The Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus, who lived around 535 to 475 BC, over four centuries after Solomon, concluded from observing life:

"Everything flows,
nothing abides.
Everything gives way,
nothing stays fixed"

Solomon would have agreed with him for the most part, an impression you clearly get in reading his books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. A couple of days ago I came across an old photograph of myself when I was small sitting in a sandcastle by the sea at Port Dickson in Malaysia, waiting for the tide to come in and wash it all away. Though we kept desperately building the sand wall higher and higher, and thicker and thicker, in a feverish bid to conquer the ocean, our attempt was, of course, ultimately futile. But we tried - many times! Only as I grew older and wiser did I understand the pointlessness of trying to control the Malacca Straits with a spade and a bucket. And it's the same with people and life, though we tend to be rather slower in learning that lesson, alas. And those who refuse to learn it often become politicians or seek other positions of authority and power to assert control over others.

Heraclitus and Solomon weren't the only great minds to realise that in this life everything irresistably changes. If you've read the Tao Teh Ching, as I have many times, you'll find the same conclusion there. So let me save you a lot of grief if you're trying to find permanency in this world, and you'll sleep a lot better: everyting does change, nothing ever stays fixed, and all your attempts to keep things constant will forever be frustrated. That's been my experience too. Trying to build anything permanent in this world is futile and I have wasted a lot of time, money and effort trying to do so.

If you are discouraged hearing that, don't be, for there are some very, very important things indeed that are absolutely constant and unchanging. That being so, and for your own peace of mind, go there instead for your safety and security. King David said of Yahweh, "His mercy endureth for ever" (Ps.106:1, KJV) and "His righteousness endureth for ever" (Ps.112:9, KJV). The writer of Hebrews, which we shall be returning to later, said,"Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb 13:8, NKJV). And finally, so that we don't begin today's message without a sturdy rail to hold onto that will weather every and all storms and the uncertainties in life, the apostle Peter said: "the word of Yahweh endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you" (1 Peter 1:25, KJV).

Here, then, are, as it were, the four horns of an altar of stability and certainty you can enjoy in your life if you will take hold of them and never let them go:

• 1. The mercy (grace and undeserved loving-kindness) of Yahweh;
• 2. The righteousness (right-ruling, judgment) of Yahweh;
• 3. The Davar Elohim (Word of God) of the Besorah - the Gospel or Good News of the forgiveness of the sins of the penitent and of the future physical and life of those who trust in, adhere and cling to,Yah'shua (Jesus Christ); and
• 4. Unlike us, the Person of the Saviour of Mankind - His nature, personality, justice, etc.. is constant.

That said, Shabbat Shalom and welcome to the second of a completely new season of sermons which will be oriented towards the new and extraordinary situation we now find ourselves in. Everything is changing very fast both in the world and in the spiritual sphere. But remember, remember, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) remains constant, so if He is in your life and heart, you have constancy within and you will not be buffeted about by what's coming, even if in the external world everything seems to be falling apart and you can make no sense of it. Trust in the mercy and righteousness of Elohim (God), trust in His Davar (Word), and then you will see Him at work!

The next 5 to 6 months are going to be a very unstable and dangerous time that is going to be unsettling, disorientating and (for some) very frightening indeed. Personally I am pleased the showdown is finally happening so that clear separations can be made, as Yahweh prophesied they would years ago in the earliest revelations of the Olive Branch. We've known this would be happening for a very long time. So stay calm, keep your eyes on Messiah, and watch Him work!

We are privileged to be witnesses of history-in-the-making. Do you realise that we are in a major transition phase between an old civilisation here in the West and an attempt by the power élites to completely deconstruct and destroy it by unleashing complete chaos on the world, first by undoing people' thinking and then undoing their lives? At the same time a radical shift is happening in Christendom too, which we need to be very alert to, so we have to keep one eye on each of these areas - the secular and the spiritual.

