Hi folks -- have been reading through Bible studies here and some of the discussions, hopping over from the Catacomb Resident blog, which was suggested to me by a friend.  Grew up Southern Baptist but was disillusioned about denominations in my late teens (esp. after discovering CS Lewis and Francis Schaeffer), so journeyed through Bible churches trying to fit in and find a way to serve our Lord.  Got a degree in agriculture, specializing more in soils and irrigation, with the ideal of working to help people in arid places have better yields, but while working at an ag research station, discovered that I was sort of handy with learning networking and very rudimentary programming on the new mid-size servers and PCs.  Eventually became a Solaris systems administrator, and migrated to Linux with the changes in the telecom world that I ended up in.  Got out of that extremely stressful environment after my father passed, and have been working on building arable soil out of caliche and to reduce the volume of stuff in the house.

The last few years I somehow started seeing the research different people were doing about the unbelievable state of our courts, legislative bodies, and the media.  Perhaps this was because of still being shocked by the banksters paying no price for what unfolded in 2008; over time I had really started to notice the preponderence of the talmudists in the shenanigans.  This was a painful realization after having been swimming in Evangelical worship of them for my whole life, but then it also made the Gospels seem like I had never read them before.  Lately it has felt like we are living in similar days as when Jeremiah was preaching, and I have been wondering how the people who believed him ordered their lives before the judgement and invasions.

I listen to a lady (Rain Country Homestead) on YouTube who gives ideas and encouragement for gardening, dehydrating foods, sewing, etc., and noticed something interesting re: one of your internal topics (about reaching the churched "unwashed masses") that you might like to hear.  There were many commenters on that video who expressed terrible loneliness from not being able to find Christian fellowship that is not name-it-and-claim-it or seeker-oriented, but truly Gospel oriented (and now I believe the correct term is Covenant -- still a newbie on this).  All of them expressed surprise to find others who felt so lost for similar reasons; I guess the number of "lost sheep" is pretty large, and there is great need among so many.  It seems like our Lord helps us to find such eddy pools as a rest from the careening tumult of the larger stream, and I am grateful -- maybe I can help.

My to-do list has included working on a Raspberry Pi to keep up my Linux skills to some degree, but I have been so focused on the paring-down, gardening, and some paper-crafts that I have not started that exercise so far.  I have done many kinds of tasks on and with computers over the decades and have more free time than it sounds like others might have, if there are things that I might be able to help with.  

Very honored to know about this gathering, and looking forward to joining the prayers, etc.

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.

I've submitted the reformatted manuscripts for both Ancient Truth: Wisdom Literature and Ancient Truth: Old Testament History. The price went down a few dollars for each, though I didn't pay attention to the exact numbers. The page count for the OT book went from 700 to 472, and Wisdom went from 693 to 467, which I am happy about.

I only decreased the line spacing for the body content. No further edits, so if you've already ordered the books, you're not missing out on anything but a slightly thinner book

I'll post the links here when they are approved.

Once again, I am unable to improve on my previous commentary on this passage.

All of these new elders preached, but unlike the Apostles, they had the natural tendency to preach outside the old Hebrew communities. It’s hard to explain Stephen’s behavior unless we assume he had some rabbinical training. He knew not merely the text of the Old Testament, but also much of the oral historical traditions now missing or buried in Talmudic mythology. Highly educated, yet filled with the Spirit such that he manifested signs and miracles, this man took the message to places the Apostles could not. Preaching was not confined to those called to pastor.

Perhaps Stephen had previously been associated with the Synagogue of the Freedmen. The synagogue name refers to Greek-speaking Jews who had formerly been slaves under Roman law, but somehow won their freedom. It was quite an accomplishment. There may have been hundreds of such little cloistered synagogues in and around Jerusalem, catering to one group or another. This synagogue must have held some claim to fame, with big shots from Alexandria, North Africa, and what we now call Turkey and Northern Syria. It would naturally be a Greek-speaking synagogue, and Stephen was quite comfortable, not only in the language, but the Alexandrian style of rhetoric so popular with such people. It is important here to note that no one seemed to have any particular vision for spreading the gospel outside native Judeans; Stephen simply went to those with whom he had some affinity.

In debating with these Freedmen, Stephen was promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this gospel he would surely have included Jesus’ rejection of the Hellenized Talmud, so near and dear to Alexandrian hearts. Stephen approached them on their own terms, with their own style of reasoning. He showed how Jesus was the central focal point of all ancient prophecies, had fulfilled the Law of Moses, and closed the Temple rituals. There was now no other sacrifice acceptable to God but the blood of His Son for forgiveness of sins. So Stephen was arguing that the Talmud was wrong, the rituals were dead, and Jesus was the rightful King of all Jews worldwide.

