Usually, the Sunday junk mail is of a mercantile nature. I quite enjoy about half of it. Learning that Aldi's Weird Product To Find In A Supermarket for this week is a bouncy castle, or receiving one of the remarkably testosterone-rich Gasweld fliers, always brightens my day a little.
Today, though, all there was was this.
It took me a while to figure out what the heck it even was. Religious, yes, that I figured out, but apart from that I was flummoxed until I looked at the Web site mentioned on the front.
The pamphlet is a bunch of Hebrew and English discussing the many bits of the Bible that definitely or possibly talk about Jesus.
You know - like the bit in the Old Testament where it says you shouldn't break the bones of any of the meat you eat during Passover, and the bit in the New Testament where it says that nobody bothered breaking Jesus' legs after he was crucified.
Man, if that's not an obvious fulfillment of prophecy then I don't know what is.
Anyway, that was all there was. No exhortations to do anything in particular. I'm used to more directness when people give me unsolicited religious publications.
If I were Jewish, I suppose I would have twigged earlier to the fact that the outfit responsible, Zola Levitt Ministries, is in the business of persuading Jews that the New Testament is not, in fact, claptrap, and that Jesus Was Or Is Lord, et cetera.
Which, I've got to say, strikes me as a better horse to bet on than the fairly long list of not-terribly-miraculous Jewish Messiah claimants. But that's not saying much.
In case you're wondering, by the way, the Zola Levitt people are not like Jews For Jesus, who are Christians in all but name. Oh, no. They're Messianic Jews, who differ from Jews For Jesus in that they maintain the Jewish observances mandated in the Old Testament.
Well, not all of the observances, obviously.
I mean, they're OK with withholding the wages of a hired man until the end of the week, or even longer, in direct defiance of God's command to not even hold the money overnight. The command not to do that is right next to the one that says you shouldn't steal from your neighbour, so one presumes it was meant to be taken seriously.
They probably also wear clothing made from two kinds of material, from time to time. Which is another big no-no.
But that bit in the next chapter about men having sex with men? They obey that part.
I'm given to understand that they don't pay so much attention to the bit in that same chapter about putting adulterers to death, though.
It's all a bit confusing.
But have no fear - although apparently pretty much everyone who isn't a Trinitarian Christ-believer is a member of a mere "cult", God has still "made His message clear in Scripture".
"Clear", in this case, indicates concealment beneath multiple levels of brilliant encoding (no, not that kind) that's taken centuries to figure out.
But that's all perfectly obvious, too.
4 December 2006 at 6:05 am
I like there two from Leviticus 20:
6 " 'I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.
27 " 'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.' "
4 December 2006 at 6:06 am
"these" not "there"