Traditionalism: God and Country

Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (including judges of inferior federal courts and judges of state courts), when applying the highest law of the land—as long as they stick to the literal meanings of the words in the U.S. Constitution—are referred to as “originalists”; they believe that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic said what they meant and meant what they said about life, liberty, justice; our unalienable rights, peaceably governing ourselves, the pursuit of happiness—and they remain vigilant to the notion that government is circumscribed in the Constitution to very specific limitations. These are “non-activist” judges who do not divine a “penumbra of rights” from rights explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights. They apply the law, instead of sliding down the slippery slope of interpreting the law.

 

Believers who adhere to the literal meanings of words in the Bible are labeled “Christian literalists” or more pejoratively, “Christian fundamentalists”; they believe that the Bible’s divinely-inspired writers said what they meant and meant what they said (construing that meaning according to the original Hebrew and Greek, as the learned team of English translators did in producing the King James Bible from 1604-1611), viz., that the Bible is, quite literally, the Word of God (i.e., divinely inspired text). The slippery slope for believers occurs when applying who we are as Christians to a myriad of fact situations as they inevitably arise.

 

Such non-activist jurists and fundamentalist believers are further labeled “conservative.” As such, they seek to “conserve” meaning and values. And what does it mean to “conserve meaning and values”? One might surmise that once a nation and/or a set of Christian believers establish and recognize Supreme Law, that that rule of law is worthless and useless unless its time-tested traditions are lived, i.e., taught, acted upon, defended, protected—conserved not only for the current generation, but preserved for posterity.

 

On this basis one may posit that real human beings are traditionalists; they live by time-tested tradition so as to be righteous and to uplift their brethren. Traditionalists strive to abide by divine and temporal law, following both the letter and the spirit thereof. To be real human beings, to be traditionalists, we must know what is expected of us by way of being on notice of what those laws are (our apprehension) and then understanding what exactly is required in order to model what it means to be law-abiding (our conduct).

 

Religious Pharisee-ism

Traditionalists are not pharisaic, in the worst sense of the word, i.e., knowing the law yet exhibiting false righteousness, thoughtless form over substance, and preaching an extreme legalism yet one based upon a lax morality; being hypocritical, two-faced.

 

By the time of Jesus the Pharisees had become a parody of themselves. These Pharisees were rabbis whose oral teachings had been collected (at least since their captivity in Babylon) and collated down through the ages into what is known as the Talmud. They were not Torah-abiding but were following the Talmudic sayings of presumably sage rabbis who preceded them (strange gods indeed!). In short, they were deceivers (or as Jesus described them, they comprised the Synagogue of Satan).

 

Talmudic Pharisees persist in our present age and Talmudic Judaism is the prevailing form of the religion by far. As I understand it, the Talmud is overwhelmingly the basis from which Judaism is taught in today’s synagogues worldwide.  

 

However, when taken in its most positive spiritual light, a Pharisee can be viewed as being diligent and precise in work; zealous and sincere in adherence to the Law of Moses. The Chosen People, less versed in that Law, received great benefit from their guidance. This is demonstrated in the wisdom of the Patriarchs throughout the Old Testament who led the Hebrews through thick and thin.

 

The adherents of Karaite Judaism are those Jews who still follow the Law of Moses. They believe in a strict application of the literal text of the scripture, without rabbinical interpretation. The Tanakh (written Torah) is their supreme authority in their theology and halakha (Jewish religious law). Karaites are of the opinion that rabbinical teachings are subject to the flaws of any document written by mere mortals, i.e., the Talmud is not divinely inspired. As a result, Karaitism has been derided by Talmudic (or “Rabbinic”) Judaism and has suffered real persecution because of its literalist, originalist beliefs. In fact, Karaites have been reduced to a small minority; many Talmudic Jews do not even know they exist.

 

To get an idea of what it means for a text to be “divinely inspired,” listen to Chuck Missler expound on how the Bible is “authenticated”:

 

Two mind-blowing extracts from Learn the Bible in 24 Hours:

Sessions 13:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud6pJaLLA8w&list=PLRj8AJuzeJRwHdeFua3pzmwPB_JCS0mIq&index=13

 

Session 14 

Begin at the 26:00 minute mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDUjROQCEg&list=PLRj8AJuzeJRwHdeFua3pzmwPB_JCS0mIq&index=14

 

Even Christian pastors, priests, and their congregations fall into Pharisee-ism when they are “led by the nose via Talmudic Judaism,” and/or when they fail to be accountable for wrongly judging one another. By so doing, these so-called Christians bring dishonor upon themselves while ruining the lives and careers of others.

