swallow, because it appeals to their preferences. That is usually the widest way for “the greatest” east of Eden. Like end stage drunks and addicts, with dizzying atavism they chose to feel good or increasingly just kill the pain of all the carnage their powers wreak globally. In the end, their rage and deception turns in on themselves, like a snake consuming its tail. When the Light finally hits them it is terrifying to witness, as those who lied about God for self gain and worldly promotion meet God’s wrath when repentance is no longer an option.

I never believed in their gods, but I learned from them like Daniel in Babylon, to obey God evermore faithfully. So I asked Him, countless times in pain or serene reflection, why he bore me into them and required me to learn their good, bad, and ugly so intimately. Graciously, I got different manners of answers that all basically said, “whatever you do I want you to do it for me, to carry me home even if it’s just the two of you.” Being a selfish sort, God used my inordinate desires about a partner for his gain, as I first spent decades in search of an able second. Ultimately, I was given exactly what I deserved, likewise for her. But something happened along the Way, which kind of glided at treetop-level beside my path, always in my peripheral view. He came down occasionally to build an Ebenezer with me, many memorials for as many episodes, some in joyful service, others in turgid trudges, but always they seemed random. In moments of review, it seemed wasteful even abusive. But now, I don’t wonder for an answer anymore. The answer is clear when I don’t cherish the piles of rocks we built, no, instead I find right order in all that only by doing, in tuning a believing loyalty to God’s processes. I’ve always been able to stare into the deep fields of an almost infinite number of dynamic elements and see a pattern emerge. There too, I don’t seek or ask for revelation. It comes to me when I am attentively doing what God tells me to do. It’s not about my ability, born or learned, it is about my will to let Him be who He is in me. I am sorry that I can’t explain it better now. But I will reflect on a few more seemingly random rock piles that all make sense now.

When I was a man about town in the Manchester, I lived next to a fellow of infinite jest and thought. We hit it off immediately, and often sat in Oxford Road cafes. He with his tea and I with my coffee, watching peoples pass by. We shared a bit of knowledge and a little wisdom. And I thought that what I learned from his expertise wouldn’t be important, but it was very important. He was Turkish and studied political economies, in particular he was writing a thesis on how Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reverted a free and growingly affluent society back into basic Eurasian despotism, which would in my friend’s estimation end in economic chaos and tyrannical rule. He was not a prophet, but he studied the truth of history critically without fear, so that today he appears as a prophet. His vision has greatly empowered me today to tell you the truth about another people’s future. It’s a lot, but for example he zeroed in on his despot’s invention and use of a new political concept, “the deep state.” So I know exactly what it is and why certain people use it. Moreover, I know who it preys upon and what it does to otherwise good people. A Christian should know just one thing about it, literally, it is a lie. Unless you’re talking about the Heritage Foundation (who I read religiously from 1983 on their now thoroughly disproven critique of The Global Juggernaut t0 their 2023 coup de grace of the Republic in Project 2025). They aspire to manifest the lie as themselves. But in their hubris and sin of choosing not to read God’s histories honestly, they are blind to their predictable and right end. As tragic as it is for innocent by-standers and those telling the truth (God adores both), the self-delusional leadership lacks situational awareness of the terrain that they occupy. It will give way beneath their feet on Command.

About the same time, I was fortunate be in a postgrad seminar of four about Paul and Judaism. Our facilitator was an award winning academic teacher on Judaism of the highest caliber, as well as being a righteous dude in his own context. He always instructed us with and toward reliable sources, which I’d reflect back to have him assist me in hammering out actionable intelligence. I valued his opinions and results. As I grew to apricate him, in time, I asked for his reflection upon delicate issues from my own former context. Specifically, a brand of Zionism and Jewish identity that destroyed a generation of people who claimed to be Christian fundamentalist. They failed, by every demonstrable measure, to honor that claim in a Substantial way. In fact, they always appeared to be going the opposite way. So, I gave him some of their works, written and video, in a desire to assay their scriptural positions and political acts. I am sorry to report, that my instructor thought I was pranking him. For two weeks, he thought it was a joke in bad taste.

Next meeting, another postgrad, a good pastor named David, who was familiar with this peculiar religious sect gave a similar witness in review of the material. Hearing the second witness, the face of our faithful instructor fell, for a passing moment it broke my heart to feel like the executioner of his pure innocence on the matter, now lost. Even though I know there’s a differential discretion in pains to God when either purity or innocence are altered (they are very different qualities in judgment), still when he spoke it got worse. But like a Godly teacher he didn’t judge, he articulated in love and law God’s real desire for Israel. Then, amazingly, he simply articulated his understanding of Jesus, based primarily on Paul connected with other New Testament sources drawn from the Old. It was a reliable vison of almost infinite depth; we even developed a dialog upon the different messiahs in the holy writings (e.g. the difference between son of Joseph deliverer and son of David defender). So we three followers of Jesus affirmed Daniel’s approach to Jesus, and turned the wickedness of religious elites into an educational moment for God-fearers anonymous that could bring healing, a real God moment for a season.

When we pointed out a roly-poly preacher who bragged about taking his private jet “to inform” the president of “the Israeli situation” to a hipster, seeker coach wearing $1000 tennis shoes, we agreed that it was very sad that the only drip these guys would have ever was worn on their feet or found in material possessions. Yep, Nicolaitans to the NAR, worldly “the winners,” they are always around like greedy scavengers and ghoulish power mongers. Learning the reality of Jesus from such folks is like trying to learn forestry at a lumber yard. But we broke the situation good to have a real discussion about why Jesus probably often walked at night because the Roman road salts would burn the feet of his followers if they didn’t have adequate footwear. That’s wanting to know Jesus in reality! And I am so happy there are at least a few people out there, a growing number in fact, who reject the intoxicating smoke and flattering mirrors to walk across burning coals to get to the reality of Jesus in a fallen world, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. I love those folks so much that I just want to know where and how God wants me to die for them.

Lest you believe I lack the relational experience to speak about religious elites, please allow me to assist you to ward off such a lie. Around the turn of the century, I was adulterously catfished by a woman who now stomps around in cosmetic insecurity, proudly officing by another president. She puts Ahab’s mate to shame, but she began as a poor and abused child. I met her somewhere in between on a Christian dating site… when in Rome you know. After a spell, I paid for her round trip flight so we could meet in person. The second she came off the plane, God showed me two things immediately: she had been horribly misused by men (even some called “men of God”) and she was still married. But God doesn’t hate innocent players even though He may despise their wicked games. He told me, “listen to her and gently redirect her.” So I did. She stayed in my sister’s room above my dying father. I took her to eat in some nice places and to any sites that she asked to see. I took her to my church and I wanted to see how see would respond to my bible study teacher, a likewise abused child who broke good… recently. My now “geriatric” self-effacing sister-instructor nailed it, as usual. The lesson gave me a perfect onramp to discussion I needed to have.

We went to lunch and then walked, so we could discuss what was going on. She was very honest, maybe a little surprised even though I didn’t reveal everything, so I actually liked her. I gave her my take on God’s take, and we agreed that she return sooner than planned and try to reconcile with her estranged husband. I told her if she got divorced, we could catch up later. Turns out she did get divorced but never called me. Also, on the way back to my folks’ she wanted to go to the Galleria, especially the stores with all the “nice stuff.” She had an eye for all that glittered in this world, but given her roots and where she was in life, I didn’t confront her taste for things. Actually, it led to a fairly profound discussion on the way God feels about that. But despite an intense face to face encounter and a very wholesome visitation, she went hard and long the opposite direction. It makes me very sad that I failed her, but it was her choice many times over, across different seasons, to epically reject God.

Or again, with my wife, I’d occasionally tried to introduce her to “American Christian TV.” It wasn’t all bad, there were a few shows relating personal testimonies by God experiencers and there were a few preachers she enjoyed. But I am afraid that’s the extent of our joy on the issue…

First, in aside for context, let me share one thing about my wife, while I have the Vine. I wanted one thing in a third partner for me and God’s union with them: putting God first no matter what. I know a lot of people say that, but let’s be honest, after a few personal encounters a list of contingencies emerges about their margins. I ain’t hating but again, this understanding is based on my honest personal experience, even “the best” that a church offers may have more than one or two other cherished commitments. And where I am going that would be disastrous. My bride has flaws, but the one I demanded she not have, I cannot find, even to this day. So I am as happy as a Labrador in mud. But also, while we’re being intimately honest, she holy terrifies me at times like the poorly trained dog that finally “caught” the God car. She is hard-core committed to the bullseye of the Divine. I petty the fools who get in her way and for the souls of those who reject her testimony. Also, even though it is not a competition, she’s as excellent with a firearm as I was at twelve with the very same weapons… All those scarry qualities and God designed her for me, so it’s productive fear and trembling. Often, she knows God better than I do, and I believe our Judge prefers her… very much, so a not a competition that she wins. All that to say, I’ve been awed by her growth with formidable spiritual vision and capacity. It’s hard to stay in that race with her. And I always trust her on spiritual issues, she too is a most reliable witness in this important regard, the only regard that counts in the end.

… so anyway, the last straw with god-roulette American TV. It was a weekend evening and I wanted to just put our eyes on for a few minutes. That’s when the horror show came on, the huckster host invited out Rodger Stone, who had recently been pardoned from federal crimes (turns out that the guy who pardoned him is a felon several dozen times over). So much for the “crime-fraud exception” in American jurist prudence. But wait, it got worse as he was hailed as a great patriot and shinning example of an activist citizen. Then these evils set-upon our home as my wife grew very disturbed and couldn’t watch. I am used to spectacular carnage and lies, but watching her, that upset me so much that I was pissed off at the problem. She didn’t know him or about his past, but she knew something about him was not right. My initial response put her at ease, “Oh yeah, he’s been a haunt for demons almost his whole life.” She exclaimed, “No, shit!” I was so proud of her, loved her more and teased her for some relief, “No ma’am there’s a whole sewage factory there.”

We turned it off and got tea, and when things calmed down, I shared the guest’s public history from being mentored by another of Satan’s servants, Roy Cohen, to promoting and supporting some of the most despicable tyrants in the world as a lobbyist in D.C., through more recent seditious domestic behaviors, and topped it off with the fact that he is an infamous and unabashed swinger in the flesh. Yes that kind pure hearts, literally not just spiritually or metaphorically. My beloved was rocked, and asked rhetorically, “these are the same people who say God-bless America unironically?” I revealed, “it’s a marketing term, that’s about as honest as a prayer prayed in mere repetition to influence other people.” We prayed for where I came from, even though I had already moved far away them in my heart and mind, that they might come clean and rid God’s house of money-changers, charlatans, and political punks. But they remain quiet chuffed about who they know, that they know, that they know who they are and what they’re doing. Too bad they didn’t simply know God, so we cut the cable and made a covenant with our eyes not to look again. But God still shows us sometimes, enough to know they kept descending the other way. It makes us sad, such a big number, but it was their choice. They were dropped on request.

These episodes aren’t isolated one-offs. They are exemplars of a systemic and cultured apocalyptic intoxication by design, which commodifies ideas and people for profit and power. A world desiring machine creating docile bodies craving lies, so they might swallow nations whole. Although, I must say the results over the recent term were much better than the devil said we’d get seven years ago. I mean at least 1 out of 5 of the people I came from, that’s a very fat remnant for Jesus, and well over half of my former country folk in general, well done and God bless those Americans! The devil owes me a dollar, but he’s a dead-beat dad who always demands that others pay for his privations, so I am not holding my breath. He ain’t my cup of tea, so even though I am a censer at Court I still carry a thurible around him just to be safe. Down here he seems to avoid me like I am the problem. I am not, but I hope I am for him, because I understand his ways that enthrall and empower his favorites, blasphemers. I learned those ways well so I might anticipate when some of his favorites might turn with a willingness to see truth honestly, so I might drop in quick for exfiltration. Their former master hates that, but he can’t stop me, not even if he’s finally given permission to kill me. I tried for years and failed, because when I came up for Air, I was healthier than before.

So, first lesson about the Liar: lies will never begat truth, just as a devil will never drive out devils, nor will self-sanctified politicos with false prophets usher in the Kingdom of God. All of them have the same mission objectives: multiply, kill, steal, and destroy anything God loves or calls good. As for those still captivated to rich personalities rather than Godly principles, profiting from chaotic hatreds of the gentiles rather than what God commands… I ask them, where’s their Nicolae Jetty Carpathia today? Who makes the merchants of the world weep and delink? Who’s the great king of crypto, government computer-controlled cashless currency, now? Who studies and admires autocrats? Who makes it all about himself and his power? What people have subjugated themselves to him, taken his mark, willingly to be part of his rebellion for world domination? If they had only recognized this day, and everything that was good for them! But now it’s too late. Like Santa Anna’s army, his hubris has put them on terrain that they cannot comprehend and cannot defend, when God blows Degüello. By their own choices, their own standards, even by their own lies, the light of reality reveals their true allegiance in and to a world of their making for gods that they have made for their own vanity. That’s just part of what you get hyper-following a thoughtful but corrupt reformer who became the only major God-talker to falsely justify usury, for infamy. I mean hanging bodies from the street lamps of Geneva should have been enough support for Jefferson’s critique of him.

Through all these episodes, and too many others to write here today (that’s a library for later), I like my lord, never sought the upper hand. Moreover, I never sought revelation or the power of creation. I urge you to be a Renewed creature, be God’s revelation to a dying world. I chose and choose to humble myself and to try to reveal Jesus in all my ways. I was/am NOT perfect! But overtime and through pains, a joy is given to me, a desire be the best bricoleur I might. It is the art of simply reordering mundane things, be they broken people or fallen songs, in such a way that it will bring glory to God… not something the world wants. I have done my best knowing often that it was not near good enough. But I cannot give God’s love to people with lost forms of love, nor can I gift sorrow to the unaccountable in this present darkness.

My bride and I are so tired of soft-path patriarchs holding up “recovered” leaders who are not sorry about what they did. They don’t even confess, just saying “well, the deacons thought it best.” We both work with people to help them confess and make amends, on a daily basis, and once you’ve done that awhile, it is real easy to know who’s being honest and who isn’t even willing to become honest. These sad cases don’t even know for whom the bell tolls. Or more simply, the truth that when you run game you’re only gaming yourself. Heck, just a few years ago I tried to tell a decent coworker we were headed to Ezekiel. They just blew me off by thinking, “Ah, no, things aren’t that bad.” To cure their denial, the war broke out a few years later. I hope they finally got over their denial.

Still, bogus preachers are on public display being stick-waving oracles, destroying children’s toys with bats wrapped in bibles, or selling five-gallon buckets of “Armageddon Soup.” A few even tell poor folks that they need to send a certain sum of money to receive “a presidential blessing.” How is that not a barefaced political idol worship ritual? That is straight out of the bedeviled pagan playbook, which these latter day gothi clerics add to by chapter and commentary in their ceremonies. Don’t they know that real Christians were martyred for not burning incense to Domitian? All of these things are literally happening, then and now, as demonic influence spreads from depraved ministers. Meanwhile, lukewarm pastors say and do nothing about the horror consuming their flocks. There are a few who speak and stand against the darkness. But it is too few who say or do anything, so these frauds and their tepid enablers are left unchecked and uncorrected. That’s not simply “different ways to express the faith” or even “just heresy.” That dark carnival is not even about malicious divisions in the church. It is an entirely different category of error: apostasy. And they keep choosing to fall.

Wisdom says it will only increase because idolaters die for their feelings and blasphemers lie for profit, but both live and die in their worldly desires. They continuously chose personalities over principles, to lord power over people instead of serving them, blaming others and accepting no accountability for themselves. It is their faith, yet they descend ever farther away from becoming the image Jesus in the world. It is this activity, by them profaning his Name and Likeness, that brings God to let them finish in their fallenness. So if you see them, ask them but these questions and tell them to try to not lie, because be they a woman believed to be of ill repute who finished well or a human-proclaimed “father of the faith” who is conspiring to coverup abuse and lies, all of them are about to answer with their very lives, how their measure of breath was spent:

Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”? The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture sentence, “Abraham believed God and was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s that weave of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?

The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn’t her action in hiding God’s spies and helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what counted with God? The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.

The oldest idolatries and blasphemies bound as one revenant Roman corpse

I know their vile, oily gods but none of them will ever be my god because I know the one God. The only thing to fear more than not knowing Him, is claiming to know Him and not living as he did. They tell the atheists it is terrible not to believe, but it is much worse to lie about knowing Him. For there is only one notion more horrifying for the blasphemous than living in a universe without a Creator, it is much more ghastly to live in a creation with the Creator as revealed in the holy writings and dare to interpret Law and Word through their pagan mythologies.

