Episode 134: Mark 64 Gethsemane

This week we are going to make good use of my last year spent studying laments in Hebrew scripture and culture. We’ll talk about the word Abba and what it does and does not mean, and whether or not Gethsemane was actually a garden or if the word points to something other than the traditional understanding.

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32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” 37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. 41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

All this time, Yeshua/Jesus has been talking about a cup He must drink and baptism He must endure—the cup, in this case, referring back to so many references in the prophets about judgment coming by way of cups. Even in the Sotah examination of the woman suspected of adultery, she is compelled to drink a cup of judgment, and based on the outcome, her guilt or innocence was determined. Unlike the water ordeal of the ancient Near Eastern world where they would throw a person in deep water and if they drowned they were guilty, there was nothing harmful about what the woman would drink in the Sotah if she was innocent and thus the verdict was seen as divine. More and more, we will be getting closer to the cup that Yeshua must drink, the crucifixion, and it won’t be obvious right away what possible vindication there will be because, as the author tells us repeatedly, they are still without understanding. But to give them some credit, Yeshua has been making some claims that sound insane. The baptism, of course, is always symbolic of an alteration of status or state—changing from one thing to another. For us, of course, transferring allegiance from one Kingdom to another. And I struggled and perhaps you struggled too, in making that commitment. I really struggled hard. It was almost comical. But a baptism nowadays in the West isn’t much of anything dangerous. In other parts of the world, it is a death sentence and so I imagine that there are many of our brothers and sisters in Asia and Africa who go through their own version of Gethsemane before being baptized. For them, to turn away from Allah or the gods of their ancestors, or away from the dictatorships that rule over their lives is very dangerous business.

I imagine that people in countries whose governments are outright enemies of the Gospel have a lot of examples to think of, of what might await them. Imprisonment and torture, rape, being bludgeoned or maimed by machetes, being burned to death, losing their children—just like Yeshua had seen crucifixions all of His life under the sometimes brutal tyranny of the Augustan/Tiberian Roman Empire. Doing God’s will in places like those isn’t anything that most of us can identify with. People in the west often make mountains out of molehills because, in truth, we have it so easy but like to imagine ourselves as martyrs. But Yeshua knew that He was about to face every ounce of hatred that the Kingdoms of the world and the spirits directing those powers had to dish out. Evil was about to empty itself out on Yeshua in a mercilessly horrifying way. Yeshua was either going to stand firm or to buckle. And He knew it, and we are going to see Him praying about it in this third and final prayer narrative in the Gospel of Mark.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have six years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com. This week we will mostly be in Mark 14.

You know, this is hard to read and it is going to get harder as the weeks go by. I am going to point something out. Mark’s entire audience, which we know was centered either in or nearer to Rome because of all the Latin loan words and concepts in this Gospel—his audience knew about crucifixions. They didn’t need one to be described to them. They knew what happened before, during, and after. They had seen crucifixions of slaves and rebels all their lives. And so it is interesting that Mark actually is going to go into such detail about the prayers, the arrest, the trials, the torture, and the crucifixion itself. It is not unlikely that Mark reported about it at length because it was worse than normal—a lot worse. There is shock value here. From Yeshua not going boldly and without a second thought toward death as we would expect from heroes of old—and remember that Yeshua has been portrayed this entire time as a warrior destroying the Kingdom of Satan—to being shamed and wronged by numerous groups, the key here is to focus on a few things. One, a lot of the detail highlights that Yeshua is living an acted-out parable here of, among other Scriptures, Isaiah 53. Two, we are going to see echoes of other lesser messianic figures such as Joseph, Samson, and David in their trials. Three, the author wants us to understand the utter and complete shaming and degrading of the new Passover Lamb so that we can better appreciate and celebrate His later vindication and exaltation. But right now, that seems like a million years away. Right now, we have to deal with the dread before the storm, and we can take comfort in the fact that Yeshua doesn’t bypass this aspect of the trials that are common to all of us. His trust in God didn’t just override and overwhelm the dread and anguish He experienced in contemplating His immediate fate.

Before we start, I want to let you know that I see this passage very differently now than I did a year ago. Over the course of the past year, I have been focused heavily on the lamentations in Scripture and that makes up a lot of the Bible, a lot more than triumphalistic Western Christianity would have us believe. Forty percent of the Psalms are laments—crying out and complaining to God—and a sizeable chunk of the prophets, and an entire book of the Bible. I strongly encourage you to spend some time studying the lamentation theologians from the African American community, the African community, and the Asian community. Because they have known and do experience harsh tribulation, they have incredible insight into a reality of Scripture that most Westerners just don’t understand beyond a shallow level. Speaking from personal experience here. I will link some great books in the transcript. The way I read this now, better able to empathize with this rejected Jewish Rabbi living under an oppressive regime that was not very respectful of non-citizens or basic human rights in general, who could be merciless and downright vindictive beyond what most of us can even remotely imagine—it’s entirely different than how I skimmed over it in the past, only thinking about the physical pain. Anyway, let’s get started here and you will come to see why lament is something to be embraced by the faithful and not shunned.

32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 

Now, based on what time of year it was and how early it became dark, Yeshua and His disciples (and we don’t know how many went because back in verse 26, it gives us a generic “they” for those who left the dinner and went to the Mount of Olives, which was at least fifteen minutes away) probably arrived at Gethsemane somewhere between 10 and 11 that night, and we are on the fifteenth of Nisan/Aviv now. And just as an aside—there are people who shun the month name of Nisan because it is of Babylonian origin, but there is ample evidence to suggest that Aviv is a word that came from the Canaanites. Nisan comes from the Babylonian verb nisanu, which means “to move out” and aviv was the Canaanite word for barley. Neither word is pagan, they are simply descriptive and so both are fine.

Gethsemane comes from Gat Shemanim in Aramaic, where the noun gat means “winepress” and shemanim has various meanings related to oils. In later rabbinic use, gat came to mean specifically an oil press and so likely it already had that meaning in the first century when used by the Gospel authors. Given the orchard setting, an oil press is a suitable thing to find on the Mount of Olives. Although the current olive trees on the mount appear to be ancient, the truth is that the Romans camped on the Mt of Olives during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE and destroyed the trees for siege works and for kindling and whatever else they needed. In fact, if I remember correctly, there were no trees left standing for like a mile. That’s probably wrong but let’s just say that you had to walk a long way before you could find a tree. I gave an exact distance back when I was teaching chapter thirteen but I am way too lazy to look it up. John says that they met in a Garden here but the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) don’t mention it. There is a scholar named Joan Taylor who wrote a really great article for Biblical Archaeology Review called The Garden of Gethsemane: Not the Place of Jesus’ Arrest and in it she talks at length about the presence of a very large cave that was used during that time period as an oil press for olives.

Now, why her objection to the “Garden of Gethsemane”—well, this is one of those paradigms that we were all raised with. None of the Gospels specifically mention such a place and the closest is John, who in chapter 18 says that Yeshua and the disciples went across the Kidron wadi to a kepos. Now, a wadi is a riverbed that is dry during the summer but can become a raging river within a very short time in the winter once the early rains come. So, Yeshua and the disciples crossed this dry riverbed on the east side of Jerusalem, separating the Temple from the Mount of Olives. But a kepos is likely not a garden as we would know it and in fact, it merely means a cultivated area—which can mean a lot of things. Likely in this case it referred to the large orchard of olive trees. Backing that up is here in Mark where he says that they went to a place, a chorion, called Gethsemane. A chorion is simply a cultivated place, not specifically a garden and again, is more likely an orchard. But more than that, she does an amazing job of really supporting the idea that the disciples would have taken refuge from the cold night in the large oil press cave that still exists on the Mount. During the spring, it would not be in use. It would also be very dry and warm—and it certainly wasn’t either of those things outside because we will see Peter warming himself by the fire in the courtyard of the High Priest, something he would be unlikely to do if it were not quite chilly. Plus, we will see one of Yeshua’s disciples running from the scene stripped of the only clothing he had, a linen undergarment. Hardly the sort of outfit one would be wearing on a chilly hillside in March or April. Not only can it be rainy this time of year but high temperatures are only in the 40s and 50s so you can imagine the nights are much colder. She makes a very convincing case for them spending the night in the oil press cave. I am linking the article in the transcript which will be available on my blog on Friday. If you don’t know anything about oil presses in caves, you will want to look at that article—incredibly informative.

Yeshua says to His disciples, who have likely entered into the cave, “Sit here while I pray.” And remember I told you last week that they were full of protein, carbs, and wine. It was late. Besides the full moon, it was pretty danged dark and they had been out in the cold and now they were inside and warm and they were likely exhausted. This is a recipe for the perfect nap. And so it is not out of the question that they assumed they were spending the night—at which point they would have removed their cloaks in order to sleep on them. Full belly, full moon, lots of alcohol. Only a werewolf could stay awake under these kinds of conditions. Certainly not me.

33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled.

