Jesus the Motilone Bari

I named this whole blog "Ants of God" after part of a story of the Motilone Bari Indians of the high mountains of Columbia. See more about them - and listen to a few nice native songs at http://www.bruceolson.com/english/english.htm Following is an excerpt from the book Bruchko by Bruce Olsen, published by Charisma House, copyright 1973 ... and 1995 by Creation House. I do not have any copies for sale. Chapter 17 ... JESUS THE MOTILONE We had been on the trail three days and were nearing Norecayra. It was late afternoon. Bobby and two other Motilones were ahead of me, their dark brown bodies hidden from view by the thick vines and bushes of the jungle. It was a beautiful time of day. The approaching darkness made the greens of the jungle soft and velvet-like. We were walking fast. In a few miles we would reach the communal home. I began to hear loud shouts ahead of us, excruci­ating yells that sounded as if they came from many different mouths. I had never heard anything quite as agonizing. My steps quickened, and I began mentally to sort out the medicine in my pack. The cries seemed more desperate as we approached. I had never heard Motilones cry out like that. They never even whimpered under the greatest pain. But Bobby and the other Motilones kept walking straight ahead on the trails, as though nothing were wrong. "Stop!" I said. Bobby and the others turned around. "What's that shouting?" I asked. "Shouldn't we see if there is anything we can do?" Bobby looked down at the trail. One of the other men, who was a witch doctor, shook his head. "There's nothing we can do." "But what's going on there?" None of the three said anything. They stared at me with dark, quiet eyes. As the cries continued to echo through the jungle, I got a little agitated. "Well, look," I said, "maybe you don't care about whoever that is, but I do. I want to see if we can help." They still didn't answer me. They're sad, I thought. There's something over there that is too sad for them to bear. "You don't have to come with me," I said. "But I want to see." They stood motionless until I turned and walked off the trail into the jungle, toward the sounds. After I had gone a few yards I heard noises behind me. They were following. The shouting men were closer than I had thought. And there were only two of them. One I knew well. He was a leader in his communal home and a fierce warrior. He had killed oil-company employees just to get their safety helmets to use in cooking. He wore a necklace of buttons from his victims' clothes and another necklace of jaguar teeth from a jaguar he had killed with his bow and arrow. Now, standing in front of a hole that he had dug — a hole that was a good six feet deep — he was shouting in a desperate, searching voice, "God, God, come out of the hole." The other man was in the top of a high tree. He was stuffing leaves into his mouth and trying to chew them, while shouting, "God, God, come from the horizon!" It was the strangest sight I had ever seen. It could have been laughable, but something kept me from seeing any humor in it. My three companions came up alongside me, looking sad and embarrassed. "You knew about this?" I asked Bobby. He nodded. "What's the matter?" He explained that the brother of the man shouting into the hole had died in a region that was not his home. He had been bitten by a poisonous snake and had died before there was time to get him back. According to their traditions, that meant that his language, his spirit, his life, could never go to God beyond the horizon. Now the man was trying to look for God, to get Him to bring his brother's language back to life, to live in his body. "And what makes him think he can find God by calling into a hole?" Bobby shrugged. "It's as good a place as any to look." The hopelessness of his expression was transmitted to his words. This was why God had let me live. I was there to tell them where they could find God. Perhaps this was an opportunity God had arranged. My body tightened at the thought of having a chance to share Christ after five years of waiting. Yet it seemed too much to expect. Inside I was praying. The man stopped shouting into the hole and came over to us. His hair was disheveled, his body covered with dirt. His eyes were holes into black space. "It's no point," he said. "We've been deceived." "How long have you been here?" I asked quietly. "Since the sun came up this morning." "And why do you say that you've been deceived?" He told me again the story of the false prophet the Motilones had followed, whose false promises had led them away from God. "We no longer know God," he said quietly. Then the other men tried to explain a Motilone legend that confirmed why this brother's death had such terrifying implica­tions. I didn't understand it all. Motilone legends are as complicated as any theology. But I did understand something new: their great sense of lostness. I had wondered again and again what