Church – Ammi Ruhama Community

The Lunacy of Legacy

Dec 17th, 2022

or: The Foolishness of future proofing

18I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-23 English Standard Version

In the past those who sought to build a legacy for themselves and for their gods built physical structures as their contribution of worship that would outlast them for what may have felt like the foreseeable future. Often times these people themselves were considered to be their god’s exclusive representative on earth. Such was the case with Roman Emperors and Egyptian Pharaohs. When this thinking passed into Christianity, the apostles were considered God’s representatives, Peter being chief among them. For centuries the heirs of the apostles ruled together in relative peace over the body of Christ as the Church Fathers but when Peter’s successor claimed dominance over them all, the church split into East and West. During this time the old ways of the god’s representatives building structures of worship to the gods for their legacy re-entered the body of Christ. It resulted in the building of Cathedrals and monuments to God who, frankly, didn’t ask for His legacy to be built with sticks and stones. Some recognised this as foolishness and so insisted rather that God’s legacy was the people within the church and therefore the organisation of those people called the Church. This enshrined theological treatises, and legal codes of conduct that eventually came to characterise whole governments as God’s lasting legacy on earth. Like it or not, this is where we currently find ourselves in the 21st century–still believing that God’s legacy and, therefore, our inheritance, is wrapped up in the nations; in a word–power.

Can this be true? Does the legacy of the King of Kings hinge on the conduct of the governments of earth acknowledging His existence and therefore His political power to be exercised through His children who have inherited the birth right of that power? This seems like a resurgence of the pagan kingdom’s theology which we find recorded in the scriptures. An apparent cycle of representatives narrowing their rule to exclusivity and building massive structures to draw more people into the worship of the god whom they represent which may or may not characterise the God of the Bible. Is there a better way? Is our inheritance so feeble that to give up political power would be the proverbial selling of our birth right for a bowl of lentils? I think not.

We who claim the Scriptures as our source one of confirmed revelation from God know that the Scriptures have plenty to say about our inheritance and that none of what it says characterises the capricious flow of earthly political power. The adjectives used to describe God’s legacy are as follows: imperishable, unspoiled, unfading, reserved. By contrast here is an example of how the Word describes the brevity of life and His control over it.

15As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
Psalm 103:15-16 ESV

He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding;
Daniel 2:21 ESV

Do we have understanding? There is no legacy for us here on earth. Nothing that continues much the same as it was. All is changing including the times and the seasons. One day is hotter or colder than the next. One year full of storms and destruction and another full of gentler weather. The sun rises every day yet at a different time and falls again at a different time every night. One eon is full of war, pestilence and grief and another of peace, health and prosperity. Legacy by contrast speaks of unchanging transcendence that is present from the moment it is created it to the moment all things collapse into nothingness. In that vein let us continue the Psalms passage.

17But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
18to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
19The LORD has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Psalm 103:17-19 ESV

To claim to have any kind of legacy here on earth is to deny what we have just learned. The only one with true legacy is God. These truths set us up to explore how the Scriptures describe God directing the kingdoms of the earth.

The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord;
He turns it wherever He wishes.
Proverbs 21:1 NIV

Judging from this verse and the one above from the book of Daniel, does it seem like God’s legacy is at stake when Christians are not in political power? Does the channel of water, even the people of God as His beloved children, have any say as to where we are channelled? Or does God pull the levers that redirect the flow of water in His fields that gives water to another part and redirects it away from another? He is the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. The Master whose house we are building and whose fields we are tending; the house being the people of God and the field being the World. Our inheritance as the people of God is the righteousness that comes from Christ which is itself imperishable, unspoiled, unfading, and reserved for us in Heaven. He has extended this towards all people and their children and their children’s children.

