Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome to this the last day of Chag haMatzah or Feast of Unleavened bread which also ends this Late Pesach (Passover) season at sunrise tomorrow morning.

Yesterday I mentioned my love for detective stories and we began a discussion on rationalism. But to be of any use, rationalism must be held to a high standard. As any lawyer will tell you, evidence can be aligned to point in more than one direction. That will, in part, depend on how thorough you have been in collecting the evidence. Have you just picked passages here and there and strung them together, or has your study of the Bible been systematic and exhaustive? Have you sought for evidence outside the Bible or have you, like some, refused to wander from its pages? And in particular, from its English (or Swedish, Norwegian, German, Afrikaans, Swahili, or French) pages? In every detective story I have seen or read, historical or fictional, the cases that are solved correctly depend, almost without exception, on hard work sifting through as much evidence as possible, ignoring none.

How many times have you ignored a Scripture which, like an inconvenient jigsaw piece, stubbornly refuses to fit into the puzzle which is your current picture of the emet (truth) about some aspect of the Besorah (Gospel)? In many detective stories those who are heads of police investigation teams are under pressure to get a 'quick result', aren't they? Usually there are political or other reasons to get a conviction. The trouble is, when you are under such pressure, you are more apt to make mistakes. Be prepared to invest time and effort. One of our brethren in South Africa, a retired policeman who's in this line of business privately now, knows exactly what I am talking about, I'm sure.

Everyone one of us is an amateur detective (your average believer), some need to be more professional (like pastors and teachers) because that's our calling. Most don't realise that the research needed for an hour-long sermon like this can take anywhere from 8-10 hours of hard work depending, of course, on the subject material. When I am working on a theological project, investigating a controversial doctrine, for example, I will typically go over what I have written dozens of times, looking for gaps, inconsistencies, and listening to the Ruach (Spirit) to point out errors or things that need attending to. The current five-part series on Unity, the last of which you will hear tomorrow, is the result of about 70-80 hours' work, I would estimate. I have had to listen or read the opinions of many different people, weigh them up, put them through sieves of various theological sizes, think long and hard, sleep on them and come back again and again carefully listening to any feedback Yahweh gives me. It's a hard slog but well worth it.

We are witnesses of the Besorah (Gospel) which means we must witness correctly. We have to be very careful about 'guessing' and 'intuition' because it's so easy to insert assumptions and to imagine things that aren't there. Do we need revelation? Absolutely. No preacher can preach without inspiration but great care has to be taken in distinguishing between inspiration and imagination. That's probably the hardest thing to do of all. I am, by default, very wary and sceptical of anyone who tells me, 'God told me so-and-so'. Why? Because, in my experience, 99 per cent of the time it's their own over-active imaginations at work. And beware of the claimed inspiration of a narcissistic generation which prefers to follow feelings over reason!

I have passionately taught and witnessed of things in the past that turned out to be wrong, things I thought I had researched well! We can't know everything and like it or not we are not always led by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) even though we'd like to believe we are. And it's embarrassing to be shown up! So part of being a good talmid (disciple) is, I suggest, also being a good detective. I know many of you have large theological libraries and you love to sift through commentaries. I love doing that and two of the brethren here are passionate about that too! Yet those who read through commentaries have, without exception, been sifters themselves. We all sift. We all search through evidence and we weigh it all the time even if it's just listening to YouTube videos online. It's built into us, it's natural, it was designed to be used. That means that Yahweh knew the various collections of 'evidence', which we each have, would never be complete but - and this is the important point - but He also knew that there would be enough evidence for all of us in order both to believe and grow and to witness...or teach, if that is our calling.

No one should ever feel guilty that they don't know it all or that they don't know much. Learning is a lifelong occupation, which is why Yahweh has established elders and teachers in the Messianic Community (Church) who have information they have collected and they have sifted through so that we can have the benefit of their wisdom. And that's not to say they're always right, clearly. All living creatures are 'detectives' down here - it's how we operate in a fallen world. Therefore we must ensure that we are not only thorough when it comes to collecting the evidence that is available to us but - and this is important - we must ask ourselves the question: WHICH EXPLANATION BEST FITS THE TOTALITY OF THE FACTS? Evidence must be used optimally.

We are extraordinarily blessed in the 21st century to know so much though that presents a problem too - we can't possibly go through everything. Nor would most of us want to. Back in the days of the apostles very little was known - indeed, before Paul there were no theologians! People lived a much simpler Besorah (Gospel) though once the Greeks got their hands on it, and then the Romans, then the British and Germans, and finally the Americans, we started making it so very complicated. The Athanasian Creed could only have been written by Greek philosophers steeped in neo-Platonism, and the Talmud by Jews steeped in occultic Kaballah.