Listen to the kakistocracy empowered by their idiocracy, for they are legionsaying, “Invicta” (winning), “pax et securitas” (peace and security), only to ultimately say “Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant.” What’s old is new again. “See us and fear as we are what heaven looks like, you must praise us!”… babel-on neo-Romans in utopia. Cue the lamentations of the merchants, Pax America is fallen. Having the most of everything ever in world history wasn’t enough for this proudest generation. So, in their blind decadence and bad faith, they are bringing it all down on themselves. It bemused some of the loyalist creatures I know that they didn’t get a chance to knock something down again. But let all down in their pit hail their great gilded skank and her Red Caesar Cult. Phew, I know the smell of their old fallen leader too well, and together they make “the beast with two backs”… Man, even if you’re just an alcoholic you must address your own issues first. Blaming a neighbor is just a sick knee-jerk response to defend a luciferin ego. But villainy is what intoxicated people do, they demand that everyone and anyone else pay for their mistakes. To them in parting, I’ll quote Claudius for my response to their spiritual deception that they tried to lift high but is now being brought low into their darkness, “Aut nōn.”

A great light was written from a dark pitted isle long ago. The Apocalypse attributed to John seems to base the most wicked “church” that he could foresee, as a social formation that he already knew and then projected it forward into the distant future. This defiling image to come appears to be drawn from the greatest oppressive strategies of dark powers arrayed against him in his day. For the revelator, they were embodied by the Flavian Emperors. Then most dreadfully, he beheld a people who claimed Jesus wed with these most gentile of rulers and their mythic paganism.

The Flavians had no legitimate claim to power in truth, for their claim to divinity was completely a human fabrication, an idol of the mind, an ideology to direct social action religiously. Their early propaganda was primarily an attack on the previous rulers, the Julio-Claudians, who made the Roman Empire the wealthiest it would ever be, before the ages of evermore debt-ridden conflicts for economy and pride, until the ultimate collapse. The Flavians spent their wealth to flood social systems and entertainment communications with lies and threats of violence to come to power amid a civil war. Once in power, they turned their systemic lying machine, a virulent political movement (e.g. the good news of Caesar), to threatening neighbors, oppressing former allies, and suppressing any voices of domestic dissent. They reinforced their privilege by way of culture elites, who falsely claimed to represent the pious citizen, by coopting mythic systems of messianism and marshaling cultural forces with singular militancy. This allowed them to place corrupt priests and unqualified patsies in high offices according to only one criteria: blind loyalty to Caesar.

Even today this power over history, which doesn’t last long, is pursed in violence. They forsake eternity in the truth and their souls. They exchanged the Kingdom that will heal the nations, even the gentiles, for a tower of moths and rust. They didn’t value the Gracious gift, and used it as a credit card that they never intended to pay to buy the gifts they wanted more. No sorrow for the unaccountable until their violent end. I say “let evildoers do their worst and the dirty-minded go all out in pollution, but let the righteous maintain a straight course and the holy continue on in holiness.” Let the snake swallow its tail, it’s just empire being empire in it’s time, like boys being boys in the locker room… But even the revelator didn’t foresee firenados of today. Yes that’s been a thing for a few years now, and there’s so much more to come upon Flavian Baal-worshippers. Their bride of Christ has been turned out as John Wayne impersonator. No human soul may sing ketava with the rulers of this world today in corruption, and rightly expect union under the roof of eternity in purity tomorrow. But I came not to bury the Caesars, only to warn them of the ides of March, which just passed. I did, and then I hoped they would listen when Wille sang to us a few years ago, *now the preach’n is over and the lessons’ begun.* But instead today, they support the ultimate move of Antichrist, genocide, as they are in legion with crimes on humanity and blasphemy against God.

Letter from a real Jesus-follower suffering a lifetime of real persecution.

CHRISTIAN REFLECTION FROM JERUSALEM

Legacy of the Seal and the Bears

There once there was a seal, his Creator kept him hidden in time and space from where we are today. His name is… Joel… because his ineffable, unspeakable, or practically unnamable lord is God. There wasn’t anything visually special about him, except for some reddish splotches on his fins. He knew this was true even though his bob by birth claimed to be the most special bob ever. Later he discovered that was not true either, for they were just one of almost countless colonies. But even before he figured that out, he never felt snuggly or cozy in his pod. Afterall, they demand that every seal do what they do to know their animal spirt(s). From the giddy-up, it was clear that Joel didn’t want to exchange his Spirt for theirs. They affirmed it time and again whenever he attempted to preach to them, calling him ignorant in his youth, made up even worse lies about him when he was older, and then just straight up rejected him in the end. This was because the loudest and fattest seals drove the herd with lies and fear to treat the pod as if it were their harem to exploit.

This reality was never more terrifyingly true than when the bears came around. The self-appointed drivers told the whole colony to surround them, so the creepiest were in the center, and when a bear came to the edges, they told the least ones at the edge to “act like bears!” Now this was great for those in the center because bears always took the seals from the edges. So after giving the orders, they never even got their hair ruffled. They didn’t even do anything when bears attacked large groups of pups in training! The unaffected leaders would simply send hopes and prayers to the bereaved, and proclaim soon after that the bears were just being bears, and that bears are entitled to arms. As the more vulnerable died within the camp- clocklike regularity, the seals least at risk would say things like “all seal lives matter” or “we cannot be replaced at the center.” And then, when survivors reported their eyewitness, the bear wannabes would always act like compassionate seals saying, “I am sorry for the way you feel.” They obfuscated reality lavishly and emotionally like a gang whenever another, lesser seal voiced a grievance or loss. Worst of all, these frauds claimed to be representing the Spirit and Creator to take the least’s pebbles and shells. They tried to justified this daylight robbery by saying their larger collections were proof of the Spirit’s approval. They were liars about the Spirit. And they demanded that others pay for their greedy mistakes in stewardship, as they hated the Creator.

It was nothing but seal-icidal stupidity on a colonial scale. Joel had known, even as a pup, this whole scenario was just very, very old and stinky whale poop. You see he, even as a pup, really talked with the Spirit. But what could he do about the slaughter? Well, the old stories say that the Creator came as a seal even longer ago, so that seals would no longer act like bears. That seal was the Creator’s exemplar in life and death and the true life after, in act and speech. They preached for seals to embrace that particular way, so They could reform and direct the unique, free gifts They had given to seals. But there were also earlier fat bloodthirsty seals who had their bears kill that Preacher too. The truth is seals can be very selfish and lazy, so most rarely tried to follow the Seal because of their nature and murderous leadership. The leaders taught cheap gifting, by even more selfish and spiritually lazy influencers who got cozy with their own want to-be-a-bear, anti-seal, teachings. They demanded that others suffer for their mistakes in teaching. That’s not a Gifted teaching, just a darker layer from an oil spill. Whenever our irregular red-finned pup tried to discuss any of this, well, you can guess the response that he got, almost always. So, Joel learned to treasure the occasion of the least and rejected so much, that he asked the Spirit what he might do for them.

Far from being what the bear-be claimers taught, the Spirit led Joel far away and back, many times. First, nearby as a pup he learned about the currents, the icebergs, and the ocean of airs above it all, and even the lights above, and highest of all, their Creator and Father. Despite this, the self-invested murders called him funny and precocious. Later, as a young seal, Joel was Called to explore depths and store houses of other oceans, as the Creator empowered Joel with internal light to see through even the darkest matters and deepest elements of creation. With great joy he got to know other pods, which his pod said didn’t matter, at least not as much. The Spirit even led him to love and care for other animals in the ocean, which his own pod’s whale poop traffickers saw as food and said knowing them was dangerous. They just wanted the other creatures to die for their mistaken privilege, lesser seals or any others. This time when Joel tried to share some light on these matters with the ones who claimed to possess the old stories, they made up lies about him and then called him a liar, turned their backs on him, and even made fun of his splotches, which at that time were a sensitive issue to a youngish seal. They called Joel weak or crazy or sick, like they never heard the Spirit say if you act like a bear you’ll be eaten by a bear… Again, he asked the Spirit what to do.

Again, the Spirit led Joel in the wrong direction, or it seemed at the time a very bad idea. He was sent to places where the old stories were made and where the story-tellers were trained. Now to be sure there were many storehouses of poop filled and sold there, but every so often our pilgrim seal happened upon rare seals. So, he learned from all but only followed those who also had almost imperceptible splotches on their fins too. They knew their mistakes and were willing to pay themselves. They were quite reserved about it, but Joel finally learned a lot from other seals. Sure he had talked and befriended all sorts of other animals, but he never knew how to be a real seal among bearish seals. Joel watched how his valued instructors handled the cadets, and how they should let go of the seriously deluded, so that they might help those with inspired desires, albeit with a wink and a nudge, not like a bear, not ever. This was the secret, the training within the training: never act like a bear even in the midst of bear worshippers. It was hard, not physically like before when he learned, but emotionally hard to let go of the bear adorers, who claimed to be the only real seals. Joel realized that his innocence and internal light form the Creator had precluded him form seeing exactly how dark matters were really, or how really bad the situation had become. So, one more time he asked the Spirit what to do.

This time the only hard part was letting go of the bearish seals and going away, again. But this time, a great joy came to Joel. A little joy came when he went among funny talking seals an ocean away. Most of them were called bad seals by his former colony, because in their dim eyes the faraway seals didn’t behave enough like bears and didn’t have enough shells or pretty rocks, like that is a bad thing because they might take their shells and rocks. This attitude only justified their dark desire to have everyone else to pay for their “treasure” of shells and rocks. What’s more, there were even pods afar who embraced all seals, most creatures, and even the good creation they shared, which Joel knew was their Creator’s plan along. But bad story-tellers perverted this core Truth on an ever-shrinking, ever-bloodier iceberg, supposedly the greatest iceberg ever… Not.

Now, the faraway seal-like seals were curious at first and asked, almost factiously, “how is it that you’ve escaped all those bears?!” The intrepid traveler answered, “the bears thought that I could breathe under water as well as on dry land and went so far, so fast before their eyes that the bears gave up because of their inferior design for diverse environments.” Because the response from the more mature and demure pilgrim preacher among them was clever and true, they wryly exclaimed, “but that’s not true!” Smiling, winking, and nudging the joyous sojourner said, “you are absolutely correct! But the bears didn’t know that, and once they experienced the fact that I can dive and thrive where they just tread water and barely dive, then they told themselves that. And they told the want-to-be-bear-seals with whom they colluded for rape, plunder, and murder. The Spirit showed me that once the fraud seals, and real bears they follow, convince themselves of something, their own smugness never allows them to change. They have even convinced themselves that they have too many rocks and shells to lose, to ever want to swim faraway with the Spirit. It’s a lie the bears love and it’s a dying shame for the seals.” Joel sheepishly reflected a little more deeply, “Of course, first things first and always… to do any of that you must get your mind right by not pretending to be a bear, and then get your heart right to follow the Spirit instead, regardless where He leads or what happens. Then one day, somedays later, you’ll see the whole ocean no matter how dark, top to bottom and side to side, all the tides and currents in motion, all at once just as He does, as a very small place where nothing is hidden.”

It was a good place and pod to be in Joel mused. But the few times he popped his head up near his old rookery, the violence and stupidity just got worse, the blood drenched bear-feeding iceberg was almost gone as the disorder, carnage, and lies grew. Dark matters are always darkest before they get darker in places like that. It now ached the grey-haired seal, but for his commitment and loyalty to the Spirit, no matter what happened, his Creator presented him with what he always wanted most, finally! Her name is Ellie, because God fulfills oaths in her. Pretty fab name, huh? She has the most gorgeous fur on every layer, very snug-able, never smugly. She has immaculate under fur that’s hard to see, but it is more important than the outer coat, because the inner is what holds air, so a seal has vertical buoyancy to support others. Not to be too rude, but her neck was like no other. Necks are very important also, as they determine the field of a seal’s vision, even to know the Wind. She loves wolves too, so she is a bit cheeky as well. Joel even loved that… a lot.

From the start they were like two peas in their own private pod, because in another way she too had been called to learn “to breathe underwater.” The Spirit delivered her out of dark matters of intimate betrayal also, just in a different context, so they could share their experiences as their lives joined for growth in the same Way. That way was always based daily, on the best of their growing abilities, to obey the Spirit no matter what, so they might sing about future days in truth as one. That is what Joel had been awaiting and searching for in reality, because to mate with any other one who might have any contingencies attached to this Priority… Well, in the end, it would be an unkindness to that anyone else, because Joel sensed where he was headed. That meant asking any other would also mean either the other wouldn’t get all they wanted, or worse, he might betray his Calling for the desires of the any other, as he a fierce swimmer but even a fiercer lover. He was just that kind of seal. He waited painfully, not patiently, for the right one, for the Right future for every creature and all creation. Also, he waited so that the Creator wouldn’t be done with him and his their whole life. Together, Ellie and Joel had one seal-soul assignment: to carry the Source of their Spirit home, even if it was the two of them! So obviously, there was much more work with the Spirit to be done for and through them, because no place is perfect but they were getting warmer… However, that’s another pretty cool story that the Spirit is manifesting presently in them. It’s for telling in yet another time and place about Light matters.

They call me Jesus and that’s all the bother 3.3

In realty I have learned in many ways, many times that churches and church people are often very wrong. This came natural to me in my blood, with love, not through childhood indoctrination. So I was patient to endure the lies, and when the time came for God to activate this agency, little of my lived experiences with religious folks persuaded me to distrust God or what he birthed in me. A humble and compassionate hermeneutic of suspicion is exactly that I needed, in order that I might do the hardest things with his great Love. So, a preemptive admonishment made with care, not egotistical eyewitness: the wrong ones will always think that I am saying something that I am not, especially this time because they’ll be quick to add to it for their dark matters…

I worked in outreach and case management through a non-profit for years. I worked in rural counties west of Houston, providing critical information and vital connections to resources for marginalized people. Most were marginalized in practically every way possible. I acted for them as a crisis counselor, advocate, and guide to health. In this service, I saw first hand the toll that socially hateful stigmata takes on the least of us from bellicose slaughter houses for religious pride. Two different people with the same condition, but in different contexts, have very different outcomes depending on a single environmental variable: the blame heaped upon them for being a moral failure. In rural areas the invisible violence is magnified. A child who got sick from a transfusion with excellent social support could expect a near normal lifetime, whereas an an adult who became infected any other way and subjected to a hostile social environment had just a few years, perhaps just months… That is real cancel culture at work for death… Let me make this perfectly clear, if you claim the lord of Life and you judge others to death, then in His eyes you are the greater moral failure, for you have profaned Him, even his cherished Name.

The motivation behind this demanding and undercompensated work was a direct response to the willful ignorance and murderous hatred that I witnessed at many churches. They were taught these vices by their religious and political leaders. I stayed as long as I could, but ultimately, I refused to drown in their hate and stupidity, and I went to do something about it. It was the closest I have ever been to working with lepers. I loved it. My God loved it, so I treasure the experience. Working with these socially-stigmatized souls taught me infinitely more about the lived experience of Jesus Christ than I ever learned at all the trade-marked propaganda centers for cancel culture.

The man whose arm is pictured in chair above was a client. A very kind old soul, a widower, a servant all his life, who if he ever had a selfish bone in his body, it was long gone. His daughter told me I was Jesus, the angel leaving the cross on the porch, through the open door. I don’t know about all that, but he was a kind and generous man by all accounts, even from those that turned on him in the end, until his end. From his lifetime of service he thought he knew people, especially his people, well and intimately. But shortly after being diagnosed in his late 60’s the scales fell from his eyes. It was an experience that I knew well by my 20’s. So, we would sit and talk about everything, guns to butter, scripture to scrapes. I valued this time so much that I would schedule our visits last on a road day, or on my way to fish. He was too weak by the time we met for him to fish. But, to this day, it eats me up that I did not offer to take him and let him sit and look out over the water with me. He was and is still an epic porch sitter, now a lost skill in America.

A few times, while sitting on the porch, bad neighbors would abuse the privilege of voicing their distain for his mere existence. It never phased him. I wanted to acquire this skill, so I shared a few of my experiences in the field while working with others. I was physically threatened, spit on, despised in many locales, even insulted with baseless epithets and slurs. Sister, that is the business end of cancel culture. Prejudice makes peoples’ souls darker faster than any other vice. The more self-righteous even tried to abuse scripture on me. On the occasions that I was Bidden to respond with an authorized usage, they would runaway or just get angrier and then flee like pigs off a cliff. I didn’t mind. I learned a lot from those experiences, mostly about God’s will and the appropriate use of his Word regarding the hearts and minds of people. The tactics, we will discuss plenty next time. But what I wanted to learn back then from my client and friend was how to not let this baseless hatred unduly affect my understanding or response. His was an awakened serenity that bordered on apathy to average eyes. I kept a close eye on him because I was only there to help and support him. Besides, whether you’re right or wrong in your thinking, as soon as you judge someone you cannot understand or learn from them. Once you pickled your mind in evil that way for too long, then it can never be a crispy cucumber again, fresh and ripe for God to favor in due season. Cucumbers easily become pickles, but a pickle can never be a cucumber again.

