Hosken-News Blog

Saturday, June 26, 2021

The Who, What, Where, and Why of Faith

The Who, What, Where, and Why of Faith The "Who: of faith is, of course, Jesus Christ Himself. He said – "I AM the door. If anyone enters in by me, he will be saved" (John 10:9a) and "I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me" (John 14:6). This makes it very clear: not the Church nor the Bible are the door, the way to faith and eternal life; only Christ Himself, the living Word of God. The Church and the Bible are very important, but they should not be the center focus of our faith and worship. If they are, they have become idols. Rather, we must always be "looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith" (Hebrews 12:2a).

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Let us back up a little bit: "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Saving faith is more than thinking an idea is true. In that sense of thinking something is true, even the demons believe Jesus is God... and tremble! (James 2:19b). No, saving faith is entrusting ourselves to Christ, as we say in one of our prayers – "we commend ourselves and one another and all our lives to Christ, our Lord." "Lord" means He is the Master of my life and yours.

Now we come to the "What" of faith. As I stated earlier, the "Who" is Jesus, but who is Jesus – which Jesus? Is it the "Jus' bleeve in Jeezus" of the televangelist? Will any Jesus do just fine? No! The Arian, Nestorian and other heresies preach another Jesus, one who is not fully God and fully man. Mohammed picked up Arian teaching from an Arian priest – the Arians had been exiled from the Greco-Roman Empire into the Arabian deserts. The Arian and Muslim version of Jesus is not the pre-eternal, uncreated Son of God, just a godly man, a prophet.

Here's where the teaching of the Church and the Bible come in. Taken together, we call it "Holy Tradition" – that which is passed down from the prophets and apostles. Before the New Testament was officially recognized, there were many writings in circulation – some authentic from the Apostles or their scribes, some were from genuine believers who were later disciples of the Apostles, and some were just plain heretical or fantastical. Then in 325 A.D., the First Ecumenical Council pronounced anathema on Arianism and distilled the true teachings in the Nicene Creed. You may wonder why this Creed doesn't begin with "I believe in the Holy Bible, the inspired written Word of God, the only authority for faith and practice." It's because the official full Bible didn't exist until 381 A.D. when the next Council (of Constantinople) recognized the canon of the New Testament. So for 350 years after Christ was on earth, we didn't have the New Testament: oral tradition passed down from the Apostles and the Creed predate the NT.

What is the "Where" of faith? Is it merely a church building? No! Of course, buildings are convenient places to gather for worship, but the Church isn't just a bunch of buildings. One of the Greek words for "church" is "sunkentrosis" that literally means "the gathering." Another Greek word for it is "koinonia" that means "fellowship" or "partaking" or "communion" as in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 – "The cup of blessing which we bless, isn't it the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, isn't it the communion of the body of Christ? Because we, who are many, are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread."

So gathering together to partake of the Lord's Supper is where the Church is constituted. How can it be the very body and blood of Christ? Because He said so, and He has the authority to make it so. If I don't like people speediing past my home, so I make a "Speed Limit: 15 MPH" sign, that doesn't make it a real speed limit sign because I don't have the authority to do that. But Christ has divine, supernatural power and authority! As I stated earlier, we pray – "we commend ourselves and one another and all our lives to Christ, our Lord." The "one another" is very important: it's nearly impossible to be a "Lone Ranger" Christian – we need each other's encouragement and support in order to stand firm in the faith. As one of America's founding fathers said, "We must hang together, or we'll hang separately."

Lastly, we've come to the "Why" of faith. We have faith because it gives a reason to live. Without faith in the risen Christ, life doesn't make sense – "If I fought with animals at Ephesus for human purposes, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, then 'let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die'" (1 Corinthians 15:32). Why fight wild beasts in the arena, why struggle against the wild passions? Why not just indulge our lusts, go for the gusto? Because "now Christ has been raised from the dead!" (v. 20a of that chapter). As I stated at the outset, the "Why" of faith is more than merely thinking some vague thing is truly "out there somewhere."

The "Why" of faith is based on a firm foundation: on the incarnation of God in Christ, the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of a real, tangible, historical Person, our Lord and Savior. It isn't just having faith in faith, or as the song "I believe" goes – "I believe... in all sorts of nice, warm-fuzzy words." That is simply circular reasoning, like "Be good because it's good to be good" or "play nice because I said so." Such words might work for a three-year-old, but they're not enough to carry us through ridicule, "cancel culture," persecution, and suffering for our faith in Christ.

The answer to the ever-present "Why?" is the everlasting Who.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News of 26 June. 2021.)