Salvation effectively tears down all earthly kingdoms, not to set up a singular earthly kingdom where God is the King and we are His earthly subjects but where the benefits of citizenship to God’s Spiritual Kingdom extend to all humanity over the whole face of the earth regardless of political makeup. He moves people across seemingly impossible boundaries because, in actuality, those boundaries are not recognised in God’s Kingdom. He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous because there has never been a government nor will their be who can prevent it and believe me, we would if we could! He extends freedom to the captive, sight to the blind, and peace to the possessed at great personal cost to those who by virtue of exploiting those people for money reject His legacy and Kingdom in favour of building their own. This is the lunacy of legacy; that we would dare to think that in 80 to 100 years, or dare I say the whole of the 2000 years since Christ walked this earth, that we could build something financial, political, social or institutional to pass on to our children that was worth all of the unrighteousness it took to build it and that that legacy is worth more than the inheritance of the righteousness that comes from Christ Jesus.

Remember what Jesus taught about serving two masters? I encourage us to think of legacy when we read it. We cannot build two legacies, one will always cancel out the other.

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Matthew 6:24 ESV

Free Indeed

Aug 10th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

A Focus on Meaningful & Mutual Freedom in Christ

ARC Guide Level 3
Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

The truth sets us free, but what is truth? It is more than abstract factual correctness. It is the fruit of which tree we are grafted into; the very language we learn from our Father upon our new birth.

John 8:31-32

31So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32-33 English Standard Version

The Context

In the ramp up to his crucifixion, Jesus engages the Jewish leaders in a rather volatile exchange that nearly results in His stoning. Jesus is teaching in the temple testifying about Himself saying that He is light of the world, the Messiah and says to those who believed in Him that if they abide in the words He has just spoken about Himself then they are truly His disciples and that they will know the truth and the truth will set them free. The Jewish leaders take exception to the suggestion that they are not in fact free. They cite their political and heritage status as proof of their freedom but Jesus maintains that those who practice sin are not free but are enslaved to sin, and walk in darkness. Jesus cites their hatred of Him and desire to put him to death as proof that they walk in the footsteps of their murderous father and are indeed the offspring of the devil. This is what moves the elders to take up stones but Jesus disappears into the crowd to avoid death before His time.

What is Truth?

The Truth sets us free, but what is truth? It is more than abstract factual correctness. It is the fruit of which tree we are grafted into; the very language we learn from our Father upon our new birth. The Jewish leaders were not speaking a factual lie when they said that their ancestor was Abraham, nor that they themselves were not slaves in the social hierarchy. However, they were not speaking the metaphysical truth that Jesus was discussing. Jesus says that the one who claims Abraham as their father and yet walks and talks nothing like Abraham is a liar as Abraham walked and spoke by faith and the Jewish leaders walked and spoke by sight. Jesus likens this deep self deception of claiming to be something other than what we are, to claiming to speak the language of our so-called fathers and yet not speak their language. To say, for example, that we are Chinese, yet when a born and breed Han from China walks into the room and greets us in Mandarin, we don’t know the language and get angry at them for not greeting us in English! We are exposed as fraudulent in our claims. In the same way, if we do not know the voice of the Spirit of God and are offended when He speaks because we do not understand, then there is a good chance that we are not born of God. But, knowing this, the truth can set us free.

Free from Sin for Freedoms Sake

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1 English Standard Version

It would be very easy, reading a verse like this, to think that what Paul means is that since we have been physically set free we should not bind ourselves to a physical or political yoke of slavery. We need to remember that Jesus says that the one who sins is a slave to sin or to their flesh. Other verses say a slave to our passions; that is to the unconscious visceral reactions of our bodies to any exterior stimuli. When compared with other imagery in the New Testament we find that what Jesus means is that the one who sins is a slave to their own body. Paul, on the other hand flips the situation on its head. The New International Version gives us a vivid image of disciplining the body.