 

Also, many Christian clergy and congregations pick and choose what is doctrinally acceptable by explaining away as only “figures of speech” certain disfavored passages in the Bible.  For example, those who subscribe to amillennialism in their eschatology (as do the Catholic Church and many Protestant sects) do not take the Bible literally and are therefore not originalists—they fail to fully grasp that Holy Scripture says what it means and means what it says. Rather, they interpret what the Bible says according to their own likes and dislikes, their own socio-cultural preferences. 

 

Secular Pharisee-ism

The state can be thought of as reaching a righteousness of form with the founding of the American Republic. America in the late Eighteenth Century was a grand experiment in seeing whether a People could split off from the Deep State of British/European intrigues-and-control to form a more perfect union of self-governing (mini)states composed of sovereign individuals. Although the nation has survived it has morphed into more of a national security state of apparatchiks, bound up with the globalist “personhood” of multi-national corporate minions, manned by a dumbed-down population of servitors who find themselves subject to a socio-spiritual miasma subversion. Can it be said that what has happened to the Republic since its founding has been the result of a creeping, “secular Pharisee-ism”?

 

To bring order within ourselves and to maintain order in society, all People are called upon to be God-fearing and law-abiding—a seemingly separate yet co-dependent symbiosis of both sacred and temporal deference to just authority. Ideally, one leans on the other. Ideally, each mutually excludes all amoral, essentially un-American systems of religion, as it does those political theories and practices that run counter to our originally established republican form of government.

 

Pharisee-ism is parasitism; it eats away at the strong fabric of truth, justice and the American way. (—even though the late Justice Scalia, Catholic conservative icon that he was, was an admirer of Talmudism; he effectively modeled modernist Catholicism’s “ecumenical merger” with Talmudic-style Judaism. Could Scalia represent a sort of odd, paradoxical exception to Talmudism? To conservatism? Go figure! Be that as it may...)

 

True American patriots reject Pharsee-ism in their politics, government and religion; in church, state and synagogue. America is a nation founded upon and firmly grounded in Biblical Judeo-Christian and democratic traditions whose values are set forth in the Bill of Rights. Indeed, freedom of religious association and free speech are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to both natural-born and naturalized individuals in America. This means that any religious or political ideology can practice what it preaches. There is no need for censoring speech. Instead, in America if something is destructive of our American way, ideally it will fall and wither by its own accord, its own lack of merit, its shortcomings, which become self-evident by its expression via speech and/or  conduct.

 

This can only happen, however, in-so-far as Americans are not ignorant of the nature of their own unique political and spiritual heritage, and are not overly-accepting of dissimulating and subversive ruses. Such ruses include radical left liberalism that embraces baby-and-family-killing feminism and sexual perversion, socialism and a “progressivist corpocracy” pushing agendas of diversity, multiculturalism, indifferentism, and mindless ecumenism. Whether American liberty can withstand this assault is problematic; with the secularist-atheist persecution of Christianity, the decline in Biblically-based education and a massive propaganda effort against the verities of our American heritage by our schools and media, Pharisee-ism seems to be winning. But is it, really? Some examples of modern-day Pharisee-ism immediately come to mind. They are worth calling out:  

·       Just look at the so-called “impeachment circus” of 2019. Democrat libtards and RINOs persecuting POTUS and anyone who defends him;

·       Liberals who accept “the news” reported by mainstream media as representing “the truth” and close their minds to arguments to the contrary. (This is practicing a modern-though-secularist form of Pharasee-ism—or more precisely, a form of Saducee-ism, the liberal side of ancient rabbinic law-keepers);

·       Attorneys seeking the acquittal of their clients (or punishment of adversaries), argue “technicalities” or make specious legal arguments hoping only to provide—for a like-minded “judge”—an opening by which that judge can make an unjust ruling (or lead a gullible jury toward an unjust verdict);

·      Pharmaceutical company operatives who provide a wealth of “scientific evidence” in support of a drug, from “clinical studies” they funded, or otherwise influenced, and from which they intend to profit handsomely. The drug ends up killing or damaging people for life. These companies may be using medical terminology and “scientific” procedure but the form prevails over the true spirit of healing.