Last Sabbath - two talks ago - I addressed my sermon directly to you as a ministry and people, you may remember, and I informed you then that 33 years of labour was shifting from being a Samuel- to an Elijah/Elisha-type ministry. This is all part of the next stage of the Last Exodus and Final Gathering. We are, in the West, moving out of a libertarian, democratic way of life that has defined the West for neatly 300 years - and have been doing so for a number of years - back into a monarchical, feudalistic system in which nations and conglomerations of nations (like the European Union, China and the Russian Federation) are no longer ruled democratically in a free and open society, but by strongmen and dictators placed into positions of power by deviousness and great wickedness. It's already happening but the illusion of freedom continues to be projected as a kind of psychological hologram into the minds of a gullible and unspecting populace distraced by irrelvant causes. In my youth it was 'save the whales', today it is the contrived presumption of 'man-made climate change', engineered gender dysphoria, manufactured racism, and the like.

Some of you may not realise it but classical liberalism of the kind I was raised in half a century ago, is well and truly dead now, certainly here in Europe at any rate. Realsing that the violent Bolshevik-type revolutionarty methods of Lenin and Stalin would never work in the more industrialised and sophisticated West, Antonio Francesco Gramsci, an Italian neo-Marxist philsopher of Albanian descent and one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, realised that the only way forward was to gradually erode, and ultimately strangle, capitalism and conservatism from within the cultural institutions themselves by getting the peoples' consent. The fact that it has been accomplished, albeit through deceit, by appealing to free-will (i.e. elections) rather than directly through the barrel of a gun, has made it much harder to counter. That is why the Visigrad nations eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, etc.), which experienced violence and economic force under communism, are now swinging back to conservatism whilst the West is slipping ever faster into communism.

Our Western civilisation has been cleverly strangled by the cult of political correctness, which has proved so much more effective than French Revolutionary Socialism, Russian Bolshevism and Chinese Maoism. It is quite a brilliant scheme, you see, because once you have changed the culture you can never go back to the way it was. To try and do so would be like trying to glue back together a field of millions of cut poppies after a scythe has swept across it. Look at Russia today which is becoming more and more Christian Orthodox with every passing year, though increasingly resembling the authoritarian Tsarist system which the Bolsheviks overthrew in 1917.

We are entering into a new and dark social and political post-Christian age. We have been heading towards it in thousands of small, almost imperceptibe, steps for half a century already, but now we have pretty much arrived at the kind of world Gramsci dreamed of. Christianity in the West started dying after the First World War, the Second World war finally nailing the lid on its coffin leaving only a Christian cultural afterglow that has been gradually fading ever since. The light finally went out in 2020 - this year...except in America where an epic struggle is happening. The dark side, "cynical advocates of evil, lofty advocates of force, [who] think their mouth is heaven and their tongue can dictate on earth" (Ps.73:8-9, JB), senses that it is nearing its goal for total cultural transformation which is why it has been in a frenzy these last four years since Donald Trump won the American Presidency - it's why the world has been plunged into increasing anarchy.

That's why they're pulling down the statutes now, to erase all memories of the past and so destroy collective, national identity. Initially they left those in place for half a century to maintain the illusion that the old order was still functioning while all along it was being replaced by a new one on the inside. Now even the outer forms serve no useful function for these revolutionaries because the illusion isn't needed any more. The masses have already, by and large, been brainwashed into accepting the new paradigm and those who won't accept it are being silenced, often brutally. The transformation into a global satanic state is well and truly approaching completion...almost, but not quite. We're actually in a situation not unlike the arrival of nazi armies on the outskirts of Moscow in the late autumn (fall) of 1941 when all looked lost and the Soviet Union was on the edge of total collapse. History turns on small hinges. Inevitably, an irreligious society must fall victim to the omnipotent state.

I also said in my last sabbath sermon that what was coming to this ministry in the times ahead would be every bit as dramatic as the Resurrection event which punched that gaping hole into world history, a hole the secular historians have never been able to fill. Soon, at the end of the end times, Yahweh is going to punch another hole, but this time into every and all false traditions in Christendom and Messiandom. What I mean by that is, the theological debating will be over when the heavenly power is in full swing. All false foundations are crumbling.