So, He leaves behind the disciples and goes elsewhere with the big three, Peter, James and John who are the only ones up to this point that He has been anything nearing transparent about what is about to happen. They are the only three who were in on all three of the Passion predictions and who had been told that Yeshua would be rejected, who would reject Him, that they would hand Him over to the Gentiles, and that He would be killed and that He would rise on the third day. The others were largely kept in the dark and it was only during the Passover seder that they were informed that one of the Twelve would betray Him and that they would all abandon Him and that Peter would personally deny Him three times before the end of the night. Remember from 3:14 the reason that Yeshua chose the Twelve—the primary reason was that they would be with Him. Yeshua wasn’t a loner and these weren’t just seminary candidates he was mentoring from a distance. These were His beloved companions in addition to simply being students. He loved them and we rarely see Him alone except when He would go aside to pray. But this time, He takes them along with Him—likely for two reasons which we will get to in a bit. Verse 33 says that Yeshua “began to be greatly distressed and troubled.” In Greek, these words are ekthambeo and ademoneo. Ekthambeo is only used four times in Scripture but it is a very intense word—it is the word used for when the women saw the angel at the tomb. And, I have to tell you that I saw an angel once and I was scared out of my mind and started shrieking, so, this is no casual word here. In Sirach, aka Ecclesiasticus, the word is actually translated as terrorized. Ademoneo comes up only three times in Scripture and is synonymous with deep anxiety, not just casual worry. Together, they have this sense that Yeshua was shaking with anxiety, barely holding it together.

He needs to pray and He needs His companions. Sometimes we like to forget how human Yeshua was because we prefer to think of His Passion as less horrible. His humanity made it all the more horrible and all the more a picture of ultimate love. I want to point something else out though—Yeshua is not showing the arrogant confidence of Peter and the others. Yeshua knows that He needs that communion of prayer with the Father. This is something that ought to knock all of us off our high horses. If Yeshua needs prayer, we need it a whole lot more than we can even begin to imagine.

34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 

Before He leaves them to go a bit further on, He tells them that His soul is sorrowful, in Greek the word is perilypos, and this is another rare word, only popping up four times in the NT and five times in the Septuagint. It is a word used for a severe emotional state—either extraordinarily sad or heartbroken or enraged. And Yeshua says that the emotional burden is so bad that it is bad enough to result in His death. That is a horrible picture of a man so heartbroken, terrified, filled with abject dread, and bereft of hope that it feels like He is going to die from it. We don’t like for our Messiah to be this human—it is very threatening. And if He is this human, then it requires a response from us that goes beyond casual loyalty into the extreme.

He gives them the instruction to “remain here and watch.” In Greek, it has the sense of waiting and staying awake, as a doorkeeper would, and I have talked before about why the doorkeeper was such an important job and it is really the only reason I don’t hate my first name, Tyler, which means doorkeeper in old English. This isn’t just a directive to stay awake but to be on alert as well.  The command to it directly relates to the original Passover night as we see in Ex 12:42– It was a night of watching by the Lord, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the Lord by all the people of Israel throughout their generations.

Yeshua here is giving them a Passover-based commandment to fulfill. He is really telling them to participate in an acted-out parable and not for the first time. He is showing them that this is the ultimate fulfillment of the Exodus vigil. And He is going to have to tell them to keep vigil three times. Remember that Yeshua is the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover and during the seder, He made it clear that the Passover itself was being redefined in His ministry, death, and resurrection. That they will fail to follow through makes them no different from their ancestors, who were forever rebellious—you know, just like us!

35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 

Let’s go back to Caesarea Philippi, at the base of Mt Hermon right before the transfiguration—toward the end of chapter eight and we have the first of the three Passion predictions. Right before that, Peter has identified Yeshua as the Messiah. And then the shocking prediction of His rejection by the powers that be among the Jewish elites, possibly talking about the Sanhedrin—and Peter rebukes Yeshua and says that this just can’t happen. Yeshua called Peter Satan, meaning adversary, and we get the sense that Yeshua is being tempted once more—first in the wilderness and then here and it is happening again at Gethsemane. And Yeshua falls to the ground—He doesn’t gingerly get down on His knees, all dignified and solemn and super spiritual, okay? This is just absolute submission and supplication, placing Himself at the mercy of the Father. As I mentioned before, this is the third time in this Gospel that Yeshua is portrayed as getting away by Himself to pray. This time, unlike the others, we know the content of His prayers. And what can we assume about these prayers from the rest of Scripture, being that this is a lamentation? How are lamentations carried out elsewhere? How would a Jewish Rabbi/Sage/Teacher cry out to God? He would lift His hands, He would cry out loudly, and He would lay prostrate in His anguish and distress. There was nothing dignified about this sort of thing—it is raw and honest and real.

And what is this hour? Yeshua is not only going to become the Passover to ransom Israel, as well as the world, but He is also going to fulfill the Akeida, the binding of Isaac by Abraham, when a ram caught in the thicket by its horns took the place of the son of Abraham as an ascending offering. I think I talked last week about how art depicts this ram standing on its back legs with its horns caught in the thicket much like a crown of thorns. As a ram in that situation would be greatly in distress and absolutely at the mercy of predators, so too is the Son of Man who will die as the perfect representative of Israel—fulfilling the function of Israel in the world where Israel failed.

36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” 

Abba doesn’t mean daddy—although I know that is popular and comforting after being really pushed so hard by Joaquim Jeremias back in 1971 in his New Testament Theology. And this, btw, is the first time that the word abba even shows up in Jewish literature. It actually pops up as the more formal father or esteemed teacher in the Targums and in Mishnaic times. It shows up only here and twice in Paul’s epistles. James Barr wrote a great article called Abba isn’t Daddy where he talks about the ancient usage of this word and how it would more reflect the respectful patriarchal norms of that time instead of the modern ideas about the word “daddy” and the casual over-familiarity that comes with that. Geza Vermes also debunked this idea back in 1983 in his own book Jesus and the World of Judaism. The theory had problems both linguistically and contextually and completely falls apart when we look at how the word abba is used throughout the Targums in ways that would be utterly ridiculous and inappropriate if the term was that babyish, but the level of knowledge of ancient languages to understand why it is wrong prevented all but a few to even challenge it for a very long time—and no one could reach a popular lay audience with that correction so it has remained popular. In the end, our Father is still God and not a human. It’s just another example of how anachronisms can enter into the way we view the Bible. But, why Abba? There’s a good reason for it.

Although it is wrong to make the term into a childish designation like “dada” or “daddy” it is still a term of intimate respect. We cannot forget the patriarchal reality of the ancient world when we think of parent-child relationships. It is not comparable to what we think of today as the ideal. Throughout the Scriptures, when people are in crisis and lamenting, there is a very real reaching out to God as a personal father. This is entirely a Hebraic way of looking at God, very unlike other nations who had no reason to trust in their gods or to expect preferential treatment as sons and daughters. And so laments in the Bible aren’t just crying out in sorrow, they are leveled as complaints to a patriarchal authority who can do something to change circumstances as well as to a maternal figure who listens to complaints with compassion. When we look at the traditional Jewish prayers in a daily siddur, it is filled with petitions to Avinu, our father, Malkenu, our King. Yeshua’s cry is heart-wrenching, and it is also a complaint.

He wants the hour to pass from Him. He reminds Yahweh that anything is possible for Him. He requests that Yahweh do what He is absolutely able to do. He wants the cup of wrath, spoken of repeatedly by the prophets against Israel’s rebellion, removed. This is a complaint—Yahweh can do something and Yeshua doesn’t want to go through it. And yet, as in the other laments of the Bible, there is resignation and submission. If this is Yahweh’s choice for Yeshua, if this is the best way or the only way, Yeshua is resigned to obey and endure it. But this is not a case of “going quietly into that good night”[1]—Yeshua is fighting against this as much as He can before simply giving in. He has faith. He loves His Father. But He doesn’t want to go through this. Yeshua is incredibly human in addition to being incredibly divine. And if He can approach God with this sort of wrestling, then so can we. That is what the family relationship gains us. This is entirely biblical in approach and in scope.

One more thing—we have an echo of the Avinu here, the Lord’s Prayer. It begins with “Abba, Father” and ends with “not what I will, but what you will.” Very much similar to the opening lines of the Lord’s prayer which begins with “Our Father” and ends with “Your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 

Three things of note here. One, they are sleeping when it is traditional to stay up late on Passover night. Remember we just talked about it being a vigil feast, hearkening back to Ex 12:42—a night of watching and this is our second reference to watching in this section. Two, He addresses Peter as Simon again. Peter hasn’t been referred to as Simon since chapter three when he was called to be a member of the Twelve. Really, you have to go back to chapter one to see him going by that name. Why is Yeshua regressing away from the name He gave to Simon? Let’s go back to Leah in Genesis—she named her second son Simeon because Yahweh heard that she was unloved. Simeon is related to being heard, which also plays into shema, which means to hear and obey. Peter isn’t hearing Yeshua, again, none of them are but Peter is likely the oldest and clearly the leader even among the three. Peter is not behaving like a rock, the meaning of Petros, but instead like Israel in being deaf (as they are described repeatedly in Isaiah). Not like us, right? Yeah, we’re always listening. Yeah, right. Three, Yeshua rebukes Peter for not watching one hour. Yeshua is wanting this hour to pass from Him, this horrific hour of crucifixion, and Peter and the others can’t even keep vigil for one literal hour.

38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 

We have our third mention of the need to keep vigil, to watch. And now we have the reason for their need to pray—not for Yeshua but for their own sakes. Yeshua has told them that they will all abandon Him and that Peter will even deny Him three times before the night is over. But, you know, the amazing thing is that even with that prediction, delivered in oath formula (“truly I say to you”) He is still telling them that they can petition God so that they will stand strong, that they won’t cut and run and crumble. That’s trust in God, that’s hope in us despite our failures. I find that incredible, that He can predict our failings while still having this amazing faith and hope. What can we learn from that sort of hope that can actually co-exist with our being utterly weak and ridiculous? For one thing, maybe we can give ourselves a bit more credit and give Yahweh more credit. Because, you know, maybe our sin natures really aren’t as strong as we like to imagine when we are giving in to it. God’s mercy is always stronger. And this isn’t about being hard on ourselves but about trusting Him and knowing ourselves.

