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A New Understanding Of The Psalms

I’m going through War Psalms of the Prince of Peace, and it just gave me something revelatory – or at least revelatory for me:

All of the Psalms are best understood as dialogue between Christ and the Father. They’re not just examples of prayer, but capture specific moments in Christ’s history with the Father – or moments yet to come. The penitent psalms are from the moment he took our guilt upon himself, his one-liners such as “Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” are Psalm quotes (Psalm 6:8), and on the cross he references not only Psalm 22:1 ( “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”), but four other psalm locations:

  • Into your hands I commit my spirit – Psalm 31:5
  • I am thirsty – Psalms 69:21 and 22:15
  • It is finished – Psalm 22:31
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The Case Against Cessationism

It’s very simple: I, and Christians I know, have directly seen the Holy Spirit work miracles. And not just that, some of us have seen and directly seen the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as described by Paul, actively at work, including tongues and prophecy. You can believe in cessation and call us liars if you wish, but I won’t change my testimony.

Also, Paul instructs people to eagerly desire the gifts, especially prophecy. So if you believe in cessation, you’re still instructed to pray and ask God to give you the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

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The Insidiousness Of The Pride Progress Flag

You may have noticed that a few years ago suddenly the pride flag was getting replaced everywhere with the pride progress flag, because it was “more inclusive”. It’s worth looking into what the colors added mean. The added chevron includes blue, pink, and white for trans and intersex, and black and brown for racial minorities. And herein the sinister agenda is exposed: Ostensibly all of the other colors are to do with topics of sexuality and gender identity, but by suddenly adding race into the mix we’re seeing an ideological coup to pull everything into a frame of critical theory and intersectionality – which are explicitly Marxist in origin.

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This Is What Happens When You Invite The Enemy In To Celebrate Themselves

They light fires in your church.

I get that there’s a debate between progressive and conservative Christians over whether homosexuality is a sin or not. But what I find demonic is the movement to centralize people’s identity in their sexual proclivities and how they desire to identify at any given time. It is gnosticism and heresy. Identity is something that God gives us.

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That Time God The Father Didn’t Inform Jesus What He Was Going To Do

27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.

Mark 5:27-32

There is so much to just this section of this story – but the most amazing part is that Jesus genuinely doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. While there are certainly multiple ways to interpret this, I think this is one of the rare times when we’re shown an emphasis on Jesus’ humanity over his deity. Here’s how I read it:

  • It was the Father’s will to heal this woman
  • The Holy Spirit did so, from Jesus, without telling him of the plan
  • Jesus was left by the Holy Spirit and the Father to assess the situation with his human understanding to figure out what was remaining that was required of him (he next proceeds to help reconcile the woman back to society – she has been an outcast for 12 years)

All of this shows something incredibly interesting: the Father and Holy Spirit, at least occasionally, only share knowledge on an as-needed basis – even with Jesus – trusting us to do our best with incomplete knowledge of the situation (but good wisdom, discernment, and prudence).

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Debating Young Earth/Old Earth Christianity

Pastor Doug Wilson has posted his Theses on the Age of the Earth. He is a young Earth proponent, but most of his theses are less about the age of the earth and more about how the debate should be framed, which I agree with. In that spirit and frame, I’ve offered these points, which I think most succinctly summarize my scriptural basis for an old earth:

  1. I have yet to hear a non-circular definition of “day” for the first few days that pin the time of them to our modern 24 hours. Isn’t the definition of a day generally one earth rotation? So any amount of time could exist before God decides to set the Earth’s spin in motion, and the telescopes could honestly be telling us the age of the stars by our modern definitions of time, i.e. days one and two could have been that 13.8 billion years without violating even conventional definitions.
  2. “Day” is one of the few terms in the entire Bible that God is actually vague about, and tells us such: Not only are we told that to God a day is a thousand years and a thousand years a day, but terms of “day of the Lord” or “day of judgement” are used all over the place to mean something more like “moment in time/epoch”.
  3. Those who insist that the term “Day” must conform to a literal modern 24 hour one-earth rotation definition suddenly get fuzzy with definitions of “death” when God tells Adam and Eve that they’ll die the day they eat of the tree. One has to interpret “death” on the day they ate of the tree as “spiritual death and an introduction of physical death into the world,” since their physical deaths were years after they ate the fruit. Why is death the term subject to interpretation, rather than the term “day”, which God specifically says is the relative term – see #2?

Overall, the only last point I have, which I did not send along to Pastor Wilson, is a rebuttal to his theses point (I believe the last one) that God could have created the universe with the light from the stars already in motion. I agree God could have – but I disagree that God would have. I believe that all creation sings of God’s character, and because his character is honest, they do so honestly.

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The Blindness Of The Pharisees

50Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51“Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

52They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

John 7:50-52

So let’s take a look at what DOES come out of Galilee, according to Isaiah:

1Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

2The people walking in darkness

have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of deep darkness

a light has dawned.

3You have enlarged the nation

and increased their joy;

they rejoice before you

as people rejoice at the harvest,

as warriors rejoice

when dividing the plunder.

4For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,

you have shattered

the yoke that burdens them,

the bar across their shoulders,

the rod of their oppressor.

5Every warrior’s boot used in battle

and every garment rolled in blood

will be destined for burning,

will be fuel for the fire.

6For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

7Of the greatness of his government and peace

there will be no end.

He will reign on David’s throne

and over his kingdom,

establishing and upholding it

with justice and righteousness

from that time on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty

will accomplish this.

Isaiah 9:1-7