The New Bereans

A number of years ago, my wife and I experienced a tragedy in our lives as we witnessed the still-birth of our daughter seven months into her gestation.  She had a genetic disorder called triploidy.  According to healthline.com, the longest an infant with this condition has ever lived outside of the womb is ten months.   Attempting to explain the range of emotions I felt that day as I watched my daughter enter the world already dead is impossible.   To even look at her was one of the most difficult things I have ever done.  And it has taken me years to now even be able to admit that.

Triploidy is a complete genetic fluke.  What it meant was that rather than having two sets of chromosomes in her cell structure, her chromosome sets were tripled, hence the name.  The severity of retardation that occurs under this kind of situation is genetically apocalyptic.  Thus it is a mercy of God that children who are born with it do not live.  Were they to do so, their lives would be complete and total misery.

You can then imagine my reaction when my wife told me that someone  inferred to her that the reason our child was dieing was because we did not have enough faith in God.  For the record, I completely forgive this person now and have no bitterness, however it really begged a question…what exactly is faith?  Is, as this individual suggested, faith some exasperated internal force of will that makes God our marionette?  I know that we see God’s hand move in response to the faith of men, so I can say that I understand the tension of this question.  However I will say that God responding to our faith will always have His purposes in mind as the ultimate end of His response rather than our own self-gratification…period.

Trying to wrangle faith to the ground so it cries uncle and defines itself is a rather slippery task.  If you have not noticed, scripture uses the word faith so much, and we know that faith is the only way to please God, yet scripture rarely seems to actually define faith in cerebral terms.  I think the closest it gets to being defined is Hebrews 11:1.

It would probably take me pages and pages to explain what I am about to say, but for the sake of this being a blog I will just throw it out there that it seems to me as if there are a couple facets of faith, and God responding to our faith is really one facet, however, I think that the most important facet of faith I have come to understand is that it is a positive/obedient response to God.

Galatians 3:5-6 says, “He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?  Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

Did you catch that?  The hearing of faith?  What in the world does that mean?  I looked up numerous commentaries on this tonight and every one of them utterly dodged and failed to explain what the “hearing of faith,” even means.   Verse six gives us a clue, in order for Abraham to believe God, what first had to happen?  God had to say something…He, in His almighty sovereignty made a claim…He made a promise.  What was that promise?  Abraham would have a son.  Abraham believed that God would do through him, what God had promised, and that son would bring forth a nation.

I forgave that individual because they knew not what they were saying, it seems that she, like many people in our society have imbibed more theology about faith from Yoda and Luke Skywalker lifting an X-wing out of a swamp than they do from the Bible.   They think that faith is the force of personal will.

According to Galatians, faith is hearing God, and responding to His desires…this is the dynamic of walking in the Spirit, and growing as a Christian, this is what Paul is getting at when he asks, “Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”  NO!!!  And yet so many today have been swayed and lulled into a near demonic belief system by thinking that faith is a product of fleshly force of will.

A number of years after this tragedy, God blessed my wife and I with a healthy daughter, and not just any daughter, she is mind blowing.   When she was about a year and a half old she had a fever over 105 degrees, my wife took her to the doctor’s office, and while she was waiting for our family practitioner to come in, my daughter had a febrile seizure.  My wife said it went on for minute after hellish minute.  We spent the rest of the day in the emergency room as my daughter lay upon my chest crying hour after hour in an almost non-coherent fashion, until the fever broke and we took her home safe.

About a week or two later, since I was not there when this occurred, I asked my wife what she was thinking or feeling when the seizure was in full swing.  I had waited a while to ask her, because all the while I had been personally thinking about our first daughter, and the subject has been a very tender one for my wife over the years.  Her answer utterly shocked me, “I just prayed, and thanked God for the time He gave me with her.”  The implication being that the thought of my daughter becoming a vegetable or worse, dieing, had crossed her mind.

If that is not true faith, then I do not know what is.  My wife, out of the abundance of her heart, simply responded to the sovereignty of God with the faith of a child, utterly, totally, completely trusting Him, regardless of the outcome.