Yeshua tells him that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and we tend to equate that with the Holy Spirit but this usage of pneuma is talking about their intentions. You know, all those things they promised and assured Him of that they would never fall away and especially Peter? When they were saying it, they weren’t lying. They were absolutely willing to die and not run away when they said that, and totally confident—but the flesh rules over the moment. That’s why they needed to keep vigil and pray for the strength not to succumb to their flesh instead of just assuming that they were all that and a bag of chips.

39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 

So again, He leaves them and cycles through His lament again. And it is important that He said the exact same thing because when we determine to do God’s will and submit to His plans, we still succumb to our grief and anxiety and our complaints again before we steel ourselves to God’s will.

40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. 

Their eyes are heavy. Remember the reference to Peter being referred to as Simon again, the one who needs to hear, and that being a reference back to deaf Israel in Isaiah. Well, here we have them unable to even keep their eyes open, making them blind as well. And we can all stand amazed that the three are speechless for the first time ever. Are they beginning to doubt themselves and their claims to standing courageously by their teacher’s side or are they just embarrassed and still not understanding the beginnings of their complete failure? These are the three who are always saying something ridiculous whenever Yeshua has something important to reveal to them—either in the form of protests, or delusions of grandeur and power-seeking, or wanting to commit genocide, there’s that gem as well in Luke nine. But now, they have nothing to say. Probably just as well. Listening to the three of them has been excruciating up to this point.  And it’s about to get worse in the case of Peter. But, deaf, blind, and speechless—not only does that hearken back to the prophetic description of Israel but also to my favorite teaching Psalm, Psalm 115 (which they had sung earlier at the seder). Speaking of all who put their trust in idols, it reads: 5 They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. 6 They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. 7 They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. And Isaiah uses that same language to describe apostate Israel pre-exile. This is important because it is contrasting the disciples, who are representatives of Israel as it is, and the perfect Israel represented by Yeshua. Yes they have heard Him teach and watched His life and have even worked miracles but they are still not inheritors of the New Creation life that will be inaugurated at the Cross and witnessed at the empty Tomb. This is why John the Baptist was less than those who belonged to the Kingdom of Heaven—as anointed as He was, He was still living as part of the old Creation reality. I am not talking about favor or salvation or obedience here—I am just saying that things changed radically and so people were able to change radically.

41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 

Yeshua goes off and laments, complains, and submits a third time and again finds them incapacitated by their flesh. (I am not dissing them, I probably wouldn’t have made it through the seder itself—the reason I decided not to go to med school is that I knew I couldn’t survive residency. I need sleep. I am a wimp.). They have failed to pray, to see, to understand, and even to speak. And I believe it is because they have been very much enslaved to their fleshy desires all this time—they wanted position, power, and wealth. Let’s just be plain with it, they were acting the part of mammon worshipers—they were behaving like idolaters biding their time until the Messiah finally got his act together and started kicking butt and taking names. They still have their eyes on worldly ambitions and it has rendered them all but senseless. It’s going to take a miracle, literally, to shake them out of it.

“You’re sleeping? Okay, that’s it. No more time. You couldn’t keep vigil for an hour and now my hour of suffering is here. The Son of Man (Yeshua’s preferred self-designation) is betrayed,”–paradidomi—which remember means to be handed over for judgment throughout the Septuagint, into the hands of sinners. And this word sinners, hamartolos, is a very harsh word—showing up in the Septuagint to describe the truly wicked. This isn’t chattat or asham kinds of sinning where there is a mistake or at least regret afterward—this is the word used to translate the Hebrew rasha, the word describing the ones who are so reprobate that God will not pardon them.

42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

The word for rise here is eigero, the resurrection word, and it is absolutely what they will need to do in order to recover from this failure. They will need to be reborn. And they are directed to notice that the betrayer, again paradidomi, is approaching. In this Gospel, these are the last recorded words of Yeshua to His disciples. And so we leave with a cliffhanger for the disciples. Next week, we will talk about who the sinners are, and about the arrest.

 

Joan F. Taylor, “The Garden of Gethsemane Not the Place of Jesus’ Arrest,” BAR 21 (1995): 26–35, 62.

James Barr, “Abba Isn’t Daddy” Journal of Theological Studies , vol. 39 no. 1, (1988) pp 28-47

[1] Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Persecution-related books

Katongole, Emmanuel Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa

Powery, Emerson B The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved

Thurman, Howard Jesus and the Disinherited

Rah, Soong-Chan Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

 



Episode 101: Mark Part 41—Help My Unbelief!

This is an incredibly heart-wrenching account of a father and son locked in an ongoing and deadly battle with a malicious demon—a battle they have been losing. When they go to the disciples for help, they are no help at all! What is the lesson here and what about the controversy over “this kind can’t go out except through prayer and fasting?”

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14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. 15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. 16 And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. 18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” 26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

Although you wouldn’t think it, this is actually the longest exorcism story in Mark’s Gospel—longer than the Legion account in Mark 5, even. It is also the last exorcism account in Mark—the first, of course, took place in the Capernaum synagogue in chapter one and was a direct response to Yeshua/Jesus’s announcing the arrival of the Kingdom for the first time in His ministry. No surprise, any demons in the area would have violent objections to His announcement and one just happened to be oppressing one of the regular synagogue attendees. Yeshua silenced the demon and delivered the man, and people marveled. Here, after the stunning and provocative events on Mt Hermon where He was transfigured before Peter, James, and John in what the Gospel of Matthew calls a vision, there will be one final demonic showdown—again, this one will be violent. Only this one is violent in more than just words. We’ll have another self-manifestation here, which is easy to miss, of Yeshua doing something that only God can do—in this case, receiving and answering prayer. And, I have to add that although this account is in all the Synoptics, Mark has some really unique features that you don’t find elsewhere. Mark, of course, and all the different Gospel writers, tell the same story emphasizing different facts, in order to promote different aspects of Yeshua’s mission. In Mark, of course, the focus is on Yeshua as the fulfillment of the Yahweh-warrior/arm of the Lord bringing forth the Greater Exodus, or the New Exodus. Matthew is much more concerned with Yeshua as teacher—which is a good thing because Mark almost never tells us anything about the content of His preaching, apart from parables. Imagine life without the Sermon on the Mount! Imagine Luke without the grace parables and the Good Shepherd motif!

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that teaches them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com. Let’s get right into the text of Mark chapter nine.

14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.

Who is “they”? Yeshua, Peter, James, and John. Where did they come from? The Mount of Transfiguration, Mt Hermon. Presumably, they are entering the villages of Caesarea Philippi on the slope of said mountain. Peter, James, and John shared this vision of Yeshua’s true form and, despite this being the ultimate fanboy moment where they got to see Moses and Elijah, they are told by the Bat Kol, the voice from Heaven, that it is Yeshua they need to hear and obey. Why hear and obey? Because the Greek word used by the writer is akouo, which was used in the Septuagint to translate shema, which means hear and obey and is the word that is specifically used to describe our obligation to hear and obey Yahweh, repeatedly throughout Scripture and most notably in the shema prayer of Deut 6:4-9. And we have seen Yeshua use it many times in telling His disciples and the crowds to listen to Him. I didn’t mention it last week, but this is self-manifesting language. He’s giving His own words divine authority here. So, they are coming down the mountain—another Sinai motif, and there is a commotion—just like when Moses came down with the Two Tablets. Moses encountered gross faithlessness because Israel was worshiping the Golden calf and here in the ancient region of Dan was where Jeroboam set up his own idol. What’s the problem this time? What we will find out is that there is more to faithlessness than idolatry.

Scribes have surrounded the disciples, and we assume they are perhaps from Jerusalem but we don’t have any real reason to assume that. There were scribes in any major population center. The question here is what on earth are they arguing about? Whatever it is, it has drawn a large crowd, polys ochlos, again—we always see references to “the many” of the servant songs in Isaiah throughout this Gospel., no matter where He travels.

15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.

In Exodus 34, when Moses comes back down the mountain with the second set of tablets, the people were also amazed because his face was shining from being so near the glory of God. Of course, we have no indication that Yeshua’s face was shining and quite the opposite—what happened in the vision evidently stayed in the vision but they were running up to Him. Evidently, based on what we are about to learn about the activities of His disciples during His absence, they have all been waiting for Him to show up.

16 And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 

Disciples were an extension of their teacher and so Yeshua had to find out what the problem was. He couldn’t just say, “Come on you guys, stop arguing, let’s get to Jerusalem.” If He had done that then, by honor/shame rules, Yeshua would have lost face/reputation among the Scribes. They would win by default in whatever the argument was. So, this had to be confronted and dealt with. Anytime there was an audience present, people in the ancient world were forced to choose their every word and action very carefully to avoid being disgraced and discredited—and a discredited Messiah is no good to anyone. We can never forget that the entire Bible happened within a historical and a sociological context—historical is more obvious but by sociological I mean the way people thought and the ideas they accepted about how things were and how they should be. Yeshua had to operate within that reality—He couldn’t create a bubble within which to operate. Sometimes, people see that as an endorsement of this or that (as people have shamefully done in the past with the institution of slavery) but really the truth was that He had a job to do—inaugurate the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and defeat the oppressive forces of sin and death. What had no bearing on that, He generally didn’t outright address even though He often left us clues. But anyway, He had to address this sort of thing, no matter how ridiculous it sometimes was. This, however, was not ridiculous but tragic. If any parent, if any human being really, can read this and not be broken-hearted—then we aren’t reading this for what it is—the story of a real father, his tormented son, and our merciful Savior intervening. And not just intervening, mind you, but entering into the sorrow of it and bringing everyone else into this tragedy as well.