A week ago today Yahweh showed me a vision of the kind of power that Yahweh is about to endow on the arising Elijah and Elisha nevi'im (prophets). I can tell you, it fair took my breath away! I cannot speak of it until it is displayed when an over-confident enemy, drunk with the illusion that he has scored an overhelming victory against Christendom, tries to move in on the Remnant to exterminate it. At that time members of the cult will be 'flying' against their will.

Even as I am speaking now, a nuclear-type chain reaction has been released within a very over-confident Islamic community that will shake it to its very foundations and cause it to eventually collapse. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands are going to leave that religion as it is impacted by the stunning revelation as to its true origins. People like Jay Smith and David Wood in particular, but others too, have ignited a spiritual powder-keg, that is already causing Moslems to turn on one another. It will take a few years to mushroom out, as spiritual things often do, but there will be no holding it back now. The genie of truth is out of the bottle and they'll never get it back in again.

All lies and liars are being systematically exposed prior to the Second Coming of our Master. The 'problem', in a sense - though actually a blessing to the Remnant who are committed to 'all truth' - is that something similar is going to happen to Christendom too...and by 'Christendom' I mean that great historical, theological, religious edifice that is an admixture of the Besorah (Gospel) and paganism which has now morphed into Gramcsi-type Marxism. That's why the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, amongst many other Christian leaders, speak the Gospel out of one side of their mouth and neo-marxism and paganism out of the other. Not surprisingly, this is causing great confusion and is destabilising Christendom even further.

These two contradictory systems can no longer be forced to walk together. Their further admixting is impossible, forcing a separation. You can't be a Christian and a Marxist at the same time - you can't believe in miracles, the supernatural, the physical resurrection and eternal life, and at the same time be an atheist. You can't be a Christian and a witch, or a Christian and a practitioner of Voodoo. You cannot be a Christian/Messianic and a Zionist because there's only one Israel, not two. Yet there are people who claim to operate in such contradictions and they have thousands, and in some cases, millions of adherents. You're actually going to be so surprised and dismayed to learn about this false satanic, pagan, Marxist foundation as the light of truth is shone brilliantly onto it, a foundation which is identical to the political and social foundation of the arising New World Order, which is why politics and religion are now blending so easily together. That is why all false Christianity will eventually be absorbed into it because it has ceased to become Christian and become Antichrist.

One of my tasks, and others like me, is to prepare the Remnant for what is coming and that is going to require an enormous paradigm shift that cannot possibly be accomplished in a day because we none of us respond to major changes very quickly unless forced to do so by desperate circumstances...like war or persecution, for example. We see some of that paradigm-shifting going on in the New Testament world of Rabbinical Judaism 2,000 years ago, with its false hopes and expectations, which had to eventually make way for what the writer of Hebrews called "the time of the new order" (Heb.9:10, NIV) or the "time of reformation" (HRV) - this is a very hard passage to translate, incidentally, though I think William Barclay captures the essence of the text best which he brilliantly paraphrases as "the time when by the action of Elohim (God) religion is totally reformed and reconstructed". So while the Enemy is deconstructing, Elohim (God) is reconstructing.

The Book of Hebrews is actually very important in that regard. In that same chapter (9) the writer (believed by many to have been Paul, though the author's name is never revealed to us) explains, starting at verse 15, that this new 'reformation' and 'reconstruction' of the emunah (faith) of the Tanakh (Old Testament) is to be a twin-faceted phenomenon that would require Paul to explain more fully. To this very day Messianics insist on one facet and Evangelicals on the other. They are currently divided by the two, like two sides of one coin warring against each other, the one trying to efface the other and getting nowhere and having to begrudgingly accept that the other is inconveniently there to stay.

