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.

Why Do We Frame Things?

Why do we frame things?  Often because we want to remember them.  We frame special moments in our minds.  Often, we frame our thoughts.  We frame special moments in our experience. Sometimes we quickly take our camera and seek and frame a special moment, event or action in the viewfinder and snap a picture of it.  We also frame what we need to learn when we want to learn something.

When we frame something we are beginning a process of focusing on something.  We are drawing a line, a frame, around what we will take into consideration, and we are framing out what we will not take into consideration.  This enables us to identify and clarify a subject.  If we want to focus narrowly on a subject we will frame the subject accordingly, framing in what we think is a meaningful background to the subject and framing out what we do not think will help us focus on the subject in the way that we want to.  If we want to focus on a wider subject we will frame our subject in a different way.  If we want to frame a bigger picture, we will frame in a whole field of view and will not focus in on something in a way that creates a sharp distinction between foreground and background.

If we frame what we need to learn for our own personal needs we might find that we are framing them widely but then when wanting to express what we have learned to others find that we are framing the same things narrowly.  On the other hand, we might have our thoughts about what we have learned framed very narrowly but find other people are wanting us to frame the same thoughts much more widely when we try to talk to them about them.  These are examples of how we are regularly involved in framing things.

Melekzedek and the Priesthood of the Firstborn

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Preface to this study by the author

The understanding in this study is the Key to the whole assembly of believers in Yehoshua, the Mashiach of Israel (concealed in the heavens), being allowed to go on unto the perfection of spiritual maturity.  It has been primarily the lack of the knowledge of the relationship of the priesthood of Melekzedek and that of the priesthood of the tribe of Levi, which is holding the position of the the priesthood of the firstborn in Israel, which has prevented us going on.  The following study is the key to that knowledge.  I intend to update this post to further clarify it in the near future.   May the God of Israel, through His kindness and grace, bring this understanding to all whom He desires to receive it.

Melekzedek and the Priesthood of the Firstborn Part I

The priesthood of Melekzedek is mysterious because it is the priesthood of Adam after Adam was sentenced to death but before Adam had been given authorization by God for such a priesthood, which represented the possibility of hope.

Indeed, this priesthood, that was carried by Noah to Shem, who was Melekzedek, was based on Adam having been the first human being. However, this was no longer simply a virtue, as Adam had become a sinner and was under the curse of God and the sentence of death. The hope that Adam and Seth (in place of Abel), and then Noah and Shem, based this priesthood on was a mysterious hope to them, as well as to the whole human race. Had not this priesthood been honestly represented as mysterious by them, a false testimony from the order of the priesthood could have resulted. A false impression could have been given to the world that Adam’s crime would not necessarily result in death.

Although it was Able, the firstborn, who first acted as a priest and expressed hope through sacrifice, that there could be mercy from God, Adam had himself laid the foundation for this priesthood when, even after they had sinned, he named his wife cHavah, the Mother of All Living. Adam did this after overhearing God promise that an offspring of the woman would destroy the offspring of the serpent. Abel had successfully begun this firstborn priesthood of hope and, while God did not formally sanction it he did show acceptance of it, and in time Adam, as head of Humanity, sanctioned it through his own act of repentance and expression of hope in God.

Thus Adam embraced the priesthood of hope, as it was carried on by other of his children, after Abel was killed. But, even when Adam fully repented and returned to cHavah his wife, so that Seth was born, God never formally sanctioned the priesthood of Adam’s firstborn, even when he saved Noah and his family from the great flood. For after the flood, God did not promise Noah that he would not destroy the world under any circumstances again, or that he would bless all the world through him. He only promised him and made a covenant that he would not destroy the world again by water.

All of this changed when God called Abraham and began to clarify the mysterious hope that caused the day of Adam’s personal death to be stretched out into a thousand years and was causing the death of corporate Adam to be stretched out to many more years. In calling Abraham, God for the first time gave the promise of the offspring of the woman to a specific member of the family of Adam. Before Abraham this promise had not been made as a promise to anyone but only as a promise against the serpent, which God had spoken in the Garden of Eden. Now, therefore, God did not so much sanction the priesthood of the firstborn, the priesthood of hope that Shem was maintaining, as create a new priesthood based on his own calling.

