December 28, 2014
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Repairers
You shall be called the Repairer of the Breach (Isa 58:12)
To All Who Obey Him
[Part Two of Three]
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For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt Himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by Him who said to Him, "You are my Son, today I have begotten [fathered] you"; as He says also in another place, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek."
In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. (Heb 5:1–10 emphasis added)
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2.
Humanity as rational, thinking, breathing creatures has never wanted to accept the finality of death as the end of conscious existence. Thus, humanity, having known God (Rom 1:21) from the days of the first Adam through Noah, has devised various schema by which humanity can believe that the consciousness of human persons continues to exist beyond death, this consciousness being represented by some form of an immortal soul [psuche], thereby overloading the linguistic icon <soul> with more historical baggage than the word can reasonably carry … the concept of an immortal soul developed from Homeric Greek shades, the form-without-substance shadows of dead persons which Odysseus visited in the underworld.
Western culture developed from two legs, one Greek, one Hebrew, with both legs borrowing practices from Egypt …
The ancient Egyptian concept of limited immortality—the person living beyond death as a star for as long as the person’s body remains intact here on earth (the logic supporting mummification of pharaohs and other important people)—undergirds the Greek transformation of the dead dwelling in the underworld as shades to the dead having immortal souls that go either up (to heaven) or down (to Hades) at death. The Greek movement is from limited immortality to full immortality for the soul, with the fate of the soul unknowable for no criteria existed to establish whether the soul went up or down at death and with this lack of a criteria for entering heaven being a dilemma that ancient Greek philosophers didn’t resolve until encountering the Jesus Movement.
The Hebrew leg of Western culture tends to use the concept of <soul> for the substance of the fleshy body: a person is a “soul” and doesn’t have a soul. However, Abram, having journeyed to Egypt before being thrown out, most likely would have understood what the Lord told him about his heirs from an Egyptian perspective:
And behold, the word of [YHWH] came to him: "This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir." And He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then He said to him, "So shall your offspring be." (Gen 15:4–5 emphasis added)
Did Abram believe that his offspring would be like stars—possess immortality, the Egyptian mindset—or that his offspring should be as many as there are stars in number, how Imperial Hebrew scribes (a millennium after the utterance was made) would have read the passage and shaded their redacted translation of the Ugarit words Abram spoke … how can endtime disciples know that Abram spoke the Ugarit language or a similar language? Because the Lord identified Himself to Abram as <El Shaddai> (Gen 17:1) and <El El-yone> (Gen chap 14) with <El> being the Ugarit word used in the land of Canaan for deity, and Shaddai being commonly used for God in the Book of Job. Thus, <Shaddai> used alone would have identified the Lord; so El Shaddai would be akin [but not translated as] saying, Lord, Lord.
How can endtime disciples know that Abram’s speech was redacted? Because Moses records,
God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am [YHWH]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as [El Shaddai], but by my name [YHWH] I did not make myself known to them. …” (Ex 6:2–3)
Yet the inscribed text of Genesis chapter 14 has Abram saying,
But Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I have lifted my hand to [YHWH], [El El-yone], Possessor of heaven and earth ….” (Gen 14:22)
How could Abram address the Lord by a linguistic determinative (used as a name) that Abram never knew? And how could Abraham name a place using the unknown (by him) determinative YHWH?
So Abraham called the name of that place, "[YHWH] will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of [YHWH] it shall be provided." (Gen 22:14 emphasis added)
As it is said to this day—what day? The day or era when redaction occurred? The day when a scribe didn’t understand linguistic determinatives and transformed the always unpronounced determinative YHWH (used for the possessive plural <Shaddai>) into a naming noun too sacred to be uttered? Did this scribe then put false words into the Lord’s mouth when the scribe had the Lord speak to Moses; for Abram/Abraham could not use the Tetragrammaton YHWH as the name of the Lord that he knew as El Shaddai or El El-yone, the transliteration of both being best represented by the English naming phrase, God Most High, with Shaddai being a possessive plural and El-yone being singular.
Abram, endtime disciples are told, didn’t know the Lord by the Tetragrammaton YHWH—and if he didn’t know the Lord by the Tetragrammaton, he could not use the Tetragrrammaton as a naming noun … Scripture has been redacted by uninspired scribes, and the redaction then taught as infallible to a gullible Christian laity.
A similar redaction of Holy Writ has occurred within the past quarter century; for Christians of the Sacred Names Heresy have retranslated and published as correct editions of Scripture that have been made to conform to their ideology, their translations having God the Father being the God of Abraham and the creator of all that has been made. By using bastardized Hebrew transliterations of consonant clusters representing Hebrew words, they dare do what even Imperial Hebrew scribes did not: they utter aloud the always unpronounced determinative YHWH, unpronounced because this consonant cluster is a linguistic determinative. And these Heretics know so little about language they ask, what is a linguistic determinative?