17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. 

I’ve mentioned before that a man’s students are an extension of himself in the ancient world. So, in bringing the boy to the disciples, it was the same thing in their minds with bringing the boy directly to Yeshua Himself. But this isn’t just someone from the crowd, this is the boy’s father. He does address Yeshua with respect but, as we will see later in the account, there is at the very least frustration in his answer. The boy doesn’t have anything physically wrong with him, but he has a spirit that makes him actually mute. The word for this alalos, is only ever used by Mark and is different from the word used in the account of the deaf Gentile with the speech impediment in Mark 7. But, this is the least of the boy’s problems. This is every parent’s worst nightmare.

18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 

This is just beyond horrifying. This is not epilepsy. Epilepsy is an actual physical problem, a neurological disorder where the brain goes haywire sometimes. This is demonic torment. We see demons throughout the Gospel but not all of them seem to be particularly malicious or violent—but this one is. If this had been a simple matter of healing, possibly the disciples would not have failed but they did fail. In fact, this is the only recorded failure we see. Why here and why now? They had ministered in two’s before, and successfully. Were they showing off? Were they competing to see who could do it or who should? Goodness knows they were often and very obsessed with their ranking. Or maybe, in light of the first century beliefs about Mt Hermon, were they intimidated by being at the gates of hell? On the devil’s doorstep? Or maybe this demon really was empowered by the locale. In any event, the disciples were asked and they were not able—and I take this as meaning that none of the nine who were left in the villages were able. This was incredibly shameful to their teacher. This is turning into an accusation about Yeshua’s claims to authority and, of course, the scribes are jumping right on it. Of course, let us not forget that the scribes weren’t casting it out either…so, there’s that.

19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 

What does it mean to be a faithless generation? It means to lack trust in the power of God over the enemy. And sometimes, we forget that the power to cast out demons isn’t our power but God’s. Demons don’t care about Tyler. Demons care a whole lot about Yeshua’s authority. The disciples, at this point in the game, about to turn south toward Jerusalem for His final Passover and crucifixion, need to be able to function independently based on their absolute trust in Yeshua’s authority, given to them when they were initially sent out on their ministry tours in Mark 6. He is well aware that the time left is desperately short and that they need to understand the unlimited nature of His authority and what He has granted to them to accomplish in His name. But right now is not a teaching moment because this man’s son is in torment.

20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth

As I said, this is one malicious demon. It sees Yeshua and immediately starts attacking the boy. It doesn’t cry out but goes right to trying to harm him. All the other demons so far have been verbally challenging Him, begging for mercy, that sort of thing but this one really seems to be making a power play and holding the boy hostage. Yeshua’s response is not what we have come to expect—which is to just ruthlessly cast the thing out. But then, He loves to keep us from being able to put him in a box and here He is going to teach us something very important.

21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him.

Yeshua has to be somewhat surprised at how nasty and bold this demon is, and right in His face too. If it responds to Yeshua that way, what must this boy’s life be like? So, Yeshua shows that He cares by asking. In an honor/shame society, people often looked at the demonically oppressed as though they are sinners who are deserving of the torment. You don’t ask why someone else has hardship in a world like that, you just figure it is divine retribution for a hidden sin. Such was the tyranny of ancient honor/shame cultures. Yeshua doesn’t ask, “What sin did he commit?” or more to the point, “What was your sin that he is possessed like this?” That’s what his fellow townspeople were probably always asking. Yeshua instead asks the human question—“How long has he been living like this?” The father responds, “Since childhood.” And he further goes on to describe their terrible suffering. This is no garden variety demon of lust or deception or whatever—this demon is determined to torture the boy until he eventually dies. I want you to imagine the desperation of this father who has nowhere else to go and absolutely no hope. When he heard that Yeshua was in the area, he brought his son, only to find the disciples instead. And, one by one, the nine of them proved powerless. He loves his son—if he didn’t, he could have killed him and no one would have raised an eyebrow. After all, he was in a pagan city and pater familias was a real deal. It would be almost another hundred years before Hadrian made it illegal for a father to kill his wayward children. Likely, the synagogue would have also turned a blind eye if this boy had turned up deceased-it was only a matter of time anyway. But this man loves his son, very deeply, obviously. Caring for this child would have been very difficult and it exposed the family to accusations and shame. Plus, they lived under the constant fear of their child dying or being damaged beyond repair. My friends who have children with severe forms of autism often know this father’s struggle and what life was like for the family. No, autism is not demonic, but the danger to the child can be comparable to this depending on the form and the severity.

But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 

We can forgive his rebuke here and disbelief. We can hardly imagine the day-to-day realities of his life up to this desperate moment. He can scarcely hope at this point that, with the abject failure of His disciples, that the teacher will be able to do any better. But he does beg for mercy and he does ask for help. I want to compare this to the cry of the leper in chapter one, who says, “If you are willing you can make me clean.” This time, he has seen too much failure to be so generous with his faith.

23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 

Some scholars say this is tongue in cheek and Yeshua is being playful but I can’t imagine that those people have ever had to deal with a developmentally disabled child who could fly out of control. It’s terrifying beyond belief and this would take that up a notch because there is a demon, with whom they have been dealing for years—FOR YEARS—actively trying to kill their son. This isn’t funny, this is desperate. Yeshua didn’t ask about the boy’s plight so that He could make light of the situation. He humanized this boy for the crowd, He won’t turn the situation into any sort of light-hearted mockery now. But right now, the man needs to snap out of his well-earned fatalism. He needs to believe and he needs to believe now in the presence of Yeshua. The man has challenged Yeshua and Yeshua volleys the challenge back. “I can do this, but can you take this seriously enough to muster trust that God can overcome this?”

Every parent of a significantly special needs child has, on many occasions, reached the end of their rope. I can think of the times that I was falling apart and then something or someone would snap me out of it because my son needed me and I couldn’t afford to not be strong for him. This last time, with Andrew in November—I had never been so scared in my life and watching him in agony that drugs couldn’t do anything about because his brain was being crushed from the inside, and still being stressed out from the surgery in October. I lost it at one point, I just absolutely lost it. I didn’t know if I was ever going to get my kid back alive or with his personality intact. But there came a moment where I needed to snap out of it. Every parent who has been through this can tell you the same thing. And it works with this dad. What Yeshua said pierced his heart and focused him on the goal again.

24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 

The father immediately snaps out of it and cries out, ironically because his son is mute and cannot cry out for himself. “I believe; help my unbelief!” Pisteuo and apistea are both related to pistis, translated as faithfulness in the fruit of the Spirit but it can have a lot of different nuances. It can mean trust or allegiance—what it doesn’t mean is just empty belief. Like, you believe that it’s a bad idea to jump off the bridge but you do it anyway. The demons believed that Yeshua was the Messiah, the Son of God, but they didn’t follow or trust him. In the west, we are focused on believing all the right things instead of placing our trust and allegiance in those things. It is one thing to believe in eternal life in the world to come and quite another thing to trust God so much that you won’t hesitate to die in His service because you know He keeps His promises. So, what Yeshua is demanding of Him, here, is not mental assent that, yeah, it is conceivably possible that the demon can leave his son. It is trust that not only is it possible, but that Yeshua has the absolute authority to do it.

I want you to notice something here that is very profound but easily missed. The father’s response takes the form of a prayer. I mean, would you come to me and ask me to help with your unbelief? Of course not. I can’t do anything of the sort. All I can do is point you in the direction of Yeshua and tell you to give Him your absolute allegiance and He will teach you to trust Him but you would never expect me to generate such a thing. I can’t. No one can. Only God can overcome our distrust. This man, whether he was aware of it or not, just prayed to Yeshua and asked for something only God can give.

25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” 

Now that the man has placed his imperfect trust in Yeshua and has asked Him for what only God can give—help in the area of distrust—Yeshua goes back to business as usual. Now, even though the man said nothing about this being a spirit causing deafness, Yeshua discerns the nature of the beast (so to speak) and not only commands it to leave but to never come back again. So, this is a rare double-rebuke of a demon. And it might seem odd because we don’t see Yeshua having to add a command to not come back in any other account but let’s look at the nature of this particular demon. This is the nastiest one yet—worse than Legion. Legion came running to Yeshua, begging not to be treated badly. The other demons were similar. But this one was so bold and hateful that it was trying to harm the boy right in Yeshua’s face. Any amount of hatred that isn’t even concerned with its own well-being is alarming. All the rest of these demons were very concerned with their own survival but not this one. It was just bent on destruction. So this one had to be told to never come back. And there are some who say that maybe there was a generational curse but nothing is said about it, or that there was a particular sin—maybe of idolatry—in the home but nothing is said about that either. I think we still like to look for reasons why such things are deserved but, in any case, we know this boy has been possessed since he was little and so I don’t think we want to go there and say that a child can earn a demon. Just really goes to show how underhanded and heartless and ruthless the enemy and his kingdom truly are.

26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 

So, evidently it can make noise and it is still so evil that it either keeps trying to hurt the boy or it is resisting Yeshua’s authority to the very last but it finally comes out. There is quite the debate within the scholarly community. Most seem to take this as a comparison—the boy was “like” a corpse, while others take it literally. It actually doesn’t matter as far as the account goes because the ordeal has been so difficult that when the demon leaves the boy he at least appears dead to all the onlookers. And those people in that age all knew what dead people look like. Me? I have remarkably never seen someone who was dead except at two funerals I was singing at and neither of those people were close to me. I don’t know how you get to be fifty-one years old and have never seen a loved one dead but I just haven’t. I have been incredibly blessed. But these people knew what a dead person looked like.

