The forum has been upgraded to 1.8.37 from 1.8.12. We missed a lot of versions...totally my fault. I'll try to keep it all up to date from now on.

A lot of versions come about because of security issues found, but there are some functionality updates and whatnot. Since the forum "jumped" a lot of versions, there were lots of updates. If anyone is really interested, the release notes are here. 

You will still see some of those pesky PHP warnings at the top, but they have been drastically reduced. I'll see about getting rid of them completely.

There are some security customizations that MyBB suggests, that I may implement in the future. But for now, I'm going to take a breather.

The final chapter of Galatians was encouragement but virtually no doctrine. We move on to Paul's letter to the Ephesians as a letter to be shared across Asia Minor. Thus, there are no personal notes to anyone specifically by name. By the time Paul was in Roman custody, Ephesus had already started to become the center of gravity for Christian religion, as things were heating up in Judea between the Jews and Rome, and Jewish Christians were fleeing. Writing from his confinement in Rome, the single major issue behind this letter was the ongoing division between Jewish and Gentile Christians.

Both factions suffered a powerful tendency to rely on the flesh. Jews typically never got past their "chosen" identity and cliquish behavior demonstrating discomfort with Gentiles in general. The Gentiles struggled to latch onto the necessity of moral purity in their conduct. In this first chapter, Paul begins tearing down the wall between them by emphasizing their new covenant identity as Christians. He begins using the constant refrain of being "in Christ" particularly as a reference to this citizenship.

It's important to notice that verses 3-14 are one long sentence. It comes close to a Trinitarian statement, in that there is a section about the Father, another about the Son, and third about the Holy Spirit. He offers praise that the Father chose us in eternity, the Son redeemed them (and us) in their recent history, and the Holy Spirit came to lock us into that redemption in our individual personal pasts. It's a doctrinal tour de force in just a few lines.

He starts with see several conjugations of the Greek word translated into English as "bless" coming from a root denoting someone or something worthy of adoration. We and the Father naturally find each other adorable. He chose us, each marked out before this wretched world was begun, with the intention of making us as pure as Passover lambs. He committed Himself to adopt us His own children because He loved us, joint heirs with Christ. This mass adoption is a part of His glory; any earthly ruler would count the size, ability and prosperity of his tribe as a primary manifestation of his glory. He gave us each other, our talents and adorned us with His grace as a fitting bequest to His Heir.

Regarding the Son, it was His awful price in blood that bought us, making us welcome into the Covenant. With this adoption covenant came unspeakable privileges that He willingly gives, simply because Jesus could see a vast empire would be His. The Father had kept secret His plan to offer His Son a realm of people who could be and build a vast wealth and power. All of this had to wait until the right moment when the Son could inherit all the power and authority of Heaven and Earth. As citizens of this empire ("in Christ") we become God's claimed nation (versus the nations claimed by the Elohim Council after the Tower of Babel). This is what "predestination" means -- marked for seizure from the other nations for a special purpose in which God never fails. Paul specifically points to his readers as part of the first generation of citizens in this new empire, a very high privilege as the first of many generations to glorify the Messiah.

Thus, when the readers of this letter first heard the gospel message, and were moved to believe in Christ, they were granted the seal of the Holy Spirit. Since there's no way they could experience all that comes with that in this life, it's as if that first generation are on layaway until everything is completed and all the saints God has claimed can be brought into the fold. The Blood has yet to be applied to future souls waiting to be born into this glorious empire.

Catch your breath now.

There in his Roman confinement, Paul heard from messengers how the churches in Asia Minor had progressed to the point they had learned to submit to Christ as their Lord and to recognize their fellow citizens of Heaven. It caused him to celebrate the unspeakable blessing of having been a part of that. He kept praying for more of the same; may the Lord continue working in them.

May they continue embracing the convictions of their hearts as their guide to understanding the full privilege and duty as members of Christ's empire, in particular, the divine gifts of the Holy Spirit working in their bodies. That's the same power that raised Christ from the dead, and which placed Him on His throne. Every power and authority in Heaven and Earth is now subject to His whims. That includes domains in the Spirit Realm that no human can imagine.

He is our Lord; we are His body. We are His hands and feet throughout the whole earth.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

In the previous chapter, Paul pointed out that we should not seek to place ourselves under the guardianship of the Law. Christ died on the Cross to claim His inheritance, and that's you and I. He ended the Law and set us all free, including Jews who embrace Him as the Messiah. The purpose of the Law was to drive Israel to the Messiah, and in the process to draw us Gentiles to Him. But it's a one way transaction; Christ does not drive people back to the Law. In Christ, we are set free from that regime to find the Father's favor in His Son. The Law was never meant for Gentiles, but the Messiah was.