The problem with textual honesty is that unless a person has been truly born of God through the indwelling of Christ Jesus, the person will cease to believe that God exists when confronted by the fallibility of Scripture. Instead of believing God, the person will believe nothing, a reality encountered in the splintering of Herbert Armstrong’s ministry following his death in January 1986. Whereas Armstrong’ ministers had baptized many—there were approximately 160,000 members of the Worldwide Church of God prior to Armstrong’s death—fewer than 25,000 of Armstrong’s disciples continue to keep the Sabbath three decades after his death, with the AWOL Sabbatarian Christians trusting neither man or God.
Now, returning to how Abram heard the words of the Lord that came to him in a vision: endtime disciples can know more than they do about the Abrahamic account in Genesis—
And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, [YHWH] has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May [YHWH] judge between you and me!" But Abram said to Sarai, "Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. The angel of [YHWH] found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai." The angel of [YHWH] said to her, "Return to your mistress and submit to her." The angel of [YHWH] also said to her, "I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude." And the angel of [YHWH] said to her, "Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because [YHWH] has listened to your affliction. … (Gen 16:2–11 emphasis added)
The Lord did not have to tell Abram that his offspring would be like stars if the Lord wanted to tell Abram that his offspring would be many, as numerous as stars are numerous. He could have simply said what the messenger of the Lord told Hagar about the offspring of Abraham she would bear. It would seem a principle reason for the Lord in Abram’s vision to tell Abram his seed would be as stars was to convey to Abram the sense of immortality that his seed would have; hence, when tested by the Lord, Abraham told the young men who were to wait for him and Isaac to return, “‘Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you’” (Gen 22:5 emphasis added). Abraham believed the Lord to the degree he knew that even in sacrificing Isaac, his son of promise would live. Abraham didn’t believe that Isaac had limited immortality, but that Isaac would live after death.
Abraham didn’t believe that Isaac would live after death through possessing an immortal soul; for Abraham was fixing to cut Isaac’s throat before Isaac was old enough to have fathered children, thereby ending descent from Abraham through Isaac. No, Abraham believed that Isaac would bodily live and bring forth heirs for him. Therefore, exactly what Abraham believed cannot be recovered from the text, but what can be ascertained is that Abraham believed Isaac would not die and stay dead even if he cut Isaac’s throat—and what Abraham believed came from the Lord telling him that his heirs would be like stars.
Once again, if what the Lord told Moses about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knowing Him by the name El Shaddai [originally with one /d/] and not by the Tetragrammaton YHWH is correct, then neither Sarai nor Hagar knew the Lord by the Tetragrammaton … the text has been tampered-with.
Although endtime disciples cannot know with certainty what Abram believed about the heir that would come from his loins, his belief counted to him as righteousness, disciples know the New Testament was written in fully alphabetized Greek, not something Sacred Name Heretics want to admit …
The New Testament was not written in a partially alphabetized Semitic language [Hebrew or Aramaic]; for Semitic languages, Arabic included, are “dead” or lifeless languages through their omission of inscribed breath/aspiration. And Sabbatarian Christians who have succumbed to the Sacred Names Heresy are spiritually dead. They have no spiritual breath in them, a statement confirmed by their bastardized Hebrew utterances.
Because the New Testament was written in Greek, with aspiration added to the word [’o logos] that Jesus left with His disciples (the word that will judge unbelieving disciples — John 12:48), the metaphorical word usage in which Jesus spoke to His disciples includes within the metaphor eternal life through the inclusion of transcribed aspiration, a reason for New Testament citations of the Old Testament being from the Septuagint, not temple scrolls … in moving from Hebrew to Greek, the righteous disciple moves from baptism into death in the days of Noah to future baptism into life (via the spirit of God being poured out on all flesh — Joel 2:28) through receipt of the Holy Spirit (the righteous are not automatically born of spirit or filled with spirit).
Every schema devised by the human imagination to assure others that conscious life continues beyond death has been or today is accepted by someone as factual although there is little or no evidence to support any of these schema: faith underlies each schema—and when examined, the source texts for the various schema do not stand up to critical scrutiny—and this includes the Bible, with the old Testament incorporating a redaction of Moses’ writings and the New Testament including a Second Sophist novel.