The only way the author of Hebrews can get the whole emet (truth) across is by means of a play on words which is virtually impossible to translate into English - or any other Western tongue for that matter. Let me read that passage to you because it is so important, and then I will explain it to you. I am going to read the William Barclay translation and then you can compare it with whatever translation of the Messianic Scriptures or New Testament you prefer (and by the way, I use both descriptions of the books between Matthew and Revelation deliberately, to make the point). So let's start at verse 15:

"Messiah (Christ) has therefore become the connecting link between Elohim (God) and man, and through Him the new covenant has come into being. A death has occurred - the death of Messiah (Christ) - as a result of which men [and women] have been rescued from their sins committed under the first ('old') covenant. And so those who have been called by Elohim (God) are enabled to receive the gift which Elohim (God) promised from all eternity. *In the case of a will, it is essential that the death of the testator should be established. It is only upon death that a will becomes valid and effective, for a will cannot be operative while the testator is still alive. It was for this very reason that even the first ('old') covenant was not inaugurated without [the shedding of] blood. For after every mitzvah (commandment) in the Torah (Law) had been announced to all the people, Moses took the blood of calves and goats, together with water, sclarlet wool, and hyssop (an araomatic herb), and sprinkled the book (scrolls) itself and all the people. 'This,' he said, 'is the blood of the covenant which Elohim (God) enjoined you to keep.' In the same way, he sprinkled the tabernacle too and everything that was used in worship. In fact, it would almost be true to say that in the regulations of the Torah (Law) everything must be cleansed by blood, and that there can be no forgiveness, unless blood has been shed.

"These are only copies of the heavenly things and they have to be cleansed by these rites. The heavenly things themselves need greater sacrifices than these. For it was not into a manmade sanctuary that Messiah (Christ) entered, a mere symbol of the real sanctuary; it was into heaven itself, now to appear before Elohim (God) [the Father] on our behalf. Nor is He there to repeat the sacrifice of Himself over and over again, as year after year the Cohen Gadol (High Priest) goes into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own. For, if that had been the way of it, He would have had to suffer over and over again, ever since the world was created. In actual fact He appeared once and for all, at the consummation of history, to wipe out sin through the sacrifice of Himself. For men it is appointed to die once - and after that comes the judgment. So Messiah (Christ) was once and for all sacrificed to bear the sins of all. And, now that sin has been dealt with, He will appear a second time, this time not to deal with sin, but to bring salvation to those who are eagerly awaiting and watching for Him" (Heb.9:15-28, Barclay).

The point of this passage depends, as I said, on a play on words. We have discussed the Greek word diathéké (Heb. b'rit) before which means two things: it means both a covenant and a will, which are two separate things. And yet the writer of Hebrews plays on these two meanings. The switch from one meaning to the other is made in verse 16*, and the argument is that the benefits of a diathéké/covenant/will, cannot be received until the testator has died. So for the new diathéké/covenant/will to become operative and effective the death of Messiah (Christ) had to happen first. Again, as I mentioned, a play on words is seldom translatable from one language to another, and this one is not, which is why I am going to great lengths to explain what's going on.

But here's the point: the word for covenant is the same as the word for will or testament which is why Messianics call Matthew to Revelation the 'Messianic' or B'rit Chadashah/New Covenant Scriptures' and why Christians (Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox) call them the 'New Testament' or 'New Will', if you prefer. That is why the idea of a 'Renewed Covenant' insisted on by Messianics makes little sense because this isn't a 'Renewed Will' (whatever that might mean) but a brand new one, it's an entirely new covenant that is validated by the death and subsequent physical resurrection of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). That's why He brings new, not 'renewed', life to those who believe - this isn't just about the resuscitation of a corpse but its complete transformation. Resurrection is something entirely new, distinguishing the way the Pharisees viewed the resurrection from what the resurrection actually was, is, and shall be. This isn't just about our old body coming back to life again: it's brand new', not merely a recycled mortal body suspended from the ageing and dying processes. And because it's an entirely new, glorified body, the Ruach or Spirit that inhabits and animates this new body is entirely new too. This new, resurrected body can do things our present bodies cannot do (like pass through solid physical matter).

