Monthly Archives: September 2022

September 29, 2022 · 3:18 pm

Productive Year

Reading is my ‘middle name’. Ok, not really.

I love to learn. I don’t have a set number of pages to read per year, but I do have certain books that I set out each year to read, depending on the size of the books that I can fit in for the year. The books that I have read this year as follows:

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol1-1000 pages

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol 2-1000 pages

The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism 348 pages

Kingdom through Covenant 904 pages

Reversing Hermon 331 pages

Jesus as the fulfillment of the Temple in John 300 pages

Jesus thru middle eastern eyes 443 pages

I am finishing up Josephus the last few months this year, which will add 600 more pages. It seems that almost read 5,000 pages this last year.

I enjoy the learning of each subject or theme of a book, or a OT Pseud.(alot of unfinished material, or excerpts of things to get something from them) But there is always something to ‘see’ in all of the material.

I am trying to narrow my interests in subject matters for books, it is really,really hard, but I am down to maybe four that I will now concentrate on. I am always getting side tracked with a conversation with someone and I will devote some time to flush my knowledge and research out to see and know the topic. (As we all should do, when confronted with a subject of the bible whether new or old.)

I will probably do some research on my four subjects of interest, on further study and go from there. I intend to give myself some time to gather some of my thoughts on these matters and write them down for my clarity and usage for sharing.

I am excited to get next year started on this. But what I am always writing,speaking, sharing with anyone that I expound on, is it is apart, or it is the “The Eternal Purpose” of God that will be the true focus of all that I do or share. I wish all of you to also reflect on what is God’s will in the Bible? With any story or beginning, it has to be the “Beginning of the Story” that exemplifies the thought of what the Author or God is trying to do, not the literal one, but the Analogy of what God is doing!

Let’s all look at Genesis 1-2, What is God’s plan? How is He going to restore His Plan?(Hint: its in Revelation 21-22.)

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September 23, 2022 · 2:33 pm

Brother, lend me your ear

I find it worrisome, that many of our brethren(sisters,too) are afraid of being,talking, or discussing theology, if it is not of the same theology as theirs.

Any bible reading person knows that this is so wrong in so many ways.

But my question is “Why”?

Are we not led to ‘listen’ to our fellow man,christian, or non-christian for wisdom to their ears?

I find this sorta ironic when someone is stern with the coming of the christians to a building to discuss God, but you cannot on the ‘outside’ of the walls of the building!

It is in this “Evangelical” crowd(which seems to be fading, good!) that has always pushed the ‘witnessing’ of people to the inth degree, that has baffled me, in their earnestness of accomplishing this knowledge.

I am, I think one of very few(at least, around me) that loves talking bible,God, eternal purpose with anyone, anytime, and anywhere. I have picked this ‘fun’ thing to stimulate me in the ways of the Lord in the past 20 years. My thirst for ‘wisdom’ has been thru the bible, videos,talks,lectures, blogs, in-person, youtube, and alot of books(the # changes weekly,lol)

I sometimes wonder, if the average christian is thinking,searching God on a daily basis? I do not see it as a burden or stupid or just weird, I see it as “getting to know my God as personally as I can”.

How often do you spend with God?

How do you spend time with God?

Can your friends tell you are different in asking,searching, studying or reading about God?

Give me some feedback on how and what you do to get closer to God?

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September 15, 2022 · 12:42 pm

Every Generation

I follow alot of people, either by email,blog,websites, text,facebook,youtube,authors, or video. One that I follow is N.T. Wright, that I have alot of his books. I also watch alot of his talks,sermons, or Q and A sessions.

One of the things that I have always remembered from a talk he had was that “Every person,christian or not, will evaluate his present condition, and decide if it is the one that he is content in”(paraphrased) This is what every generation of people are faced with when they stand up to their life and life beliefs.

I had not even thought about this, until it was happening to me. I started to questioning my beliefs, my institution, my lifestyle, and my faith. When this came about, my “reconstruction” was with the institution of the “Church”, what was it, what does it look like, what does it do? and was it what I was experiencing.This was my starting point. Biblical exegesis is what I started to delve myself into over 12+ years ago. It has not let up in my studying,reading, and soaking everything in thru reading the Word. Recently I have expanded my portfolio of reading by reading the Apochrapha, Pseudepigrapha,Old Sea Scrolls, and Josephus, with the near future will starting the adventures of Jewish literature.