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Saturday, June 12, 2021

'Soft Atheism' Leads to Soft-Headed Christianity

Jane Goodall, atheist Somehow, the Templeton Foundation believes that the "soft atheist" Jane Goodall's "answer to humanity’s greatest philosophical question, 'What does it mean to be human as part of the natural world?'" is worthy of the annual Templeton Prize, which is larger than the Nobel Prize, awarded previously to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and Michael Bourdeaux with whom I've had the honor of working for freedom of religion.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

This grandmotherly-looking woman who spent years with the great apes spoke of her "vision for a harmonious world ...cast in a rosy-golden hue" as she held a cuddly monkey doll while being awarded this prize. But we must never forget the point Chesterton once made, that "where animals are worshiped, humans tend to be sacrificed." She advocates "selective abortion, even infanticide" while quoting from the Apostle Paul's famous anticipation of heaven: "Now we see through a glass darkly; then face to face." Goodall doesn't present herself as an angry atheist. Indeed, spiritual language suffused her speech as she accepted the award. She admitted that the truly "deep mysteries of life" lie "forever beyond scientific knowledge." This is nothing less than sugar-coated atheism with a little pat on the head and a "bless your (ignorant) heart" to Christians.

Don't be a soft-headed Christian that falls for this line! "Soft atheism" is still real atheism that is lulling Christians to sleep with pseudo-religious jargon. Their aim is the same: to marginalize and silence the Christian claim – "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible." By twisting words around, "soft atheists" claim to be working for human rights while they fight for "Freedom from Religion" – the name of one of their organizations. They ignore the idea that all people "are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as our U.S. Declaration of Independence states. If we jettison our belief in the Creator Who is our loving Father, we set out on the evolutionary path away from life and liberty, toward abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia disguised in flowery, religious-sounding language. Indeed, "where animals are worshiped, humans tend to be sacrificed."

Without faith in the Creator Who is our loving Father, "soft atheism" supports its talk about human rights and freedom from an invisible skyhook: nothing is holding it up. Designing a structure in which the first-floor supporting walls are missing leads to the upper floors collapsing: the second storey can't be supported by just a vague "deep mystery of life" up there in the clouds somewhere "forever beyond scientific knowledge." God became incarnate and knowable in the Christ, the Annointed One: we can touch Him and see that He is not a ghost, an apparition, a figment of our imagination: check out "A FIRST-CENTURY VIEW OF YESHUA, THE MESSIAH – A Historical Account of Yesous Khristos, the Anointed One."

How do we actually do this? What does it look like where "the rubber meets the road"? The Apostle Paul gives the answer in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews where he describes the Old Testament heroes of our faith: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Rahab, Samuel, David, and includes those who "were stoned, they were cut up with knives, they were tortured, they were put to death with the sword" (v. 37). They did this as witnesses, as martyrs for the faith that was to be fulfilled in Yeshua, the Messiah.

As Fr. Stephen Freeman writes: "This is the faith of the martyrs. The long history of the Church’s faithful who have gone to their deaths include many stories of terrible persecutions and tortures. They also include an abiding witness to an abiding sense that everything being done to them somehow misses the point. When Christ stood before Pilate, He was threatened with the might and power of Rome. 'Don’t you know I have the power to release you or to kill you?' Human beings have no power over God. The Kingdom of God willingly enters into the suffering of this world, willingly bears shame, willingly embraces the weakness of the Cross. The martyrs acted as they did because their lives were not of this world. Christians should not live in this world thinking about a world somewhere else (heaven). Rather, Christians themselves are heaven in this world. It is that reality to which we bear witness (martyr means 'witness')."

Taking a stand for the truth of the Gospel-based genuine human rights can be costly. Dr. Martin Luther King is famous not only for his "I Have a Dream" speech, but also for leading out with the song – "We Shall Overcome." You know what happened to Dr. King. How do we Christians overcome evil, the evils of atheism that leads to abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and genocide? We cannot fight evil with evil, we must always remember:

"Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written: 'Vengeance is Mine, says the Lord.' But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good" (Romans 12:19-20).

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 12 June 2021.)

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Morally Free and Secure

It has become urgent to Have Free and Secure Communications due to the "cancel culture" of intimidating, shaming, demoting, firing, shadow-banning, and outright censoring of mostly Christian and morally or politically conservative people.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The above web-page, Here's How to Have Free and Secure Communications, details what we're up against and how to exercise our freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the face of the "panicdemic," pressure to conform to the crowd, or at least to shut up. It is perhaps best summed up by the saying – "You are totally awesome and unique, just like everyone else!" – which is simply another way of telling you to be a nonconformist, to be and do whatever turns you on, just like everyone around you who is conforming to nonconformist culture by rejecting traditional Judeo-Christian ethics.

For such people, freedom of religious expression and speech means that you are free to believe and say anything and everything in general but nothing in particular. If you dare to express the ideas that only one God exists (monotheism), that truth is objectively true, that A is not equal to not-A, and that traditional Judeo-Christian morality is the best way for society to procreate and perpetuate itself (monogamy), you will be labeled as a bigot, racist, and/or Fascist. Those who make such accusations are blissfully unaware that Fascism is merely socialism dressed up in the cloak of "we are the elect, the chosen, the super race."

