The kingdoms tottered

"The nations made an uproar,
The kingdoms tottered;
He raised His voice,
The earth melted'
-Psalm 46:6

Photo by  Chris Kotsiopoulos: http://www.greeksky.gr/files/atmospheric.htm

Martin Luther - Reluctant Revolutionary

It's the 31st of October; half a millennium after Martin Luther hammered his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg and sparked the Reformation. And as a big-F5 for your memory, watch this wonderful PBS production on the life and works of Martin Luther - Reluctant Revolutionary.

The Good, the Bad, and The Postman

The Postman

Last night I watched a bit of The Postman before I could stop myself. The Postman, you’ll remember, was one of a few clear indications that the brilliance of Dances With Wolves was only an accident. As if Water World hadn’t convinced everybody that Kevin Costner shouldn’t be entrusted with money beyond the price of a Big Mac, a few die-hards foolishly funded Costner’s next attempt to a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, and this while the genre in its broadest sense should have been abandoned after Mad Max anyway. Perhaps we would have been saved from the Left Behind series. You can’t plant a tree if you don’t have a compost layer, after all.

The Postman tells of a world in which no formal government exists, and people live huddled together in make-shift villages, hiding from each other and especially from the movie’s primary bad-guy: General Bethlehem (whose provocative name doesn’t provoke because it’s marvelously unclear what the deal is). Enter the postman (Kevin Costner), who became the postman because he found a dead real postman and helped himself to his outfit. But the outfit made the man, and the man fell neatly in a kind of messianic role, namely that of restoring communication between the various settlements.

Enter the General, who wants to maintain chaos in which to play war, and who subsequently takes a decisive dislike to the postman, who wants to create a natural kind of order. All this is an obvious instance of the tried good-and-evil dialogue, and a clever contribution to the debate on whether Jesus of Nazareth was indeed God’s son or only some passerby who was involuntarily adopted by the architects of the Messianic legend. But alas, the movie’s daft execution and primary themes make it virtually impossible to render it any respect in aforementioned matters. So you figure that the Biblical Jesus is an elaborate hoax based on some historic hick named Jesus of Nazareth? Whose legend rose to prominence by the warring efforts of insurrectionists, whose own compass inflated in the false vacuum created by the collapsing Roman Empire? Well, hurray, that’s very deep.

Kev and the General slug it out



The Postman’s world consists of clearly distinguished good-guys (peace-loving victims who want to reestablish Pax Americana) and bad guys (war loving hoodlums who probably destroyed the US in the first place). When the bad guys kill a good guy, the rush of cello’s swells and audiences are guided into heart-felt gasps, as our hero staggers and crushes in slow motion to the earth, and dust rises like a freed soul from where the body falls. When the good guys kill a bad guy, however, none of them shows any awareness of how very awful it is to kill another human being, even if the good guys are obviously forced to do such a horrible thing because the bad guys were going to do it to them.

Even in our own present day and age, the archetype of good guys versus bad guys has been long found blasé. We now like to believe that there’s a bit of the good guy and the bad guy in all of us, and which one of the two guys wins depends on which guy you feed.

But that too is blasé. Jesus (that is: Jesus the Biblical literary character) teaches that only God is good, and since we’re not God, none of us deserves the predicate good-guy. We’re all bad-guys, so that moves things right along.

We bad guys have no clear fix on what is good, so we have no idea what to shoot for. And that brings about the strenuous notion that we shouldn’t shoot at all. Mankind is lead to wherever it must and will go, and in the mean time, we are told to love our enemies and our neighbors like ourselves, take care of the world and worship God alone.

But, you may ask, what if a guy like General Bethlehem shows up? And that’s the point we’re trying to make: it’s highly likely that a man like Bethlehem will show up and that he will gather a following. But when he does, he can only be successfully “dealt with” by non-violent opposition. Bethlehem too must and will go to where God will lead him. There’s not a single instance in world-history where a society takes up arms against tyranny, whether domestic or foreign, and not only deposes the original tyrant but frees itself from tyranny all together. Even the US today still suffers greatly from the burden of the right to bear arms in order to form a coalition against any invading force, not because there are no forces that would love to invade the US but because of the many Bethlehems that can’t wait to shoot a fellow Postman.