Around May 2019, a little over a year ago, I introduced you to the concept of the phronema, remember? For those of you who have forgotten or who are new to this work, the phronema is the self-sacrificial, daily, consistent, repeatable and verifiable mindset, outlook or overall spirit of the authentic, biblical Messianic Community (Church) through both its faith (trusting) and its praxis or acceptable practice - 'the faith' of the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) - and one who thus lives by this phronema is described as being 'faithful' or possessing 'faithfulness'.

If you'd like some deep insights into what I am talking about, then I would invite you afterwards (if you're listening to this broadcast) or now (if you're studying this online) to carefully read the sermon I gave called, The Jonah Enigma: IV. Canons Within Canons. This was followed by a four-part series called Ancient Connections which I also invite you to dip into again or for the first time because then you will have some idea of what this new season of sermons (the Malkut Series #11) is going to be all about. I consider these to be amongst the most important teachings I have ever given. Then we began the Complete Messianic Evangelical New Testament Phronema Study Series course and started getting into the Gospel of Mark which we had to interrupt owing to a number of events including, most recently, the Melchizedek Priesthood Dedication & Raising of the Melchizedeki Tabernacle, a major Final Exodus event. I am hoping we will be able to get back into that study series again presently, as Yahweh wills, depending on critical world events. In the meantime we are being geared up for the next phase of the Second (Last, Final) Exodus, so be prepared for anything.

Let's get back to the sense of Hebrews 9:10 which Barclay rendered as the time when religion was totally reformed and reconstructed, or as N.T.Wright puts it in his Kingdom New Testament, "when everything will be put into the proper order" (KNT). That in itself is a controversial thought because most Messianics have in their mind the idea that the New Covenant was really just the Old Covenant being 'renewed' or 'resuscitated' (which, in part is true, as far as the moral and ethical Torah are concerned), an idea which sort of works from Matthew through Acts but which starts to break down by the time you start studying Paul's 13 letters but then finds itself disjunctive with what the apostle taught - with a quarter of the New Testament. And that's a reason many Messianics reject Paul because they just don't 'get' him the way most Evangelicals do. The gift of messianism, in our time, has been the restoration of the Torah lifestyle. But equally messianics have in many instances become a hindrance and obstacle to the Besorah (Gospel) in their misguided attempt to totally demonise everything and anything 'Christian' and 'Evangelical' as though it were some terrible accident of history and subversion by Satan, a spiritual legacy of their Judaism which hates all things Christian (unless they happen to be duped zionists - see the Jacob's Trouble series). What many messianics call 'Christian' is, at its core, the authentic expression of 'Gospel faith', even if a number of Christendom's festivals and creeds are unquestionably pagan additions to the point of becoming foundational for them. In that respect messianics can be rather extreme ('Ultra-Messianic'), throwing out the baby with the bathwater in their total rejection of evangelical Christianity, which in turn can lead the more radical among them going down a very dangerous path indeed, including rejecting Paul and the deity of Messiah.

Let me remind you one more time what the phronema is: it is the self-sacrificial, daily, consistent, repeatable and verifiable mindset, outlook or overall spirit of the authentic, biblical Messianic Community (Church) through both its faith/trusting in Christ (as exemplified gloriously by parts of Christianity) and its authentic practice (as exemplified by the messianic Torah-lifestyle) which together constitute what Scripture calls 'the faith' and 'faithfulness'. That's why we have been calling ourselves 'Messianic Evangelical' these last few decades to get that particular idea clearly across. But it's not wholly adequate, and we've known that for a long time, even if it has provided some useful handles for investigators to grab and hold onto while they find their way into the phronema of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit).