The conclusion of my thesis, "A FIRST-CENTURY VIEW OF YESHUA, THE MESSIAH – A Historical Account of Yesous Khristos, the Anointed One," attempts to describe how such a theology or ideology of being chosen and elect by God can lead to and in fact has led to being turned against those very people who believed they were the chosen and elect: Jews and Christians.

The problem stems from Augustine's use of Jerome's mistranslation of Romans 5:12, saying that "sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, for in him (Adam) all have sinned" instead of "...in that all have sinned" (neuter in the original Greek, so it can't be "him"). This verse became the Rosetta stone, the key to Augustine's interpreting St. Paul's passage – "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Whom He predestined, those He also called. Whom He called, those He also justified. Whom He justified, those He also glorified. What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:28-31).

So, what's the big deal? What's the difference, anyway? A great deal of difference: from Romans 5:12 Augustine developed his doctrine of "total depravity" – that because you and I are born guilty of Adam and Eve's sin, we are therefore totally depraved and incapable of doing anything good, we are all damned from birth because of our original parents' sin, which has been passed on through sexual intercourse down through the generations to us. The only way out is through baptism. But even Augustine agonized over the thought that God would damn to hell an unbaptized, innocent baby.

So Augustine had to develop his doctrine of predestination and limited grace in order to escape this dilemma: he taught that God has predestined some to be saved – the elect – which of course included himself! – and the rest of humanity to be damned. Have you ever met any Augustinians or Calvinists who weren't totally convinced that they were "elect"? Of course not! It is psychologically very assuring to rationalize that you and I are better than everyone else (but I'm not so sure about you). The problem with this is it shifts the moral responsibility from me to my forebearers and back to Adam and Eve: "It's not my fault, it's hereditary – it's genetic!" which in turn means that if I believe that I'm "of the elect" then I can get away with doing whatever I want because I'm not morally responsible, I'm elect, elite, above the law. That leads to mass immorality, mass murder, and genocide, as history has proven.

The key to understanding election and predestination is the phrase "For whom He foreknew" (Romans 8:29). Only God has foreknowledge, so only God knows who are predestined. We cannot possibly know for certain if we are of the elect – it's impossible because we humans are finite creatures, bound by time and space, we don't know the future. God's foreknowledge does not cancel my freedom of choice, and it is precisely that freedom that makes me morally responsible to make the right choices, not "whatever turns me on."

When we correctly understand Romans 5:12 as placing the responsibility for sin and death squarely on each and every one of us, not on someone else, we see the need to call out to the merciful God – "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" or just – "Lord, have mercy!" The one true God is not a Yin-Yang pagan god that is a mixture of good and evil, he is all-merciful and all-loving, which means he respects our freedom, he doesn't force himself on us. So as for me and my house, we choose to follow the Lord.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 29 May 2021.)

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Saturday, May 8, 2021

The Great Commission

Yeshua, the Messiah, known to the Greek-speaking Jews in the Dispersion as "Yesous, the Khristos – the Annointed One," whose followers saw him executed, dying on a Roman cross, suddenly came back to life and appeared several times to his eleven Apostles and many of his other disciples. Click on this photo to read about all of these appearances.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Scroll down a little further in the above photo's link, where you'll see "Yeshua Appears to All the Apostles in Galilee" and issues the Great Commission as follows: "16 But the eleven disciples went into Galilee, to the mountain where Yeshua had sent them. 17 When they saw him, they bowed down to him, but some doubted. 18 Yeshua came to them and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything that I commanded you to do. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.' Amen" (Matthew 28:16-20).

At 10 a.m. this Thursday morning our time, which was 8 p.m. their time, I had the privilege of speaking on this Scripture passage to some evangelists and their house churches in Bangladesh. I'd like to share with you what I said: first of all, in v. 17 it states that still "some doubted." When people are presented with information – an event or an idea – that is entirely beyond anything they have experienced in their lives, they often simply can't comprehend it or believe it. Someone is standing here who was dead, many of these people saw him die, but here he is! Unbelievable! And so it is today, when people hear about the Virgin Birth of Yeshua, his miracles, his death and resurrection, they doubt it because it's entirely outside of their experience. I have had similar reactions from people who have never been outside the state where they were born when I tell them about our living in Russia for 17 years.

Then in v. 18, Yeshua says – "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth." Older translations use the word "power" but the Greek word "exousia" is better translated as "authority" or the right to do something. In the first days of Holy Week, Yeshua was debating with the Pharisees, Saducees, and Scribes about his authority. They asked – "By what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?" (Mark 11:28). Then he told them three parables, all dealing with the question of his authority versus theirs. His authority was his own, from God, and legitimate, theirs was an assumed authority and was being used in an illegitimate way, only to continue their hold on power.