Girl in a mirror dimly

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I
shall know fully just as I also have been fully known" - 1 Corinthians 13:12

Source: http://ciracar.com/amazing-reflection-photography

The Nephilim & the Curious Case of the Similarity between the Sons of Anak and the Post-Exilic Levite Gatekeepers

A Nephil (close-up)

A lot has been written (i.e. guessed and fantasized) about the enigmatic Nephilim who lived before the flood (Genesis 6:4) and managed to survive the flood somehow (Numbers 13:33 - because they were extra-terrestrial or spirit beings?). But as I looked at the name Ahiman, the plot thickens even more:

Ahiman is one of three sons of Anak, and the Anakim are a sub-class of the Nephilim (Numbers 13:33) and the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 2:10). The three sons of Anak are driven out of Hebron (previously called Kiriath-arba) by Caleb (Joshua 15:14), and Hebron, you'll remember, was the original capital of Israel under David, as decreed by God Himself (2 Samuel 2:1). Somehow, however, the Anakim made it back to Hebron, and were subsequently slain by Judah during the secondary annexation campaign, and that right after they conquered and burned Jerusalem, which can hardly be a coincidence (Judges 1:10).

After the establishment of the united monarchy under David and Solomon, the leptonic breach occurs and the united kingdom continues as Israel and Judah. Israel is deported to Assyria and Judah (and Simeon within its borders) goes off to Babylon. When the first wave of Jews returns, a rudimentary social structure is established. Possibly in anticipation of there ever being gates again, a small contingent of four Levites is assigned gate-keeping duty and is stationed at the fringes of the Levite camp (1 Chronicles 9:17). Utterly curious, however, is the undeniable symmetry between the names of the Anakim who lived in Hebron, and the Levite proto-gate-keepers:

Hebronites	Anak	Ahiman	Sheshai	Talmai
Levites	Akkub	Ahiman	Shallum	Talmon

I have no explanation for this and so far I haven't found any commentary that even touches on this phenomenon. I'm curious to learn what others think of this. Do you think it's a coincidence void of any further meaning? Or is there something fabulous going on?
Please leave a comment if you have an opinion. And while you're at it, post this article on Facebook and wherever to attract more input.

The Greatness of our God!

"Let my teachings drop as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
As the droplets on the fresh grass
And as the showers on the herb.
For I proclaim the Name of the Lord;
Ascribe greatness to our God!"
- Deuteronomy 32:2-3

The original source of this photo is unknown to us here at Abarim. Do you know who made this photo? Please let us know and we'll add a link.

J.K. Rowling and Christ.

This J.K. Rowling quote is circling the Internet and as it circled onto my screen and subsequently onto my Facebook page, a friend asked if, perhaps, Rowling’s rock bottom has anything to do with Christ. If so, it would be odd because, as my friend said, “I don't see any sort of Christian ethics in her writings. Wizards, sorcerers, magic, all things the Christians are warned to stay away from.”

I don’t see anything in J.K. Rowling because I don’t read J.K. Rowling. That’s not because of some deep and meaningful reason; I just never was drawn to the whole fantasy genre. But she seems to be quite a contemplative person – has gone through the hell of divorce and clinical depression – and inadvertently expresses her complexities in her art. She grew up Christian and shows allegiance to Christianity, even though it would probably not hurt her successes to do otherwise. 

I’m guessing that part of the success of the Harry Potter books comes from its fresh reflection of a very real world, full of soul-sucking demons and nasty über-spirits and mysterious forces that we all experience but can neither place, name nor identify. I don’t think she referred to Christ as the Rock of her bottom, but I am curious to see why God chose to bless her so extravagantly anyway. I’m fearing that the Christian Christ we expect to be told of in properly elevating writing is not going to be the Christ who will be found when it’s too late to change our theologies. And while I’m waiting for it all to unfold, I quietly recall that Jesus was found first by a group of Iranian magicians who were clumping after some astral sign they saw.

"It's a pitty we're not trying for a bit of inter-House unity"

Hermione

God With Us!

O boy! O boy! It took me three trips to the supermarket, this afternoon, to lock and load for the game tonight. I got salty sticks, killer pretzels, cheese nips and a wide rank and file of potatoes chips, mustard and dips you’d murder your neighbor for!