 

The opposite of pharisaic “libtardism” is a well-informed, solidly-educated, traditionalist body politic. We might start with understanding real history. Some say that the United States of America as a constitutional republic ended with Lincoln’s imposition of the Lieber Code; a never-revoked declaration of national emergency (war) that suspended the U.S. Constitution and vested plenary power in the Executive Office of the President.

 

Then there were Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 actions of (1) bankrupting America via HJR 192, prompting the national  government to (unconstitutionally) repudiate its promises to redeem paper currency with gold who (2) looked to the Trading with the Enemy Act as amended by the War Powers Act of March 9, 1933, to empower the federal government to take control over any and all commercial, monetary or business transactions of We the People—We, the newly declared “enemy,” which quite literally turned our nation into a USA, Inc.

 

It can further be argued that the political leadership in America since the time of Lincoln (or as some argue, more correctly I think, after the time of Andrew Jackson) has been characterized by the infiltration of avaricious self-interests that run counter to the originary interests of America’s true sovereigns, those individuals who are collectively referred to as “We the People.” Politics was simply a matter of keeping the People from knowing the truth about what their elected officials and unelected government bureaucrats, in league with entities having certain nefarious intentions and preferences, were doing to them; politics became simply a public relations ploy used by those with more sinister motivations.

 

The roots of government oppression, via inordinately high taxation, is traced even further back to Shays' Rebellion, 1786-1788. Michael Hoffman writes trenchantly about this righteous revolution led by farmers and laborers in Western Massachusetts in his Revisionist History newsletter, Issue No. 105, Oct,-Nov. 2019. Many were men who had served in the Continental Army to free us from British tyranny. Their complaints went unanswered. Instead, they were crushed without pity by America's new military forces under the strong-arm influence of the government and legal fraternity in league with  financial and mercantilist interests—an all-too-familiar dark alliance of usurious money-lovers. 

 

Not until President Donald J. Trump arrived have We the People had an able advocate. Trump is telling-it-like-it-is to the American people and to the world, challenging Deep State business-as usual. And he is showing a superhuman resilience against this Swamp’s unyielding coup strategies against him. As 2020 approaches we are witnessing the exposure of this very real Swamp monstrosity that has been crippling America the Beautiful for generations. We are witnessing formerly “entitled, vested interests” wailing and gnashing their teeth as they beseech the aid of their principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. It is a pivotal time for America and a crucial time for the world. Many of the Biblical signs are manifesting that indicate the Apocalypse is getting nearer and nearer. (Before reading the Book of Revelation, look at the Books of Ruth, Zechariah, Daniel, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and 2 Peter. Beware, oh human beans, beware! Now is the time, as never before, to apprehend the Bible and to care for your soul.)   

 

Whatever permutations may have befallen it, the United States of America was founded as a constitutional republic; it is not a democracy—and will never be a socialist dictatorship.

 

A story comes to mind. "At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention—a lady asked Dr. Franklin, ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got: a republic or a monarchy?’ ‘A republic,’ replied the Doctor, ‘if you can keep it’. (McHenry’s notes were first published in The American Historical Review, vol. 11, p.618 (1906). When McHenry’s notes were included in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934), a footnote stated that the date this anecdote was written is uncertain." Source: Bartelby’s Quotations, https://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html Retrieved on 12/2/2019, slightly reformatted for readability.)

 

Let’s see if we can rise above Benjamin Franklin’s foreboding suspicions and keep it a republic.

 

Keeping the Faith—in God and Country

There is tremendous value in knowing what it means to be a Christian. By this I mean truly grokking the Bible, and by so doing really knowing, inviting, and keeping Jesus Christ in our hearts. Surprisingly, perhaps, this uncommon knowledge is quite a “ramble into the esoteric”; it is more than just a path of “gimmee that old time religion,” though that may suffice quite well as a beginning and an endpoint for most Christian believers. But drop what you are doing and hear me, for there is always more to explore in the subtle realms. And if we have a mind to do so, then let us do it.