When you see the word "Therefore" in v. 19, you should ask yourself what is it there for: it is there to connect the previous verse about Yeshua's authority with v. 19! He is saying in effect: "I have God-given authority and I am giving you, my Apostles, this same authority to go forth and make disciples of all nations." In some older translations, it states – "teach all nations" but it is more than just teaching the doctrines of Yeshua and the historical facts about him. Making disciples of all nations is training believers to do the things that Yeshua did: he and his disciples baptized people in the name of the holy Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they healed them, they fed the hungry, cleansed the lepers, they even cast out demons and raised the dead.

Verse 20 is very important to read carefully and understand, because many preachers don't explain it correctly: they say it means to teach people the parables that Yeshua taught, tell about his death on the cross and his resurrection, and tell people to believe these things. But that's just the start, just the basic truths. This verse in older translations states – "teach them to observe all that I commanded you" but the word "observe" can easily be misunderstood to mean "watch" or be a spectator. Too many church-goers view church as a spectator sport: they sit in their pews and watch a performance by the choir and the preacher. Wrong! The word "observe" actually means to "obey" or to "fulfill a command." What did Yeshua command his disciples to do? In Matthew ch. 10 and in Luke ch. 10 and ch. 11, he sent out his Apostles, commanding them to preach the Gospel, heal the sick, care for the needy, and cast out demons. The demons of today are the false ideologies of atheism, materialism, and secular humanism that hold captive literally billions of people, saying that Yeshua was just a prophet or a moral teacher, he didn't really do anything miraculous and he didn't rise from the dead, or that you can believe whatever you want – all religions are OK – but just keep it to yourself.

So in Matthew 28:18-20 we have authority in the Great Commission, and we have a continuation of Yeshua sending out his Apostles, in Acts 1:8 – "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." Here the Greek word for "power" is "dunamis" and we get "dynamite" from this word. It means the strength or the ability to do something. In Matthew 28, Yeshua gave his Apostles authority or the right, and here in Acts 1, he promises to give them power or strength and ability to preach the Good News, heal the sick, care for the poor, and drive out evil powers.

The Apostle Peter writes about this: "God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you - not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:20-21). The Ark is a symbol or a type of the Church, the Bride of Christ. The eight souls – Noah and his family – were the only ones saved from the flood. So to believe in Christ and be baptized is to be in the Body of Christ, the Church. There is no salvation outside of the Church, the Body of Christ. The Apostle Peter is teaching us that the flood was a symbol of baptism, which is the reality: baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit saves us, it's not simply like taking a bath to wash away the filth of the flesh, but it cleanses our conscience, our hearts' desires. We are resurrected with Christ in baptism into a new, spiritual life.

The Apostle Paul also writes on this topic: "He [God the Father] put all things in subjection under his [Christ's] feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23). The Church is the Body of Christ, and only in the Church we can experience the fullness of Christ. The Bible is very important – the services of the Orthodox Church are full of Scripture, about 75% of each service is direct quotations, reading the Scriptures, or references to the words of Scripture. But the Bible isn't the source of all authority, Christ received "all authority" – he is the source – and he gave this authority to his Apostles.

The Apostle Paul writes – "These things I write to you, hoping to come to you shortly; but if I wait long, that you may know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:14-15). The Church is " the pillar and ground of the truth." In verses 1-7, Paul writes about the qulaities and duties of "overseers" or priests/pastors. The word "priest" is a shortened form of "presbyter" ("prest"). Timothy was bishop over the churches in Ephesus (ch. 1:3), and in ch. 5:17-22, Paul instructs him again about the virtues that an overseer should have before Timothy would ordain them – see v. 22. And the Apostle Paul appointed Titus as bishop in Crete (Titus 1:5-8) to ordain priests/pastors on that island.

The Church was established on the Day of Pentecost, when the promise of Acts 1:8 was fulfilled. God sent the Holy Spirit to give the Apostles power to go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the earth – to the Gentile nations. In Acts 11:19-26, we read how "ordinary believers" went from Jerusalem to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, where they began sharing the Good News about Yeshua. When the Apostles in Jerusalem heard about this, they sent Barnabas to help the believers in Antioch organize a local church. He sent for Saul to help him. We know that Barnabas was a Levite (ch. 4:36) and Saul (later Paul) was a Pharisee: both of them were well-trained in the Scriptures. And so, they taught the believers in Antioch, and v. 26 states – "The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch." They weren't called Christians at the time Barnabas and Saul were there, church history tells us that it was Euodias, the second bishop in Antioch, who later called the disciples "Christians" – not all the facts are in the Bible, so it's important to also study church history. But the point is this: to be a Christian is to be a disciple, you can't be "just a Christian" and go to church once a month or a few times a year, and lead a moral life. A disciple isn't a super-Christian, someone who has decided to go all-out for Christ. A disciple is a Christian, and a Christian is a disciple. A disciple is someone who obeys and fulfills Christ's commands.

