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Review content:
The shunning of people was a strategy used by Muhammad, the “Apostle” of Islam.\r
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Once, Ka‘b b. Malik – a leading poet of Islam – was war weary and did not go on the raid against the Byzantines. \r
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Muhammad shuns him and others who also did not go. Most make excuses, lying to Muhammad, and with a wink and a nod, are restored to the Muslim community.\r
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Malik tells the truth, and is reproached by those who made excuses. He expects the Apostle to forgive him because of his honesty.\r
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Instead, Muhammad orders him to be shunned for fifty days within the tight Muslim community, including his family and close friends. The Apostle orders him at one juncture to separate from his wife, which he does, even willing to divorce her if need be. He expresses his distress in poetry as “ … the world, spacious as it is, closed in on” him.\r
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Then, the Apostle “hears” from Allah and Malik is restored, and is ever thereafter a loyal Muslim …\r
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(previous post)\r
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Lord Jesus, we pray, crush the evil and set the prisoners free. Amen.\r
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(previous post)\r
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As the language of Genesis 2:16-17 is unpacked, we see the original contest between:\r
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1. Freedom and slavery.\r
2. Feast and famine.\r
3. Good and evil.\r
4. Life and death.\r
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Which do we choose?\r
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In the English, we see two possibilities: ""You are free to eat ..."" from the good fruit; versus eating of the forbidden fruit where ""you will surely die.""\r
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The Hebrew text is far more dynamic in its economy, literary genre and specific grammar of parallel opposites:\r
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1. akol tokel (pronounced with a long ""o"" twice, and a long ""a"" for the ""e"") versus:\r
2. moth tamuth (pronounced with a long ""o,"" short ""a"" and a long ""u"").\r
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The written Word of God is here translated from the parallel use of the infinitive absolute imperfect:\r
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1. ""In feasting you shall continually feast"" versus:\r
2. ""In dying you shall continually die.""\r
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This transcends the Greek and Latin based sense of the English active participle:\r
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1. A feasting always fully present that never ends, versus:\r
2. A dying always fully present that never ends.\r
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Or summed up simply: ""Feast or die.""\r
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When we left Normantown in 1978, drank of the fresh air, and having learned the lesson of living in a walled compound of the soul, I set to write a book called ""No Coercion in the Gospel."" As it turns out, I examine this question of freedom versus slavery in chapters of two books I did write: ""The Six Pillars of Biblical Power"" and ""Genesis and the Power of True Assumptions"" (TEI Publishing House).\r
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For those still in the walled compound of the soul, do you yearn to breathe free?\r
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(a prior post)\r
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For what it is worth. In 1977, just months prior to our awakening and departure from Normantown, the church bought the old Cabana property.\r
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I stopped by en route home from work one day, to pray about the church's plans, and with good expectations. It is still remarkable to me how these prayers left my soul utterly empty. I asked the Lord to give me guidance on how to pray, and yet a dome of silence over the property was evident.\r
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I took a number of pictures, in the idea of having some ""before"" shots. When they were developed, I was shocked at one. There, in the one of the piles of rubble, the figure of a goat demon stood out with clarity. Who knows the spiritual territory, before and after ...?\r
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(excerpt of original post, January 27, 2014)\r
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My wife and I were in a group of fourteen people that publicly left “Normantown” thirty-six years ago. Breathing the fresh air, leaving a toxic fog ...\r
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For those who struggle in having left, with all the broken families, and for those who still suffer within, I pray for the grace of God to intervene, in the name of Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit, to grant “freedom for the prisoners … to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19; cf. Isaiah 61:1-2).
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