Christ had to offer them. Their way of getting along with each other was far superior to that of Americans. But there was more to life than that. I thought of the night Jesus had entered my life. It had been so many years before, such a small point in time. Yet it was the root out of which everything I was had grown. Through it God had brought me peace and real purpose. And here were the Motilones in a search for God. But how could I explain things like grace, sacrifice, the incarnation? I could tell a there's simple story, and they would understand. But how could I commu­nicate real spiritual truth? A lively discussion started. The man who had been in the trees came down and joined us. He reminded us of the legend about the prophet who would come carrying banana stalks and that God would come out of those stalks. I couldn't quite understand the idea behind the legend. "Why look for God to come out of a banana stalk?" I asked. There was puzzled silence. It made sense to them, but they couldn't explain it. Bobby walked over to a banana tree which was growing nearby. He cut off a section and tossed it toward us. "This is the kind of banana stalk God can come from," he said. It was a cross section from the stalk. It rolled at our feet One of the Motilones reached down and swatted at it with his machete, accidentally splitting it in half. One half stood up, while the other half split off. Leaves that were still inside the stalk, waiting to develop and come out, started peeling off. As they lay at the base of the stalk, they looked like pages from a book. Suddenly a word raced through my mind. "Book! Book!" I grabbed up my pack and took out my Bible. I opened it. Flipping through the pages, I held it toward the men. I pointed to the leaves from the banana stalk, then back to the Bible. "This is it!" I said. "I have it here! This is God's banana stalk." One of the Motilones, the one who had been in the tree, grabbed the Bible out of my hand. He started to rip out pages and stuff them in his mouth. He thought if he ate the pages he would have God inside him. When nothing happened, they began to ask me questions. How could I explain the gospel to them? How could I explain that God, in Jesus, had been like them? Suddenly I remembered one of their legends about a man who had become an ant He had been sitting on the trail after a hunt and had noticed some ants trying to build a home. He'd wanted to help them make a good home, like the Motilone home, so he'd begun digging in the dirt. But because he was so big and so unknown, the ants had been afraid and had run away. Then, quite miraculously, he had become an ant. He thought like an ant, looked like an ant and spoke the language of an ant He lived with the ants, and they came to trust him. He told them one day that he was not really an ant, but a Motilone, and that he had once tried to help them improve their home, but he had scared them. The ants said their equivalent of "No kidding? That was you?" And they laughed at him, because he didn't look like the huge and fearful thing that had moved the dirt before. But at that moment he was turned back into a Motilone and began to move the dirt into the shape of a Motilone home. This time the ants recognized him and let him do his work, because they knew he wouldn't harm them. That was why, according to the story, the ants had hills that looked like Motilone homes. As the story flashed into my mind, I realized its lesson for the first time: If you are big and powerful, you have to become small and weak in order to work with other weak beings. It was a perfect parallel for what God had done in Jesus. But there were so many unknown factors in the way the Motilones reasoned. How could I be sure that I would convey the right thing? I couldn't. Yet I felt sure God had given me this time to speak. So I took the word for "becoming like an ant" and used it for incarnation. "God is incarnated into man," I said. They gasped. There was a tense, hushed silence. The idea that God had become a man stunned them. "Where did He walk?" the witch doctor asked in a whisper. Every Motilone has his own trail. It is his personal point of identity. You walk on someone's trail if you want to find him. God would have a trail, too. If you want to find God, you walk on His trail. My blood was racing, my heart pounding. "Jesus Christ is God become man," I said. "He can show you God's trail." A look of astonishment, almost of fear, spread over their faces. The man who had been shouting into the hole looked at me. "Show us Christ," he said in a coarse whisper. I fumbled for an answer. "You killed Christ," I said. "You destroyed God." His eyes got big. "I killed Christ? I did that? How did I do that? And how can God be killed?" I wanted to tell them that Jesus' death had freed them from meaninglessness, from death and the powers of evil. "How do evil, death and deception find power over the Motilone people?" I asked. "Through the ears," Bobby