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November28 @ @ rRandyP comments: mFaithOfJesus kjv@John:11:45-57 JESUS THEREFORE WALKED - It was no surprise to Jesus how the Sanhedrin/Pharisee coalition would react, it was part of the equation going in to the miracle. One only has to go back to the times of Moses before Pharaoh to see how miracles tend rather to harden the hearts of those it should have softened. It is as weighing in the one hand the tremendous weight of the many works and believers in the works of Jesus against the weight of what is self important in the other; the more weight added to the side of Jesus the more the scale tips towards self. Self is a communal property here, there is much investment into it by these individuals. It is no less true in our day. What we call freedom of will is clearly very territorial and pack like. Measure again the imbalance between the one sent doing the works of God and the several who find it expedient for all that the one man be put to death. It is the same measurement we face today. Why should the works of God be put to death (in our case explained away)? Because they threaten the so called works of man. They see it as a work to keep their place and their nation. Their place is as spiritual and moral leaders of a pitiful run down thoroughly dominated depraved frontier outpost of Rome, a vague resemblance in name only to the nation that by God they once possessed. That is the work that they put above God's? What is our's? So what does it take, we must ask, for them / for us to see matters on the ground as they truly are? The results and consequences of our possessiveness and self (pack like) justifications? How the works of God are sternly pushed aside as if to the wildernesses? These men gather to purify themselves and at the same time they issue a state wide edict for His capture. The feast is being prepared for. The faith of our Lord knows more of what it is up against ahead of time than we tend to know even after the fact because it knows the heart of man; all men; the real state. He will spend this time now with His disciples preparing them and their faith for the similar battles they will one day face themselves. He will walk no more openly amongst these hardened.

December2 @ @ rRandyP comments: mFaithOfJesus kjv@John:12:37-50 I KNOW HIS COMMANDMENT IS LIFE - Similar to God hardening the Pharaoh's heart, He has hardened many of the chief priests. I don't know if it is meant that He enacts this upon them, rather that the thought of Him as now presented makes their hearts hard. It is like us saying "you make me sick". You of course do not make me to be sick, my guttural response to you is sickened. The thought of God dwelling in the flesh? For the hardened sickening. The thought of messiah not coming from their ranks, sickening. The thought of them not knowing God, but this unlearned fool, sickening. The thought of Him calling them hypocrites and children of the Devil and a broad of vipers, sickening. That He heals on Sabbaths, that He claims to forgives sin, that He associates with sinners and publicans, that every answer to them is a parable or puzzle to solve, that He is leading the uneducated masses and them into a head on collision with Rome; it is all just sickening to the chiefs. Worse yet, there are suspicious people among these leaders who seem to believe on this Jesus, but wont stand up for Him (which must go to show what type of people He draws). You can see how hearts can become hardened with very little external pressure from God, in fact it is likely to believed that they are doing God the favor for putting this revolting lunatic down. Here is the thing though, everyone knows that Isaiah said that all this would surround the "Righteous One"; that He would be denied and rejected and tremoved from the living. Jesus said that if a man hear His word and believe not, He (Jesus)judges the man not; His word (Jesus speaking the Father's command) judges Him. If God has forced a hard heart upon one then how can HE judge him? HE has not forced, we have responded that way in facing His truth. Why not judged until the last day? Because until the last day there remains that possibility that a person's heart can be changed; and if not changed, used to strengthen someone's that has. The faith of our Lord is that the Father's commandment equals life everlasting. Therefore He speaks what He has been told. One that believes on Him believes on the Father. That same word is eternal life to one and judgment of similar kind to another.