Category: israel

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current affairs history human israel

An Immigration Thought Model

Christians love Scriptural commands; it makes things easy. We weigh in on an issue by citing a verse (or five) and we’re done—ding! Next problem?

So it is with immigration. We surf through our New Testament and then pause, sighing thankfully that there is a verse that seems to deal with illegal aliens, or at least strangers: “The stranger that you invited inside, fed, and clothed his nudity…it was me, Jesus. When you rejected that stranger and left him imprisoned; you rejected me, Jesus1.”

Well, we blush; it’s not as good as an explicit command. The passage is totally about interaction at the personal level and it doesn’t offer anything in the way of “thou shall”—especially not on the national level.

Ignoring the other post-worthy problems up above, I think there’s a proper goal in finding what Scripture says in regard to immigration. Surely, not for the purpose of finding a new law (wrongheaded, that), but for the purpose of discovering operating principles.

For that, we need to construct a thought model.

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israel romans study

The Non-Violated Law of Romans 4:15

Tonight at the Roman’s study there was a question regarding Romans 4:15—why is it there?

The questioner was confused about the nature of violation of Law since this entire chapter doesn’t seem to be dealing with Law at all. After all, asked the student, isn’t the nature of Law to (1) prescribe and punish; and hasn’t Paul already established the (2) equality of Jew and Gentile to enter in by faith: why go back and deal with condemnation that comes about from Law breaking?

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christ church israel spirit

The Work of the Church

I’ve tried to highlight certain assumptions: (1) the church is made up of people; (2)that the church could only come about after certain historical requirements were in place; and (3) that the church’s leadership  is divine (in other words: God is the church’s leader). Following those assumptions (and an unmentioned fourth) I progressed to highlighting the Goal of the church summed up in glorifying God by glorifying Christ. Such a broad definition leaves the most vague of us floating helplessly through a foamy sky of ambiguous vapor. Therefore, I want to spend some time looking at how that purpose is evidenced by the overarching work of the church.

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church israel study

The Goal of the Church Tied to The New Testament

With the tri-fold assumptions in place: (1) the church is made up of people; (2)that the church could only come about after certain historical requirements were in place; and (3) that the church’s leadership  is divine (in other words: God is the church’s leader), we can safely move on to the purpose, or goal, of the church. An ambitious goal for one post but that’s what you can expect from a probable-heretic.

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christ history israel

Psalm 110, Melchizedek, Priesthoods and the Revealed Messiah

I’ve spent some time banging around some thoughts on Psalm 110, what it meant in its Jewish culture and how it was used by the early believers. To think about that I had to first spend some time thinking about the origins.

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