Shabbat shalom chaverim and welcome to the first sabbath assembly of the year, the first sabbath of Aviv, the Month of Blossoms, and the sabbath immediately before the feast of Pesach (Passover). The snow has returned here in Sweden but hopefully won't last long. The weather is definitely more spring-like.

Last week some fellow messianics were disputing with me as to whether we were a month too early with the New Year and gave a variety of reasons for their belief. Because of the different ways messianics calculate the New Year and the calculation disparities that result, a lot of fruitless debate results which we try to avoid. It was because of the need for an accurate calendar that we developped our online Dynamic Creation Calendar in 2012 which was again recently updated to make sure it was still accurate. And as I pointed out last week, the way Father orchestrated the Book of Revelation course to end on exactly the day before the New Year was one of many signs that we were on the right track [1].

Things came to a head in a similar dispute 9 years ago in 2015, this time between our own people, which resulted in a huge collaborative effort to iron out the discrepancies, which we did, and we now refer people back to that important study that led us to conclude that "Aviv 1 is the first/closest New Moon to the vernal equinox" [2] which this year is at 4.06 am on Wednesday 20 March in the Roman Gregorian calendar. Since 10 March is closer to 20 March (10 days difference) than 8 April (18 days difference), it follows that the correct Aviv 1 was indeed a week ago today and that an extra (13th) intercalcated month is not required this year. I hope that this resolves any doubts people may have had. Now obviously if you are not of this ministry and calculate the New Year differently, using sunset as day's end and beginning rather than sunrise, you will have problems and need to research this issue out first. If you still follow the compromised Talmudic (Rabbinical) Jewish Calendar or some other one (like the Enochian or Jubillee calendars), you need to made a serious study of the Creation Calendar and take a look at the study I made that conclusively proves, beyond any dispute, that this was the one Moses followed during the Exodus [3]. So unless you can prove that Yahweh commanded Joshua or any of his successors to change the way Moses taught (you can't...not in Scriptureat any rate) then as far as I and this ministry are concerned, the matter is permanently settled until Messiah returns and can determine how we are to observe the times and seasons in the Millennium.

With that matter hopefully out of the way, we come to our traditional subject at this time of the year which is preparation for Passover. If you are persuaded, as I am, that Yahweh, for a prophetic purpose, has synchronised the feasts this year with actual political events happening around us as I speak, then I think you will be further persuaded that what I have to share with you today will be helpful. We are creatures of the light - the Light of Messiah - and not of the dark like the world with all its ongoing and irresolvable perplexities. For prior to Passover and the first Exodus, Egypt had been convulsed by Yahweh's judgments, the Ten Plagues in which He overturned, one by one, the alleged power of Pharaoh's gods (including Pharaoh himself who claimed to be a god), demonstrating to Egyptian and Israelite alikethat they were nothing. Even the magical tricks of the pagan priests, with their occultic ability to turn rods into snakes, were brought to nothing when Moses repeated what they had done and his snake consumed theirs. We've long known that, as in former years, Yahweh's supernatural power would return to meet the needs of our own day as this current world becomes more and more wicked and occultised, and Satan once more brings out his fancy tricks department with which to beguile the masses.

A first century BC Hellenised Israelite philosopher of the Tribe of Judah called Philo who lived in the great metropolis of Alexandria, Egypt, whose writing was widely used in Christ's day and even cited in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) [4], very much captures the atmosphere that prevailed in those days of plague in a piece of superb literature that has survived as the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, part of which I would like to read to you in a moment so that if darker days sudddenly come, you will not be surprised or unduly dismayed, as well be reassured that the arrogance of the wicked which you see displayed all around you will suddenly evapourate. For when darkness comes, it is in judgment of the wicked, and that is always of benefit to the righteous even if they must also suffer alongside them for a while.

But before I do that, though, let me share with you a saying of a contemporary author, children's advocate, and promoter of what she calls 'gentle parenting and effective discipline'. I am speaking of L.R.Knost, whose book Two Thousand Kisses a Day I have had highly recommended to me. This is not necessarily an endorsement of her feminism or social justice activism which I have not had time to look into but simply an acknowlegement of the profound truth of the following words. You may have already encountered them on the internet precisely because they resonate from our collective experience as true:

"Life is amazing. And then it's awful. And then it's amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That's just living - heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it's breathtakingly beautiful" (L.R.Knost).

