From an old acquaintance's band--they are believers. This song hit me earlier this week, and it stuck with me since I have a soft spot for lyrics like these. They are coded such that people like us can recognize the attitude, but casual listeners could pass over them easily enough.

Quote:You make everything feel half-alive
You make everything long for the light
You make everything feel half-alright
In me

When death comes a’knocking on doors
When my heart knows its been here before
In the house where the windows are boarded up with fear
When the moonlight is burning my eyes
And the only way out is too bright
When the worthiness of living life is far from dear

You make all of me feel half-alright
Enough to see hope through the night
That the bitterness leaves with the sunlight’s growing near

You make everything feel half-alive
You make everything long for the light
You make everything feel half-alright
In me

How do I walk into freedom with my limbs asleep?
How do I move through the finite, to eternal things?
How does my heart long for home that I’ve never seen?
How do I see past the veil of this body?

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.

We figured out (I think it was Linda?) that I had missed Jeremiah when I did the manuscript for the Ancient Truth: Moses and the Prophets print book. That's fixed but it'll be a day or so before amazon approves the new manuscript file.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2TRD2F4

I'll post here when it's official.

John's second and third letters are brief summaries of what he wrote in his first epistle, addressed to a couple of people noted for helping itinerant preachers take the gospel to new mission fields.

Chronology: Paul was executed in roughly 65-66 AD. Peter wrote his letters from Rome and was also executed a short time later. In 70 AD, a Jewish revolt in Jerusalem brought a swift Roman response that destroyed Herod's Temple. Christians who fled that event largely gathered in and around Ephesus, turning it into the new hub of Christian religion. The other members of the original Twelve Disciples traveled far away or were executed, leaving John as the elder there in Ephesus. His letters were written around 85 AD. Jude wrote his letter some while before John's to an unknown audience that was almost certainly dominated by Hebrew Christians. He identifies himself as James' younger brother, which made him half-brother to the Christ he proclaimed as Lord.

We thus get a picture of how the heresies John faced developed during the early explosion of Christianity in Ephesus and the surrounding region. Jude's focus is on the early Gnostics. Jude had rather written something else, but this cult was a serious threat to following Christ. He says they had infiltrated the community to which he writes.

They had twisted the gospel of grace into an excuse for libertine self-indulgence and denial of Christ. Jude's first comment is that these men were predestined to damnation from the start, never part of the Elect. They will meet their doom, but Jude wants to give context as to why the churches must endure their presence for a time.

First example: We notice that Jude uses terminology that makes a lot of later western church folks a little uncomfortable because he cites Hebrew mystical imagery that was common during the Second Temple period and plugs in his Lord as the Messiah to which that theology pointed. Many English translations leave out the reference to Christ being present during the Exodus. It was not Jesus the man, but rather an earlier manifestation of God's Word that appeared in the Exodus, leading the nation out of bondage. And this same Word of God was the standard of judgment that called for the destruction of those who rebelled against God's order of things for leadership in the wilderness.

Second example: Jehovah's elohim staff also rebelled and invaded the mortal realm, getting personally involved in mortal human existence. They were forced to remain in this realm in the Abyss as part of their punishment, until the Day of Judgment.

Third example: The men of Sodom and Gomorrah (along with three smaller cities nearby) transgressed the limits God had set for them and went all out, trying to engage in degrading ritual sex with angels. Their punishment was fire raining from the sky, turning the whole area into a smoking grave.

These Gnostics also transgressed the boundaries in the same way as the cultists of Sodom and Gomorrah did, rejecting the created order of authority, even to the point of cursing the elohim. Even the archangel Michael knew better than that, but spoke only in echoes of what God had already said. The Gnostics don't even have a clue what they are talking about, but arrogantly transgress the boundaries. They rejected the place God made for them and wasted the gift of human faculties, living by brute animal instincts with no moral restraints. That kind of lifestyle carried its own doom sooner or later.

They had joined in the sins of Cain, and of Balaam, and the rebellion of Korah. It's quite a challenge to describe the depth of depravity to which they had sunk, sneaking in to the church love feasts to selfishly gorge themselves. They boasted of powers and wisdom, but were like clouds without rain, trees without fruit, stinking foamy wild waves of the sea, and stars that moved out of constellations. God was saving up special wrath for them.

Jude refers to the oral lore about Enoch, who prophesied before the days of Noah that wrath was coming for all the people who embraced the lies of the rebellious elohim. These pre-Flood idiots even dared to insult God directly, complaining about how He would not let them sate their foul lusts. It's the same sin the Gnostics were engaged in during Jude's days. We would call them psychopaths.

Jesus had warned such people would appear after His Ascension, seeking to mislead the Elect and destroy the unity in churches. Jude recommends that his audience do the work of Christ, having mercy on those who struggled with their faith, teaching them to distrust the flesh and keep it under the discipline of the Spirit. This is how we carry out the Law of Christ.

