We come to a rough spot in the chronology. Sometime during this period between Tabernacles and the Passover that last year of Jesus' ministry, He had to leave Jerusalem for a time. John tells us that around the Feast of Dedication or Lights, early December on our calendar, Jesus was walking along Solomon's Porch and encountered a delegation of the Sanhedrin, demanding that Jesus state clearly whether He was the Messiah.

John doesn't mention it in the narrative, but the Twelve were with Him, and perhaps others. During the argument, Jesus said that He and the Father were One. The officials were ready to stone Him, but after a little more debate, they decided to arrest Him. Yet, He evaded capture and headed down to the Jordan River near where He was baptized, Bethany beyond Jordan (outside of Judea). He and his disciples stayed there for a good while. The crowd that followed Him grew again. This was not the kind of folks who would desert Him for using parables; this crowd had far more genuine faith.

After a month or so, Jesus decided it was time to go back across the Jordan into Judea. The disciples reminded Him that the Pharisees were ready to stone Him when He left. Jesus said something cryptic indicating He was the Light of the World, and they should take advantage of His light while He was there, and not stumble around in the darkness of their human reasoning. The plans of the Sanhedrin made no difference against the Father's plans.

Then there was the discussion about how His dear friend Lazarus was dying. The disciples continued stumbling around in their literal-minded reaction to what Jesus was telling them. Finally, He told them flat out that there was a divine purpose at work here. Lazarus had to die so that Jesus could raise him again. So the delay insured Lazarus was dead, and then had been buried.

Jesus and His entourage arrived in the other Bethany, upon the Mount of Olives, after Lazarus had lain in the tomb four days. It's not that Jesus suffered any myths about dead bodies and roaming spirits, but He knew that on the fourth day, everyone who witnessed this event would have no doubt Lazarus was truly dead. A large number of Jews came up from Jerusalem to comfort Mary and Martha over the death of their brother. This would naturally include some of those Pharisees hostile to Jesus and even some members of the Sanhedrin, since Lazarus had been rather wealthy.

Martha got wind of His approach, coming up the backside of the mountain from the Jordan Valley. She went out to meet Him just outside the village of Bethany. There was an uncomfortable discussion between them, with Martha missing the point, just as the rest of His disciples often did. She affirmed her conviction that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. Anything He asked, the Father would grant, though it never occurred to her that Jesus intended to raise her brother.

Martha went back to the house and got Mary to come out with her. Jesus was still standing outside the village. Everybody attending the wake saw Mary leave quickly and assumed she was going to the tomb site. They decided to follow at a respectful distance. Martha and Mary met Jesus, and Mary fell at His feet. Oh, if only He had been there to heal Lazarus!

Everyone was moved at the scene, but didn't understand what was going on in Jesus' mind. He was deeply offended at the whole thing, perhaps most of all for the sad state of those who had completely forgotten the ancient Hebrew otherworldly outlook. Lazarus was far better off, and Jesus was going to jerk him back into this fallen world. For this, He wept, but also because they simply didn't understand. They kept chattering about how Jesus could have kept Lazarus alive, as if He had ever been worried about that. Still deeply troubled at the hardness of their heads and hearts, Jesus stood before the tomb.

He told them to remove the stone cover. Martha, ever practical, objected. Even with a good load of burial spices, the body would stink badly at this point. Jesus insisted He was only going to keep His promise that they would see the glory of God this very day. Jesus prayed out loud, driving home the point for those listening that this was to show them the Father's glory. They needed to know beyond all doubt that He held such unprecedented authority in His hands.

He yelled for Lazarus to come out of the tomb. Lazarus came hobbling out, wearing the full body covering of winding strips. His arms were pinned down and his legs strapped together, so that he could just barely move his feet. The face cloth was tucked under the strips at his neck. He ordered some folks standing by to cut Lazarus loose. (There would have been young men there whose job it was to accept the defilement of touching dead bodies so everyone else could still be ritually clean and enter the Temple, etc.)

At this point, too many of those who doubted Jesus had no place to flee intellectually. It didn't necessarily change their hearts, but it was impossible to dispute the power Jesus wielded. Quite a few folks were changed, but by no means all of them. Several of them reported the whole incident to the Pharisees.

The Sanhedrin and subsidiary councils met as one and decided it was necessary to have Jesus executed by any means they could find. Further, we know that they also were plotting to kill Lazarus and put him back in his tomb, because the mere fact this man lived again was a fiery condemnation against them.

I've added an article to the online library: Earmarks of the Final Apocalypse. The objective was to restate in clear terms what we should expect to see in the Final Apocalypse, so that we won't be fooled into thinking the current troubles are anything close to that. I pulled up a post from the old blog that I closed out some time ago when WordPress forced everyone to use an editor that is designed to prevent writers like me from posting anything.

Today is the high holy day of the Green Religion.

