in the Christ shall all be made alive -1 Cor. 15: 22
Many years ago, an interim pastor at the church I was attending asked me to go with him to Pacific Garden Mission in downtown Chicago. This pastor was involved PGM’s Unshackledradio broadcasts. On this occasion, he and I ministered to those who came in off the street. I played a couple hymns on my trumpet. He gave a simple gospel message. Those attending received a hot meal after our brief service.
During my student days at Moody Bible Institute, I visited other Chicago rescue missions. I would play my trumpet and, with others in our group, give a brief witness to my faith in the Lord. Telling the forlorn and broken sitting before me that I was raised in a Christian home and received Jesus as my savior at eleven years old – I was coming from a place nowhere near where these folks had been.
But the gospel has a way of speaking into memories and of stirring folks to reflect on their life. Some wept upon hearing childhood accounts of home. From recollections, whether good or bad, the gospel points people in the direction of rescue from a life gone prodigal.
On each occasion, as I walked into the meeting room of the rescue mission, I encountered the smell of alcohol, urine and of unwashed bodies and clothes. My eyes met with a scene of loss – each figure a shell of their former self.
The homeless – alcoholics, the drug dependent, the bankrupt, the mentally ill, the despairing, the dis-owned by family and friends – sat scattered among the rows of chairs. Some folks were asleep sitting up. Some were laying across chairs asleep. Some were mumbling things unintelligible. And some sat up looking despondently at the floor. The body language: “I’m adrift, aching and alone.” The sign out front: “JESUS SAVES”.
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Are you having a real struggle? Come to me! Are you carrying a big load on your back? Come to me! – I’ll give you a rest! Jesus invites his listeners to put on his yoke and take lessons in humility from him. Arrogance is a heavy burden to carry and to defend (Matt 11: 28-30).
It’s the sick people who need the doctor, not the healthy ones. I came to call the bad people, not the good ones. Jesus responds to the grumbling legal experts when they see him eating with tax-collectors and sinners (Mk. 2: 17).
You see, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. Jesus responds to the grumbling observers of the faith-based salvation of chief tax-collector Zacchaeus (Lk. 19: 1-10).
After all, God didn’t send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world could be saved by him. Jesus is reconfiguring the Pharisee Nicodemus’ notion of salvation (Jn. 3: 17). Jesus says that he will be lifted up just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert. This, Jesus explains, is how much God loved the world. And so, everyone who believes in him should not be lost but may share in the life of God’s new age.
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The Gospel According to Mark chapter 4 records the rescue of a small fleet of fishing boats crossing the sea. A big windstorm came up and began filling the boats with water. Life and livelihood were in jeopardy. The fishermen were freaking out. Jesus, however, was sleeping soundly on a cushion in the stern in one of the boats. They woke him up.
Jesus got up, silenced the wind, and told the raucous sea “Shut Up!”. Things calmed down at once. The rescued, whose alarm at the tempest shifted to awe-struck terror of the rescuer, said to each other “Who is this? Even the wind and the sea do what he says!” Their crossing continued over to the land of the Gerasenes without further incident.
Chapter 5 of Mark’s gospel account records three rescues. The narrative begins with Jesus and the small fleet of fishing boats arriving on the shore of the land of the Garasenes. They are suddenly confronted by a man with an unclean spirit. He emerged from a graveyard which is where he lived.
The man is wild. No one can physically restrain him, not even with shackles and chains. But the wild man’s attention is captured. He runs up to Jesus and falls down before him.
Jesus questions the man and hears that that man is possessed by a hoard of demons calling themselves “Legion”. The demons, knowing that Jesus will deal with them, want to be rescued in their own way. They beg Jesus to not send them out of the country. They want to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus lets it happen and the pigs rush down into the sea and drown.
The herdsmen’s reaction, not unlike the fishermen’s reaction earlier, was of utter terror. They began telling everyone about what had happened. People came to Jesus. They saw the man who had once terrorized the countryside. He was seated, clothed and in his right mind. When eyewitnesses told the crowd what had happened to the man and to the pigs, the people were afraid. They begged Jesus to leave their district. The man who had been rescued, however, asked to go with Jesus. Jesus wouldn’t let him.
Go back home. Go to your people and tell them what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had pity on you.
The rescued man goes out and tells what Jesus had done for him. Everyone is astonished.
The next two rescue accounts in Mark’s gospel account involves two people of different social and economic status: a named man – Jairus, a synagogue president – and an unnamed woman. Mark intertwines these accounts.
Jesus, having crossed back over the sea, is quickly surrounded by a large crowd on the seashore. Jairus arrives. When he sees Jesus, he falls down at his feet and begins pleading.
My daughter’s going to die! My daughter’s going to die! Please come – lay your hands on her – rescue her and let her live!
Jesus goes off with the man. And a large crowd follows pressing in in him. Enter the unnamed woman.
Mark tells us . . .
A woman who’d had internal bleeding for twelve years heard about Jesus. (She’d had a rough time at the hands of one doctor after another; she spent all she had on treatment and had gotten worse instead of better.) She came up in the crowd behind him and touched his clothes. “If I can just touch his clothes,” she said to herself,” I’ll be rescued.” At once her flow of blood dried up. She knew, in her body, that her illness is cured.
Jesus knew at once that power had flowed out of him. He asked who it was that touched him. The woman of low estate, trembling, made herself known to Jesus.
My daughter, your faith has rescued you. Go in peace. Be healed from your illness.
(I am reminded of another close encounter rescue: four men carried a paralytic on a stretcher, bringing him to see Jesus. The crowd was so thick around Jesus they couldn’t get near enough to ask for the man’s healing. So, they opened up the roof and lowered the stretcher with ropes. They placed the man right in front of Jesus. Jesus noticed their threads of faith and said to the paralytic Child, your sins are forgiven! (Mk. 2: 3-5))
As Jesus was speaking to the woman, some very sad people arrived from the synagogue president’s house.
Your daughter’s dead. Why bother the teacher anymore?
But that didn’t stop Jesus from rescuing the girl.
Don’t be afraid! Just believe!
Jesus said no to the crowd following him (Too much commotion already?) and went to the synagogue president’s house with only Peter, James and John. When they arrived, there was all kinds of weeping and wailing going on.
Why are you making such a fuss? Why all this weeping? The child isn’t dead; she’s asleep.
Mark tells us that they laughed at him and then. . .
Jesus put them all out. Then he took the child’s father and mother, and his companions, and they went in to where the child was. He took hold of her hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Time to get up, little girl!” At once the girl got up and walked about. (She was twelve years old.) they were astonished out of their wits. Then he commanded them over and over not to let anyone know about it, and told them to give her something to eat.
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The demoniac was cut off from himself and society because of what possessed him. Jesus ‘hog-ties’ the “Legion” and plunders the “strong man” domain (cf. Mk 3: 23-27). Jesus expels the unclean spirits and liberates the man from his living death. The image of God is restored. The man wants to go with Jesus but Jesus won’t let him. Jesus sends the unshackled man away so that people will see and hear from the rescued man himself: “Go to your people and tell what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had pity on you.”
The woman with the continual hemorrhaging was cut off from just about everything and all the time due to her ritual impurity (Lev. 15:25). She had exhausted her resources to find a cure. Then, by faith, she reached out and touched Jesus, God’s holy one. He rescues the woman from her living death – the constant loss of blood from her womb. She is restored to holiness, purity, and wholeness.
Death, the ultimate separation and defilement, tore the twelve-year old girl from her family. Because of her father’s pleading Jesus comes to her bedside, takes hold of her hand and restores the life that had flowed out of her. She is rescued, reconnected to her family, and is no longer a defilement.
(Note: It is interesting that in Mark’s account of the woman and the girl (5: 21-43), touching and being touched is mentioned six times. Ritual purity – maintaining holiness – was a daily and vital concern for a Jew. Physical contact would trigger any Jew who followed Scripture’s instructions regarding purity.
Jesus didn’t ignore the ritual purity laws in the process of rescue. Instead, he neutralized the effect of the law by restoring the woman and child. By stopping the flow of blood and making her clean, Jesus ‘neutralized’ the ritual impurity of her touching him. By raising the girl to life, Jesus ‘neutralized’ the ritual impurity of touching the dead (Num. 5:1-4; 19:11-22; 31:19-24))
When Jesus announced “The time is fulfilled. God’s kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news (Mk. 1: 15) he began to show the world what the kingdom of God on earth means: God would reclaim creation – his temple – and rescue his image-bearing humans.
In these rescue accounts and so many others, Jesus is not asking about the salvation status of the individual. He is not asking them if they want to go to heaven when they die. He is not rescuing people to have them later sent off to become a disembodied spirit in some heavenly realm somewhere over the rainbow. No. Jesus wants those in his kingdom to do what he has done. Death is a short interlude. As with the twelve-year old girl, Jesus will take you by the hand, get you up and get you back at it. Death is not a retirement home.
The four gospels (and the epistles) tell us that Jesus interfaced with his creation – as heaven and earth – for its salvation. (Think of heaven as God’s space.) We read that the kingdom of God on earth, as Jesus taught and lived, is about rescue, rebirth, healing, faith and not fear, touching and being touched, making all things new, new creation, new wine skins, wholeness, sound minds, and about the Genesis to Revelation project – God dwelling with man (Rev. 21: 2-4).
The world’s salvation, epitomized in another Tower of Babel campaign – Build Back Better – is another take on rebuilding systems and institutions and on redesigning people and society to save the planet and to benefit the elites.
Much of today’s social justice activists work to force their salvation onto you. They want society to work in certain way. Hence, pseudo-moral campaigns like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and the coming social credit scoring.
As I see it, Jesus didn’t do social justice – changing systems and institutions to save people. Jesus has a human connection with people and so much so that he went to the cross for their salvation. You won’t see one politician going out of their way to sacrifice anything. And, what do social justice activists sacrifice?
Jesus spoke against the self-righteousness that’s behind much of today’s social justice activism. And, he didn’t coerce anyone to be rescued. He didn’t force salvation onto anyone. People came to him with their faith and open hands. He responded to their need.
The difference between the world’s salvation and Jesus Saves is the difference between putting yourself into the hands of a bureaucracy and some ism and putting yourself into the hands of the Infinite-personal God in Jesus.
At the cross. At the burial. At the empty tomb. Three wait-and-see days. Three women.
The gospel according to Mark begins with the ushering in of “the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son” (Mk. 1:1). Composed of short narratives that could be easily visualized by those who heard its reading, Mark’s terse and unembellished gospel clears a straight path so that the reader can see and perceive Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises (Mk. 1:3).