Mohammad’s visions as recorded in the Qur’an encompass myth about Christ Jesus, a factually untrue myth circulated among lawless Christians, the myth originating in 2nd-Century orthodox Christians not understanding that there should be no recorded history of the man Jesus that precedes the beginning of His ministry. Thus, what Jesus does as a twelve year old shouldn’t be included in Scripture, regardless of whether this twelve year teaches in the Temple or makes birds from mud. For emphasis, there should be nothing in Scripture about Jesus being born in a manger or about Jesus being descended from David or about Jesus [in the Qur’an] making twelve birds … 2nd-Century Ebonite Christians used as their sacred text essentially a copy of Matthew’s Gospel minus its first two chapters. In doing so, they reveal in what they accepted as Scripture that they better understood the Christian message than did orthodox Christendom. For again, Christ Jesus isn’t Christ until His ministry began, with apparently the Apostle Peter understanding this point by what and how he preached, with Mark’s Gospel being John Mark’s faithful account (according to Bishop Papias of Hierapolis, a contemporary of Polycarp) of what Peter preached.
But people want to know about this remarkable child before He was a man—
Then let there be tales told of Jesus as a young man sailing the Mediterranean, journeying to Wales, then across the North Atlantic as myth has Jesus so doing … why are not these stories included as part of Scripture? Why, because the locals in Asia Minor didn’t know these stories, and Jesus’ disciples were not to relate much of what He told them as His friends.
Christianity is not for everyone prior to when God sets His hand to save through casting the Adversary, the presently reigning prince of this world, into space-time and delivering dominion over the single kingdom of this world to the Son of Man. Then it will be the time to harvest firstfruits; then it will be the season to save firstfruits. Then all of humanity, not just Christians, will be filled with spirit and liberated from indwelling sin and death. Then the world will be baptized in spirit and into life.
In this present era, the kingdom of the heavens is taken by force: Matthew’s Jesus, speaking to the crowd after John the Baptist’s disciples depart from Jesus, said, “‘From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force’” (Matt 11:12) … John was still alive according to the narrative; so how much time had passed between the days of John the Baptist and when Jesus spoke? There wouldn’t seem to be any time passing. The days of John the Baptist were continuing. But Matthew’s Jesus isn’t the man that walked the still then existing peat bogs of Galilee. Matthew’s Jesus isn’t the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel. Rather Matthew’s Jesus is the indwelling Christ Jesus in each son of God, foreknown and predestined by the Father; called by the glorified Christ Jesus; justified and glorified by the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] and thereby raised from death while continuing to dwell in a fleshly body that is not only mortal but condemned to physical death. Matthew’s Jesus is the spirit of Christ that penetrates (as a husband penetrates his wife for purposes of procreation) the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that is in the non-tangible soul [psuche] of the person, thereby making Christ Jesus the head of every born-of-spirit Christian as the husband is the head of his wife (1 Cor 11:3). Hence, the chronological years passing between “the days of John the Baptist” and “now” can be all of the Christian era, with today representing this period, today being the reality of the First Unleavened, the 14th day of the first month, the Preparation Day for the High Sabbath that will in this reality begin seven endtime years of tribulation.
Do you [you personally] have a prehistory before you were called by Christ and born of spirit? You do, don’t you? So is your prehistory that of Christ Jesus? No it isn’t. But when the spirit of Christ entered your spirit and you began to walk in this world as Jesus walked, doesn’t Jesus’ history [biography] become your history? It does, doesn’t it? And if you argue otherwise, you’re not truly born of spirit. Therefore, because the same scenario pertains to every human person drawn from this world by the Father—including for the man Jesus the Nazarene—no history of Christ Jesus prior to His baptism by John should be included in Scripture, with the exception of Jesus’ preexistence as the Logos [’o Logos] who held primacy [arche] with the God [ton Theon] prior to when He entered His creation as His unique Son (cf. John 1:1–3; 3:16).
Now for the reality of the preceding paragraph: you will imperfectly walk in this world as Jesus walked, but because you spiritually wear the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, the <you> that the Father sees, that angels see will have you walking perfectly as Jesus walked.
Again, for emphasis, there should be no inscribed history or biography of Jesus prior to the beginning of His earthly ministry. In this both Mark’s Gospel and John’s Gospel are correct whereas Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel are problematic for differing reasons, with Luke’s Gospel being a redaction of existing Christian texts, witness accounts, and ministerial teachings, with no screening out of what Paul called the mystery of lawlessness (from 2 Thess 2:7). In other words, what the mystery of lawlessness taught about Christ Jesus can still be found in Luke’s Gospel, with Luke’s Jesus being a different Jesus than Matthew’s “Jesus,” and with Matthew’s and Luke’s Jesus figures differing from Mark’s Jesus … the Synoptic Gospels do not tell a harmonized narrative unless read superficially.