I mentioned at the beginning that Islam is about to go through a major crisis. It's holy book, the Koran, claims that it was delivered word-perfect from heaven and that in its present form today, it is flawless. Unfortunately for Moslems, there are at least 30 or more different 'Korans' in existence with somewhere in the order of 34,000 or more textual differences that contradict one another. I don't want to get into the fascinating history of that book which has heavily plagiarised both the Talmud and apocryphal Christian writings, because we don't have time, but basically serious Western-educated Moslem scholars like Sheikh Yasir Qadhi know deep down that the Koran's own claim is fraudlent and they are either in denial or having a crisis of faith. Why do I bring this up? Because most Christians of the conservative set believe the Bible is something similar, and even if they pay lip-service to the idea that it was written by both Elohim (God) and men inspired by the Ruach (Spirit) and not delivered pre-written in, and from, Heaven, they tend to believe their particular English copy is word-perfect from Genesis to Revelation so that it might as well have been delivered pre-packaged from above in the manner claimed by Moslems for the Koran.

One thing we as Messianic Evangelicals are at pains to emphasise is that the Bible can only be understood within the historical context of each book. The Bible writers colour their writings with their particular personalities and their worldview as it existed at the time of writing. For example, where earth-bound observers used 'heavens' to describe the visible universe - as in "The heavens (shammayim) declare the glory of Elohim (God); and the firmament (raqiyah) (or 'dome' - NRSV; 'skies' - NIV; 'canopy', 'expanse' or 'visible part of the sky') shows His handiwork (ma'aseh = 'handiwork'; 'craftsmanship' - NLT)" (Ps.19:1, NKJV), a 21st century King David would be far more technical, based on our contemporary knowledge of science and astronomy. Nevertheless Yahweh inspired pre-scientifically-informed men to express His revelation on the basis of the limits of their knowledge. So I wholly agree with Vatican II when it declared the Catholic position - paraphrasing - that "the Bible is the Word of God (Davar Elohim) written using the words of men".

Because in our immaturity we want the Bible to be something more like the Koran in terms of its delivery, we often forget or overlook the 'words of men' part not only in terms of limited scientific know-how but also the sometimes very carnal 'temprements' of men. We read of David's frustrations in the Psalms, Jeremiah's fits of depression in Jeremiah, Solomon's pessimism in Ecclesiastes, and so on. It's a very human book indeed but what makes it special - unique - is the way Yahweh used these very fallible men to convey His emet (truth) about ultimate reality - visible and invisible - and His will through revelation and prophecy. Our vision and expression is limited by our mortality. We see only images and reflections and struggle to express things greater than ourselves. As Paul said:

"For since the creation of the world Elohim's (God's) invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Rom.1:20, NIV).

We do have a tendency to filter what we read in Scripture through the lens of our own expectations, beliefs and even lack of belief, and that goes for the translators too. Consider the well-known Scripture at 2 Timothy 3:16 which is used by different groups to mean different things. Here's a version many of you will be familiar with:

"All Scripture is Elohim/God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of Elohim (God) may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim.3:16-17, NIV).

The King James Bible renders this, "all scripture is given by inspiration of Elohim (God)" (KJV) and all conservative Protestant commentaries will tell you that it is the Protestant Bible that's the subject matter here, or if you're a King James-onlyer, that it's one particular English translation made in 1611 that's inspired, but none of the rest. The problem is - and this is something Hebraic-roots Messianics by and large recognise, the native tongue of the New Testament writers wasn't Greek (which is what nearly all our New Testaments are translated from, even though Paul was fluent in Greek) but (in the case of most of the New Testament) Aramaic which is why the Aramaic version reads slightly differently:

"Every writing which was written by the Ruach (Spirit) is profitable..." (HRV)

This is more accurate than the general sense of the Greek translation which says that "every writing is given by inspiration of God". That is why modern scholarly translations like the New Revised Standarsd Version are honest enough to add, as a footnote, that an alternative reading to the traditional Protestant one could be "every scripture inspired by God is also..." etc. (NRSV). Do you see the difference? Are all the canonical Scriptures as a whole inspired (which will depend on what canon you adhere to, as there are some differences between Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Messianic compilations) or is this simply a reminder to submit to writings that are Yahweh-breathed, without specifically naming them? And remember, when Paul wrote these words to Timothy, only the Tanakh or Old Testament canon was considered 'Scripture' because Paul had no idea that one day his epistles would become Holy Writ!

