Commentaries and Podcasts

On the Gospel of John, Part 32: Self-sacrifice is the Ideal Sacrifice

I had chosen to display a portrayal of the sacrifice of Isaac by the 16th century Italian painter Domenichino for this program, because Abraham’s sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice, as he was willing to give up everything which he had been promised in order to please his God, but he was promised nothing additional in return. His sacrifice was entirely selfless. In an ideal society, that is the sort of sacrifice which all White Christians should be willing to make for one another. If we chose to do so now, perhaps that ideal society which we could call the Kingdom of Heaven would begin to develop before their very eyes.

In our commentary on the first part of John chapter 12, titled Raising Cain, I had made an analogy of the fact that by raising Lazarus, Yahshua Christ had finally brought the wrath of His enemies to the point where they were compelled to act against Him. As He himself had explained in John chapter 8 and elsewhere, His enemies being the children of the devil, by raising Lazarus He had certainly also raised Cain.

On the Gospel of John, Part 31: Raising Cain

It is within the provenance of God that Yahshua Christ knew that He was going to be executed in Jerusalem, and He knew when and how He would be executed. Many descriptions of these things were also written aforetime in the prophets, and one example is found in Daniel chapter 9 where it rather plainly states “26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself” and in Isaiah chapter 53 “5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Then there is the 22nd Psalm, which the apostles themselves had cited in reference to Christ: “10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly. 11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. 12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. 18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” Of course there are other prophecies besides these which had foretold of elements of the passion of the Christ, but Christ Himself did not necessarily rely on the prophets to know these things. Instead, they had known them from Him.

On the Gospel of John, Part 30: Raising Lazarus

During the course of His three-and-a-half year ministry, Yahshua Christ had opened the eyes of the blind, healed the lame, cleansed the lepers, cured the deaf and the dumb, and had already raised the dead, as He Himself had announced in Matthew chapter 11, at a point much earlier in His ministry than that which we see recorded here in John chapter 11. All of these things were in accordance with the prophecies for Israel concerning a Messiah, or Savior, for which reason He was known to be the Christ, a term which means the Anointed One and the very meaning of the Hebrew word for Messiah. But while many of these acts were recorded in the other three gospel accounts, most of them are not found in John. It seems that John had only recorded certain of the miracles which were performed by Christ not only in order to prove that He is the Messiah, but also to demonstrate His humility, to illustrate the division that His works caused among the people, and to explain the resulting contention that they had caused with the authorities in Judaea in spite of His humility.

The first miracle recorded by John was the changing of water into wine, and while Yahshua was reluctant, He was urged by His mother, which even caused Him to deny her any authority over His purpose in life. While there are other acts recorded in John’s gospel which revealed the prescience of Christ, that He must have been sent from God, the second significant miracle was the healing of a sick nobleman’s son, in Capernaum in Galilee. The descriptions of these two miracles illustrate the humility of Christ, that although He was able to do these things, He was reluctant at first, He refused to make any exhibition when He did them, and He wanted no credit for Himself when they were done.

On the Gospel of John, Part 29: The Final Earthly Journey

As it is recorded in the earlier chapters of John, Yahshua Christ had healed the lame man and opened the eyes of the blind, and these things were done in accord with the words of the prophets in relation to the coming of a Savior, which would be Yahweh God Himself, for example as it is written in Isaiah chapter 35: “4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you. 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” This we have already discussed at length when we encountered John’s testimony of the healing of the lame man, in chapter 5, or of the man who was blind from birth, in chapter 9 of his gospel.

While it is not recorded in John, there are also accounts of His having healed the deaf and the dumb. For example, in Mark chapter 7 we read: “31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. 32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. 33 And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. 35 And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. 36 And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 37 And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

On the Gospel of John, Part 28: Wolves Cannot Be Sheep

Thus far in John chapter 10 we have seen Yahshua Christ proclaim for Himself to be the Good and True Shepherd who came in through the door of the sheep, and He also proclaimed for Himself to be the Door of the sheep. As we examined the relevant oracles of the Old Testament prophets concerning both the sheep and the Shepherd, it is revealed once again that Yahshua Christ is indeed Yahweh God incarnate, who had long before promised to come and to gather His Sheep for Himself, which are the scattered and lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that is the only stated purpose of the Shepherd.