There were other bishops beside Timothy and Titus: after Euodias, Ignatius was bishop in Antioch, he was the little child that Yeshua took on his lap and said – "Let the little children come to me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Both Ignatius and Polycarp were disciples of the Apostle John. Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna. So what we see here is that the Apostles appointed well-trained and godly men to be bishops over the churches in various areas. This is how the Church is to be governed. This authority to ordain bishops and they would ordain overseers (priests/pastors) is the model that was established in the first century and continues to this day. These councils of godly men, bishops, are responsible to maintain true doctrine and practice.

Well then, what is the Church and how do we know if we are in it? Several Orthodox theologians have said – "We know where the Church is, but we do not know where the Church is not." There are genuine Christians, disciples of Yeshua, the Messiah – the Christ, who might not even know about Apostolic authority to ordain priests/pastors. But these disciples believe in Christ's birth from the Virgin Mary, his death for our sins and his resurrection. They believe in and were baptized in the name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They believe that the Lord's Supper in some mysterious way beyond rational understanding is really the Body and Blood of Christ, and that when we partake of it, we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). An Orthodox priest in Moscow (he's now a bishop) once told me: "If you believe these 3 things, you are Orthodox, whether you know it or not."

So there are members of the Body of Christ who are out there, waiting to be taught these truths, to learn that they are in the Church, Christ's Body. They are sharing the Good News of Yeshua, the Messiah. In extreme situations ("in extremis") when no bishop or priest is available, they are permitted to evangelize, baptize, and even conduct the Lord's Supper without official ordination, but they need to eventually be organized under Apostolic authority, like the disciples in Antioch were. This is how the Great Commission works!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 8 May 2021.)

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Saturday, April 24, 2021

Holy Week

(← click!) Why do the Eastern Orthodox celebrate Holy Week and Easter so late in the Spring? It goes back to the calendar that Julius Caesar authorized. Later, when the united Church decided to set the date for Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon after Spring equinox, they were using that "Julian calendar."

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The problem with that calendar was leap year: it inserted Feburary 29 every fourth year, period. Well, this was a bit too much, it should skip the leap year at the turn of each century except each fourth century. So by the 16th century, it was off by 8 days, Pope Gregory's astronomers informed him. The pope in 1582 unilaterally decreed that all Christians should adopt this new calendar, called the "Gregorian calendar." But the Eastern Church rejected it, saying the pope had no right to change the date of Easter ("Pascha" in the Eastern Church): only an all-church ("ecumenical") council could do that. By today, five centuries later, this 8-day difference has grown to 13 days, so now the Spring equinox comes 13 days later for Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Just after WWI, the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch called a conference to decide, among other items, whether to adopt the Gregorian calendar. They voted to do this, but because the bolshevik revolution had just taken place in Russia, the old Turkish Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and Greece was in the throes of fighting for independence, the patriarch was deposed and the decision to adopt the new calendar wasn't implemented. That was 100 years ago. It takes a lo-o-o-ong time for the Orthodox Church to change!

How does this relate to the days of Holy Week? For at least 50 years, Bible scholars have known that "Friday," the commonly-accepted translation for the Greek word paraskeuin is not quite correct. It means "Day of Preparation" for the Sabbath, which is usually on the seventh day of the week, so the Day of Preparation is most often on a Friday. But any Jewish holy day is considered a Sabbath, so the Day of Preparation can actually be any day of the week.

In my first attempt to write a harmony of the Gospels, in about 1970, it became clear to me that the generally-accepted understanding of Holy Week contains several problems with the naming of the days. Previously, however, Bible scholars attempted to solve these problems by proposing that Wednesday was a "quiet day," i.e., that nothing is written about it in the Bible. But if over one-third of all the Gospels is taken up by Holy Week, how can one suppose that the Gospel writers simply lost track of one day?

When I researched this question more deeply, I noticed that Yeshua came to Bethany "six days before the Passover," Jn. 12:1, and "the next day," Palm Sunday, Yeshua entered Jerusalem, Jn. 12:12. Every day of Holy Week is described in detail:
1. Sunday: Jn. 12:12; evening: Mk. 11:11
2. Monday: Mt. 21:18; Mk. 11:12; evening: Mk. 11:17-19
3. Tuesday: Mk. 11:20; and "after two days the Passover is coming" - Mt. 26:2
4. Wednesday: Mk. 14:12; evening: Mk. 14:17
5. His arrest during the night leading into Thursday: Lk. 22:52; Thursday morning: Mt. 27:1; "late afternoon" (in Greek: "opsios") just before sunset: Mt. 27:57
6. Friday: Mt. 27:62-66, the special Sabbath: Passover, a "quiet day"
7. Saturday: Mk. 16:1; Lk. 23:56b, the regular Sabbath, another "quiet day"