The first time an appropriate opportunity to ask him about how he dealt with all the baseless hate arose, he responded with a little parable: “Son” he said, “did you hear about the fool who was convinced that he could fly by a huckster, so they jumped off a hundred story building?” I did not respond but looked at him willingly. He did not turn his head towards me, he kept rocking and looking off into the fields. We took-in three beats of heavy but heightened awareness for him to answer what needed to be a rhetorical question, “yeh, that fool was so stupid that the poor son-of-a-gun thought he was successful for more than ninety-nine and a half floors!” We laughed and enjoyed more of the gentle breeze, warming sun, and common experience.

Then, I shared with him something that I hadn’t shared with anyone else at that time. Several times when ignorant and hostile folks confronted me, something anomalous happened. I ask God to tell me what’s wrong with the person. He would still me, and a shaped colored form would emanate, which had contiguous discernable qualities and secondary impressions. They were much different than apparitions. I had talked to several neurologists and psychiatrists, and there are myriad reasons it could not be sensory synesthesia, certainly not in any pathological sense. They were like mathematical primary forms or like Grimm in a way that explained the reality we all share more deeply, rather than the superstitious grotesqueries of pulp spiritualism as presented in This Present Darkness. Käsemann argues that the gift of the Spirit is to discern spirits, so I know that I am in right fellowship on that account. I understood it immediately and without effort, as you might come to understand the stages of a Greek tragedy in this thread without even knowing it. All it took was years of fear and trembling, time and attention, and a willingness to be vulnerable before violent people repeatedly, then the sight comes with ease to simply exposes a register of forces standing behind the shadow “Punch and Judy Show” of this world, which the powers that be aim to exploit in their consumer slaves. In fact, they demand that all their subjects see nothing else except what they can preach or sell to you. If you don’t, they call you sick and mark you for cancelation.

Anyway, somehow the impressions and understandings just made since to me, even though it was initially terrifying and ultimately the source of more sorrow than joy. But in retrospect, I see it as God fulfilling His nature in mine. I learned early on that “exposing the hearts and minds of people” is key for the ministry of Christ Jesus. So it is good. It felt like Him perfecting my broken attentions, natural and learned, concerning mundane awareness. So I endeavored to feel more. It hurt, but not like fear-induced change. It was just acceptance to change, which is hard for most. It made complete sense in the arch of my life, having grown from a child who studied the streams and tides in motion to a teen with a preternatural knack for stochastic field functions, to the point that I could see probability where others only saw chaos in seemingly random data sets. I never got to finish working on that plan, but I used it a lot to fish. More to God’s point, it prepared me enough for the work He had planned for me back then, and today.

I had seen glimpses all my life in multivarious contexts, especially when people were fearful for no good reason. But then living as Christ in the field, it all came full circle. So I only ever use the gift to help people on my own volition, never for personal gain of any sort, out of my fear of God, like my lord Jesus, best I could in failure following after him. God has used it in other ways too, where only He has that right… And God knows that any charlatan with a fraction of this unction and agency would have made a killing. But the point now is that my porch-sitting companion said that he didn’t just believe me, but he knew I could before I told him! People passing through their veil of bodily mortality can see more than most. He said too that he’d always known another fella with that capacity and I reminded him of his other friend from the moment we met. The breeze picked up and the sun grew warmer, as I felt calm resolve balanced with healthy fear in a dynamic peace within like I had few times before, but now do with greater recurrence since.

Overtime it really resonated with one of my favorite Omar Bradley-isms, so I pass it on when I see a righteous person enduring the crap-fest of self-righteous people. A biographer once asked him, “a lot of people, who have known you for years. They all say that you have never yelled out an order. You often say please too. Why is that?” The five-star general answered, “I out ranked them.” Later, some corroborated tales say he had pointed dialogues with those who out-ranked him. For me, I want to think that it was because Omar knew that almost all the time he understood the larger picture better than his subordinates who just needed to focus their role on that day, not anyone else’s, or they would fail in their duty and people would die tomorrow. So, this vision was a privilege never to be abused, and a gift to be mediated to save the lives of those who he served with, and even more so, those who served under him. Jesus makes that clear across his teachings. Too bad more wanna be “strong men” model Patton, pursing personal status and fame, going the other way after pagan gods and mystical teachings only to come to an entirely different end, even before he died.

Always made sense to me, for in reality, Jesus outranks everybody, and yet he never took the upper-hand. He only barked correction at those who presumed to out rank him from their crystal-darkling of religiously self-perceived privilege, a view which does nothing in reality, but prove them to be liars and hypocrites. And for those who abused the religiously lower-ranked for material gain… He literally whooped them, before they died and encountered his Father’s wrath after they passed. Seems like anyone who knows him would know that well enough to save their hides and souls. Unfortunately, many went the other way to institute the most beastly system of cultural cancelation and profit that the world has ever been subjected. Heck, they are so stupid that they have the mendacity to say they are the ones being “canceled.” It is just like idolaters, who are always fleeing from shadows cast by their depraved imagination.

So enduring and pervasive is their global economy of hate that my client and I were able to commiserate about it even 1800 years later, thousands of miles away, on a breezy warmly lit porch just outside Wharton. The Fellowship was so strong that I learned from my client to pity the lost souls who didn’t know any better, and try to help for as long as I might. More recently, Jesus taught me not to care too much for those who persistently chose the dark over the light and know better. Today, I just miss that porch and my enlightened friend. I found great comfort in seeing him sitting on the Porch with that other fella he knew. They waved, and by them both I learned to breathe underwater.

στασιμονς

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentleman. -Patrick Rothfuss

You know that from day one, the Palm Sunday I came into America, I was with you totally—laying my life on the line, serving the Master no matter what across the earth, just to return and be forced to put-up with no end of fascistic scheming by religious poohbahs and worldly politicos who demanded that everyone live their trademark lifestyle. I didn’t skimp or trim in any way. Every truth and encouragement that could have made a difference to you, you got. I taught you out in public and I taught you in your homes, urging confessors and profaners alike to a radical life-change before God and an equally radical trust in our Master Jesus.

But there is another urgency before me now. We were ordered away. I’m still a bit in the dark about what will happen here, for some things are ordained, while others demand that we brave the sea and respond well to conditions on kinetic terrain. I do know that it won’t be any picnic, as God and our lord told us repeatedly, and clearly, that there are hard times and suffering, more peoples with even more chains in greater darkness ahead. But my struggles matter little. What matters most to me is to finish what God started: the job the Master Jesus gave me of letting everyone I meet know all about this incredibly extravagant generosity of God.

And so this is good-bye, for a time. You’re not going to see me again this season, nor I you, you whom I have gone among for so long proclaiming the news of God’s inaugurated kingdom. I’ve done my best for you, given you all our Master has allowed, held back nothing of God’s will for you.

Now it’s up to you. Be aware—both for yourselves and your congregations. You have charge over these people—God’s people and treasure they are—to guard and protect them. God himself thought they were worth dying for.

I know that as soon as I am gone, vicious wolves who’ve always been among you are going to show up from many directions and rip into your flocks, men from your very own ranks twisting words so as to seduce disciples into following them instead of Jesus. So stay awake and keep up your guard. Remember those years I kept at it with you, never letting up, pouring my heart out with you, one after another.

Now I’m turning you over to God, our marvelous God whose gracious Word can make you into what he wants you to be and give you everything you could possibly need for a community of holy friends.

I’ve never, as you so well know, had too much love for wealth or fashion or the pride of life among the popular elites, which they sculpt so pervasively in thoughts and desires; it’s all fathered for their devils, not God. With these bare hands and wits I took care of my own basic needs and those who worked with me. In everything I’ve done, I have demonstrated to you how necessary it is to work on behalf of the weak and not exploit them. You’ll not likely go wrong here if you keep remembering, in spite of all the seductive sound and furry hissed by the selfish gentile overlords, that our Master said, “You’re far happier giving than getting.”

For Our Beloved

God, investigate my life;
    get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
    even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
    I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
    before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
    then up ahead and you’re there, too—
    your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
    I can’t take it all in!
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
    to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
    If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
    to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
    you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
    At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
    night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.
Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
    God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
    any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
    And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
    all the men and women who belittle you, God,
    infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
    see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
    Your enemies are my enemies!
Investigate my life, O God,
    find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
    get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
    then guide me on the road to eternal life.

So to then…
Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, on pace with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

The Son judges all, but the Father who knows all selects and sends another at his Son’s behest for his bride… So playing a Cyrano de Bergerac-ist bit, like a chaperone of another order… Oh, dearest hearts these moments have been a great thrill for me! And me a chaperone? The role came as complete surprise, I never saw coming until I was already doing it for a minute. We laughed. I think it has been my favorite part. It has certainly drawn me closer to the Christ, who is Jesus, and that’s saying something these days. Besides the least, y’all are my favorites and that won’t change, no matter what the worst tell you. And for “the few” who are both least and faithful to the end, I good cry about you all the time, and hurt whenever I hear about you hurting.

I am certainly raining now. Because this is the last little bit where I’ll help you sing ketva with Jesus for awhile. But I am not important, you are able to keep in tune with the reality of Jesus no matter what, and that will keep you walking in our Father’s Ketubah, down the aisle to His son’s huppa. So, I’ll leave you with a few symbolic glimpses of your future days with our lord. The first is the most costly lesson that I had to learn to follow Christ most intimately these days, in order to divide all things rightly amid the chaos. And the second should give some joy to the poignancy of the first. Then third, last but certainly not least, a couple of very personal “other songs” that my lord wanted to sing directly to you, his betrothed, even though he’s not able to be with you in person today. We must do this the right way after all. So, I’ll let the images speak now…

The first time I saw this film, twenty years ago, I identified primarily with Fischer… Wow, how that’s changed. Now I’m the guy who feels too old for the job, Ben. The gift? Ben knew his song well before he started singing to others. Fischer was a great singer, but he didn’t know the right song yet, so he had more gifts than anyone but none to give. That took time under Instruction.

You cannot pass on a truth or a spirit that you do not have. It took a holy revolutionary act of war on myself, in all my broken parts, to stay in constant contact with God, practicing his principles in life everyday throughout my life, however fitfully, to increase or just maintain spiritual fitness. No matter which character you identify then, now, or tomorrow, becoming conformed to the image of Christ is not what you imagined, because you always began as a child only after you meet him in reality. And no matter your age at that rebirth, your perspective and skills must change from that time forward.

Let it be, stay on course, purify your inner life, be innately transformed and then you will be able to do things that were impossible before for you, even in front of your “enemies.” Great forces come to your aid as your soul will not look the same to “allies” either. Your heart will not feel the same because you will not be the same. You will come to friend or foe alike in love, otherwise you are the same imposter. When you do, then you will able to forgive yourself when you love them both sacrificially. You only fail if you convince yourself that you know already exactly what that might look like in a distant future and set your feelings on a false course by pre-judgment, which leads you ever farther from loving all others and God. But by any discernible standard, you are still here because you have a hard-earned Spiritual compass set to True north.

Έξοδος

When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of the strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance. –Martin Luther King Jr.

“But he knows where I am and what I’ve done. He can cross-examine me all he wants, and I’ll pass the test with honors. I’ve followed him closely, my feet in his footprints, not once swerving from his way. I’ve obeyed every word he’s spoken, and not just obeyed his advice—I’ve treasured it.”

As the lights come on across Europe and go out across America, neither theatre will be easy, as the powers of darkness and distance attempt to destroy us. But it hastens singular opportunities for all to shine, with legendary brilliance, carry Him into historic eternity. And in case you didn’t know, Eternity is the only place worth being acknowledged. I myself have a nephew headed to serve in the armed forces on the continent soon. I may only be months, not years, behind him… But that is no matter to me, paying for other people’s mistakes is the highest calling, according to Jesus. So if called and allowed, I will embrace it. What matters to me today is to finish well for those who hope rightfully for more life in the renewed earth through their personal and communal transforming, believing loyalty in God alone for his unique Life, both today and forever. I beg of you with all the earnestness at my command, abandon yourself to Him, put your own house in order, and rescue. All your world’s problems are of your own making, the chaos is just a symbol. So stop hating and blaming, repent to love and serve, not just because you want to… but because you must!

I apologized once before that you were lied to so much, so often, by so many, but that’s the reality when you dwell in a selfishly disordered pit. I cannot palliate them again. I remember praying for a boomer instructor that I admired in ‘08, because he grieved about financial retirement loses while playing the game fairly. I prayed for him and conditions changed. I’ve seen him a few times since, and I believe he is well now. But I cannot mitigate for that again, that type of intervention now would be Insalutary. It hurts me emotionally too. Before as well, I apologized that you probably weren’t looking for me, and I wasn’t what you wanted but I promised that I was what you needed according to God. And if you learned anything about me, let it be that I did nothing with you here of my own accord. Sadly for me, I knew ahead of time that many would still go on choosing other gods, instead of serving other people. More sadly, I knew some people that I treasured didn’t believe what could happen, but it has. I knew it, because it was the experience of my God and my lord too. And I certainly can do no better than they did.

I’ve known most of my life that this day was coming, and this wasn’t the manner that I wanted to memorialize Spring with you the first time. For your sakes, I wanted to get through at least one round of terrain, tactics, fire, and movement after introduction and basic principles. But people make their choices and God responds. As you should know, I am going with God, no matter what… and I dearly hope, most deeply, that the ever-shifting currents will bring me near to see you again. One of the best instructors that I ever met may have summarized this almost universal existential phenomena resulting from hard training best. I asked “why are you so hard on the ones given to you, because it’s obvious in private that you love them and care about them more than yourself?” He answered with a question, “What’s the difference between their mothers and me?” I said that I didn’t know because I didn’t want to alter his right answer. He said, “there’s only one… time. Their mothers had them for 17 years, I’ve only got a few months. And the realities they’ll confront soon are only going to be worse if they aren’t better prepared.”

I do not know exactly what conditions and the terrain will look like when next we meet. I do know that we’ll finally discuss those crooked steps and that conversation is only for serious people. Also we’ll finally use some maths, literally from the oldest character tradition in the Book… And there’ll be big surf. All that demands the kind of focus possessed only by the tried and truly tested.

(Next rendezvous at sunset on September 29th 2028… God’s speed)

To do something right it must also be done at the right time and in the right way. We followed protocol and went to the sickest first, to rescue the presumed dead from the really dead. After a move and before we engage a new theatre for the same mission, we have an opportunity for a final westward review: an apples-to-apples-to-apples diagnostic. This is a go/no-go test to filter the “pond life,” because if you cannot choose wisely while you are in the in the most comfortable, powerful, and affluent position in world history, then you have no business here. This is basic Spiritual physics: Knowing the mottos, mere lip-service, is not enough. An idolater cannot enter the Kingdom, but they can go halfway around the world to make a double-damned replica of themselves… People may baptize with water as they want, but the Holy Spirit empowers the obedient at his pleasure.

Social works, cultural influence, and political powers have taken infernal people far in their world, but also below, and always under through the ages. To rescue with Jesus, you must utterly smash your idols for the right power (Authority) to serve abaft him from above. In this Ministry, no one who knows the Alpha calls themself an alpha, we all fall somewhere behind. The only question is will you quit? Likewise, worldly-privilege infects people with the same puffy, muscular hubris that weighs-down and exhausts souls, sinking them with hardened hearts. I hope you understand and put-on these God-given truths, so you might not give up and then fail. If you thought you knew “the rules,” you do not… or I would not be here, and you would not have been given two “practice exercises” just to tread water in a kiddie pool. You don’t like it? Go home. This is where I am called, and Home is coming to me.

Constitutional Theology is clear: “we the people” are the sovereign and choose in our mundane governance, not God. Summa Potestas for self-rule is the principal choice: E pluribus unum, “the one from the many.” First and foremost, the Federalists asserted that the Republic ought never have a king, or even judges, for God to choose. God respected their choices and has allowed ours, even if a wicked people continue to reject His accountability and prefer to play the victim, or worse, “play god” by defunding the social contract for the common weal and corrupting a principled system of government at their hour of Visitation.

God (big g) is mentioned only three times in all the founding federal documents. Once is in the Declaration of Independence, “Nature’s God” (if only for the bestial worshippers today), when the founders needed to appeal to a greater authority than a worldly king. “God” is not mentioned once in the Constitution but only referred by arcane aspects. If you want to understand these references, then read Locke and Rousseau, not Augustine and Calvin, and their natural outcome was prophesied better by Hobbes than Daniel. “God” is penned only twice in all 85 essays of the Federalist Papers, both times by Madison, once again as “Nature’s God” (if only to double-damn the American bestial idolaters), and then a last time to assert that no singular theology or sect ought ever be allowed to define the divine for political hegemony nor ever be imposed on anyone.