A reason evidence can sometimes look so convincing is because it fits our preconceptions at any one particular time. Have you ever judged another believer and though him 'crazy' or 'way-off' only to discover later, upon being presented with more complete evidence, that he was right after all? And did you not - please be honest here - did you not, in your original judgment, assume that the 'Holy Spirit' was confirming that you were right when in fact it was just your feelings testifying - your fears and prejudices getting their voices in edgeways? We so often make judgments such as, "this theologian is one of the 'good guys' because he comes from my tradition and what I currently believe, therefore that other theologian is one of the 'bad guys' because he's from another tradition which is 'heretical' therefore he can't be right." These days I find I am borrowing insights from teachers, preachers and theologians from nearly every Christian and Messianic tradition because, it seems to me, that Yahweh is 'no respector of traditions'. I just have to make sure I am careful - very careful, which means letting things sit for a long time, like a good wine, before sampling them.

For example, the doctrine of universal salvation has been sitting in my spiritual cellar maturing for at least 20 years, and I only brought it out into the light and served it uncorked last year. I keep backups of our website going back all the way to the beginning and I tracked down the first time I mentioned it by name to the year 2000, though I had actually hinted at it long before then, right from near the very beginng of this work. The same is true of other controversial teachings like the identity of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit). I have needed not only tons of evidence to back it up but my heart has had to have time to be worked on too, again, like a good wine [1]. Which is why I advise everyone not to unnecessarily rush into anything controversial save that which is a matter of life-and-death, like your basic salvation, as Paul urgently said:

"I tell you, now is the time of Elohim's (God's) favour, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor.6:2, NIV).

So don't assume, if you're a Baptist, that all Baptist preachers are the 'good guys' and don't make mistakes, and all Charismatic preachers are the 'bad guys' and who are constantly in error, or vice versa. We tend, in our flesh, to be suspicious and prejudiced against all those who are not of our denominational 'tribe'. At the same time, of course, we should be careful. I read a lot of material produced by Anglicans, Methodists, Provisionalist Baptists and Messianics in particular, and not infrequently I am stopped short by something crazy they say that is so out of sync with the 'good stuff' I have been feeding off.

People construct seriously wrong theologies because, in looking through poorly cut lenses, all the evidence seems to fall neatly in place. You see that in detective stories all the time. All the evidence seems to fit just right. All the evidence seems to point the guilt at someone who is, in fact, innocent. Where there had been inconsistences or gaps, the evidence was naïvely glossed over. People have been sentenced to prison, and even executed - and tragically still are - because of shoddy, incomplete and prejudiced investigation work.

When I was a new believer I fell into the trap of believing that all pieces of scripture were of equal value and of the same category which you could just fit together like a string of beads. I just pulled passages of the Bible out here and there and then strung them together. Why did I do that? Because I imitated my first Bible teachers who did just that! The Bible is not a computer program with lines of coding you can pluck out and just rearrange in whatever order you choose. I call this 'ping-pong' theology because people just hop from one verse to another in different books and assume they can be seamlessly connected because similar words are used. The Bible is not a sequence of genes that you can clip out and string together willy-nilly to make your own shortened version. It's a self-contained story presenting a bigger picture. You can't invent your own private DNA and create your own doctrinal organism out of it. But that's what people do! They have made all sorts of bizzare Monsanto-like creatures from their theological gene-splicing, many of which have turned out to be monsters, some lethal to spiritual health. The doctrine of eternal torment and justifications for slavery, racism, violent intolerance of those with different views (like the Inquisition), and war-mongering spring to mind.

Once, though, you change these distorted lenses that you use to examine Scripture - once you start trading your biases for an attempt at objectivity - you will see things in a new light. Then - and only then - you can allow the evidence to lead you to the emet (truth), regardless of whether it fits your original preconceptions or not.

For me the journey has been a little different than most. Instead of going directly to Paul and attempting to cobble a complex theology together from material that was not designed to be used in such a fasion, I was taken down a different path. Instead of attempting Monsanto-like scripture-splicing, which is not what they were created for (like the genes in DNA, there are multiple layers of information which are lost once you start chopping the genes up and trying to reduce them to mere base-pairs), I was shown early on that there is a tavnith or pattern running throughout the Scriptures, that forms a reliable spiritual grid upon which all claims to emet (truth) may be fastened to and tested. It is multi-layered and multi-dimensional. And if you chop parts of Scripture up in order to, say, better understand the meaning of a word, you must immediately afterwards reassemble it so that you can see the overall pattern.