In some of the older Bible translations, the Greek word paraskeuin is translated as "Friday" leading people to conclude that Yeshua was crucified on Friday, but the word literally means "Preparation Day" (for the Sabbath). Now in the majority of new translations the word paraskeuin is translated simply as "Preparation Day." Usually the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, Saturday, but in the Old Testament we learn that every Jewish holy day was considered Shabbat or a Sabbath: Lev. 16:29-31; Lev. 23:2-8 and 24. In Mk. 15:42 and Jn. 19:14 we see that the crucifixion of the rabbi Yeshua, the Messiah, took place on "Preparation Day" before this special Sabbath, the day lambs were sacrificed for Passover, and in Jn. 19:31 we read that this was not the usual Sabbath, but "that Sabbath was a special one" - the greatest holy day of the Jews, Passover. And the previous Sabbath was not seven days before this great Sabbath, but "six days before the Passover" - Jn. 12:1. The Church, however, has traditionally accepted the common usage of the word paraskeuin as "Friday," the day before the usual Sabbath or Saturday.

Jews and Orthodox Christians normally reckon the day as beginning at sunset and ending at the next sunset. But Yeshua changed this sunset-to-sunset order when he prophesied that "the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" - Mt. 12:39-40s, and it was fulfilled:
* Day 1: Thursday, Preparation Day: the Lamb of God was sacrificed, died at 3 p.m., buried in "late afternoon" (Mk. 15:42), and the night leading into Friday;
* Day 2: Friday (the special Sabbath, Passover) and the night leading into Saturday; and
* Day 3: Saturday (regular Sabbath), after sunset the women bought ointment, rested, went to the tomb just before dawn on Sunday, and saw the angel (Mk.16:1-5).

This moves the "quiet day" to Friday, the special Sabbath day of rest, (click the photo→) Passover, which makes much more sense. See also Jn. 2:19-21 that they would destroy the temple of His body, and He would and build it in three days; also Mt. 27:40 and 63 - "After three days I will rise again"; also Mk. 14:58 and 15:29.

Joseph of Arimathaea had three hours in which to bury Yeshua, from 3 p.m., "the ninth hour" or "late afternoon" to 6 p.m. when began this special Sabbath, Passover. In my opinion, the Body of Yeshua, the Messiah, lay in the grave from Thursday before sunset through early Sunday before dawn, the Day of Resurrection – exactly three days and three nights. But if the reader prefers to think that Yeshua was crucified on Friday, that is also one of the various possibilities. Neither one or the other affects our salvation in any way. Such non-dogmatic differences in Bible interpretation are called "theolegoumena" in Orthodoxy. The reason for bringing this detail up is simply to answer the critics who say that the Gospel narrative or Yeshua was wrong when he said he would be dead for three days and three nights. The most important thing is the fact that the Messiah was betrayed and crucified for our sins and rose for our justification.

So, barring another bolshevik revolution or overthrow of empires, it may take at least another 50 years for the Eastern Orthodox Church to recognize that paraskeuin in Greek can mean something other than "Friday" ...but I'm not holding my breath until that happens.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 24 Apr. 2021.)

Sunday, January 17, 2021

As It Was in the Day of Noah

"As it was in the days of Noah, even so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise, even as it happened in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky, and destroyed them all. So it will be in the day that the Son of Man is revealed" (Luke 17:26-30).

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Put yourself in the sandals of a person back then: "There's that crazy Noah again, building that huge ship! Why on earth does he need such a big boat? There's no water anywhere near here deep enough for it to float in! All we need is a rowboat or a little sailboat to get around on the Euphrates and in the marshlands!" So they decided to get on with their lives: business as usual, preoccupied with everyday, mundane things, getting their sons and daughters married off, partying... until it was too late. And in the days of Lot, they ate and drank, engaged in homosexuality and wickedness: even Lot's own sons-in-law ignored his pleas to flee the city.

"The thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5-8). There was a lot of wickedness in Noah's time, but that is not what Jesus mentioned, as we see in Luke ch. 17. The ordinary tasks of daily life kept them from really thinking about what Noah was preaching and doing. They were so busy with the normal affairs of life that they failed to prepare to meet God. We can be so busy with a thousand and one different things. We have our jobs, families, household activities, education, recreation, entertainment – a whole host of things which occupy our time and interest. It's easy to become busy with so many different things that our spiritual life becomes choked: "That which fell among the thorns, these are those who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity" (Luke 8:14).

We are so busy with the daily stuff of life that we fail to dig deep and try to understand what is really going on around us. We take our cues from what most of the people are saying and we repeat it, until it becomes an axiomatic truth in our thinking. He who controls the narrative ends up having it written in history books. How many people at Christmas time actually think about the Incarnation of God, His partaking of human nature so that we can become partakers of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4)? Compare that to the constant barrage of songs and TV shows about a fat, old Santa Claus in a red suit with white fur trim, flying around the world in a sleigh drawn by twelve reindeer, led by Rudolph with a glowing red nose.