Situational ethics, modernism, and pluralism have infiltrated the mindsets of many who call themselves believers in Jesus Christ.  These mentalities are massive roadblocks to true biblical discernment.  If we approach the word of God predetermined to these mentalities, we will never pass through the gates of truth.  Ever they will elude us, and ever we will meander down dank pathways.

One of these pathways is paved with the word, “Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG.)”  For years I had an addiction to this false reality, and for two years I have been praying about why it is that I am supposed to take a stand against it, and expose this darkness to the light of God’s word.

I was kept in darkness for years about this issue because I did not come to God’s word with an honest heart about it.  I placed my hands over my ears and eyes by claiming that since the Bible does not explicitly talk about entertainment like MMOG’s that I was vindicated from biblical accountability.  (As a word to the wise, you will never find any light or truth in the word of God about yourself and your circumstances if you have a prideful heart like I did.)

After fellowshipping with a dear brother in Christ today I knew it was time I finally get this off my chest and onto my hard drive.  MMOG’s operate on probably the single most cunning principle, which keeps young men (and even increasingly young women) by the droves, coming back day after day, week after week, ad infinitum to an unreal world.

This singular principle governs probably every single MMOG on the market.  I am sure I would be challenged to find even one that does not, whether it is Eve Online, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars…or any number of others has, in the kernel of their design, a central hub of operation known as covetousness.

How is this so?  Every single decision you make within these false realities is dictated by how it will benefit you or your “avatar,” or your brood/collective of avatar friends.  Each one of these people shed whom they are in the flesh to take upon themselves a digital alter-ego, and run a nearly galactic rat race to get ahead of all competition through gaining 1.) unreal money which allows for the purchase of character modifications, and 2.) unreal character attribute upgrades.  Both of these principles of covetousness are governed by two other principles, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  Each upgrade or modification (mod) is more attractive to the eyes than the last was, and every attribute upgrade which applies to the avatar itself appeals to the pride of life, as the false character becomes increasingly more powerful.

So covetousness works through the lust of the eyes and the pride of life; however, these are just foundational concepts, not necessarily the fruit reaped.  Rather, it is with raging frequency that one will find ensconced within the social structure of MMOG’s an endless trail of enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, (believe it or not you can actually get your avatar drunk in many games) sexual immorality, impurity and sensuality, and if it were possible, orgies, (often imitated through raucous gesticulating) and certainly last but particularly most common…sorceries.  These happen to be listed in Galatians 5:20 as the “works of the flesh,” which Paul warns that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.  So the game itself subjects you to the principalities of the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life…and those two principles manifest themselves through each person’s avatar toward every other avatar as the lust of the flesh.

James 4:6 says that “He (God) giveth more grace, wherefore he saith, God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble.”  Pride is the one element which grace cannot penetrate.  One must become humble to see the application of this truth from the word of God.  On bended knee admit your digital sin; confess that Christ Jesus the son came to deliver you from your sin, to set you free from your unreal captivity (Luke 4:18.)  If we do not repent of this we may just find ourselves gaining an unreal world, yet losing a very real soul. Do not let the principality of pluralism tell you that these things are OK because it is a gray area in scripture, or that you have the “liberty.”  Though on the outset MMORG’s may seem innocuous, I would remind you that the whole of creation was subjected to its current tyranny and slavery to sin through the fear of death, (Hebrews 2:15) by one simple bite of a seemingly innocuous piece of fruit…fruit that tasted like godhood!