And it's precisely like that because Yahweh created life beautiful, but it's also fallen making it ugly too, and the two, as it were, are forced to coexist, to clash, part for a while for breathing space, and then they clash again. The world (and the West in particular) had a massive clash between 1939 and 1945, had a brief golden age after that, settled down to the mundane, and now we find ourselves accelerating towards another gigantic clash which can only be avoided if enough people of good will come together, persuade the majority to repent, and talk and compromise rather than feed the rapacious, profit-making war machine of evil men, because, as should now be obvious, another global conflict could at worst destroy the planet (which the Bible says will not happen) or at best severely poison and cripple it (which might happen). That's the global scene but really today I want to focus on the individual and personal.

If you can accept and embrace the reality that Knost describes and not have meltdowns or become magnets of misery every time awful things happen (because they happen to everyone, not just you and I), you will make things so much easier for yourself and those around you. People need hope and edification, not navel-gazing and abject negativity. Everyone has stories of woe to tell and, yes, they must be told to someone willing to help with a view to finding healing and reconcilation, but we must not turn our horror stories into into a perpetual 'woe is me' pity-party, forever reliving past miseries. This is the kind of world our Heavenly Father sent us into so that we could see contrasts, and either choose to grow and prosper, stagnate, or contract into inward-looking sterility. I guarantee you aren't going to change the bigger reality around you in the world as a whole very much, if at all, unless you have an extraordinary powerful anointing from heaven and are willing to sacrifice yourself to a global task, forgetting self, and perhaps even laying down your life. Few can or want to which is why Elohim (God) has to intervene at some point and put everything to rights, which He will accomplish through the Second Coming of Messiah.

Yes, we can perhaps shift the balance a little from the awful to the beautiful here and there individually and at times collectively too when people learn to cooperate and put others before themselves. Then we can start influencing our local communities for the better too - sometimes. So let us use the elements of reality for what they were intended by the Creator - inward growth and outward service. Our calling as believers is to make an impact on an individual level before anything else. What you don't do is what Marxists and other political idealists do who trample on individuals in order to achieve some sort of overall societal benefit. That never works because it entirely misses the point about what being a human is - it just makes everything worse. The collective matters but so does the individual - and collectives start with individuals else those collectives become instruments of oppression, withness the history of the Soviet Union and Maoist China.

Just look at the history of communism and fascism, and now coporate liberalism, and see where they have got us. We must deal with individual development and let Yahweh take care of the bigger societal picture because without reformation at the grass roots there can be no lasting reformation politically and socially at a national or global level. The people have to first individually be willing. Individuals must be awakened and transformed first and only the life-giving power of the resurrected Christ can do that through the mediation and instrumentality of men and women of sound heart and good will. The Utopians never will. You can't claim to love humanity and expect love for humans to flow out of that. You have to start with individuals and work outwardly. That is why I am now such a staunch opponent of all forms of statism, and by statism I mean the total, or near total, state administration and control of social and economic affairs. It simply doesn't work. Statism, because its power is centred in a small, often unaccounable, self-perpetuating and unremovable élite, always ends up oppressing and murdering people who won't conform to their narrow vision. And unfortunately we are now living in an era where the worst forms of statism have combined into an evil monster unlike anything we've seen before, far worse than anything Stalin and Hitler spawned: a communist-fascist hybrid conjoined by corporate capitalism led by people who claim to be wiser than everyone else and who therefore insist on the right to blind obedience. We talked quite recently about man's inability to use power righteously in his own strength [5].

Equally, starting with self doesn't work either, because self alone is dead. We need something or someone greater than ourselves so that we don't become selfish, narcissistic, self-entitled brats who evolve into cry-bullies demaning our imagined 'rights' in everything. But we do have to start with the individual and that individual must understand that its future happiness can only be assured by becoming what it was created for. For we all have a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts that only Yahweh can fill through His Son Yah'shua (Jesus) to make us what we always wanted to be. He offers Himself free but the maintenance of that acquired freedom in Christ costs us everything we have. The healing, restorative and empowering gift of Christ is only given to those who believe in Him, surrender to Him and obey Him. His presence in our life not only enables us to navigate the bad times and be influencers for the good around us, but fulfills us in every way by making us whole persons. By accepting Christ into our lives we come out stronger instead of weaker in the good times as well as the bad. We can navigate both and be victorious in both.