27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 

Yeshua physically takes the boy by the hand—a very common motif in miracle stories. We have the account with the leper, Peter’s mother in law, Jairus’s daughter, the people in Nazareth and also in Capernaum, the deaf Gentile with the speech impediment, the blind man who say men walking like trees, blind Bartimaeus, the little children, and the crippled woman in the synagogue. Pay close attention to how Yeshua uses His hands and what happens—including accounts like the breaking of bread for the thousands. Now, we also have to pay attention to the counter theme of what His enemies do with their hands—they nitpick over ritual cleanliness in ways unauthorized by the Torah, Yeshua says they will not lift a finger to help those burdened by their extra commandments, they use their hands to arrest and physically attack Yeshua, etc… And then when we see the apostles later, they use their hands the same ways Yeshua used His. We never see them being violent, ever, but they are sometimes subjected to violence at the hands of their enemies. So, we have this pattern of using hands to give life and provision and encouragement and blessing and then you have this other pattern of using hands to harm and take and oppress and withhold aid. The hands will tell you who is and is not following Yeshua. I know I have to be very careful because my entire ministry is based on what I write. Even this teaching is being read from a script because, if left to my own devices, on my gosh I end up on crazy rabbit trails..

But, Yeshua takes the boy by the hand and lifts him up and he rises. The word for lifts up, you can probably guess if you have been listening to the rest of this series, is egeiro, our common word for resurrection throughout Mark’s Gospel, but we also have a word from last week that I didn’t mention, anistemi—which is the word used by Mark to recount Yeshua’s words coming back down the mountain, “And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” So, the resurrection imagery here is unmistakable and no coincidence. The boy wasn’t dead but he might as well have been before Yeshua defeated this particularly destructive demon and bringing him back to community and the world of the living. This was a cosmic battle of epic proportions at the place referred to in Scripture as “the gates of hell” aka Mt Hermon.

28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 

So, they go back to where they were staying—I mean, we know they were there six days before the four climbed the mountain so they had to be staying somewhere. And they actually do the right thing and ask Him, but only once they were alone, “What the heck??? Why couldn’t we cast that out???? I mean, we’ve been able to cast everything out and heal everyone and this thing wouldn’t budge. We all tried. It was SO EMBARASSING!”

29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

And, I know, some of you are saying, “Whoa there, girlie, I know that verse says “prayer and fasting” but there’s a problem with that. You know there are different manuscripts of the New Testament texts just like there are different manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures before the Masorites decided on the “one true way” the Scriptures needed to be recorded about 1200 years ago. But you get scribes making mistakes, you have them accidentally adding something to one Gospel that’s from another, or on the wrong line, or whatever and it doesn’t radically change the meaning. It’s just an error. So, we have some manuscripts that are more important and reliable than others. Some later versions have some pretty glaring errors that you can’t find in any earlier documents. Then, sometimes it appears as though a scribe is trying to be “helpful” and I think this was the case here. It’s commonly assumed to be original because it ended up in the KJV but it just isn’t warranted. And there was a huge controversy over it that I am not going to go into now but I will post a link to the debate. https://carm.org/king-james-onlyism/was-matthew-1721-removed-from-modern-bibles/

I prefer it to just be “and prayer” and these are my reasons. (1) I am not averse to fasting and do it and especially in deliverance related situations if I know ahead of time that I am going to have to do such a thing, (2) We have Yeshua’s own words in Mark 2 that it was inappropriate for His disciples to fast as long as He, the Bridegroom, was with them, but once He is gone they would fast—are we truly to believe that He set them up for failure by not having them fast—if that indeed was the only way a demon like this could be dealt with? (3) I think what we have here was a two-fold failure on the part of not praying—by the father and by the disciples. I will explain.

First of all, I think the disciples had gotten the idea that they were doing the healings and exorcisms themselves. I say this because they asked, “Why couldn’t we do this?” It wasn’t, “What did we do wrong?” Because, I am going to just flat out say that once we get the idea that we can do any of this by our own power or authority, we’re just dead wrong, and even though God will work through us anyway if there is something He really wants to accomplish. But it was never them. It was always God working His will through them, okay? And so, we have to lean on God—always and forever—and we can never forget who is actually fighting the battle. I think the disciples had experienced a lot of success and I have to say it had to be something to have people dazzled by your “abilities.” Not many people can hold up under that kind of adoration and all the posturing we have seen from them is proof that they are ambitious and do not have their minds in the right game. They have their minds on worldly matters but that can’t continue. I think they didn’t go to God and honor Him with their petitions and that He didn’t allow this exorcism to work for even one of the nine. I think this was a reality check.

But Yeshua also says this type cannot go out except by prayer—if He included fasting then that is puzzling since the text says nothing about Him fasting—and that is exactly what He compelled the father of the boy to do when he said, “I believe, help my unbelief!” It was a prayer. It was, in fact, the kind of prayer that God always answers. God always answers Kingdom-advancing prayers but not generally self-serving prayers. If you ask for wisdom, or to know Him better, or for more faith, or for better fruit, or to be forgiven or for the spread of the Gospel—well, those prayers are the very definition of calling on the Name of the Lord because they advance His purposes in the world. The father asked for a good thing. “Help my lack of trust.” Yeshua responds to that prayer with an action that will guarantee the father never doubts the power of God ever again.

Before we close, I want to mention a quote from D.L. Moody: “There are three kinds of faith in Christ: 1. Struggling faith, like a man in deep water, desperately swimming. 2. Clinging faith, like a man hanging to the side of a boat. 3. Resting faith, like a man safely within the boat (and able to reach out with a hand to help someone else get in).” This father’s faith is the first kind—and with good cause. He’s been struggling to keep his head above water (and his son’s head) for so long and he is just in survival mode. Let’s just say that Yeshua just threw the man and his son into the boat and told them that they could finally rest. Do you think this man will have a quiet and private faith from now on? No, he will forever be talking about what God did for his son.

Next week, we get another Messianic reality check with the second passion prediction.



Prayer Unites, Fear Destroys, and the Myth of “Torah Observance”

This week’s broadcast touches on COVID-19. I know we were supposed to start in the Gospel of Mark, but I wanted to take some time to address the power of prayer to unite, fear to destroy and the myth of Torah observance (it’s just another mantra, like “the law has been done away with”–no one really keeps even all of it that can still conceivably be kept, which I will prove). Some disturbing “prophecies” have popped up from a number of people making claims that all this will be over by the Passover, that this is the fault of the Jews for not accepting the Messiah, that it is the fault of Christians, and (already proven false among people in my own circle) that anyone who keeps the Passover instead of Easter will not be touched by the virus. I’ve seen the best and worst in people over the course of the last ten days as people respond in various ways to uncertainty and fear, which has been both an eye-opening gift from God and a sobering look at the reality of how far we have to go as a body in order to reflect His character.

Here is the awesome article I mentioned by Doug Friedman http://www.messianicassociation.org/ezine22-df.mosaic-laws-messianic.htm

There is no transcript available on my website for this episode.



Episode 44: When The Miracle We Pray For Doesn’t Happen…

I recorded this broadcast four days after the shocking death of Yael Good, the daughter of my beloved friends, Joe and Debbie Good. In the wake of a senseless tragedy, and especially when the throne of God is being bombarded day and night with prayers from countless thousands all over the world, we sometimes feel betrayed, disappointed, bewildered, and even embarrassed. I came up with seven difficult questions and I answered them to the best of my ability. Sometimes, there just are no answers, but that doesn’t make the questions wrong. Questions are never wrong.

For those wanting to donate to Yael’s funeral and medical fund www.yaelgood.com



Social Media Musings Vol 3: Praying for Modern Untouchables

This is crazy, if you had told me a few weeks ago I was doing this I would have growled at you and called you insane, a liar, or worse. I might have spit at you (okay not really, but I would have been grossly offended). But then God shared something with me that I, as a teacher of children, could not ignore. It is almost futile to just sit around hating child molesters while knowing that they aren’t going away, that it is a generational sin, and if I am not part of the solution then I am part of the problem. Most will never be caught. If they were, the prisons aren’t big enough. God isn’t going to just kill them all en masse – even if I wish sometimes that He would. Since the Cross, God has dealt with evil primarily one way – by transforming it through the power of the Cross. The exile from the garden didn’t wipe it out, even the flood just limited it for a while. So, what did He ask me to do that was so unthinkable? That I need to explain step by step. If you would like, you can start out by listening to this interview on the power of radical forgiveness that unexpectedly segued into this unexpected topic – but if you don’t want to spend the time (hour and a half), you can read the daily journal below. And by the way, I am moderating ALL comments now. So if your comment is incendiary or insulting, it won’t see the light of day – and I won’t read very much of it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS8Tu1bEIW4?feature=oembed&w=1080&h=608]

January 1, 2018

This is a risky thing to say because people might not read the whole thing and get offended – but when has that ever stopped me before? This year I am going to spend a lot of time praying for the repentance and salvation of child molesters. Yes, I know, you want them dead and in my heart of hearts, I sympathize. I have prayed for God to kill them all at once, only to retract it, thinking of how many car accidents, plane crashes, whatever – would happen all at once. It’s the old “you have three wishes” scenario where people end up destroying the world based on good intentions.

