Do You See All These Things?

Matthew 24:1-2

Yehoshua/Jesus left the Temple and was walking away when his talmudim/disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings.  ”Do you see all these things?” he asked…

Yehoshua left the Temple and was walking away.  He did not offer the prophecies that follow concerning the Temple and the end of the world, its judgement and salvation, to those who were worshipping within the Temple on that occasion — those who did not expect judgement to come first on the House of the Lord/Hashem.

His talmudim/disciples were also unprepared for this and were not expecting it, yet their preparation was in following Yehoshua.  He gave his prophecies to his talmudim/disciples only when he was questioned by them.  He was walking away from the Temple because he was about to leave Jerusalem desolate (Zephaniah 3) and return to his Father who had sent him.

Had Yehoshua failed because he was not received by his own, and therefore the Temple would have to be destroyed?  No!  It was unto this end that he was sent into the world.  The Temple would be destroyed because it was made to be one in the word of prophecy with his body.  As his body would be raised again, so the Temple would be raised again.

Out of Yehoshua’s death would be salvation for Israel.  Out of his rejection would be the reconciling of the world.  All of Matthew 24 should be read in this light.

Since the Temple was built to be destroyed, why was it built at all?  Heaven and Earth were created in order that God might dwell with/ את /Et his dear creatures.  This is the pattern of purpose for the Dwelling Place of God that is revealed through the Temple.

God did not make the world in vain but to be inhabited, Isaiah 45:18.  God created the corruptible world to be a seed that He could re-create into an incorruptible world.  Even if death entered through sin, as indeed it did, God would re-create the world through redemption, which indeed He did and is continuing to do by unfolding and revealing that redemption.  This is the pattern of judgement and salvation revealed by the history and the future of the Temple.

Matthew 24:2 specifically

“Do you see all of these things..?”  Our experience of the Time World / Temple is an aspect itself of that very Time World / Temple.  Yehoshua’s teaching and prophecy framed that experience for his talmudim/disciples and for us.  We must experience death and resurrection with minds and hearts and souls and strength that is, altogether as one Adam, learning.  Don’t allow this to be too deep for you.  Understand it.  Our experiencing redemption as conscious souls, learning repentance, through history, through prophecy, through being subject to judgement, through justice, through mercy, all this is essential to re-creation, the re-creation of the Time World, the Temple above and below, the regeneration of the seed of the universe.

From the Good News to the Good News

Jesus Christ/Messiah: Hebrew > Yehoshua HaMashiach

I Corinthians 15 studies will lead us to understand that in the Hebrews 6 to Ephesians 4 journey we are not simply going on from the gospel, the good news. We are going on from the good news to the good news.

As with the disciples, the talmudim of Mashiach on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, we are going on from the place where the good news and the hope of Mashiach first took us captive to the place of fully understanding the good news “according to the Scriptures” – 1Corinthians 15:1-3.  In Jewish Kabbalah, (non-occult Kabbalah), this is taught in terms of the waters from below ascending back to meet the waters from above, which are the blessings of grace.  The meaning of this is that faith is ultimately corporate, just as salvation is ultimately corporate.  It is the Kingdom of G-d that is ultimately saved, and it is the heart and service of all as one Kingdom that ultimately returns to G-d through this salvation.  This return is called, faith.  This is the meaning of corporate faith.  Ultimately there is no other faith.  We cannot in the end have faith alone by ourselves – even if it feels that way for a time.  Thus, we learn that the idea of “whosoever believes”, and the idea of believing, is not ultimately about the individual in the way we have come to think of ourselves as individuals.  It is about the believing or the not believing of Humanity, and of people-groups within humanity.  When we are judged we will be judged as members of a group, as “sheep” or “goats”.  We will show what faith we shared in with others, whether in the Humanity that produced fruits of repentance or in the Humanity that produced fruits of rebellion.  Truth is one.  It is not something that is self-centered.  Though we are first found by the good news when we are lost and alone, we go from this experience of the good news to the place where Humanity hears the good news as one Humanity together in the obedience of Israel hearing the one God of Israel speak to all.

