At some point when explaining God's covenant with all humanity through the Noahide Law Covenant, I will be asked to support my position with Scripture. I'll need to because, I'm dealing with Westernized Christians. The image of tilling the soil is a recurring  theme that comes to me. If I get the go ahead to teach a class, my subject will be Law Covenants in the Bible. The idea has been simmering for at least the last year and I've been taking notes for the entire time. I just need to organize them into coherence. I have plenty of experience teaching Sunday School for Adults, young adults and little'uns. It's all in the Lord's hands now and prayers are always appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Source: Radix Fidem: A Covenant of Faith

Quote:The name Radix Fidem is Latin for “root of faith.”

We aren’t trying to be pretentious here; this is just an effort to distinguish ourselves from other brands of Christian religion. There’s nothing wrong with using the English translation, but that’s a rather generic phrase and we aren’t trying to hijack it as somehow uniquely ours. We don’t take ourselves that seriously.

The Latin word radix is related to our English “radical” – getting back to the root of things. We aren’t quite so radical as to throw away everything from our ambient culture, but we don’t hesitate to reexamine everything. This began as my personal effort to understand better the cultural and intellectual context of the ancient Hebrew people. Anyone with just a little academic background in Old Testament history is well aware that the Hebrew people were radically different from us today.

And if you take the Bible seriously, it presents a record of God’s revelation of Himself to one nation in particular. This God claims to be the one and only true deity, the Creator of all things. The narrative indicates that what we have today is a significant departure from where we began. Somehow we chose a path the led us out of our original communion with Him, and the bulk of His revelation is aimed at revealing His terms for restoring that lost communion.

The path to restoration includes Him building and developing a language and intellectual background, a vast ancient heritage that was partly fresh and new, but also partly drawn from the likes of Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures. Thus, we can say that the Bible belongs to a much wider Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) tradition. Yet, it arose out of that to offer a unique approach to the question of peace with our Maker. In essence, ancient Hebrew traditions were made by God as the vehicle of His revelation, not simply chosen from a collection of existing traditions. The language and particular assumptions about reality were part of the package. If you don’t make some effort to grasp the huge differences between the Hebrew outlook and our latter day Western outlook, you cannot pretend to understand the Bible, nor the God of the Bible.

Jesus presented Himself as the Son of God, the final and ultimate revelation of that God. It’s not enough that a Westerner would attempt to understand His words and actions, but it requires seeing Him as the revelation itself. We note that biblical language personifies things in ways we might consider a figure of speech, yet we know from studies of ANE cultures as a whole that they would have taken that personification quite seriously. In other words, for them it was virtually literal, that you cannot abstract truth into words and ideas, but must become acquainted with ultimate truth as a living Person.

That’s just an example of how radical is the difference between today’s Western outlook and what lies behind the Scripture. Americans are highly conditioned by a general influence of folks like Plato and Aristotle, along with a hoard of Germanic myths. There is some academic evidence that the Christian gospel was highly modified and compromised to appeal to an Anglo-Saxon audience (among others) so as to bring them under a faux political “Christianity” (see my previous book, A Course in Biblical Mysticism for an in-depth examination of this shift). The problem is that the compromised version of the gospel has become the very foundation for the whole range of Anglo-American Christian religion.

American Christians tend to assume that this is what God intended. We take issue with that. Not in the sense of hostility, but we aren’t willing to continue in this tradition any longer, particularly when we cannot find peace with God there. God has awakened something in us that, when shared with American believers, provoked varying degrees of rejection. We aren’t so arrogant as to demand the world as it is should change to suit us, but we know where we aren’t welcome. The current community of faith under the name Radix Fidem consists of folks who couldn’t find a home anywhere else. Keep what you have if it works for you, but it’s not working for us.

A critical element in our different approach is embracing the notion that reality itself is formed on the character and personality of God. His revelation also reflects that same personality. He chose to depict Himself as a nomad desert sheik, an eastern potentate ruling under ANE feudal customs and traditions. We believe this was for a very good reason: Creation itself is hard-wired according to that ANE feudalism. It’s not a feudalism like Western Medieval feudalism, where the focus is on ownership of land with people attached. ANE feudalism is a familial ownership of people; a sheik’s domain and greatest treasure is His household of people.