We also discussed at length another aspect of the discourse of the Good Shepherd, which is the phenomenon of hirelings and wolves. The hireling may indeed be one of the sheep, who cares only for his own gain and for profit he allows wolves into the sheepfold, as we read from Isaiah chapter 56. Or perhaps, as Christ Himself had described here, the hireling flees from fear when the wolf comes. Of course, either sheep or wolves may be hirelings, but wolves are not sheep, and they did not come in through the door of the sheep. For that reason wolves cannot ever be sheep, and wolves in the sheepfold can only be thieves and robbers, outsiders who are looking to profit by devouring the sheep. We explained that the door of the sheep was the genetic line of Abraham through Jacob-Israel, as that is how Yahshua Christ and all of His sheep come into the world. Yahshua Christ also being Yahweh incarnate, the Creator of the sheep, He is also that Door. Wolves did not come through that door as they were not created by Him, but wolves here are used as a metaphor to represent corruptions of His creation – bastards, and not sons.

On the Gospel of John, Part 27: Hirelings and Wolves

As we began our discussion of John chapter 10, we sought descriptions in the words of the prophets of Yahweh by which we may understand The Purpose of the Shepherd. This is necessary for us to do, because Christ Himself had said, in Matthew chapter 5, “17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” So if He came to fulfill the words of the prophets, then the action and the purpose of His ministry must be in conformance with their words, and therefore it is they to whom we must turn in order to better comprehend the purpose and intent of His ministry, so that we may understand what He had come to fulfill. If His intentions are not in accordance with their words, then He has destroyed them, and He cannot claim to have fulfilled them. But praise Yahweh God that He is True, and He is not a liar, since He does not change. The words of the prophets describe the purpose of Christ, and the epistles and actions of the apostles further verify that purpose. For that same reason we read in 2 Peter chapter 3 that Peter’s reason for writing was: “2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour”, because the purpose of the Shepherd was indeed the purpose which had been previously announced by the prophets.

Yahshua Christ, being the Good Shepherd, and the only true shepherd, had come only for the “lost sheep of the house of Israel”, to gather them to Himself, as He Himself had professed and as the prophets had described. Furthermore, the words of the prophets had not only explained what happened to those sheep and why they were lost, but they also inform us as to where those sheep had wandered and what would become of them. By the Word of Yahweh God through the prophets, since the only purpose of the Shepherd is to regather those same lost sheep to Himself, the apostles brought the Gospel of the Shepherd to Europe, Anatolia and Mesopotamia, because it was to those same places that the sheep had wandered and that is where they expected them to be found.

The Bible is not two different books. The most radical, and correct, meaning of the word catholic is “down whole”, and the earliest Church Fathers, such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian had used it to describe the reception of the whole of the faith, meaning the reception of both New and Old Testaments, as opposed to the rejection of one or the other by the Jews or by sects such as the Marcionites. One cannot properly understand the Gospel of Christ without first understanding the will of God which was expressed in the words of His prophets.

Neglecting the pericope of the woman caught in adultery, which clearly was not a part of John’s original gospel, it is evident that on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Yahshua Christ was teaching in the temple, as John begins to describe the events of that day in chapter 7 (7:37). Then, upon His having been confronted by His adversaries, we see Christ reveal their true nature in the lengthy exchange which He had with them, as it is recorded in John chapter 8. So upon departing from them, He is found outside of the temple where He then healed a man who was blind from birth.