answered, because language is so important to the Motilones. It is the essence of life. If evil language comes through the ears, it means death. "Do you remember," I said, "how after a hunt for wild boars the leader cuts the skin from the animal and puts it over his head to cover his ears and keep the evil spirits of the jungle out?" They nodded, listening closely. "Jesus Christ was murdered," I said. "But just as you pull the skin over the chieftain's head to hide his ears, so Jesus — when He died — pulled His blood over your deception and hides it from the sight of God." I stood looking at them, hoping desperately that they would understand. Then I saw on their faces that they did. I told them Jesus was buried. A wave of grief swept over them. The man who was searching for his brother's language began to weep. It was the first time I had ever seen a Motilone cry. But the thought that God was dead, that they were lost, brought tears and sobs. I picked up my Bible, opened it and said, "The Bible speaks that Jesus came alive after death and is alive today." One of the men grabbed the Bible from my hand and put it to his ear. "I can't hear a thing," he said. I took it back. "The way the Bible speaks does not change," I said. "It is like the papers of your speech that I have. They say the same word one day to the next. The Bible says that Jesus came to life. It is God's banana stalk." I showed him the page and told him that the little black markings had meaning. "No one has ever come back from the dead in all Motilone history," he said. "I know," I replied. "But Jesus did. It is proof that He is really God's Son." They asked many more questions. Some I didn't fully understand. But I was sure that God had spoken through me. That night I prayed, "God, give validity to Your Word. Make it touch these lives." I claimed God's promise that His Word would not return to Him without any response. Yet there didn't seem to be any response. I continued to walk the trails with bobby, giving medicine to the witch doctors and showing them how to do their work more effectively. One evening, though, Bobby began to ask questions. We were sitting around a fire. The light flicked over him. His face was serious. "How can I walk on Jesus' trail?" he asked. "No Motilone has ever done it. It's a new thing. There is no other Motilone to tell how to do it." I remembered the problems I had had as a boy, how it sometimes appeared impossible to keep on believing in Jesus when my family and friends were so opposed to my commitment. That was what Bobby was going through. "Bobby," I said, "do you remember my first Festival of the Arrows, the first time I had seen all the Motilones gathered to sing their song?" The festival was the most important ceremony in the Motilone culture. He nodded. The fire flared up momentarily, and I could see his eyes, staring intently at me. "Do you remember that I was afraid to climb in the high hammocks to sing, for fear that the rope would break? And I told you that I would sing only if I could have one foot in the hammock and one foot on the ground?" "Yes, Bruchko." "And what did you say to me?" He laughed. "I told you you had to have both feet in the hammock. 'You have to be suspended," I said." "Yes," I said. "You have to be suspended. That is how it is when you follow Jesus, Bobby. No man can tell you how to walk His trail. Only Jesus can. But to find out you have to tie your hammock strings into Him and be suspended in God." Bobby said nothing. The fire danced in his eyes. Then he stood up and walked off into the darkness. The next day he came to me. "Bruchko," he said, "I want to tie my hammock strings into Jesus Christ. But how can I? I can't see Him or touch Him." "You have talked to spirits, haven't you?" "Oh," he said. "I see now." The next day he had a big grin on his face. "Bruchko, I've tied my hammock strings into Jesus. Now I speak a new language." I didn't understand what he meant. "Have you learned some of the Spanish I speak?" He laughed a clean, sweet laugh. "No, Bruchko, I speak a new language." Then I understood. To a Motilone, language is life. If Bobby had a new life, he had a new way of speaking. His speech would be Christ-oriented. We put our hands on each other's shoulders. My mind swept back to the first time I had met Jesus and the life I had felt flow into me. Now my brother Bobby was experiencing Jesus himself, in the same way. He had begun to walk with Jesus. "Jesus Christ has risen from the dead!" Bobby shouted, so that the sound filtered far off into the jungle. "He has walked our trails! I have met Him!" From that day our friendship was enhanced by our love for Jesus. We talked constantly about Him, and Bobby asked me many questions. But he never asked the color of Jesus' hair or whther He had blue eyes. To Bobby, the answers were obvious: Jesus had dark skin and His eyes were black. he wore a G-string and hunted with bows and arrowss. Jesus was a Motilone.