We know for a fact the first churches in Jerusalem were also structured under this same ANE feudal model. We believe the New Testament churches scattered across the Mediterranean Basin were also organized this way originally. We believe “church” meant an extended household under a covenant of faith and guided by a shepherd elder. This elder was rather like a clan chieftain. The other primary leader was a priestly figure. Thus, we have the Two Witnesses of “priest and king” in terms of how they functioned within that extended family household. And while most early churches were, indeed, pretty much literal kinfolks, the ANE had a long tradition of adopting new family members. In the New Testament, the emphasis was on shared spiritual heritage, not DNA. This was no different from someone converting to the Covenant of Israel and becoming a very literal member of the nation. The covenant was the identity, not the bloodline.


Radix Fidem is a covenant family and is organized along ANE feudal lines. We believe in elder leadership alongside pastoral leadership. There is ample tradition and custom to make this work; it remains for us to make adjustments to understand and adhere to it as part of our covenant of faith. We know it’s a big leap for people pickled in the philosophy of democracy. We insist it shares very little with historical church organizational structures like magisterial, presbyterial or democratic and others, but our path is ANE feudal simply because we believe Creation itself operates that way.

This is just a part of our radically different approach to following Christ.

Nana continues to improve, Michelle continues to spend her nights with her Mom. Nana had a bone deep wound on her hip which is covered by a wound vac, fluid drains into a pouch that has to be emptied every few hours, the wound is healing but is still an inch deep. She vitals have to be monitored and she needs assistance getting in and out of bed. Her blood sugar levels also have to be kept at the right levels. It frustrates me that these women refuse to allow others to help them out. "Modesty be damned ladies, swallow your collective pride and let people help!" There are a dozen people who would just leap at the opportunity to help their beloved Miss Judi. My wife can get under my skin and irritate me like no one else and vice versa but, we love and support each other no matter what. No one else would suffer me and it hurts to see her frazzled. So please pray for her, for Nana and my kids. I have some unspoken needs that I ask you to pray for also. Thank you in advance, for the record your prayers are felt and they work!

I will be posting each chapter from Ed's Radix Fidem: A Covenant of Faith book as a separate thread. Below is a summary of the main points, taken from the original page here. It provides a good overview of what we're trying to do here at radixfidem.org.

Quote:The basic idea is this: We consciously strip away everything above ground, as it were. We want nothing to do with the old growth that is even now wilting and dying. We might be willing to use some of the residue for fertilizer — we don’t have to be utterly alien and inexplicable, but we aren’t really eclectic, either. You have to let the Spirit of God lead through your heart how you answer the questions this label will raise. But while we might be willing to use commonly accepted terminology of the existing organized religions, the content is wholly different.

We can’t pretend to go back to the historical New Testament churches in any way except in terms of essence. We seek what is organic to human nature as God revealed it. Taking seriously Paul’s admonition to “rightly divide” the Bible, we seek to transplant that ancient root to a new context. What would Jesus be like if He were born in your place? We don’t get that answer by dragging in a mountain of cultural garbage from Western Civilization. But we aren’t trying to resurrect any other civilization, either. We reference the Ancient Near East simply because that’s how we know what the Bible says to us today.

This is a living document. Elements would be characterized thus far:

1. Consciously and emphatically non-Western. This means we exclude the fundamental materialism and rationalism that makes man the measure of all things. We go out of our way to understand what distinguishes Western Civilization so that we can discern how it’s mythology has ruined historic Christian religion.

2. Fundamentally super-rational, not cerebral. This correlates to the previous point. We reject the notion that reason and intellect are the pinnacle of human capabilities. While we recognize that most people abuse the word “mysticism” as something useless and irrational, we contend that God will scarcely bother with addressing Himself to human intellect, but calls to us from far higher faculties. Revelation is inherently mystical. We assert that He gave us other forms of “knowing” that are hard-wired into human nature. We reject the Western dismissive attitude about anything not rational. Faith is above reason, not below it.

3. The Spirit Realm is real and beyond comprehension. There is a distinct realm of existence totally alien and separate from ours. It is in every way superior, and our plane of existence is merely a temporary bubble within that greater realm. The human mind is totally unequipped to handle the Spirit Realm, and it is best understood with other faculties.

4. We follow Christ. Jesus Christ as a historical figure was the final revelation of God’s moral character. Everything that departs from His teaching is inherently wrong. No living human — past, present or future — could claim to be Christ’s proxy on this earth. No organization or institution existing today can justly claim to speak for Him. Rather, we insist that we each must follow Him as best we can discern His calling. His founding of the “church” was not for purposes of control, but fellowship. We fellowship with each other to the degree and for the duration of how well we can tolerate each other with a clear conscience.