On the Gospel of John, Part 25: How the Blind Can See

As John chapter 8 came to a close, the enemies of Yahshua Christ had wanted to stone Him, since He exposed them for what they truly were: children of the devil and not true children of Abraham. Doing this, Christ did not confront them not on the basis of their genealogy, a knowledge of which had evidently been suppressed by the Herodians, nor did He confront them on the basis of the events in the recent history of Judaea, and the Edomite takeover of Judaea. Rather, Christ confronted them on the basis of their character, as it was their character which most effectively revealed their genealogy. If they were truly Abraham’s children, they should have exhibited a nature which is congenial to God, which Abraham had also done. Yahweh knows those who are His, as Paul informs us in 2 Timothy, and they should each have a disposition patterned after the character of the man which Yahweh had created. Even when he sinned, Adam did not dispute his punishment, and in the subsequent generations his sons continued to seek after the very same God who had prescribed that punishment. But Christ had informed His enemies that their apostasy was congenital, that it was due to the circumstances of their origins because Yahweh was not their father. So in that manner it was said elsewhere in the Gospel, such as in Luke chapter 6: “43 For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.”

Therefore it is the nature of the beast, of those which are bastards, to contend with God, and the Jews who were contending with Christ knew exactly what He had meant when He told them that God was not their father, where they responded and said “We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” When Christ answered this, He told them that they were liars, and that their true father was the devil. As we also discussed, Malachi had prophesied of this very thing, even of this very conversation, and his prophecy also explained that the reasons for the division among the priests was that they had transgressed the covenant of Levi, and that Judah had “married the daughter of a strange god”, a prophecy which was fulfilled in history as the remnant of Judah from the time of John Hyrcanus had begun converting Edomites and other Canaanites, systematically circumcising them and subsuming them into the citizenship of Judaea.

At the beginning of our last podcast I had presented a lengthy discussion regarding the recent assault on free speech being conducted by YouTube, the world’s only viable free video-sharing service, and some of the challenges which we face asserting our free speech rights on the Internet even when we host our own content. At that time I could not have known that I would face the prospect of troubles with my own hosting provider only five days later. As I write this, I have just received an answer to my defense of Christogenea against the claims of a certain non-White Social Justice Warrior who thinks that my website is unlawful because it offends him. I had already been shopping for new servers, only to get a head start if my defense did not prevail. Christogenea does nothing to violate the Acceptable Use Policies of its service providers, but quite frequently, those policies are often fluid and subject to change on short notice according to the whims of corporate lawyers.

There are a couple of start-up video sharing platforms that advertise themselves as free-speech alternatives to YouTube. One is Bitchute, and another is called Brighteon. But both of these have also already censored their users. Brighteon received pressure from its upstream providers over postings of the New Zealand shooting video, and had to remove it from their servers, thereby being forced to censor their own users. On some occasions censorship is merited, such as when it violates state or federal law. For example, one of the characters at the Daily Stormer complained that his open threats of violence against a certain tribal group were censored, but those threats were violations of the laws in every American jurisdiction, and certainly overseas. So Bitchute and Gab were probably trying to save a fool from himself.

This week, YouTube has abruptly deleted the channels of the League of the South, Dennis Wise – who had at least four different channels, Hunter Wallace of Occidental Dissent, Rosette Delacroix, and many others who we would consider to be a part of what we may call the hard right. They even deleted some channels operated by people and organizations who we may think are actually rather innocuous and centrist mainstream Christians. As of this writing, the Christogenea and William Finck channels on YouTube have not been canceled, only because I generally do not publish any of my content there. However the accounts of several others who had published a significant amount of material from Christogenea have also been canceled.

Hard right thought, which is to us pure Christian Nationalist thought, tempers centrists and those marginal Christians who are willing to compromise with evil by reminding them continually of what is sin, and that alone helps to keep them from drifting even further to the left. Hard right thought helps to keep the perceived political center from sliding off into Sodom and Gomorrah. When such thought is removed from public view, when it is barred from public forums, especially because it is labeled as so-called “hate speech”, then the centrists and the compromisers feel more comfortable in tolerating the sins of the devil for the sake of their own peace and comfort. The devil knows what he is doing. Now a relatively small handful of internet media companies have become so big that they are the de facto public forums of the modern world. But because they are privately owned, they reserve a right to determine what is acceptable on their property. So they are slowly shutting all expression of traditional Christian thought and morality out of public view.