Again, Matthew’s Gospel, despite its “appearance” as a historical biography of a real person, incorporates fictional elements that causes the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel to be the indwelling Jesus that gives spiritual or heavenly life to sons of God. There may well be more fiction in Matthew’s Gospel than in the Second Sophist novel posing as Acts, but the fiction is of a different sort and functions more like prophecy than biography. Most Christians, however, cannot handle there being any fiction in Scripture, let alone a significant amount. But if the chasm separating man from God is to be breached, the one constructing the causeway must be absolutely honest with Scripture, which means seeking to understand and to explain to others why Matthew’s Jesus is mocked by Roman soldiers in a scarlet [red] robe (Matt 27:28) while in Mark’s Gospel Jesus has a purple cloak placed on Him (Mark 15:17), with purple being the appropriate color for mocking a royal pretender and with red emphasizing Christ’s shed blood … by the author of Matthew’s Gospel assigning a royal genealogy to Jesus (Matt 1:1–17), this author didn’t have to establish royal linkage but could, instead, emphasize salvation. Plus, a convert to Christendom will not be mocked in the heavenly realm for being human royalty: no one in the heavenly realm cares whether the fleshly body of the human person descended from generations of kings, for with baptism into Christ’s death, there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, royal nor commoner. The living inner self is a son of God through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou].
The weakness of the Qur’an reveals itself in what it records about Jesus the Nazarene as a child; for the angel Gabriel did not give this knowledge to Mohammad in a vision. Errant Orthodox Christians gave this knowledge to Mohammad, who then apparently falsely claimed that this knowledge came to him via a vision.
The genealogy that the author of Matthew’s Gospel assigns to Jesus is fictional as this author himself writes: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (Matt 1:18). Joseph was not the father of Jesus, and if Joseph wasn’t the father, then any connection between David, son of Jesse, and Jesus is fictional. Regardless of how widely held the belief is that the Messiah will be of David’s biological descent, the belief is false.
Isaiah writes about the Messiah, saying,
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of [YHWH] shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of [YHWH]. And His delight shall be in the fear of [YHWH]. He shall not judge by what His eyes see, or decide disputes by what His ears hear, but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist, and faithfulness the belt of His loins. (Isa 11:1–5)
A root sucker growing from the stump of Jesse is not a son of David, but is another tree growing from the same roots as Jesse grew, with Jesse’s father being Obed, son of Boaz and Ruth, with Obed being a descendant of Abraham by birth and by a double grafting [the inclusion of Rahab and Ruth] onto wild rootstock. The Messiah comes to Israel through birth and double grafting, the indwelling of the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou].
While it is popular to believe that Jesus was the son of David, He wasn’t … using this popular belief, Jesus intellectually trapped Pharisees, asking them a question they could not answer because of what they believed (that the Messiah would be the son of David). For why would David write, “YHWH says to Adonai, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” (Ps 110:1), with Jesus citing the Septuagint translation of the Psalm, which has the Greek equivalent of, The Lord says to my lord—
What is popularly or commonly believed by a culture is almost always wrong.
The Pharisees were wrong when they answered Jesus, saying the Messiah would be the son of David … why would David’s descendant [the Messiah] sit at the right hand of the Lord until the Lord makes the Messiah’s enemies His footstool? Does not this would-be son of David have authority over His enemies? Why can’t the Messiah make His enemies His footstool? What limitation has been placed upon Israel’s Messiah that would cause Him to wait until the Lord tramples the Messiah’s enemies? And if a limitation has been placed on Israel’s Messiah, then is this Messiah not an imposter?
No limitation has been placed on the Messiah. Rather, the Psalmist discloses that Adonai has in its plurality an earthly connection, an earthly face: “[YHWH] has sworn and will not change His mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’” (Ps 110:4).