My Introduction

From column 19 the Psalms Scroll > Qumran. The Tetragrammaton

My life is characterized at its core by my seeking through a Biblical journey to understand the process of learning. I believe that this life for everyone was from the beginning, and still is, for the purpose of learning to choose life with G-d, to have faith in G-d.  And this has come to mean learning to hear G-d.  It has come to mean learning repentance.  It has come to mean learning reconciliation.  And it has come to mean learning the need for and the process of universal repair and renewal.

I have been drawn especially to understand the process of the learning that takes place within the process of interpersonal communication.  The learning about learning that takes place in the academic theories of learning, while valuable, cover a limited aspect of the great challenge of learning that we face.  Academic theories usually focus more on the learning of skills and subjects than on the dynamics of interpersonal learning.  My Biblical journey has taught me to understand interpersonal learning in the first place as the interpersonal leaning that takes place between G-d and the Human Race, between God and His creature, Adam.

It is from learning how to hear G-d that we learn how to hear one another.  And only when we have learned to fully hear one another have we learned to fully listen to G-d, for this is what G-d is telling us to do.  There is a great mystery involved for us in the great challenge of learning what we have to learn in this life, but because G-d is our Guide we are able to do it.

G-d began to guide us in learning to choose life, to have faith in Him, by forming the family of Israel and giving Moses to Israel and by putting in the mouth of Moses words like these,  “Hear oh Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God is one.  Love Him with all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength in all you do.”

My Biblical journey has taught me that all the world is called to enter into the house of the family of Israel as children or, if not as children, then as honoured guests.  The house of Israel is the place of the Bible.   It is here that we can learn how to learn and how to choose life, by learning how to hear G-d and how to listen to one another in obedience to G-d, with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength in all we do.

Israel’s Suffering Messiah

Seeking Jerusalem

Jesus/Yeshua/Yehoshua did not separate himself from Israel. For the sake of the world learning the nature of his faithfulness he has endured for a long time all efforts to separate him from Israel. He will not allow these efforts to continue forever. Soon he will make all the world to know that no one can call him Christ/Messiah/Mashiach before the Father who seeks to separate him from Israel. But anyone who has done so who has not known what they were doing will be forgiven.  Zion Mashiach Shalom faith Bible Torah

{{ This is the permanent lead post on my new site, Scent Essence of Jerusalem. I will be posting Key Understandings there in the knowledge of the Good News of Israel and Her Messiah. }}

 

The Defining of Corporate Israel

The Jordan River    Wikipedia

• Herein is the defining of corporate Israel: G-d gave Israel her name, and is making her true to that name by redeeming her.  She is his.

Isaiah 43
1 But now here is what the LORD says that created you, O Jacob, and he that formed you, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you art mine.

Herein is the defining of corporate Israel:  God has  named Israel and has therein claimed Israel as His, and this He has done in redeeming Israel, beginning with the calling of Abraham and the calling of Moses and the bringing of Israel out of Egypt.  All of this is the beginning of the redemption of Israel out of the sin and death of Adam, and this redemption is completed in the body of Yehoshua HaMashiach.  By this redemption is Israel named and claimed by God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth.  For corporate Israel is defined by the will of God and by the act of God, through the obedience of Yehoshua HaMashiach.

With Commentary: Titus 3
5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to [the defining of Israel by] his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration [through the word of this mercy], and renewing [in Israel] of the Holy Spirit;
6 Which he shed on us abundantly [for the sake of All-Israel] through Yehushua HaMashiach our Saviour;
7 That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

With Commentary:  John 1
6 There was a man sent from God [to immerse Israel again in the Jordan River], whose name was John.
7 The same came to be a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all [Israel] through him might believe.
8 He [like all the prophets] was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9 That was the true Light, which lights every human being that comes into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world did not recognize him.

