The Ancient Battle

In ancient days, the people of the Book found themselves enslaved in a strange land, a land of pyramids and distant stars that shone through stony shelves to illuminate the minds of those Egyptians with secret doctrine and occultism and magic and sorcery by which they thought they could enslave the people of the Book. But that didn’t work out for the ancient power mongers, because the Lord of Creation raised up a prophet to inspire his people and to to motivate them out of enslavement, out of Egypt, and into a land that they would occupy for a very long time. As time passed, the prophet wrote upon tablets an account of their genesis, their temporary enslavement, their exodus, and even an account of their ancestor who had preceded their enslavement, a man, Abraham, who had moved, back in the day, from one place to another, in order to establish a new way of living for himself, his sons and daughters, and his progeny. As the years rolled through them, Abraham’s descendants, primarily Moses, took up the scribe, or the stylus, or the pen or whatever it was, and continued that divinely-sinspired legacy of preserving history and wisdom and laws to live by. By ’n by, they became the people of the Book, who still perform the same functions in our world today. We thank the Jewish people for that long legacy of revelation, history and wisdom, and inspiration. After Moses . . . came many other scribes and prophets. . . just to name a few, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra, Malachi, and right on up to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, not to mention Paul, but oh, I just did. I take it, you’ve heard of them? n’est ce que pas? Consider, for instance, the ancient prophet/scribe Daniel, who had been taken captive by a strongman, an emperor/king, Nubuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was a mover and a shaker, a strong man, probably a bully, amd yes, a conqueror. He had been around the block a time or two. He noticed that Daniel, and a few of the other People of the Book, were smart, well-informed about the ways of the world, and. . . actually wise, even though they had not been sly enough to escape imprisonment by Neb’s Babylonian armies. Daniel’s wisdom provoked jealousy among some of the other staffers in Neb’s administration, and so they cooked up a scheme to take Daniel down, but it didn’t work. Daniel wrote about all that later. But that wasn’t all that Daniel wrote. Long story short. . . we are still reading Daniel’s best-seller, later included in a volume called, as the People of the Book called it, Torah. Later, after Jesus had been born, crucified and resurrected, we Christians added our testimonies onto that ancient Book that had been carried from generation to generation. Our addition was the New Testament. Put it all together and its the Bible. We Christians have great respect for the People of the Book, whose Torah got us going on the right path toward salvation, exodus from this present arrangement, and eternity with the Creator of Universe. But ya gotta believe it. Just sayin'. And if you believe that, I’ve got some real estate in heaven I’ll tell you about.

All along that watchtower of Torah and Testaments, we have had prophets. Daniel, for instance—getting back to Daniel—mentioned in what is called the 11th chapter, a certain type of leader, probably recurrent in human history, who serves the god of fortresses, sometimes called the god of forces, instead of the Lord of Creation, who actually set the Universe in motion: the stars, the planets, the atoms, the elements, the forces of nature, the genetic code, all of it. . . Later, Jesus the Messiah came along and proved to the human race that the god of forces is not the one who is actually in charge of this world. In fact, it was the god of forces who thought he was doing people of the Book a favor by putting Jesus on a cross. But the god of forces was severely self-deceiving himself when he thought he could get away with crucifying the Lord of the Universe. I mean, Herod probably said, on crucifixion day, There, let that be a lesson to these religious fanatics. That’ll teach ‘em to not go around making trouble for us who are in charge! You see, Herod, and Pilate and all those guys in charge thought they knew what was going on. They were serving the god of forces, or fortresses, whatever. But that’s all sound and fury and bluster signifying nothing much, in the big picture. The actual Truth is (the envelope please) the god of forces only thinks he’s in charge! Jesus used the very act of being crucified by the so-called powers that be. . . to prove that this life, Eternal life! is not killed off forever by the god of forces or fortresses, because the LORD Creator of the Universe set up the whole Life thing for forces and fortresses to be only a small component of the real thing, eternal life with the God of Creation. Jesus proved that by His Resurrection from death, in spite of the criminal execution! Can you dig it?! That’s the bottom line in this great story that was begun long ago when Moses started the Book and we added to it the most important part: Victory over death, and over our sin itself, which is what started the whole mess that we call human depravity and our sorry history of bloodshed, violence, depravity and death itself. But hey, I’m here to tell ya, death is only temporary. You believe that? Just sayin’. Have a nice day. Ponder it if you care to. Follow the Way Glass half-Full