 

Various spheres of knowledge in the more profane (mundane?) world are also quite worthy of our time and attention. Why not read the world’s greatest literature, learn a craft, practice yoga, or study a whole new field such as philosophy, agriculture, physics, oceanography, mechanics, or electrical engineering? Any worthy field of pursuit has its deeply satisfying, almost esoteric, feel to it as it broadens and deepens us. Even such sports as swimming, ball playing, track and field, and such activities as subsistence hunting, fishing and boating, or camping and hiking, add developmental dimensions to us. Some may not see such an attitude as very “traditionalist”—but I do.

 

Whatever we choose, we focus then relax our focus, losing ourselves amid the doing and yet slowly mastering whatever it might be. Every endeavor, if engaged in with the right perception, is certainly contributive to a believer’s knowledge and wisdom, sensibilities and well-being. In other words, we should not be so hidebound (in a kind of frantic fanaticism about "The Good Book") that we essentially cordon ourselves off from the total richness swirling about in the noosphere, from communing with the natural world, or, for that matter, from a spectrum of activities accessible to us in this big, wide world.

 

If they haven’t found it already, Christians should discover that the love of God, agape love, animates all that we are and all that we do; all our interactions with others. Though we wear many hats as we walk through this world our heads are in the clouds; we can be at once here and elsewhere. We begin, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, to perceive consciousness, the Spirit that moves through all things, as a sort of “soul guide”; and as our consciousness expands, so do the dimensions of our being, of our reality. We experience time, the fourth dimension, a physical dimension but one that we discover is not linear, with a past and present available in the now and a most likely future that is always unfolding (depending on the choices we make). Imagine what , say, walking within six more dimensions—in ten total dimensions—might be like. (The Book of Genesis informs us, and physicists say, that there are six further dimensions to plumb.)

 

Imagination is the domain of theoretical physicists and small children. Wonderment at creation is food for the soul: its manifold beauties, its simplicity and its intricate complexities— its infinite by-ways, its agonies and hard lessons, all conspires to inspire. The soul, meanwhile, yearns for liberty from a temporary body temple that can significantly damper down its richness-of-being.

 

Friends implore me to look at this, look at that. I look, I share because they are my friends. They wish to share because our common bonds of friendship have meaning. Sharing deepens that meaning. Sharing deepens appreciation. And I will consider any worthy endeavor that a friend values. This is letting agape love into our shared being. It fills us with a grace-at-the-encounter. And when my energy ebbs I do nothing; I rest; I commune within my self-soul, only to find I am still not alone.  

 

Tell me, friend, have you had it up to here with “callous sophisticates”? I have. This nation, this soul cries out for an oasis in a time of chaos. And when enough souls unite in a deep and abiding understanding of God and country, there will be the ringing of bells and joyous sounds across the land; mountains will cease to tremble; seas shall calm themselves; the bright blue of the skies will shine beams of a pure love-like-heaven and all of creation will be new again.

Tribute to Michael McKibben

Michael McKibben of Leader Technologies is a man among men. He invented, built and patented the infrastructure that tech companies such as Facebook stole and then used to provide platforms and applications which are so ubiquitously used by everyone today.

 

When he sought his remedy at law is when he discovered the fallacious drama known as "the legal system," a system that instead protected the thieving criminals. Over the years since then Mr. McKibben wised up. After slogging through the history, the backgrounds of the judges in his case, and the evidence that was ignored, he has documented his findings and has filed a Miller Act Notice with the Chief Executive (POTUS). Damages are in the trillions of dollars. If and when he recovers his damages he has pledged to use that capital to rebuild the media into as much of a truly free press as is possible. To hear his personal story go here:

https://aim4truth.org/2019/11/20/important-message-from-michael-mckibben/

 

Through his horrendous experience and dogged research, study and analysis, Michael McKibben is offering to our Executive Branch a skeleton key to The Matrix, viz., to that phony Deep State System (comprised of Establishment and anti-Establishment) originally devised by the East India Company, refined by Cecil Rhodes via the Brit monarchy, and which was then acted upon by The Pilgrim Society, the Queen’s Privy Council, Tavistock, the Council on Foreign Relations, SES and SERCO, media, tech, and intelligence agencies (foreign and domestic), infiltrated U.S. Government agencies, banking and finance, and NGO foundations/non-profits.