Christ set us free for a reason: so we could walk freely in His favor. This is a personal relationship with Him, not a highly ritualized subservience. The rituals are not part of His reign, and that includes circumcision. It's not for Gentiles. If Gentiles enter into that dead realm, it owns them wholly and they are no longer part of Christ's realm. They have walked back into the realm of flesh and death. We need not wonder fearfully whether God will accept us. The Holy Spirit assures us that we are accepted by Him. The condition of our fleshly body is not considered; it's a matter of faith in Christ. His love replaces fear.

When Paul last saw them, the Christians in Galatia were running free and easy. Who loaded them down with burdens to make them drag around so slowly? That load of nonsense did not come from Christ. All it takes is just a tiny little bit of deception to stop you in your tracks. The "burden" of Christ is like wings that speed you up. Let the fools who are preaching that burdensome nonsense face their own judgment; don't help them carry their garbage bags around.

Paul didn't preach a Jewish identity to them. If he had, the Jewish authorities would not have persecuted him. He wouldn't be preaching the Cross; there would be no reason for Jews to choke on the Cross as the final sacrifice God accepts to end the entire body of ritual law. Instead of cutting around ("circumcision"), let the Judaizers cut themselves off (emasculation). Paul suggests mockingly that, if a little cutting helps, how about a whole lot?

Granted, the wrong kind of freedom will also become a burden that kills. It's the paradox of faith that it sets us free to voluntarily bind ourselves to loving each other as Christ did. Besides, rabbis had been teaching for at least a couple of centuries that loving your neighbor as yourself is the summary of the whole Law of Moses. Get that right and everything else will take care of itself. But if you follow the example of the Judaizers, you'll end up like predators, taking advantage of each other. This would destroy the churches.

The Spirit and the fleshly nature are natural enemies; there can be no peaceful coexistence. One will rule or the other, and the Law is for the flesh, not for the Spirit. Obeying the Spirit transcends the law code. Paul lists the kinds of stuff that comes with the flesh. It's power is nonexistent and desperately needs the Law, because it does not know how to do good. It can only destroy, not build up.

By contrast, the power of the Spirit produces a host of glorious behaviors that take you outside the reach of the Law. Belonging to Christ nails the flesh to the Cross. Law cannot do that, because flesh refuses to surrender. You can walk in the Law and stay in the flesh, or you can embrace the new life in the Spirit and live by His character.

Yet again: The typical character of Judaizers was to be snarky, always jockeying for position while seeking to undercut each other. That's what they made of the Law. Christians don't need that stuff.

Ed and I have been receiving weird PHP warnings at the top of some pages on the forum. You will know them if you see them. Nothing to worry about right now, since they just are just cumbersome notifications. Everything seems to be working fine. If you encounter them, simply scroll down and the page content should be below the warnings.

I have noticed on the Who's Online page (it's linked on the forum home page at the bottom of radixfidem.org), that there are a lot of hits from unregistered visitors, from a range of IPs originating in Hong Kong. On the server side, I banned that range of IPs, so they can't see the site unless they register. I'm seeing guest hits right now but they are scattered geographically and they don't seem suspicious.

I'll check on things later or tomorrow, but keep this site in your prayers, if you can.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Paul reiterates the imagery of preservation of an estate until the heir reaches the appointed time and condition of bequest. The emphasis is that all of God's Elect, Jew and Gentile, were the estate, and Christ was the heir. But we were minor children, as well, as part of the divine household estate. We were under the various elohim powers God appointed over the nations of the world, all of us under one law covenant or another. For us, it was no different from being slaves, just like any minor heir prior to the bequest of the estate. Jesus was the natural born heir, but we have received an adoption that elevates us to the status of true younger heirs behind Him as Firstborn. The mark of that adoption is the Presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ in our hearts. Because of this, we can call Him by the personal terms of endearment used by natural children -- "Daddy! Papa!"

Paul follows a tangent thought here: Gentiles were under the control of lesser deities, the Elohim Council in God's courts. Those were not gods, not honestly classed as such in the Creator's eyes, but they played that role, seeking to skim off some of His glory for themselves. But now that the Galatian believers had become acquainted to the true God and Creator, were they going to return to that slavery under those lesser beings who were just scam artists at best?

