Homesteading for Heaven

What if all Christians heeded Revelation 18:4 in a precautionary way, as a commandment that is valid and to be obeyed from the moment that it was published, circa 100 AD?

Right now, looking at our era with its challenges, it is worthy to consider that millions of Christian homesteads would

(1) boost food security for Christians and the nations where they're located
- moral people owning the land and producing food

(2) boost national security for the nations where they're located
- the Second World War confirms the logic of Christ's word about going to the hills when there is a clear signal of national spiritual perversity and coming catastrophe: the loyal, patriotic nation can survive as a loose network, able to feed itself and hide outside of the urban systems.

(3) boost spiritual security for Christians
- false-teaching churches thrive on exploiting people's weaknesses: their need to belong to a social network, their tendency to depend on others for basic survival necessities (food, water, safety etc., and so therefore "let the pastors read the Bible for you; you don't need to do the work of learning the Bible for yourself."). Homesteaders are largely immune to those two types of weakness.

See also an earlier post on this blog, "If Christ's disciples moved "off grid" and cared for Nature...".

Goals: Peace with God, everlasting life with God

Update: I no longer believe that it is unproblematic to quote Hebrews saying that sins committed with knowledge and will cannot be forgiven for the sake of Christ's sacrifice. Christ does not make any such warning. Likewise I wish to clarify that the phrase the written word of God is problematic, in my view, because of the differences between the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Bible, and the words of others in the Bible, including Paul. Please see the Translator's Preface to The Christ Family Bible, here: <christfamilybible.free.nf>.

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You're not going to have peace with God if you are disobeying God. Our modern era does not usually understand, that in God's household, disobedience isn't tolerated. 

Christ makes that clear.* Likewise the apostles of the New Testament.**

You will stumble† and make mistakes, and in such a way disobey God. But if it was not done willingly and knowingly, there is a way to be forgiven, likely alongside painful punishments designed to teach you and others not to make such mistakes.††

What this means is: you need to have a fearfully respectful relationship with the written word of God. Try: a billion times more careful than you are with the laws of the nation where you live.

How do you overcome the problem of mistranslation of the Bible? Likewise, with tremendous care. Your soul and wellbeing now and forever depend on such carefulness, not to be in disobedience to Almighty God.°


Notes
* Matthew 12:48-50, Luke 6:46-49
**1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:3-7, Hebrews 5:9, 1 John 3:7-24, 2 Peter 2:20-21 etc.
† James 3:2
†† Hebrews 10:26, Luke 12:46-48, 1 John 2:1
° For brief discussions of this challenge and how the Bible guides respectful readers out of danger, please see "The Christian Bible's Guide to Reading the Christian Bible", "Reading the Holy Bible Sympathetically", and "Why is the NT ambiguous, and pseudo-Christianity so common?"

Shall truth get asylum? (Paper published 2007)

These are quotes from "Shall Truth Get Asylum".

Foreword
"In August I hidden first time! because I didn't know anyone lived in a room in a school. in the days worked illegally in an office where one man like 50 gave me the job. Salary, times were entire days and evenings and worst was that he talked sex wi me.... I met another man who gave me a temporary job in a pet store I pretended that didn't get rejected but as soon knew I was negative, he threatened that I had to go if I didn't make sex with him. I have been other places and it is always the same. I got sick that I been alone home or if I go out everyone can do what they want to me, I can only cry when I alone. I live in a cellar now. Need someone who can stop this or can get me into school again. please help me!" (Save the Children Sweden 2007: 19) 

Introduction 
I would like to introduce this paper by discussing a few different applications of the question raised in the title of the paper shall truth get asylum? This paper is about the research function in the context of sustainability, and it is a case study of the research function in defending the sustainability for a specific group, namely children in Sweden without legal migration documentation, many of whom finding themselves in this situation because of an asylum seeking process in Sweden that many regard as a failure, or worse, a programmatic attempt to avoid Sweden's responsibilities under international conventions including the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Convention against Torture....

For the entire paper, please see the PDF via this Google Drive link.

House churches need the perfect governance system that the Bible describes

Update: I have become increasingly convinced that Christ and the Father want the absence of hierarchy among the disciples, especially based on Christ's words in Matthew 23 and John 21. The Lord Jesus is recorded as saying in Matthew 23 that all disciples are siblings, none of whom should be called rabbi or guide, because we have one teacher (the Christ), and that anyone who exalts themselves will be brought low. In John 21, the Lord's commission to Peter can be read without any permission for hierarchy: the two Ancient Greek verbs used there, bosko and poimaino, had several senses each, such as "feed" and "tend" respectively.

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House churches are a sound way to organise Christian life, as long as the other governance structures that the Bible describes are also applied: properly qualified elders/overseers [1] who are rewarded according to performance [2], and evangelists whose responsibilities include refuting false teaching [3]. 