The one to whom Abraham tithed, Melchizedek, king of Salem, was the human personification of Adonai, who was to sit at the Most High God’s right hand until His enemies became His footstool … the author of Hebrews writes,
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He [Melchizedek] is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever. (Heb 7:1–3)
In Genesis where Abram pays tithes to Melchizedek nothing is said about Melchizedek’s ancestry:
And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High [El el-yon].) And he blessed him and said, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!" And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (Gen 14:18–20)
The naming icon <El El-yone> carries in itself the same identifying characteristics that <El Shaddai> carries, but carries them in a singular sense, not as a possessive plural. And while no genealogy for Melchizedek is given in the Genesis account, it would be wrong to assume that Melchizedek was immortal, or was a spiritual being like an angel simply because no genealogy is given in Genesis. A better assumption would be that since Moses could not gaze upon the face of the God of Abraham and live (Ex 33:20), Melchizedek was not God Most High but was a man; Melchizedek was not the God of Abram but the earthly representative of El Shaddai as Abraham himself was the shadow and copy [an earthly representation] of Christ Jesus (“If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise” — Gal 3:29). Thus, the author of Hebrews says, in writing,
See how great this man was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the spoils! And those descendants of Levi who receive the priestly office have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people, that is, from their brothers, though these also are descended from Abraham. But this man who does not have his descent from them [that is, from Levi] received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. (Heb 7:4–6)
A priest after the order of Melchizedek would have Melchizedek as the one who served as the human personification of the spiritual reality, the glorified Christ Jesus:
It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. In the one case tithes are received by mortal men, but in the other case, by one of whom it is testified that he lives. One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. For the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. For it is witnessed of Him, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God. And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever.'" This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. (Heb 7:7–22 emphasis and double emphasis added)
It isn’t Melchizedek that had indestructible life; it is Christ Jesus who has indestructible life. It is Christ Jesus who is a priest—the High Priest—after the order of Melchizedek who was a priest of the Most High God [El El-yone] before this God of Abraham [the God of living ones — Matt 22:32] revealed Himself to Moses through the linguistic determinative <YHWH> (Ex 6:2–3).
If the Abrahamic narrative in Genesis has been redacted, and if the Gospels as received are not collectively factual, what assurance does a person have that he or she will retain conscious existence beyond death? The assurance that comes with having the Torah written on hearts and placed in minds so that all know the Lord, with all being taught by the Lord …
However Pharisees would have attempted to answer Jesus’ question about whose son was the Messiah, these men who sought theological purity would have had to confront the reality that David’s lord was not the Most High God but had a human face, a reality concealed by translation. And if the Messiah were a human person, he could not be all powerful, but could only be a man as David was. Only by having a second face, a divine face, could the Messiah be all powerful.
Jesus trapped Pharisees attempting to trap Him. He placed these Pharisees in a position where they had to admit the Messiah could be a man as Jesus was, and they were not about to go there. They were not about to admit that Jesus could be the unique son of the God of Abraham, and the adopted son of the God of dead ones. They would not admit that two deities could exist, what Jesus indirectly said to Sadducees (see Matt 22:32). Therefore, they could say nothing without condemning themselves.
To believe, however, that conscious existence ends with physical death takes at least as much faith as to believe that consciousness continues beyond death … whatever a person believes is based on incomplete or altered evidence, the problem confronting philosophers long before Christ was born—and the problem confronting Christian scholars today.
Pharisees believed that Israel’s Messiah would be the son of David, belief that ignored what Isaiah had prophesied about the Messiah being the root sprout coming from the stump of Jesse. But Christians compound the errors of Pharisees by believing that human persons are humanly born with immortal souls … if this were the case, why did Matthew’s Jesus say to His would-be disciple, “‘Follow me and permit the dead to bury the dead of themselves’” (Mat 8:22), or why did Paul write, “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23), or John’s Jesus pray, “‘This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’” (John 17:3)?
Pharisees refused to recognize Jesus as having been sent into this world by God the Father, whom none of them knew or had known (John 17:25) for they were spiritually dead and the dead know nothing. And because they refused to recognize Jesus as the cause and source of salvation—acquired indwelling eternal life—these Pharisees were without salvation. They were truly dead! And they would perish spiritually because of their unbelief.
This is the time of year when a third part of humanity believes that Christ Jesus was born in a manger in the town of Bethlehem and there visited by shepherds and three wise men bearing gifts, but this belief isn’t supported by textual evidence. The date of Jesus’ birth isn’t known … if shepherds were still in fields with their flocks, Jesus’ birth occurred before the ninth month when heavy rains would have compelled shepherds to pen their sheep, thereby giving their sheep shelter from these chilling rains.
Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. (Ezra 10:9)
Matthew’s Gospel disagrees with Luke’s Gospel as to where Joseph and Mary lived at the time of Jesus’ birth. According to Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph and Mary had a house in Bethlehem (Matt 2:11) at which they received the wise men coming from Parthia and in which they continued to dwell in Bethlehem for a year or more after Jesus’ birth: “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men” (Matt 2:16).
But according to Luke’s Gospel, Joseph and Mary dwelt in the Galilean town of Nazareth (Luke 2:4) before Jesus was born and went back to Nazareth after Jesus was circumcised and dedicated (v. 39).
There certainly would have been no need for Herod to order the death of all male children two years of age or less in the city of Bethlehem and in the surrounding region if Joseph and Mary had lived in Nazareth for a year after Jesus was born. Likewise, the magi bringing gifts to Jesus wouldn’t have found the child in a house in Bethlehem if Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth. So Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel present to disciples a differing Jesus, one descended from David through Solomon and one descended from David through Nathan; whereas the prophet Isaiah has Israel’s Messiah not coming from David at all, but being of a separate lineage of Obed, a lineage that grew as a root sucker of a felled tree.