What we must realize in reading the scriptures is that the more we understanding not the ‘stories’ but the theme or more importantly the “Paradigm” of the Bible,God’s Word for His Eternal Purpose. We sometimes forget to ‘See’ the forrest, because we are in front of a 90′ Redwood, that we think is the entire forrest. Nope. God’s story is the whole forrest. It is a narrative from Genesis thru Revelation.

I have personally witnessed people that are still standing in front of that Redwood and think this is all there is of God and they are proclaiming that ‘tree’ is God, or that tree is what God wants us to believe in, and only that tree. This is so wrong. At so many levels.

Maybe, Just maybe this is what the problem is in christianity, everyone is standing in front of their own Redwood proclaiming that the answer to God is their redwood! Oh My! We need to step back, way way back to see the whole forrest and God’s design of His World for His people, and His place of Rest and come to the realization that it is bigger than they thought!

I will almost say that it is actually easier than everybody thinks it is. What if we just did the verses below:

2 Corinthians 13:14 (RSV)
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Galatians 2:20 (RSV)
20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Nothing else matters.

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September 14, 2022 · 2:33 pm

Time for the “Book Review”

The book most recently read was entitiled “The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism” by Jason A. Staples.

I would highly recommend this book for the clarity of the terms for “Israel”,”Jew” and “Hebrew”. I would also recommend any book about this subject, you would be surprised by how some things in the scriptures will clear up for you when reading things.

This is another example, where we can get ourselves going down the wrong road with our ‘asuming’ definition of something and you find out the statement you say, is not factual. There are many things as christians that we mean to go back and do some research on terms, definition, stories, paradigms, allegory,literal, types, metaphors, and parables! I recommend that we all do it!

Staples does a very good job of detailing what the people, inside and outside of ‘Israel’ , What prophets meant by their usage of each word, and when it changed to a subset of one, or vica versa. It was very informative to the understanding of even within the ‘Jewish’ community in which they were apart of. Within these three definitions of this said ‘group’ it would change when an event happened to one or all of the group. Depending on when the word Israel was used in could be meaning just the northern tribe, or it could mean both the northern and southern tribe, Judah. This was used in knowing of the original setup, but also of the reuniting of them both in the eschatology of Israel, and their prophets.

A added bonus of this book, was a subset of a theme that was carried out in the telling of the story of these three terms. It was the underlining story of the “Covenant Theology” laced throughout the telling and believing ‘Israel’ that they would ‘all’ be brought back together as one. It is this, that brought me even more assured on what covenantal Theology of God’s desires for All to be “ONE”.

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September 11, 2022 · 3:31 pm

New Focus

Aimlessly walking I was.

As a good bible reader, I was all over the place in my searching, researching,learning, and just nit-picking my way thru the bible.

But I have found my niche, finally.

I have been asking my self, should I try to focus on 3 or more of different themes that I was currently interested in or should I really focus on one thing. And if I did, what would it be?

Through my various journeys of traveling thru different avenues of the bible, I believe that I have found the one that actually could be said to be the foundation of all the other themes that I had been studying. So the New Focus for me will be in the Old Testament Era (yes, this not what I expected either) the “2nd Temple Era”!!

I have thru my studies come across a what I believe is a very foundational aspect of the scriptures, that what I had thought was being used as a foundation of theology, wasn’t it seems to those that I have either talked to,listened thru sermons, or blogs of various authors(to my surprise)! I will weave this foundational premise or paradigm into the studies of the “2nd Temple Era” study. I hope we can do this maybe in a Chronological order but if things dictate that we skip ahead or even go back to relook at something to have it fit in to the whole story, we will.

Just for those who don’t know when the 2nd temple era was, it was ‘586 bc to 70 ad. Let me know if you have questions or comments on anything we talk about. Discussion is good, and most importantly it is learning and forming our minds to God.

Let us begin our Journey!!

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