Santa knows who's naughty and nice, and will put a lump of coal or a switch in the stocking of naughty little boys and girls, so "be good for goodness' sake" (that's circular logic – 'be good because it's good to be good" – for sure!). And the jingle about Rudolph ends – "You'll go down in history!" Hardly anybody today knows that Saint Nicholas who stood against the heretic Arius at the First Ecumenical Council is the origin of the Santa Claus myth. So we end up thinking that the story about Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary is just as much a myth as Santa Claus and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Which has gone down in history these days?

Or we get drawn into vast conspiracy theories if we're politically oriented, or mind-boggling theories about the "End Times" and the "Rapture" if we're religiously oriented. At the end of Luke ch. 17, the disciples asked Jesus – "Where, Lord?" He said to them, "Where the corpse is, there will the vultures also be gathered together" (v. 37). What does this mean, anyway? As I understand it, Jesus is saying – "If I were to answer your question, it would be a dead give-away: all sorts of evil birds would swarm around it!" Perhaps that's too folksy an interpretation, but in Matthew chs. 24-25 when He told His disciples parables and teachings about the "end of the age," He said at least three times that nobody can know the day or hour when all these things will take place. Our task is to be always prepared, to pray without ceasing – be in communion with God at all times, and share the Good News.

And yet, some persist in insisting that they have inside knowledge of the "End Times," causing sectarian and heretical splits such as "pre-millenial," "post-millinial," pre-tribulational," post-tribulational," and "dispensational" divisions and denominations. In the first verse of Luke ch. 17, we read that Jesus said to His disciples, "It is impossible that no occasions of stumbling should come, but woe to him through whom they come!" That double-negative construction might be a little confusing, so let's look at how Matthew phrased it: "Woe to the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must be that the occasions come, but woe to that person through whom the occasion comes!" (Mat. 18:7).

There will always be people who dream up their own distorted doctrines by misinterpreting Scripture or focusing only on a few phrases, ignoring all other relevant passages and what godly men before them have taught. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that any and every idea is just as valid and true as others: that's relativism. The real reason for allowing freedom of speech is so that the truth will ultimately be made clear: "No doubt there must be divisions among you so that the ones who are in the right may be clearly seen" (1 Corinthians 11:19).

In my last essay, "Cancel Culture," I quoted 1 Peter 3:15 – "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with gentleness and respect." This is how we should respond to hard times, but then the why follows:

"Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which He also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you – not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:18-21).

Note carefully what the Apostle Peter wrote: the Ark is a symbol of baptism, which now saves us. He doesn't say that baptism is merely a symbol. The Ark is the symbol or the type, and baptism is the antitype – the reality of what the symbol or allegory represents. The Scriptural teaching here is that baptism saves us, not by washing the dirt off our flesh, our bodies; but by washing away the sin and guilt of our conscience, dying to the old self in baptism and being resurrected with Christ to a new life, the life in the Spirit. In the Apostle Peter's second letter, he wrote:

"But there also arose false prophets among the people, as among you also there will be false teachers, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result, the way of the truth will be maligned. In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn't linger, and their destruction will not slumber. For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved to judgment; and didn't spare the ancient world, but [God] preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them, was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds): the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment" (2 Peter 2:1-9).

Again, Peter alludes to Noah and the Ark, and to Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. About the false teachers he says – "Many will follow their immoral ways." The Church Fathers and Saints (holy, godly men and women) all teach that the primary sin of the flesh is not sexual immorality, but rather gluttony. The former is more blatant – you either do it or you don't – but the latter is less obvious – everybody needs to eat, right? So why not enjoy it, indulge yourself and eat a little more... and a little more? The Fathers and Saints tell us that such yielding to the desires of the flesh little by little, bite by bite, opens us up to the more blatant sins of the flesh such as sexual immorality, drunkenness, and drugs. But the answer is clear: if "God preserved Noah" and He "delivered righteous Lot," He will also "deliver the godly out of temptation" – so entrust your life to Christ and His Body, the Church, the Ark of our salvation, to do it!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 17 Jan. 2021.)

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Cancel Culture

In this article on "Cancel Culture," we read - "Politics, religion, equality, race, sexual orientation and even sports, all of the topics you might avoid on a first date or at a family reunion" have the potential to damage or destroy relationships, effectively erasing the "offending" party from our lives.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

As the above article explains, many publicly-owned large corporations have bowed to the leftist "cancel culture" pressure, adopting LGBTQ, gender-neutral, and anti-racist policies for their corporate culture and public policies, caving in to the intimidation, bullying, and outright terrorism of the mobs. If this sounds rather "Orwellian" it's because it is: read Orwell’s 1984 and Today: "The Ministry of Truth" was the state's propaganda arm that continually drummed "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength" into the minds of the proles. But a few brave holdouts in our society have resisted and have made this pressure backfire: one company that produces Latino foods was somehow labeled "racist" - they resisted this pressure and saw their sales shoot up by 1000%! So there are still sizeable numbers of Americans who can see right through this "cancel culture" nonsense.