For example, Mark uses literary bracketing (inclusio) to focus in on that fulfillment. Two accounts of blind men receiving their sight bracket Jesus telling his disciples (three times) that he will be rejected, handed over to the authorities, killed and then rise from the dead after three days. (Beginning Bracket: Mark 8:22-26; End Bracket: Mark.10:46-52.)
Because of their own unwillingness to really really look at Jesus (cf. Mk.8:25) the disciples do not perceive Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises through death and resurrection.
At a mission critical point in the gospel account -Mark chapter 8 – Jesus reproaches his disciples for their lack of understanding. We learn from the brutally honest account that those closest to Jesus, each with two good eyes and two good ears, still did not grasp that the Messiah had to be crucified and then rise again. We hear that in Peter’s repudiation of that mission (Mk. 8:32).
Peter is Mark’s principal eyewitness source of what Jesus said and did and of the disciple’s reactions. But after the end of Mark chapter 14, where Peter’s denial is recorded, Peter and the male disciples are nowhere to be seen or heard from.
Three women are introduced into the passion narrative (Mk 15). They are the source for Mark’s passion account. They are eyewitnesses of what occurred at the cross, at the burial and at the empty tomb.
Earlier in the text, Mark wrote of the blind gaining sight, of those with two good eyes not seeing and not perceiving what was taking place. Mark now places emphasis on seeing that would lead to perceiving and, hopefully, to belief. He records the seeing of the women seven times:
Henry Ossawa Tanner
At the cross. Some of the women observed from a distance. They included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome. They had followed Jesus in Galilee, and had attended to his needs. There were several other women, too, who had come up with him to Jerusalem. (Mk. 15: 40-41).
(Note that Mark added that these women had also been with Jesus for most of his ministry. He is telling us that they had observed Jesus from his early ministry to the empty tomb. These women likely heard Jesus teach his disciples new things: about him being handed over to be killed and his rising from the dead after three days. (Mk. 8:31-32; 9:31-32; 10:32-45)
At the burial. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses observed where he was buried. (Mk. 15:47)
At the empty tomb. After the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could come and anoint Jesus …” who’s going to roll the stone away for us?”
Then, when they looked up, they observed that it had been rolled away. (It was extremely large.) (Mk. 16: 1-4)
So they went into the tomb, and there they saw a young man sitting on the right hand side. He was wearing white. They were totally astonished.
“Don’t be astonished,” he said to them. “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazarene, who was crucified. He has been raised! He isn’t here! Look – this is the place where they laid him.
“But go and tell his disciples – including Peter – that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just like he told you.” (Mk. 16:5-7)
The earliest manuscripts of Mark’s gospel account end at 16: 8:
They [the three women] went out, and fled from the tomb. Trembling and panic had seized them. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
This is a curious ending for a gospel that begins with “the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son”. Mark clearly wanted the readers to perceive Jesus as the Messiah, God’s son. He clearly wanted the reader to take in the crucifixion of the Messiah and his bodily resurrection. Why end good news with fear and trembling?
Mark’s gospel account may have had a longer ending. If the original manuscript was written on a scroll (likely), the edge of the scroll containing his ending may have deteriorated. This also happened to many dead sea scrolls.
Later copies of Mark contained appended text (Mk. 16: 9-20). This text may have been added by a scribe in the second century who was familiar with Luke’s gospel account. There are similarities. Mark’s promise of “the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son” has been restored- fulfilled – with the added text. And so was Mark’s emphasis of those not perceiving what is taking place.
Mark’s narrative emphasis on hardness of heart leading to unbelief – rejecting what has been seen and heard by eyewitness accounts– is reinforced in the added text:
When Jesus was raised, early on the first day of the week, he appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told the people who had been with him, who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that he was alive, and that he had been seen by her, they didn’t believe it.
After this he appeared in a different guise to two of them as they were walking into the countryside. They came back and told the others, but they didn’t believe them.
Later Jesus appeared to the eleven themselves, as they were at table. He told them off for their hardness of heart, for not believing those who had seen him after he had been raised. (Mk. 16: 9-14)
At the cross. At the burial. At the empty tomb. Three wait-and-see days. Three women seeing seven times. Eleven hard-hearted disciples. And you? You still don’t get it? (cf. Mk.8:21)
All God’s promises, you see, find their yes in him: and that’s why we say the yes, the “Amen,” through him when we pray to God and give him glory (2 Cor. 1:20)
The eyes have it. Amen.
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“Nowhere in early Christian literature do we find traditions attributed to the community as their source or transmitter, only as the recipient. Against the general form-critical image of the early Christian movement as anonymous collectivity, we must stress that the New Testament writings are full of prominent named individuals . . . Compared with the prominence of named individuals in the New Testament itself, form criticism represented a rather strange depersonalization of early Christianity that still exercised an unconscious influence on New Testament scholars.”[i]
[i] Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI), 2017), 297
There are many who say, “O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!” Psalm 4: 6
The day came when Jesus arrived at a synagogue in Capernaum with a small group of swarthy fishermen. The leader of the synagogue asked the newcomer to speak to the gathered. The reaction of those assembled is recorded in the gospel according to Mark (1: 22).
They were astonished at his teaching. He wasn’t like the legal teachers; he said things on his own authority.
The hearers were εξεπλησσοντο – astounded, amazed, struck out of their wits, and were being knocked out. No second or third-hand hearsay accounts from Jesus.
Continuing the valid data stream (ευαγγελιου: Mk.1:1) begun of Peter’s eyewitness account of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son, Mark reports (Mk. 1:23-26):
All at once, in their synagogue, there was a man with an unclean spirit.
(You will read in Mark’s gospel account that the presence of Truth, very Truth, causes vile things to come crawling out of the woodwork and be exposed for what they are.)
All at once . . .” What business have you got with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” he yelled. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: you’re God’s Holy One!”
“Be quiet!” ordered Jesus. “And come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed the man, gave a great shout, and came out of him. Everyone was astonished.
Those in attendance were awe-struck not just by word but also by deed – the exorcism.
“What’s this?” they started to say to each other. “New teaching – with real authority! He even tells the unclean spirits what to do, and they do it!”
In chapter two of Mark’s narration (Mk. 2: 3-12) Mark reports the reaction of another gathered group to the healing of a paralyzed man. You know the story?
After ministering to people in the open country – the crowds were becoming massive – Jesus returned to Capernaum. When word got around that Jesus was at home, a large crowd gathered once more with the result that people couldn’t even get near the door as he was telling them the message – God’s kingdom was arriving.
Four people arrive carrying a paralytic on a stretcher. They can’t get near Jesus because of the crowd. So, with know-how and dogged determination to bring about the restoration of one of their community, the four neighbors create Plan B: open up the roof and lower the stretcher. (NB: The men didn’t lower their expectations. Their faith finds a way to place their ‘concern’ into the hands of God.)
Jesus saw their faith, and said to the paralyzed man, “Child, your sins are forgiven!”
Legal experts, who were among those gathered in the house, were likely there to investigate “mis-information”. Notice their reaction in the presence of True Authority.
“Who does this guy think he is. It’s blasphemy! Who can forgive sins except God?”
Jesus, knowing in his spirit that thoughts like this were in the air, poses a question to everyone’s Who does this guy think he is question.
“Is it easier to say to this cripple ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your stretcher, and walk’?
“You want to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins?”
Not just by the word of forgiveness but also by deed, Jesus turns to the paralytic and tells him to Get up, take up your stretcher, and go home.
The man got up, picked up his stretcher in a flash and went out before all of them.
Everyone was astonished, and they praised God. “We’ve never seen anything like this!” they said.
The authority by which Jesus forgave the man’s sins and then raised him up to new life amazed the people who witnessed it all. They had never visualized that this would happen – We never saw it on this fashion. They were so filled with awe, in fact, that they began to glorify (δοξάζειν, doxa) God, reimagining what it meant for God to dwell with man in his temple on earth. Themes of redemption, restoration, and resurrection were invoked that day when the hand of God reached from Scripture into their lives:
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live[a] so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Not everyone’s reaction, though, was recorded by Mark. That reporting would take up volumes. No doubt, though, that the four men who carried the stretcher were relieved of their burden and went back to their community to rejoice with the healed man.
Let’s go on to reactions of fear, as recorded in Mark (chapters 4 & 5).
In chapter four we read about Jesus teaching a massive crowd as he stands on a boat just off shore. The evening of that same day, Jesus and the disciples sail over the sea to the land of the Gerasene’s.
Chapter five records Jesus encountering a man with an unclean spirit – a “Legion” of unclean spirits. The man’s brutish behavior undoubtedly frightened the people living in that area. They tried to restrain him but without luck.
Well, in between the off-shore teaching and reaching the far shore where the untethered demon-possessed man lived, a big wind storm blew up. The boats that Jesus and his followers sailed in began to fill with water. Jesus, according to Mark’s/Peter’s account (Mk. 4:38), was asleep on a cushion in the stern. (I would have no doubt that standing in the hot sun on a boat projecting your voice for hours would exhaust anyone.) They wake him up.
He got up, scolded the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Shut up!”
The wind died and there was a flat calm. Then he said to them, “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?”
Great fear stole over them. “Who is this?” they said to each other. “Even the wind and the sea do what he says!”
Terror gripped the disciples. They were in the presence of . . . who? It appears that their reaction indicates a petrifying reimagining of Jesus as God with us.
The disciples certainly had been taught in synagogue to fear God (Deut. 10: 12-13). It appears that their reaction also indicates a reimagining of what it means to fear God – not just holding ultimate respect for God but also holding onto the reality of his sovereign power over all creation. They undoubtedly knew of God holding back the Red Sea so Israel could cross over and escape the Egyptian army. Now this! Right in front of their eyes!
Their fear would become a proper φοβος (phobos) or phobia and not an irrational phobia, of say, pagans. The disciples had seen God and lived to tell.
Fear abounds in Mark chapter five when Jesus does what no one had the ability to do: tie up the “strong man” and plunder his house (Mk. 3: 27). Jesus exorcises the man with the “legion” and commands the unclean spirits to enter a herd of pigs per the request of the spirits. The spirits didn’t want to leave the country. (My guess: the unclean spirits were given territory to control by the Satan.)
The herd of about two-thousand pigs rushing into the sea and drowning caused a panic.
The herdsman fled. They told it in the town, they told it in the countryside, and people came to see what had happened. They came to Jesus: and there they saw the man who had been demon-possessed, who had the “legion,” seated, clothed and stone-cold sober. They were afraid. The people who had seen it all told them what had happened to the man – and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to leave their district.
The unknown and uncontrollable had happened. Folks were awe-struck, gob-smacked, and beside themselves with fear.