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.

Unrelated to the recent hacking, Bluehost changed its hosting package structure. Where once I had unlimited disk storage but a limited file count, I am now both limited to storage (150 gigabytes) and files (1 million files). When I was switched to the new plan structure, I was way over the disk limit and I was basically locked out from doing anything, since I couldn't upload or add to the disk. For instance, I could log into my blog's or this forum's admin section but I couldn't add a new post in either.

I had a backup of the site plus a ton of personal files I was keeping on the server, so I moved them off onto a thumb drive. I am well within the disk limit now, and I was already well within the file count limit.

No emergency or anything yet, but I may need to upgrade again if we approach the storage limits. That day may never come, but I am just keeping it in prayer that I'll still be able to sustain the forum financially if I do need to upgrade.

John's schoolboy Greek grammar should be obvious, but people have debated for the past two millennia over what he says in this chapter. I take the position that the so-called "John's comma" in verse 8 was not in the original letter. This refers to some added lines that don't belong with the message, lines that showed up in the KJV based on very late manuscripts, but is clearly missing in the oldest copies we have of this letter.

John's theme is still the distinction between those who carry the Presence of the Holy Spirit and those who do not. There is no way to reconcile the differences between those two groups. We should hardly be surprised that humans with the Holy Spirit believe in Christ as both man and God, while those without His Presence cannot possibly accept that truth. They will come up with all kinds of silly explanations for who Christ was and what He must have represented, never mind what first-hand witnesses like John could tell you.

The chapter break comes at the wrong place, splitting a paragraph. Thus, this chapter begins with John finishing his comments about how people led by the Spirit cannot avoid obeying Christ's command that we should love each other as He loved us, something the various cults choked on. John says that if you love the Father -- as many cult teachers claimed they did -- then you cannot avoid loving His children. If you love the Father, you will obey the Son's Law to love each other. It's not a burdensome law like the Talmud; it's entirely natural.

He's talking about spiritual birth, the Presence of the Holy Spirit in your soul. If God is your Father in that sense, then you have escaped the authority of Satan, the god of this fallen world. He does not own you any longer because you aren't rooted here; you are rooted in Eternity. We just happen to occupy a fleshly form for a limited time while we represent an invasive divine presence in his domain. Our commitment to Christ is how we overcome Satan's efforts to bring us back under his power.

The people who have broken that curse will consistently proclaim that Jesus was both man and God. The fleshly nature cannot accept that truth. John was there for much of Jesus' life since they were cousins. John was part of the same extended family as John the Baptist, too. While John probably did not witness the baptism in the Jordan (the reference to Jesus coming by water), he would have heard about it from multiple sources among his kinfolks alone. But John was there when Jesus died on the Cross, so he saw how Jesus came by blood.

And all of this is backed up by the voice of the Holy Spirit living in every person who comes to Christ. Thus, there are three witnesses: the water baptism in which the Father spoke bluntly Himself for all to hear, and blood on the Cross that shook the earth and darkened the sky, and the divine Presence of the Holy Spirit who would not have come into hearts in quite the same way without the Ascension. John believes.

And if you can swallow the testimony about the Voice of God at the baptism, and the testimony of miracles from hundreds at the Cross, then the voice of the Holy Spirit is greater still. Without His Presence, you could not make sense of the human testimonies. But with His Presence, you already have all the testimony you need, never mind whether you experienced those miraculous events yourself. God is naturally going to testify of Himself in your soul, but if you can't embrace the truth of the Incarnation, then you are calling God Himself a liar.

Without the Spirit of the Risen Lord in your soul, you cannot claim to have eternal life.

Thus, John wrote this letter to reassure the fleshly minds of his readers that they do indeed have eternal life. Just listen for the Spirit's witness. That Voice is the assurance you have to approach the Throne of God and make requests that He is eager to answer.

Something you should pray for is that any child of God who has gotten off the path, led astray by the lies of the cultists, would repent and return. There are limits of course. John has already specified what he means by "a sin leading to death" -- denying that Jesus was the Son of God. If someone can go that far, they aren't a child of God. Pray for them to get saved, if you feel led, but don't pray like they are just a child of God who got off track. There are plenty of mistakes His children will make without denying Christ.

We know that those who are spiritually born are not going to make that kind of mistake. That's what John means by saying the children of God don't sin -- that particular sin, of course. The Devil cannot reclaim your soul; the Lord forbids it. The Holy Spirit makes us aware that we belong to God, while the rest of the world belongs to Satan. The Spirit also makes us fully aware of who Christ is and that we belong to Him. All those cults are lies; they don't know God and cannot embrace the Savior.

Finally, John says he wants his little darlings to be careful and avoid getting too close to idolatry.

I don't known too many details, but Pam is in the hospital with some sort of infection. She has had blood and stool tests done. I'm rather worried but I don't have much more information than that.

I'll post back her when I know more.

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.

"What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" -Romans 8:31