I know that I am not the only one who can read, but after being called out of them, when I look back on the murderous abomination at the Republic’s Temple, beneath the very apotheosis of our first president, on Epiphany, a sacrosanct day on both calendars… a white religious horde led by their bozo flim-flam man destroyed the peaceful transfer of worldly power, which Washington believed was the one thing that made our former Republic exceptional, and with the same sin, they fulfilled Lincoln’s greatest fear, the Republic died by mob rule… I felt alone… like the last next to the Omega. But now, like him, I weep no more over the petty tyrants, their thugs, and those most responsible: the abhorrent multitude of craven citizens choosing the liar to justify themselves before other people, or worse, they remain silent, still in acquiescent complicity.

As for Christ Jesus, who eternally shackles the chaos and confines all depths with his fearfully glorious name throughout everything you see and everything you can’t see, he gets no reference in the Federalist documents or papers. And he is perfectly pleased with that fact! Conceive that reality, if you can, for just one fleeting moment… an idolater cannot. The facts according to the Word of God are that my Captain and Rescuer preemptively declined any such dubious honor in preparation for his earthly ministry. But near the end of that time, “God’s people” picking an infamous felon, Barabbas, certainly left a painful and lasting impression on him to this very day. Conceive that now… Also know that Silas, Timothy, and Paul are horrified by the prospect that anyone with Jesus’ name on their tongue could be so self-deceived that they lift-up the man of lawlessness a third time, even after his rebellion and crimes were publicly disclosed. Elsewhere, even as children, we were told:

… don’t let anyone divert you from the truth. It’s the person who acts right who is right, just as we see it lived out in our righteous Messiah. Those who make a practice of sin are straight from the Devil, the pioneer in the practice of sin. The Son of God entered the scene to abolish the Devil’s ways.

Our Father’s work through Jesus will be completed. No matter the cost, all lies will be abolished, even the cherished and convenient ones. In truth, all of us who have rent our bodies in service for the Most High and our lowest choices stand on the side of the pool today, even if only to watch revealers flail about as their betrothed gods engulf them with an ever more prejudiced religion of baseless hatreds and selfish delusions. Their covenants might’ve been given and cut on Hermon or Sinai. Ours was declared from his Spirit on Eremos and codified in his flesh at Golgotha, therefore we do not fear what they fear. Steady and loyal we breathe the Difference beyond death.

Please read the entire fact checked article. Truth disturbs self-appointed “experts”: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/billy-graham-mixing-religion-politics/

So, again we say:

^“Will you put up with a little foolish aside from me? Please, just for a moment. The thing that has me so upset is that I care about you so much—this is the passion of God burning inside me! I promised your hand in marriage to Christ, presented you as a pure virgin to her husband. And now I’m afraid that exactly as the Snake seduced Eve with his smooth tongue, you are being lured away from the simple purity of your love for Christ.

It seems that if someone shows up preaching quite another Jesus than we preached—different spirit, different message—you put up with him quite nicely. But if you put up with these big-shot “apostles,” why can’t you put up with simple me? I’m as good as they are. It’s true that I don’t have their voice, haven’t mastered that smooth eloquence that impresses you so much. But when I do open my mouth, I at least know what I’m talking about. We haven’t kept anything back. We let you in on everything.

I wonder, did I make a bad mistake in proclaiming God’s Message to you without asking for something in return, serving you free of charge so that you wouldn’t be inconvenienced by me? It turns out that other believers paid my way so that you could have a free ride. Not once during the time I lived among you did anyone have to lift a finger to compensate me. My needs were always supplied from another province. I was careful never to be a burden to you, and I never will be, you can count on it. With Christ as my witness, it’s a point of honor with me, and I’m not going to keep it quiet just to protect you from what the neighbors I am with now will think. It’s not that I don’t love you; God knows I do. I’m just trying to keep things open and honest between us.

And I’m not changing my position on this. I’d die before taking your money. I’m giving nobody grounds for lumping me in with those money-grubbing “preachers,” vaunting themselves as something special. They’re a sorry bunch—pseudo-apostles, lying preachers, crooked workers—posing as Christ’s agents but sham to the core. And no wonder! Satan does it all the time, dressing up as a beautiful angel of light. So it shouldn’t surprise us when his servants masquerade as servants of God. But they’re not getting by with anything. They’ll pay for it in the end.”

Faithful ones do not fear, as before, no matter what “we the people” decide there will be a corrective course, a rescue plan, although one set of operations is much easier than the other. Do fear being a muscled-up sucker by choosing foolishly again, because you will sink and the consequences and repercussions will not be mitigated for anyone. Everyone should have believed just a few years ago when we all heard God say that He was about to hand the nations over to confusion. Even more recently, Israel should have obeyed His commands. In their turn, the “holy princes” who should have known that people cannot nominate holy apostles or prophets, then they might have taken a clue from Jacob’s trouble…

And now, all of those who remain standing for the next stage need to remember those disgraced spiritual princes, which people chose, who fell before us as corrupt stars from a toxic firmament to end this time. Stay awake, because there are more who seem allies, even with a type of gospel, but they are enemies in Jesus’ election, his choices. Know this too, if you are capable of understanding anything Spiritual, everyone was born to kneel our hearts through loving service to all others on earth to know Heaven, but instead the lawless choose to stomp loudly in the world to rule a wasteland over their defrauded replicas. The reality of Christ Jesus is a liberator for the poor and oppressed, always and forever. He is not a mascot for the rich and powerful, not ever, not even once.

Today is even more solemn to me because tomorrow I travel to remember and celebrate a true man of God. I am most thankful that he honored me with his presence, if only for a short while. By his witness and others like Jesus, overtime and even to my shame at the times I resisted, God developed a terrible and burdensome forensic ability in my spirit to discern well, both in kind and degree, His precious few from all the frauds, a sepulchered remnant tethered only by Heaven’s Silver Cord among the greedy hoi polloi of posers. In tribute to their earthly service and deliverance, I will drop one more line for Rescue. If you will not listen to all our God-given witnesses and servants, then listen to “the Greatest Generation.” In particular, sons obey your fathers or you will be shamed-suckers in eternity, forever known as the most wicked generation:

From the east… and North, we see the right and narrow way to reaffirm the eternal truth that the devil will be given his due, even peoples, as God ordains in every aeon. Today is a fitting time. Therefore, in Righteousness’ sake, in poor imitation of my Intercessor, and in the finality of this time, I pray all out and face-flat in the Silence again that you might simply tread water under the most comfortable circumstances possible… for just this, your hour…

…And then

God answered: “Write this.
    Write what you see.
Write it out in big block letters
    so that it can be read while treading.
This vision-message is a witness
    pointing to what’s coming.
It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait!
    And it doesn’t lie.
If it seems slow in coming, wait.
    It’s on its way. It will come right on time.

“Look at that man, bloated by self-importance—
    full of himself but soul-empty.
But the person in right standing before God
    through loyal and steady believing
    is fully alive, really alive.

“Note well: Money deceives.
    The arrogant rich don’t last.
They are more hungry for wealth
    than the grave is for cadavers.
Like death, they always want more,
    but the ‘more’ they get is dead bodies.
They are cemeteries filled with dead peoples,
    graveyards filled with corpses.
Don’t give people like this a second thought.
    Soon the whole world will be taunting them:

“‘Who do you think you are—
    getting rich by stealing and extortion?
How long do you think
    you can get away with this?’
Indeed, how long before your victims wake up,
    stand up and make you the victim?
You’ve plundered people after peoples.
    Now you’ll get a taste of your own medicine.
All the survivors are out to plunder you,
    a payback for all your murders and massacres.

“Who do you think you are—
    recklessly grabbing and looting,
Living it up, acting like king of the mountain,
    acting above it all, above trials and troubles?
You’ve engineered the ruin of your own house.
    In ruining others you’ve ruined yourself.
You’ve undermined your foundations,
    rotted out your own soul.
The bricks of your house will speak up and accuse you.
    The woodwork will step forward with evidence.

“Who do you think you are—
    building a town by murder, a city with crime?
Don’t you know that God-of-the-Angel-Armies
    makes sure nothing comes of that but ashes,
Makes sure the harder you work
    at that kind of thing, the less you are?
Meanwhile the earth fills up
    with awareness of God’s glory
    as the waters cover the sea.

“Who do you think you are—
    inviting your neighbors to your drunken parties,
Giving them too much to drink,
    roping them into your sexual orgies?
You thought you were having the time of your life.
    Wrong! It’s a time of disgrace.
All the time you were drinking,
    you were drinking from the cup of God’s wrath.
You’ll wake up holding your throbbing head, hung over—
    hung over from Lebanon violence,
Hung over from animal massacres,
    hung over from murder and mayhem,
From multiple violations
    of place and people.

“What’s the use of a carved god
    so skillfully carved by its sculptor?
What good is a fancy cast god
    when all it tells is lies?
What sense does it make to be a pious god-maker
    who makes gods that can’t even talk?
Who do you think you are—
    saying to a stick of wood, ‘Wake up,’
Or to a dumb stone, ‘Get up’?
    Can they teach you anything about anything?
There’s nothing to them but surface.
    There’s nothing on the inside.

“But oh! God is in his holy Temple!
   Quiet everyone—a holy silence. Listen!”

(Next exercise is on March 19^th 2025. All of us will start keeping the right time then, so things here on the earth might be done as they are in Heaven. That is all.)

Dear folks, I was informed of yet another push-date on our next deep dive. The chief saw the look on my face and knew how I felt in my gut before we went to chair. So, out of a superabundance of kindness, to you or me, perhaps all, he gave me leave to write something brief and personal, not prescribed or formal, so that this winter would not be one of complete chilly discontentment. It is still the best of times and the worst of times today, as many remain dead who claim to be alive, while we are dead yet live… obviously Professor Schrödinger was well read on Master Dickins too.

Time before last, we discussed an intermission or break in Isaiah. Here’s a much smaller one timewise in Mark, which has been stuck in my mind for a minute this winter. Don’t let this more diminutive break go unnoted. It casts a revealing light upon our present situation. So, as I may, if it’s not too formal:

“As soon as the meal was finished, Jesus insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead across to Bethsaida while he dismissed the congregation. After sending them off, he climbed a mountain to pray…

(This space marks a significant temporal rift in the discourse. It’s certainly a departure from Mark’s rapid-fire storytelling trademark: “immediately!”)

…Late at night, the boat was far out at sea; Jesus was still by himself on land. He could see his men struggling with the oars, the wind having come up against them. At about four o’clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea. He intended to go right by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and screamed, scared to death.”

My favorite part is that Jesus saw his people “struggling,” however when he sets off across the water, “He intended to go right by them.” It is real. That ain’t the aspect of the story they teach in Sunday school, heck, I’ve never heard it from a carpeted pulpit, for obvious but un-Godly reasons. And I get the distinct impression that Jesus doesn’t like being dehumanized, for it’s no coincidence that type of error also leads to dehumanizing others, the very people that we’re meant to rescue. So it makes perfect sense that I’ve heard this aspect of the story discussed and pondered, at length, repeatedly in the field and under fire out on the bounding chaos. I take great comfort in the narration when things get existentially stormy, so I might still “go out, even if the US Navy stays in port.” And I appreciate it theologically because that type of material wouldn’t be part of the canon of an emerging Jewish sect without very good reason. I believe it’s there because it’s true, just as we glossed another episode in Mark where his family and friends think he’s “beside himself” (crazy). I prefer Mark most often for these reasons, but then I am rough trade who has become “a basket case” for God’s purposes.

Our man Paul also has a similar temporal and spatial break where he talks about the parameters and conditions wherein followers of Christ might judge. In this age we are told to judge only those within the church or those who claim to be, yet they are not. We are not to judge those outside the Church, that’s not why Jesus came. But too many, often well intended men with the embarrassing condition of PE cry, “yeah sure but just a few lines later it says that we are to judge the entire world.” They’re right on the surface, but they’re deeply wrong because they have prematurely eschatologized, and that always leads to grave error. I can understand the human hermeneutic to make much of one’s self, I can even forgive it, but then it needs to be left behind to die. Instead look for markers, story guides provided by the writer(s).Do not ignore the subtle verb tenses, which mark a different time. And there too, Paul also rocks a revelatory interrogative line about a people judging angels.

Now, if you can literally call down angels today (or in this present age) and discern their role without prior knowledge and accurately appraise their works up to this point in time, please drop me a line. And if you can do it, then maybe you can start judging the world now. But if not, please confine your judgments to the everyday affairs within your church as practice for the coming age. If you do not control yourself, then you are drowning others. Lastly, don’t worry, I don’t have PE, as I have strict guards placed about me to keep me in obedience to first principles. I have embarrassed myself in other ways though, and I remember those who gave me a break.

On a brighter note, there are more descriptive markers that define gestures in a place (a particular location in spacetime) for great effect. I am thinking now about Ephesians wherein the celebrant eloquently confesses, “My response is to get down on my knees before the Father…” who apportions manifest authorities (rightly exercised power by name in reality) to every family, both in the heavens (plural) and on earth. Think of the tribal array mapped about the Tabernacle. I know some of you have, yes I am thinking of you sister, but it’s so much more than that. Ephesians, more so than John’s Apocalypse, is a discourse ahead of its time. It’s a real story that straddles all times and places, to focus on today, no matter what day that might be. Ultimately, you’ll see that all of it as a rectified reflection to close out an age. An age God inaugurated by separating and apportioning all peoples on earth to their various gods due to their selfish and prideful collusion with the powers that be in abominable, but distinctly human ways, “in only darkness and agony,” much like now-a-days (more on this later for those who make it to C school).

I’ll just finish by confessing that I get a bit chagrined when hypocritical Enlightenment interpreters of the Word, who’ve decried pagans and Marxists, occult this great revelation about the heavens and earth, which is repeated throughout the Writings, by whitewashing heaven (singular) into their own private club, “a workers’ paradise” of course as it would be rendered by Thomas Kincade. That is a sad state of affairs, and I thank God it is not true. They may not have PE, but they need to show a little more respect for the fullness of the texts, the significance of context, and Mister Kincade. I respect all of them; and they too, the selfish hermeneutics put aside, I love enough to give them a break, to point out that no one can rightly expect to inherit the reality of the beatific revelations of the first half of Ephesians in the age to come, if one does not obey the covenantal practices enumerated in the plain-spoken second half commands in one’s daily life.

There is a bigger pattern at work within the divine marking and articulating appointed times rightly; think about the covenant God cut in the Sermon on the Mount/Plane. ‘If you desire to inherit (in the future), then you must be (today).’ Amazing so many sell that promised, forever inheritance for a bowl of soup, which is something that comforts for only one day. They take a simple, real deal and turn it into a over-wrought credo existing only in thoughts and belief, to comfort the things they already want to be true. I ask them, if there were three frogs on a log, and one thought about jumping off while all three believed they could, how many frogs were left behind on the log? I cannot make it any clearer, get real man.

Now, since we are exactly where we are and my orders were clear, I’ll share some warmth that I’ve enjoyed this winter, a few most beautiful yet very human things: from the short take above to songs, a little comedy, and a moment on a human story, a biography really, which keeps resurfacing in my mind here below. I most earnestly hope that you find some comfort and Spiritual growth before what comes next… Necessary endowments too oft forgot by Jesus-haunted people who are always chasing or building their newer model messiahs; there are so many loudly produced and conspicuously consumed these days; and they’re all part of the liar’s dehumanizing project to beach Love. Our Father made me so I could always see, but because of their doubling-down reverie I have stopped blinking, and now, by my Lord, there is no more landlubberly slackness for us. Personally, I’ve always known, even before my soul’s embodiment, that God bore all souls into the flesh of this world, “so it is here you will be tested… water born and water bred, hurrah!” Engage that enthusiasm realistically, for James tells us to consider every trial before us as “all joy.” Trust me, there are historic “joys” headed our way, but still, we will go out. That is our call, faith, and duty. It is perfect messaging in the wake of Christmastide. His messaging is forever fitting in every way for the Rectification, the elemental breaking and reforming of all things, from age to age.

So now, I pray, “Father and Lord, grant your Spirit mercy in dealing with your most intimate family in the heavens and on earth. I desire most that we no longer squander your divine tenderness, your unsurpassed forgiveness painfully, so painfully raised, but instead help us make full use of your unique gift to recover those lost within the terrible sea, the chaos that men make of your works and creatures. Even though you don’t need us, I beg that you deign to train us, use us, to make right all of your Creation, not with the manners of other gods and fallen powers as we have too often for too long, but now only in the Power that descended to reveal both your Will and Way in “bruised” human flesh…. Enable us to serve Jesus’ way, no other. Even in Silence, I beg you to realize and amplify yourself evermore, in us and through us. Please do this Father no matter the cost to us, it will be justified for we can only do evil without you. Amen.”