We then read that Jesus got back into the boat and the recovered soul asked to go with him. Jesus wouldn’t let him.
Go back home,” he said, “Go to your people and tell them what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had pity on you.”
He went off and began to announce in the Ten Towns what Jesus had done for him. Everyone was astonished.
All men did marvel. And it could be said – as taken from the Greek wording – that people in the brief accounts mentioned were astounded, amazed, awe struck, put out of place, knocked out and beside themselves with fear. The hand of God will do that.
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Tell me. What blows you away? Announcement of a new iPhone? A blockbuster sale? A blockbuster movie? Is it the computer-generated imagery (CGI) that Hollywood keeps cranking out? CGI has never block-busted me, not even fantastical sci-fi smash hits. I don’t marvel at Marvel comics on the big-screen. What’s to believe about what it offers? People in funny costumes role playing about saving the earth from made up monsters? (It unsettles me when I hear grown men talking about Star Wars and Spiderman movies. Ant Man?!)
What causes you to be afraid? It could be any number of things.
The hand of God may astonish you and make you wondrously afraid. Any fear should not be to the point of begging Jesus to leave, as the account above details. One of scripture’s most repeated commands is “Fear not”.
Ask Jesus to heal your imagination so that you will see the hand of God at work in your life. Then let the hand of God astonish you and make you reverently afraid. You will come to REAL-ize that you are I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
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Personal note: Shane (1953) is my favorite western. No CGI used. No PC. No soy boys involved. Just homesteaders in Wyoming territory defending their homes and farms against a bully named Ryker.
Ryker claims ownership and rights to the range. He ultimately brings in a hired gun to deal with the homesteaders and the mysterious Shane, a hired hand on a homestead.
The parallels to the abuse of power today are striking.
Special request: Congress members, including Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham, should be made to take sobriety tests before they deliberate, pass laws and speak to the public in their capacity as congressional representatives.
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One can pretty much tell what the media wants you to focus on by the changing yards signs of the virtue signalers in your neighborhood. Around me the signs have changed from . . .
That day, when it was evening, Jesus said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side.”
They left the crowd, and took him with them in the boat he’d been in. There were other boats with him too.
A big windstorm blew up. The waves beat on the boat, and it quickly began to fill. Jesus, however, was asleep on a cushion in the stern. They woke him up.
“Teacher!” they said to him, “We’re going down! Don’t you care?”
He got up, scolded the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence!” Shut up!”
The wind died, and there was a flat calm. Then he said to them, “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?” – The gospel according to Mark 4: 35-40
In this Christmas account, Jesus is NOT Away in the Manger. (Nor are you, Lord, working to fit us for Heaven To live with Thee there, as the song incorrectly goes on to say.) Jesus won’t abide in our sentimentality nor in our desires to escape earth and its capsizing gales. No. In this Christmas account Jesus, God with us, is in the same boat as we are.
He asked us to carry him over to the other side. We did what he asked and then BAM! A situation arises that looks devastating. We become desperate. And, like the winds, we lash out: “Don’t you care!”
The world around us is in freak-out mode. Paranoia is growing. And, so is mental illness.
What do people do with the constant waves of fear porn battering them on all sides? Many scramble to sit at the feet of the purveyors of fear porn. They want them to allay their fears, to bring them salvation. The world always has an answer for your fear of DEATH!
If CNN or MSNBC, for instance, reported on the above account, those talking heads would demand immediate action on climate change to assuage your fears. OSHA, another onlooking savior, would mandate life preservers and limited boat capacity To SAVE LIVES! Politicians would go on TV and demand more of our tax money to look into building a bridge to the other side To SAVE LIVES!
And of course, the CDC via OSHA would mandate that passengers in close quarters wear a mask and be quadrupled-vaccinated before going to the other side To SAVE LIVES! The world always has an answer for your fear of DEATH!
Now, there are people who feed on the spirit of fear and its high drama. They keep the mandates going. They cry for more. The COVID drama or the Climate drama or the XYZ drama gives meaning to their meaningless lives. But who do you think is behind the spirit of fear drama?
Jesus scolded the disciple’s spirit of fear – “We’re going down! Don’t you care?” – with “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?” Jesus had made it clear and calming that he had the wherewithal to deal with the forces of nature that would take us down, even as he was asleep on a cushion in the stern.
The reason Jesus could sleep during a big windstorm was the same reason he could lie sleeping as a helpless infant in a manager when deadly forces were out to get him – Jesus had complete and utter trust and confidence in the Father’s love. He abided and slept peacefully in that love.
For the Father loves the Son,” Jesus says. (John 5:20)
Why do you think you the spirit of fear is being given out? It is done to drive you away from complete and utter trust and confidence in the love of God as expressed in Jesus.
Jesus would go on to teach his disciples As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love (John 15: 9). So, this Christmas . . .
“Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?”
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This Christmas, it is time to take a deep breath and rest on what you know to be true. It is also time to tell the mouthpieces of evil– human and inhuman – “Silence!”
It is time to tell Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Joe Biden, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Bill DeBlasio, Lori Lightfoot, J.B. Pritzker and the rest of the godless ill-winds to “Shut up!”
It is not time to retreat. It is time to tie up and plunder the strong man’s house (Mark 3:27)
~~~~~
(Something to keep in mind: We read in the first chapter of the gospel according to Mark that Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news.
“The time is fulfilled,” he said. “God’s kingdom is arriving. Turn back and believe the good news.”
Would God allow his kingdom to go down in a boat? No.
There is a persistent remnant theme in Scripture. When others have fallen away because they have become disillusioned with God and the word Jesus speaks, and concern themselves with the worries of the present age, and the deceit of riches, and the desires for other kinds of things (Mark 4:18), the believing faithful are delivered and brought forward. Take a deep breath, fall back on what you know to be true, and move forward.)
~~~~~
2 Timothy 1:7 reveals, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear (phobos), but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Romans 8:15 also said, “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear (phobos).”
The foul stench of burning lithium batteries – thermal runaway – mingled with the rancid smell of decaying protein – rotting victims of spike protein injections – fills the air. The reek, still in my nostrils from yesterday’s walk, lays on my tongue as a putrid tasting film. The heavy odor of gases formed by decomposing batteries and humans attaches to everything. Another rotten egg day. One didn’t have to be a prophet to see these days would come. Two plus two equal four and man versus God equals 2030.
My basement apartment, packed with a six-year supply of food and water, and several cases of Zero candy bars, is a bunker. The street level windows are barred and painted over. My door is reinforced with steel plates. The tiny apartment quarters are safe and suffocating. Going outside was not safe but a bit of relief.
I put on an N95 mask to go outside. You had to. One couldn’t be sure of what was floating in the air. Destruction followed destruction in the name of Progress. The old had to be torn down to allow the new to rise from the ashes. That’s what OneChannelTV preached and people believe its gospel. The air is filled with all kinds of crap.
While mankind pinches its nose and turns to the TV to give them their tomorrows, I take long walks along Jemison Lake. The breeze off the lake wafts free. The wind blows where it wants to. I feel and hear and see its effects. Walking along the lake, I am reminded once again that I am a human living among the technology possessed.
*****
Many humans gave up their feeling-seeing-hearing ghost to a 24/7 smartphone addiction. I saw it happen in 2020. People gave themselves over to a digital life and to a complete dependence on handheld machines. The Metaverse became their augmented reality encompassing relationships, work, shopping, and entertainment. They began to love their avatar as themselves.
In their quest for not-having-to-think autonomy, people became automatons. They learned from the XYZists that independent thought was dangerous. It was discouraged and censored as not being inclusive or as “racist” or not XYZ. Not thinking began to be believed as freedom from punishment-incurring ‘wrong’ thoughts. What you were to think came from a smartphone that you kept with you 24/7.
The XYZists were happy to give people their ‘freedom’ and to do the thinking for them. With the ruse of a public health crisis in 2020, they instituted a biotech process to reprogram the masses. They began with mandating DNA and RNA-modifying COVID vaccines. They had their reasons for doing so – population control and remaking people into their godless image.
The XYZists and their minions hate people. That is why they are never happy or satisfied with the human race. They must redo creation. They must rid the earth of the excess and neutralize what is left behind.
Since the XYZists hate everything that doesn’t reflect their own words and thoughts, challenging them meant you were a “Supremist”. Not responding to them in kind meant you were “racist”. The XYZists had their own published style guide to be used in their presence. If they considered you to be a “supremist” or a “racist” or a “bigot”” or a “XYZistaphobe” then you would receive “social justice”. Force, aka mandates, is used against those who resist the XYZist societal transformation and the New World they espouse.
So, they began to use vaccines to cull a significant portion of the population and to modify those who survived. They used biotechnology to produce people that they might abide. And that meant turning those humans into Uh-huhs. The non-thinkarians quickly submitted to authoritarian XYZists out of fear for their WIFI streaming lives. The XYZists tell people what to fear and what not to fear. They use rollover-and-play-nice psyops to get people to comply.
These days I can never be sure if I am talking to the actual person or to an app controlling their thoughts. So, I test them: I say “Jesus is Lord”. If they look at me blankly, I know they have given themselves over to an app.
*****
Ever since the latest burst of electromagnetic radiation – a sun burp or manmade the weekly public affairs program Mask the Nation wouldn’t say –it’s been Halloween. Mindless ghouls and zombies with vacant stares walk the streets. These had submitted to vaccines during the years of TransMandates.
The vaccine cocktails included modified RNA, Luciferase enzyme and graphene oxide nanoparticles -GONPs. Graphene is highly conductive and anxiolytic. So, the freakish and fuddled, who glow blue at night from the bioluminescent Luciferase, can’t find their way home and they don’t care. Their apps went haywire.
Following the vaccines, transcranial electromagnetic stimulation had been imposed on most of the world’s population. Brain chips were mandated by the Emergency Use Authority as a cure-all for mankind – as I said, the masses were viewed with fastidious disgust by XYZists. In the years following 2021, XYZists became members of the Central Life Oversight and Utilization Department or C.L.O.U.D.
TMS brain chips gave C.l.O.U.D. a read-write capability over neurons. The chips could probe and stimulate them. Democracy’s Last Hope Alliance, contracted by the EUA, monitors and modulates neuronal activity. Controlling the outcomes of the brain-chipped Appoids was the purview of DLHA and the EUA. After the EMP, they were working feverishly together to get their Appoids back inline again.
The G2G pass app implanted in Appoid brains told them where they could or could not go. Each Appoid was to check in with a smartphone photo during the day. But after EMPs things go bonkers sending the brain-chipped into spirals of confusion. The DLHA and the EUA rush to get new community organizing smartphones and new cats handed out.