We are hardly surprised that those who were not moved by the Spirit to accept this impossible message would be infuriated at this smart-aleck attacking everything they thought made them special in God’s eyes. What far too many wish to underplay here is the hateful racist superiority complex of Jews in that day. They might argue among themselves who was more pure in Jewishness, but nobody would ever surrender an inch to including actual Gentiles in God’s blessings. Jehovah made the world, but He was in their minds God of the Jews only, and everyone else was made by God to serve them. Any Messianic message failing to confirm this prejudice was hateful to them.

So they networked with other significant figures in the city to accuse Stephen before the Sanhedrin. All this sounded to them like blasphemy, and an attack on the Temple itself, “God’s Residence.” Luke calls them false witnesses in the sense that they lied against God and His Word, but the claims were more or less accurate from the slavishly literalist viewpoint of the Pharisees.

What had Jesus actually said? When the Twelve were discussing the Temple facility one day, Jesus said it was just a building, and would one day suffer the fate of all buildings. Moreover, it would be utterly destroyed because His Nation would reject Him. While it may well be in the minds of Jews the Residence of Jehovah, His divine Presence had not been there in centuries. Instead, it was born in the flesh of His Son. So Jesus pointed to His own body and said if anyone tried to tear down this Temple, He would simply bring it back in three days. More, He was going away to make His followers into walking Temples of the Lord, just as He had been. He would reside in their hearts as the Holy Spirit. There was simply no room for such truth in the minds of the Jewish leaders.

So arresting Stephen and hauling him before the assembled court, they saw a man whose face glowed with divine presence. It must surely have made them nervous, for to be in God’s presence always makes us aware of our sin. We can either confess it and be forgiven, or close our hearts and cling to sin as our “holiness.” The tension between the truth and the established order was about to erupt.

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.

There's a lot of background to this lesson that is not obvious to casual readers.

First is that local Judean people were clannish. Despite the urbanization around Jerusalem, and the significant influx of Gentile influences through first the Greeks, and then the Romans, the substance of one's social life remained the extended family. Thus, several of the Twelve were cousins of Jesus; this was something they took for granted. Nepotism was a virtue in Jewish society, unlike in our culture today. The Law of Moses promoted it via unspoken assumptions. You could not obey Moses without nepotism.

This became the fundamental means of organization within the exploding church in Jerusalem. While a significant portion of members simply brought their immediate family with them into the body, those whose family refused to join them could simply adopt a new family. This was already accepted in their culture, so adding the dimension of shared spiritual birth simply provided another path, and ultimately more valid, to something they already had a tendency to do.

For anyone who grew up in a Judean or Galilean household, this was all perfectly natural. They brought with them the instinct to organize into the same clan structure as the basis for everything the church did daily.

Diaspora Jews might have some faint ethnic hints of this in their background, but none of the connections with the locals. A primary reason they or their ancestors had left Palestine in the first place was the rich commercial opportunities around the Mediterranean Basin. These people were typically much more wealthy than the average local peasants who made up the early core of the disciples. Their large donations to the common treasury were quite welcome, but they had a tough time breaking into the social habits everyone else followed by instinct. These Diaspora Jews typically spoke Greek. They might have still learned some Hebrew Aramaic, but it was not their native tongue, and the local vernacular even less so.

Indeed, for all their lives coming to Jerusalem for Holy Days, they ended up in segregated synagogues, as well, where their common Greek tongue was in use. The area surrounding Jerusalem hosted a wide array of Greek-speaking synagogues catering to all kinds of special shared interests. But when they embraced Jesus as their Messiah, most of the Diaspora Christians would have been tossed from those synagogues. Thus, they had no social anchorage in the city, and were very much outsiders. They struggled to find a place, even with each other. Their association with other Greek-speaking Christians lacked the depth and stability common among the local Jewish Christians.

When it came to the likes of widows and orphans, the Jewish instinct was to take care of them as part of the extended family. Most of the Diaspora Christians had no one to adopt them. Having been outsiders all their lives out in the Gentile world, they were sensitive to being outsiders again. They noticed that the locals had clan leaders who interceded for them in the growing welfare system within the church. They contributed so much, but too many of their own were left out, because they lacked elders who automatically took care of them.

The Apostles understood the problem. Here was a church body filled with Judeans who would have normally been dismissive of Galilean bumpkins, as virtually all of the Twelve were, yet they were embraced as Apostles over this body. The term "waiting on tables" would translate more accurately to being chained to a desk in endless administrative trivial tasks. They were in effect the priesthood, and not political or administrative leaders. It was not their training or mission.

The administrative tasks were properly left to elders. Elders were native to the clan social structure, and the local Jews had it worked out instinctively. The Diaspora Christians had no native elders, so the Apostles directed the Greek-speakers to appoint some. In essence, they were telling the Diaspora Christians to organize themselves like the locals, to embrace each other as family-in-effect. From that effort, elders naturally arose by their talents and blessings from the Lord. Those were then presented as their new elders and recognized as such by everyone.

It was an ancient tradition of the Hebrew people to appoint new judges this way. Someone who was old enough and respected enough would be welcomed into, for example, the Sanhedrin by laying on of hands from the senior members. The Apostles used this gesture as a way of elevating the men chosen as the equivalent of local magistrate within the church body. Luke doesn't use the term "deacon" because that word means a mere attendant; these men were administrative leaders.