 

When Pres. Trump finally brushes off the libtard gadflies, cleans house, and consolidates his power, I am hopeful (as are so many other patriots) that during his second term he can then initiate the rebuilding of our Republic. Mr. McKibben’s willingness to rebuild the media superstructure—into the Free Press as originally envisioned by America’s Founders—would seem to be a first step in that revitalization effort. (After this I'd also expect to see a dismantling of this 5G death cult, chemtrailing, directed energy weapons, and many other obvious harms being inflicted on Americans.)

 

As we transition from victims to knowledgeable patriots pro-actively confronting the System, let us bow our hearts to offer prayers for grace to gird us in our steadfast commitment to what is moral, right and just. Thank you, Michael McKibben, for your untiring efforts and willingness to, as St. Paul the Apostle put it, "fight the good fight!"

Psyche? Soul?

What is psyche? What is the soul?

 

[In my first novel, the “consciousness” of two dreadful creatures spawned by ET cross-breeding experiments escape the planet. They take refuge on another, far-away planet. This planet has rudimentary cellular life. They park themselves there and become “attractor basins,” seeking to form this new-found ooze into their own image over eons into the future. Thus, in effect these etheric life forms set themselves up as “gods of evolution.” Science fiction as brought to you by 23 Skiddoo: Way Back Beyond Across the Stars (2016). This raises complex questions!]  

 

Could the soul be the unique individual’s grasping of a world-soul called psyche, which tries to hold onto a stream of metaphorical image/sound-messages, this “global network of DNA-based life.”?

 

What if all of the biospheric energies of DNA-based life resonate in a diaphanous jumble of morphogenic (See generally, Rupert Sheldrake) frequencies—and the non-DNA physiosphere is the basin attractor that allows these infinitely interweaved fields to localize on a planet, accessible in time and space to life forms at once embedded in and capable of noospheric interpretation of its multivalent manifestations? Can we call these morphogenic resonances the “spirits” or “holographic inner essences” or “Platonic forms” of living entities?

 

Are we being anthro-snobs by allowing that only humans possess “souls,” and relegating all life forms of lesser neurological development to one, separate designation of possessing “spirit”?

 

Are there and should there be developmental levels within Spirit, that all-embracing synonym for the collective repository of psyches or the world-souls of eternally infinite universes? And when we exit time and space by accessing the achronon (Jean Gebser,The Ever-Present Origin, Ohio University Press: Athens, Ohio, Eng. trans. 1985, orig. pub. 1949 and 1953, pp. 284, 292) can these world-souls be experienced without their being bound to their phenomenal, substrate material?

 

Indeed, how essential is material existence to the realm of the psyche? Is it an absolute precursor for the birthing of psychic elementals? Do these psychic elementals then continue on in the universal web of psyche after they cease to be hosted by DNA-life?

 

Does inanimate matter or non-DNA life host such psychic elementals? Or do the forms “exist” autonomously, hosting DNA-life for a while as a kind of flowering and then re-release themselves back into the psyche?

 

To what extent do humans participate with psychic elementals in a symbiotic synthesis, bestowing meaning and hence a categorical existence to them as parasitical to human knowing? Or is it the other way around?

 

Is it possible that humans leech onto bits of psyche, the world-soul playing host while we vampirize it to support whatever twisted sense we can, given the limitations of our meaning-making abilities? Are those abilities “caged” and thereby “pre-determined” by our “phylogenic passing through” so that our ontogenetic reality is both produced by and producing magico-mythic images to feed those very meaning-making capabilities?

Maybe "psyche" is just one essence of God and our "souls" are drops from that essence.

Tribute to Chuck Missler

There are lots of preachers out there; Bible thumpers, proselytizers, revivalists, evangelists. I can’t recall very many of their names. Usually I come across them while in the car scanning my radio dial. They normally range from somewhat entertaining, to mildly interesting. It depends, of course, on where my head-is-at on a particular day, but some are quite intriguing. (Tony Evans, Th.D. comes to mind.)