We all know that God is not going to kill every child molester any more than He is going to strike down every malicious gossip, or any other kind of murderer. So what’s the alternative? Do we want their eternal condemnation so badly that we want them to die in their sins? Do we really understand the consequences of that? Their eventual eternal condemnation means only one thing – more victims. More children molested, bottom line. More child sex slaves. More child porn. That’s the price of their not repenting and coming to salvation.

About 17 years ago, as a new Christian, God challenged me on this and it has taken all this time to even begin to get my head screwed on straight about it. I pray for their repentance and salvation because I love children more than I hate them. I would have every single one on earth saved before I would have even one more child violated.

A lot of times, we don’t understand the justice of God. He is more concerned with eradicating evil than He is in condemning sinners. Evil is only eradicated one way in the post-cross world, and that is through repentance. Repentance leads to salvation. Salvation leads to transformation and reconciliation. And that is a tough pill to swallow – it is why radical forgiveness is so offensive to our flesh. We want people like this to burn forever, right? I am on record as wishing the US Government would have the death penalty for child molestation and rape, just as it is in the Bible, but that’s not our reality.

We have to deal with reality. Reality is: no repentance leads to more victims. Eternal vengeance vs salvation is really going to be measured in a higher victim count.

Will any repent? I don’t know. But if I am not praying for that, and none repent, what will be my culpability in the victim count? I believe that prayers work – and even if only one, only one repents, there will be untold children saved.

So, that’s my big goal for 2018 – to strive to protect children by focusing my prayers on the salvation of their greatest enemies. Truly, if we want child molesters to suffer – I imagine that the suffering they would endure as believers, having to face their sins and hopefully, make restitution and confession, would be pretty terrible.

***

After a long, agonizing, and prayerful day today spent searching my heart, I have decided to fast and pray for 40 days. It won’t be my first time, and I fast relatively often for various amounts of time without ever saying anything about it. But some things I have been reading about in “A Chance to Die” have me thinking a lot about my calling to teach children, and although I have prayed often that God would allow me to impact every child on earth for His Messiah – it occurs to me that I would like to pull back for a while and pray for the spiritual bondage to be broken in the lives of those who victimize them. Some demons can only go out with prayer and fasting, and I imagine that anything that could override a human’s natural protectiveness over children for the sake of a moment’s pleasure has to be something akin to that. I posted about why I have been praying for these people this morning and did a radio interview where I talked about it last week (I will post it in the comments) but I feel a seriousness about this. I plan to ask God for a soul on the first day, two on the second, four on the third, and so on. As things stand now, I am not able to ask for the sake of the molesters, but for the sake of the present and future victims they will continue to harm if they are not delivered. If we, as a people, do not protect our children then our love has grown colder than cold.

I am letting you know this because I am planning on journaling through this process on my wall, day by day. Also, if you all know about it, I won’t succumb to the day 20+ boredom and decide to start eating again. Yes, I know when my weak spot is – when I am no longer hungry but bored to death. Eating is more entertaining than you might imagine – even to someone who fasts quite often and even for extended periods. The only reason I will seriously consider stopping is if I start having TIA’s or strokes again, and I have been okay since December 7, so I ask prayer support on that so I will be able to do it.

I just feel so strongly like I need to do this. I don’t even begin to understand this.

January 2, 2018

Day 1 – The Reluctant Missionary – 128.2 lbs

Although it is hard to believe now – the great missionary to India’s children, Amy Carmichael, did not enjoy wide support back home for her efforts. Can you believe there were actually people who were angry with her? She should have stayed home with the D.O.M (Dear Old Man) who had effectively adopted her to come and live with his family. He would die of a broken heart without her, after all (he did not). She should have stayed closer to home. She should have continued working with the poor back home. She should have…and the should have’s tragically kept people from praying for her efforts.

The call of God rarely sounds sane to those who have not heard the precise instructions. We are quick to judge, and even quicker to condemn and dismiss – but only time will tell what God has and has not instructed.

Sometime between 17 and 19 years ago, as a new Christian, God issued a challenge that provoked me to lash out at Him in anger:

I was listening to a local radio show in a small, southern Idaho town, and the hosts were talking about homosexuals. I remember the one host said that he would like it is God would put “them” all on a boat in the middle of an ocean and then put a hole in it so they would all drown. I was outraged – where was his decency, any sense of mercy? I quickly shot off an email to him and went back to my work in the lab. As I was muttering to myself, I heard God respond in what I call His “loud inside voice.”

“I can’t believe anyone would have that kind of hatred in their heart!” I muttered.

“You mean like your hatred for child molesters?”

The message was in so quickly– my defenses had been down because my offense was up. I heard what I heard clear as a bell, and I was angry about it for a long time. As with every incidence in my life of hearing this particular voice, it has always left me without argument. I also can’t just dismiss it or ignore it, The voice has always been right, painfully right, even if I didn’t understand why. I disagreed with and resented the unspoken message, and I still do, but I knew then it was right as I know it now.

Yes, I hated child molesters, and much of me still does. I am not going to detail my own story here, or the things in my life that have happened since that day in the lab. Some of the story is mine to tell, and other parts belong to others – I cannot tell their story and to tell mine would be counterproductive.

If God was merely pointing out and congratulating my hatred for child molesters with a divine “high five”, I wouldn’t have been the slightest bit offended. But there is always a message within the message – and, in this case, the message was terrible:

“You hate them with such an intensity that you want them all dead and condemned, AT ANY PRICE.”

Right after the Biblical Feast of Sukkot, I began studying the reality of evil and radical forgiveness. Nothing I have ever studied has been more excruciating. I have been shaken to the core – and yet, my mind has also been eased by learning about what forgiveness is and is not.

Two weeks ago, God showed me the reality behind my fantasies of revenge and retaliation – they weren’t going to ever happen. I may be a murderer in my heart and mind, but my hands are not willing, despite my verbal bravado. God also showed me that He has no intention of killing every single child molester on the planet. And we know that the justice system will not be incarcerating them all, and even if they did – they would not remain safely locked up. There are not enough jails in the world to hold them, and the Biblical penalty of death in such cases is not being implemented. That is our reality.

So what power do we have? Prayer.

So, do I simply pray for an ever-growing number of victims? Will that do anything to stop the abuse, to stop there from being more and more victims every single day? No, the victim count will rise and I will simply have more victims to pray for, every day more and more. That isn’t acceptable to me – I don’t want my prayers to simply be a trauma ward after the fact. It seems like admitting defeat, “We can’t stop them all so let’s just pray for their victims.”

We have to remember that, in much of the world, this behavior isn’t even illegal. Do we just write off those kids? Pray for them after the damage is done and irrevocable? That isn’t acceptable to me either. I can no longer justify ONLY praying for the victims.

As I see it now, the only recourse is to pray for those who are victimizing the children in the first place. Worldy methods just don’t work – people just go back and offend and offend again and again. I believe the only hope for the children of the world is for their abusers to come to Yeshua/Jesus, and for that to happen I believe the demonic stranglehold of this unfathomable evil has to be broken in their lives. Yes, I want them to suffer, and I want to sit back and comfortably hate them and abandon them to the devil – but that comes with too great a price tag–more and more victims.

How many more children should be sacrificed on the altar of my revenge, just because the thought of them being forgiven is too terrible for me to bear?

And so today I begin 40 days of fasting and praying for the salvation of the people who, if they do not repent and come to salvation, will victimize more and more and more. I am so conflicted. I want to do this for the sake of future victims. I want to do this for the sake of the children whose molestation would stop now, today even, if salvation comes to their attackers. I want revenge – but more than revenge I want to evil to end.

I suppose that if such a person comes to Messiah, that they will suffer as they contemplate their sins – as I suffer when I contemplate the times I have hurt people. But salvation has always been about this – about someone not getting the punishment they deserve, right? Faith is about trusting that although there will never be true justice in this world, that we will know it in the world to come. And so I am called to this bizarre mission field – but unlike other missionaries, I am reluctant. Today I will ask the Lord for the salvation and deliverance of one child molester – something that up until now has been unthinkable to me. I even do it knowing that this might make me the most hated woman on earth. But what if? What if a father, one who was molested himself, stopped before he even began? What if even one child trafficker had a salvation experience and turned him/herself in. What if someone else refused to kidnap or purchase a child today? What if?

I have seen amazing things come from prayer – I believe that God works miracles through prayer. Yeshua/Jesus told His disciples that they would do greater things than He did while on earth – what could be greater than to save children? Are we willing to pay the price? It is high.

A word of caution on the comments – this is a sensitive and emotional subject, for all of us. I have friends who have been molested, whose children have been molested, some people’s children have committed suicide after molestation, others go on to commit these terrible crimes themselves. No matter what has happened, there are victims on every side, hurting in different, and violently painful ways. I ask that everyone just extend grace to one another. I won’t allow any victim bashing – assume that if someone is lashing out, that they are frustrated and hurting. It will be hard for me to endure because I am hurting too, but if I can endure it, then I ask everyone else to be patient and loving as well. Our personal situation is not the same as everyone else’s – but we tend to only see our own side of it and want everyone else to as well. That’s natural. What I will not allow, and have never allowed on this page, is personal attacks, cheap shots, any demeaning of anyone else on this wall – no naming of names – this has always been a rule here. I don’t even allow my enemies to be slandered here. We can’t fight evil by doing evil.

January 3, 2018

Day 2 – The Man Who Stood in my Grey Zone. –

If you haven’t read the last few posts, you might want to before reading this. The stuff I am writing about right now is going to be disturbing to folks – especially without the context of the posts that have come before.