The traditional Christmas manger scene represents shallow, superficial readings of the Gospels; represents a fabrication of Gospel accounts that merges Matthew’s Gospel with Luke’s to produce an unholy narrative, secular in origin and contradictory to fact … Christ has nothing to do with Christmas trees or Christmas shopping or Christmas itself—
At this time of year, the majority of humanity shops to give or to receive without serious consideration being given to obeying Christ Jesus, the source of eternal salvation.
Although neither Matthew’s nor Luke’s birth narratives can be supported by secular evidence or by narrative consistency, the author of Matthew’s Gospel had to get Jesus into Egypt, the topographical representation of sin, and then back out of Egypt before Jesus committed sin in order to slip Jesus behind Joshua [in Greek, ’Iesou — “Jesus”] and the children of Israel as the son called out from Egypt (Hos 11:1), thereby giving Jesus priority over natural Israel. Hence, Matthew’s account of Herod’s murder of infant males of two years or less in Bethlehem ties Jesus to Moses [Herod to Pharaoh, and Jesus as the Son of God to Moses the son of no-father] and then has Jesus’ return to Judea supplanting the children of Israel’s entrance into the Promised Land.
But what the author of Matthew’s Gospel writes about Joseph and Mary taking Jesus to Egypt and about Herod ordering the murder of two years old and less males in Bethlehem has no collaboration in secular writings, when the unjustified murder of young males in Bethlehem would have been recorded in a complaint to Roman officials that would have been retained.
There is theological justification for Matthew’s chapters one and two, but not historical evidence; for more than three sets of fourteen generations occurred between Abraham and Christ as a careful reading of the Torah, Judges, and Chronicles will confirm. Thus, what the author of Matthew’s Gospel was attempting to communicate by setting forth three sets of fourteen generations remains poorly understood.
The author of Luke’s Gospel postulates a differing ancestry of Jesus from David than the ancestry advanced by the author of Matthew’s Gospel—and while this difference has been casually explained by Matthew’s account representing the ancestry of Joseph, husband of Mary, mother of Jesus, whereas Luke’s account represents the ancestry of Mary, this explanation doesn’t hold up to examination. Both accounts are said to represent the ancestry of Joseph, with acknowledgement that Joseph isn’t the “real” father of Jesus. So neither account represents the ancestry of Jesus, the unique Son of the Logos [’o Logos] who was God [Theos] and who was with [pros] the God [ton Theon] in primacy [arche] (John 1:1), and who created all things physical (v. 3) before entering His creation as His son (John 3:16). About this, Paul wrote,
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5–8)
Unfortunately, human belief need not be supported by fact, but unsupported belief will save no one … to believe that Jesus was born in a manger on or about December 25th cannot be supported from Scripture, and certainly not from the Gospel accounts of Matthew or Luke, who has shepherds still in fields with their sheep.
Believing that Jesus was born on or about December 25th is unbelief of God, Father and Son—is unintentional denial of Christ Jesus’ divinity; for the iconography of mother and child pertains to the Egyptian goddess Auset [Isis, but most likely pronounced Iset], friend of sinners and the oppressed and commonly believed to be the mother of Horus, the falcon-headed god (and the “eye” atop the pyramid on the back of American dollar bills). The name Isis references the throne on which Pharaoh sat: her headdress is a throne, and Pharaoh her child. And about the idolatry of Egypt, the Lord told the prophet Ezekiel,
On the day when I chose Israel, I swore to the offspring of the house of Jacob, making myself known to them in the land of Egypt; I swore to them, saying, I am [YHWH] your God. On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands. And I said to them, Cast away the detestable things your eyes feast on, every one of you, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am [YHWH] your God. But they rebelled against me and were not willing to listen to me. None of them cast away the detestable things their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. …
I said to their children in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their rules, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I am [YHWH] your God; walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules, and keep my Sabbaths holy that they may be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am [YHWH] your God. But the children rebelled against me. They did not walk in my statutes and were not careful to obey my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; they profaned my Sabbaths. (Ezek 20:5–8, 18–21 emphasis added)
As Rachel stole her father Laban’s household gods and hid them from both her husband and her father by sitting on them, figuratively giving birth to a new generation of idolatry, Israel and the children of Israel took the idols [the idolatry] of the Pharaoh out from Egypt so that they could serve these idols in the Promised Land. But serving idols did not work out well for Israel and the children of Israel:
Moreover, I [the Lord] swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers' idols. Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am [YHWH]. Therefore, son of man [Ezekiel], speak to the house of Israel and say to them, Thus says the Lord [YHWH]: In this also your fathers blasphemed me, by dealing treacherously with me. For when I had brought them into the land that I swore to give them, then wherever they saw any high hill or any leafy tree, there they offered their sacrifices and there they presented the provocation of their offering; there they sent up their pleasing aromas, and there they poured out their drink offerings. (I said to them, What is the high place to which you go? So its name is called Bamah to this day.) Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord [YHWH]: Will you defile yourselves after the manner of your fathers and go whoring after their detestable things? When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord [YHWH], I will not be inquired of by you. (Ezek 20:23–31)
Partially because Israel took from Egypt its idols and idolatry; partially because the children of Israel took from the Canaanites they were to dispossess the idolatry of the Amorites and the Canaanites, the Lord gave to the children of Israel statutes commanding them to sacrifice their firstborns—
All firstborns belong to the Lord (Ex 13:2) … a firstborn sacrificed at or near birth remained unpolluted by its parents’ idolatry. These firstborns were sealed in death until such time as the Lord chooses to resurrect them. They remain innocents, the victims of their parents’ unbelief. And by being burned in fire, they symbolically represent in their physical deaths the spiritual fate of their unbelieving parents, the children of Israel.