11 He came unto [Israel,] his own, and his own did not received him.

12 But, [on account of his mercy to Israel,] as many as received him, to them he gave [the] power [of his own resurrected life] to become the [adopted] children of God, [this is the unlimited power of God's Torah, which comes] to those who believe on his name:

13 Who were born, [thereby, of a new birth, that is] not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of Adam, but [is a birth from above,] of God.

Is The Torah Written On Our Hearts? part one

View from Mount Sinai   Wikipedia

Christianity, as a gentile institution, has a long and somewhat convoluted relationship with the Torah.  Torah has, in English, traditionally been translated and interpreted as the Law of God.  While this translation allows English speaking non-Jews to think about the covenant and commandments given to Israel at Mount Sinai in their own English terms of reference and not to have to study and learn what the Torah meant and means to the Jewish people, it can, at the same time, be misleading even in terms of the English language.  The word, “law” and the concept behind it has a wide variety of connotations and associations to different people in different English speaking nations.  The same can be said about the corresponding terms in other western languages, and indeed in all gentile languages.  One connotation of the word, “law” and the concept of law that is universal amongst all nations, apart from Israel, is that the law is made by  the political forces that form the government of the given nation.  Law and laws are human creations.  This point alone is enough to start us off with a good understanding of why gentile language translations of the Torah of God can evoke misleading ideas.  The word, “law” if used to translate the Hebrew word, “torah,” can leave a person to imagine that the Torah, or Law, of God is something that God created and added to His creation after He had created it – the way human legislators might add laws to a nation after it is already a nation.

If a person were inclined to think that the Torah was merely added to Creation after Creation already existed, Proverbs chapter 8 could be presented in order to correct this idea.  However, the pertinent passage in Proverbs 8 is necessarily written in poetic language and might not have the intended impact unless it were clearly stated that the passage teaches that Creation is made, from beginning to end, according to the precepts of the Torah.  For the Torah is not a dictionary of crimes but a design for life.  This is a challenging teaching of Holy Scripture for Christianity, as a gentile institution, to deal with, and while it has been mostly avoided by Christian teachers, we will have to come back to it again and again.

Whether or not this teaching of Holy Scripture is immediately received or grasped, it can be shown that it is not the English word, “law” that is well suited for bringing a person to this understanding.  Indeed, our sense today is, and rightly so, that laws have to do with crimes and not with sins.  That is to say,  it is not family rules or social or religious customs that constitute crimes but only such actions as deemed by courts to violate specifically written laws.  We do not understand the case to be so much, as Paul said, that by the law is the knowledge of sin, but rather, by the law universally undesired action is made a crime.  Since this is our fundamental concept of law, it is hard for us to think in terms of such a concept being the blueprint of Creation.  If we do try to think this, we have gone way of base.  In fact, it would be better for us to translate the word “Torah” in the context of Proverbs 8, if we must do so, as “Design“, rather than as “Law“.  Creation was made according to the Torah, the Design, of God.  But that Design is not a design that is purposed primarily to define sin or crime.  It is a design that is purposed primarily to illumine the way of Godly love.

The Vulnerable Yet Invincible God

by S.H.栩浩 via Flickr

• READ THE PREVIOUS POST ON THE TORAH AND THE RESURRECTION FIRST, THEN RETURN HERE

What Does It Mean That The Definition of Corporate Humanity Begins With God?

It is well said that the Torah, in refering to the the time of creation, teaches us that there is One who has begun everything and brought everything into existence and that therefore he is the owner of everything that exists and he has the right to rule over everything that is his.  Yet more than this in referring to this One, this Creator, as the God of Israel the Torah identifies the Creator as One who has chosen, if quite selectively to be identified with Adam. The Creator is revealed by the Torah as One who has made Himself from the beginning to be vulnerable to His creature Adam.  If a God is revealed to be loving by nature nevertheless it is not a matter of necessity that He should love His creation, for necessity is not at all the nature of love.  The loving Creator could have hated His creation if He had not found it good.  Indeed, the mystery of how God would find His creation to be very good in the end, how He would love it and even make Himself vulnerable to it by entwining His very identity with the identity of Israel is the story told by the Torah.

