Our man in Japan

 The two men set out & came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab & stayed there that night.. Joshua 2:1b People who say the Bible is mere fairy tales forget some chapters are more like an X rated movie..

 If you are drawn away to serve & worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. Deuteronomy 30:17 They need to cancel the Sanja matsuri this year. 

  See the devastation of the land and the diseases the LORD inflicts on it. Deuteronomy 29:22

 Then the LORD gave the donkey the ability to speak. "What have I done to you that deserves your beating me three times?" it asked.. Numbers 22:28 This is one of the highlights of the Book of Numbers in my opinion. It certainly appears in many kids bibles. Long before Shrek, a talking donkey!! 🐴 Of course materialists can't take this sort of thing seriously.  But what is impossible for God? And what's more, the donkey is an animal rights activist long before such things were even thought of. So I would argue this passage is centuries ahead of it's time. Anna Sewell & Hugh Lofting made their whole writing careers out of this sort of thing..

 Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because he had married a Cushite woman. Numbers 12:1 Another nameless woman that we know almost nothing about. In modern terms she was probably Sudanese, or from somewhere round there. Is Miriam racist? I think the text seems to suggest she might have been. What is unclear is whether the Cushite lady followed Moses in terms of religion. It seems probable to me that she did convert to Judaism, because there is no suggestion she led Moses towards idolatry. Given the LORD's reaction, it is clear Miriam's criticism was completely unjustified. It may be one of the first Jewish/black conflicts recorded in history, but it certainly wasn't the last..

 The cloud of the LORD.. Exodus 40:38 ☁️⛅️⛈ Shinto makes a fuss about trees and rocks. Now I partly get this. Trees and rocks are pretty great, and are worth celebrating. There is an innate beauty in the so called natural world. That's because everything God does, God does well. Now of course Christians make a fuss about 🎄 Christmas trees. The ancient English poem The Dream of the Rood is narrated by a tree that becomes the cross Jesus is crucified on. But there is another medieval book that many have forgotten about. It's called the Cloud of Unknowing. Because in Exodus, God chooses to reveal Himself through fire, and through a Cloud. Now we tend to take clouds for granted. Joni Mitchell wrote a song about them, but many of us cuss if it is raining on a day we have plans. Science likes to use long words like cumulonimbus to describe different types, and while something is gained by careful observation, we can also lose something magical and mystical if we merely reduce them t...

 '..about three thousand people died that day. ' Exodus 32:28 We have here a Jewish September 11. An act of religious violence so extreme which on a superficial reading would seem to give grounds for atheism. There's a lot of talk about extremism these days in the UK, and pacifists go to the extreme of saying no violence is ever justified. It's a position I was pretty sympathetic to when I was young and idealistic, but now I'm older the idea of an entirely MLK type non violent reaction to someone like Hitler seems increasingly unrealistic. Surely when evil is real, we should fight it? But how? The Catholics & the Quakers are the 2 extremes within the broader Christian world on this. I respect Quakers for their commitment to pacifist theology & praxis, but ultimately I side with the Catholic more pragmatic idea of 'just war'. Quite how liberal Catholic Biden will put this into practice, though, remains to be seen. How far is he willing to go? I'm ...

 When the earth quakes & its people live in turmoil, I am the one who keeps its foundations firm. Psalm 75:3 Another Fukushima earthquake. May God have mercy on the souls of the dead. You may say, if God loves Japan He has a funny way of showing it, but I went to a Korean church once which had a sign 'God loves Fukuoka', which is where I live. If anybody had a reason to hate the Japanese it would be the Korean victims of Japanese colonization, but these Korean Christians clearly saw through historical sins to love their former enemies. And they are right to do so. God does love Japan. If a hundred people die in a so called natural disaster, it is often our greed, laziness or pride that contributes to those deaths. And ultimately God spares the millions of others for us to learn better what is truly important. 

[The LORD] said: 'If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you'. Exodus 15:26 Words of hope during Covid.

 The Lord.. twisted their chariot wheels, making their chariots difficult to drive. Exodus 14:25 I see the Japanese Navy has had an embarrassing submarine incident..

 The Lord is the righteous one, & my people and I are wrong. Exodus 9:27 Many Brits made fun of Mary Whitehouse, a TV reformer in the 70s, but she was right most of the time. But now thankfully many Brits have come to the realization that much of what our national broadcaster the BBC puts out is a cancer on Britain, and are impatiently waiting for Boris to do something about it..

 The human race has nothing to boast about to God.. 1 Corinthians 1: 29 Quite. St Paul right on the money as usual..

 They confronted Moses.. Exodus 5:20 Moses, again just like Archbishop Gomez, was not without his critics, even amongst his own people. The Christian left see Biden differently to those of us who take the Bible seriously. But they are a dying breed. Whenever a church decides to follow the world instead of the Bible, that church withers, just as Jesus said it would. 

 You may say to me- Andy, that's a tad unfair isn't it? Comparing Biden to a pagan Egyptian monarch? Only the parallels are quite frightening. Do I need to spell it out for you? Pharaoh thought he could kill little tiny babies and nothing bad would happen to him or his country. Biden seems to think he can push international abortion, killing little tiny babies, and nothing bad will happen to him or his country. In this new version of Exodus Moses is played by Archbishop Gomez, who on the day of the Inauguration was already warning of moral evil. 

Is that so? retorted Pharaoh.. Exodus 5:2 In Egypt there was a new King that didn't get it. In America there's a new Prez that doesn't  get it. This won't end well.