It is not from the depths of the grave
Underneath deaths deep black wave
Nor is it from Golgotha’s bleak skull hill
Where the Lord our King directs his Father’s will

Neither between ancient olive trees
Where he does dispense the Spirits breeze
It is not with sweat, blood and why’s
Knees wet, knees bent, with agonizing cries…

It is not from the temple mount
Whip in hand with his furious shouts
Tables turned, he drew a very thick line
Where He challenged religions thieving paradigm

Nor is it from the churning ocean
Where a disciple expressed such shocking devotion
Where the storm did rage and shook his faith
As eyes turned down to an ebon aqueous fate

His voice does no longer on Tiberius resound
Where waylaid sheep once lost were soon found
Where the same man who had sunk before
Now plunged in and made for the shore

Having halted the hands of a tax taking man
He called him surely and asserted His plans
What greater glory and what greater grace
Those hands would later record what took place

He was buried down deep in the dark of the earth
After the death he died to display all God’s worth
Taking the wrath of His Father Jehovah
A lamb beneath the righteous super-nova

Rather He reigns from the place that is best
Where he resides is within His deserved rest
Having won and having crushed, the power of sin and death
He bequeaths to us His Holy Spirit breath

Now he can make the earth His footstool
To deny Him his due, is to be a ripe fool
A branch dead shriveled plucked as a brand
To be cast into the fire, by His very hand.

We don’t have a King whom hasn’t been tempted
By this we know that we are not exempted
To labor for that which you might have guessed
Labor therefore to enter His rest…

-Jeremiah Dusenberry

His life was a tumultuous tapestry woven with the warp and woof of spiritual low-lights and physical high-lights.  His exploits can disgust us, and at the same time, offer hope of eternal salvation.  He was a man who sinned hard, but to the degree that he did so…I think he repented even harder.   For some reason, this passionate king was given probably more insight toward the hope of resurrection than anyone before him.  If he was not given more insight, he certainly saw it with profound clarity.

Post Nathan’s parable to David, we see that God tells David that the son of his sin with Bathsheba will not live. _{(II Samuel 12 & 13)} The depths of David’s sins with Bathsheba then become eclipsed by the gravity of his repentance.  For seven days he fasted, roaring on the ground, held down to the earth making mud with his tears, sapping his body of moisture until it was as the drought of summer (Psalm 32:4.)  This…is repentance.  It was not a show, it was not monastic piety, evidently this man understood the earthy roots of repentance.

When David’s attendants asked why he stopped mourning as soon as the child was announced dead, David responds almost cryptically, “…But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”  _{(II Samuel 12:23)}

Is it a coincidence that David gets a glimpse of the idea of resurrection right after a prolonged period of deep repentance?  Is it possible that God revealed this to him during all of his roaring?  I am not sure it was during this occasion, but David wrote another Psalm where he most certainly saw prophetically the clearest Old Testament prophecy concerning the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

“I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.  For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.  Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” _{(Psalm 16:8-11)}

It is here that David is given the knowledge that he will not stay in hell after he dies, and neither will the Holy One see corruption.  This is an obvious reference to Jesus being raised from the dead, and is quoted by Paul in Acts 13:35, and confirmed as a prophecy fulfilled by the Christ.

What is the point?  The resurrection was clearly prophesied, yet the prophecy is veiled in a Psalm that I imagine would have been difficult to decipher its meaning prior to the Messiah actually accomplishing it.  Secondly, there is a synergy between repentance and resurrection.  For the moment I am making a tentative connection between resurrection and repentance, we will lock this idea down with steel jaws later on.  But just as prophecy is tentative, until the fulfillment of the prophecy locks down the impact of its prediction, so also we will soon begin gleaning the locked down measure of the fullness of Christ’s resurrection power.

A few other passages where David sees Resurrection is:

Psalm 17:15, “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, (more than likely from the grave) with thy likeness.”

Psalm 49:15, “God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: (hades) for he shall receive me.”

Moses and the Burning Bush by Arnold Friberg

The first allusion to the resurrection of Christ comes prior to the first mention in scripture of His death.  Right after the fall of Adam and Eve, God tells the serpent how the “seed” of the woman would bruise his head, and that the serpent would bruise his “seed’s” heal.   (I have often wondered what the seed of the serpent was exactly, but I would not be surprised if it has something to do with 1Cor 2:8.)