To understand why the Lord would command the idolatrous children of Israel to do what He never intended Israel to do (burn firstborns), the endtime Christian needs to realize that with God, human death is not final. Whereas myth has Amut marrying her brother Osiris, then using her magic to resurrect Osiris to life after Set [Seth] kills Osiris and strews his body parts on the seven hills, the Lord needs no magic to raise whomever He desires from physical death, thereby making death no hindrance to receiving spiritual life. As such, the firstborn sacrificed by its parents to Molech escapes being reared in an idolatrous household and there learning to mock the Lord through Israel’s worship of sticks and stones.
The Lord would not hear the prayers and supplications of the unbelieving children of Israel; nor would He permit His prophets to inquire about what would happen to unbelieving Israel. The fate of this people was sealed in His statutes commanding them to burn their firstborns, with Israel being the firstborn son of the Lord (Ex 4:22) … as the people of Israel burned their firstborn, He would burn His unbelieving firstborn son, Israel, in the lake of fire.
What about Christians who do not obey Jesus? What about Christians who sincerely believe that Jesus is Lord, but who have been taught that they are not to keep the Commandments, that keeping the Commandments is legalism; is akin to outward circumcision, and as such negates Jesus’ sacrifice of His life? What about those who read what Paul wrote to the Galatians—“if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal 2:21)—and reject all forms of law-keeping?
What does it mean to obey Jesus?
In John’s Gospel, Jesus said,
Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees Him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word [’o logos] that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me. (John 12:44–50 emphasis added)
The spirit of God [pneuma Theou] entered into [eis, from Mark 1:10] Jesus when this heavenly life-force [spiritual breath of life] in the bodily form of a dove descended upon the man Jesus after He was raised from John’s baptism: Jesus received a second breath of life. He was born anew, born from heaven, born again, thereby becoming the personification of God the Father. Hence, when Philip said to Jesus, Show us the Father, Jesus answered,
Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. (John 14:9–11 emphasis added)
If Christ Jesus is the source of salvation, and if in Christ Jesus a person saw the invisible God that not even Abraham, Jacob, or Moses had seen (for each saw the God of living ones, not the God of dead ones), then the man Jesus became the visible personification of the previously unknown God of dead ones, with Jesus in John’s Gospel saying,
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. …
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:1–4, 24–26 emphasis added)
The dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5). The spiritually dead know nothing spiritual.
If as Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel tells Sadducees that the God of Abraham is the God of living ones (Matt 22:32), then the dead ones are not only the physically dead (as Abraham now is) but the spiritually dead—all who have not been born anew or born a second time, with Jesus telling disciples and would-be disciples [again], Permit the dead to bury the dead of themselves (Matt 8:22) … it is the spiritually dead that, this time of year, “shop until they drop.” It is the spiritually dead that go to war with one another to fight for possession of land that has no more permanency than ice; for what was it that John wrote?
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17 emphasis added)
The spiritually dead have a God that they do not know: the Father, the deity that Jesus came to reveal to only those whom the Father had given Him. Jesus didn’t come to reveal the Father to all of Israel or to all of humanity, with humanity serving as serfs in a demonstration project to establish that self-governance in all of its various forms leads only to death.
