The Exodus Experience of the Other

Exodus

The Israelite experience in the wilderness

Was haunted by the likes of a skeptic.

In each traveler, there lived a villainous

Scandal of chaos, an annihilation epic.

In the wilderness they did not trust

The foundation for knowledge of the Other.

Even at brother and sister scandal brushed

Aside the Trust to be discovered.

God commanded a census

At the wilderness journey’s start

Even though Israel was contentious

Of any other their scandal might thwart.

The accounting imposed on each traveler

An acknowledgement of one another.

It was of a presence or absence character,

Something skeptics do not bother.

Only in the wilderness place

Skepticism undermines experience.

The census, though, gave ordered weights

To their trustworthy trip, not luxuriant.

The Israelite experience of 40 years,

Their return to ancient Egypt crushed.

That wilderness journey with all its tears

Was precisely a gesture of Trust.

This is a versed paraphrase taken from a paragraph in the book

Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Schocken Books - Random House LLC

2015

Food Court

Food Court

Mall retailers open at ten.

Walkers earlier stepped here in their stride.

An aroma from Starbuck’s then

Attracts eight old men inside.

With their Cups of Joe

They gather at a rectangle table

In chairs set high ready to watch a show

Of incoming shoppers ready and able.

Not long do they watch.

They’d rather talk with each other.

At their ages there’s no time to botch

Or lose precious minutes with a brother.

The best of their day

Is having memory

While chatting the morning away,

Recalling past things held exemplary.

One good hour of conversation,

Sixty minutes of friendship to soak,

They end their daily libation

Parting with handshakes of the folk.

Judicial Pendulum

Judicial Pendulum

As the pendulum is influenced by gravity,

So Anthony rode his swing.

As culture descended into depravity

To pop influence, not law, did he cling.

Ephemeral and lusty love his standard,

Not the family, nor created order.

To the libertine he then pandered,

Swinging over a 5,000 year border.

His swing, though, is not the issue,

It is his arrogance toward created grace;

An act that widened existing social fissure,

An act cosmically out of place.

This judicial interpretation

Created positive law.

Of the natural it was an abjuration

Of the Holy One we hold in awe.

A mere mortal of the court

Transformed the meaning of life.

With debasement of the sacred did he cavort,

Cutting divine attachment with his judicial knife.

James and John

James and John

The Holy Apostles James and John,

Ambassadors of the Most Holy One,

Jesus’ message they carried on

For souls to be won.

James to believers, he saith

“No partiality should you show

To sisters and brothers in the faith,”

God’s law in love you should already know.

But if you show partiality,

A sin is what you commit in disgust

At your poorer brother’s reality.

So saith James the Just.

“The beloved” was how John was known

By his Savior and his Lord.

In long life John had grown

To understand Caesar’s sword.

In John’s apocalypse

He exposed the harlot and beast.

Oppression and exploitation were Rome’s scripts,

From her own people it stole and fleeced.

John clearly saw the future

And warned of Rome’s heavy hand.

Government’s grip on mankind would soon suture

That oppressive attachment through God’s command.

John has opened our eyes

To existential civil threats from within,

Exposing the beast’s promises in guise

So that we avoid the harlot’s din.

Now we see in our own day,

Secular Apostles James and John,

Each in their own personal way

Consider the people a pawn.

James the Director overstepped his charge

Rendering a final decision.

He missed the mark by and large,

With the people he had a collision.

John the Justice was placed in a position

Of being the judicial tipping point

For or against a leader with a mission.

An emperor did the Chief anoint.

The author of Revelation

Through God’s angel did receive

A full understanding of any nation

Whose government when corrupt deceives.

The Ark and the Encounter with its Underlying Theology

Christians, particularly "evangelical" Christians, should take note of the underlying belief system of Ken Ham and the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) movement that produced this new amusement park in Kentucky.

The theological and ecclesiastical gap between the YEC and orthodox Christianity is wide and deep.

A full explanation and comparison of the differing beliefs is found in the book The Heresy of Ham: What Every Evangelical Needs to Know About the Creation-Evolution Controversy by Joel Anderson.

Book - THE HERESY OF HAM

This is the Kindle eBook version
The paperback version to be released by August 1, 2016

Stand By Your Man, Hillary Or The Fix Is In

Stand By Your Man, Hillary

or

The Fix Is In

(a la, Rocky & Bullwinkle)

In 1992 she came to Bill’s defense

Despite his questionable behavior.

No Tammy Wynette was she then, and hence

In 2016, Hillary needed a savior.

Shrewd Bill, the efficient political operative,

Planned an “unscheduled” tarmac meeting by the book,

Thinking no-one looking and the AG quite cooperative,

Slick Willie arranged to get Hillary off the hook.

On July 2, Hillary met with investigative agents

Asking questions about her irresponsible acts.

She gave them her truthful statements,

Most of them contrary to the facts.

Three days later the Director to the press

Cited various Hillary statutory violations.

Assuming roles of judge and jury, the Director stressed

That in his opinion any prosecutor had weak foundations.

It’s over, it’s settled. The Director caved.

Though justice not served, the FBI did not snow me.

Cultural government’s new roads are now paved

And hardened by Director James Comey.

You gotta hand it to Bill,

He knows how to please and circumvent

The “right” leaders with no will.

America's government is his sweet rose to scent.

So Hillary wants to be top commander,

But has already said she’ll hire Bill

To run the economy and to other nations pander

While she loiters in the White House bereft of any skill.

Wake up, America!

Hillary and Tammy (little woman?)

New book - The Heresy of Ham

ARCHDEACON BOOKS, a publishing imprint of Woody Norman LLC, this week released a new book by Joel Edmund Anderson. The book - The Heresy of Ham - is available currently as a Kindle eBook. The paperback version will be available by August 1, 2016.

Dr. Anderson is an adjunct professor in Religious Studies at the University of North Alabama, where he teaches various courses on the Old Testament. Before that, he taught for 16 years at various Evangelical Christian high schools in California, Arkansas, and Alabama, teaching English Literature, Bible, Church History, and Worldview. He has written a number of articles for Biblical Theology Bulletin, Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament, and Currents in Biblical Research. He also maintains a blog, resurrecting orthodoxy (at joeledmundanderson.com), where he writes on a variety of topics, from Biblical Studies, Church History, the New Atheist Movement, Young Earth Creationism, and other topics related to Christianity.

Anderson holds a B.S. Ed. in English from Northwest Missouri State University, an M.A. in Theological Studies from Regent College, an M.A. in Old Testament Studies from Trinity Western University, and a Ph.D. in Old Testament from University of Pretoria. 

Dr. Anderson challenges the claims of the Young Earth Creationist movement, Ken Ham in particular, by comparing the movement with orthodox, creedal Christianity.