Paul mentions that they were now enslaving themselves under Talmudic holy days, something wholly inappropriate for Gentiles who did not inherit any of Israel's national history. There were a whole bundle of special observances that God had not commanded, but which the Pharisees had forced into civil law, choking the common Jewish people with an excuse for yet one more abusive tax. Paul kept his Jewish habits rather private, living more like a Gentile than a Jew among them. How many Jews did they know who would even admit to such a thing? Did not Jews typically hector their Gentile neighbors about pagan habits that interfered with nitpicking Jewish observances? The Galatian Christians should stand with him in rejecting that legalistic nonsense; he certainly didn't feel insulted that they would ignore the Jewish calendar.

He mentions some physical condition that compelled him to spend time in Galatia, apparently when he had planned not to even go there. There are a couple of plausible guesses what he refers to, but it doesn't matter. Whatever it was usually caused superstitious Gentiles to spit at him, but instead, the Galatians received his gospel message with frank enthusiasm. What happened? It sounds like the Judaizers had managed to turn them against Paul personally.

Was it not odd how the Judaizers treated the Galatian Christians as suckers? First they come courting the churches, appealing to their vanity. Then, they start telling them how awful they are for not embracing Judaism, using the old trick of provoking desire for the snake oil by talking about how hard it is to get. And Judaizer religion was snake oil, indeed, completely worthless. To Paul, it feels like having to give birth to the same child again, after they had grown quite a bit. Whatever it was that compelled him to struggle physically to bring them the gospel was worth it, but this pain and sorrow of countering the Judaizers was egregious and unjustified.

Do they really want the Law? Paul will give them a bit of Old Testament the Judaizers would prefer to hide. He talks about Abraham who had an elder son (Ishmael) by his household slave, Hagar. However, Isaac was his natural born heir. The distinction is that Isaac was born in response to a promise from God, whereas Ishmael was born from a mere human choice. Paul will use this story as an allegory -- in the same rabbinical style the Judaizers would.

The Covenant of Moses was like Hagar, rooted in the customs and laws of slavery. Israel as an earthly nation was purchased from slavery in Egypt. Like a concubine, her children held limited privileges, represented by earthly Jerusalem (Zion). But the legal wife was Sarah, and her children were full heirs, which is the Covenant of Abraham/Christ, represented by the spiritual Jerusalem (Heaven). The faith covenant is everything the law covenant could not be. Paul is being terse here by letting the implications seep through without words.

Continuing in that vein, Paul refers to Isaiah 54:1. The ancient prophet paints the image of what those returning from Babylon could have if they rose to faith instead of wallowing in mere law and all its limitations. Would the Judeans coming home be more like a bitter old woman who lost her children? Or would they return in full faith in Jehovah and be more like a young bride that has not yet had children? If the latter, then they could expect a whopping large faith family that would inherit the heavens.

Those who put their faith in Christ are like children of that prophetic promise. Yes, Christians would face persecution from Jews, as Isaac faced from Ishmael, and for the same reason. But those who retain their status as Jews are born for slavery to the law, while the children of faith inherit as fellow heirs with the Son of God. Only a fool would go back into the slavery of the Law Covenant.

Ben reported on a mild earthquake hitting parts of OK in today's daily update.

Ed - did you notice it at all? It was in the OKC area, close to midnight.

Let's lighten things up a little. Would anyone care to speculate?

I've noticed that some of the most academically oriented sites hosting daily articles are manifesting typographical errors they would previously have not allowed to slip through. It's not just one site nor one particular orientation; it's everywhere. On the one hand, I suppose it's proof the material is written by a human. On the other hand, it seems to indicate a shift in things that I'm not sure I can properly attribute.

What do you think?

Hi family

My best friend and neighbor, Michelle, just left my house on her way home.  Her son is on his way to come get her and take her to the ER at our preferred hospital in Raleigh.  She has been having tightness of the chest for over two weeks now.  Around 4ish she starts getting these spells that cause a lot of different symptoms.  She has been trying different things and trying to figure out what is going on.

Enough of that!  She was up visiting and we decided she needs to go to urgent care.  Then we thought eh, they'll probably call an ambulance.  Then we thought, uh yeah, no.  So, I called her son and we all agreed she needs to go to where the good care is and where she is most comfortable.  He is a Raleigh police sergeant and a very no nonsense kind of person.  She will be in good hands.

She has had her share of being in the hospital, but it has been three maybe four years since her last time.

So, may we all pray that she is blessed with relative peace of mind, courage and strong faith to get her through this.  That Father will bless her with compassionate, patient and wise doctors.  And, most importantly that she find healing and come back home.

Thank you!!!