The cats, you see, have been implanted with a camera, microphone and an app that reports back to DLHA the activities and conversations of the Appoids. But, the Catoids also go haywire after EMPs. The defective Catoids are scrapped and replaced by a DLHA C. A. T. unit – a Clean Account Transmission unit. I am not making this up.
*****
The World Truth Federation, C.L.O.U.D.’s central committee, keeps tabs on everyone except for us Blanks. Me and a few of my close friends claimed the “Blanks” label when COVID Compliance Officer Heinrich B. Smersch called the unvaccinated “blankety-blank fools” on Mask the Nation. “Blanks” you see, are off the radar.
“Blanks” blend in. We move through crowds of Appoids without being noticed. We hide in plain sight. We don’t call attention to ourselves. On my way to the lake and to Joes, I stumble around with a mask on and with my eyes glazed over. I wear dirty smelly clothes like the Appoids. And since there are C.L.O.U.D cameras and UniForce police everywhere I have to be careful. As a “Blank” I have never submitted to “the science”. I have to avoid getting close enough to a UniForce officer. He will scan me for Appoid status.
The ubiquitous presence of WTF surveillance is matched by the ubiquitous presence of souls that have converted to “the science”. Among these souls are the Appoid women of the Thought Temperance Union. They march down the street with signs that read “No Jab No Justice”. Their children, the ones who survived the vaccine’s miscarriage properties and survived abortions – their aborted fetal cells being used for vaccine testing and XYZist life-extension serums – panhandle for food money. And there is ever-present smell of death coming from “the science” converted.
*****
On my way home, I stop at Grocer Joes – a black market supplier. I trade Joe two of my Zero bars for another night of hot plate Spam. I use Joe’s Faraday-caged Crypto ATM for transaction privacy. The People’s IRS began monitoring all transactions in 2022.
I finish up and put my crypto wallet back into my military grade Faraday bag. I tip my hat to Joe and sign “later” and “one”. I head to over to Last Chance Pizza.
Melanie is waiting for me. We go into a back room. Melanie signs “tonight” and “One”. I sign “Yes” and 6 Mil”. We hug and I head home.
6 Mil is the guy who lives across the hall from me. I gave him the name because he has so many bionic parts that he reminded me of the Six Million Dollar man. His brain chip was fried by solar storms. He didn’t opt for a new chip so he was fired from the UniForce. 6 Mil lets me in the back door and I invite him in for Spam.
You’ll need some backstory at this point.
*****
Back in 2021, one would have thought that ministers and priests would have alerted their congregations to the evil that was being sown around them. But they kept giving their people the soy milk of the word.
Many of the faithful in 2021, who lived on a thin margin of faith, began to unload their faith. They didn’t have to imagine what would happen to them if they didn’t mask and vax up. So, they submitted to the authorities by calling it Biblical to do so. Their faith was easy pickings. The State swooped down and grabbed it up. These now attend Our Lady of Perpetual COVID.
There were those faithful who didn’t have much of a faith history to fall back on. They heard gospel things and spoke up, making all kinds of noise about the evil going on. But under public scrutiny they folded and bowed to the self-proclaimed gods of the State, rendering to them everything demanded of them.
There were those who fell in with Progressives. Their faith was quickly choked. For, Progressives have an overpowering bent toward social justice gospel.
Then there were the five. Those I am aware of “five”. We meet secretly, two or three at a time. How did I come across the others? More backstory is needed.
*****
Ever since I turned sixty-nine in 2021 there has been a voice inside me that tells me to not resist and to just retreat. “Just go along and finish your life. Do what they say. Sit on your patio, smell the cut grass, feel the sun, look back on what you’ve accomplished, feel safe, don’t stress, forget about conflict.” But another voice is telling me “I go where I will. I’ll show you what needs to be done.”
In 2021 I was stirred by the second voice. I began to memorize Scripture. After I memorized The Gospel According to Mark, I started to go out to street corners and recite it out loud. I had to recite and walk so that I was wasn’t considered to be loitering. I continue to do this today.
In the afternoons I go out, take off my mask and recite the Gospel of Mark out loud. There are many in the streets right now who have lost their app connections because of the EMP. Some have refused to be reconnected and are looking for a way out. So, I am able to connect with souls and not just app personifications.
What you may find interesting is that when I am reciting the gospel out loud, the UniForce doesn’t notice me. Angels come between me and them so that the good news gets out.
Then there were five. Over the course of the past year four have begun to follow Christ. They are Joe, Melanie, Violet and 6 Mil. I have discipled each of them. Tonight, we are coming together for 6 Mil’s baptism.
We hold baptisms at Jemison Lake after midnight. We put blue glow sticks under out shirts to throw off the Uniforce and the surveillance drones. We use sign language until we are sure we are alone.
Since 2020, electronic gizmos have been implanted into brains and bloodstreams. Nature and society have been repackaged into a simulated environment. Virtual reality replaces realism. Life has become a bizarro graphic novel . . . except for a few minutes by the lake.
*****
You ask about me? My current name is Lena. I was baptized in my eleventh year. I lost my job in my sixty-ninth year because of the vaccine mandate. Nine years later my body is fragile and my faith solid
I can’t bear to see the destruction all around me. I can’t bear hearing the anguished cries of the souls who gave their lives to “the science”. But I can’t ignore any of it either. These were once fully human, so they must long for healing. And, they must want justice for what’s been done to the human race.
2030 and the science has settled. Its putrid tasting film lays on my tongue. Humans have been sacrificed for “the science”. But MATTERS aren’t settled yet. Wait and see.
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Ivermectin has been used in humans for 35 years and over 4 billion doses have been administered. Merck, the original patent holder, donated 3.7 billion doses to developing countries. In 2015 the two individuals who developed Ivermectin were awarded a Nobel Prize for medicine.
“We know that the entire creation is groaning together, and going through labor pains together, up until the present time.” – the Apostle Paul
Have you heard the wind howling? Have you heard the endless pounding of the surf on the shore? Have you heard nature singing in a minor key? While creation is an utter joy for me to take in –the birds singing, the brooks babbling, the palette of fall colors, the smell of lilacs and rain – I also get from nature a sense of melancholy and unsettledness.
Over the past eighteen months, many lives have been devasted by the Wuhan virus and by the response of the experts and authorities to the virus. The cures are proving worse than the disease.
Evening Melancholy I 1896 – by Edvard Munch
To wit, the Biden regime is mandating that private sector employees be vaccinated with a vaccine that has not be fully tested and has produced a rapidly growing number of adverse effects AND DEATHS and does not stop the transmission of the virus or protection from the virus. Pointless. Senseless. Evil.
Biden told America that his patience is wearing thin with the “unvaccinated minority”.
Life is hard enough as it is without the accusations, the antagonism, the name-calling, the stifling, the censoring, the blacklisting, the plundering, and the destroying done by the so-called experts and authorities. And, especially when it’s done in the name of very questionable science. Life is hard enough as it is without adding more pointless futility to it.
Does Edvard Munch’s Evening Melancholy symbolize your present state of mind?
This summer, after memorizing several Psalms (1,4,103 and 104), I began to memorize the gospel according to Mark. By the end of chapter three, I was struck by the same evil and destructive behavior of the authorities in Jesus’ day.
When someone comes on the scene and says what Jesus said, one would expect questioning of his authority. But as Jesus validates his authority through his teaching, through healings, and the casting out of unclean spirits, we find that there is a system of power in place that seeks to quash all challengers to its authority.
Let’s briefly recall what took place.
Mark chapter one. Jesus is announced as the Messiah and son of God. John the Baptizer points to Jesus as the one who will plunge people in the Holy Spirit. After his baptism by John, Jesus is pushed into the desert where he is tested 40 days by the Satan.
Jesus then goes into Galilee announcing the good news: “God’s kingdom is arriving”. He calls Peter, Andrew, James and John to follow him. (These and others will be eyewitnesses to what Jesus says and does.)
So far so good. Many Jews at that time were looking for a Messiah.
In Capernaum, Jesus goes into the synagogue and teaches. Everyone there is astonished by his teaching. They said that he wasn’t like the legal experts. He said things on his own authority. (Uh-oh!)
While he is there teaching, an unclean spirit makes itself known. (At this point, I think that the hovering legal experts and the unclean spirits begin realizing that their domains were under assault.)
Jesus casts out the unclean spirit. Word about Jesus spreads at once across the surrounding districts of Galilee. The healing and the casting out of unclean spirits continues.
Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever.
The townspeople bring the sick and demon possessed to Jesus. He heals people suffering from all kinds of diseases and he casts out many demons. (This is a good thing, right?)
Jesus goes to other towns in Galilee to tell the good news and to cast out demons.
A man with a virulent skin disease is touched and healed by Jesus. The man spreads the news so effectively that Jesus has to stay out in the open country because of the large crowds.
Mark chapter two. Jesus returns to Capernaum. A crowd gathers at the door when people hear that Jesus is at home. They want to hear the good news. They want healing. They want unclean spirits cast out. They want the groaning to stop.
As Jesus is teaching, a paralytic is lowered through the roof (the only way to get the cripple close to Jesus even though not OSHA approved). Jesus took note of their faith. Jesus tells the man laying before him that his sins are forgiven. (Uh-oh!)
The jot and tittle police begin to grumble.
“Why does this guy talk like that? It’s blasphemy! Who can forgive sins except God!”
“Why do your hearts tell you to think like that?” Jesus asked them.
Jesus goes on to question the flaunted leverage of the legal experts: “Is it easier to say to this cripple ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your stretcher and walk’?
“You want to know if the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins?’
Jesus tells the cripple “Get up, take up your stretcher and go home”. The man gets up, picks up his stretcher in a flash, and goes out before all of them with forgiveness of sins and the ability to walk brought about by the faith of others.
Large numbers of people are following Jesus. The jot and tittle police are worried about losing their grip on the public. They go beyond grumbling and begin pointing their finger.
Jesus calls tax collector Levi to follow him. Plenty of tax associates and sinners join Levi as dinner guests of Jesus and his followers. The legal experts from the Pharisees (who were into social distancing) ask Jesus’ disciples “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”
Jesus hears their question and replies to their obtuseness.
“It’s sick people who need the doctor, not the healthy ones. I came to call the bad people, not the good ones.”
People start questioning Jesus about religious practice. John’s disciples and the Pharisee disciples were fasting. Jesus’ disciples were not fasting. The reason Jesus gives: “The bridegroom is there with them. How can they fast?”
More conflicts with the see-the mandate-and-not-the people authorities.
One sabbath Jesus and his disciples are walking through a cornfield. Not only are the disciples not fasting, they are plucking corn as they go along with “the bridegroom”.