By living victoriously in the resurrection power released to us by our faith in the work of the cross, we are assured of a glorious future and an inwardly safe and contented present. Please understand early on that He does not promise us paradise in our outward circumstances. This is impossible in a fallen world such as this but He can, and does, make us sufficient to successfully deal with every situation as it comes up. Life, as Knost correctly pointed out, is a conflicting mixture of opposites precisely because good and evil must coexist for now until we have attained to the spiritual stature for which we were created. And like it or not, being in this mixed-up world is necessary for that, so that we can be put to the test. Yahweh has allowed this for a wise purpose. That doesn't mean we should be passive towards evil and go an hide away on some desert island (the devil will, I guarantee, find us there too), but rather pursue goodness, resist wickedness, and accept the-for-now inevitability of the mix which is reality generally, constantly repositioning our sails to get the best wind out of every situation, positive and negative, as we chart our way through adversity, the good times and the drab-and-ordinary times too. We must learn to deal with, and profit from, the good, the bad and the mundane.

But back to Philo and his Widsom of Solomon composition that I mentioned earlier. This is one of the few Apocryphal books that are found in Catholic but not Protestant Bibles (though it was in the Protestant 1611 King James Version) that I find instructive and helpful. It paints a picture of reality that is constantly repeating itself in every generation in new and varied forms, and will constantly do so, until the Second Coming. Whether we struggle merely to survive or, if we're wise, go further with divine backing and struggle to prosper too, is entirely up to us. And by prosper I don't necessarily mean make lots of money but to principally grow in character and spiritual stature. The only thing that is guaranteed is that if we don't struggle, we will at some point be overwhelmed, so struggle we must (as Darwin correctly pointed out) if we are serious about living.

But first you must believe there's a point - a purpose - to everything even when nothing seems to make a lot of sense. Whether we struggle with a celebratory song in our hearts or a dirge (mournful song) is for us to choose provided we are humble enough to recognise that we're going to need others' help, and they ours. It soon becomes apparent to the observant that to succeed in this world requires the cooperation of others, and that's where community becomes so important - for Christians and Messianics, the Messianic Community or 'Church' because none of us can do it entirely on our own. Yes, some things we must manage on our own. Yes, there are times when we must stand on our own in order to defend our values and convictions against implaccable opposition but we can't remain alone indefinitely without either stagnating or crumbling. We do need each other to prosper. It's a reality of life.

Now listen with me as I read Philo's extraordinary perception of the spiritual currents at work in the Exodus story, particulatly (in this extract) in regard to the behaviour and reactions of the wicked. I'm sharing this by way of encouragement to those who may suppose that the wicked always have the upper hand and that resisting them is hopeless. It isn't...because the bad times don't last. He has structured his description poetically like that of a Tanakh (Old Testament) navi (prophet), a reason, I suppose, some (like the Catholics) have felt justified in canonising it:

"Your judgments [Yahweh] are indeed great and inexpressible,
which is why undisciplined souls have gone astray.
When impious men imagined they had the qadosh (holy, set-apart) nation in their power,
they themselves lay prisoners of the dark, in the fetters of long night,
confined under their own roofs, banished from eternal providence.
While they sought to remain unnocticed with their secret sins,
curtained by dark forgetfulness,
they were scattered in fearful dismay,
terrified by appariions.
The hiding place sheltering them could not ward off their fear;
terrifying noises echoed round them;
and gloomy, grim-faced spectres haunted them.
No fire had power enough to give them light,
nor could the brightly blazing stars
illuminate that dreadful night -
only a great blaze, burning on its own accord,
that, full of dread, shone through to them;
and in their terror, once that sight had vanished,
they thought what they had seen more terrible that ever.
Their magic arts proved utterly unavailing,
their boasted cunning was ignominiously confounded;
for those who professed to drive out fears and disorders from sick souls,
themselves fell sick of a ridiculous terror.
Even when there was nothing frightful to scare them,
the prowling of beasts and the hissing of reptiles terrified them;
they died convulsed with fright,
resfusing so much as to look at the air, which cannot be eluded anyhow!
Wickedness is confessed very cowardly, and it condemns itself;
under pressure from conscience it always assumes the worst.
Fear, indeed, is nothing other
than the abandonment of the supports offered by reason;
the less you rely within yourself on these,
the more alarming is it not to know the cause of your suffering.
And they, all locked in the same sleep,
while that darkness lasted, which was in fact quite powerless
were now chased by monstrous spectres,
now paralysed by fainting of their souls;
for a suddden, unexpected terror had swept over them.