I got Coke, 7-Up, five kinds of beer, two bottles of locally produced wine, a pint of kamikaze sake and vodka in a bottle shaped like a Kalashnikov. At the veggie market I secured a battery of cucumbers and red paprika, pickles, tomatoes and those little bullet onions. I’m gonna cut them up and splay them on a plate like a bunch of casualties.

All my friends are coming over because I got the biggest TV and the coldest fridge. And we’re gonna cheer our guys on until they whoop those weasels something awful. We can’t help it; it’s in our blood! We’re The Partisans, or Red Star, or so I’m told, and tonight we’re going head to head with those other guys, Red Star or Partisans -- I’m not sure, it depends on who we are. All I know is that we’re great and they suck!



But apart from that, I must haste to add, it’s nevertheless cute how once meaningful and terror-striking names are now so often applied to elements of a social expression. The red star was once the venerated or abhorred emblem of communism, essentially the system that created Yugoslavia, inflated its economy and left it a smoldering hole in the ground after its demise.

The Partisans were once roaming groups of merciless militants operating in occupied Yugoslavia, fighting the enemy by means of guerilla warfare. Now one is the name of some football club and the other is the name of the best football team in the world!



And when our guys have whooped their guys, I got an even better treat for my friends. The other entertainment station we get here in Serbia, namely CNN, is showing updates and specials on an even more awesome game: Das Kapital versus The Terrorists!

O boy! O boy! I sure hope I got enough beer in the fridge.

A glowing review of Cross On Me on Amazon

A reader of Cross On Me who calls himself  Vesa S left a wonderful review on Amazon.co.uk:

"Cross On Me is a novel about a mad or a brilliant man. Book is hard to put down once you start and it contains many thought provoking ideas and parables that tickled my mind long time after finishing with the book.

We are following the journey of Qoe though highways and small roads of USA, Canada and Alaska, but book contains so many layers, symmetries and references that it hardly can be said to be a journey log.

I enjoyed the rich language and fast moving scenes from all over the world."

Travel to Israel

Guest post by Nisha Sharma

Each year crowds of tourists tour Israel, both as a way to discover the natural and historic beauty of this fascinating land as well as to gain greater spiritual insights. Once you have toured Israel you will certainly never read the Bible in the same way again. By following the same path as Christ and experiencing the sights that served as the backdrop for so many important Biblical events you will be able to strengthen your Christian faith and come away with a renewed spiritual understanding.

Travel to Jerusalem

While there are numerous sights and attractions to see throughout Israel, there are several holy cities that should certainly be on your must see list. These cities include Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jericho and Bethlehem. During your tour of Israel you will encounter a wide variety of well known sights and which remain important even today, including the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, the Garden Tomb, The Mt. of Olives, The Shepherd’s field, the Sea of Galilee, the Western Wall and the Temple Mount Jerusalem. You can also expect to see the site where Elijah took part in the contest with the false prophets of Baal, Muhraka.

Taking advantage of the chance to visit the holy land of Israel is an important opportunity that should not be missed by any Christian. There are many different types of tours of Israel available, including tours that will highlight important Biblical events and sights as well as study and seminar tours. Tours typically last between eight and twelve days, depending on the number of sights to be included in the selected tour.

Regardless of the length of your tour, you can be assured that each stop in Israel will etch a significant memory within your mind and touch your heart while providing a truly life-changing experience. A Christian tour of Israel often serves to ignite one’s faith in a way that is incomparable to any other travel experience. Your knowledge of the Bible will be enhanced while your faith is strengthened. The places included in tour itineraries are specifically chosen to help each participant develop a deeper reflection of their own personal Christian walk.

A trip to Israel would certainly never be complete without visiting the city of Jerusalem. As the most popular city in the entire country, Jerusalem offers fabulous views as well as increased insight into the old and new parts of the city. The holiest site in the city, the Western Wall, is situated in the Jewish Quarter. The site where Christ was crucified, Golgotha, is another site that should not be missed during your visit. Other important sites include King David’s tomb, Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the opportunity to cross over the Sea of Galilee by cable car. Despite any amount of controversy, Israel remains one of the most sacred sites in the world and is one that each Christian should experience within their lifetime.

My name is Nisha Sharma I work as the editor for Holiday365. I have been representing the business for the last 2 years now. Holiday365 offers some great deals in the UK, please visit our website to see offers on holiday parks.