Acts 2:23
Jesus was handed over to sinful men. God knew this and planned for it to happen. You had sinful men take Him and nail Him to a cross.

Acts 4:27-28
Truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your plan had predestined to take place.

Isa 53:6 & 10
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;

This is Good Friday.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. – Hebrews 13:7-10

Why does the author of Hebrews, right in the middle of this thought drop in the unchangeableness of Jesus? Before and after it he is speaking of the church leaders “who spoke to you the word of God” and so the church is not to ” be led away by diverse and strange teachings”. I think the obvious answer is that what these guys are teaching doesn’t get changed or overruled by some new guys showing up with new teaching since Jesus didn’t change. He is our unchanging standard in teaching. If something new comes along we need to test it to see if it presents a changed or changing Jesus.

So now notice how he ends the section, he talks about those who serve at the tabernacle (the tent used before Solomon built the temple; it is significant) who do not have a portion in this new altar. In the Old Covenant the priest shared in a portion of the sacrifice, it is how they fed themselves and their families. But now something is new, there is a new altar in which those guys don’t have part of. So did something change? What about that bit just before it where Jesus doesn’t change? Something significantly changed. Remember earlier I mentioned that Moses was a servant in the house Jesus built. The tabernacle was built under Moses’ direction. Moses gave the law concerning the priests. Didn’t something just change if those guys now can’t get food that way?

Obviously Jesus didn’t “change” things here. What was pictured in the tabernacle was fulfilled in Jesus. You can’t keep doing the picture when the reality comes. Imagine if you were going to take your family to Disneyland. You talked about it and showed brochures from it. Your family planned out what rides each would ride and in what order. Imagine if you even went so far as to build a model of Disneyland in your backyard! (Disney would sue) Now the day arrives and you’re ready to go. Your eight-year old decides to stay in the backyard and watch the miniature Matterhorn. He refuses to take his ticket to Disneyland and clings to the paper mache mountain. He has no part in the family trip but is clinging to image. Did the Matterhorn change? Now, it has “come” and has been rejected. Even though junior is still holding on to the image, you are going to tear that mess down when you get back from Anaheim. It isn’t a change it is a fulfillment.

That is what is going on in Hebrews. Jesus didn’t change, what was pictured in Old Testament Judaism was the same thing that that came in Jesus’ death and resurrection. So now if someone comes along and says something that doesn’t follow Jesus’ incarnation they are not to be followed. Jesus didn’t change and suddenly move us back to Old Covenant worship.

I’m sure we’ve all gotten that e-mail claiming that someone has $1.5M in an account and they need to get it out of X country. They ask you to open an account they can transfer it to and you can keep some. It is a scam to get your personal information.

Usually it is the widow or son of some assassinated or deposed ruler. Here’s a new twist:

From Amed Hassan,
Abidjan (Ivory
Coast),
Tele: 22507599685.

Dear,

I am Mr Amed Hassan from Ivory Coast. I am an orphan of 18years old,
being that I lost my father a couple of a year, and some months ago. My
father was a serving director of the Cocoa exporting board until his
death .

It goes on from there. I guess the spammers are finding little sympathy for deposed dictators and now are turning to 18 year old orphans. Egh.

I spent the weekend doing an e-mail tango with support at Palm. The last e-mail I got from them was that I wouldn’t have to pay the $35 to get the replacement CD but I would have to buy the CD. Well, the first thing out of the guy’s mouth on the phone was $35 fee.

In a last ditch effort to get a real answer I got a hold of support at the Palmone store and got a better answer:

I am very sorry, but the 3rd party software provided on the Software
Essentials CD is only licensed for purchase with a new handheld.

We do not have that item available separately.

I am sorry we cannot be of more assistance.

Why couldn’t someone have said that to me from the start? The Palm support people are telling me they can get it for me but I’m not impressed with their knowledge of what is actually going on.

On a positive note, I found the CD set for sale at another place and ordered it. Shew.

I bought my Palm Tungsten T second hand from eBay last year. I know the risks of buying second-hand but I was willing to take them. I got the Tungsten for a good price and the only thing missing was the CDs that come with it. No problem, I downloaded Palm Desktop 4.1 and was syncing my heart out.

Recently I bought a Bluetooth dongle for my iBook and started syncing via Bluetooth. This is really cool. In the last week I found that I can get my Tungsten on the internet via Bluetooth. This was cooler.

As I started reading up I found that my Tungsten originally came with e-mail and web browser software on those mystical missing CDs. Rats. No fear, I decided to contact Palm to see about getting a replacement. I send them an e-mail in which I was unfortunately not as specific as I should have been. They pointed me to Palm Desktop 4.1 for the Mac. Okay, I replied with more clarity. They pointed me to the Palmone Store and told me to look for the Tungsten T Installation CD. Sorry, none can be found at the fabled store. I replied to the e-mail explaining that problem and included the original dialogue. I’d learned my lesson the first time. They once more pointed me to the Palm Desktop 4.1 for the Mac software. Now I’m getting frustrated. I replied once again with a quote of my explanation from my second e-mail to them. They told me to call the store.

Now that phone call, or series of phone calls were just as much fun as the e-mail exchange. Typical voicemail menus, leading in the wrong direction. The one I really liked was when I called Customer Care (a misnomer). Press 1 for Technical Support, press 2 for Customer Care…I pressed 2. Press 1 for Customer Care, press pound to return to the previous menu. I laughed carelessly at the little joke and pressed 1. The guy I talked to was nice and professional. He took my information (except for that little bit about what I was actually looking for) and put me on hold. When he came back he said that my Tungsten was out of warranty and it would cost me $35 to get an answer!