By the way, I've been reading some of the comments on Suspicious Observers' videos. From what I gather, if Saturn shows the effects of the galactic gravity/dust wave in the next few years, that would seem to indicate we have ten, or at most twenty years, before that dust cloud hits earth and the sun. Now, the sun will probably take its time reacting. If the pattern holds, earth will begin to enter an ice age at that time. And God alone knows what it will happen after our magnetic poles converge. But from what I've read, an ice age takes about five years to reach crescendo. I've haven't seen anything suggesting how long that will last.

There's an awful lot we don't know, and I know only a small portion of that, but it sure looks to me like we get maybe another ten years before the commencement of an ice age. Somewhere in there we will see at least one good massive CME before the micro-nova.

Probably won't be much point in taking pictures of that stuff with a digital camera... 

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.

For those of you who missed it, I've reactivated my old blog: Radix Fidem blog. I'm currently using it only for pictures, mostly taken while riding my bike, and some accompanying explanations.

During His time hanging out in and around Jerusalem until the His final Passover, Jesus offered a couple of parables on prayer.

The first is the Unjust Judge. By long tradition across the entire Ancient Near East, every town and city had at least one retired bigshot who acted as the lowest level of civil court judge. They hung out at the main city gate, which was where other aging elders would sit and witness legal matters. Most of what they did was make note of standard legal property and contract exchanges and keep track for the community at large.

Jesus tells of a particular judge who didn't really respect the Covenant nor care much about people in general. Apparently he simply enjoyed having the power over others. One of the most common cases he might see on a regular basis involved widows being defrauded of their sustenance because they had no legal standing to actually inherit property. It had to go under the care of the nearest surviving male relative. Lacking a relative who actually cared about them left them in a very precarious position. There are all kinds of ways this could go wrong, and a great many widows lost everything, being kicked on the street with nothing. Sometimes the best solution was to appoint a community elder to prevent any predatory actions against them.

This was a common arrangement and the widow was trying to arrange this by having her property removed from the control of someone who wanted her gone. While the judge in question had no interest in actual justice, he knew that if he didn't grant her request, she would wear him out by constant harassment. Old Jewish women were notorious for this.

What about those cases where God alone is the only Judge who can act? Jesus said that sometimes our Father will take His time responding to an injustice for reasons we cannot guess. Still, when the time comes, He acts swiftly to execute His decisions. And you can be sure that when His Covenant children call on Him, He does hear our petitions.

So perhaps the real question is: Who has faith to actually trust the Lord and call on Him persistently? If it works well enough to move unjust judges, surely it will work with the Judge of all Creation!

What would it take to gain that kind of "legal standing" with God? Jesus told another parable about that: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector. On a particular day, at the Hour of Prayer in the Temple, a Pharisee and a tax collector showed up. The Pharisee stood close to the altar did his typical arrogant ritual prayer, thanking God for choosing to make him wealthy and holy, unlike the tax collector. He boasted to God just how holy he was.

The tax collector slipped into the back corner of the Court of Israel. There he bowed and didn't dare raise his eyes. He smote his chest in genuine contrition, seeking God's forgiveness.

When the Temple ritual ended, Jesus said the tax collector left with a far greater measure of God's favor than the Pharisee did. The Covenant wasn't a mere matter of ritual, but of sincere love and commitment to the Lord of the Covenant. His Law is a Law of Hearts, not mere ritual observance.

I talked to my parents this past weekend, then also to my sister who is handling a lot of their affairs currently. It turns out they are stable but declining. Mom is at stage 5 of 6 in her Alzheimer's. She lives a lot in the past, to put it a certain way. She asks my two sisters about me as if I were still in grade school. Did I get home okay from school, what did they make me for dinner, how was my homework, etc. Sometimes she has trouble recognizing my sisters at first when they visit, but she comes around. 

Dad's dementia is advanced (don't know the stage or the "rating", but it's probably middle stage). He's on new medication for it now, but he was getting sundowning pretty badly. He'd start yelling or throwing things, getting really irritated over simple things. He has macular degeneration fairly badly, so he can't be active much beyond talking or listening to music or the television. That might be worse for him psychologically because he used to read a lot.

When I talked to them over the weekend, I probably got them at a good time because they seemed fairly lucid. Eventually I'm going to catch them at a bad time, chances are. My sister said I should plan on coming up soon to see them, because there's no telling how much either of them have. Prognosis for things like that can be uncertain. I'll likely plan for something soon after the kids are out of school, so around mid-June time.

Lots of experts, real or imagined, are telling readers to beware of specific problems coming our way. I'll mention a couple, and some of you may be aware of others worth sharing.

1. The Governor of Texas ordered inspections of trucks coming across the border from Mexico, looking for drugs and so forth. The Mexican truckers have responded by blockading the main port on their side. Then the narco gangs set fire to some of the trucks because they won't tolerate the blockade. They would rather face the risk of their drugs being found than the certainty that their drugs can't cross the border at all. At any rate, experts warn that in the next two weeks we should see serious shortages of the vegetables that come from Mexico. The US buys almost half its produce from there. One story can be found here.