While the One who created all things is the owner of all things and has the right to rule over all things, in making Himself vulnerable to Adam, He made it possible for all things to be stolen from Him and destroyed.  This is the mystery of God’s solidarity with Adam, which He revealed in redeeming Israel from Egypt as His own.  For it was by this solidarity of identity with Adam that God gave Adam free-will, and because of this, because Adam abused that solidarity, God commanded the branch of corporate Humanity which He chose by a temporal redemption for the sake of an eternal redemption, even Israel, with commandments 1.) that they should be faithful to Him and trust Him, 2.) that they should serve no other power but Him, 3.) that they should not assume His name upon themselves in vain, 4.) that they should remain with Him in His rest by remembering the Sabbath Day and keeping it holy, 5.) that they should retain honor for their parents and not lose their place in corporate Israel through selfishness, 6.) that they should not murder after the example of Adam who destroyed worlds, 7.) that they should not commit adultery as  when Adam, the man and the woman broke covenant with one another out of lust for elohim.  And most emphatically, 8.) that they should not steal, as Adam stole the world from their Creator, and  9.) that they should not commit false witness as they believed a false witness against Him when they sinned against Him, and as they witnessed falsely against one another for their sin and did not immediately repent, and finally 10.)  that they should not covet anything that belonged to their neighbor, lest they come to hate their neighbor without a cause and in hating their neighbor without a cause end by hating their own redeemer who God would send to them.  For by these commandments and all the commandments of the Torah God would invest Himself and all of His interests entirely in Israel.

For it was the purpose of God, in investing Himself entirely in Israel by His Torah, to place all of His vulnerability to Adam in Israel in order that He might make Israel invincible in Him for the redemption of all worlds.

Tags: CVNNT, TORAH, CREATION, DEFINITION OF CORPORATE HUMANITY, ISRAEL, CORPORATE ISRAEL, GOD OF ISRAEL

On Mashiach’s Humanity

Getty Images via @daylife

Traditionally, we, as Christians, have considered God’s judgment upon the House of Israel and the association between the destruction of the body of Jesus and the destruction of the Temple and have concluded that this was the cause of the destruction of the nation of Israel from the Land. We have thought that if the nation of Israel should be restored to the Land at all it should only be if the nation repents for the destruction of the body of Jesus. How can we believe that Jesus’ arms are wide open to us as individuals, that his blood atonement has enabled him to open his arms to individual Gentiles and also to individual Jews and yet fail to believe and to declare to the world that he has made an atonement for forgiveness for the nation of Israel? What idea of his humanity do we have

It will be said, But they must accept the offer of forgiveness and have instead rejected it! If your neighbor at first rejects the offer of God’s forgiveness in Jesus toward the parents and all their household do you then change your theology and say to them that Jesus arms are now closed toward them and will only be opened to their children and to their households in the future, when they come to the age of responsibility? You do no such thing, but traditionally this is what Christianity has done to God’s chosen household, the one he called his own, saying, But they have rejected the offer of forgiveness, now his arms are closed to them and will only open toward their children individually. What idea of Jesus’ humanity do we have!

Considering these things we might believe that, after all, we do believe that an atonement was made in Messiah for Israel as a nation, but do we really believe this if we do not declare it to the world? And traditionally Christianity certainly has not declared this, either to Jerusalem or to the Jews as a people, or to the nations. What idea of the Messiah’s humanity have we therefore represented?

God cannot be fully known except through the humanity of Yehoshua. If then the humanity of Yehoshua is not fully known, what is the extent of our knowledge of God? If someone knows so little of the humanity of Yehoshua (Jesus) that they imagine that his heart is hard toward his nation of Israel and that his arms are closed toward his nation and that they are only open toward isolated individuals, because he has rejected the extended family structure that God gave to him, and with such a confused knowledge of the humanity of Jesus then goes right on and tries to articulate a concept that Jesus is God, how much of their concept of God is clear? But if people find it hard to understand the corporate nature of Israel and how Messiah could have made an atonement for it even when Israel did not acknowledge this as a nation, it is not surprising. For the corporate or national nature of Israel is not simply like that of the other nations. It involves an amendment from God to the definition of family and nation that he created when he created Adam.