"And this, whoever it might be that fell there
stayed clamped to the spot in this prison without bars.
Whether he was ploughman or shepherd,
or someone working by himself,
he was still overtaken and suffered the inevitable fate,
for all had been bound by the one same chain of darkness.
The soughing of the wind,
the tuneful noise of birds in the spreading branches,
the measured beat of water in its poweful course,
the harsh din of the rocky avalanche,
the invisible, swift course of bounding animals,
the roaring of the savagest wild beasts,
the echo resounding from the clefts in the mountains,
all held them paralysed with fear.
The whole world was shining with brilliant light
and, unhindered, went on with its work;
over them alone there spread a heavy darkness,
image of the dark that would receive them.
But heavier than the darkness, the burden they were to themselves"
(Wisdom of Solomon, 17:1-20, JB).

What amazing wisdom in perception and how eloquently put though credit must also be given to the translating committee at the School of Biblical Studies in Jerusalem who first rendered the Greek into French, and then to the translating team under Alexander Jones of Christ's College, Liverpool who, mostly working with the original Greek, rendered the beautiful prose you have heard a quotation from in English. The whole of the first edition of the Jeruslam Bible is like this, a reason I use it a lot, though as a dynamic-equivalent translation with Catholic leanings, you do have to be aware of Catholic bias. Philo above all else had a good grasp of human nature and understood how the wicked respond to light and truth. The Wisdom of Solomon, along with Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), are two of the Apocryphal books our School of the Elders study as commentaries on biblical principles. And though the reference, if somewhat nationalistic, is to his fellow Judeans, Philo ends his account with a reminder of Yahweh's promise to all those in either covenant (Old or New) who are true to Him:

"Yes, Yahweh, in every way You have made Your people great and glorious; You have never disdained them, but stood by them always and everywhere" (WS 19:22, JB).

As believers, we are each given a 'territory' to conquer from the darkness (the 'space' occupied by our spirits), hold it against being retaken by the darkness and develop it into an island of lights for the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) to find refreshment at, and blessed by. That is the legacy of every servant of Christ. And finally, we must fine ways to pass that legacy on, whether through individuals or in some transmissable medium. For the last 500 years since the development of the printing press by Gutenberg in particular, that medium has been in mass-produced books; and though books are fragile, they have shown remarkable endurance provided they are printed in sufficient quantities. In times of political and religious book-burning, which come around with frequent monotony, it takes only one volume to survive for it to be later propagated again. Christians are particiculaly famous, amongst antiquarians, for their multiple preservation of copies of the New Testament. There are those who have faith that electronic media are the future for preservation but I have my severe reservations on two main counts:

• 1. Firstly, it's a lot easier to duplicate, forge or rewrite electronic media, the more so that we now have AI; and
• 2. Secondly, it's a lot easier to destroy electronic media - one giant solar flare of sufficient magnitude, or a worldwide EMP attack, could potentially wipe it all out in seconds, plunging the world back into the pre-electronic age.

These concerns lead me to question the whole thinking about the usefulness of information itself, at least in the spiritual and moral realm. Anciently, before much or anything was written down, the substance of sacred texts and wisdom literature were passed down orally - by word of mouth. But for that to succeeed you have to have integrity of transmission which means its human transmitters must tnhemselves have integrity and must be systematically schooled in the same discipline. In an age of feverish activity in things mundane and useless, mass electronic distraction and the shrinking ability to think and learn, the future looks dim unless a new community can arise that restores some of the tried and tested old ways. As you know, I am a great believer in books - a bibliophile - not simply for sentimental reasons or the familiarity that comes with being raised in a world where books were regarded as the highest and safest repository of knowledge, but because to use them requires an important discipline that is increasingly disappearing - quietness, contemplation and an active, creative imagination. There is far too much unimaginative, colourless mechanical programming these days, and not nearly enough space for the spirit to roam.