There are—and there should be—Christians concerned about alleged disciples of Christ Jesus that refuse to obey Him and thereby condemn themselves to the lake of fire … these Christians pray for their fellow Christians, but God refuses to hear their prayers even when they, themselves, serve as model examples of Christian love. Why doesn’t God hear? And why do they continue to pray, year after year, decade after decade? What will it take to cause Christians to obey Jesus? And when will Christians give up on their brothers in Christ ever obeying Jesus?
Ancient Israel knew the God of Abraham, the Theos of living ones, but ancient Israel never knew the Theos of dead ones who could have at any time resurrected the inner selves of the people of Israel from death but chose not to do so. Why?
When the Christian willing to obey Jesus meets as a person with another Christian, human bonds of attachment are developed, these bonds sometimes brotherly, sometimes parental, sometimes romantic. But the bonds themselves are physical, as in the lyrics of a country music song: The girls are all prettier at closing time. Biologically generated emotions are manifested as thoughts, with these thoughts if left unchecked becoming deeds of the flesh: a fellow will take a girl home that he won’t find attractive in the morning, and this should not be. But biology does produce thought. And these thoughts are fleshly in character and origin.
A Christian who prays for the salvation of another Christian, one that refuses to obey Jesus, defies logic and makes an emotionally based prayer to God, a prayer God will not hear and a prayer that harms the person-making-the-prayer’s relationship with God. Yes, this is correct. If a Christian out of concern for the salvation of a brother in Christ repeatedly prays for a willful sinner—praying that God give to this sinner knowledge the sinner apparently lacks—the Christian praying out of love for the brother in Christ will not be heard by God in this prayer or in other prayers; for if glorified sons of God are to judge angels, the person praying for a willful sinner that claims to be a disciple of Christ Jesus discloses to God that this person lacks the spiritual maturity necessary to judge between belief and unbelief, between good and evil. The Christian is still ruled by fleshly desires, unselfish desires but nonetheless carnal desires.
The Christian who refuses to obey Jesus isn’t ignorant; never is. For what Christian doesn’t know that the Sabbath is the seventh day of a weekly cycle dating back to Moses and the giving of manna? What Christian doesn’t know that pork is an unclean meat? What pork eating, Sunday keeping Christian doesn’t know that what he or she does is contrary to how Moses commanded Israel to live? They all do. And the same thing can be said about Sabbatarian Christians that use bastardized Hebrew when naming the man Jesus of Nazareth: they all know that the Gospels were written in Greek, a fully alphabetized language with the inclusion of vowels in words signifying the giving of the Holy Spirit.
Hebrew is not a fully alphabetized language: it is written without vowels, without aspiration, without breath. And Scripture written in Hebrew, or in Arabic (also a partially alphabetized Semitic language) signifies absence of the Holy Spirit.
No vowels, no sound; for consonants represent the interruption of the vowel stream. Consonants tend toward silence. And consonants without vowels are silent. Thus, texts written without the inclusion of vowels are linguistically dead through being silent. Life has to be put into such texts by the reader.
God chooses into whom He will place life—and He simply will not give life to another Adversary. Therefore, until He is convinced by the person that he or she will believe Him, believe His words as uttered by the man Jesus, believe the writings of Moses who wrote down the words uttered by the God of Abraham, He will not reveal Himself to the person but will continue to be the God of this dead person.
The preceding declaration would seem to undergird the argument that the Father was the God of the Old Testament, because of the Old Testament being written in Hebrew and Aramaic, linguistically dead languages. But no such argument will hold; for the God of Abraham was not the God of Ephron the son of Zohar, the Hittite. The unknown God of Ephron was the Theos of dead ones
The above is speculative but probably accurate.
There was a first Adam who formed the shadow and copy of the second or last Adam, Christ Jesus.
Israel’s time in the Promised Land precedes/preceded the human birth of the man Jesus, who would become the second Adam when the breath of God [pneuma Theou] entered into Him in a manner typifying Elohim [singular in usage] breathing the breath of life into the nostrils of the first Adam (Gen 2:7). Hence, Israel in the Promised Land could form the humanly living reality that casts as its shadow a pre-Adamic hominid that would have been without life originating from Elohim [singular in usage] breathing His breath into the nostrils of the man of mud. This pre-Adamic hominid would have been of mud, a clay vessel, but would not have had the thoughts of a human person just as human persons do not think the thoughts of Christ Jesus.
If the idolatrous people of Israel cast backward as their shadow a “pre-human” hominid, would this hominid not be akin to Sasquatch, who seems to be [if existing] neither human nor ape? … What is it that anthropologists find in sub-Saharan desert excavations? Fossilized bones of hominids that are not Homo sapiens?
Although the dating of these archeological finds remains problematic, the bones themselves support dating to more than six thousand years ago. These hominids predate Adam. And we have entered the realm of speculation. And this is enough for one Repairers message—
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."