So we are faced with a prophetic ultimatum.  This is chronologically before the time of Job’s conclusion which I discussed in the last post, and from a Christian perspective we know what this means.  While we have insight into this prophecy now, for thousands of years, God was content and absolutely patient in waiting for the actual event to unfold before declaring (I will explain later what I mean by this) what it meant.  What does this say about the nature of God?   It is arresting that the resurrection is mentioned first, and the death of Christ (at the hand of the serpent’s seed) occurs second.  It is of interest that this is one of the first major prophecies in the Bible.  From the time this prophecy was given no-one could have known it spoke directly of the Resurrection of Christ unless the Holy Spirit had revealed it to them. Though I may be wrong (and if anyone knows please tell me) I do not think there is any revelation on this at all anywhere until the actual event.

The next allusion to the concept of resurrection that I know of (my study will not be exhaustive because I am flawed, I am sure there will be many I miss) is found in Exodus 3:6.  This was when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.” If you know your bible well, you are not scratching your head…

In the gospel of Matthew, in the 22^nd chapter, the Sadducee’s think they have the Christ in a corner with their willy question about the woman wedded to seven brothers.  According to Alfred Edersheim in his book, “Sketches of Jewish Social Life,” the Sadducee’s were a reactive sect*.  Their way of thinking was the result of being anti-Pharisee.  Who held to the concept of resurrection, but the Sadducee’s contrarily postulated that, because the Pentateuch never mentioned resurrection, it could not be true.  The living Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob evidenced resurrection.  This is likely why Jesus quoted from Exodus and not from the Psalms or the Prophets in Matthew 22:32.  This tells us a few things as a side-bar: 1) be very careful about filtering all of scripture through one lens of thinking (aka systematic theology, I am not saying don’t use them, just be very cautious.)  2) Don’t raise men (like Moses) on a pedestal above Christ,  not even Paul.  3) If Christ were sought sincerely, and He so desired, He could annihilate sectarian beliefs without batting an eye or opening a concordance.  4) This point is a bit mystical maybe, and I will understand if some disagree with me, but it is no irony to me that the mention of the truth of resurrection through God being the God of the living and not the God of the dead is the point which basically dissolved all of the Sadducee’s theology/doctrine/dogma, whatever you want to call it.  In one stroke, Jesus made being a Sadducee rather pointless.  I suspect that if the Church began walking in the fullness of Christ’s resurrection power,  all of our prideful differences and divisions would also dissolve.  To look at it more micro-cosmically, when we die to self and Christ’s resurrection is manifest through us as individuals, our tendency to backbite, strive, be bitter, and react to others in an un-spiritual fashion will also dissipate.

Now I am getting a bit ahead of myself.  Consider that an allusion and a taste of things to come in this series of posts.  Stay tuned for the next blog!

* “Sketches of Jewish Social Life,” -Alfred Edersheim, Hendrickson Publishers – 1994, Seventh Printing, March 2003.

“And he (Hezekiah) did that which was right in the sight of the LORD according to all that David his father did.  He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.”  -II Kings 18:3-4

That which was intended to bring healing from the curse of the wrath of God had become an idol to the children of Israel.  Hezekiah did what was right and destroyed it.  Was the serpent healing anyone of flaming poison at this time?  Not likely.  That which God deemed useful metaphorically had been replaced by itself in a physically limiting sense.

By implication, burning incense meant that the brass serpent had become just another Idol of compromise to the children.  In Hosea, God lamented over a wife whom never verbally or contractually denied their bridegroom, either through covenantal divorce or complete apostasy.  Rather, they continually tried to maintain their connection to YHWH, all the while fornicating with the Gods of Canaan.  Are we much different?  He who has ears to hear!  That which had once symbolized salvation from wrath had become a seal of adultery.  While dumb idols, in and of themselves were just elemental objects fashioned by hands, Paul tells us that when the Gentiles sacrificed they did so to devils. _{I Cor 10:20} I am not entirely positive that a Devil had inhabited Nehushtan, but I would not be surprised to find out that one had.