The whole is more important than the constituent parts because it is the whole that is chayim or life. Physical matter can be reduced to its physical components (they just found some new sub-atomic particles the other day, by the way) but you can't do the same to life or living organisms because life is not constructed in the same way as matter. You cannot ultimately reduce spiritual life to any supposed 'basic elements' or 'particles' like you can molecules and atoms because Elohim (God) is non-reducible. Chayim or life, in its ultimate sense, can only be encountered. And once you have, all the intellectual theology that may have led you to it in the first place, like scaffolding errected to repair a house, has served its purpose. Life is the end or goal of the journey, which is why it is the final element of the formula that is Yah'shua's (Jesus) salvific description of Himself: "I am the Derech (Way), the Emet (Truth) and the Chayim (Life)" (Jn.14:6).

A child instinctively understands this when we, as we grow up and are forced through the mill which is the Western educational system, chop everything up into little bits and wonder why nothing works when we try to glue it all together again afterwards. You can't chop up a dog as you would dismantle something you have made with Lego and then reassemble it in the hope that you will get a living dog back. You actually kill it doing that. Theology can 'kill' Elohim (God) too if it's not done properly. As one who has just had a major operation, I know how precarious and dangerous it is to disturb any part of the whole body by chopping it up!

Scripture is the same. As I have been trying to tell you, Scripture is a story that has to be spoken for it to become alive, the heart and mind must be open and receptive to receive it, and you have to be willing to respond to it by opening your very life to it. No wonder sceptics like Mark Twain, who have tried to dissect and analyse it on the cold marble slab of the Enlightenment, have described the Bible as being like "chloroform in print" because separated from it's life source that's exactly what it becomes. That's how I experienced it once, as an atheist dead in my sins. The Word - the Davar, the Memra, the Logos - is a living thing, not something to be endlessly dissected. And if your encounter with it is purely intellectual, it will suffocate you in the end. That's why John didn't start his gospel by saying, "In the beginning was the printed Bible which you must reduce and rearrange...". He was pointing to the living Messiah as Logos, He who dwells in the hearts of those who trust in Him and love Him.

Don't, however, misquote or misunderstand me. I am not saying we should not carefully examine Scripture like a detective. It may just not be everyone's 'thing'. That is what the male, intellectual, left-side of our brain was created for. But we have also been given a female, intuitive, right-side to our brains and the two are supposed to work in balance - in harmony. I guess that's why not as many women are attracted to theology as men! We have our respective rôles which I guess is why there is nothing quite as tragic and unnatural as a man who is wholly led by his feelings and a woman who is wholly led by her brain. I am not saying there shouldn't be brainy women or that men should be without feeling - of course not - but what I am saying is that we are best suited to fit our design specifications so that we are not led astray. Male and female ministry provide balance and both genders need to learn something of the other's but we must not try to usurp one another's rôles as has happened in modern society. Nor am I saying that there should only be one 'type' of male or one 'type' of female'. Yahweh has deliberately created great variety, so much so that no two individuals are identical, not even twins!. Nevertheless there is a divinely ordained and created structure and a hierarchy that we are bound to follow.

I hate that we have to deal with 2,000 years of jumbled up theology but the Kingdom needs its theological janitors to go in and clean up the filthy mess made by others. It's the same in nature. The Creator made creatures that clean up the mess left by other creatures because He wants a tidy, healthy world. That has been, and remains, one of our tasks, and to do that, we've had to do lots of theology and history. Nevertheless, I don't want to end this Passover Season of sermons and teachings so that anyone goes away believing that the Christian life consists only of - or even mainly of - expositional and historical theology. It's not even the principle thing, really, even though, as I just said, someone has to do it to save 'lost believers', if you know what I mean (Christians and Messianics lost in the maze). Cleaning ecclesiatic toilets is one of the chores we must do for hygiene's sake - for our spiritual health - but the toilet isn't the main room in the house. It's one of many.

The big question we have been asking ourselves these last couple of mornings has been: How can we be a credible - believable - witness to mankind? And I mean 'we' in the widest possible sense as the whole Body of authentically born-again believers. We've talked a lot about theology, rationalism, and the way people think and behave today, and how best to reach them. I believe, as I have said several times now, that this year is the big year of 'change' we have been waiting for in the sense that everything is coming to a head or climax.