No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
1 Corinthians 9:27 English Standard Version

In Paul’s analogy, he is discipling his body for a race or a fight. He trains others to run and fight, but would be a sorry excuse for a coach if he himself could not run or fight. What Paul and Jesus are saying is that either we are slave to our bodies or our bodies are slaves to us! We are either controlled by the flesh and the things of this world, or we submit to the Spirit and make our flesh the servant and slave of our minds. The idealists (of which I am one) are wont to remind us to take back our thinking from our bodies and to give it back to our minds–this I think is the idea behind freedom. If freedom is a state of being–a state of mind–that results in a physical reality then the Spirit unleashes our minds from our bodies and we can then understand the sayings of Jesus in regards to food being for body and not the body for food, only perhaps we will slightly adjust to say that the body is for the soul and not the soul for the body. Both are integral to the interface, the body is the primary interface; the slave, but the soul is the one who communicates through the body. The body may be in chains and the soul free, but if the soul is in chains then so will the body be. When the soul is set free the body will not be far behind.

No one who is master of their body enslaves another in body or mind to do their will; they are perfectly capable of doing the work themselves and indeed say to themselves regularly, “if you want something done right, do it yourself”. However, when ‘like minds,’ meet they spark genius between them and move mountains by the power of two or more souls who were masters of their own bodies and therefore of their environment. These are the truly free ones. They are not, necessarily, marked by wealth or status, or ascetism or poverty–they are those who tell their bodies to behave a certain way and obey.

The Spirit is Willing But the Flesh is Weak

However, the interface is broken. No matter how masterful we are over our environment it is still marred by secondary interfaces that, over time, have weakened us. We attempt to tell ourselves what to do, and end up crying out in frustration with Paul,

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Romans 7:24 English Standard Version

Every action done in the flesh leads to death and every action done in the Spirit leads to life–Paul concludes that Christ saves us from this body infested with death. Belief in Christ as the light of the world sets us free, as Jesus testified about Himself. Not free as in separated from our bodies of death but free from the control of the body, and indeed freedom to enslave the body to the soul to be used once again for intersoul communication.

The State of Affairs

Our bodies exude self absorbed death when they are in control and as a result we drive people away from us, whether they be controlled by the flesh or by the Spirit. People come together in the flesh when there is a common goal to legitimise, provide for and protect one another’s bodily well being. This is so engrained in us, that we all just thought, “well, what’s wrong with that,”. What’s wrong with that is that what or rather whom we are protecting one another from are other primary interfaces controlled by secondary interfaces. We fail in our common goal of intersoul communication and settle for the compromise of interbody cooperation.

People controlled by the Spirit, however, are not concerned about their own legitimacy, safety or provision because it does not rest in other people, nor even in themselves, but in the Spirit. They speak the words they are told to speak, they go where they are told to go and do what they are told to do without fear of alienation from their source of value. Those controlled by the flesh look on them as if they were the hyper-individual, but that is their own failed eyesight. If they were to look on them in the Spirit they would see that they are one with the Spirit and with all those who are also one with God; but again do not derive their value from one another nor their association with one another but with God alone. There is a deep love between them because of their deep love for God, their is a deep unity among them because of their indescribable unity with God and the ones who live by the flesh but claim to be redeemed are driven from their presence because the Spiritual ones don’t need those who walk by the flesh as much as they think they need to be needed by other people. This is the clash between the flesh and the Spirit. This is the battle for freedom that rages in the heart of every man, woman and child. The flesh cries out to more flesh for legitimacy, safety and provision and the Spirit rests full of value in the person of Jesus.

We who would be free and would tout ourselves as free in Christ, would do well to pay heed.

Old Leaven | Corinth

Aug 8th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 5:1-8

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. ²And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? ³For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. ⁴So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, ⁵hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,^[a]^[b] so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

⁶Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? ⁷Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:1-8 English Standard Version

The Fellowship of Light in Bodily Language

Paul draws yet another example of the body’s immaturity in the Spirit; instead of letting the light of love cast out all darkness, as we hear from John. They hid the light and made space for darkness within their hearts and within their fellowship. A member of the body, very likely one of these influential people calling people exclusively after themselves took his father’s wife (likely one of many) for himself. An act so dishonourable, and divisive that, Paul says, it can only have come from malice towards his father and the wickedness of his own unchanged heart. Paul doesn’t spell it out as black and white as John does later on in the century, but rather gets right down to handing down judgement on this man. Ultimately, Paul says that the ‘old leaven,’ their old gentile lives, are what is causing all of this immaturity and sin to enter the body and cause such division and defilement of the body. The natural state of the body is to reject diseased tissue not to accept it or to attack healthy tissue.