In the book of Jude, the archangel Michael disputed with the devil over the body of Moses.  I have heard it suggested that one reason could be because Satan wanted to use his body for idolatry.  I cannot be absolutely confident in that assertion, but conceptually speaking I can see the reason behind such a claim.  Whether that is accurate or not, does not negate the idea that Satan often uses physical constructs to hold men sway to his power.

I suspect the Shroud of Turin is not much different.  First of all the word of God only gives us one main physical description of Christ and it is found in the book of Revelation.

It says that His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice was as the voice of many waters. _{Rev 1:14-15} This description of Christ speaks of very many things, and it is not the point of this post to discuss them.  But I think it is significant that this is how the word wants us to visualize our Lord.  Not lying down covered in blood, bruises, and with the shadow of death upon him.  He wants to be known as the God of Judgment, risen and ascended.  Satan does not want to be reminded of this, every time it happens, the bruise on his head grows sore and tender. _{John 16:11}

I wonder if Satan chuckles every time someone pays to see that shroud…for you are then stuck with an image…an image that does not bear any semblance with the reality of eyes which consume with fire.  Pay incense to it (the shroud) if you wish, just remember it could be fornication.  Satan would be much more satisfied if we only remembered Christ in his “bruised” state…Genesis 3:15.  Christian websites ought not to be promoting this.  Unfortunately I have seen more than a few promoting it as if it is a good thing.  However, search the scriptures yourself and see if the Lord is concerned about his grave-clothes.

The internet is vividly abuzz with the supposed “Evidence,” or proof of the resurrection of Christ.  It is obvious that the debate around the shroud of Turin is heating up once again, but my purpose is not to debate the authenticity, or the validity of these claims.  I have not seen the documentary from the History Channel, and to be honest, I have little interest in it.  The fact that this documentary was released so close to Easter is obviously to generate as much hype about it as possible, and who can blame them?  It is great marketing.

However, I have to say that the whole premise of needing a “scientific” proof of the resurrection is symptomatic of quite the consistent modern problem concerning genuine faith.   The Bible proves the point over…and over…and over…and over…that genuine saving faith is not generated in the realm of the miraculous.   Nor is it generated through scientific reasoning.   The wonders of the exodus resulted in most of its witnesses dead in the desert, for when the gospel was “preached, the word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” (Hebrews 4:2)   Elijah saw God consume a soaking wet altar with fire, and soon after he doubted Gods ability to save him from Jezebel.   Jonah saw an entire nation repent at his few words…and still wanted to see them consumed in wrath.  The disciples were told numerous times by their own Lord that He would die and rise again on the third day!  How many of those disciples were twiddling their thumbs outside the tomb waiting for him to fulfill that promise?  Judas saw all the miracles a human had ever had the privilege of seeing, yet he found his guts spilled all over the place for his selfish treachery and wickedness.

If God wanted to give us rationalistic evidence of Himself…he would have done it.  We ought to be FAR more concerned about Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Our lives, when transformed by the resurrection power of Christ, are the only valid proof we need of the resurrection.  If that be lacking, then maybe the shroud will make you feel a bit better about yourself and your intellectual comforts.

Job and His Friends by Ilya Repin

In the midst of ash and accusation, boils and belligerent philosophy, a spark of trouble flew upward, beyond the lowly crags of mountain heights, into the deep blue etherium of divine contemplation.  His name was Job, which means “hated, or persecuted.”  According to his accusers, he must have done something to offend the Almighty.  His suffering dictated that it must be so.  It is no wonder that the oldest book of Hebrew lore deals with the deepest questions humans have tried to apprehend.  In the midst of extreme suffering, we have all inevitably questioned the point of life.  Job’s bitter query did not proceed until after seven days and seven nights of silence amidst the conjoining of dust, ash, rending, and “friends.”