I didn’t need technical help. My Tungsten is working perfectly fine. What I needed was to order a replacement CD. I wasn’t going to pay $35 for that privilege!

I e-mailed them with a pretty sardonic “thank you” for the runaround. If I get a reply that points me to Palm Desktop 4.1 I’m going to very carefully consider switching to Pocket PC.

I went to see The Ladykillers last night. Don’t bother, it wasn’t that good. If you must see it, wait till it comes out on video.

That isn’t to say that it didn’t have some good points. Tom Hanks’ performance was great. He was charming to the end. But that was about it. The story didn’t contain any surprises for me. However, it was done by the Coen brothers and they always seem to have more going on in their movies than meets the eye. I think that is what happened in Ladykillers. Consider the assembled team. The Intellectual: Goldthwait Higgenson Dorr PhD, the Fascist: The General (Pol Pot with a Hitler mustache), the Liberal: Garth Pancake (significant other named Mountain Girl), the Gangster: Gawain MacSam (Marlon Waynans constantly spewed vulgarities), and John Q. Public: Lump Hudson (who actually did nothing the entire time and was very stupid).

WARNING: Spoilers follow. Don’t read any more if you don’t want to know.

I think the old woman, Marva Munson, is intended to represent faith. Faith in God. There is evil taking place in her basement of which she seems unaware. The police (government) ignore her or at least don’t take her seriously. When the gangster approaches to kill her he is reduced to a scared little boy and is accidentally killed by the liberal. When the fascist goes after her, he chokes and the falls down the stairs. The liberal, who delivered a passionate speech to the gangster about his participation in the freedom marches in the ’60s then tries to steal all the money and leaves the team with a box full of Mother Earth News magazines. It seems fitting that the Fascist would be the one to kill him. When Lump tries to put his foot down and do the right thing, he accidentally kills himself. The Intellectual is of course hit on the head and dies. In turn their bodies are dumped on to a garbage barge that I think symbolizes hell (Gehanna, which was used as a metaphor for hell, was a garbage dump for Jerusalem). Even Pancake’s finger which had been blown off is, in the end, cast on the barge.

When Marva discovers what they’ve done, she demands that they return the money and go to church with her. She remains unscathed through the entire thing. The juxtaposition of the gospel music from her church and Wayans’ filthy mouth is arresting. And the silent painting of her departed husband, which changes expressions throughout the film, has its own candle filled shrine and may represent God. When she speaks of him being disturbed, the police sort of chuckle at her like she’s nuts.

I’m sure if I saw it again, which I won’t, there would be other things that stand out, the Coen boys are very good at that.

The first six verses of Hebrews 3 really caught my attention this morning. The comparison is between Moses and Jesus. It goes like this:

Moses – faithful (v 2)
Jesus – faithful (v 2)
Moses – Servant in house (v5)
Jesus – Son over house (v 6)
Moses – part of the house (v 3)
Jesus – builder of the house (v 3)
God – builder of everything (v 4)
Moses – worthy of honor (v 3)
Jesus – worthy of greater honor (v 3)

The phrase that really tweaked my attention though was “we are his house”. The implications of that are pretty significant. “We” is arguably referring to the church. That means that Moses was in the church, that he was a faithful servant (or minister) in the church and that Jesus was the head (or builder) of that church Moses served in just as he is the one we are part of today.

This says a great deal about continuity between the Old Covenant and the New. Can’t wait till Dr. Carson gets to Hebrews in class.

You know about that court case before the Supreme Court about the Pledge of Allegiance? I actually agree that “under God” should not be in there because of atheists. The guy is arguing the case on behalf of his daughter, he doesn’t think that she should be made to say that in school. He doesn’t want it to say that there is no God either (fair enough). BUT, and it is a big but, something I didn’t know was that he doesn’t have custody of his daughter, his wife does and she is an evangelical Christian raising the girl as a Christian. On those grounds I think the case should be tossed! It is also tragic that schools are once again being used as a political battle ground.

Remember that other controversial film about Jesus, the Last Temptation of Christ? Well, the screenwriter of that one, Paul Schrader, has some very interesting comments about The Passion. For example:

My guess is that Mel has a problem with the Enlightenment because his film really does go back to the visceral blood cult origins of Christianity, and the fervour it’s created is more akin to a Gospel tent meeting than it is to a motion picture.

Well, Schrader, not surprisingly, is very modernist. Notice the notion that his version of Christianity is better than even the original. But wait, there’s more!

The Gospels were rigged for political reasons from the get-go. They were written 30-40 years after the fact to curry favour with the Romans and separate the Christians from the Jews. So the Pharisees were made to seem much worse than they were and Pilate was shown to be more agonised.

So where, one wonders, does Schrader get any reliable information about the origins of Christianity? How can he determine that anything anyone says about it is true? To the point, how can he be sure that his view is the correct one? A good thing that he says is that the gospels were written 30-40 years after the fact. There are critics who claim they were written 100 year later, especially the Gospel of John which is sometimes pushed to 250 AD or so. At least liberal theology has allowed the Gospels to move back a bit. What is really curious is that the Gospels were slanted for political favor and yet that move utterly failed. The Christians faced persecution first in Jerusalem but later from local governors and later by Roman Emperors. Furthermore, if the Gospels were “rigged for political reasons from the get-go” why not rig them even better? Why not make Jesus into a Roman apologist and have him persecuted and killed by the Jews for being too Roman? That would have really scored points with Rome especially after the destruction of Jerusalem in 72 AD (when Schrader claims they were written.)

Modernism isn’t an answer to this. It proceeds based on disbelief in the trustworthyness of the Bible and then try to prove their case. If you look at modernism since the 1870s it has repeatedly gotten black eye after black eye. It is amazing that it survives to this day.