Zero

Aug 7th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

A Brief Focus on Expectations & Fulfilling Our Potential

ARC Guide Level 2
Ideal for those acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

The alcoholic, the drug addict, the absent parent, video game junkies, phone addicts;–it doesn’t matter what the coping mechanism is, the real addiction is the homeostasis that they bring to our bodies and minds–the stress release. When nothing is amiss…no screaming children, no nagging spouse, no concerned family member…just me and my own self resetting to zero. It is this addiction to zero that controls us. Our bodies produce the stress hormones we tell them to produce when we are out of touch with reality; when our expectations are beyond normal. We say or think things like, I have kids but they shouldn’t be quintessential children; they need to be emotionally mature adults around me or I can’t cope. Our bosses, our spouses, our family members all look down on us when we are in our sub zero state. So, when we’re resting comfortably at zero, or one or two we actually feel great! We feel respected and loved and cherished. We’re told that we are someone’s rock and steadfast lover of their souls, and we believe it. We also believe it, when we’re told that we are neglectful when no one is looking and a sorry excuse for a Christian and that we are leading people astray towards some errant belief. We want to be operating at 100% but, as well, we feel guilty for wanting more because we’re accused of wanting to be the big man on campus; the harvest gods. We operate at around 80% in some areas like work or faith, but around 10-20% in others. Our addiction to zero holds us steady in its grasp. Ask about any area in our lives and we will give a standard for what we expect our lives to look like. Unless we fix the standard in our minds we will not adjust how we behave on a regular basis to raise our standard of homeostasis.

Assignment | Corinth

Jul 31st, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

But I, brothers,^[a] could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? ⁴For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. ⁹For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:1-9 English Standard Version

The Through Thread

Paul asserts, if there was any question about where the Corinthians were on the spectrum of being naturally or spiritually minded, that they are in fact quite naturally minded; unobservant of spiritual things and, as a result, full of jealousy and strife, pitting Peter, Apollos and Paul against one another by claiming to hold exclusively to any one of their teachings as being distinct from another. Today we might say that they believed that they had distinct truth claims on the gospel of Christ. Paul’s point here is that they only saw their respective words, analogies and arguments for the gospel and not the through-thread of the Spirit of God which joins them all together. He uses the example of being a labourer in God’s field or a builder of God’s building.

From Simple Seeds and Stones

Paul relates his work in the gospel to sowing seeds or laying a foundation. Seeds were sown by broadcasting them which is literally walking for absolute miles back and forth casting the same seeds over a large area. Foundations were laid by digging a hole and dropping massive stones into the hole and surrounding them with smaller stones to fall between them to give a solid base to build on later. Both of these are rather boring, laborious jobs that rely on seeing the bigger picture to see the significance of what would otherwise seem to be busy work. Paul says that while putting seeds or stones in the ground might seem like simple work, it is this work that allows for others to come along and add water that activates the seed when the sun hits the soil around it allowing it to become a more complex fruit bearing plant. In the same way putting stones in the ground prepares the way for the more complicated work of building the walls, hanging doors or setting a roof on top. They are all the same work, for the same person and so are all connected. The point is that from the simple seed of the gospel comes the fruit of the life of one controlled by the Spirit, and from the foundation that is Christ comes a building made of precious stones–both themes Paul will return to later in the letter.