From a magisterial sermon in one line (above), a gift given to real martyrs, to the ardent, human, and real prayer by a father for his daughter to God. A prayer to end the inherited lies and present destruction, the Curse, and God’s response with a father’s obligation (below):

Now some of the most sublimely spoken beauty in the history of the English language, made all the more weighty as it speaks to the bigger unseen picture, which is only for those with ears to hear and hearts to burn:

Sublime poetry to ridiculous comedy:

Silly comedy to an illuminating story… a tale in which I discovered more and more depth, the deeper I dove and grew. It’s been recurring to me this dark winter:

Samuel Houston was a man misunderstood by all but Providence. You couldn’t blame all, after all he certainly was a rascal in his youth. He scandalized “the good white folk” who thought they knew him, by running away from home to live with the Cherokee. It was there he took a brake and learned of his need to serve a higher cause in order to sleep through the night, while learning the broader scope of humanity, greater than the very limited one the people he came out from had taught him. In turn, the Cherokees gave him a call sign, “the Raven,” for his keen vision and strategic thinking. It was a better name because Cherokee names are not an ends in themselves like the European powers use them, a name to these humble and oppressed people reflect a deeper spiritual reality, not worldly power.

When he returned to the land of his birth, Sam thought serving a people that didn’t understand him at the risk of his life was a noble cause. He soon caught the eye of General Andrew Jackson, who most called the greatest field commander of his day. In turn, “Old Hickory” thought Sam was, especially for a man who never sought promotion. After the war of 1812, the candidate Jackson made Sam an integral part of his campaign. Once again, the Raven exceeded expectations, and after more victories, his mentor set him up in politics. He even remarried “the right kind of woman” for a bright future to help lead the young and growing nation. When the Cherokees were forced from their lands Sam did what he could to mitigate the brutal oppression, but the horror and shame of his people damn near killed him. He lasted all of six years in that soul-crushing pit.

He divorced his model wife and took a break among more civilized people, the First Nations People in the Arkansas Territory. I ask you dear reader, if “the savages” are more intelligent and civil than “the civilized folk,” who is zooming whom? Forget the propaganda, what’s the real cultural logic behind the vainly constructed reality of that world? It’s always been the case, or the Apostle Paul wouldn’t have nearly as good a biography to remember.

Anyway, after a spell and becoming renowned as “white brother big drunk,” he heard of a small band of Texicans fighting an empire to the south in order to restore the Constitution of 1824. The big drunk saw another higher cause and went to Texas. After Gonzales (if you know warfare you can’t call it a battle) where proud and stupid men revived King Leonidas’s ancient slogan of “come and take it” only to get slaughtered, Sam decided to help at war again. Once there, it was obvious to men of vision that even in his “delicate condition” Sam saw their actual situation clearer than anyone who never drank a day in his life. And after a few years trouble shooting the war effort, getting to know the landscape in detail, and a series of slaughters… those “in power” had seen enough and made him commander of the forces that remained, in their darkest hour.

This is the part that I’ve been thinking about most: It literally was a winter of discontent and dread. Who could stop the man that abused elected power so lawlessly to destroy the Constitution and ordain himself emperor, “the Napoleon of the West?” Meanwhile, Sam was living down to his infamous moniker, yet wisely ordered a sustained retreat. The movement was part of “The Runaway Scrape” to the east. This gave the Raven and those with him time to train, establish better logistics, and wait for the man with godlike hubris to make a mistake; they always do. Now, if you know anything about warfare know that it is intelligence, discipline, logistics, and patience that wins wars. If God did pick the winner of men’s wars, he’d pick that side every time because they shoot better in reality.

Of course, those who were supposed to be serving at Sam’s direction didn’t know war or God, not in any real sense. Most of them were proud and ignorant; they put more effort into tailoring their uniforms rather than their training, more time talking and bragging than listening and learning… real Patton-lovers before his time. It’s no wonder there were myriad coup attempts and non-stop defaming and complaining. What the rubes didn’t know was their man had taken all that and worse before, several times. The only wonder is why he stayed. But it is no wonder to anyone who looked at the arc of Sam’s life, and Sam did. Even on a ship of fools, he knew how to keep a the right course, with his eyes upon the markers and hand upon the rudder, even when the best became dogmatically dissolute and the worst were filled with ignorant intensity.

Remembering the Battle of New Orleans, in the spring of April of ’36, Sam seized an opportunity by feigning another retreat. This one led the petite Napoleon onto ground that the pipsqueak was not familiar with and lost his numerous advantages by camping there. He reinforced his position, feasted, and slept in the next morning confident in his apotheotic brilliance, superior firepower, and exponential numeric advantage. The battle lasted all of 18 minutes. But the killing went on for hours. It was a brilliant display of combined forces that took full advantage of terrain, tactics, fire, and movement a century before Omar Bradley went to WestPoint then to codify that very approach for the strongest military in the miserable history of human failure. But I digress… The Tejanos lost 9 men with 3o wounded, while their opponents suffered over 600 fatalities, hundreds wounded, and over 700 captured. Self-proclaimed gods bluster, fall hard, and act like punks under trial. True to form the disgraced general, dressed as an enlisted man, was out-ed among the prisoners as they showed him deference while they were brought before a wounded Houston for judgment.

The same damned fools who profaned Sam before screamed for total vengeance and an agonizing death for Santa Anna. But the Raven didn’t see things that way. The army was disarmed then granted supply and passage back to Mexico. And their leader was given a break because the Big Drunk knew that was the only way, the right way, to establish the place the Texicans had dreamed of with pains. Even the few devils who didn’t learn their lesson, couldn’t deny the astonishing victory. Texas was established as an independent republic, with Santa Anna’s approval, not long after that warm, sunny day. Now, there are numerous other accomplishments that “good people” admired after that day, markers in Sam’s life, any one of which would make any petty politico these days fat and happy for life, most of their histories are written that way.

But let me tell you what I admire most, in brief. Sam was an Anglo ahead of his time in fighting for the rights of the oppressed and it cost him dearly. Besides fighting a losing cause with FNP, Sam wanted slavery abolished and to preserve the Union; it cost him his job as governor. Notably, Sam used his influence to keep Lorenzo de Zavalla, an educated San Juanista rebel form Merida, as vice-president until the day he died. Sam thought it was mete and right as the republic’s strength would come from its diversity and inclusion, just as it had in the rag-tag assembly that he built into an army, to the chagrin of racists, so most. Tejano is still a name of honor there among true Texans, even as the petty Santa Annas in Austin today disgrace this, their own legacy in hateful acts. More personally and on the brighter side, Sam remarried “a deliberate woman” in ’40 and soon after he became a leading member in an early temperance movement, correlation or cause? Only the Big Drunk could say. And the coup de grace, the man quipped the greatest statement in the history of Christian baptismal days. In ’54, along the banks of a Texas bayou, the baptizer proclaimed “the water has washed your sins away!” Sam is said to have grinned and clapped back, “Lord help the fish below!” Who knew such a sardonic one-line master and spiritual realist could also be such an enthusiastic environmentalist? Well, anyone with integrity would… I know for a fact that God blesses and keeps pure-hearted Texas drunks close by, if only for choral and comedic entertainment.

He was a bit like Balian, weren’t he? Both were men who are heavily fictionalized and yet always seem out of time, because no matter the revision, they incontrovertibly lived as if they were already in the age to come but acted properly within their time according to that greater reality, which was still yet to fully be. That’s no small feat, but it is one that Jesus calls for from whomever he calls. None of us can do it perfectly but we must try. That’s what grace is for… to save, help, and guide us from failure to failure until we stop trying or die. It is simple integrity committed to rest in the spirit and truth of the greatest and therefore timeless Reality, while toiling on a day to day basis in the eternal now. No wonder the failing powers that be were the greatest adversaries in both stories. Compromised people in power usually have enough sense to know the real, the authentic McCoy when she arrives among them. What they lack is the integrity to act right, the moral rectitude to act sacrificially, because they know deep down that their reign is done and has already been judged lacking, and they are too proud to let go of their millstones. So they get increasingly deluded, hateful, and violent until they change or drown in their manifest sins, in the stormy sea that they created. That’s the idolatry story in a nutshell. No one reborn from the living waters of faith, especially not the One I serve, wants that, but they chose it. God gave them and us a choice. So he, and we, will honor that agency singularly even if it means separation from those we love. We who honor Him, live in his Spirit to live and let others live, even if it means live and let them die in reality.

…Intermission…

For the longest time I was forced to watch the generation of a people who bore me chose replacement messiahs and snow jobs until they are now frozen and buried away from reality, just where the petty Nimrods and greedy wolves want them. For a long time I was mad (a sane response), then indignant (righteously so), and after all that I gave out more than 490 breaks a head (like God said), finally I came to simply do what I could for those who wanted me to help (that’s Shalom), and I let the sea take the rest. For me the hardest part was not wearing the lost on my sleeve, but I got there, not to a “utopia,” but in reality. Then about three-and-a-half years ago (adjusted for the year of delay), at an inflection point that I didn’t see coming, I was given a most weighty proposition. It was the happiest and most comfortable I had ever been in my own skin. I had finally found the peace that I had struggled and fought for so very long and very, very hard. Accepting the Request would mean an end to my most treasured peace, “my own private Idaho.” So I was reluctant to say yes, and in my deepest, novel infirmities I asked to see my master in reality.

My lord saw that as a wise and right response, so he came to me. I said, “for a long lifetime I have begged, borrowed, and pleaded… stormed, struck-down, and walked away… all bruised to hell and back. I finally learned to treasure your Peace… away from a people who wouldn’t give up their religions of pride and self-righteousness, nor their worldly power and wealth. In sum, they would not forgive, turn from their replacement messiahs and live out your reality.” His response was brief and turned a half-century of learning about him on its sublime head and altered a final estate that I was already more than pleased with, one I didn’t deserve. He changed it all in an instant by saying, “That is my testimony too. They might not Stephen, but we do. We go out.” Then he showed me his bruise, “You know there are many families above as there are below. Please do our Father’s bidding. I gave you our choice for a bride, now…” his soft voice enjambed into silence, and he just smiled. But he had a longing in his eyes that disturbed me at first because it was all too human, almost needy… I’d seen the same look in my own mirror a thousand times, and I thought “ah young Porphyro,” and once again I had no choice. At least it didn’t feel like I did.

That is Real, no escapist blasphemies for me, for by his gaze my flesh embodied His principle. He gave me a break, so I should do likewise… (intermission) …even if there are people who make a show of reciting the Lord’s prayer mindlessly every Sunday or Wednesdays, or any other days, but never actually live it out; they only forgive the debts in their finely manicured worlds that they feel good about forgiving. That’s just a lived-principle of natural love, loving only those few they chose to love or forgive, for whatever selfish feeling or prideful reason. Actually, they do the opposite of Jesus’ commands to reveal their hiemal religion by nursing grudges, doubling-down in contempt, and even making up more lies, replacement messiahs always provide more lies and ignorance. In short, they do everything and anything they might do just to avoid doing the one and first thing, beyond lip-service, which sets-apart followers of Christ Jesus in reality. I’d long left-behind their patterns of a subnivean birth. I dropped their inherited curses like they were my infected garments. Everyday since, my life breaths, oscillates, between eye-scorching understanding with burning bones and threadbare thoughts to unappreciated serenity that reforms more peaceful wits, which makes my training well worthwhile, even to the point where I dread getting that comfortable in my flesh ever again.

That’s no present danger today, because in just a little over a year from now the last Jubilee in the Age of Grace officially commences. There’s always some splash and overspray between times in God’s use of times. Profound benthic currents in creation don’t reverse in an instant, unlike the gentile philosophers’ demands for clear cut lines and right angles at specific moments that never seem to workout for them. So they’re forever thrashing about their credos and teachings; they say truth but they cannot even tread water. They storm about, all for fear their “purity” will be polluted. Their teachings are the pollutants, their ways toxic. Pay heed to Paul’s instruction, confront them for reconciliation’s sake, judge them in your house if they persist, and cast them out of your assemblies if they still refuse to turn. It’s their choice to make if they want to drown in a pool of their delusions, but leaders do not let them harm or mislead the weak among you or else drowning will seem a kind escape at your time of final appraisal… At God’s other hand, it is only in his Silence that we might most faithfully attend to the voice of Grace until the end of its final echo over the abyss. We who’ve sacrificed our choices and surrendered our lives here below have sensed the undertow for a long time, while above Apricity’s gleaming re-colors the psychrophilic sky… descending into the world’s deepest winter, turning the snows into oceans.

( “As foolish voices proliferate, the restrained word is wise.” Delayed deep dive is now scheduled for sundown September 27th)

Spoiler Alert

It Is About Time

(Burn your floaties for a deep dive thread. Psalm 119 Pe : January 20th 1632 GMT )

No one has ever become poor by giving. — Anne Frank

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live. —  Omar N. Bradley

Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night. Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies. Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light. And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again. I can still hear you saying, you would never break the chain… — Fleetwood Mac

In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. —  Brennan Manning

The Cry of a Suffering Servant

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

Many bulls surround me;
    strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
Roaring lions that tear their prey
    open their mouths wide against me.
I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.

But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
    You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
Deliver me from the sword,
    my precious life from the power of the dogs.
Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
    save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

I will declare your name to my people;
    in the assembly I will praise you.
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
    Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
For he has not despised or scorned
    the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
    but has listened to his cry for help.

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
    before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek the Lord will praise him—
    may your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth
    will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the Lord
    and he rules over the nations.

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
    all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
    those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
    declaring to a people yet unborn:
    He has done it!

Isaiah’s Reflections on the Deeply Rooted Theme

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out,
    or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
    he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
    In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”

This is what God the Lord says—
the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,
    who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
    who gives breath to its people,
    and life to those who walk on it:
“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
    I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
    to be a covenant for the people
    and a light for the Gentiles,
 to open eyes that are blind,
    to free captives from prison
    and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

“I am the Lord; that is my name!
    I will not yield my glory to another
    or my praise to idols.
See, the former things have taken place,
    and new things I declare;
before they spring into being
    I announce them to you.”

…

Listen to me, you islands;
    hear this, you distant nations:
Before I was born the Lord called me;
    from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.
He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,
    in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
    and concealed me in his quiver.
He said to me, “You are my servant,
    Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
    I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
    and my reward is with my God.”

And now the Lord says—
    he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
    and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord
    and my God has been my strength—
he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

This is what the Lord says—
    the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel—
to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation,
    to the servant of rulers:
“Kings will see you and stand up,
    princes will see and bow down,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

…

This is what the Lord says:

“Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce
    with which I sent her away?
Or to which of my creditors
    did I sell you?
Because of your sins you were sold;
    because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.
When I came, why was there no one?
    When I called, why was there no one to answer?
Was my arm too short to deliver you?
    Do I lack the strength to rescue you?
By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea,
    I turn rivers into a desert;
their fish rot for lack of water
    and die of thirst.
I clothe the heavens with darkness
    and make sackcloth its covering.”

The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
    to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
    wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
    I have not been rebellious,
    I have not turned away.
I offered my back to those who beat me,
    my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
    from mocking and spitting.
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
    I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.
He who vindicates me is near.
    Who then will bring charges against me?
    Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
    Let him confront me!
It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
    Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
    the moths will eat them up.

Who among you fears the Lord
    and obeys the word of his servant?
Let the one who walks in the dark,
    who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
    and rely on their God.
But now, all you who light fires
    and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
    and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
    You will lie down in torment.

…

See, my servant will act wisely;
    he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him—
    his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness—
so he will sprinkle many nations,
    and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
    and what they have not heard, they will understand.

…

Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

“Who dis?” is actually a very old question and among the first questions I ask of a text: Who from and to whom, along with who profits/loses by its saying? In this case it is Isaiah and the Isaianic tradition reflecting on an already ancient knowledge by God’s faithful ones. Due to his inherited and achieved status in Jerusalem, Isaiah was an unlikely pick because he seemed to have everything in common with the people that he addressed… Irony for efficacy, that is the reality of God as we discussed last time. God resolved that paradox in a Flash, somewhat like that fellow Saul who stood with discarded cloaks at the stoning of Stephen. We may come from a people, but we are transformed into the people of God. That divine process always comes with a cost today for a profit in the future, ask Isaiah or Saul or Stephen. Often that cost is the very system of bogus belief, crumbling worldview or delusional cosmology, that made us fat and semi-euphoric for so long. Shoot, I myself literally came of age in The Valley of Quail…     

Despite the social status and cultural privileges (gifts of man) Isaiah enjoyed, at his maturity he recieved a gift from God that reoriented salvation history. It rectified poor Aye, so that he might know all that former “glory” as filth and sin, which he then confronted, endured, and overcame. In the midst of world-ending circumstances arose the genesis of a revelation, which we know as the Most High calling, from the only God that breaks the chain of the world through suffering service. Like so many others, Isaiah saw that all those “gifts,” all that “greatness,” became as crappy rags in the twinkling of an aye. It was his humility, honesty, and willingness to serve, no matter the loss, that made him “a man of God.” Further, he admitted, from the start, that his sins were part and parcel of his people’s even greater sins.