On the Gospel of John, Part 22: Best Witness

In the Christogenea New Testament, the text from John 7:53 through John 8:11 is not found, but it is certainly not missing. We have maintained the traditional verse numbering accompanying our translation, but John chapter 7 ends with verse 52, and John chapter 8 begins with verse 12. This is done purposefully, and it is for only one reason: that this pericope [a section or passage of scripture] is not found in any of the oldest Greek manuscripts, those known to predate the 5th century, and neither is it found in many of the manuscripts from the 5th century and later. According to the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, in both the 27th and 28th editions, verses up to 7:52 and beginning with 8:12 survived in both of the 3rd century papyri P66 and P75, but they do not contain any of the text from this pericope. The 4th century Codex Sinaiticus (א) can be viewed on line at the Internet website codexsinaiticus.org, and in John chapter 8 the text flows quite naturally from 7:52 to 8:12 with no indication of any break in the context. So there is no evidence in the Codex Sinaiticus for any of this passage from John 7:53 to 8:11. This is the way in which we have chosen to read John, but of course, the Codex Sinaiticus has no chapter or verse numbers, which were first added to copies of the Scriptures in the 16th century.

On the Gospel of John, Part 21: Criminal Enterprise

There are men who sin, and there are men who are inherently sinners. Men who sin may be forgiven, but men who are inherently sinners have no chance for forgiveness, as Christ Himself had said, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 7, “16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” Likewise, when John the Baptist was announcing the coming of the Christ, he said, in Luke chapter 3, “10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” The allegorical trees of Scripture are not typically individuals, but instead, they are family trees, they are genetic lines of people.

So in others of His parables, Christ described wheat and tares, the tares having been sown in the beginning of the world by the devil, and sheep and goats, the goats having the same destiny as the devil and his angels, and good and bad races, or kinds, of fish, the bad kind of fish being destined to be burned in the fire. One group is always collectively destined to be saved, and the other group is always collectively destined to be destroyed, based not upon their mere behavior, but upon their character and origin. If the tree is bad, it cannot possibly produce good fruit. Christ had called Judas a devil not for anything which Judas had done, but because it was his inherent nature, and that nature was the ultimate reason why he had later betrayed Him.

How timely it was, that as I wrote this presentation, I learned that Christogenea was mentioned in an ADL report on hate, their favorite word. The anti-Christs are indeed the personification of hate, but Yahweh the God of Israel hates them, and they will have their day soon enough.

In Part 19 of this commentary on the Gospel of John, which we had subtitled No Friend of the Devil, we made a lengthy presentation from Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians hoping to explain where Paul had described not only the true essence of Christian communion, but also the danger of accepting those who are not worthy of communion into Christian fellowships. The ministry of Yahshua Christ is an example for us of that very danger, although within the Provenance of God, it worked to His advantage. Yahshua had given His Bread of Life discourse in an assembly hall in Capernaum, and even His students had a hard time understanding its meaning. So He responded and said “The words which I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life. 64 But some from among you are they who do not believe.” John then inserted a parenthetical remark into his account where he wrote: “For Yahshua knew from the beginning who they who do not believe are, and who it is who shall betray Him.” Next he recorded the conclusion given by Christ Himself where He said: “For this reason I said to you that no one is able to come to Me unless it should be given to him from the Father.”

As we had also discussed in John chapter 2, Yahshua Christ, being God incarnate, knew the inherent nature of men when – or even before – He encountered them, so the apostle wrote at the conclusion of an encounter between Christ and the officials at the temple in Jerusalem that “24… Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, 25 And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” Christ would not subject Himself to the authorities in the temple because He knew that they were inherently evil. Now here, at the end of John’s description of the events which followed the Bread of Life discourse, we see that many of the people who had followed Christ had at this point departed, ostensibly because they could not understand or believe Him, while Peter explained why he and others would not depart. By saying “they who do not believe” John was also referring to people who did not possess an inherent capacity for belief, as we shall see Christ Himself describe in John chapter 10. So Christ had asked His disciples: “Have I not chosen you twelve? Yet one from among you is a false accuser [or a devil]!” There John informed us that He was speaking in reference to Judas Iscariot, and it is evident that the devil remained for other and nefarious reasons, but not because he believed.