Fulfilling the Assignment

Paul’s use of, ‘assignment,’ is not as permanent as it might sound. In the same way that his later use of, ‘gift,’ of the Spirit is not a once for all time gifting but rather a living manifestation of the Spirit of God. In the same way, our, ‘assignments,’ (some call them vocations) from God are less like homework or employment and more like listening to and obeying the voice of His Spirit. Too often we think of a “call into ministry,” as being a lifelong commitment to one job within the body in the same way that we think that, having once manifested the gift of administration, the Spirit won’t manifest Himself in us in other capacity and that, that’s our life’s purpose. What happens is that God uses us in some way, either to speak or to teach or to call people to Himself and it feels so good to be used by Spirit of God in any capacity that we attempt to reproduce the environment in which it happened. I felt this same pull after inviting a homeless man into my garden to live for a week. We walked very closely together for that week as we discussed spiritual things and worked on procuring more stable living conditions for him. I felt afterwards that God must want me to start a homeless ministry, but when I prayed and searched the scriptures for confirmation God asked me to let my experience of being used by the Spirit be what it was and to let it go and to continue to listen to His voice instead. He told me that if I went forward with starting a homeless ministry that it would be a hinderance to other’s responsibility to invite the homeless into their homes and feed them their food and walk with them for the week that He calls them to do that. My assignment had been completed; I listened and obeyed and was shown the state of the body of Christ as a result.

Paul had been assigned to sow seeds in Corinth. He did a bit of watering and harvesting while he was there as well as he attests, but his main assignment was to plant the pure seed of the gospel in their hearts and then leave it to the work of another whose assignment had been to water the seeds of the gospel. Paul generally allowed others to water and harvest, he took special interest in a few who he personally raised to full reproducing maturity in Christ but allowed the rest of the body to raise one another up to full reproducing maturity. He did not allow himself to be side tracked with the task of being the one to whom everyone outsourced their assignments–and neither should we. We all have our own listening and obeying to be getting on with, and only the Spirit knows our next respective assignments.

The Mind of Christ | Corinth

Jul 30th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16

¹⁴The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. ¹⁵The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ¹⁶“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16

The Natural and Spiritual Mind

Paul makes two statements about the naturally minded person in these two verses. First he says that they do not accept the things of the Spirit because they think they are inapplicable, childish and pure foolishness. Secondly he says that they do not understand them due to their spiritual source. The teachings of Jesus that come to mind are when he told a crowd full of people that if they didn’t eat his body and drink his blood they would not enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ intentional guising of his teachings in parables to baffle those who thought that they could discern what he meant by human reasoning also comes to mind. Notice that Paul doesn’t say that the natural minded person doesn’t hear or see spiritual things, plenty of people heard and saw Jesus teach and perform daily miracles–it is that they don’t accept them as viable. They are on a completely different wavelength from the thoughts and intents of the Spirit. The natural minded person seeks only to be unambiguously certain in their factual accuracy; to be right. They equate being right with being righteous; to be able to answer any question with their own heuristic of human wisdom be it rationalism or empiricism or whatever they believe.

Paul then says something very interesting. He says that as a result of the natural and spiritual mind divide in the body of Christ, the spiritual person; the person channelling the Holy Spirit of God on a daily basis for their words and their actions like Jesus did, judges all things. They see all things as they should be and the things that are not, they speak the words of God to correct. However, the natural minded ones should not be judge them, because they don’t understand their judgements. Paul is about to define the natural mind even further in chapter 3, but at the end of this thought, he says that the natural minded believer who isn’t channelling the Holy Spirit has no reference for the things of God and therefore cannot judge those who do.

Unity at the Cost of Pride

Jul 29th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

ARC Guide Level 2
Ideal for those acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

Examining the Claim that Unity Sacrifices Truth

⁶If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. ⁷But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1 John 1:6-8 English Standard Version

Unity Sacrifices Truth?

One of the reasons we often give for why we are not meaningfully one in the body of Christ is that we think that joining apparently disparate Symbiotic Organisations together would result in the compromise of what each of us believe to be the truth. Somehow it totally escapes all parties involved that that is exactly what happens when believers from out of town join our SOs. They compromise because our theological statement is probably somewhat different than their old fellowship. They will sign our theological statements and go on believing their own private theology while they are among us, which is likely what would happen if we attempted the merger of two SOs, only there would be three levels of theological belief. Each of the bodies from the SOs would believe their old statement of faith while the individual members would hold their own private theologies all while signing the new statement of faith–an amazingly terrible result if we were aiming for unity in love. So what then? Is the claim true? Only if one or more parties holds the whole truth within themselves.