The Pharisees corner Jesus: “Why are they doing that which is illegal?”.
Jesus responds to their contention with a reminder of David doing something similar. He recounts that David, when he was distressed and he and his men were hungry, ate the ‘bread of the presence’.
Jesus tells them that the sabbath was made for humans and not the other way around.
Mark chapter 3. Things are heating up. Jesus goes to the synagogue once more. A man with a withered hand is there. People are watching to see whether Jesus heals the man on the sabbath. If he does, they will frame him with a sabbath-no-no charge.
(Were the people afraid of being expelled from their synagogue by the legal experts for going along with Jesus? Were they told to snitch on Jesus?)
Jesus asks the man to come forward. Jesus then questions the ready-to-jump-on-him group.
“Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath, or to do evil? To save life or to kill?”
The group (submitting to the authorities) remained silent.
Jesus is deeply upset with the hardheartedness of the lockstep group. He looks around a them angrily.
Jesus restores the man’s hand. The Pharisees see this as an act of insolence against their version of God’s law. They rush out and begin to plot with a political group – Hellenistic Jews called Herodians – against Jesus. They want to destroy Jesus (based on technicalities).
Healing a withered hand appears to be a non-issue for the legal experts and Pharisees. Power to say what the issues are is the most important matter to them. Power to make people dependent on them (like a vaccine that lasts six months and then requires booster after booster).
(I wonder. Do Jesus’ questions imply that doing good (and evil) and saving life (and killing) do not take a day off? Is he asking to what end keeping the sabbath serves? And, does it serve those who enforce it? Did the legal experts weaponize the sabbath to bring about conformity to their will? Would not doing what is good and saving life (as in the CDC not promoting Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin) be a crime against humanity?)
Following the underwhelming response of the synagogue zombies and seeing the reaction of the beard-stroking Pharisees, Jesus heads off toward the sea with his four disciples.
Great crowds of people are swarming him. There is a real danger that Jesus will be crushed by the crowd. Sick people are pushing in toward him to touch him (No masks or social distancing here!). The groaning of creation is growing louder. And so is the shrieking.
When the unclean spirits see Jesus, they fall down in front of him and yell “You are the son of God!”
Jesus goes up a mountain. He summons twelve men. He names them apostles. They are called to be with him, to be sent out as heralds, and to have authority to cast out demons. (Jesus shares his authority and power. It appears from the gospel accounts that the Pharisees and legal experts like to retain theirs.)
When the group descends and goes into a home for a meal, a crowd gathers again so they couldn’t even eat. When his family hears about this, they come to restrain him. “He’s out of his mind,” they say.
(Was calling Jesus a crazy man a way to distance themselves from Jesus? You bet it was. Was the family of Jesus afraid of the legal experts and authorities like those in the synagogue? Were they also afraid of being expelled from the synagogue? Was this name calling a betrayal of Jesus long before Peter’s betrayal of “I don’t know the man”?)
Head wagging legal experts came from Jerusalem. They had their own brand of groaning – the “tsk tsk” kind. They came, not because a man with a withered hand was healed. They came to take control of the situation. They want Jesus sidelined, canceled, boycotted.
When your credibility hinges on being self-important, you villainize others. The experts blacklisted Jesus by calling him possessed by Beelzebub. They discredited him by saying that Jesus did what he did by the prince of demons. This was their ‘science’.
Jesus pushes back, first by talking about the absurdity of their claim: “How can the Accuser cast out the Accuser?” He explains that a kingdom or a household split in two cannot last. Then, in no uncertain terms, he tells the people that if anyone blasphemes the holy spirit that sin will not be forgiven.
Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters come to where he is and wait outside. They ask to see him (Did they come with a restraining order from the Pharisees?). Those sitting around Jesus see them outside and say “Look, you mother, brothers and sisters are looking for you!
“Who is my mother?” Jesus asks those with him. “Who is my brother?” He looks around at those sitting in circles around him. “Here is my mother. Here is my brother. Anyone who does God’s will is my brother, my sister and my mother.”
The showpieces of the self-righteous demand service to their drama. Right now, we have high drama as captured in the curse “May you live in interesting times”
We are told what to do. We must be vaxxed or be vilified. We must accept lies and lie to ourselves. We are told to submit to the Federal Pharisee guidelines. We must conform or be expelled from society or be crucified.
Right now, we are being told by the experts and authorities to mask up, take the jab, be gay, be effeminate, abort freely, hate our country, hate the color of our skin, hate our history and “follow the science”.
Right now, the entire creation is groaning and wanting relief. But drama from the experts and authorities is what we get.
Jesus dealt in simple terms. Do good. Save life. Put the world to rights. Relieve suffering and not add to it.
Follow the Savior. Can I get an “Amen”?
*****
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“We find that following the implementation of Shelter-in-Place (SIP) policies, excess mortality increases,” the researchers wrote. The researchers used SIP as a blanket term to refer to lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and other similar draconian mandates.
The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed.
The first clue I had that something wicked this way was coming: the media’s “We’re all in this together.” I understood that slogan not as a tug on my heart to join others in the ‘fight’ against COVID, but as an appeal to Groupthink, self-deception, and manufactured conformity and consent to COVID Communism.
I recognized the hammer-and-sickle symbolism behind the slogan and its meaning – proletarian solidarity with the state and its “public health” directives. I knew then that “the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood” would come from the State’s Soviet-style propaganda machine – the mainstream media.
As we have learned, there is to be NO debate and NO questioning of “public health” guidelines and the all-inclusive mandates they foster. Remember comrades: “We’re all in this together” -the young, the healthy, the immune, the obese, the very old and the respiratory compromised.
Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
– Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Discussion and debate are not to be given social media ventilators. They are to be left to die. The free air that once filled our lungs and gave us consciousness – the State is taking the oxygen out of our lives, masking us and forcing us into a locked “Controlled Opposition” garage filled with exhaust fumes coming out of the State engine.
“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” — Hannah Arendt
The carbon monoxide (CO or COVID Orthodoxy) induces headache, dizziness, weakness, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. Yet, anyone who opens the garage door to recycle the atmosphere will hear from a loudspeaker “You are letting in misinformation! Shut the door!” Any efforts to breathe free air will be dealt with severely.”
If discernment of the false and true– “the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world” – is being deadened by the State and its media collaborators, then we may not see that . . .
There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.
– Hannah Arendt
*****
Framed and Reframed
Once more Jesus went to the synagogue. There was a man there with a withered hand. People were watching to see if Jesus would heal him on the sabbath, so they could frame a charge against him.
“Stand up,” said Jesus to the man with the withered hand, “and come out here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath, or to do evil? To save life or to kill?” They stayed quiet.
He was deeply upset at their hard-heartedness, and looked around at them angrily. Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out – and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him.
-The Gospel According to Mark, 3:1-6
Those who read this account might say “What’s the problem with healing the man with the withered hand? Why would a rule or some mandate get in the way?
In this gospel account, people are “watching to see” if Jesus breaks the letter-of-interpreted-Law mandate – no work on the sabbath. They have watched the Pharisees day after day sabbath after sabbath, so they know what they are NOT supposed to do. And, according to convention, this Jesus must behave the same way. If he lifts a finger to lift the fingers of a withered hand, they will hand him over to the authorities.
Right before this (Mk. 2: 23-28), during a sabbath corn-plucking incident, Jesus had reframed the sabbath for the “Look here!” Pharisees: “The sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the sabbath.
Now he reframes the next sabbath situation with a legal question about good and evil that went well beyond their incremental mandates.
(According to Sabbath traditions, if you cut your finger, you could stop the bleeding – but you could not put ointment on the cut. You could stop it from getting worse, but you weren’t allowed to make it better.)
Who has discernment in this account? Jesus or the interpreted-Law mandates hovering over the group?
Are the sabbath traditions (mandates, essentially) made for man or man for the sabbath traditions/mandates?
Who is the person using their authority for good and who is using their authority to maintain their position of authority?
Now, I’ll reframe a similar scenario:
Once more a doctor went to his office. There was a man there in his waiting room with symptoms of COVID. People were watching to see if the doctor would heal the man with Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin and break with the CDC vaccine protocol, so they could frame a charge against him.’’ (That scenario seems eerily close to reality.)
Tell me. Is it right and good and discerning to give the man proven repurposed protocols (Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, Vitamin D, Zinc, etc.) that will work to keep him out of the hospital and help him recover with immunity within days OR to force the man to go along with a highly touted CDC vaccine protocol that has many reported ill-effects and doesn’t’ protect the man from COVID (See Israel, the most vaxxed nation in the world)? Are the CDC mandates made for humans or humans for the CDC mandates?
Tell me. Do we sit in silence in a waiting room of appearances watching this because “We are all in this together”? Do we frame the doctor for not following the law laid down by authoritarians in power? Do we continue thoughtlessly day to day like, say, Adolph Eichmann or Joe Biden and let evil do its thing?
Or, do we regain discernment, speak the truth and do what is good no matter the framing and people waiting to destroy us?
Executive Order 2021-20 (COVID-19 EO Number 87), issued by Governor Pritzker on Thursday, August 26, implements the indoor mask mandate and vaccination requirements. Once again, the Governor has acted unilaterally to exercise his emergency management powers, without the advice and consent of the Illinois General Assembly.
Canada- Bank accounts frozen if people don’t get vaccinated and sign up to the 1984 surveillance app. This man is getting worse all the time pic.twitter.com/xdDMj2m2JE
. . . only the plasma from the UNVACCINATED meets their requirements:
“One of the Red Cross requirements for plasma from routine blood and platelet donations that test positive for high-levels of antibodies to be used as convalescent plasma is that it must be from a donor that has not received a COVID-19 vaccine. This is to ensure that antibodies collected from donors have sufficient antibodies directly related to their immune response to a COVID-19 infection and not just the vaccine, as antibodies from an infection and antibodies from a vaccine are not the same.”
Conclusions: This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
We must remember that this was all a choice. No, not the arrival of a deadly disease from China, but the concerted effort to radically alter daily life in response. It’s a choice driven by fear, by a failure to come to terms with our own mortality. And all the while, the goal posts shift, from “15 days to stop the spread,” to “flatten the curve,” to vaccines, COVID-zero, and on and on and on.
BREAKING: Healthy Joe Rogan tested positive for Covid & is about to make authoritarians big mad with his quick recovery regimen pic.twitter.com/2hzLxIBRjy
Dr. James Neuenschwander testifies about level three and four side effects and thousands of deaths at Michigan House hearing on Covid Vaccine Mandates.
“The “greater good” argument cannot be used to mandate vaccines . . .”