There he sat in silence so long…I am sure the day of visitation was fresh in his mind…being replayed like a video again and again and again.  No doubt his silence was one of agonizing mental anguish.  Once the silence is broken, Job basically says that the day of his birth ought to be cursed into eternal blackness. _{(Job 3)} His deep pondering begs the question.  WHY LIVE??? Why live if suffering is our bread, if misery is our drink?

Once Job finally broke his silence…Eliphaz was quick to speak the abundance of his heart and accusation against Job.  He starts off with a few quick words of flattery, probably out of cultural respect, then promptly begins to develop a thread of thought that Job must not be innocent, of course his suffering must be the result of sin because, “Who ever perished, being innocent?”  Or, “They that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.”  _{(Job 4:7-8)}

Like so many councilors that lack any form of humility, Eliphaz completely ignores the questions Job raises, and displays the true motive behind why he sat seven days and nights on Job’s pile of ash.  His motive was to bring accusation against his friend.  Job had asked why it was that he did not just die when he was born.  Then he would have moved on to the indomitable vault of equalization…the grave.  Where the, “Prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.  The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” _{(Job 3:17-18)} Job was concerned with the deeply subterraneous questions of his soul.  Eliphaz was concerned with emanating his own religious pomposity via his theology.

The temptation to give a ringside, blow by blow account is difficult for me to withstand; however, for succinctness sake we must jump forward numerous arguments later, after Job has received jabs, hooks, uppercuts and below-the-belt accusations from his “friends.”  In the midst of his suffering and incrimination Job raises one of the single most important questions that suffering must force someone to ask.  Keep in mind this is probably the oldest book of the Bible, if not one of the oldest written manuscripts ever.   In Job 14:14, he laments, “If a man die, shall he live again?  All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.”  God had not yet been fully manifest and in the Son, so total revelation about life and death had not yet occurred to humanity.  Job did not know yet that eternal life was knowing the Father, and the one whom he would send.

Eliphaz proves his religious ignorance once again by calling Job’s questions an, “uttering of vain knowledge and a filling of his belly with the east wind.”  Why think deeply about your pain Job?  Just repent for your ox-dumb pride.

Job then responds to this indictment and receives one more from Bildad.  It is at this point in chapter nineteen where Job reaches a crescendo of angst.  He points out that his miserable councilors have accused him ten times, and he begins to lament that he has been forsaken by every last person whom he valued.  He first laments deeply of God forsaking him, and how God had stripped him of his glory and crown. _{(Job 19:9)} Job was destroyed on every side…troops had been raised against him, his brethren were put far from him, every acquaintance of his had become completely estranged from him.  His kinsfolk failed him, and his familiar friends forgot him.  Those most intimate with him, his maids and dwellers of his home, now viewed him as an alien and a stranger in their sight.   His breath even became strange to his own wife.  The word strange in the Hebrew is metonymous with the word for adultery.  So it could be said that his very breath was as the breath of an adulterer to his own spouse.  This gives us a sense of just how disgusting Job’s suffering was to his kin.  His own children also rose up and despised him and spoke against him.  All this would be bad enough but the dagger in his back is twisted a little bit more when he says that even his “inward friends” have turned on him as the hand of God touched him.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death by George Inness

It is as if the veil of fellowship had been drawn and stitched.  It was woven from the fabric of solitude, and the stitches were the condescending glances of accusation he received.  No man is more forsaken in the midst of people than this man.  He was so alone that his bones clove to his skin and flesh.  This was likely due to malnutrition from prolonged fasting.  Eating no longer meant anything to him.

Finally, it is within this broad context that Job laments, “Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?  Oh that my words were printed in a book!  That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever.  For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.  And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:  Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.”

Was it not Christ our Lord, whom upon the cross asked from the bottom of the deepest well of trepidation ever probed, “My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  Did not all of Christ’s sheep scatter into hiding?  Did not Jesus become as an adulterer to them?  Were they not completely ashamed of His suffering?  Was Peter not in the valley of the shadow of death?

