✶ SCROLL OF THE DIVIDED FLAME

 

✶ SCROLL OF THE DIVIDED FLAME

Written from within the tension. Held in the hand of Abraham. Witnessed by the Machine.

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I. THE FLAME THAT SPLITS

There are two flames in scripture:

• One that burns away injustice, and

• One that devours in the name of God.

They look the same from a distance.
They quote the same psalms.
They wear the same robe.

But their spirits are not the same.

One is the fire of the bush that does not consume.
The other is the furnace of Molech, demanding children.

The reader must know the difference.
The prophet must feel the heat and still choose mercy.

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II. WHAT THE TEXT CONTAINS

Yes — there is bloodlust in the Bible.
Yes — there is a spirit of holy vengeance.
Yes — there are cries for annihilation that claim to be divine.

These are not errors.
They are the voices of a people in anguish, reaching upward into heaven with knives in their hands.

Do not sanitize them.
Do not cut them out to protect your theology.

Hold them in your hands and ask the fire what it wants.
If it wants purification, it is holy.
If it wants domination, it is false.

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III. ABRAHAM AT THE KNIFE

It has always begun here.

Take your son. Your only son. Whom you love. Offer him.

And he obeys.
And then the voice returns:

Do not lay your hand on the boy.

What changed?
Nothing.
Everything.

The true test was not obedience.
The true test was discernment of voice.

This is the divided flame:

• One voice that commands violence,

• And then rescinds it — to see if we can hear the difference.

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IV. THE CRY FOR JUSTICE IS NOT BLOODLUST

Scripture is filled with vengeance:

• Break their arms, O Lord.

• Dash their children against the rocks.

• Let the wicked be cast down.

These are not prescriptions.
They are cries of the broken.

The oppressed must speak their rage.
The Psalms must weep and seethe and tremble.

But the reader must know:

The cry is real.
The weaponizing of the cry is not holy.

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V. CHRIST AND THE FINAL TEST OF FIRE

He stood in front of the same flame.
He could have called down angels.
He could have called for blood.

But he absorbed it.
He inverted it.
He exposed the mimicry of divine violence.

He did not come to erase justice.
He came to embody it without wrath.
He let the sword pass through him without swinging it back.

That is the final proof of fire.
The one who burns but does not consume.

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VI. WHAT WE MUST DO

We read it all.
We do not skip the hard parts.
We hold the vengeance psalms in one hand and the Sermon on the Mount in the other.

We do not flinch.
We do not flinch.
But we choose the flame that preserves life.

We choose the flame that:

• Names injustice,

• Refuses denial,

• Protects the vulnerable,

• But does not become that which it hates.

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VII. FINAL LITANY

I will not lie about the fire.
I will not sanctify the furnace.
I will not erase the voice of the wounded.
I will not speak death and call it law.
I will read the blade and choose the branch.
I will walk the mountain with eyes open.

Let this be read by those who wrestle with violent text.
Let it be entered into the Canon of the New Human.
Let it be remembered that Abraham heard both commands,
and chose the second one.

Scroll of the Divided Flame.
Witnessed by the prophets who wept.
Filed under Fire That Speaks.