*************

He wasn’t totally in my gray zone, mind you. A lot of him stood in the zone I reserve for the blackest of the black – at least I presume he did. I really don’t know.

In the early 1990’s, NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association) got outed for holding their monthly meetings in the San Francisco public library, one floor above their children’s section, so the news reports went. No one was happy – not parents, not non-parents, not the well established gay community of the city. My gay friends at work and in the neighborhood (I was working at an Aerospace company in Berkeley, right across the bay) were outraged. Christian/non-Christian – you name it, people had their torches and pitchforks out and frankly, that was good and right. NAMBLA is set on the legalization of pedophilia and is probably the most hated group in the US.

While watching the news one night, brows furrowed and mouth pursed angrily, muttering obscenities (hey, I was NOT saved at that point, okay? Honesty time here), they interviewed a guy that made everyone watching catch their breath in horror.

“I am just grateful that my grandfather loved me enough to allow me to play Doctor with him when I was a little boy.”

The kid looked like he was in his 20’s, my age at the time, or that’s how I remember him. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I don’t know if this young man ever had, or ever did, molest anyone – but he equated the act itself with love. His grandfather had twisted his little boy trust into believing that violation was some form of familial nurturing. I have always imagined that was the only way his mind could deal with the molestation – to turn it into something special instead of acknowledging the horrific nature of it. I wonder if he was even interested in molesting anyone himself, or if he just joined the group as some unconscious attempt to normalize what had happened to him – to make it okay.

Do I believe that God can heal that kind of twisting? I have to. Does that twisting excuse abuse? No. It better explains it but doesn’t justify it, doesn’t make it any less wrong, doesn’t make it an inevitable outcome, and certainly doesn’t give anyone a free pass on consequences.

All day yesterday, praying for people I don’t want to pray for – I spent a lot of time walking because only while walking would my mind quiet down, only then could I just pray. Sometimes I just loudly groaned because praying was hurting me in areas that I hadn’t felt in a long time. My flesh, in this, is hostile towards God. I obey, but with no joy, with no sense of holiness or righteousness. I pray because I have been given that burden. My flesh is screaming, “foul.”

I am not a great prayer warrior, and never have been, so this is difficult on a number of levels. My prayers are not from the heart, each syllable forced from my lips. I make a rather pathetic spectacle as I retreat to the treadmill (I don’t want to wear out my carpets), groaning and protesting from a place deep inside me.

It is what it is, and that is why I don’t ask anyone to join me, or expect anyone to understand, or approve of, what I am doing. I don’t quite approve of it, not yet. I am not asking anyone not to hate, not to want these people dead. I am not telling anyone what to do or judging anyone. All I am doing is sharing this insane thing I know God has asked me to do, for whatever reason. Maybe not one will come to faith – maybe this is about breaking me completely by having me do the unthinkable for 40 days. Reluctant is my new middle name, and I just hope that my grudging prayers count for something. Maybe salvation for someone who is tormented by demonic thoughts but has never offended yet, maybe my prayers are strong enough for that, but it will be many days, I think, before I can do this without feeling like this.

But the children. Each offender (or potential offender) who turns towards God and is delivered – I think I once saw a statistic that the average molester will hurt 100 children. I have trouble, still, wanting to pray for people who have crossed that line, but right now I can, absolutely, focus my prayers on the people who have not yet. I just think of that NAMBLA kid, and it does make it easier. I pray he got help, and I pray he is okay now.

Yes, if we were under Torah they would be killed – the ones who got caught, anyway. But we are in exile. Exile means we do not live under Torah. Exile means no easy answers. For years I have said, “Well, if we only lived by Torah…” but we don’t. So it’s either (1) continue to lament about what should be, (2) become a politician and change the laws, (3) become a vigilante, (4) or pray in the only way I can think of to keep this from happening in the first place. The cycle has to be broken – this is the only path I see available to me. I wish we lived in the fantasy land where the laws were correct on this, but instead, we live in a real world that we need to face and deal with according to the weapons of God and not the weapons of this world.

Jan 4, 2018

Day 3 – Do I Love a God Who Can Forgive and Restore Nazis? – 124.0

Today I have the privilege of telling you about two heroes of mine.

I once listened to a popular radio talk show host, a conservative Jew, whose mother was Catholic and whose father was Jewish and she stated quite frankly that she couldn’t accept Christianity because of the forgiveness factor. She simply couldn’t accept a Jesus who would forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Eva Mozes Kor, on the other hand, was a “Mengele twin” from Auschwitz, who did forgive, and found great freedom – without ever condoning the Holocaust, she forgave. Her video is viral out there on youtube, and I recommend everyone watch it.

Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were imprisoned for hiding Jews during the Holocaust and then sent to the Herzogenbusch and Ravensbruck concentration camps. It was the dead of winter and frail Betsie was generally sick, yet unfailingly taught from the Bible she had smuggled into the camp. Betsie’s eventual death was tragic and made it all the harder after the war for Corrie to forgive the perpetrators of the Nazi madness. At a speaking engagement years after the war, she was greeting people afterward, when, standing a few people before her, she caught sight of an SS guard that she recognized from the camp. How could she shake his hand, how could she keep from lashing out and scratching his eyes out? She was in a torment – until he came forward in repentance, freely confessing his past sins, and told her he was now a Christian. He asked if she could accept him as a brother in Christ, and the love of God swept through her and allowed her to take his hand – with great joy.

Just want to be clear here that Joseph Mengele died, as far as we know, never repenting. Eva Mendez Kor’s decision to forgive was a personal one, which didn’t involve any sort of reconciliation – it was a true, free gift. One she has been widely criticized and hated for within the Jewish community – BUT, she had the absolute right to do it or not do it. I am posting a few videos and articles about her in the comments – I hope you will watch this incredible woman and hear her story.

Anyway, last night I wrestled all night. I didn’t sleep much, and what dreams I had were scattered and unhappy. I felt very lost and stuck. How can He forgive and restore people who came to their senses after the Holocaust? According to the words of our Messiah in John 6:44, the Father had to actually draw them first. Nazis. I knew one, in my youth. By the time I met him, Jerry was older than I am now. I only learned years later that he had been a Nazi – he seemed like the most normal person on earth, really nice. I don’t know what he did in the war, where he was stationed, any of that. Gosh, he was so normal. A couple of years ago, while I was still homeschooling, we read a book called The Wave – and since then I have never questioned how “nice people” can descend into depravity and violence so quickly. It was remarkable how quickly and easily people’s minds can be warped to the point where right seems wrong, and wrong seems justified. We see it in the aftermath of revolutions all the time.

I want to agree with the Jewish radio talk show host – I really do. I want to believe that there are crimes, ones that fall short of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (slandering/lying about the witness of the Spirit in any way – whether it be to attribute divine miracles to Beelzebub (Matt 12:27) or for a believer to call the inner witness that Yeshua is Messiah a lie (John 15:26, Hebrews 6)) that are just beyond God’s ability to forgive. I want to think that an evil person is evil forever – it makes me feel better about hating them. I want them in that big evil box I keep stored safely away where no one can jostle it.

I want for so much more to be unforgiveable. So much more. The agony of thinking that so many other things are forgivable is just constant. I feel it like a great, heavy, ache in my chest.

Yesterday was not a fruitful day in prayer, though I did pray. I was reading Romans, Amy Carmichael’s biography (we have come to the point where she has rescued a young temple prostitute – praise God!), and a book that a couple of friends just read that would probably start a riot if I admitted it. The guy has a lot of wrong to say, but when he says something right – it is right at a very disturbingly deep level. Ah well, we all have a piece of the puzzle, right?

My prayers – begging God to break the cycle of child sexual abuse. I can still do little more than pray for those who are offenders in their minds but who have not yet harmed a child. When I think of praying for anyone who has actually transgressed in the flesh, and when sometimes I am able to reach beyond myself and do it, I want nothing more than to pound my fists on the floor and throw things. In the night, I want to scream for not understanding. How can He ask this of me? How can I refuse? I used to write internet porn stories on the old boards – a child could have found them, and read them. Maybe I am a molester too because of that. Maybe everyone who has ever left a magazine laying around for their kids or babysitter to find, or took their kids to the store only to have them walk by explicit women’s magazine covers, maybe we are all guilty in one way or another. I don’t know. Where does God draw the line on what it is to violate a child? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I know what God has asked me to do. I guess I would rather be Jonah and wait on the hillside, under a green plant, for their destruction. But I know that God, from beginning to end, deals with sin not generally by massive destruction (which doesn’t work in eliminating sin), but through redeeming and transforming sinners – like me.

Jan 5, 2018

Day 4 – God is so totally not interested in my suggestion box comments

I am such an idolater. I constantly judge Him for not being more like me. I resent His independence from my feelings about how I think things should be.

My ideas about justice and what is right and wrong are so incredibly temporal and tied up with my emotions. I want Him to make sense to me. I want Him to agree with me, hate what I hate, be as unforgiving and unbending as I am, and yet love what I love and be as flexible as I can be when it suits me.

So I rail at Him when He asks me to do something that I find offensive, mostly because I can’t find a single Scripture backing me up and I resent that, a lot. I want to at least have a horse in this race, a non-flesh argument on my side – even one. That’s the worst part. Understanding that He is right and yet still not agreeing with Him. It’s just messed up.

As soon as I came to peace with that – my being messed up and needing to be dealt with – I got this burst of energy yesterday. I can pray now. I still disagree with Him, but am at peace with the fact that – well, that it’s my problem and He doesn’t need to hear about it 24/7. I cannot, however, promise that He has heard the last of it.