News Media, Stop Whitewashing. You Are Guilty

It’s not a “ground incursion, an “expanded offensive, or a “military operation. Palestinians aren’t “evacuating,” “moving,” or “leaving.” It’s not a “conflict,” a “crisis,” or a “war.” It’s genocide. Israel is committing GENOCIDE. Stop whitewashing it, report it.

Ephesians 3:6 And the Land of Promise - for the Church of God in Christ

(CLV) Eph 3:6 ...the nations are to be joint enjoyers of an allotment [SUNKLERONOMA], and a joint body [SUNSOMA], and joint partakers [SUNMETOCHA] of the promise in Christ Jesus, through the evangel." The Apostle builds the picture upon what he said in Eph. 2 about Christ forming one new human (one people, one race) of the Jews and Gentiles. Eph. 3:6 goes on to make it more amply clear that there is no "Promised Land" on which one supremacist ethnic group such as Zionists or Aryans or the like can make their exclusive home. Thus, Ephesians is a stiff rebuke to Zionism and to American exceptionalism which has done so much theft and murder in the name of God.

The Covenant of Moses is Fulfilled and Over

Some say that the Lord God tells us to keep "kosher" and to "keep the Law" because Matthew 5 says so. But really the Lord says that kosher laws are over and done. The Law of Moses has been fulfilled by Jesus. We are to live in the Holy Spirit, obeying all that Jesus tells His church to do.

CLV Mt 5:18 - Mt 5:19 18 For verily, I am saying to you, Till the heaven and the earth should be passing by, one iota or one serif may by no means be passing by from the law till all should be occurring. 19 "Whosoever, then, should be annulling one of the least of these •precepts, and should be teaching •men thus, the least in the kingdom of the heavens shall he be called. Yet whoever should be doing and teaching them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of the heavens.

What is the Lord quoted as saying in Matthew 5:18-19? He says, "till all should be occurring...one iota or one serif may by no means be passing by from the law." All did occur. The "Law" - the Torah - all did occur and was fulfilled in the Messiah, being completed at the Cross. Even "the heaven and the earth" did pass by (or "pass away"). As the Apostle Paul said, "If any human be in Christ, that human is a new creation!" The heaven and earth which were joined together in the Temple have passed away. And the New Temple is in Jesus the Messiah risen from the dead and seated in the throne of Elohim (God). And you, be baptized into Christ repenting of all sins, and receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus and the Father. And, for you, the new heaven and the new earth arrive into the depths of your being. Our task is to "preach the truth" to ourselves. That is, cooperate with the Lord through the Holy Spirit to preach the truth to ourselves. "The whole world" within ourselves will hear the truth and be baptized and do all that Jesus commanded us. From the depths of your being the Truth, the Life, and the Way are yet to be worked into your whole being. But as Jesus says,

CLV Mt 28:16 - Mt 28:20 16 Now the eleven disciples went into Galilee, into the mountain where •Jesus arranges with them. 17 And, perceiving Him, they worship Him, yet •they hesitate. 18 And, approaching, •Jesus speaks to them saying, "Given to Me was eall authority in heaven and on the earth. 19 Going, then, disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, 20 teaching them to be keeping all, whatever I direct you. And lo! I/ am with you all the days till the conclusion of the eon! Amen!"

Jesus said, "The teachable [my translation; others say 'meek'] shall inherit the earth". Jesus and the Holy Spirit teach things to people. Proverbs 8 says "Wisdom shouts in the street. ... Turn to my correction. ... I will make known my words to you." So, here we are in a big crisis. I hope that in this crisis some people will become Christians. It is okay to turn to the Lord of heavens and earth in time of crisis. Revelation 2:9 says something like "I know the false accusations against you BY THOSE WHO SAY THEY ARE JEWS BUT ARE NOT BUT THEY LIE. Be faithful unto death and I [Jesus] will give you the crown of life." A crisis is what Jesus calls "tribulation". We all will have tribulation. We will go through it together. We will learn humility and togetherness. To do unto others as we would have them do unto us. We have an Antichrist Empire [the USA] which became an empire in the 1700s and 1800s and 1900s mostly by genociding the native population of the land it stole. Then it genocided people in Vietnam with napalm and agent orange and bombing civilians, killing a couple million people. All the while their major media covered up most of it. Anyway, that is a long story. Here we are with the major media lying to Americans and Westerners in general. For a short time we have alternative journalism on the internet. But that will be taken away sometime soon. The Empire already crushed most of the University student's freedom to tell us what they have studied about the evils of this Empire. But we have the Bibles. We will have some underground ways of communicating. We can make it through together. I don't know how soon this tribulation will happen. But it might me beginning soon. Bye for now.