In his current state, it might take years for Vic to recover his right mind. He’s been flaying around and mumbling the whole time in the back seat of my car. His mind, no longer aware of surroundings, seemed to be in a state of virtual reality. And that is the reason for the all-night drive.
I was told to not bring a phone or any electronic device with me. I was given a hand-drawn map with sketched landmarks to direct me once I left Highway 16.
Down the backroads, I questioned what I saw. Those Aspens by a fence – is that what’s shown here? Was that the rock formation I was supposed to turn at? Where are the three lone towering Ponderosa Pines? Is that the field of wildflowers I drive alongside?
After two hours I found myself at a huge rock formation that jutted out northward per the “N” on my map. According to the sketch, an Indian would be there waiting for me. What happens now?
Out from behind a rock came the Indian. He came over to my car and looked inside. When he saw Vic, he shook his head. He looked at me, pointed to himself and said “Notah”. He asked me if I had any electronic devices. I assured him that I didn’t. He told me to follow his pickup truck.
After driving an hour or so, somewhere around Bighorn National Forest, we drove up to the off-the-grid Fire and Flame Human Refuge. Notah helped me walk Vic to the door of the lodge. A petite older woman came out and helped me walk Vic inside. I turned to thank Notah but he was gone.
Inside, there was pine wood everywhere. I felt I had returned to summer camp. A door swung open and the room filled with the aroma of baked corn bread . . . and chili?
With the woman’s help, I brought Vic into the Great Room. I settled him in an arm chair that faced outside. A field of wild flowers was in view. In the distance, fir tree-skirted mountains. Vic put out his hand and began twitching his thumb as if flicking a TV remote button.
There must have been twenty-five people in the Great Room. Catatonic people.
Sharon introduced herself. She was the one who had helped me with Vic. I learned that she managed the refuge. I asked about the people in the Great Room.
“Do you see that woman standing by the window?” Sharon pointed.
“Yes.”
“That is Marisa. She is not looking at the wilderness in front of her. She sees only her reflection in the glass. Up till now Marisa has spent most of her time taking selfies and posting them on social media.”
“What about that man who seems to be constantly scrolling with his finger?”
“Before Bill came here, he was constantly checking social media pages for updates. He developed the scrolling-finger habit as part of a social-validation feedback loop. Dopamine was released into his brain when someone liked or commented on something he posted. Right now, he’s in withdrawal from the social-validation feedback of dopamine.”
“What about that teenage girl over there? The one with the wide-eyed look?” I asked.
“Myra was brought here by her mother. She had isolated herself from her family. She spent hours of the day on social media. Myra has a fear of missing out. It is a common phenomenon for teens to want to be socially connected. Technology offers a non-stop social-validation feedback loop. A teenager, fearing the possibility of social alienation, goes online constantly for validation.
Myra developed a sleep disorder after staying up all night texting. Her school work suffered. She developed poor eating habits and gained weight. The negative effects of her social media interface made her depressed, angry and less social. Technology presents teenagers with a false sense of relational security while ignoring those in the same house.”
“Is that young boy here for the same reason?” I nodded my head in the boy’s direction.
“Yes, similar reasons. His father brought him here. John was online playing games for hours and hours. His father asked him to spend time with him outside – play catch, go fishing. But John refused. Like Myra’s social-validation obsession, when John didn’t play or interact with the games, he thought he was missing out. His father could see that John was missing out on life, so he brought him here.”
“What about that older couple sitting in the arm chairs?”
“They are Jim and Sally. Their close friends brought them here. They were very concerned for them. They told me that Jim and Sally would get up in the morning, turn on the TV and listen for the weather forecast. They would leave the TV on the rest of the day and sit and listen to the world’s take on things and the advertised solution: problem, problem, problem, cure; problem, problem, problem, cure; problem, cure; day and night.
By their friend’s account, Jim and Sally had become terrified, angry and even despairing by what they heard. Honestly, that’s what Noise does to people. C’mon. Let’s listen to them for a moment . . .”
“Jim, you are a racist.”
“We both are Sally. They said so.”
“They’re telling us that we could die from cancer or climate change or COVID or the guy in the White House if we don’t do something.”
“How about we just die, Sally, and be done with the whole business?”
“Now Jim. We should listen to them. They know better than us. They’ve told us so many times that we can’t trust our own thinking . . .”
“I am glad their friend brought them here,” Sharon said. “They needed relief from the Noise . . . At Fire and Flame, we don’t give people sedatives. We give them space to work out their salvation.”
Sharon then asked me why I brought Vic to Fire and Flame.
“Vic has been a friend of mine since high school. We hung around each other and kidded each other all the time. But then things changed when he got devices. He was no longer present with me or to anyone, really. It seemed to me and his other friends that Vic was using technology to avoid us. He talked incessantly about what this and that could do.
Vic’s other friends gave up on Vic. They had come to find out that Vic had spent large portions of his paycheck on new devices. He bragged about the new devices until one day he came to one of his friends and asked him for a loan. Vic wasn’t able to pay the mortgage. He had to borrow money. But that wasn’t the breaking point for Vic.
I heard from a friend that Vic wanted to join me at the Remnant camp to escape the COVIDians. Two people had come to his door and asked him for his Vax papers. Vic learned the reason they came to his door: they had been monitoring him through his devices. He didn’t have Vax papers because he refused to be vaccinated.
The two COVIDians declared Vic “unsafe’ and told him that he was banned from the Internet, email and online accounts. They took away his phone, laptop and internet connection. They wrote his name down on a ledger and said they would be back the next day.
I relayed back to Vic that he could come to the Remnant camp but he would have to go to Fire and Flame first.”
As I was talking to Sharon, Vic got out of his chair and began walking around the Great Room. He was again flaying his arms and mumbling to himself.
“When they first come here,” Sharon said, “they are agitated.” They haven’t been used to having their hands free. They are restless, hyperactive, and full of nervous energy. They cannot tolerate a sense of boredom and look for highly stimulating activity. They walk around and say and do things and are unaware of the effect they have on others. It will take time for Vic to become focused and to stay focused on reality.
“Fire and Flame . . .?”
“Fire and Flame is a portal to a world away from the constant pinging of digital devices. The Dark Forces of this world produce relentless Noise. It is meant to unsettle and distract you from The Message. Here, there is Signal not Noise.”
“Message? Signal?” I asked.
“You will find out tonight.” Sharon replied. “C’mon I’ve prepared a room for you. You can rest before dinner.”
****
A bell rang. We were summoned to dinner and I was again reminded of summer camp. I got up, splashed some water on my face, got dressed and headed down the hallway.
The dining room was another pine-paneled Great Room: floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides and a fireplace. Twenty-four pine-wood tables filled the room.
When everyone had gathered and were seated, Sharon asked “Evangelist Mark” to please ask the Lord’s blessing on the meal. Evangelist Mark stood up and prayed the blessing on the cornbread, chili, salad and the lemonade (what I used to call “bug juice” in my camp days). Odd how the past and present comingle and not just in my dreams.
I looked around the room. Six people sat at each table. And though so many filled the Great Room, there was little chatter. I saw many somber faces. Some stared off and ate, unaware that others were sitting across from them. Others fidgeted with their silverware and played with their food. A few were animated and tried talking to those around them but received no response.
Sharon sat down and gave a big sigh. She and her helpers had made sure everyone had food before sitting down. “How’s the food?”
“Delicious! The aromas had made me when I came in this morning,” I replied. “Is that Bach I hear in the background?
“Yes. Bach is the sound of redemption. It is particularly effective in helping to balance our brains between dissonance and consonance. The mind is then able to focus and attain deep concentration. This enables an inner quickening of the imagination, creativity, memory and intuition.”
Across the table from the two of us sat Joe. Sharon asked Joe to tell me why he had come to Fire and Flame.
“Well,” Joe began, “. . . a 5G network. I was told that it was the bee’s knees. They said it was designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices. With it, I was to be almost omniscient – aware of everyone and everything through a mobile ecosystem.
But using it day after day I found myself thinking about the device and what it wanted me to be aware of and wanted me to do next. I had become connected to an impersonal object that was directing my life with its AI. I was fooling myself – actually, I was subverting myself – pretending to be aware and to be in control of my life.
“That’s what brought me here. The addiction to being omniscient and to controlling things was intense. I spent most of my time working the device. I was doing apps, pushing buttons – nonstop! I finally asked myself “Why does my heart tell me to think like this? Inside my head . . . it was like John Cage music playing over and over.
One day I heard of Fire and Flame from a neighbor who was fleeing the COVIDian and Woke persecutions. He said that he was going to the Remnant camp. One night I left everything behind when his car showed up. He drove me here.”
Joe ended his account with a smile.
“Jennifer,” Sharon leaned over. “This afternoon Vic broke into my office. He was looking for a device to get on the internet. I have none. Then he started breaking into cars and trucks looking for a way to connect and found nothing. Then he ran into the woods. Notah found him and brought him back.”
“Vic may try again tonight. If he does Notah will follow him. No one is a prisoner here. We understand it’s a major struggle to be free from Noise. Notah will ask if he wants to return. If not, he will take Vic to a bus stop many miles away from here.
“We are a refuge for humans. We can’t help trans-humans, if that is what Vic wants. They are wired for Noise. We are to live as humans, we are to love. Trans-humans cannot live, cannot love. They only obey digital prompts and inputs.”
****
At twilight, the group from dinner came down to the fire pit. We sat down on the semi-circle of logs around the bonfire. The sun had gone down behind the horizon of mountains and no longer gilded their peaks.
Above us, in the blue-to-black July sky, a conjunction of terrestrial objects – Venus, Mars and the moon. They were easily visible. Venus shone brighter and slightly below the red planet. The familiar moon was making its circuit below.
Across that cosmic vista came a silhouette of a black whirring object. And then another. Sharon leaned over and told me “They are the regime’s Charon drones. They are keeping an eye on us. The regime and the people of the Noise are terrified of the people of the Signal”.
At that moment, a young boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, got up and stood next to the fire. He began . . .
Psalm 1
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees . . .
The boy recited the Psalm from memory. He sat down and then an older woman – a grandmother? – got up. She began to recite Psalm 61 from memory . . .
Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you, when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; for you are my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy . . .
When she had finished, a teenage girl stood up and recited Psalm 104 from memory . . .
Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers . . .
When she had finished, she sat down. Each of them had recited their Psalm as a dramatic reading. The words came from their soul.
The drones, now four of them, blotted out starlight as they hovered and circled. I looked around. Was I the only one who noticed them?
Someone yelled “Evangelist Mark! Give us the Good News!” More joined the call.