 

Most are representatives of a specific Christian denomination who seem just as interested in “promulgating-for-profit” as they are in enthusiastically promoting “Bible lessons.” Some, however, only seek to teach the Bible and spread the Word of God from that Good Book without much emphasis on collecting donations or enlisting fresh faces into their church. These are often referred to as occasional or “itinerant” preachers.

 

One such non-denominational Bible teacher was Chuck Missler, Ph.D., Biblical expositor extraordinaire (1934-2018). Notice I said “teacher” and not “preacher,” though determining the difference between them can be tricky. There is a definite “occasional” and “itinerant” aspect to Dr. Missler because,  due to the demands of his professional career, he and his family moved 25 times during 37 years. But I wouldn’t really call him “preachy.”

 

I never met him in person. Instead I’ve learned a lot about the man and his work from watching his many presentations on YouTube. He has an engrossing and enlightening approach to unraveling the intricacies of Scripture and in demonstrating their timeless significance as (what he calls) "an integrated message system."

 

This exemplar of Bible scholarship came into-his-own after a lifetime of immersion into its depths. At nine-years old Missler became infatuated with the Bible. He had continued with his personal study over the course of a lifetime and the fruits of this pursuit have made his familiarity with the Bible staggering to the mind of the common person.

 

As a youth he also demonstrated an aptitude for technical interests, viz., airplanes, ham radio, and computers. He would go on to develop a successful career involving engineering and business. But Bible study always remained a loved avocation during a life that lasted close to 84 years. And Dr. Missler incorporates his knowledge of both classical and quantum physics, together with an in-depth background of computers, into each excursus he may take into the text of the Bible—a rare skill indeed among “itinerant preachers.”

In fact, Chuck Missler was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate. Moreover, he earned a Masters Degree in engineering at UCLA with additional post-graduate studies in applied mathematics, advanced statistics and information sciences. Then he completed his doctoral studies at Louisiana Baptist University where he was awarded a Ph.D.

 

Even if those explicating the Bible have a basic working knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Greek (as Dr. Missler does) they still need the ability to connect everything up into an organically cohesive, living whole which presents the Bible as the transformative tool that it actually is. That’s exactly what this fellow has done in his many books and lectures.

 

Chuck Missler married right after graduating from the Naval Academy. He and his wife, Nancy, soon had four children. She was eventually drawn into earnestly searching out Biblical truth, especially concerning the nature and application of Agape or God’s love, as she wrestled with her own personal issues revolving around marital difficulties. Through her, Chuck learned a lot and he grew to appreciate Nancy as never before. They remained “in love” until the very end; sadly, Nancy passed on in 2015.

In the early 1970’s Chuck and Nancy founded the Koinonia House, a non-denominational institute and ministry whose mission it is to promote Bible literacy among 21^st Century Christians. Again, Chuck Missler is non-denominational. He only wants people—people of any and all stripes—to "get" the Bible. And he was (and still is) a Bible teacher par excelence.

 

Apprehending the Bible is hard work. It takes time, energy, focus, and the ability to read and research. Fortunately, our load has been much lightened by expositors such as Chuck Missler. Still, the rewards of doing so are great; if Bible study is undertaken seriously, one cannot help but become an ardent believer—not only in every conviction contained in the Apostles' Creed—but also as a pre-millennial with a strong dispensational understanding concerning the Tribulation and the Second Coming of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, thus ushering in His thousand year reign.

 

Preachers go on preaching; people go on listening and believing. But let it be known that belief can be significantly deepened by awe, which is exactly what a believer experiences as one’s knowledge of the God-designed Bible grows in orders of magnitude. One aspiring to learn the many profundities of Holy Scripture can only stand in Dr. Missler’s shadow as a neophyte student of the Bible. Enough said. Rest in peace, great man!

 

 

The Virtues of Character & Integrity

 

What is the difference between character and integrity?

 

[I respond based upon what I have learned listening to Dr. Chuck Missler in a two-session video presentation entitled Manifesto of Our King. Missler is a non-denominational, Biblical expositor extraordinaire. He has an engrossing and enlightening approach to unraveling the intricacies of Scripture and in demonstrating their timeless significance.]

 

Character = Integrity + Wisdom

“Character is what you are when no one is looking.”

 

Character defines what we are; integrity defines what we do (and wisdom, how or in what manner we do what we do).

