If you want to mail any of these to me, my email address is lyons8804 at earthlink d0t net (spelled out to thwart spam-bots).

From the Genesis account we learn that garments represent works, earth represent the natural.

We see that a donkey represents the prophets, and this is reflected in the parallel as John the Baptist confronts the compromising Herod in the same manor that compromising Balaam was confronted by his donkey.

We learn that The people of Israel are the branches to the tree.

So that on “Palm Sunday” a very clear testimony is made as to what was happening.

The adult donkey (the prophets) were followed by the newest donkey (the colt – John the Baptist). The tree:Jesus sat upon the garments::works of his disciples proclaiming his fruit. Meanwhile the people were throwing their own garments on the earth proclaiming that they desired earthly works, and they cut their own branches off of the tree and threw them in the dirt as well.

The people proclaimed that they wanted an earthly king. No wonder the next day they could shout “Crucify him!”.

Ge 27:40 And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.

Since Esau is the earthly first son::man he represents the law. The yoke of Isaac the second son::second man then is grace.

Esau’s blessing says that law will serve grace and when law has dominion, grace is no more. From the mouth of the old testament is the proclamation that we have always been under grace, should we believe as Abraham did. I’m so glad that wasn’t a new message proclaimed by the Christian “cult” but was in fact the same message proclaimed from the beginning.

Don’t throw out the Old Testament yet. Keep up the good work Chris.

At first blush, I counted 5 ’straw men’ before I got all that far into the article. So, you want data? Let’s just go to one of the first ones. You said:

Let me also say that Rob Bell does state he affirms “the historic Christian faith,” which he then defines vaguely. Bell postulates, “But if the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?” The problem we immediately confront is that in the postmodern mindset nothing can be stated absolutely which then rules out a priori something being strong in the first place.

Funny thing, you just put words in Bell’s mouth that were NEVER there, and then you proceeded to tear the words he never said apart. Classic logical ’straw man’ fallicy. I could go on, but your articles are so easy to deconstruct and show false that I don’t have to put any words in your mouth, since you do it yourself…

And Ken, you do “call” yourself a pastor-teacher, and perhaps you act in that capacity in the real world, but nobody made you the pastor-teacher of the internet. If that’s all it takes, then I could call myself one, as well, and I don’t even need a piece of paper on my wall… As your discussion this evening has shown, though, you’re just not able to answer anyone’s questions/criticisms with any level of aplom that one would expect from a ‘pastor-teacher’ – even one wet behind the ears and fresh out of school.