I realise I am sounding uncharacteristically vague and arty today but that's because I believe that is as important as the scientific, mathematical faculty which is at least one half of our mind. Perhaps the hope - or at least some hope - for the future resides in the creative ability to discover new ways to express fundamental truths. At the same time, in a world so saturated with information, with knowldge growing exponentially, is is increasingly hard to separate out what matters from that which doesn't simply because there is so much to potentially process. We need wise, experienced men and women to make collections of what they regard as being the most important knowledge for humanity, a process that can get very subjective at times. There is no one way. At the very least, we need catalysts for each new generation, nuggets of gold refined by the previous generation and assembled in useful collections bound by some sort of system and order, that will spur the new one to rediscovering the old ways and discovering new ones.

As one who has had a heavy burden placed on his heart to devote his life to extracting, rearranging and presenting both old truth and new in often new ways, which I have tried to gather together into a single website for the generations after mine, you can perhaps understand in some way my urgency. History is full of the tragic examples of generations that have disdained knowledge, deprioretised its preservation, lost it, and then descended into ignorance, darkness and finally barbarism. It happened once in Europe, it happened æons ago in the ancient Americas. And though it might sound incredible to you to hear me say so, because of the fact that we have so much information at our fingertips now, I am fully persuaded we are entering such an age of darkness. And the reason is because the élites, who crave global dominance and are close to achieving it, want to carefully censor information to exclude the truth and promote their dark agenda. And the rise of AI has given them the tool to rapidly rewrite not only history in their 'Newspeak' but everything the way they (and therefore Satan) want it presented. I shudder every time I see AI-produced art and novels because this is crushing the impulse for human creativity and all that makes us distinctively human. It is preparing us for soulless transhumanism, the merger of man and machine. That is why original works must be preserved in a way that is difficult for AI to counterfeit to foreclose a situation where finally nobody knows what's real anymore. The counterfeit will be called the real thing, and the real thing a counterfeit.

In such a nightmarish scenario, where works of importance cease becoming available, the need for continuous revelation also becomes imperative. Consider this. What if all Bibles were to be made illegal, confiscated and burned (it has happened, and still happens in some places) and Yahweh's witnesses need to quote and bear testimony of His Davar (Word)? Those who have memorised Scripture have an immediate advantage, of course, a reason we encourage Scripture memorisation from a young age. Some of you here memorised passages from the King James Version (KJV) as I did. Yet others may have committed the Revised Standard Version (RSV) to memory and yet others the New International Version (NIV). Paul was not as good at this as he he might have liked because he had a tendency to paraphrase, often forgetting which Tanakh (Old Testament) book he was citing too - I so identify with him! And though there are those who make a great deal of fuss over precise English quotations, we must remember that all translations are conceptual to one degree or another and that what matters is the substance of the original text so that our listeners get the essential meaning of that text, not 'exact words'. If the exact wording of Christ were vital, we would need to bear witness only in Aramaic and that would mean having to teach our listeners Aramaic too. For reasonms best known to Him, Yahweh has chosen English to be the language of international communication though French, Spanish and Russian have competed with it, and soon Chinese.

So what matters is accuracy of meaning, not a particular English reading. I am thinking especially of the 1611 King James Version Only craze that has evolved into a cult of sorts. We need to remind these people that not one of them actually owns a 1611 edition of the Bible translation they believe to be infallible! And to furthermore point out, that nearly 1,000 editions recording about 22,000 differences were produced between 1611 and 1769 containing minor corrections. Most of these were printing errors and changes in spelling as the English language itself underwent change for during this time the French letter 'J' was introduced which had previously not been in our language. So 'Iesus' became 'Jesus'. More importantly, as far as the KJV was concerned, is the fact that four real English revisions have been made since. The five versions which are most like the KJV are the Revised Version (RV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New King James Version (NKJV), and the most recent, the English Standard Version (ESV), all pof which are favoured by conservative evangelicals. In all there are over 3,030 similar translations to the KJV if you count the over 2,011 languages it has been translated into too (I even have a Norwegian translation of one of those KJV revisions and personally met the translator in Oslo). The KJV you buy in the shops today is not the 1611 but the 1769 edition, the product of 158 years of language refinement and evolution.