A man, fiftyish, got up. He took off his glasses and handed them to Sharon. (I learned later that they were husband and wife.) He covered her with a blanket.
The night air had become chilly. More wood was thrown onto the bonfire. People huddled together under blankets. Faces became animated with the fluctuating glow of the roaring fire. All eyes were on Evangelist Mark.
This is where the good news starts – the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son . . .
I recognized the words from the opening of The Gospel According to Mark.
“A shout goes up in the desert; make way for the Lord! Clear a straight path for him! . . .” . John the Baptizer appeared in the desert . . . “Someone a lot stronger than me is coming close behind” . . . This is how it happened . . .After John’s arrest, Jesus came in to Galilee, announcing God’s good news. “The time is fulfilled! God’s kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news!” . . .When the sun went down and evening came, they brought to Jesus everyone who was ill, all who were demon possessed . . .
Jesus went back to Capernaum . . . a crowd gathered with the result that people couldn’t even get near the door as he was telling them the message . . . A party arrived: four people carrying a paralyzed man, bringing him to Jesus. They couldn’t get through to him because of the crowd, so they opened up the roof above where he was . . . they used ropes to let down the stretcher the paralyzed man was lying on. Jesus saw their faith and said to the paralyzed man, “Child, your sins are forgiven!” . . .
Evangelist Mark, from memory, continued his dramatic narration of the whole gospel to its conclusion . . .
When Jesus was raised, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first of all to Mary Magdalene . . . Later Jesus appeared to the eleven . . . he told them off for their unbelief and hardheartedness . . . “Go into all the world and announce the message to all creation” . . . When the Lord Jesus had spoken with them, he was taken up into heaven, and sat down at God’s right hand. They went out and announced the message everywhere. The Lord worked with them, validating their message by the signs that accompanied them.
For over an hour, the fireside group sat captivated by The Message. When Evangelist Mark sat down, someone in the group began singing. Then others joined:
If we die with him, we shall live with him;
If we endure patiently, we shall reign with him;
If we deny him, he will deny us:
If we are faithless, he remains faithful. For he cannot deny his own self.
While they sang, I looked for Vic. Then I saw him leaning against a tree, back from the group. Shadows came and went across him, as many began walking back to their rooms. Was that a sparkle of belief in his eyes? Was that the glistening of a tear?
Sharon and her husband Tom – “Evangelist Mark” – walked me back to the refuge rooms. I was tired. Tomorrow I would make the long drive back to the Remnant Camp and to people of the Signal there. Sharon told me that Notah would help me ditch the drones. He knew when they came and went. He could tell by their noise.
“Episode_1093 The people aren’t waiting politicians to save them anymore, and we discuss the effects of the vaccine.”“Episode_10979 Our military is being weakened and Christian churches are under attack in Canada”
*****
Who is Dr. Malone?
*****
Informed Dissent:
Camilla Canepa was operated on by Gianluigi Zona, director of the neurosurgical and neuro-traumatological clinic of the San Martino hospital: “I had never seen a brain that was affected by such an extensive and severe thrombosis.” . . .
The girl arrived in the emergency room in the Lavagna hospital on June 3, just a week after the AstraZeneca shot. She had complained of severe headaches.
“I can see people,” said the man, peering around, “but they look like trees walking about.”
A blind man gains partial sight. He interprets the forms he sees via his prior limited understanding. Did he know at this stage that his perception was off?
The gospel according to Mark is composed of short narratives that could be easily visualized by those who heard its oral performance. Mark would have the listener hear, see and perceive who Jesus is. He would have the listener understand that seeing and hearing alone are not sufficient for the followers of Jesus. Understanding is what is required. At a mission critical point in the gospel account -Mark chapter 8 – Jesus reproaches his disciples for their lack of understanding.
The disciples had been mumbling about not having brought enough bread for their boat crossing. Yet twice before they had seen with their own two good eyes Jesus multiplying loaves to feed thousands. They had picked up the leftovers! And now they are mumbling about not having enough bread!
“Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand? Have your hearts gone hard? Can’t you see with your two good eyes? Can’t you hear with your two good ears?”
“You still don’t get it?”
Right after this rebuke is the narrative of the blind man who receives a two-stage healing of his eyesight (Mk. 8:22-26). The man’s depth of field is made whole. He could see everything clearly. Men were no longer like walking trees. His perception was growing.
Mark then increases the depth of field for those visualizing the account of the blind man’s healing:
Jesus and his disciples came to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked his disciples, “Who are the people saying that I am?
(I suppose in this setting that Jesus’ question could also be stated as “What do people perceive about me?”)
He gets feedback.
John the Baptist,” they said, or, some say, Elijah. Or, some say, one of the prophets.
Like the blind man whose initial vision is without depth of field and lacking clarity, people are reporting that they are seeing a form that they were vaguely familiar with.
What about you? asked Jesus. Who do you say that I am?
Peter, recently admonished about the bread incident, doesn’t hesitate to declare “You’re the Messiah.”
The people perceived Jesus to be one of several polemical figures: Elijah, John the Baptist or a prophet. The people were looking for just such a figure to re-enter into their times and bring about God’s judgement on the wicked.
Peter, like many Jews during the second temple period, looked for a new emergent figure: the messiah.
Hearing Peter’s reply, Jesus gave his disciples strict orders to not disclose this to anyone. It would appear that Jesus had more to teach the disciples and he didn’t want them to go public without them seeing/understanding what he sees. Mk. 8:31:
Jesus now began to teach them something new.
Jesus tells the disciples that the son of man must suffer and die at the hands of those who reject him.
Peter is clearly rattled with this new teaching. Clinging to the vague figure of a messiah and projecting onto Jesus that image, Peter rebukes Jesus for saying things that would alter his own view of things.
Jesus sternly rebukes Peter for rebuking him.
Get behind me, Accuser! he said. You’re thinking human thoughts, not God’s thoughts.
Even after all that he had witnessed, including an unclean spirt that identified Jesus as “God’s Holy One”, Peter still did not perceive who Jesus is. Peter still didn’t understand. Peter, with his “human thoughts”, was still in “men as trees walking” mode.
Jesus does not hold back. Jesus goes on to describe what is required of those who follow him. He talks about life altering choices. He talks about accountability. (I think Peter, at this point, wanted to go back to passing out bread.)
Having taught them something new, Jesus, his mind set like flint towards Jerusalem, brings his closest disciples on a field trip. Peter, James and John go with Jesus up atop a high mountain. There, Jesus is transfigured into heavenly splendor right before their eyes. Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, are standing with Jesus.
Peter, again using human thoughts, didn’t know what to say but he said it anyway . . .
I tell you what – we’ll make three shelters, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah!
Peter (“You still don’t get it?” Peter) gets another stern rebuke:
Then a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud: This is my son, the one I love. LISTEN TO HIM!
This same Peter declares to bystanders who are questioning his relationship to Jesus, “I don’t know this man you’re talking about.”
A Roman centurion who stood before the cross, saw how Jesus died. He declared “This fellow really was God’s son.”
Seeing, hearing and perceiving. “You still don’t get it?”
****
Mark’s skillfully structured biography uses a literary device (inclusio) to emphasize that seeing, hearing and perceiving things from God’s perspective are absolutely essential traits for followers of Jesus. Between healing-of-blind-man narrative brackets, Jesus takes his disciples aside and talks mission detail. He relates what His father has told them. He wants the disciples to take this in. This information will prepare them for what is coming.
Beginning Bracket:Mark 8:22-26. We read of a blind man receiving a two-stage healing. Then, in Mark 8:31-32
There’s big trouble in store for the son of man, he said. The elders, the chief priests, and the scribes are going to reject him. He will be will be killed – and after three days he’ll be raised. He said this all quite explicitly.
And, again in Mark 9:31-32:
The son of man is going to be given over into human hands. They will kill him; and when he’s been killed, after three days he will rise again.
They didn’t understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him.
And, again in Mark 10:32-34:
“Look, he said, “we’re going up to Jerusalem. The son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the legal experts, and they will condemn him and hand him over to the pagans. They will taunt him and spit at him and flog him and kill him – after three days he will rise again.
End Bracket: Mark.10:46-52. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus receives his sight after calling out loudly to Jesus “Son of David! Jesus! Take Pity on Me! … Son of David take pity on me! . . . Teacher, let me see again.”
****
Both hardness of hard (Mk. 3:5) and the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod (Mk. 8:15) can keep one from seeing and perceiving who Jesus is and what he is about. Jesus warned against both.
When the disciples asked about his use of parables (Mk4:10-13), Jesus’ response included words from Isaiah 6: 9-10:
The mystery of the kingdom is given to you, but for the people outside it’s all in parable, so that ‘they may look and look but never see, and hear and hear but never understand; otherwise they would turn and be forgiven.’
Don’t you understand the parable? He said to them. How are you going to understand all the parables?
When Jesus confronts the disciple’s mumbling about not bringing enough bread (Mk.8:17-18) he questions them as to whether they are just like the outsiders he talked about in his response to parable use:
Can’t you see with your two good eyes?
Can’t you hear with your two good ears?
Many today do not perceive who Jesus is. They, like Peter, readily associate themselves with Jesus, as Jesus appears to them as being “on the right side of history”. But they remain clueless as to who he is. Instead, they project onto Jesus a form they are familiar (and comfortable) with.
Some are not comfortable with a Jewish Jesus. Some project onto Jesus a Catholic or Evangelical image. Some project onto Jesus an image of a Progressive social justice warrior. Some say he is Elijah, some say John the Baptist and others . . . Oprah, for instance, projects a Pluralist-Pantheist-Playdough image onto “the Son of God”.
***
Why was Jesus pressing so hard for his disciples to gain understanding? Human thoughts deny the reality of Jesus every time. With God’s thoughts, God’s perspectives, we can see beyond our present circumstances and our present suffering and grab ahold of God’s resources.
The apostle Paul, who wrote of unwise hearts growing dark (Rm. 1:21) and teachers possessing an outline of knowledge and truth (Rm. 2:20) prayed for the church at Ephesus. He desired that the church receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus.
I personalized Paul’s prayer, found in Ephesians 1: 17-19, so that those of us who follow the Lord can pray and grow in the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of our Lord.
I pray that the God of King Jesus, our lord, the father of glory, would give me, in my spirit, the gift of being wise, of seeing things people can’t normally see, because I am coming to know him and to have the eyes of my inner most self opened to God’s light. Then I will know exactly what the hope is that goes with God’s call; I will know the wealth of the glory of his inheritance in his holy people; and I will know the outstanding greatness of his power toward those who are loyal to him in faith, according to the working of his strength and power.
