Testimony from 7 years of life in Christ

Humility is what enabled me to be accepted as a disciple of Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, on the very first day I had genuine humility and no ounce of arrogance toward God, 21 April 2013, shown through wholehearted confessions that day, and preceded by years of showing to Christ my willingness to keep His words and commandments. And humility is still the necessary element that I bring to God, that enables me to be an instrument, a worker, and obedient, a new born and growing child of Almighty God.

Almighty God has shown this to me through many proofs. For example, one teaching/warning of Christ has been particularly hard for me to apply (Luke 6:25, the warning against consuming more food than one needs). But when I take time to ask Christ to help me keep this word of His, having recognised my own inability, then the power comes.

Likewise, when I have confessed like many Christians in the Bible, that I am a bond-servant (a slave) of the Lord of Heaven and Earth, Jesus Christ, and that I am thankful to be Christ's bond-servant, thus humbling myself, amazing things begin to happen.

Tragically, it seems that we live in an age where Satan is very effectively dropping the poison of pride into most everyone's heart and mind, even of people and churches who call themselves Christians. For these 7 years, I have been heartbroken and shocked many times by the behaviour, seemingly incorrigible due to pride, of people who profess to be followers of Christ. So, I must say, that alongside the value of humility, I have painfully learned the value of seeking truth, distinguishing between fact and falsehood, especially in regard to people's claims to be Christian, born anew in the Holy Spirit, and moral, etc.

Lastly, let me say that working in ministry now for about 7 years, with many years prior in close contact with churches, it has become a fairly strong hypothesis that there is a great need for humility and reform for Protestant as well as Catholic and Orthodox churches. That is to say, it seems that for centuries, ungodly pride, going beyond what is written in Scripture and being puffed up one in favour of the other, has worked its way deep into the marrow of all 3 church groupings. (See 1 Corinthians 1-4 for an excellent discussion of the problem of schism and how to solve it: do not go beyond what is written in Scripture.)

"woe to you the rich for you have received the consolation of yours"

Christ warns rich people that they should grieve, because they have received their consolation.* The clear implication is that being rich is so immoral that it leads to being condemned to hellfire. The explanation is provided many times elsewhere in the New Testament: God demands that people prioritise the basic wellbeing of others.**

Christ's warning can imply, further, that a rich person receives literally no other consolation other than what earthly wealth can provide. That is consistent with what we see in experience, where so many wealthy people struggle against depression, terrible relationships, and bad health. They are tormented.

Also our entire national societies are afflicted, when we glorify the rich lifestyle, against God's condemnations of it. When people are encouraged rather than discouraged to be rich, the door is opened in their lives and our shared national life for 
- corruption: people making immoral, even illegal choices for money
- division and even collapse of society
- self-destructive short-sightedness: short-term money gains blind people to the long-term environmental, social, economic and institutional destruction they are sowing.

Notes
*Luke 6:24
**Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 3:11, James 5:1-5

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.