This became the standard for all future churches. A church body was organized like the early Hebrew nomad nation days, where priests led in spiritual matters and elders/chiefs/kings led in administrative matters. God was pleased with this, and used it to call even more souls to join this first church in the New Testament.

And in this case, one of these new Greek-speaking elders became known for preaching and miracles: Stephen.

My wife Jeane has contracted whatever respiratory illness that seems to be going around now.  It started Monday night with a cough.  Tuesday morning I started treating her with nebulized hydrogen peroxide and Ivermectin.  She seems to be holding her own now but is very weak with a headache and little appetite. We both had Covid this past January and it affected her more than I.  I give credit to the Lord for keeping us both out of the hospital then and would ask that you pray for healing once again.  THANKS!!

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.

It was summer in Jerusalem. There was more than one kind of heat, though. The gospel of Jesus burned like a bonfire in His disciples.Luke tells us the miracles that accompanied Jesus were even more prevalent in the Apostles. One Jesus was trouble enough for the Sanhedrin, but now there were at least a dozen of Him, and because of them, thousands who lived that power and teaching.

So far as we know, the area known was as "Solomon's Porch" was along two or more sides of the Court of Gentiles. It was a nice shady spot near on the Temple plaza where rabbis typically gathered to discuss things, but the thick presence of the disciples of Jesus crowded out the previously thin scattering of scholarly groups. Even among those who would not dare join them, the believers were considered good people, a definite improvement in the atmosphere.

It got to the point where the common folks brought their sick and dying out to lay along the sides of the streets where the Twelve commonly walked. Their hopes were that at least the shadow of their leader, Peter, would pass over them and perhaps heal them. It became a real traffic nightmare, because crowds of people from walking distance of the city brought all their sick and demonized folks for healing and deliverance.

And day after day, they testified that Jesus was the Messiah and had risen from the grave by His own authority. The healing and other miracles were a sign of His divine authority at work in His followers. They taught Moses the way Jesus had taught him, a path clearly not where the Jewish leadership was taking them. The mood in the city was quickly turning unfriendly to the Sanhedrin.

The Sadducees in particular were incensed at this whole trend. The High Priest exercised his authority and had the Apostles arrested and put in their jail. They planned to convene a court session the next day, but during the night, an angel came and released them. He commanded them to go out and keep teaching and preaching in the Temple plaza. Upon hearing this, they promptly went at sunrise back to Solomon's Porch and began teaching as soon as anyone showed up, and that didn't take very long.

So when the Sadducees had gathered in council, they called for the prisoners to be brought before them. The Temple Guard officers went and found everything secure, but no prisoners. The priestly men began discussing how this could be, and how it could turn out. In the middle of this grave discussion, when one of their associates burst in and told them that the prisoners were back in the Temple plaza, preaching and teaching again.

This time the Captain of the Guard himself went with his troops to ensure things went peacefully. They came and politely asked the Apostles to come back to the Sanhedrin court with him. The officials were concerned that the Temple Guard would be stoned if they were to rough up the disciples of Jesus, because it was obvious the crowds were more in favor of the disciples than they were of Jewish leadership.

When the men were standing before the council, the spokesman demanded to know why they had disobeyed the previous court orders not to teach in the name of Jesus. He warned darkly that their teaching was blaming the Sanhedrin for His death, showing contempt for the Sanhedrin Council.

Peter was blunt. He and his associates were going to obey God, not any mere men. They were guilty of murder, but God had raised Him back to life. He was the Son of God and heir to Heaven's throne. It was their privilege to offer His forgiveness upon the believer's repentance. Peter and his associates were eyewitnesses to all of this, and they had the backing of God's Holy Spirit, a gift He was now giving to all who commit to obeying Him as Lord.

In their minds, every one of the Sadducees was thinking about how they could hold a grisly execution for these arrogant bumpkins from Galilee. But one of the councilors stood up and called for an executive session, and the disciples of Jesus were hustled out into the hallway. This councilor was named Gamaliel, a highly respected peer of the Sanhedrin. He recounted two messianic rebellions. When the self-proclaimed Messiahs died, so did their movements. The rebellions just fell apart because God was not behind them.

Gamaliel advised the Sanhedrin to leave these followers of Jesus alone. If it's another false Messiah, then their movement would also fall apart. But if God is behind this, no power on earth could stop it, and the Sanhedrin would be lined up on the wrong side. They all agreed to accept his advice.

The called in their prisoners and had them beaten with rods across their backs, according to their legal traditions. Again, they were ordered not to speak in the name of Jesus, and dismissed.

But the disciples simply came out of the place celebrating. Being counted as the same kind of threat to the Jewish leaders as Jesus was fit them like a great honor. And they promptly went back to teaching about Jesus and performing miracles all over the city.

Another trip around the sun for our sister, forrealone. Hope you are especially blessed today