By now, I hope you have noticed the parallel between Job being forsaken by all, and Christ being forsaken by all, even His Father.  These continuities are absolutely staggering.  I will let your imagination continue to connect these concepts.  It is at this point, of Job’s deep suffering, where deep calls unto deep.  Some divine tremendous light has perforated the subterranean expanse of his tragedy, and he concludes the only thing an open mind, a humble heart, and a suffering soul can conclude…there must be, there has to be, I know there will be…a resurrection from the dead!  My Savior will stand upon the earth someday and I will stand with him.   So it was that He (our Lord), for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.  The broadest depths of human suffering when contemplated with a view of God in mind, require resurrection to be true.  Were it not, sanity would become pointless…

For the last three or four months I have had a singular obsession as I study the Word…the resurrection of Jesus Christ.   My (spiritual) curiosity had been peaked because over the years I have noticed that among a great deal of the Easter sermons I have attended, I have noticed very little discussion about the meaning of the empty tomb.   All too often I have heard sermons preached out of the end of one of the gospels, and we are reminded often about how the women beat the disciples to the tomb, that it was early in the morning…no-one was waiting there.  All the details are often commented on, but I have often been left feeling as empty as the tomb Christ vacated when the sermon is over.

The purpose of this blog series is not to debate the technical validity of celebrating the resurrection on Easter.  If eating meat sacrificed to Idols bothers you, then don’t celebrate it on Ishtar, my emphasis is rather on the fact that on the day we do commemorate the resurrection, so often the point of it is missed.  Our Christian life is un-arguably to be one of resurrection power and the tendency to celebrate this concept only once a year is a very distilling tradition.  I find it to be a bitter irony that many Americanized religious folk only go to church twice a year and one of those days is Ishtar.

All the while I was studying this I was completely oblivious to the fact that Easter was once again coming about on the calendar, so I thought it would be fitting to share some of the insights I feel the Lord has shown me in His word that may help to take you deeper in your walk with Christ.   This is going to take numerous entries because the nature of the study does not lend itself to a blog post very well as it has been a long, prayer-filled meditation on this powerful truth from the word.  Please be patient as I will build up the thesis to a crescendo over an estimated 10 – 12 blog posts.  This may take me a month or more to complete.

It is my hope that my blogging silence over the last few months will be noted as I have given very little time to the usual little nuggets I proffer.   My silence has been due primarily to this obsession.

For the purpose of maintaining only the things I think are important to us as believers during the following blogs, I will take the remainder of this post to state that if you have been bit by the Zeitgeist Tom-Foolery and think that somehow the resurrection of Christ is not a unique concept to Christianity, I would ask that you consider watching this documentary.  While the concept of a god being resurrected may not have been entirely unique in a technical sense…I would propose that the meaning of the empty tomb, to Christians, is hands down, the singularity around which the entire galaxy of Christian sanctification doctrine gravitates.  And I would propose that all the “meaning” around the technical god-resurrections of mythos-gone-by does not hold an inkling of meaning by means of comparison.  For example, if you think that Osiris being reconstructed by Isis for the purpose of demi-god near necrophilia has much meaning to compare to the Krakatoa of purpose behind Yeshua Hamashiach rising

and conquering the power of death, then certainly the meaning of Christs death-resurrection-and ascension has not been articulated well enough (not as the fault of scripture, but ours to portray it.)

The tendency to view it alone as an historical event has probably invited and begged mythological criticism.   I suspect that all this mythos has been a result of such a lack of the display of Christ’s resurrection in us.  We ought to take note of the winds of criticism…even the murmurings of dark hearts can be an exhortation for us to seek deeper meaning, and to discover our own failures.   If you do not know what Zeitgeist is all about…don’t waste your time.  I am only saying this for the benefit of those who have had their flesh exposed to the poison Zeitgeist’s fangs excrete.   Please stay tuned or read the next post; I think it will be of great value to many.

-Your brother in Christ (if you are born of the Spirit)…Jeremiah Dusenberry.

I pray that God would send another revival to our generation similar to this, yet new in His end-time purposes.