5. The Law Covenants symbolize the nature of reality itself. We are fallen creatures and unable to natively discern how to live. We are beholden to His Law Covenants in the sense that they manifest how He intends we should live within our existential context. His Law Covenants explain the fundamental nature of reality itself. Living by His revelation means living consistently with how God created things, and such living elicits a positive and supportive response from Creation. It is our duty to abstract our best obedience from the context in which those Law Covenants were revealed. However, the specifics of the Law are not binding outside of its context.

6. All Creation is alive. That is, in the sense of how we conceptualize and act in God’s Creation, we cannot get it right if we don’t see it as living and active in its own right. It is not passive and neutral, but has a distinct will and interest consistent with God’s revelation. It longs to see us living in faith. Down to the smallest individual subatomic particles and energy flows, the world around us celebrates with us when we desire holiness. Creation is not fallen; we are, so the burden is on us to discover God’s provision. Only by embracing God’s moral character can we discern His intention in Creation.

7. All truth is God’s truth. If it works and your conscience is clear, the beliefs and practices you hold are between you and God. We recognize that certain expressions of genuine faith will limit who can fellowship with us, and take no offense at what God prospers outside His work in our lives. We have more than enough to occupy ourselves with what He has for us. Taking yourself too seriously is a moral failure.

Another history lesson. Ed has a good post addressing the true nature of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I quoted the relevant part of his post below.

tl;dr version: Protocols was originally a sincere critique of Western-style governments, by French satirist Maurice Joly, under a different title. It got him in a lot of trouble, but troublesome books tend to never go away, and the book ended up in Russia as Protocols and aimed at Ashkenazi Jews in particular for their support of communism in the Russian Revolution.

Quote:Most of my American readers are unlikely to know too much about the back and forth of the French Revolution, but at about the time of our Civil War, Napoleon III ruled France and he had learned a lot about espionage from Ashkenazi Jews like the Rothschilds. A very smart lawyer named Maurice Joly who opposed Napoleon III published a scathing critique of the ruler via an imaginary conversation in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. It’s referred to as the “Geneva book” because that’s where it was published in French. Joly was tossed in jail for it and very few copies of the book survived.

Joly’s brilliant work captures the essence of Western government. It’s more than just true to Machiavelli; it’s an accurate portrayal of the lies and secrecy that arose from a necessity of manipulating the population as the simplest path to ruling. Keep in mind that Napoleon III remained faithful to his progenitor’s policy of moving toward fair and equal treatment of Jews, while Joly appeared to be a Catholic loyalist. The Catholics of France maintained a prejudice against Jews, though some would argue it was well earned, given how often the Ashkenazi Jews had assisted in manipulating popes, bishops and creating tension with secular rulers, along with promoting the confiscation of Church properties. However, Joly’s work seems to offer no blame on the Jews for the sins of Napoleon III.

However, his book was borne somehow to Russia which was facing the early stages of its eventual Communist Revolution. Keep in mind that not all those Kazar Jews had left their ancient homeland in what was then western Russia. Russian Jews were generally in favor of communism, so it’s quite natural that people loyal to the czar were not friendly with Jews. As far as we can tell, someone in the imperial administration rewrote Joly’s book and made it sound like a Jewish plot to take over the world. You can read a really good, but rather long, explanation of the plagiarism. The shorter version is that, given the necessity of translating into Russian, and re-translating into English, the resulting book reads differently, but says the same thing as Joly’s with just a few additions. The resulting book is known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (get a free copy here).

So on the one hand, the Protocols is a fake. On the other hand, it started out as a very enlightened explanation of the lies and manipulation of Western governments, and remains a very accurate prediction of what we are seeing today. It looks very much like the behavior of the Rothschilds and the Zionists. So it really doesn’t matter if anyone espouses the book as their actual goals; this is where the Devil leads human governments. This is especially true of governments that embrace the Zionist cause and support Israel. The people involved in publishing the Protocols knew it was an accurate assessment and seized on the information, although some of it could as easily be said of themselves. It’s all the more accurate for any kind of globalist institution that aims to create a world government because this is a fair description of communist government agendas. We should skip the “Zion” part of the title and recognize the book for it’s accurate portrayal of governments in general.

We've discussed the Heart Math Institute (HMI) in the past. Iain said it had the same feel as Scientology, and I agree. It turns out this thing branches out in directions we would never expect. There was a hoax born in 1997 or so that I never caught wind of called WingMakers. The guy behind the WingMakers hoax (Mark Hempel) is on the advisory board of HMI. Further, there are reports other folks involved in HMI had actually promoted this WingMakers hoax.