We are only really comfortable with others publicly disagreeing with us if we believe that we are ultimately in the right, and that they will eventually come around to our view. The young disagree with the old because the young are naïve and have life to live before the truth will be revealed to them–in other words, we believe that they will eventually agree with us, and so believe that we are the originators of truth contrary to a Nerahist epistemology. We, generally, have no problem saying that we are one with young believers in our fellowship, even if they vocally disagree with us. I think this may instinctually be because we know that they are still growing, but it may also be because we have stopped growing and think ourselves to be without sin or as having arrived at the fullness of truth (something the Apostle Paul said not even he had done). In the spirit of Hank Hanagraaf, no one is bold or stupid enough to say of an 8 or 9 year old believer that because they don’t fully understand the hyperstatic union of the Godhead that, if they die, they will go to Hell; this is not the gospel of Christ. If this is the case and ongoing relationship is what moves us mutually closer to unity in love with one another and with God, then there is no reason for our current division except to perpetuate that division. However, if we are not the originators of truth and communion with one another in the light drives out wrong belief, then we can expect that we will arrive at unity when the darkness has been driven out of both us and them until there is no, ‘us and them,’ only one body with one Spirit and one mind in Christ.

So, can two symbiotic organisations be joined together to bring about the kind of unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 without sacrificing truth? No. Not if we say and act like we are the originators of truth–a problematic conclusion for believers in Jesus. This is why I regularly call for church leaders to declare a year of Jubilee; to dissolve our SOs and allow the natural sifting process of the light of love to refine us in the truth as the scriptures say it will.

Nerahism | Corinth

Jul 28th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 2:6-13

⁶Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. ⁷But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ⁸None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
¹⁰these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ¹¹For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹²Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. ¹³And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.^[d]
1 Corinthians 2:6-13 English Standard Version

The Spiritual Mind

In answer to the unwritten question of, “why didn’t you teach us the things that Peter and Apollos are teaching?” Paul says, “actually, I did–I shared a few interpretations from the Spirit to those of you who were mature enough to hear them.” In saying this, Paul is crystal clear that the wisdom he shared was not his own but wisdom from the Spirit of God who interprets spiritual truths like the whole of the Word of God to those who are spiritual.

Nerahism

We believe that all truth is revealed truth. That we have the whole of the truth in front of us, but that in order to see it, the truth must be revealed to us by the Spirit of God. We have all had the experience of having read a passage our whole lives thinking that we know the meaning only to read it in the Spirit of God and for it to take on a next level, life changing meaning. Paul later calls this, “knowing as we ought to know,” we call it, Nerahism (pronounced: Nearism). The Hebrew nir ‘ ah means, “he let himself be seen; showed himself”. It is the basis for this epistemological belief. Nirahists believe that we are always on the receiving end of truth and wisdom and never the origin and thus never the authority. We can mature in that wisdom as we listen and act on it, but it always the wisdom from the Spirit and so is freely available to all believers.

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Paul’s Frustration |Corinth

Jul 27th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

And I, when I came to you, brothers,^[a] did not come proclaiming to you the testimony^[b] of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ²For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men^[c] but in the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Paul asserts that when he came to Corinth to proclaim the testimony (some manuscripts say, ‘mystery,’) of God, he allowed it to be a mystery and didn’t really express it in the format of a traditional oration; a well prepared and even better delivered speech. What he proclaimed was the fact that the Christ had come and was crucified. Keep in mind that it was always Paul’s habit to come into the synagogues first and so this message would not have reached the gentile believers until afterwards. We already know from 1:14-17 that Paul did not make it his mission to make many converts and baptise them as he did not consider it his mandate from the spirit; only to communicate the simple message that the Christ had come and was crucified. Paul also says that he made no effort to put on a show of physical prowess as he was sick and weak at the time when he came to them as well as trembling and afraid. His work was done rather out of his weakness in the demonstration of the Spirit (read: Paul’s manifestation of the Spirit through the fruit of the Spirit in his life) and of power, presumably the power of the gospel as previously stated in chapter one but also likely in miracles.