****
War Room Episode 795 – Dennis Prager, Transhumanism, and the West
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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Cindy Wity 
“Come to Me”
April 24, 2022 Leave a comment
in the Christ shall all be made alive -1 Cor. 15: 22
Many years ago, an interim pastor at the church I was attending asked me to go with him to Pacific Garden Mission in downtown Chicago. This pastor was involved PGM’s Unshackled radio broadcasts. On this occasion, he and I ministered to those who came in off the street. I played a couple hymns on my trumpet. He gave a simple gospel message. Those attending received a hot meal after our brief service.
During my student days at Moody Bible Institute, I visited other Chicago rescue missions. I would play my trumpet and, with others in our group, give a brief witness to my faith in the Lord. Telling the forlorn and broken sitting before me that I was raised in a Christian home and received Jesus as my savior at eleven years old – I was coming from a place nowhere near where these folks had been.
But the gospel has a way of speaking into memories and of stirring folks to reflect on their life. Some wept upon hearing childhood accounts of home. From recollections, whether good or bad, the gospel points people in the direction of rescue from a life gone prodigal.
On each occasion, as I walked into the meeting room of the rescue mission, I encountered the smell of alcohol, urine and of unwashed bodies and clothes. My eyes met with a scene of loss – each figure a shell of their former self.
The homeless – alcoholics, the drug dependent, the bankrupt, the mentally ill, the despairing, the dis-owned by family and friends – sat scattered among the rows of chairs. Some folks were asleep sitting up. Some were laying across chairs asleep. Some were mumbling things unintelligible. And some sat up looking despondently at the floor. The body language: “I’m adrift, aching and alone.” The sign out front: “JESUS SAVES”.
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Are you having a real struggle? Come to me! Are you carrying a big load on your back? Come to me! – I’ll give you a rest! Jesus invites his listeners to put on his yoke and take lessons in humility from him. Arrogance is a heavy burden to carry and to defend (Matt 11: 28-30).
It’s the sick people who need the doctor, not the healthy ones. I came to call the bad people, not the good ones. Jesus responds to the grumbling legal experts when they see him eating with tax-collectors and sinners (Mk. 2: 17).
You see, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. Jesus responds to the grumbling observers of the faith-based salvation of chief tax-collector Zacchaeus (Lk. 19: 1-10).
After all, God didn’t send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world could be saved by him. Jesus is reconfiguring the Pharisee Nicodemus’ notion of salvation (Jn. 3: 17). Jesus says that he will be lifted up just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert. This, Jesus explains, is how much God loved the world. And so, everyone who believes in him should not be lost but may share in the life of God’s new age.
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The Gospel According to Mark chapter 4 records the rescue of a small fleet of fishing boats crossing the sea. A big windstorm came up and began filling the boats with water. Life and livelihood were in jeopardy. The fishermen were freaking out. Jesus, however, was sleeping soundly on a cushion in the stern in one of the boats. They woke him up.
Jesus got up, silenced the wind, and told the raucous sea “Shut Up!”. Things calmed down at once. The rescued, whose alarm at the tempest shifted to awe-struck terror of the rescuer, said to each other “Who is this? Even the wind and the sea do what he says!” Their crossing continued over to the land of the Gerasenes without further incident.
Chapter 5 of Mark’s gospel account records three rescues. The narrative begins with Jesus and the small fleet of fishing boats arriving on the shore of the land of the Garasenes. They are suddenly confronted by a man with an unclean spirit. He emerged from a graveyard which is where he lived.
The man is wild. No one can physically restrain him, not even with shackles and chains. But the wild man’s attention is captured. He runs up to Jesus and falls down before him.
Jesus questions the man and hears that that man is possessed by a hoard of demons calling themselves “Legion”. The demons, knowing that Jesus will deal with them, want to be rescued in their own way. They beg Jesus to not send them out of the country. They want to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus lets it happen and the pigs rush down into the sea and drown.
The herdsmen’s reaction, not unlike the fishermen’s reaction earlier, was of utter terror. They began telling everyone about what had happened. People came to Jesus. They saw the man who had once terrorized the countryside. He was seated, clothed and in his right mind. When eyewitnesses told the crowd what had happened to the man and to the pigs, the people were afraid. They begged Jesus to leave their district. The man who had been rescued, however, asked to go with Jesus. Jesus wouldn’t let him.
Go back home. Go to your people and tell them what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had pity on you.
The rescued man goes out and tells what Jesus had done for him. Everyone is astonished.
The next two rescue accounts in Mark’s gospel account involves two people of different social and economic status: a named man – Jairus, a synagogue president – and an unnamed woman. Mark intertwines these accounts.
Jesus, having crossed back over the sea, is quickly surrounded by a large crowd on the seashore. Jairus arrives. When he sees Jesus, he falls down at his feet and begins pleading.
My daughter’s going to die! My daughter’s going to die! Please come – lay your hands on her – rescue her and let her live!
Jesus goes off with the man. And a large crowd follows pressing in in him. Enter the unnamed woman.
Mark tells us . . .
A woman who’d had internal bleeding for twelve years heard about Jesus. (She’d had a rough time at the hands of one doctor after another; she spent all she had on treatment and had gotten worse instead of better.) She came up in the crowd behind him and touched his clothes. “If I can just touch his clothes,” she said to herself,” I’ll be rescued.” At once her flow of blood dried up. She knew, in her body, that her illness is cured.
Jesus knew at once that power had flowed out of him. He asked who it was that touched him. The woman of low estate, trembling, made herself known to Jesus.
My daughter, your faith has rescued you. Go in peace. Be healed from your illness.
(I am reminded of another close encounter rescue: four men carried a paralytic on a stretcher, bringing him to see Jesus. The crowd was so thick around Jesus they couldn’t get near enough to ask for the man’s healing. So, they opened up the roof and lowered the stretcher with ropes. They placed the man right in front of Jesus. Jesus noticed their threads of faith and said to the paralytic Child, your sins are forgiven! (Mk. 2: 3-5))
As Jesus was speaking to the woman, some very sad people arrived from the synagogue president’s house.
Your daughter’s dead. Why bother the teacher anymore?
But that didn’t stop Jesus from rescuing the girl.
Don’t be afraid! Just believe!
Jesus said no to the crowd following him (Too much commotion already?) and went to the synagogue president’s house with only Peter, James and John. When they arrived, there was all kinds of weeping and wailing going on.
Why are you making such a fuss? Why all this weeping? The child isn’t dead; she’s asleep.
Mark tells us that they laughed at him and then. . .
Jesus put them all out. Then he took the child’s father and mother, and his companions, and they went in to where the child was. He took hold of her hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Time to get up, little girl!” At once the girl got up and walked about. (She was twelve years old.) they were astonished out of their wits. Then he commanded them over and over not to let anyone know about it, and told them to give her something to eat.
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The demoniac was cut off from himself and society because of what possessed him. Jesus ‘hog-ties’ the “Legion” and plunders the “strong man” domain (cf. Mk 3: 23-27). Jesus expels the unclean spirits and liberates the man from his living death. The image of God is restored. The man wants to go with Jesus but Jesus won’t let him. Jesus sends the unshackled man away so that people will see and hear from the rescued man himself: “Go to your people and tell what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had pity on you.”
The woman with the continual hemorrhaging was cut off from just about everything and all the time due to her ritual impurity (Lev. 15:25). She had exhausted her resources to find a cure. Then, by faith, she reached out and touched Jesus, God’s holy one. He rescues the woman from her living death – the constant loss of blood from her womb. She is restored to holiness, purity, and wholeness.
Death, the ultimate separation and defilement, tore the twelve-year old girl from her family. Because of her father’s pleading Jesus comes to her bedside, takes hold of her hand and restores the life that had flowed out of her. She is rescued, reconnected to her family, and is no longer a defilement.
(Note: It is interesting that in Mark’s account of the woman and the girl (5: 21-43), touching and being touched is mentioned six times. Ritual purity – maintaining holiness – was a daily and vital concern for a Jew. Physical contact would trigger any Jew who followed Scripture’s instructions regarding purity.
Jesus didn’t ignore the ritual purity laws in the process of rescue. Instead, he neutralized the effect of the law by restoring the woman and child. By stopping the flow of blood and making her clean, Jesus ‘neutralized’ the ritual impurity of her touching him. By raising the girl to life, Jesus ‘neutralized’ the ritual impurity of touching the dead (Num. 5:1-4; 19:11-22; 31:19-24))
When Jesus announced “The time is fulfilled. God’s kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news (Mk. 1: 15) he began to show the world what the kingdom of God on earth means: God would reclaim creation – his temple – and rescue his image-bearing humans.
In these rescue accounts and so many others, Jesus is not asking about the salvation status of the individual. He is not asking them if they want to go to heaven when they die. He is not rescuing people to have them later sent off to become a disembodied spirit in some heavenly realm somewhere over the rainbow. No. Jesus wants those in his kingdom to do what he has done. Death is a short interlude. As with the twelve-year old girl, Jesus will take you by the hand, get you up and get you back at it. Death is not a retirement home.
The four gospels (and the epistles) tell us that Jesus interfaced with his creation – as heaven and earth – for its salvation. (Think of heaven as God’s space.) We read that the kingdom of God on earth, as Jesus taught and lived, is about rescue, rebirth, healing, faith and not fear, touching and being touched, making all things new, new creation, new wine skins, wholeness, sound minds, and about the Genesis to Revelation project – God dwelling with man (Rev. 21: 2-4).
The world’s salvation, epitomized in another Tower of Babel campaign – Build Back Better – is another take on rebuilding systems and institutions and on redesigning people and society to save the planet and to benefit the elites.
Much of today’s social justice activists work to force their salvation onto you. They want society to work in certain way. Hence, pseudo-moral campaigns like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and the coming social credit scoring.
As I see it, Jesus didn’t do social justice – changing systems and institutions to save people. Jesus has a human connection with people and so much so that he went to the cross for their salvation. You won’t see one politician going out of their way to sacrifice anything. And, what do social justice activists sacrifice?
Jesus spoke against the self-righteousness that’s behind much of today’s social justice activism. And, he didn’t coerce anyone to be rescued. He didn’t force salvation onto anyone. People came to him with their faith and open hands. He responded to their need.
The difference between the world’s salvation and Jesus Saves is the difference between putting yourself into the hands of a bureaucracy and some ism and putting yourself into the hands of the Infinite-personal God in Jesus.
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Filed under Christianity, Culture, Gospel of Mark, Kingdom of God, social commentary, The Gospel of Mark Tagged with Build Back Better, Christianity, Kingdom of God, Pacific Garden Mission, social justice, The Gospel of Mark