Many prophecies have been made over the last few years and Yahweh has told us several times that the Western élites are poised for a great defeat. Certainly they have had a lot of set-backs since Donald Trump took office and they are fighting back furiously, pulling out every stop they have like a cornered wild animal. We have seen their despicable behaviour in the open. The rival mob in Russia and China are challenging the hegemons in America and Europe and there can be no doubt that they have been responsible for substantially shifting the balance of power. My own view is that the turning point and the start of the end - their biggest mistake - was the NATO bombing of Serbia during the Clinton administration. After that everything started going downhill for them, just as it did in 1914 when Austria decided to 'punish' Serbia for the assassination of the Grand Duke Ferdinand by one of their nationals. Today's 'Serbia' is without doubt Syria which the Western élites have failed to conquer, their biggest blunder yet, though as I speak to you they're trying again. The tide is changing in Europe too with a massive swing against the Marxist/liberal maffia that runs the European Union. The arrest of Julian Assange the other day is just another phase in the unravelling of the plot.

There is an interlocking of horns going on right now between the powers of heaven and the powers of hell. The Enemy is trying to morph one version of his system into another. It is a big game full of mirrors and smokescreens to keep the masses in the dark but I don't think it's going to work. The élites who sit on Deep State thrones in Washington DC, the City of London and the Vatican have their plates full right now and there is more than a little panic, from the corporate board rooms all the way down to the devil-worshipping covens that provide the demonic empowernment of those working above ground. The meatgrinder is warming up.

In so many ways the war of words is over. It will conitnue in the media and elsewhere but the lines are already drawn and the people have already chosen what they want to believe and what they don't. It all now boils down to raw power. That is as true in the earthly realm of politics as it is in the heavenly domain of divine activity. As the world's powers flex the muscles of their armies, navies, air forces and banks, so too the Heavenly Realm is about to unleash its arsenal of power. Bible teachers and theologians are important but they are redundant without the power and operation of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit). What's required now is another kind of kitting-out for war. And just as the Reichstag in Berlin burned down in the 1930's, so Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has burned down just days ago. Is there a prophetic meaning? Oh, most certainly, the one involving the politics and power games of an age and the other the religious and cultural. The Fourth World War is essentially one of culture and religion. And as the West shifted from conservative monarchism to Marxism between the First and Second World Wars, so it is now shifting from traditional Christianity to Paganism and, ultimately, Satanism. That, at least, is the plan.

This world has always been the battlefield of a clash of powers but at certain moments key battles are fought in an attempt to establish a major paradigm shift by brute force. Such a time is upon us - right now. And irrespective of whether it's the gang in Washington and London (Western Roman Empire), or the gang in Moscow and Bejing (Eastern Roman Empire) that's in the ascendancy or in control, the target of both is us - the Kingdom of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). Both sides hate the Master as vehemently as the other even if they each pretend to be upholders of the Besorah (Gospel) to gain political points. All they do is shrewd and calculated. It is all about power and control.

As I have been saying for years, we face the equivalent of the Great Depression of the 1930's all over again, only this time it will be orders of magnitude worse. If you have not prepped spiritually and physically (a countryside survival location with food, water, medicine, etc.) then you are like the five foolish virgins who ran out of oil at the critical moment (Mt.25:1ff.) and the current Judgments of Yahweh will swallow you up.

For us only one thing matters and it's this: will we be able to say of every Remnant assembly, because it's a reality, "YAHWEH-SHAMMA - Yahweh-Is-There" (Ezek.48:35) - the name of the City where Yahweh Dwells? We have the promise that once "His servants...worship Him" "in spirit and in emet (truth)" (Jn.4:24, NIV), "the throne of Elohim (God) and the Lamb [will be] there" so that "no longer will anything be cursed" (Rev.22:3, NLT). That is why the emet (truth) ultimately matters if we want His presence and want the curses that come with living in this fallen world of the Old Creation lifted off our lives. That is why we do theology. But first we need the Ruach (Spirit), and abundantly so.

That is all I wanted to share this Passover Season as we prepare to depart across the Glomma back to Norway, the Mediterranean back to Africa viâ Sweden, and the North Sea to the west. As all of will be here for the regular Sabbath tomorrow, I look forward to seeing you then. It may be a while before we are able to fellowship again as the adventure unfolds and we too cross rivers and seas. Yahweh's blessings, grace and shalom (peace) be upon you and your families in abundance, may you have His protection and guidance in the hard days ahead, and may goodness and chesed (mercy) follow you all the days of your life, is my prayer in Yah'shua's (Jesis') Name! Amen.

Endnotes

[1] I don't drink alcohol (as in this ministry we are under the Rechabite covenant) but a friend of mine was a wine expert and taught me about wine-making, wine-tasting, etc. which provided a good illustration.