Caitlyn's Newsletter - published on Substack 2025-05-23

Thoughts On The Israeli Embassy Staff Killings Caitlin Johnstone May 23, 2025 Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix: Two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC have been shot and killed by a man who shouted “Free Palestine” and reportedly told police “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza” after his arrest. The entire western political/media class is ferociously decrying this as an antisemitic attack, despite the shooter’s clear and unambiguous motives against the state of Israel rather than the Jewish faith, and despite one of the two victims being a Christian from Germany. So let’s get one thing clear from the beginning: two Israeli embassy staffers getting shot in Washington DC is less newsworthy than tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Israel’s genocidal land grab. It is less important. It deserves less attention. It is not the main story. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the main story. ❖ Many are suggesting that this was some kind of false flag attack to change the narrative and rescue Israel’s image on the world stage as public sentiments turn against its genocidal atrocities. I see no evidence for this at this time. I’ve been predicting that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza will give rise to violent extremist attacks, because that’s just what happens when you do profoundly evil things in full view of the entire world. There may be nothing more to it than that. ❖ You simply cannot give Israel sympathy. For anything. Ever. No matter what happens. Israel weaponizes sympathy; it uses any sympathy it’s given as a weapon to justify murdering people. If someone uses something as a weapon to murder people, it’s immoral to keep handing them weapons. You must disarm them. ❖ https://x.com/caitoz/status/1925702876749316234 ❖ The real story here is how the entire western political/media class has expressed more outrage and sympathy over the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers than tens of thousands of Palestinians in history’s first live-streamed genocide. The coverage of the story is the story, because it exposes how little regard the western empire has for the lives of non-westerners. Palestinians are not regarded as fully human, so their deaths by daily genocidal massacres are considered less worthy of attention than a double homicide in Washington DC. Western institutions regard Muslims and Arabs and people with darker skin as subhuman vermin whose extermination should be met with an emotional response ranging somewhere between indifference to glee. Our civilization views itself as morally superior to Nazi Germany while continuing basically the same atrocities under basically the same ideology. That’s the real story here. That’s the real lesson. ❖ https://x.com/caitoz/status/1925500273516323247 ❖ So let’s recap in case anyone’s confused: Nothing Israel did to Gaza justified October 7, but also October 7 justifies everything Israel has been doing in Gaza, but also nothing Israel has been doing in Gaza since October 7 justifies any violence toward Israel. Everyone got that? Does that sound about right? ❖ CNN’s Dana Bash is already suggesting that “Free Palestine” is a call for violence against Jews, and ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt is citing the embassy staff shooting as evidence of the need to deplatform pro-Palestine voices. This comes as British police level terrorism charges against a member of the Irish hip hop trio Kneecap for waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert. I have said it before and I will say it again: Zionism is the single greatest threat to free speech in our society today. The west’s support for Israel is causing a nonstop aggressive assault on our civil rights throughout the entire western world. This is personal. Israel directly threatens us all. ____________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 Israel continues its murder-spree with a full-scale war on the Palestinians in the West Bank. For decades, the Israelis and Americans prevented the Palestinians from having a nation-state, even though the Palestinian negotiators were willing to have a two-state solution. The Israelis and the USA plotted and assassinated and murdered so that Palestinians would be physically and socially divided, so that they could be destroyed. The Lord sees and will reward every individual according to his/her deeds. If you want to believe your mainstream media that is manipulated by Zionist Billionaire money, that is your choice and you will have to answer for it. - Peter Van Breemen 2025-02-27