My main point in sharing all this with you is this. The same truth can be said in many different ways. In a language as rich and diverse as English there can never therefore be a single 'correct' or even a single 'most correct' translation, whether the KJV or other versions. Lots of passages of Scripture make it plain that Christ is Divine/God - and this statement I have just made, though you won't find that precise wording in the New Testament, is truth, because that's the concept we need to accept, adhere to and trust. My own confidence in the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life rest firmly in this proposition because only an infinite Being could ever accomplish these things. And so when at this time of the year we contemplate the infant Yah'shua (Jesus) part of the marvel and wonder that the Creator of the Universe was present as that baby, it is that realisation that induces me to worship Him.

'Yah'shua is Elohim' or 'Jesus is God' is the Truth Concept that matters. That is what one distills out of numerous Bible passages. And that was the very first divine flash of revelation I received when I was investigating Buddhism in Oxford. It's what led me to abandon the Buddhist quest and change direction in my search for truth. That three-word truth has been my guiding star ever since and repeating those three words in testimony is as true as citing all the passages of Scripture affirming that one truth in whatever language and in whatever Bible version exists in that language. So I can say 'Jesus Kristus er Herre' in Norwegian, 'Jesus Christus ist der Herr' in German, 'Jésus Christ est Seigneur' in French, 'Dominus Iesus Christus' in Latin, 'Kurious Ishsous Cristos' in Greek, 'Jezus Chrystus jest Panem' in Polish, etc. and they would all be true. Jesus Christ is Lord, Yeshua haMashiach is Master and were it possible to communicate telepathically in pictures, something that doesn't need words at all, we could still convey the same truth. Indeed don't we have at the back of our NKJV Evidence Bibles the Gospel arranged in pictures only (pp.1857-1860) which you can present to someone whose language you cannot speak and who cannot understand your language? People have been converted this way. Indeed, there is no one way to convert. Observing a believer living out the Gospel, wanting that, and being 'infected' by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) will work too. We don't all have to journey from the same spot and in the same way. And as any educator will tell you, no two children perveive and learn in exactly the same way.

Why am I saying this? As we begin the new biblical year we're not only going to face new challenges but are going to have to find new solutions to old problems too. Truth isn't just a set of doctrinal propositions written in one particular language and in a certain style, though it's that to, but ultimately it's a life lived. It's an ongoing Story, but a true story, not a work of fiction. Indeed, Christians know Truth as a Person: "I am the way, the truth and the life", He said (Jn.14:6). Truth is living, personal and it journeys or moves. Like a flowing river, it changes location constantly. It doesn't sit still. To own it fully and be saved or regenerated, we have to be fully in Christ. And it begins in infant form and grows to adulthood when properly nurtured. Human life is maintained by eating food, breathing air and drinking water not by merely knowing that we must do these three things but actually breathing, eating and drinking. Knowing is important but it's only a step to living. Life is proactive - it requires a response to knowing the truth about it. Part of that is instinctive just as understanding we need Christ comes from a deep inner spiritual hunger that's worldless at first until it's presented to us in words. That need is a Person. So I'm not saying words are unimportant. I'm simply saying they're a stage in a process and that it's the concepts or meanings behind words and word structures that count more than the words themselves. These concepts or meanings are also what the Bible calls the Davar, Logos or Word. A parrot can repeat words but cannot understand them and sadly there are a lot of professing Christians and Messianics like that. They simply parrot or imitate but don't 'move with the actual music' of the Gospel life.

Which brings us back to where we started today and that is the experience of life itself - the amazing, the awful and the ordinary. The awful one day will pass away and the reality that the returning Christ brings with Him may well also be 'ordinary' but it will soon become 'amazing-ordinary'. Trust me! The amazing will be the default always and it will only get more amazing, just as our journey in Christ gets more and more amazing the deeper we come to know Him. I met Him face-to-face, as it were, in 1977, though I was getting glimpses of Him earlier, as in that Buddhist meeting I mentioned. I have pursued Him intellectually, emotionally and spiritually - and, yes, physically too - and the journey is still going on. It just gets deeper and deeper, more and more personal and relational, and less and less intellectual or propositional. Things simply 'are' now and don't need mountains of words to assure me I'm okay.