It was his painful and prolonged sufferings because of his own people, not necessarily for his people (the coming terror was already on them because so many of them kept doubling down in their sins), that made him who he became; it was by appointment with God that the prophet’s overwhelming faithfulness grew and became memorialized across the Writings and the Witnesses. As a result of his lived, believing loyalty to his God, he became his name, “God saves.” He and some from among his people faced a disastrous future and distant hope all at once, centuries before any one became aware of the sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth. What an honor, what a horror, talk about a trail blazer and a saga for the ages, a rain-maker and heart-breaker of the second order… “who is like the Lord?!”… But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Isaiah turned from the boutique charity and plastic charms of Israel’s gods of lifestyle. God put him to work calling out the lies and loves, the dark and the light, of those gods, which many people insisted that they couldn’t live without, or worse, they would die for them. So be it, the unholy rubble had to be cleared out, no matter how long it took, so that survivors might know the real shalom of God. Only survivors know the faithful terror of the journey, the Arms that held them thorough it all, and the Power that raised them to overcome both their past and all the obstacles to come. Those who’ve jumped in enjambment across that chasm can and did carry each other. Their suffering enabled them to fully trust and know a suffering God. Others cannot. Only a suffering God can “save” a suffering people. And who is not sin-bruised? Those who entertain themselves with ersatz victimhood have gods that will not “save” anyone. Those people and gods forge the chain of their world by chaining others in darkness. God breaks all chains and the dark with the Light. The idols and their servants anesthetize guilty bystanders in night-fall. The Spirit of God draws in peoples to awake at Day-break.    

There is a beautiful isle where I learned one of their most enduring and widespread sayings quickly for survival’s sake: “Mind the gap.” It may seem doggerel and trite for a people renowned as eloquently repressed poetic folk, but it is essential to everyday life there, just as an embrace of Spiritual enjambement is required for real life with God everyday… If you don’t remember, no worries the post is up most days for now. And if you’re new, then please start at the beginning of the blog. (It will be inverted this summer just to make sure).

“In the gap” is where those Isaianic texts were written, and it’s where we live, in analogy, almost like the first generations of Isaiah’s readers. The most knowledgeable folks conclude there’s about a two-hundred-year gap between Isaiah 39:8 and 40:1 (yes, I am averse to more recent impositions to the Writings, but for wit and brevity sometimes exact addresses are helpful). The first 39 chapters are primarily about loss, this is where God’s judgment comes as withdrawal, not wrath, and not because of “other people,” but because the people who claimed to be His people didn’t act like His people for a very, very, very long time. To be fair, some did, but many others did not. Unfortunately, God’s judgment is global and communal, as well as personal. There were too many who had put their “faith” in their glory which, in reality, was rooted in unjust economic and military policies of unfaith. Ironically, that faithlessness was championed most by those who called themselves “faithful.” The power of faith-filled unity meant to glorify the God of Israel, was co-opted by vichy believers and the powers that be.

So, God simply handed them over to the circumstances that they had built for themselves for so long. It is Right and Just in every age, and I will always praise Him for it no matter what. Even if it happens, again, sometime soon, my tune will not change. Of course the name of Isaiah was celebrated only in the aftermath and reinvestment of Israel so many years latter, while the faithless are lost to history and God. It ain’t nothing new, and very few look back at Isaiah as a prophet of doom. But in the thick-of-it, back then, the people were only happy in their delusions, but a time later, and today, most rightly remember him as a messenger of God’s salvation, a great prophet, perhaps the greatest. I need to remind myself of that on an almost daily basis.

On that personal note, since it’ll be a minute before the next post, I wouldn’t claim any of those titles, because through many trials I have learned that it doesn’t matter what people call me, and it matters very little what I denominate myself as…  What matters most is first what God calls you before His counsel, then what He calls you in private, and if the Writings are to be believed, the name our parents gave us at birth matters somewhat, but even that can be overcome/changed if renamed by God. So, I am a witness to my God, a servant to my Lord, and there’s another curious name, a three-off oddity that even has me and some others, who are most knowledgeable about such things, a bit puzzled. So today, “witness” and “servant” only for me… even if not asked, it is answered.     

Now back to the plot: first we get a time of loss, deserved consequences, and divine repercussions… then some silence (two hundred years?) … and then hope comes to the fore in chapters 40-66. For those who kept the hope alive in the inspired, creative, and imaginative tradition of the great prophet, the horizon was the goal, the telos, while muddling through the gap. I’ve always felt that it is the profound tension between judgment and promise that made Isaianic texts so freaking awesome. I might not want to endure Jerimiah’s story again, but Isaiah’s? Yes, please and thank you more. Both were lugubrious, to be sure, but Isaiah looked up while Jeremiah looked down, a bit like comparing Yeats to Joyce, or if I maybe so bold, Emerson to Thoreau… both great but in different perspectives.

Certainly, we may suffer in service to God and others, but if we have indeed been set free, then no storm at sea is too much (an allegory we’ll explore next spring more fully)… Remember that after the shipwreck is when Balian’s story, like Isaiah’s, was rocketed into the fifth dimension. The new (old) land of myth-cum-reality, a place of ancient inheritance, and a new (old) way of living must be championed, not for the powers that be… No, but for the Power that redeems Balian… All against the dissolving backdrop of a lost wife, living among despicable people riding roughshod over a failing society, and against a terminally corrupt church. God delivers Balian, not for himself, but so that he might help heal God’s land, while delivering a beloved people at the very moment they felt abandoned and doomed. And he does it all, like Isaiah, every dang step God’s Way, in Right conscience, not the way of petty tyrants according to the vile desires of worldly achievement for a selfish priesthood. The Godly are delivered in pain, not comfort, according to and out of their natural state. Born again but from above, as it were. They are delivered while they lived in reality, not while they glorified themselves in a delusional future or over-nostalgized past, which was trademarked by the wealthy ghouls of politics and religion. That is what I am talking about, that is how “I am” does it, “just listen to the words long written down” and the movie you were just shown.

The salvific conviction that drives chapters 40-55 comes in the gap. The robes of glorious recovery can only be worn, if people remove their old garments. I confess some old attachments are more than skin deep and it’s almost impossible to imagine the loss of their comfort, even though their stench has finally offended the Long Nose of Heaven. Staying on God’s superhighway mapped out by Isaiah, the hope that renews hearts in chapters 56-66 also comes with struggle. The return, the reordering of Holy places, and the land itself are faithful yet contested. Contemporary readers may want to flag up the inclusiveness demanded in chapter 56 and the renewal of a greater neighborliness in chapter 58. There were many who capitalized on division and proclaimed exclusivity… But I guess they had to die first because everyone knows those types never change.

Personally, I find it beyond curious that time and time again certain peoples become convinced that their faith was full and complete before they were born, their forefathers’, and their’s alone, had everything completely right. How serendipitous their world is, how lucky they are! Well, I am sure that I will never know their world or where it goes because that is not my story, it is not Isaiah’s story, and it certainly isn’t Jesus’ story. My God and my Lord and Isaiah, all told me from the time I was a little child that our Way is narrow and beset on all sides, especially from the inside. Even on the far side of the Cross from here, before God was made flesh, even then, the way of the suffering service was well known to the righteous. We are always commanded to love till to our deaths, while others order ageless, baseless hatereds only to call it life. Bon soirée and c’est la mort to all those “lucky” people in that wide-way of living.

Before we bid adieu to Isaiah and his blessed people and turn to the Fulfillment of the suffering servant and those beloveds who first followed the Way of Jesus, I’d like to make a minor personal point, perhaps it is only important to me, perhaps not. But it seems to me that throughout the Bible, from Adam and Eve to Job and his “friends” to the Spirit and the Bride, that sometimes there is a man, or woman, every so often, put there by God in a highly conflicted situation…. They are salvation history writ small with burning bones and trembling flesh. “Sometimes there’s a man”, or so it is written, that embodies the panoramic dilemma of God’s people as a contested personification between heaven and hell, peoples and powers. That is the character of the suffering servant. History, or at least the narration of history, brings the eyes of the world to a cataract in time and place. The person is the round peg for the God-shaped round hole, but most, if not all, of the people that they encounter want her or him to be a square or triangle or anything and everything that they are not called, nay ordered to be. Why would they do that? Because… well because, Nimrods and all the petty goons who apologize for them want to control others.

Scripture, it’s Writer, and I put it to you, here and now, that living for self is not Satanic; it is just human. I can understand it. Every human ought to understand it. Hell, some of us even got rich and fat on it, you know “The American Way,” or even much more broadly “The Western Wind.” Those ways are melting away today, but their victims are still the most desired by God. Hence, they are very far from unredeemable, even the ones that victimized the others can be regenerated if they turn from their wickedness. Black sheep are best at breaking generational curses, and scapegoats that overcome devils are lifted up to ride on a horse of a different color.

Conversely, it is impossible to please God with “ethical wars” or “moral statutes”, both are spectacular manifestations of failed faith en masse. “Get religion” fiats reveal the end of an age, not the beginning of a glorious new Reich; see the imperial propaganda to conquest and Leges Juliae imposed on Roman citizens as the Republic fell to centuries of tyranny. The fall of the Weimar Republic is a more recent display of darkness in action by a people claiming to be righteous and imposing purity on others. There was a time, not too long ago, when everybody knew that “good Germans” would make “bad Americans.” But, from age to age, all it takes is one wicked generation for all to be lost.

It is even clearer today than back then, that compelling by threat of artillery fire, or homogenizing legislation, leads to antichrists’ counterfeit for God’s purity. Their terminal fraud is forcing others to conform to their will because their god told them so, or else they’ll make all others disappear… That is always Satan’s followers’ sin, always has been since Cain, and it will be to their bitter end. No matter what they call themselves or how they brand their faithlessness, the action of their heads and hands mark (for all to see) the desolating occultation of the possibility for Spiritual growth, with the abominable destruction of Holy space wherein people might have chosen God. Why? Because the white-washed tombs still chose unjust splendor over righteous suffering. It is the definitive and literal opposite of service to others. It is self-service, demanding all others serve them. God will not forgive this blasphemy in spirit, this eternal sin. My Lord says so.

The only Way that I’ve been given is to fulfill God’s promises, and trust Us, that Way cuts down every other way. Even if you pervert your pet passages over a hundred lifetimes across mass media… Can you fool God? Can you redeem Satan? It is not my job ‘to teach Nazis lessons in humanity, Nazis ain’t got no humanity because they exchanged suffering in God’s image for their own pleasurable power in the world; they are all foot soldiers of a Jesus-hating Lair.’ And devils rule every petty nimrod and all their apologists… But being a witness against all that gross wickedness and a servant to those who suffer from the evildoers, that is the suffering servant in a nutshell. God promises those servants a divine solidarity in Isaiah 61, which culminates with the righteous One’s proclamations at the Sermon on the Mount. That’s where I am headed, and who I am with, no matter how much hell all the devils try to heap upon us.      

C’mon people, you don’t need to be Isaiah, for even Jonah, “the worst of the prophets,” knew that change is a requirement and Spiritual growth hurts/matures only by personal choice, never in bullying duress. Moreover, again, service to God and others is free and exists, for real, only in a volitional state. Most importantly, if we grow Spiritually then our understanding of God will change, grow every day, sometimes almost none (maybe it even feels like a loss) and other days there are giant leaps in perception. Life is part of that process. The trick is choosing every day to grow along His lines, not our own or this world’s. Then, without doubt, He’s always getting bigger. But unlike human tools, in Christ, the greater the scope of disclosure there’s also an increase, not a decrease, in the detail we see, “the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God.” Heck, I am worse than Jonah or any of you, and still I know this little bit to be true: worship God alone.

Jesus’ Perfection of Suffering Service

First and Last Response to Satan

The devil led him (Jesus) up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

The Cost of Following Jesus

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Watchfulness

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”

The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

The Narrow Door

Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

Mister Robert Allen Zimmerman’s Song

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”

Still, the Same Dispute with Worldliness

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

These are just a few salient passages from only one Gospel, and I had a whole spiel ready… but in final review, who could expand on the Master? Who can throw light upon the Light? What kind of fool could? Well, I got the Nod here, so I’ll briefly ask… Do you see Isaiah’s points on inclusion, greater neighborliness, and the holy rejection of worldly gifts, rule, and standards? Do you see the stakes? Who profits and loses? Do you see the vows, the commitments, and the guarantee of Isaiah 61? Do you see the blessedness, the exhilaration, and the rapture of Matthew 5? If yes, keep up the good works in right trust… If no, well, you are in luck because the time ahead will afford even the blind, deaf, and dumb many opportunities to break good. For the dead, it doesn’t matter what happens they’re going to stay asleep.

In turning from the Master to his disciples, I can say that we’re at least 2 years away from discussing Tactics: the formerly tenuous, subterrain seeds, the forgotten meanings of teshuva, tzedakah, tikkun olam pulled from death and darkness into flowering by the light of Christ Jesus. Suffice to say today… if you do believe, then you will suffer to follow him, God, and the broken world in right service. Despite their hiddenness to most, at present the rudiments are on full array wherever suffering servants garden. I need not say anymore on my Lord’s account… other than if you do not love him now in the embrace of service, you’ll never love him again. So, focus on growing His gifts in you, not building on your achievements, because the Spirit of Christ is looking to invest virtues not outcomes. To Him, in this world, human accomplishments are meaningless… at best. So stay at it, even if it seems that you’ve made no difference, the Spirit sees your faithfulness.  

Disciples in Suffering Service

His (a Pharisee named Gamaliel) speech persuaded them (the members of the supreme council and tribunal of the Jews). They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

…

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man (Saul of Tarsus) is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

…

 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

….

 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.

…

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering… The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

…

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!… Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

…

 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

…

For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

“He committed no sin,
    and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

…

 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For,

“Whoever would love life
    and see good days
must keep their tongue from evil
    and their lips from deceitful speech.
They must turn from evil and do good;
    they must seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
    and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 

…

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin… Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And,

“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
    what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.

…

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

“God opposes the proud
    but shows favor to the humble.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

It would seem that no matter where we look in the New Testament, poor Aye, is always less than a stone’s throw away. These are just a few citations from a few of those books. None from Paul, just one more Paul quote further down, but as you’ve been shown over the past 27 posts, you cannot swing a dead gentile anywhere in the Paulines without landing on a passage concerning right suffering for, and like, Jesus. Can’t have too much scripture. Again, I’ll truncate the commentary so the texts may do the Lion’s share of their work in you. Just a reminder and a storied caution to end.

The Rule of Christ means his baseless love merits our eternal service. So why do so many who claim the Name express evermore baseless hate? Oh, you know the wicked creatures who judge by the amount of skin pigment per square inch, and the others who promote “convenient lies” for greed and selfishness, serving the Beast and their disordered world. Many of them scream about taking all scriptures literally, but of the multitude I’ve met, only one or two are missing their right hands… ironic or hypocritical? Perhaps both. Those “good people” will be startled (in the minimum) to awaken in Judgment that their doctrines and theologies are mostly human inventions. They have taken literalisms as metaphor and metaphor as literalism… that’s forgivable by any reader, even all the men “who’ve taken up their sufferings as a woman giving birth.”

It may be forgivable, but it is manifestly horsepucky, just avoid stepping in it. However, a worse sin comes when they get puffed up enough to foist it upon the Word, from the outside, for personal gain (imposing their disorders on God’s Order). To be sure, at certain times and places (people’s or “national” spaces), they helped to preserve and guide. They are excellent histories of human reflections about God, which are always historically situated and culturally contested. Therefore they’re not immutable or divine at all; in fact, they’re the opposite; they are the very evidence of change. Yet their promoters tell their followers not to change. How curious and queer of them. Simply ask anyone who has recovered from childish ideas or trauma: what happens when people try to carry all those old behaviors for too long into their maturity? The old beliefs begin to do much more harm than good; they can even kill. How many “Christians” have taken “a godly” social affinity for a situational teaching as propaganda to murder literally because of purely metaphorical doctrines on various perspectival debates? The nimrods among us are doing it this very day. That is not suffering according to God’s will. The best I can say is these teachings might assist some, but they will not save any one. Put your trust in Jesus, and serve God alone.   

All the nations may walk
    in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
    our God for ever and ever.

That’s why I and others read for the story, particularly, resonances across the stories, melodies shared by the holy ones across the whole earth and every age. I don’t know much, but I do know that the semantic codes in the various, relevant languages have changed greatly just over my lifetime. Also I know, the Song remains forever the same, and it is the most direct route to the heart of any matter. Even as empires and their philosophies, or nations and their languages, or contracts and “covenants,” rise and fall… and brothers and sisters they do, they all do… Even if all the elements were to melt away tomorrow, I am with the One who created all things you see and even those you don’t yet. For he is the One who sent me himself to suffer for his cause: the restoration of His order in all His creation (independent clause)… and also, you’re invited to join Us along with any of your preferred saints (dependent clause).  