2. This story quotes Martin Armstrong (video interview I didn't watch) saying that the collapse of the western economic system will demand a war to prevent the worst consequences. It could come in the next few weeks, but could also take longer, since there are so many variables that have to be lined up.

So, these two are ostensibly close-range enough that we can easily keep track and test if these experts know what they are talking about. I'll probably grab a few bags of frozen veggies today, but that's not really any different from my recent habits.

This evening had to rush my youngest daughter, 20, to ER. Was inflamed cartilage around her ribs and was prescribed anti inflammatory. It was strange symptoms for a 20 year old; severe pain when breathing. The Lord's will be done, Amen.

It would have been better if translators had called the Tree of Knowledge the "Tree of Decision", as the word for "knowledge" implies the power to decide or to judge the truth of things. That's the nature of the Fall -- Adam and Eve seized the authority to decide for themselves what was good and evil -- the Tree of Deciding Good and Evil -- and rejected the authority of God to decide such things. Since we chose not to listen to Him, He closed the door on His counsel, which requires us in our fleshly form to come back to Him through redemption.

Humans by default cannot know what is good and evil. They can certainly decide for themselves; that's what the Fall means, but they don't know what God thinks about such things. So, when you are trying to navigate the streets and the traffic is very dense, you may become offended. Did all of those people sin by inconveniencing you? Yes and no. They may well all be in sin, but none of them got on the street with the intent to delay you. They didn't sin against you in that sense.

The answer in this case is to learn how to go on with your life. It's not a question of forgiving, because there was no offense. It's just your irritation, and whether you take it seriously or not. Sure, some drivers are complete asses about it, but in general, that's not the point. There's nothing you can do to hold them accountable, so you might as well get over it.

But for those few who do go out of their way to cut you off and flip you the bird; was that a sin? Who gets to decide? If all you want is punishment on them, then you don't understand what the whole question of good versus evil is. The real issue is to get them to stop that behavior. Cops and fines and jail might convince a rebellious human, but nothing inside that offender changes. We could easily get lost here in what can be accomplished on the human level, but we are compelled by faith to pursue the ultimate meaning of things. Human forgiveness isn't worth much; it's just a convenience. We want to understand the eternal issue of defilement that most humans can't even perceive.

That's the real question here. The Covenant by which we return to the Lord and seek His revelation of what is good and evil also grants us a clear conviction so we'll know. The whole point is that we turn over to Him all questions of good and evil. We recognize that we are incompetent to decide what is good and evil. This is not merely a question of human relations. Every sin defiles. Defilement affects your life on this earth in subtle ways most people don't recognize. While you may have no human authority to affect punishment on those who sin, under the Covenant you do have divine authority to forgive or not. Jesus said so (Matthew 18:15-20): "What you forgive, the Father forgives" in so many words.

You could let that inflate your sense of self-worth, but that would be missing the point. We are striving to walk in the Covenant here. We want to operate under His authority, so we submit to our convictions, which are written by God's own hand on your heart. We submit to His decision what is good and evil. What do we forgive and what should we hold before Him for wrath? Choose carefully. It's not that you are obliged to forgive everything.

How often did the Old Testament saints say, "May the Lord judge between you and I"? That wasn't forgiveness; that was letting it go so that God could handle it at His whim. You forfeited your claim on that person's behavior and the eventual justice. You decide to make no plans either way. Of course, you suspect the Lord is going to take some action sooner or later. But you don't forgive because you sense that doing so will harm the Covenant shalom.

So, there is a sense in which no one outside the Covenant has the authority to forgive. They don't "know" -- they can't rightly decide. Under the Covenant, we have divine authority to forgive, but we need to be careful about it. We should turn it over to the Lord, except when our convictions steer a clear path to God's solution to the problem.

And the whole thing assumes the notion that those who offend you owe you something. That's how the Bible characterizes it. Thus, you think in terms of releasing the debt as "forgiveness". Some things you dismiss immediately, like snarled traffic. It's just part of what we endure in this fallen world. Some things you don't feel competent to judge, so you hand it off to God. You'll know eventually whether He forgives, and thus you forgive, or whether He will punish them and you can rejoice in His glory. Other issues are well defined in your soul and you know right away what you should do about it.

How would you forgive yourself? To whom would the debt be owed? You are both parties. The language of forgiving self is symbolic. You know your better self had no power over the fleshly nature at times, because that power is so very difficult to exercise. Once you get used to the notion of a dual nature, then you fit the symbolic language into that frame of reference. Your soul has to forgive itself in that sense for not reining in the fleshly nature.

I don't think it's safe to imagine a third party within yourself to moderate between good and evil selves. The cutesy image of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other is a dangerous proposition. You have a fleshly nature and an eternal nature; it's very much like two people together in one body. There is a conscious awareness, but it must identify with one or the other, and isn't a person per se.