References

[1] "It is necessary, therefore, the overseer* be blameless, husband of one wife, sober, sensible, well-ordered, kind to strangers, apt to teach, not tarrying at wine, not a striker, instead reasonable, not battling, not a lover of money, leading his own household well, having children in obedience with all reverence (yet if someone does not see to lead his own household, how will he manage God's ecclesia*?), not a neophyte, so that he not, having been deluded, fall into the Devil's judgement. Yet it is necessary to have a good testimony from them outside, so that he not fall into reproach and the Devil's snare." (1 Timothy 3:2-7, CFB)

"For this grace I left you behind on Crete: so that the remaining things you would set up rightly and appoint by city elders, as I ordered you, if someone is blameless, husband of one wife, having faithful children not under accusation of wastefulness or unruliness. It is necessary, indeed, for the overseer to be blameless as God's house-manager, not self-willed, not inclined to wrath, not tarrying at wine, not seeking shameful gain, instead kind to strangers, loving what is good, sensible, just, holy, controlled, holding before himself the word of faith according to the teaching, so that he be able both to appeal by the instruction that is sound and to refute them speaking against it." (Titus 1:5-9, CFB)

[2] "The elders who are leading well must be deemed worthy of double honour, especially they who are working with the word and teaching. For the Scripture says, "An ox treading you shall not muzzle", and, "Worthy is the worker of his wage." (1 Timothy 5:17-18)

[3] "Trustworthy is the word, and I want you to be thoroughly established regarding these things, so that they be minded to stand over good works, they who have been trusting God. These things are good and profitable for all human beings." (Titus 3:8, CFB)

Mission: Victory over the Devil

Are you confused about why God created the Universe, and why He created you, and what God wants from you?

Well there's good news. Christ gives a pretty clear answer, repeated several times at the end of the Holy Bible.

The point of this place is that you either overcome the Devil, and can be trusted by God, or the Devil overcomes you.

See "God's Wonderful Announcement" for a brief explanation.

How Almighty God's Word strengthens marriage

"And it was said, 'Whoever would untie from the wife of his, he must grant her divorce!' Yet I say to you that anyone who is untying from the wife of his except on account of fornication causes adultery to be committed against her, and whoever would marry a woman who has been untied, commits adultery." (Matthew 5:31-32, Christ Family Bible)

"Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from [her] husband committeth adultery." (Luke 16:18, AKJV)

Comments:

Notice that one cannot free oneself from an unhappy marriage by driving one's spouse to leave. That strategy both causes the leaving spouse to commit adultery by leaving and makes re-marriage an act of adultery for the new spouse (and logically for the remarrying spouse too).

Both spouses have tremendous reason to make their marriage work. If you don't make your marriage work, your spouse might give up: by that action, your spouse commits adultery (a carnal work that leads to Hell), and you cannot remarry at all without committing adultery, even if your spouse has committed fornication.

The precise words of Christ as recorded in Greek are important also because of the terms used:
1. "Untie" (apolúo), not "divorce", is the key term that describes the abandonment of a marriage. Consider that for much of history, spouses could not hope for a legal document in their country, that would legally end their marriage. So what the abandoning spouse has in mind is abandoning, untying, leaving permanently.
2. The word "divorce" describes the legal document: apostásion.
3. Christ's words and terms direct our focus away from pieces of paper from a court, to look at the reality as Almighty God decides: only death and fornication (a carnal work that leads to Hell) can actually end a marriage, though Paul rather inexplicably adds his own rule that if an unbelieving spouse asks a Christ-believing spouse for divorce, the Christ-believing spouse is then "free", implying potentially free to remarry.

What happens when God's people stray?

The condition of the churches today is so bad, that it is difficult even to have any hope for missions to unreached ethnic groups: what will happen when a church that doesn't keep the New Covenant, brings its false message and even badly mistranslated Bibles to a new society?

The condition of many churches (but hopefully not all churches) is to the point of their being incompetent. Now, the Holy Bible addresses this type of condition:

- The Lord Christ Jesus describes moral degradation to the point where "...many will be entrapped [into sin] and will hand each other over and hate each other. And there will be many false prophets and they will deceive many. And due to the increasing of the lawlessness, the love of many will be made cold." (Matthew 24:10-12, CFB)

- Similarly, the prophet Ezekiel is sent with this message to God's people of that time: "...‘You are a land that is not cleansed or rained on in the day of indignation.’ The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured people; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in her midst. Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, to shed blood, to destroy people, and to get dishonest gain. Her prophets plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord had not spoken. The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, and mistreated the poor and needy; and they wrongfully oppress the stranger." (Ezekiel 22:24-29, NKJV)

One of the key messages here is that when God's people have fallen into immorality, God sends catastrophes: to judge, to chastise, to purify a remnant, and to show that there is an ultimate judge to respect, Almighty God.

- "Because of this, among you are many weak and sickly and a considerable number sleep. Now, if were judging ourselves, we would not judge! Being judged, however, by the Lord, we are chastised, so that we not be condemned with the world." (1 Corinthians 11:30-32, CFB)

- "....the children of her I will kill with death, and all the churches will know that I am the searcher of kidneys* and of hearts, and I will give to you each according to the works of yours." (Revelation 2:23, CFB)

- "All flesh shall see that I, the Lord, have kindled it...." (Ezekiel 20:48, NKJV)

- "You shall defile yourself in the sight of the nations: then you shall know that I am the Lord." (Ezekiel 22:16, NKJV)

These catastrophes can never come through the actions of Christians, of course: Christians are commanded to love all people, to hate no one, and to put away all anger (Matthew 5:22, 43-48; Ephesians 4:31; Colossians 3:8).



Notes:
* Valuable discussions of what "kidneys" could signify (e.g. metaphorically) are provided by Brown Driver Briggs, Thayer's Greek Lexicon, and Liddell Scott Jones.

CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2019 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

NKJV: Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.