Thanks to Jesus and all the saints who have gone before me, I know that there is only one God who heals and liberates in the realities of Spirit and Truth. For others, I am reminded of what Kant said, “If the truth shall kill them, then let them die.” It has been my biggest nut to crack personally, but I’ve made some progress. “Live and let die” is actually part of the holy protocol when Jesus sent out some of the first missionaries, ‘don’t even mind the dust.’ It is also some of the Spirit’s last words, ‘let them be as they were.’ The only ones who reject truth are those preferring their own lies be imposed on others, so they might suffer a little less for a minute. Ironically, in the end, it is they who’ll suffer the most, by far. To build an idol, you must kill the truth first, to restore the truth you smash the idol first… but the lies that remain destroy the idolaters more than they’ve ever harmed the poor and oppressed. There is the greatest hope in the last judgment. It grieves me that Isaiah 61 and Mathew 5 are perverted in selfish mouths and belied in greedy acts to further alienate the very folks my God sent me to love… All-the-while clarity and mercy, beauty and joy, in Christ are on full display in the discounted and forgotten. They embody the Gospel, the sufferings of my Lord most, as they are drawn out of the world’s chaos and restored in the Spirit. The song, the Promise, and mission remain the same.    

Make no mistake, whether I blog or not, whether anyone reads it or not, I will serve daily, because my Lord has set me free in deed. And even though I am old and grungy and poorer in worldly wealth than I ever have been, I am not glum, I have never had more joy in my life. I suit up and show up, and I let the Spirit do the rest. It is a beautiful plan: take it easy and share. My only lament is that it is too often from a desk, and not always out in the trenches where I was born-again. Sometimes people see the Glory and sometimes they don’t. But because I have been led through times of affliction, brokenness, and loss, practically no one is out of reach. I know enslavement and bondage in wealth and poverty, they are both imposters in seasons of grief like Job’s old friends. All that means I’ve been formed as a stranger to no person, unless they reject me. But then, “Ain’t no bother,” because the world is heaping up ever more consequences and repercussions for most who become, by pain, even better targets for the Gospel, sometimes I even add a few words.

Finally, as a true cautionary tale, allow me to end with a story that should be taken very literally by my intended first audience. It concerns a baptized and serving, famous follower of Christ Jesus, post-Pentecost, so I’ve always looked for him in myself. But thanks to right suffering for the cause of Christ over the decades, I see less of him and more of people like Paul.   

Simon the Sorcerer

Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

After they had further proclaimed the word of the Lord and testified about Jesus, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.

What can we learn from the father of lifestyle christianity? Is there anyone still today who’d dare prefer the fake news of their fetish to the Good News of God? Were Simon and his heirs counted as goats or sheep according to the Master? Did they repent to the extent that the Spirit might transform him into Christ-likeness? Were they finally will-ing to suffer God’s will rather than try to steal God’s glory by buying God’s power? Did they ever come to understand what they have done so very wrong? Can they smash their worldview ultimately, which was composed by sin and bitterness in a desire for status and reputation that ripped off other people for their own personal wealth? Are Simon and his children frauds forever? How was any of that about doctrine or theology, instead of just plain old self-will run riot? So what does the Judge say is important? Simon says the right words, like he must have at his baptism, but there’s obviously more to the salvation on offer through the blood of Jesus. All Peter tells us is “perhaps,” if Simon honestly turns and exchanges “greatness” in sin for humility in the Spirit. I trust that the narrator leaves us hanging (“enjambs” us) for a very good, spiritual reason.     

Let’s not move on in negativity. There are a few things we can certainly know from this dense little vignette. We know, no matter your perspective on Pentecost, that God does not share his Glory nor splash out his Power willy-nilly. Luke often points us to obedience in the believer as a prerequisite for “greater” manifestations of the Holy Spirit through a convert. Whether you personally appraise that as “a reward,” or not, from either viewpoint we know growth in the Spirit is about the wise articulation of Christ-like principles in our everyday life, no matter the outcome. God does not invest His power in people based on their influence, public notoriety, reputation or worldly wealth. God judges differently, because charisma without character is always cancerous but character without charisma is always curative. Time is on God’s side, not the enemy’s; so we can wait, sometimes we even wait patiently. Like the wise man said, “everyone wants to be full but very few are willing to be filled.”

If you might be “a camel,” then start assessing yourself with “the eye of a needle” now, today. Further, we can know that the qualities which the Spirit searches for are neatly analogized, in summation, as a “heart” issue. Moreover, “heart failure” can disqualify you from God’s ministry. But fear not, for we should know also that repentance cures these spiritual heart issues. I practice mine almost daily, but your milage may vary… That is cool with me because, to be honest, I need all the work I can get in, while I am sure others do not. In addition, we see Jesus’ implied missional axiom at work: “Live and let die,” for no matter Simon’s final estate, the apostles went on doing the same thing. They remained “on-task,” grinding it out day after day. At least this time, they didn’t have to take a flogging. I certainly count that as a good day, while some fools who’ve never been beaten for God laugh. On that day the Lord’s servants only had to strongly admonish a greedy-rich and power-hungry man of celebrity. And lastly, we may know too that in the Lord’s service, some days are good and many others are best called “necessary days.” At times there will be suffering, but there is always purpose at work. I pray you have many more good days than “necessary” ones.

The Suffering Servant Balian

Behold, Immanuel Kant, the white, upwardly mobile man from a working-class background who founded CRT. Critical thought brought reformational ideas and European culture to full flower. But today there are a lot of leaders out and about, who claim his mantel and that cultural inheritance, yet they have betrayed their philosophical, theological, and political creators. So it is no wonder they make war on their Creator, chosing to make their own images instead. They are simply delusional sophists selling a destructive world system, which never existed in God’s name or will, for a moment of worldly power. They are literally at war with the only living God, His good order of creation, and divine will.

Wherever and whenever these nimrods get their way, Truth is murdered to raise their idols (and fetishes), as thinking of truth well, with cirumspection, is abolished. If they get their way enough, then whole generations, with God, will learn that the unity of apperception alone makes possible the synthesis of the manifold under a category out in the streets together. I wonder if that might not be for the best, for it will terrify and destroy the wicked thugs, the world system they’re trying to impose, and their beastly “house-keeping,” once again, as it has so many times before, but only after a terrible amount of unecessary suffering.

I had a few thousand words about Kant ready, but increasingly it came to our attention that many people would rather hate him than even attempt to understand him. Ignorance is no sin, we’re all ignorant, but pride in one’s ignorance is a very detestable sin that profanes the sapient qualities God gifted humanity. Still worse, imposing that ignorance on others, especially for pride or profit, is a stain on a soul for eternity. They should’ve chosen a Godly code. I mean for Heaven’s sake, most of their own theories of salvation (especially at the moment justification) require the person to be self-reflexive and appreciate their own sinfulness, to the point where they are willing to reslove a new Spiritual sythesis in their lives. That’s the essence of critical (anything) theory. Most idolaters are stupid, but you have to be far past dead (sold out to Satan on-the-down-low) to be that dumb about something so important and obvious to a Rectified life.

It’s easy to suffer and serve the people and issues we care about. That is just natural love, even the gentiles can do that. But loving a stranger, or even an enemy, and expect nothing back? Even being accused or punished for their defense and restoration? That’s God’s kind of love, the love of a suffering servant. You may say, “I serve Jesus!” just like Simon did. And well, you might be right about that. Maybe it means something, maybe not… the right answer to that is “perhaps.” But I know for a fact that he Himself stands for those who suffer as he did. I am not ashamed, for that is the only thing that matters, because that is the Power that saves. By act, word, and deed that is the love of Christ Jesus.

I know people who actually live that kind of love, they are so easy to see and I am drawn to them; I am all about them now. But still, it is ever easier to see those who talk about God’s love, speaking beautiful words of life, healing people, etc… But my Lord calls them goats. I spent a life time trying to reach them, but they reject and accuse me most falsely. So now, I am ordered to keep moving and not to look back, not even to carry them as dust on my shoes.

“They call me Ismahel,” “but that ain’t no bother.” 6.6

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

 …

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

It is clear that both the Master and the writers of the Second Witness inarguably linked suffering and the living experience of resurrection with Christ in the midst of a broken world. How was this most basic truth lost? Well, perhaps it stems from the only warning I’ll flag-up on that great fact. Praying for the sufferings of Jesus Christ, like Paul did is a mistake, or so it seemed at the time, for a long while. But I must say that accusing such a person of having an unclean spirit for undergoing such sufferings by God, following the Lord, in order to receive the Power of God… well, let’s just say Job’s friends are in better shape.

Oh, yes dear reader the accusations fly, no matter what demons I’ve cast out. But like the man sang, “I’d rather walk in the dark with Jesus.” And trust me, there is no quicker way to acquire “trust with God,” and be blessed with God’s trust in you. Lastly, before I begin, please remember that this is my witness, there are as many as there are other witnesses. I do not intend for anyone to be like me. I am simply sharing my experience as Jesus gave me his strength and hope, because he told me to, here and now. You need to follow Jesus similarly and pass it on in the life he gives you.

It was the spring of 2006, and all of the fun (from all but one) of the memories above were just that: distant memories, on the otherside of a very dark place. But that’s not the point today. As you might be able to tell from the photos, I was always a “utility player” who ranged almost globally. I wasn’t great at any one thing, so I was willing to learn many things as God, and his appointed mentors, allowed the Spirit maximum room to operate in me. I took pride in nothing, so if I failed, at least, I learned how to get up again, again and again. More importantly, if I were misplaced by my superiors, or abused by friends, then it wasn’t my fault! I miss the lightness of that freedom. Only in retrospect, I am now sure the point was that I always learned something while not reinforcing my own biases about myself. I remained teachable and open, kenosis-lite if you will. Also, as you’ll see below, I learned rule #62 the hard way, repeatedly. Is that another rule that is Greek to you? It shouldn’t be strange to anyone in the flesh, especially in the service, especially when we suffer in service. Rule #62 is simply, “don’t take yourself too damn seriously.”  

My father had just died after suffering terribly for a decade, and a people, who God sent me to again, had enforced a very unholy separation. While many of the priests were gracious, the lay people were murder. So, you might think I’d be sad or frustrated. But actually, I experienced a great relief and freedom in both cases. Until, on my birthday, two very solemn angels of high rank came to me. I had not met them before, but I came to know one of them later as Raguel. Even though I did not know their names, somehow I knew their work, their protection of my Lord’s body in the tomb. I honor any angel of the Lord. I had learned that if you meet one, you can be very personal. However, if it’s two, or more, all seriousness and greater honor is required. So, I simply said, “What would my Lord have of me? His servant is listening.”

Then something unique and new happened, one, or both in perfect unison, spoke to me without moving their lips. He or they said, “Son of man prepare yourself for soon your soul will be raised while you still wake. But fear not, for we will remain with your body, so no harm will come to you as you rise to meet God and serve your Lord for three days.” Dumbfounded, all I could manage to say was, “If it is God’s will, let it be.” You can never go wrong paraphrasing the Lord’s mother, it was the safest response I know and the only one that came to me at the time. It has been my experience, in general, that if you quote scripture to angels, it’s hard to say the wrong thing. I like that because I’ve always been accused of saying the wrong thing with people.

The day was quiet and hot. There was no wind, but I went for a shaky walk in the park on Heights Blvd. I spent the better part of 90 sweaty minutes trying to figure out what all that meant exactly. I didn’t know if I should be excited or scared, or something else. Things hadn’t been going my way of late, was I going to be rewarded or punished? The possibilities were incalculable. The next day I was overcome by fear because my whole body, especially my head, felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. I called a friend or two daily to try to understand what was happening and what I should do. But I soon learned, that there are times when even well intended friends cannot help, and I should forgive them even if they hurt me because they simply don’t understand.

Over the next week or so, as my state of mind and body deteriorated, I became more and more literally “beside myself,” and my friends and family grew increasingly worried. But I remained compliant and calm, even as they suspected or accused me of using drugs again. Let’s get this out of the way now, so I need not repeat it: I agreed to every drug test, no fewer than 4 were given with blood and hair. Each affirmed that I was, and had been, stone sober for at least a year; it had been longer. As the Devil would have it, this concerned my good people even more. They were beginning to understand that they did not understand. And they were frightened. So, near the end of the process, my people handed me over to the police, even though I had committed no crime. I had been a lamb the entire time. The police finally handed me over to doctors, which had been my friends’ intent.

The police were kind, the cuffs were too loose, but I had to wear them for the ride. I tried to have an ordinary conversation under extraordinary conditions with them. I believe they were more unsure than I was, maybe even more nervous. Meanwhile, I was tearing the veil between realities. I could see people and spirits at the same time. And as the car rose along the express lane towards downtown, I saw all of Houston laid bare. As if people had never been there, but I could see all the artificial structures as well like fog. Later this type of binocular vision would become important to understand. I could see all the fallen spirits squatting along the bayous and could hear the frogs croaking and cicadas chirping. Back in my head I was talking about housing prices and the coming global economic crash in 2008. And you know, I think that tripped out those poor public servants worse than if I told them what I was really looking at!

The policemen continued to be very kind. They removed my cuffs before we walked into the back of the station, so I offered to help them with their bags from the trunk. I sat alone in the corner of a hallway for a minute, and then they brought me a coke and took me to talk to an intake officer, who I believe was just trying to figure it all out. She couldn’t, but I tried to be calm and rational, even as she became disturbed. Whatever she figured, she took me to a table and another fellow asked if I’d like a sandwich. I said yessir thank you and please. And I’ll never forget as he walked out, he said aloud, “One more sandwich, we got royalty here tonight!” I still don’t know what he meant, but I enjoyed the free coke and sandwich, and a bottle of water to go. The sandwich guy came back and said it was late, so he was going to give me a place to rest. It was an unlocked room with a big window, two-way not one, and a new cushy mat that smelled clean against the back wall. So, I laid there as the binocular vision was fading, thinking to myself, “Well this isn’t too bad, in fact everybody has been really nice.”

Then came the drop, my two friends appeared over me and the padded slab beneath me, in the little room. I didn’t say anything, but I think the people outside heard something because I saw some folks walk to the window as Raguel spoke, “Son of man, rise now and be born above!” It felt like a terrible gravity wave was intent on ripping me apart, I began to shake and groan. I focused of the word “born,” and then I thought of how women screamed in pain, so I did. This had the folks at the window beside themselves and croaking and chirping like the bayou creatures outside. I looked down and saw the madness of it all. And in an instant, none of the madness concerned me… brothers and sisters I was gone, “Elvis had left the building.” For the next three days you’d have to ask the angels, police, and doctors what happened to my body because I was nowhere near it. And I was so happy to be free!

Next, I found myself walking up a valley. It was lush and flush with life. It was glorious, and as I walked up, I relaxed and felt as if this was the way I was meant to feel, the way everyone was created to feel. It felt good, but not too good. To move it still required focus and effort but there was no pain or tiredness. Then as large hills rose on either side of the valley, it began to dawn on me that I was walking a path that I had before, but there were no man-made any things. It was a river from Ein Gedi up to the Pool of Siloam… where “the old city” would be or had been. But that understanding cease to concern me as I saw God, the Father, alone sitting beneath a little pavilion or gazebo of sorts, as He rose, I flew to him and we embraced… I cry writing it now. He said, “Well done, son.” That’s all I ever wanted to hear, it is all anyone should ever need to hear, and I know it is what He wants to say to everyone. Whatever desires I still harbored for acknowledgement from anyone else ended that day, except for my wife… maybe… And for a long time, I wished the story ended there. But there’s always more.    

Next, we cleared the embrace somewhat as He looked at me and said, “I want you to go to a place, not understand it, serve and just trust Me.” My heart fell a bit, then my whole being fell a long way. It got so dark that I couldn’t see, but after a minute some vision started to resolve. I felt small and cramped, uncomfortable but not painful like my body had before. It appeared to be a cave and on the back wall stood one figure, and another sat with forearms on his knees and head down. Both had on spotless, high-quality linen, but as I saw some blood on and about the one sitting, and I realized where I was and who I was standing before, as he raised his head to meet my eyes. I know it is hard to believe dear reader, but believe me, I was speechless for the second time in one story… impossible I know, and so does anyone who knows me.  

