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Month: May 2021

Podcast: Narrative is Everything, and, Fighting “Traditions” in the Church

Podcast: Narrative is Everything, and, Fighting “Traditions” in the Church

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Establishing the Narrative — working within the context of the Holy Scriptures.  The Church has gone the way of the Jews by erecting a series of “oral traditions” around the Scriptures such that they don’t mean what they say. It is all or nothing — returning to the entire Gospel story — discipling nations.

 

To My Colleagues — Let’s talk about Violence

To My Colleagues — Let’s talk about Violence

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I have been writing on this site since 2017, and for longer on another blog.   

I was told a few months back that some of my colleagues had “found out” about my blog  and were afraid to be in the same building as I was.

At the time I thought it was foolish.  They all knew me and worked with me. I was not an unknown person.  But more recently I have realized that, yes, people can be genuinely afraid.   

So let’s talk about violence.

It has never even remotely entered my mind to hurt a colleague physically.  Never. Not even the colleague who told me that I (me, this writer) “just don’t like those little brown people from south of the border.”  The idea of hurting a colleague — or anyone — is abhorrent to me.   And it troubles me not a little that I should even have to address this.   But I do have to address this.   Some of you feel afraid, and I respect you enough not to mock your feelings or to tell you that you shouldn’t feel the way you feel.  

Try that in a marriage: “Honey, you shouldn’t be angry at me because . . . .”   No, she feels angry.  Her feelings are real. Telling someone they shouldn’t feel the way the feel isn’t helpful.

 Violence is a theoretical concept to me. I do write about it.  But  I don’t practice it.  I have no experience hurting people. (OK, my last fight was 40 years ago as a drunken frat boy and I got whipped).  I have worked with people I disagree with for my entire life.  Not just my current employer, but in Grad school as well.   I’m used to being the odd-man out on matters that truly interest me.  I keep my opinions out of the work place almost entirely.

Yet, a thinking man — to be a thinking man — must speak publicly.  

I don’t talk about my employer because, frankly, my interests lie upstream from politics and policy.  I’m interested in philosophy and linguistics and theology and history and go wherever I think I need to go with those things.  A broad field indeed.

I take responsibility for my ideas, and for the consequences of how my ideas affect me.  I knew what I was getting into when I started writing publicly and I fully understand that there would be pushback.   I’m OK with that.   I need to write  — in Maslow’s hierarch of needs, writing is my self-actualization.  

But I will never hurt you.

Anyway, I’ve addressed it.  

Cheers,

Fritz

“Cry Aloud, Do Not Hold Back . . . “

“Cry Aloud, Do Not Hold Back . . . “

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Like everyone else, I keep wondering what it is going to take to turn things around. We are drowning faster every day.

This is what I’m doing: Never again will I be silent in the face of Lies. No matter how much they hate me, no matter how much they accuse me, I owe my ancestors, God, and progeny the courage to speak the Truth today, tomorrow, and forever.

When they scream and accuse me of their sins, that’s only proof that I’m doing the right thing. Moral courage precedes physical courage. This is the preparation phase.

“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.”  Isaiah 58:1

Judeo-Christian = Anti-Christ Christian

Judeo-Christian = Anti-Christ Christian

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Judaism = Anti-Christ.
Christian = Christ

The Christian church seems hell-bent on following the path of the Jews by erecting a structure of man-made traditions and precepts around the Word of God in order to “interpret” the Bible in such a manner as pleases them.  Evangelicals (I’m including myself in this group) seem to prize the praise of the anti-Christs over the honor of the Word of God.  

This is the sickness that has killed the Church: the yearning to be accepted by the world and the willingness to pretend that the Bible doesn’t say what it says.   The Jews did the same thing with the Law — they erected their doctrines around it, twisting it to mean something completely the opposite of what it said.  Jesus earnestly chastised the Jews for this.

And Jesus warned the Church about exactly this.   “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees,” he said. That leaven is their doctrines — precepts  elevated above the written Word of God.    But we ignored this, and have pursued our own traditions and precepts.   The Jews call their traditions the Talmud.  Evangelicals haven’t organized their traditions into a written code, yet, but the Pope has been working on it.  His recent efforts to codify an alliance between the Papacy and Judaism and Islam is a perfect example of this anti-Christ effort. …

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Podcast: The Great Awakening is Happening

Podcast: The Great Awakening is Happening

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  • The Big Lies in our Country.
  • Victoria’s Secret — What the heck happened?
  • New Sin #2: Thou shall not speak good of  Whites.
  • New Sin #1: Thou shall not speak evil of Jews.
  • What has to happen before what we want to happen.
  • A Great Awakening begins with rejecting the “oral traditions.”
  • Rejecting cowardice.
  • Don’t be afraid of the Giants in the Land.
  • Embrace the “rock of offense, the stone of stumbling.”
Letter from a Jew — and My Response

Letter from a Jew — and My Response

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Message: Hi, I’m an observant Jew living in Jerusalem. I think that a lot of your experiences with Jews are with American ethnic but not religiously observant Jews, and that’s too bad. These people have lost their way, in the same way that American “Christian atheists” have lost their way. I’m sorry that they are the face of Judaism today. I hope that you will consider taking time to distinguish between observant Jews who are true to Godly principles and I believe have much in common with you and your beliefs and non-observant Jews that claim their Jewish status while totally ignoring everything that our religion teaches us. If you ever find yourself in Jerusalem, you are welcome at my Shabbat table. There is a place for both of us in this world.

Response:
Dear —–,

Thank you for such a kind and thoughtful email — permit me to address some of your points.