This "cancel culture" ideology was foretold centuries ago in the Scriptures: "Do you think that I have come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, no, but rather division. For from now on, there will be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. They will be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Luke 12:51-53, which Jesus quoted from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah 13:2-6). It causes parents, children, and other relatives to erase the "offending" party from their lives.

The Good News provokes anger and resentment in those who have been immersed in our post-Christian, neo-pagan culture because it implies that their lifestyle of "Pleasure, Power, and Pride" - the three temptations of Christ, or as the Apostle Paul phrased it - "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" - is ultimately futile and meaningless. Christ came to this earth to die: that was His goal in life. We must realize that our ultimate goal in life is also to die: we brought nothing into this world and we will take nothing out when we leave this world. We must die with Christ in baptism in order to put on Christ, to be transformed into His divine, eternal nature: see Theosis Is The True Purpose Of Human Life.

On the Day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter concluded his sermon to Jews and proselytes from all over the known world with the words - "'Repent, and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.' With many other words he testified, and exhorted them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this perverted generation!'" (Acts 2:38-40). Homosexual behavior and other forms of perversion had seeped into the culture of the Jewish dispersion because they were living in pagan cultures.

How should we as Christians respond to "cancel culture"? Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount - "Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matthew 5:9-12). "Blessed" means joyful, not fearful or hateful. And several verses later, He said - You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust" (vv. 43-45).

A while later, He said - "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you. Yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles" (Matthew 10:16-18). And at the end of His earthly ministry, in Matthew ch. 24, His disciples asked Him - "Tell us, when will these things be? What is the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?" (v. 3). He replied - "For nation [ethnos] will rise against nation, and kingdom [ruling party] against kingdom; and there will be famines, plagues, and earthquakes in various places. But all these things are the beginning of birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to oppression, and will kill you. You will be hated by all of the nations for My name's sake. Then many will stumble, and will deliver up one another, and will hate one another" (vv. 7-10). Ethnic and political conflict, hatred and betrayal: sounds familiar, doesn't it?

I'd like to call your attention to v. 12 - "Because iniquity will be multiplied, the love of many will grow cold." The word "iniquity" is is "bezzakonie" in Russian - lawlessness, or "Ungerechtigkeit" in German - unrighteousness. The idea here is engaging in wrong or illicit behavior and rationalizing it as justified under the circumstances (situational ethics), or "payback" - retribution for past wrongs (reparations), or doing wrong things for the right reasons. The result: many people's love of family and neighbor will be canceled, normal societal relations will suffer breakdowns, leading to anarchy and revolution.

The Lord's and His Apostles' minds were immersed in the Scriptures: "You shall rise up before the gray head, and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God. I am the Lord. If a stranger lives as a foreigner with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in measures of length, of weight, or of quantity" (Leviticus 19:32-35). This includes respecting the elderly, treating immigrants fairly (but they were required to forsake paganism and abide by the Law of Moses), and practicing justice - using honest weights and measures which includes not "shaving the shekel" - depreciating the value of money by inflating the amount of currency.

The prophet Zechariah wrote - "Thus has the Lord of Hosts spoken, saying, 'Execute true justice and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother. Do not oppress the widow, nor the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.' But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear. Yes, they made their hearts as hard as flint, lest they might hear the law, and the words which the Lord of Hosts had sent by his Spirit by the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the Lord of Hosts. It has come to pass that, as I called, and they refused to listen, so they will call, and I will not listen,' said the Lord of Hosts" (ch. 7:9-13). There comes a time when mankind's iniquity will overflow and the Lord must step in and put an end to it.

Later, while the Apostle Paul was awaiting execution in a Roman prison, he wrote - "Do all things without murmurings and disputes, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world" (Philipians 2:14-15).

The Apostle Peter summed up how to respond to evil "cancel culture" and lawlessness - "Finally, all of you be like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing. For, 'He who would love life, And see good days, Let him keep his tongue from evil, And his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil, and do good. Let him seek peace, and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And His ears open to their prayer; But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil' [quoting Psalm 33:13-14]. Now who is he who will harm you, if you become imitators of that which is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. 'Do not fear what they fear, neither be troubled' [quoting Isaiah 8:12]. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:8-15).

We must fight the temptation to pay back evil with evil, to compromise our Christian morality because "everyone's doing it" - both of these attitudes are living according to the flesh. Instead, we should live according to the Spirit of Christ Who lives in us, gently and respectfully giving an answer for our hope. May we choose to do the latter!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 3 Jan. 2021.)