Further Thoughts

We don’t really know what to do with the fact that Paul did not present a succinct five point gospel message with an alter call and a baptismal pool ready to hand. We know his reasoning; that the people of Corinth would not put their faith in his wisdom but in the power of God to save; that is, in Christ. Paul’s frustration is that when the Corinthian believer’s encountered the wisdom of Peter and Apollos, meant for the spiritual digestion of more mature believers, they went ahead and placed their faith in human wisdom anyway. If we take anything from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians perhaps it should be that all truth is revealed truth that takes a certain tolerance to adjust to. If and when we are exposed to a concentration of truth that is higher than our tolerance we tend to think that it originated with the author or speaker and attribute to them the things of God and so slide into the slippery slope of leader worship which Paul was warning against.

The message of the gospel is special revelation from God to everyone who receives it. There are some who say that if special revelation is not saying anything new then we don’t need to hear it. That it would be like a special report flashing across a news screen about old news everyone already knows. But if we applied the principle of “If it’s not new we don’t need it,” to the Bible then we could cut out the majority of the Bible as most of it is God repeating Himself ad nauseum to generation after generation after generation of people who are the recipients of special revelation from God even though he told someone else that one time–in fact, we could cut out most of the New Testament as He isn’t saying anything new there that isn’t deeply rooted in the Old Testament! The mystery of the Gospel is that God reveals Himself afresh to each one who receives it so that we do not place our faith in a leader’s wisdom or a culture’s wisdom or an ethnic wisdom that would exclude anyone who proclaims Christ and Him Crucified.

The Nature of Shame | Corinth

Jul 26th, 2022

Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.

Daniel L. Bacon

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

ARC Guide Level 1
Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

²⁶For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,^[c] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no human being^[d] might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰And because of him^[e] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 English Standard Version

The Nature of Shame

Paul writes to the Corinthians an aspect of God that is rather uncomfortable for the sitting people of God who have received mercy, and that is that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Or, as Paul writes, “God uses the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are”.

Those who have been called by God unto salvation and to the repair of the interface have to be an unassuming people by necessity. This is largely because the assuming people will have already been well entrenched in their symbiotic organisations and be too comfortable to make any substantial repairs to the interface which, frankly, works just fine for them; and why fix what’s not broken?

But God uses the people that are not strong by the world’s measure to bring to nothing the people who are:

The unrighteous to shame the righteous,

The sexually divergent to shame the chaste,

The Gentiles to shame the Jews,

The women to shame the men,

The slaves to shame the free.

What is shame then, but the offering of grace and mercy by God to those we thought were not deserving? I will take it a step further in light of adversarial unity. What is shame but when God blesses those who curse us when we won’t? What is shame but when God loves our neighbours when we won’t? What is shame but when a church opens across the road who are reaching people with the Gospel who vote differently than we do? What is shame but when a child sees what it took an adult a lifetime and a doctorate to see; and who speaks the truth without reticence or thought of payment?

We pay lip service to the levelling nature of the cross, but the result of God’s grace to us is that all hierarchies of distinction in the body are done away with until we are all one in the mind of Christ Whatever gradations of so-called righteousness that remain as a result of our organisation and structure; those things we pride ourselves in will be our shame and our humbling before God.

Tag: Church

or: The Foolishness of future proofing

A Focus on Meaningful & Mutual Freedom in Christ

John 8:31-32

The Context

What is Truth?

Free from Sin for Freedoms Sake

The Spirit is Willing But the Flesh is Weak

The State of Affairs

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 5:1-8

The Fellowship of Light in Bodily Language

A Brief Focus on Expectations & Fulfilling Our Potential

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

The Through Thread

From Simple Seeds and Stones

Fulfilling the Assignment

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 2:14-16

The Natural and Spiritual Mind

Examining the Claim that Unity Sacrifices Truth

Unity Sacrifices Truth?

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 2:6-13

The Spiritual Mind

Nerahism

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Further Thoughts

Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

The Nature of Shame