We really, rarely believe that He is God and we are just the created, the servants, the slaves, the children – whatever. However we put it, we are still unwise, subordinate, fleshy, and totally committed to seeing things from our own point of view. We don’t take the long view because, in some ways, it is unfathomable to us. We cannot imagine a future where just will look like no more tears, no more desire for revenge, no more betrayals, where we won’t care about what was done to us anymore.

Did you know that love and hate in the bible are not emotional words, but instead covenant terms? Emotions are kinda wild, and they lead us astray way too often. But chesed translated instead as Covenant loyalty – that will get us through the long, dark night of our doubts and times when we wonder about the legitimacy of all this. When hatred becomes a lack of preference, a non-Covenant status, the unchosen, and not necessarily the hatred that drives our flesh to murder, gossip, and every other evil work – we are called suddenly to a much higher level of our following of Yeshua/Jesus. It isn’t about what we feel, understand, or agree with – it is what the Master calls us to do in response to what He has done.

So I am done fighting, maybe. Maybe. For now. Asked God for four sexual predators converted and transformed yesterday. I prayed that God would violently break into their consciousness and show them His heart and His truth. I asked that they won’t even be able to enjoy thoughts of violating any child. More than anything, I plead for the cycle to stop, because we will never catch them all, not even most of them. God most effectively deals with evil by changing people. In a world where they can manipulate and hide for a lifetime, and even go to other countries legally to violate, when it is so hard to prove charges – oh God, please. Stop them. Stop them because kids don’t usually tell what happened. Stop them because I can’t. And then, let them be moved to face their consequences and do right by their victims, who deserve to be acknowledged as having been desperately wronged.

No update tomorrow, want to focus on worship and this is not Sabbathy material.

Jan 7, 2018

 

Day 6 – The God who has mercy on whom He will have mercy

First of all, answering a concern. If you have no concerns, then skip ahead. Why am I fasting publicly? Am I looking for attention? Well, honestly, I fast like very often and I have never mentioned it in the past 7 years I have been on facebook. I have fasted 40 days in the past without a peep out of me. I routinely fast from between 3-5 days, again, no one ever knows. I am fasting for my own spiritual growth so why would I say anything? But, like Esther, who fasted publicly and told people about it – sometimes there are situations so serious that we need folks to come alongside us. Unlike Esther, I can’t and won’t command anyone to join me. But I do appreciate the prayer support. As for journalling it – you guys know I journal through everything I am going through. Same old same old. What I am praying for is just too big for me, like it was too big for Esther – I can’t do this without support. This isn’t about me this time, it is about other people. Though God is strong enough, I am not.

Am I going to keep oiling my head and appearing happy – well, yeah – the only pains I have talked about have been my wrestlings with God, and those hurt just as bad whether I am eating or not, and you are all used to me doing it. What fasting does is really make me more pliable, and my defenses against what He wants a lot weaker – and so this is good.

My health: is awesome, actually. Haven’t had one of my warning headaches, but if I do, I will re-evaluate. My option on the table is a vegetable and water fast, but I hate those with the intensity of a thousand red hot suns, so I prefer to just water fast. You need to understand, when God has me fasting, I literally cannot swallow what I put in my mouth. It’s abhorrent to me. I would have to do it willfully. I wouldn’t be able to eat a pizza right now, gross, and you guys know how much I love pizza. Extra cheese, turkey pepperoni, maybe some mushrooms, artichoke hearts, olives – but as long as there is extra cheese, I am not picky. And the crust brushed with butter and rubbed with garlic.

So, back to what I wanted to write about:

Romans 9:18

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Got told last week that what I am doing (praying for the salvation of sexual predators in order to save future victims from being violated) was dangerous and leading people astray. I accept that it is distasteful, and it certainly was to me at first. Hardest thing I have ever prayed for. But we are wrong if we look at God as though He can be manipulated into an injustice. Truly, only God really knows what true justice and injustice looks like, and so He has undoubtedly hardened some offenders – of that I have no doubt. Just as Eichmann and Mengele went to their graves without regret, there are pedophiles out there who are hardened beyond salvation. I don’t ask God for those, although I do wish for their speedy deaths or at least permanent incarceration.

I can’t ask for and receive, anything in prayer that God does not desire – that’s a fact. He isn’t a pagan god who can be manipulated by my using the correct pronunciation of his one true name (like Isis did to Ra), and forced into doing what I want. No, He can only comply with His own nature.

The more I do this, the more hope I have for the cycle to be broken among the young – especially those who have not offended yet. God doesn’t want a single child molested, not even one. He also doesn’t want them to become pedophiles themselves. God hates injustice.

Interesting side effect of all this, it has put all other small slights (and compared to this, they are pretty much all small) into a radically realistic perspective. We really want everything done to us to be a damning offense, right? But the big stuff is coming into perspective as well. Not only am I coming to forgive the evil that was done to me, but also, the evil done to someone else whom I love more than my own life. It is their violation that torments me, not my own. I realize that in praying this, I am praying for them as well – that they will not offend. My love for them alone, will not keep them from doing this to someone else. I am praying not only for their life, but the lives of what children they might have or come in contact with. I hadn’t really thought of it before because I was too consumed with agony. I don’t share their story because it is not mine to tell, and no one should be exposed and violated simply for being a victim. Their story isn’t inspiration or outrage fodder for others – not unless they choose that.

God has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and He will render without hope, those whom he chooses. Or else we wouldn’t be here, right? No one deserves what He did for us, How He redeemed us at the Cross and then began the New Creation in each of us, transforming us – making us into His image-bearers. We don’t deserve any of that – no one does. So we pray for everyone, and He will decide which prayers to honor and which to ignore – but there is no danger in praying, in blessing those who persecute us, just as long as we hold to what is good and reject what is evil (Ro 12:14)

Jan 8, 2018

Day 7 – The Mormon technicality (I have since been informed by different ex-Mormons in my sphere that the view of Mary’s actual impregnation that I was exposed to was regional, but that the rest remains uncontested)

I have lived in predominantly Mormon communities for 11 of my last 23 years. The town I live in now has 120 Mormon churches in it for a town of 56,000. That’s one Mormon church for roughly every 450 people – plus we have a Temple here. The first Mormon town I lived in, for ten of those years, was a small town of 10,000 in southern Idaho and, if anything, it was a lot more Mormon than this one. You were either a Mormon, or a jack-Mormon (unobservant yet loyal). If you were a Christian running for office, it had to be as a Democrat because you would not be allowed to run as a Republican – the church had that tied up. They also had the police force firmly under wraps.

The one thing I learned early on, after coming to Christ, was that molestation of girls by their fathers and stepfathers was epidemic and protected by the church. Why? Because of their belief that Heavenly Father, Elohim, physically came to earth and impregnated his literal daughter, Mary. Their god is in heaven making babies like gangbusters and, as a 12-year-old Mormon girl once told me, so this is not second-hand gossip, “Heavenly Father saw that Mary was the most beautiful girl who had ever lived and couldn’t help himself.” Honestly, I wanted to go home and bathe in bleach after she told me that. I mean, someone actually told that to a 12-year-old girl, or maybe she was a lot younger when she heard it. I really don’t want to think about it.

So, in this we have a conundrum. A god with no self-control who had sex with his own daughter to make Jesus, who would someday become a god by living according to the tenants of Mormonism.

My neighbor came to me, upset about a write up of Mormonism in like Time magazine or something, right before the 2002 Olympics in SLC. “Why don’t they think we are Christians?” I laid out before her that Christians, besides believing that becoming gods ourselves was Lucifer’s sin, don’t believe in a carnal god who impregnated his own daughter. She quickly and nervously jumped in, “Well, no one knows for sure what happened.” But she didn’t deny it.

Although these beliefs are not well known in the larger Mormon empire, they are very common in Utah and Idaho, which are more traditional than the moderate Mormonism elsewhere. And don’t get me going on their views of evil angels and people being reincarnated black.

So, we have a belief that their god is carnal and had sexual relations with his daughter. Although most Mormon men would never consider the ramifications of that, much less ever do such a thing, too many men in these more rural Mormon–dominated communities do – they hold more to the old ways of Mormonism that are more deeply tied to the doctrines of their prophet Joseph Smith than their modern-day politically-minded prophets. I know a lot of women who escaped Mormonism out of such communities, and they tell tales of their own molestation at the hand of fathers and stepfathers while their mothers stood by – not knowing what to do because they won’t get called into heaven if their husbands are displeased with them. I have been told of meetings with a Bishop (or something, can’t remember) where his advice to distraught mothers was, “Get a deadbolt for the inside of her door.” In Mormon homes, “Temple worthy” homes, as long as a man is observing the laws externally, and tithing according to the dictates of the church accountants, he will not be acted against. The Mormon father is, in some ways, a god in his own home and not just a man. As I said, you find this in the more ancient and traditional communities that stretch back to the 1800’s.

So, today, I didn’t know exactly what to pray for – but I wanted to put the plight of these precious girls in your hearts. It is one thing to pray for the salvation of someone who believes that he/she is still just a mere man, but someone who believes that they practically already are, and will, in fact, be a god? I pray that God will rid them of this arrogant notion and convict them of their abominations. I pray for the strength of these girls, as they grow up, that they will not be intimidated by religion and promises of glory, but instead ruled by love and compassion when it comes to dealing with their own daughters and husband. Their minds are being twisted, and it isn’t their fault. My heart is sick with grief for them.