I couldn't bear to read the crap on the WingMakers site, and I won't link to it. Their basic document is a fictitious series of interviews between some Dr. Neruda and Anne Anderson, neither of whom is properly identified. However, the former is supposed to be a member of ACIO, a branch of NSA. That oddball branch is revealed in the interview as a benign group using alien technology, centered on time travel. The story drones about this group and the aliens and the theory behind their time travel technology. In the midst of it, there is a strong endorsement of Doc Childre and HMI.

The whole thing was debunked by people with time to waste. For example, there's Jeff Rense's site, itself a quagmire of mindless conspiracy stuff running the full gamut, but also offering a few tidbits of good sense, just by accident now and then. There's a rather difficult to read post because it's hard to tell who is saying what, but it's pretty plain to see that the webmaster of the WingMakers site, Mark Hempel, is the author of this wild work of fiction meant to be the foundation for a movie, TV series, or maybe just a marketing tool for some low grade music Hempel composed. Either way, Hempel confesses it's just fiction.

There's another critique claiming that the site had been hijacked and changed by someone else a few years after the initial appearance. This critique indicates significant changes in the content of the site, probably in an attempt to make it more salable.

But it was this discussion on Yahoo that caught my attention, linking it to HMI and something called Global Coherence Initiative. Now this thing is part of the HMI website, so you can look that up yourself. However, they have a paper you can download from National Institutes of Health. Just take a look at the summary; you'll get a dose of buzzwords mixed with some probable thin science. But if you read between the lines, it's all about trying to hook folks into a cult for global dominance. This is the same folks who at times have given support to the WingMakers crap.

Why does it matter? We could easily be tarred with the same brush as these folks.

There are churches out there where we can actually survive and, oh how I hate this term "make a difference" . I'm fortunate enough to be a member of one. Is it a model of what we would like to see? No it's a western church, but there are a few who I'm making some progress with. They may not be aware of it but their fruit is beginning to ripen. Perhaps it's because I've been there so long. Perhaps it's because we are small but, mainly it's a foundation built by our Pastor Emeritus who for 49 years created a most non dogmatic atmosphere. I've never been hounded for skipping or pressured to believe anything but that with which I am comfortable.
   I had a discussion with a lady a couple of months ago about being led "by the HS through the convictions of your heart instead of the cognitive reasoning of a fallen mind". I quote because I rehearsed the line to reach a westernized Christian. She disagreed with me, I said "Go to your OT, it's chock full of what I'm saying" . I thought I'd lost and chalked another one up for experience. She must have went to her OT because, it's two months later and I have a new ally. 
   My point is this; we are missionaries in a strange land and have to reach people where they're at. We have to communicate in their tongue to teach them something new, just like the Apostles did. My church is my first missionary journey. I'm convinced there are churches we can work in and if it doesn't we can follow Christ's admonition and wipe the dust from our feet and move on. This thing of ours has to move into the real world.

Man, these are stacking up today. 
  My Doctor, John Davis just lost his Daddy. Remember him and his family please. The man has been my doctor for the last sixteen years, he has a heart that genuinely cares for his patients. He fusses at me over my high BP & the other things Drs say are bad. I pray the Lord grant him the mercy to get through all the procedin's that lie ahead in the same manner as He did for me when my Daddy expired.

Please pray the Lord grant my wife and kids grace sufficient to cope with Nana's long recovery. Specifically; my wife, Michelle has been spending the night and her time after work caring for her mom. It's stressful for her and our kids, Graham and Megan. She can only make pit stops and going to see her at work is, well...bosses want employees to work not meet with family. 
   To care for Nana involves intimate female stuff so, I'm holding down the fort at home. To do this and be on call when needed I am forced by circumstances to temporarily suspend my search for a full time job with benefits and continue my part time housecleaning, yardwork and fix it man work. Our request is for Nana's health to continue to improve until she can do more for herself. Which will ease my wife and kids burden and I can find a real job and feel less like a bum.

I'm very pleased to let everyone know that Nana, Mom, Miss Judi is out of rehab and back home. When all this began, my wife called me telling me that her Mom was in ICU and Drs were cautioning her to prepare for the worst. Immediately, the prayer burst out of my heart " Lord, if you require a life take mine, she touches more lives than I ever will, surely you have more for her" something like that, I was, as we say, "all tore up" but, I meant it. Next thing  Jesus said "Fear not my morose friend, this is not unto death" and "your people worry entirely too much about things that are mine and they need to rely on My strength, your role is to go pray with them as I show you". "Yes sir". There's still a ways to go and more praise and prayers to go. I still know she will come out of it and keep telling my people that Lord means what he says, quit worrying.