Indeed, as I have said hundreds of times in my ministry, the Bible nowhere predicts that a book called the 'Bible' will come into existence! Different parts of the Bible are mentioned - Yah'shua (Jesus) mentions the "Law and the Prophets" - "the Torah (the 5 Books of Moses) and the Nevi'im (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.)" and the Psalms, and John refers to the Book of Revelation as a self-contained entity all on its own which we mustn't alter in any way (Rev.22:18-19), but no unitary Protestant or Catholic 'Bible' is ever mentioned, thus making sense of the better rendition of Paul to Timothy:

"Every scripture inspired by Elohim (God) is also useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to Elohim (God) may be proficient, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim.3:16-19, NRSV - alt. reading).

That means, for instance, that what Job's friends said is not profitable for any of the above except they be contrasted with what Job said or what Yahweh said to Job so that we can clearly see the difference between right and wrong. We have to see the bigger picture, the whole story, the entire text, for it to acquire the fullness of inspiration, and not simply cherry pick bits and pieces here, creating personal theological houses of cards. Likewise, the serpent's words to Eve taken alone are useless until they are contrasted with what Yahweh said. Only with the bigger picture do we start to appreciate, see, and move in the phronema which is why we must immerse ourselves in this book to get the fullness of its revelation out. The Scriptures are like DNA - there are different levels or orders of coding using the same material or code sequences. So be careful when people tell you the Bible is 'verbally' inspired (some even claim every letter is inspired) because on it's own that statement is deceptive even if in the original autographs it may be true when taken as a whole. It's the phronema that's inspired and profitable - the Word in action as a living, incarnated entitity, an expression of the Divine Word, Logos or Davar in human life.

Brothers and sisters, this has been a long teaching this morning, and I apologise, but it's important that you learn to implement Scripture the living, phronemic way in the turbulent days ahead. I have had a practical reason for saying all this. And, I know, it's all too easy to go off on tangents or get into pet topics. My purpose has not been to get into a discussion or debate about the canon but to get you to see how to use Scripture, which was one of those four horns of security I mentioned at the beginning. We've already made it clear what we at NCAY believe. There are many different genres of Scripture each of which have to be read and understood a little differently from the others. There's prophecy, poetry, apocalypse, history, letters, gospels, and so on. But is there a difference between the way modern 20th and 21st century people read Scripture today than, say, 1,500 years ago? Absolutely, and that is why we started looking at the Davar (Word) as phronema, a word used by Paul in the Greek version of Romans 8:6-8,27, so that we could get back to that. The nearest we can come to it in English - at least as a single English word - would be 'mind' or 'thinking', but as we have seen before, it's much, much more than that, because our Western idea of 'thinking' and 'mind' is essentially Greek in substance. In Hebrew there's a big heart component too, and overarching both is the idea of ruach, spirit, breath or wind (hence the word 'inspired' or 'breathed in' by the Ruach/Spirit).

I wanted today to create a kind of 'boundary line' around this new Malkut series of sermons because the Kingdom of Elohim (God) is radically different from the merging kingdoms of this world, kingdoms that are becoming uniformly Antichrist. All too often the border between the two gets confused leaving a very dangerous fuzzy area inbetween where many a soul has floundered and perished because so many denominations straddle the border, some jutting more into the world than others, with some almost totally annexed and absorbed by the world. That border has to be drawn clearly with lots of Torah markers so that we know accurately where one kingdom ends and the other begins. Then we can join the markers together into a line - a very clear division - which we can invite those belonging to the world to defect across that border into the Kingdom of Deliverance and Freedom. Then we can properly disciple converts in the fullness of the liberty of the Besorah (Gospel), something that's only possible with clearly marked and guarded borders.