The one standing, facing me, on my Lord’s right side, asked my Lord, “Are we ready now?” It was the first time I’d met Melchizedek. My Lord responded while looking at me, “Are we ready?” If I had a jaw, then it was agape, and still I was mute. But the two opposite me were patient, merciful, and kind in their silence, like they knew that I needed a minute, or a thousand. Jesus gazed up kindly, and Mel developed a slight grin. Finally, I got out one syllable something like, “What, er who, er huh?” Immediately, the one still standing said to my Lord, “You are right, he talks too much.” I began to feel stupid and hit my knees before my Lord and gushed, “What can I do?” He smiled and said, “You can start by helping me up, but be careful, this body is still weak.” I crawled under his left arm, as Mel dropped under his right, and we rose slowly to walk a few steps towards an unattractive entrance or exit out.  

Where were we walking? There is only one place that smells and sounds like that, it is not a bad place; it is the bad place. And I was not afraid, I just wanted to know what to do. As Jesus regained his feet, he walked ahead with Mel and I side by side behind. Because I wasn’t crazy, I looked right to ask him, “What do I do?” Mel said, “You’ve studied this, don’t worry you will know.” And after a beat he said, “It is easier than dealing with a committee of the self-righteous!” Jesus turned back, a bit, to look and quip, “Yeah, they’re murder!” They had made me comfortable in the worst situation imaginable, only to confound the devils as we walked at them smiling, a bit. Imagine their surprise, as their party in the grave came to a full stop.

I don’t have the words yet to explain it well. I don’t think that is the point today. But we walked upward as if on a line, the devils parted like the Red Sea. Holding them in abeyance was the easy bit, the bad part was hearing the screams of souls, some cursing, most begging, while some yelled out confused bits of the writings, some even still recited platitudes. That’s when I learned to leave behind my timeline, because some of those sayings weren’t invited until long after the Christ event literally transpired on earth. But none the less, I heard them then as I do now. As we walked a sphere materialized about our Lord, and Mel and I held it as a train while moving away from one another with hands out stretched. Some of the souls made it to us and took refuge in the sphere, others could not, while still others would not. The devils were no issue at all, I kept my eyes on the souls. It reminded me of most my mission trips, or even my life writ short… Some coming close even as others fall away, while still others curse or beg at a distance.

As we rose the screaming dissipated and the multitude with us began to get a grip on reality; then some even rejoiced. But I stayed focused on the flanks. Finally, we came to a heaven that I had not seen before. There were walls, attractive walls, and an entrance with the requisite guards, some I knew. Before the gate Mel walked up by my side, putting his left on my right shoulder he said, “Brother, today is not your day to walk in. Stay with me here.” I was very disappointed but like in this here story, that was not the point… but it is coming. I took advantage of the time I had with Mel. I wanted to go back to where I had met the Father, Mel smiled and obliged. He had a similar experience and I believe he was happy to have a confidant. We talked a long time, and I really wish I could tell you his story today. It is an amazing tale and he’s every bit the character for it. It is sad so little is known about him, but maybe later I’ll be given permission. At the end of that day-long walk and talk down to the Dead Sea that was made alive before us by the river of life we strolled along, he said it was time to say goodbye, because there was more for me to do. That’s when it got weird, so I turned pro.

I came back to my body, in a clean bed with a blood pressure cuff on my left arm. The attendant said, “Oh, he’s back! We thought you were going to die and break the machine.” I asked what day and time it was, and as the angel had told me it would be, it was exactly 72 hours from the time my soul had left my body behind. I laid there a minute to breathe and feel again. As the attendant departed, I saw two fellows to my left. A fellow crying while lying in another bed next to mine, and second fellow sitting in a chair on the far side beneath a window reading the Bible out loud. I asked their names. The one crying said his name was Jeremiah and the one sitting was called Isaiah. Yes, I know. But given the week I’d had, I thought that it made perfect sense. And then, it got weirder still.    

After a few minutes I stood and walked out into the common room. I knew the room, I had served in that psych ward, on that floor, and in that room over a decade before as an intern from university to collect data on schizophrenia for a longitudinal study. I started to laugh, why not? There I was, someplace I knew but on the other side of the looking glass. Some people might have been worried, but in an instant I realized that God had prepared me long before hand with a profession and education that I had left behind and thought, “what a waste of time and effort for years.” Only in that delayed moment did I come to understand that suffering had been of great use. It prepared me for the time to come, all that “suffering” was invaluble preperation. I knew exactly what was going to happen and what I should do. It was easy, I just had to be patient and remain calm. I just took it as a staycation.        

There were some hard bits. I had a few friends visit me, and I tried to ameliorate their concerns without getting too heavy. The older of my two sisters was my greatest concern. She saw me a day or two before and said that I “didn’t even look human.” She was relieved, but still very worried because she knew all my tox screens had come back pure as the driven snow. I thought to myself, “It is an old and well-known story, but wait a few months to unveil all of it to her.” Mostly, I listened and nodded for a few days. I said all the right things when people asked the right questions. Directly, I knew I’d get a release hearing. And I did.

Again, I was put at a big round table with a lot of well-intentioned folks. It was the same table I sat at some years ago, as we told young people that life was over as they knew it. They were usually hit the first time with a brutal diagnosis they couldn’t understand. So, I was curious about what I needed to say, but I knew their protocol. When the head doctor spoke up, the first thing she said put me at ease, “We hardly ever see a case like your’s sir. You came in psychotic, then you were suddenly struck sane.” They waited so I replied calmly, “From the looks on your faces and the reports others gave to me, I’d say it was a profound psychosis.” That took them aback, so I invited them to tour, in discussion, the symptoms and signs of adult-onset schizophrenia. I didn’t have the history or symptoms before the episode, and I had done things before or after, in the few days they watched, that schizophrenics can’t. And I told them the story of my last few years or so, all my family, friends, and all the other “good people” I had been among.

I love doctors and scientists with polite voices and loud pens, because I can alter a whole room full of them and their long-held opinions with one single fact. Whereas, I can confront a single idolater with a world of facts, and they still chose to die, or kill, in their misbeliefs. Just within that calendar year, I had sat before a similiar table filled with “good” and “spiritual” people. I tried to talk to them but their pride in ignorance was so great, God told me to go Jonathan Edwards on them. I did, and told them that if they did not repent God was going to start taking out American cities. They did not, so God did; within weeks Katrina destroyed New Orleans and then Rita emptied out Houston. Still nothing, they were far past dead. I didn’t bring it up back then, or today, like profiteers and gravy trainers do in books and on TV. That misses the point entirely. In fact, it makes things worse for everybody, especially the generations to come.

The point is righteous people must apprehend reality critically to adopt in an on-going and healthy fashion to build faith, not just once maybe to make much of one’s self. I don’t want more of me. I want more Jesus in me and everyone else, dead or alive. Also, I only mentioned it today to point out that I know some are sicker than others. That’s fine; it’s Reality. I’ll work with both, often, as I am now, but only with those who are willing to be honest, even if just a little to begin. Back then, the doctors released me med free the very next day. While those other people, I don’t know what happened to them. In both cases, I simply told each group a greater, but limited, truth within and about their worldview, which they could understand, with a lexicon they could comprehend, and I allow for the results to vary widely; that’s their choice and I am ordered to live with that come life or death. That’s really all you can do, short of abolishing their delusions and showing them the greater reality. But that takes much more time than I had back then. It is a gift, and it is a curse, that takes great wisdom and patience to exercise rightly. I watch myriad charlatans do it grievously everyday without insight and no wisdom in media, on the streets, and in churches. God hates it. They’re butchers of the heart, mind, and soul for profit.

Two things of note happened the last day. First, the lead doctor, a short brilliant woman, took me aside and said, “After reflecting on your history, I don’t know how you made it. Any of those half dozen events you experienced could’ve sent me over the edge.” I smiled and said, “Ma’am, you are a brilliant doctor and I completely agree with you.” In parting she asked me just to do two things for her, since she wouldn’t prescribe meds, “First, keep it up, stay clear of drugs… But more importantly stay away from those sick, wacko religious people and set strong boundaries with your dysfunctional siblings. That’s the hard part because I know how much you love them.” I said, “bless you for hearing me and understanding.” Her words are burned into my memory and I put into practice her sage advice and never looked back. That was a fast ball right down the center.

Maybe she sent in a relief pitcher for the curve, maybe not. But there was a tall, slender, and much older man, perhaps a visiting senior fellow or oversight board member, who’d remained silent throughout. He came to me as I was packing. He seemed a bit nervous, maudlin even, he said, “I know, you’re about to leave and you will. I just wanted you to know that I’ve never believed in anything that I couldn’t prove or see. But for the first time yesterday, listening to you, something happened. I couldn’t sleep and now I feel anxious, like something has changed and I don’t know what to do…” He began to fail in his speech, so I put my right hand on his towering left shoulder and said, “Man there is a God, he calls me by my name and I call him Jesus. I know, for a fact, that he literally went through hell on earth, and beneath it, just to get to you today. All of that just because he loves you that much. If you believed one thing I said, it needs to be that he as is real as my embrace. So, take your time and talk to him about it, tell him all your fears and doubts, heck be angry at him and blame him for this shitty world, you’d be crazy not to feel that way. I know he’ll work with a man like you no problem at all.” He simply said, “Thank you, thank you.” And he walked away, I believe he went to cry and have a long-overdue discussion with his Creator.

Now here’s the drop for you, dear reader. Thank you for allowing me to take the long way round to get to you… There is no board of know-it-alls that could ever exist that might train and send a someone on such a mission to get to that mature slender fellow. You couldn’t save enough flyer miles or move a coastline far enough to make it through. You may have heard of a mythical two kilometer sniper shot, but that one, that day, took light-years to measure. It would be insane to try it on human power. No one could survive or negotiate such a path, but I did because I was willing to endure the trial. That man was worth it, moreover the One who sent me, led me, and sustained me through it all is worthy.

My sisters have gotten much healthier over the years and now that we are older, we are the comfort to one another that our parents always wanted us to be. We’re all living happy and purpose filled lives. And what of all those terrible, whacko religious people? Shoot, I went to conference not too long after and paid to have Mark 3:21 translated into a dozen other languages. And while I’d love to say that it is all good news for them, that would be unwise and untrue at the moment I fear. But somehow, in a manner far weirder and greater than what you read above, I am still getting through to a few, so that many more might reach the Promised Land one day, in such a way, that it will make my story dull and inconsequential by any comparison. Their testimonies of the God and the Lord that I know have and will overcome the world.

Peculiar as it sounds, it is all true. I could prove most of it today circumstantially, but one day in the future I believe the right people will know it, in full, substantially… Can’t wait! Even better, it is mine alone with God. And as of today, I can finally say, out loud in writing, in full faith and complete confidence: This is the Jesus I know… that by him I made peace with all my past and forgave myself last. So that now, all might find peace with God by forgiving and serving others first, just as Jesus did. Amen, and all glory be to God!

Parable of the Constant Gardener

Once there was a generous Landlord who granted a people a prime valley under the most gracious set of conditions for many ages. And in a time after a time and another and a half, there was a general issue gardener who was given an ordinary plot, by the extraordinary Landlord, in the hills just outside, and above, what had become a rich and powerful city within the grant-land valley. He came from the valley and understood the indulgent people there. By all accounts, from the few below that knew him, he was far from perfect but he worked daily, some days were good while others were necessary. Most thought him curious because he really wasn’t interested in their fascinations, and none of them were fascinated by the things that interested him. The gardener found this curious because it was the Landlord who had directed his interests, and weren’t they supposed to serve the same interests, those given by the same Landlord… or so they claimed?

The gardener saw three folks, or types of folks, from the city on a semi-regular basis, always as they were walking up to the hilltop above the garden and far above the city to yell into the valley about the Landlord. They’d scream things that didn’t sound like the Landlord, who’d given him his plot, and they their valley. The gardener would silently, but dutifully, observe them in his few free moments as they’d go up and down, up and down, up and down, time after time, season after season, year after year… Finally, one day, curiosity got the better of the gardener because the Landlord asked his constant gardener for just one last season of work. So, the mediocre gardener, at his best, thought to himself, “this might be my last opportunity to ask the self-distinguished folks on their way up, what all they’re doing while being so conspicuously busy all the time.” So, he asked out loud, “Pardon me, what are y’all saying up there on the hilltop?”  

The first just laughed as confetti came from their cosmetic mouth in a semi-ecstatic state. They mocked the gardener with the sore back and chapped lips by saying, “Oh you fool, why do you move the stones about to raise such a meager crop, then only to have to grind the grains and bake your own bread?! We only have to ask, and free bread along with everything else we dream of, is delivered to us every day!” The grubby gardener almost spoke… But he became focused on an idea given directly to him by the Landlord a long time ago: “Life here in the valley ain’t about the bread. No, it is about serving the Landlord according to his will, not what I want for myself.” He wanted to say it out loud, but before he could, the first accuser transformed into a very pretty peacock, and began to squawk and rave about in their plumage, and no sooner than they had started in on their raving, than they begin to melt into a gurgling puddle of stink.

Just as the gardener began to say, “Oops, it was a mistake to ask.” The second accuser chimed in too quickly and sharply with the most eloquent speech ever composed, a jive of pondering verbosity, which they claimed was all about the Landlord’s most important precepts. It was a lecture so erudite that the gardener didn’t, or couldn’t, understand it as a long tongue descended from that educated mouth only to tickle their self in an area the gardener had been taught to avert his eyes from. And just as the dull-witted, poor spelling gardener wanted to say, “Oh please, stop talking, I don’t understand you, but I fear for you!” The second became a turkey, who strutted and gobbled. The gardener couldn’t speak gobble, but thought to himself, as the Landlord had taught him in his common ignorance, “Life here in the valley ain’t about testing all His words and concepts. No, it is about serving today as the unique Word of the Landlord served all long ago.” The turkey observed the slow-thinking agrarian and laughed in presumption at him for even trying to respond to their overwhelming speech. And as the wordy bird continued on, they too became an even larger bubbling pothole of stink, while the gardener thought to himself, “Too bad that jive turkey wasn’t even aware enough to pay attention to the horrific plight of the bird who walked by them for so long and stood right next to them.”

As the gardener turned his gaze to the third, the last accuser, he thought to himself, “If this one responds too… Well, I won’t say they’re the dumbest in the land, but they better hope that other fellow doesn’t die.” However, as the devil would have it, the third began to speak by dropping their pants and tried waving what only wives, mothers, and doctors ought to see. This embarrassed the gardener who turned, only to listen as the willy waver began to shout his propaganda, “You are low and I am already on high! The Landlord told me that I should rule and do as I please with the land and everyone in it, because I am great and you are not. I am already perfect and you are still terrible compared to me! Now turn to gaze upon me and become awed by my might!” In turning the gardener began to meditate on the Landlord’s rule that, “Every creature who received the good land should serve the Landlord only, who ordered us to serve the other people and the land, not rule it, in the Way that the Landlord did in person, both in word and deed.” But just wanting it to end, the lowliest of men turned all the way back around to see the third’s… short-coming. The gardener tried not to laugh, but as he sealed his mouth, the “Ozymandias” of the group grew ever angrier and devolved into the ugliest vulture you ever did see with the same diminutive “micro claw.” And then, as the filthy bird “powerfully” charged the “defenseless” gardener with the fowl’s dead menacing eyes, with beak out-stretched… Can you guess what happen? Yup, the same as happened to the first two but just faster and smellier.    

Now this quiet fellow who only gardened before, threw himself to the ground in a heap and began to think, “I really should have kept my mouth shut, just smiled, maybe even waved, and then none of this would’ve happened. The stink certainly wouldn’t have been this bad. Man, I really messed up the order of things!” And as the pea-brained, almost hunchback, old dirty gardener began to condemn himself, he heard the voice of the Landlord say, “Stop it! You only thought to tell them the truth, which is what I told you and them to say. Now, stand and walk to the top of the hill and I will meet you. There is a lot to do because the wicked and the greedy have confused most the people with lies to destroy my land and each other, from the lowest valley to the highest hill.”

Well, the gardener’s day went from catastrophic to perfect in a wink, and he started walking up the hill with hands free and heart aflame. As others descended and drew close to walk up with him, he didn’t even mind the strong smell of salt at work behind them in the air, because he was looking forward to seeing Landlord face to face and learning of the things to come. In fact, his heart was so full of glee about those prospects that he didn’t have any room in there to wonder about what became of those three special folks who had carried all their own “weights” up and down the same path so many times just to melt and stink in the end.

Coda

A Psalm of David

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
    he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

“There’s been enough talk for one day…” and I’ve been ordered literally by counsel to read, circumabulate, and break chains, while withdrawing restraints and saying as little as possible for a time. But I will be out there every day in the streets and libraries tak’n her easy fer all y’all, making the rounds Ghost-mode engaged. I whole-heartedly encourage each of you to do the same, in his Way. I pray that all of you live as the One we trust does, clean your own house, while “suffering” to serve others in fear and rejoice in trembing. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your own way…” Then come what may, whenever or however it may… you will be in the best possible position, and I’ll be right there with you all in Spirit. That is God’s promise being fulfilled in us, his servants.

(The next post is planned for sunset March 26th… yes, I know and selah)