An Obadiah Slope column
Who goes there: “The people who go to heaven are all alike in one way: they are sinners who have placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:12; Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9).” is a good quote from Got Questions.org on the question of who goes to heaven.
” “They have recognized their need for a Savior and humbly accepted God’s offer of forgiveness. They have repented of their old ways of living and set their course to follow Christ. (Mark 8:34; John 15:14).”
And while Obadiah understands there is more to be said, ther’s a lot of going too far and saying whther this or that indiovidual is going to heaven. This is well above Obadiah’s pay grade and he submits above the paygrade of anyone who is not a member of the holy trinity.
It’s only only pontifficating about the eternal destiny of Pope Francis. Compaining about the odd circumstance of the Plymouth Brethren putting up corflutes, a commentator says of the group: “None these days have a relationship with Jesus but with their leader Bruce Hales and their cult. And make billions.”
Can you tell who is saved at such a distance? Put Obadiah down as a doubter.
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Branded:
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Remembering Machus: Poor bloke only got into the New Testament because Peter cut off his ear, as the High Priest Ciaphas and his entourage came to arrest Jesus.
But why did Peter have a sword? Obadiah, asked this question at a family gathering had to say he honestly does not know. We might need to unpack a complicated commentby Jesus: “He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37 It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” (Luke 22:36–37)
Jesus does tell tells his disciples to get a sword. Helped by a drewdowns.net post Obadiah can see an explanation of why.
The prophecy “And he was numbered with the transgressors”’” comes from Isaiah 53:12 “… he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
Downs who is an Episcopal rector explains “It says “he was counted among” which doesn’t mean they were the lawless. It means that powerful people considered them to be the lawless.
“So Jesus is instructing his disciples to appear lawless. He’s asking them to play dress-up. Go look like a bunch of terrorists!“
Well, that might be an overlyvivid way of putting things. But the general idea that the sword was fulfilling that prophecy is the best Obadiah can do.
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Trump at the Communist Comedy Club: On Obadiah’s favourite right wing podcast, from the Jewish Commentary magazine they are getting sick of the President after only 100 days. Editor John Podhoretz comes up with a playful analogy= in the wake of Trump determining the result of the Canadian election.
“It’s like a guy at a comedy club. He does this bit, it bombs, and I think he decides that he’s just going to keep going with it until he can force his audience to find it funny. I don’t understand the geopolitical meaning of it. I don’t understand the purpose of it. And it has now had pretty significant world, real world consequences that interrupt the narrative that Trump is the leader of a new populist worldwide surge movement to oust liberals from power and bring in nationalist, anti-liberal, anti woke forces. So apparently he did trigger some form of nationalism, but it was anti-Trump, anti-American nationalism, and that’s not what we are wanting the world to be experiencing, I believe. …
“But thinking about this, thinking about the interest that MAGA pays in the A FD in Germany, in Victor Orban, in Hungary, in the populist in what’s going on in France, JD Vance’s going around Europe and lecturing them about how terrible they all are in handling this, I have this weird moment just now where I thought MAGA seems to be trying to emulate the idea of international communism or a kind of right wing omni cause effect in the first half of the 20th century where, or even through until let’s say the late seventies, something like that in which leftists in general looking internationally felt some kind of commonality with leftist movements all over the world about with whom we had literally no common cause or particular connection.
“They would celebrate Che Guevara, they would celebrate the North Vietnamese or indigenous movements in weird places like East Timor, stuff like that, that they really had no particular connection to except this idea that there was something giant happening in the world that would come back as a kind of tidal wave and wash over the United States or something like that. And I thought, gee, we don’t want to emulate international communist conspiracies, but I guess I was wrong. I know Steve Bannon calls himself a Leninist, and so maybe that’s what’s really going on here. And now we have the world saying we don’t want your Leninism.”
Commentary panelist Christine Rosen from the American Enterprise Institute slaps Podhoretz’ musing down: “I don’t think it’s that sophisticated, honestly, I think it’s just the relationship with Canada is similar to how Trump 2.0 has treated all of our easygoing democratic allies, which is like crap. I mean it’s basically the international relations version of twerking up against your allies and then caving time and time again to your enemies as he has done with China, most notably and Russia as well. So I think, I don’t know that there’s a strategy. The Vance types actually do love to hold up Hungary in particular, which is great as a model unless you look at their economy, which is terrible and a lot of the more authoritarian ways in which Orban has held onto power. But I don’t see this as a movement. I don’t actually think intellectually there’s enough framework there for them to make that case.”
Obadiah, taken with the Podhoretz analogy, thinks there’s something to the idea that Trump is a Lenin setting up his Comintern (the Communist International that aimed to spread communism around the world.) And a further thought meanders into Obadiah’s mind that the Canada result, which will lead to a more independent and self reliant Canada, is a harbinger of the effect Trump will have around the world. Countries paying their own way is what Trump says he wants. But probably not achieved through people cursing him and his worldview.