What then exactly is the nation of Israel, or corporate Israel? Is it ethnic Israel? Is it just the extended biological family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Indeed, it is this extended biological family but not just this family as defined by the definition of an extended family that was created in the creation of Adam. For by covenant with Abraham God defined the nation of Israel as with an amendment of his word. What does this mean? Finally it means that the nation of Israel, the Messiah’s nation, is defined as being exactly what it is to him, to Yehoshua (Jesus), the King Messiah of Israel!

This means that first the biological family of Abraham, as chosen by God, was itself defined by the covenant of God, and was defined as the promise of the Messiah. The Jewish family, or nation, as a whole was and is the promise of the Messiah!  If the prophets prophesied about nothing but the Messiah, the whole Jewish nation is about nothing but the Messiah! This is the meaning given to humanity as defined by the amendment to the definition of humanity that was created by the covenant that God made with Abraham. And the sign of this covenant is circumcision. And the complete keeping of the commandment of the sign of the covenant is the keeping of the whole Torah of God given as an elaboration of the covenant made with Abraham to the whole nation of Israel on Mount Sinai.

Is the nation of Israel, corporate Israel, then only flesh and blood, as Adam was created flesh and blood, and the family structure of human flesh and blood, as Adam was created, male and female to produce a family structure? No, the nation of Israel is all of this and the promise of Messiah. But since the nation of Israel is, to begin with, a flesh and blood nation like any other nation, how is it that a convert becomes a full member of the nation of Israel?

This can be understood in the following way. A convert is one who is made marriageable in Israel, who was not born marriageable. Thus we have in Deuteronomy 21:10-11: “When you go out to war against your enemies, and Hashem your God will deliver them into your hand, and you will capture its captivity; and you will see among its captivity a woman who is beautiful of form, and you will desire her, you may take her to yourself for a wife” (ArtScroll). In God’s choice of Israel the nations of the world are in principle already conquered and turned into a captivity. This is because at the same time by God’s choice of Israel, by his covenant with Abraham, Israel also, and previously to the nations, has been destroyed and turned into a captivity according to the unamended definition of a nation given to it by the creation of Adam. We therefore read, Jud 5:12 “Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.” The judge of Israel is called upon to awake and to sing a song of good news concerning a prince of Israel who gathers into Israel the captivity taken from the nations. And this leads us to: Ps 68:18 You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive: you have received gifts for people; yes, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them (KJV modified).” In Ephesians 4: 8-10 Paul teaches us to understand that Messiah converts the whole captivity of Adam and gives humanity new gifts in the service of love in the redefinition and re-creation of humanity and of all things.

God’s definition of humanity as defined in the calling of Abraham, in the calling of all Israel, does not allow the captive woman to be raped, but only married, and only married if she desires to become a convert to the news that God has made a new claim upon the humanity which he created through the promise of the Messiah.

The idea that God never really chose the biological nation of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but only the remnant of that nation composed of those individuals who chose to truly accept him as their God might be read into a passage such as the one following from 2 Esdras 12:31-34
…this is the Messiah whom the
Most High has kept until the end of days,
who will arise from the seed of David
and will come and speak with them.
He will denounce them for their iniquity and for their wickedness,
and will display before them their contemptuous dealings.
For first he will bring them alive before his judgment seat,
and when he has reproved them, then he will destroy them.
But in mercy he will set free the remnant of my people,
those who have been saved…

The idea that the remnant in some way replaces the nation is a misunderstanding which would be akin to saying that the soul of a believer is not saved but replaced by a different soul. Indeed, very simply and very literally, the remnant of the nation is a corporate part of the corporate whole, which thus represents the corporate whole. It is only because atonement was made for Israel corporately that it could be appropriated by individual Jews and converts.

To Be Continued