Yes, there are many apostate “heritage” Christians. Perhaps atheist Jews have much in common with them.

That said, my thoughts on Judaism have nothing to do with whether they, or Christians, are good and moral people. Even Saul (renamed Paul) was a perfectly observant Jew and, no doubt, morally superior to me, even before His conversion to Jesus Christ.

Nor is the issue one of acquaintances or associations. I am not a young man. I have lived all over the world, and I have more education that anyone ought to have. One of my office mates in grad school was a Jew who did his doctoral dissertation on pre-Columbian Jews in Latin America. My wife’s good friend is Jewish and we attended her son’s Bar-Mitzvah. My professor (for my PhD) is Jewish. This isn’t about any of that.

This is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah. It is about His identity — His father is God Almighty, not Joseph, not a Roman, not a Samaritan. Mary was no immoral. Jesus was born of a virgin woman, and prophesied by Isaiah:

Isaiah 7:13-14. He said, “Listen, now, O house of David! It is too slight a thing for you to try the patience of man, that you would try the patience of God as well? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his Name Emmanuel.

This is what happened. Mary, a descendant of Adam and David, was a virgin. Luke 1:35: The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child will be called the “Son of God.”

Jesus Christ is the Son of Man by Mary, and the Son of God by his conception of the Spirit of God. Literally, Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

This Jesus Christ is “the stone which the builders rejected and has become the chief cornerstone.” (Psalm 118:22)

Saul (a Jew who studied under Gamaliel) was persecuting the Christians until he was accosted by Jesus himself (after His resurrection): “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Saul responded “Who are you, Lord?” Jesus said, “I am Jesus who you are persecuting.”

Soon after, Saul/Paul was proclaiming that Jesus “Is the Son of God.”

Paul, of course, yearns that his fellow Jews be converted to Jesus, the Messiah. But let’s look at what Jesus Christ said to the Jews, to the Pharisees, and about Judaism:

To the Jews (John 5:39): You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, it is these that testify about Me. And you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

Again (John 5:45): Do not think that I (Jesus) will accuse you fore the Father; the one who accuses you in Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you had believe in Moses, you would believe Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?

Jesus: “Everyone who confesses Me before men, I will confess him before My father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32)

As you may be aware, the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Pharisees was terrible. The Pharisees (Jews) utterly rejected Him. It was their oral traditions that Jesus Christ took ought with — they elevated it above the Torah. If they had believed in what Moses wrote, they would have believed in Jesus. (See above, John 5:45).

This, of course, goes right to Genesis 3:15 (the words of Moses) when the Lord rebukes the Serpent after the Fall, and says that He will put enmity between the Seed of the Woman (Jesus Christ, born of Mary) and the Seed of the Serpent. Both John the Baptist and Jesus Christ identified the “seed of the serpent” when they rebuked the the Pharisees as a “brood of vipers” who were destined to hell. I have heard that Talmudic tradition suggests a similar hellish destiny for Jesus Christ. The point, I believe, is to accentuate the irreconcilable nature of their relationship. Repeatedly the Pharisees charged that Jesus had a demon. Jesus Christ countered telling them that “you are of your father, the Devil.” (John 8:44)

Now, the point is not to make people feel uncomfortable, nor to inspire odium, it is rather to state the simple facts as presented by Jesus Christ in the Holy Scriptures.

The identify of Jesus Christ is the issue. The Jews/Pharisees claim he was a demon possessed bastard child of Samaritan. (John, chapters 5 through 8 are especially illuminating). It appears that those Jews embraced the unforgivable sin of slandering/blaspheming the Holy Spirit; for Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in a virgin and caste out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is no mere man. His Father is God Almighty, directly and without intermediary. Blood lines in the Bible run only through the male (even Mary’s genealogy). The direct Father of Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ put it this way: “I and the Father are One.” (John 10:30) and so the Jews killed him for “blashphemy.”

John 5:18 is illustrative: “For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

This Jesus declared: “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgement to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” (John 5:22-23).

This is not an issue that be be papered over in the name of “interfaith unity.” It is absolutely fundamental: Who is Jesus Christ?

Jesus is the Son of God because he ws born of a Virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit. Born without Adam’s original sin, death could not hold Him, and He rose from the dead. That Virgin woman did not transmit to Him the sin nature.  Jesus, unlike David, was not conceived in iniquity — he was born sinless. Mary’s virginity, and Christ’s conception by the Holy Spirit, allowed for the sinless Sacrifice to be born, the Lamb of God whose blood was shed to atone for sin, once for all.

Mary’s virginity and the nature of Christ’s conception are fundamental to His identity as the Messiah and Son of God — He is the perfect sacrifice whose blood was shed to atone for sin. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.

In closing, permit me to point out a few other Scriptures that highlight this insurmountable divide.

1 John 2:22-23 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the anti-Christ, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confess the Son has the Father.

1 John 3:23. This is His commandment, that we believe in the Name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another.

1 John 4:2. By this you know the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the Anti-Christ, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

1 John 5:11-12. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He was has the Son has life, he who does not have the Son does not have life.

My issues are not whether Jews are nice or have good morals or good families — Saul was perfect in the Law. My issue is not the historical experience of the Jews.

My issue is faithfulness to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. And clearly He did not look kindly upon the Talmud (the oral traditions) nor it’s propagators — those people and that tradition were the one’s who murdered the Prophets and the Righteous One (Acts 7:52). Jesus Christ was born of Man through the virgin, Mary. His conception was from the Holy Spirit — Jesus’ Father is God Almighty. He is the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, the only begotten Son of God.

This is the faith.

Fritz Berggren, PhD
Colorado
May 18, Anno Dominii 2021