 

The character of a true Christian is portrayed in the Beatitudes and the Similitudes given to us by Jesus in the opening part of His Sermon on the Mount. (Matt. 5:1-16).

Matt. 3-10    The eight Beatitudes ("be-attitudes");

Matt. 11       The reaction we can expect from the world;

Matt. 12       How to interpret that reaction.  

Matt. 13-16  The Similitudes express how we role model in the world who and what Christians are made of.

 

This Sermon is one of four places in the Bible wherein Jesus presents long homilies. The Sermon on the Mount was directed not to the masses, but to at His disciples, to those who were already believers. 

 

Blessed are…

The poor in spirit <= Our attitude toward ourselves whereby we feel our need, viz., how weak and sinful we are without Christ, and we admit our human frailty.

=> for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;

 

They who mourn <= Our attitude toward sin, viz., having a true sorrow for sin; God hates sin. Sin breaks God’s heart. (Micah 7)

=> for they shall be comforted;

 

The meek <=Our attitude toward others is that we are not defensive, we are and always remain “teachable,” viz., we have nothing to prove (Psalms 37)

=> for they shall inherit the earth [“land”];

 

They which hunger and thirst after righteousness <= Our attitude toward God; we receive His righteousness by faith because we ask for it, viz., that the things of the spirit of God are “spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14)

=> for they shall be filled;

 

The merciful <= We have a forgiving spirit and love others, viz., we forgive because we are the beneficiaries of so much forgiveness by our Father; you reap what you sow (Luke 16)

=> for they shall obtain mercy;

 

The pure in heart <= We keep our lives and motives clean; holiness is happiness to us, viz., we have a singleness of purpose devoted to God—to the truth within and no substitutes—i.e., not the world

=> for they shall see God (Psalm 51:6 and John 1:18);

 

The peacemakers <= We should bring peace between people and God, and between those at odds with each other, viz., in spiritual warfare we must put on our “Christian armor” (Eph. 6) to guide us, e.g., compromise with evil is NOT peace (Gal. 5:19-21)

=> for they shall be called the children of God;

 

They which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake <= All who live “godly” lives will suffer persecution, viz.,will be  “accused falsely for my sake” (2 Tim. 3:12)

=> for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 

These eight Beatitudes are eight virtues comprising the essence of our being as Christians. They characterize what we know as inward righteousness, out of which our conduct arises.

 

Integrity implies conduct; how we comport ourselves in the world; our actions are products of our belief and discipline, which reflect back upon the nature of our character. And so what we do also defines who we are.

 

Moreover, how we act in our doing, i.e., having that “backbone” of exercising integrity (what we do), must also be tempered by Wisdom, defined as fear of the Lord steeped in the knowledge of the holy (Proverbs 9:10).

 

Character = Integrity + Wisdom

The entirety of the Sermon on the Mount can be thought of as The Manifesto of Our King, Jesus. A true king is one who is kingly in both the temporal and spiritual spheres. (Judaic law prohibited Levite priests from being appointed or otherwise holding secular positions.) There are three “kings” mentioned in the Bible:

• Melchizedek (the Old Testament “pre-figuration” of Christ);
• Jesus Christ Himself; and,
• His Church (diligent Christians)  

The Sermon on the Mount is “the Law of Jesus,” viz., His Manifesto, which is the superseding New Covenant. Jesus did not set aside but fulfilled the Old Covenant of Moses. Your salvation does not accrue because of your ability to fulfill Matthew 5,6, and 7, but because Jesus did—and you can appropriate His achievement to your benefit by simply receiving it.

 

In like way, the Passion of Christ was not a tragedy—it was an achievement that can be appropriated for your benefit.

 

Today, we are at the interval; between the Miracle of our origin and the Mystery of our destiny. With Jesus dwelling in our hearts, each of us can be a king among pilgrims in a simulated universe heading outside of our time domain.
 

Our relationships according to the New Covenant of Jesus are summed up in the following table (for further study):

                                 

Relationships of Our King’s Subjects

                   “being”

        To Self (Matt. 5:1-16)

                   “doing”

      To the Law (Matt. 5:17-48)

      To God (Matt. 6)

      To Others (Matt. 7)