There are behaviours we imitate and there are behaviours we become. I've known the Saviour now for 47 years and yet there's so much I still don't know about Him. He continues to surprise me and to overturn assumptions I have made about Him along the way. And just as amazing is getting to know my Heavenly Father Yahweh too and who the Person of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is. Have you ever had the experience of thinking someone was a man and finding out she was a woman (or vice versa) when you got up close? Well, that's what happened with the Ruach (Spirit) in my life. Today I know Her (Them, actually), yesterday I spoke of Her as an impersonal 'it' and before that I assumed She was 'He' because of tradition. The three core Entities of the Elohimhead (Godhead) - father, Son and Holy Spirit - are Persons who can know and must learn to intimately relate to through habitual, daily communion...they cannot be known simply by intellectually arranging biblical information in our head but must be encountered supernaturally. The biblical information about them isn't unimportant, obviously, just not the same thing. Knowing me personally is not the same thing as simply reading a Biography about me somewhere and creating a discription from what others have said about me and assuming that that's 'knowing' me. It isn't. That's knowing about me...and then only in part.

But before I could arrive at that place of knowing Elohim (God) intimately, I had to outgrow the many biblically foreign man-made creeds which, though useful as a primer in the days of my spiritual infancy, eventually started obscuring and impeding like veils rather than revealing and enhancing the Truth as to their existential reality. Christianity mostly now sees through ancient fossilised Greek neo-Platonist lenses which is a distorted vision of spiritual reality, useful perhaps for Greek believers coming out of paganism 2,000 years ago but redundant today. The Gospel isn't Greek, or Roman...or American. You'll discover some of those ground-breaking truth discoveries in my Hot Potatoes testimony. Back in 1977 I couldn't have dreamed what Father Yahweh would show me over the following years and that continuous revelation never stops. This last year has for me been an extraordinary time of revelation, not so much in my head but in my heart, but this revelation would never have been possible without all the steps I had to learn along the way. We are creatures of process learning. We don't learn all in one go but gradually. I am holding more hot potatoes now than presented in that original article, by the way, and I'm not even sure I'm allowed to write them down yet, though I am dropping hints here and there as fast as I am allowed or able, as in this year's theme which is the dual Garden-City nature of the New Jerusalem symbolised by two dragonflies in a dance. I'm frankly amazed and overwhelmed with gratitude by what I am encountering and incorporating into my essential being now. I am changed forever.

And yes, this last year has been full of the amazing, but it has also been full of more of the awful and plenty of the ordinary too. It's always going to be like that. Some of the awful we can bring to an end, some we can't, and new forms of awful will continue to arise around us especially as we head for more war and more totalitarianism. Think how awful life in Ukraine is right now. And as I keep reminding my friends and loved ones, 'It is what it is' or the acronym 'IIWWII', not because I'm a fatalist (I'm absolutely not [6]) but because I like to think I am both hopeful and realistic. I don't pretend the awful doesn't exist or resent the ordinary. They are necessary companions in my earthly probation.

Next week is the Passover Season as we once more retrace our steps, begin again with the simple things, and hopefully gain new insights with which to take our lives to a new spiritual level. What we should not be doing is starting each new biblical year in the same place we were at the previous year. I am personally so way beyond where I was in 2023 that it now seems like a distant universe. I hope you are too, and if not, that this year will be the first of many years of great unmissed opportunity and spiritual development for you. See you in just under a week's time for the Passover, so get your lamb, red grape juice and unleavened bread ready! Yahweh bless you! Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Also see, Aviv 1 and the Equinox (2016)
[2] The Aviv 1 Quest: From Search to Discovery (2015)
[3] Is the Exodus Absolute Biblical Proof for the Creation Calendar? (2019)
[4] Matthew 16:18/Wisdom 16:13; Matthew 27:43/Wisdom 2:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1/Wisdom 8:8; Romans 9:21/Wisdom 15:7; Ephesians 6:13-17/Wisdom 5:17-20; Hebrews 11:5/Wisdom 4:10
[5] See, Book of Revelation LXXVI: 'I am Coming Soon!' (Revelation 22:8-21)
[6] See Agency