This fact is enigmatically taught by the commentary of the sages of Israel on the passage on Abraham and Melekzedek meeting that is recorded in Genesis. The sages teach that because Shem failed to bless God before Abraham the priesthood was taken away from him and given to Abraham, who never failed to honor God more than the creature.

This is a necessary teaching, in that there is an aspect in which there is a cutting off of the old order and of putting the new order in its place. However, on an other level, there was also an acceptance of Shem’s, Melekzedek’s, testimony that the true hope and blessing of Adam was to be found in the word of God spoken to Abraham. The accepted testimony of Shem is the prototype of the final and ultimate rejoicing of the nations with Israel in the final and ultimate redemption of Israel, because it is this that results in the blessing of all families of the earth.

And so there is a certain way in which the priesthood of the firstborn coming through Noah was redeemed and fully and formally sanctified by God, even as he was formally setting it aside for the sake of the priesthood of Abraham. For Shem, in blessing Abraham was making himself a convert to the faith of Abraham and not only himself but also the whole order of his priesthood. This was a great and mysterious act, for it was made the basis upon which Abraham’s relationship to Adam would also be redeemed.

Melekzedek and the Priesthood of the Firstborn Part II

When Israel was redeemed from Egypt it was on the basis of all of the firstborn of Egypt being slain, but the firstborn of Israel being preserved alive on the basis of the blood of the Passover Lamb. The death of the Passover Lamb was, so to speak, the death of the priesthood of the order of Melekzedek, which was, spiritually speaking, then resurrected in the priesthood of the firstborn of Israel.

There could be a priesthood of Abraham, called to the blessing of the world, called to the certain promise of the resurrection of the dead, but only on the basis of the carrying out of God’s word in the sentence of death upon Adam. Thus, the firstborn of Israel would forever always have to be redeemed by blood, in a way acknowledging the necessity of the carrying out of the sentence of death upon Adam, individually and corporately. This commandment was, therefore, the witness given with assurance through the very existence of the firstborn of Israel, that there would come a resurrection of the dead.

In this way, God had created for himself a priesthood of the firstborn, a priesthood of a certain hope. For Mashiach to be called a priest after the order of Melekzedek is to refer to him, by implication, as the Passover Lamb, which lamb represented the death of all of the firstborn of Israel, but did so in a substitutionary way. Because the blood of the lamb would be seen as the blood of the firstborn of Israel, the angel of death would passover their houses. It was not that they were any less subject to the sentence of death than any other children of Adam but that they were made to be a sign of the promise of the resurrection of the dead.

In this way, the priesthood of Melekzedek was redeemed from being a priesthood of a world condemned to death and was given over to the priesthood of the firstborn of Israel as a priesthood of the certain hope of the resurrection of the dead. When Israel sinned with the golden calf the priesthood of the firstborn of the tribes of Israel could no longer serve in this office. The place and the office of the priesthood was filled by the firstborn of the tribe of Levi. Now it is evident that this could only be until the one who God promised against the serpent came, the one who would be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It is he who causes the firstborn of Israel to live. Therefore it is to be understood that Israel’s sin is removed through him and the priesthood of the firstborn is restored to all of the tribes. This is the redeemed priesthood of Melekzedek. And the Mashiach of Israel, anointed of God, though not yet of all the tribes of Israel, is, being the firstborn of the dead of the tribe of Judah, made the High Priest of Israel eternally, in heavenly places, according to the order of Melekzedek.

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.

Getting To The Quick

Nicholas Roerich – Procopius the Righteous Praying Wikipedia

There is a way that life works and there is a way that life does not work.  And there is a way in which every person is sensitive to the way that life works and the way it does not work.  There is also a way in each person that this sensitivity to the way that life works is broken.  We might say that the way that life works is through righteous nurturing, or a righteous practice of love.  The way in which people are most often broken in their sensitivity to knowing the way that life works is in their not recognizing righteousness.  Virtually all people recognize the need of life for nurturing and the need for love.  Many, perhaps most even recognize that love is something that needs to be practiced, not just felt.  However many people, perhaps most people, will disagree with one another at some point about the right way to practice love.  People even disagree about the right way to nurture life.  The reason for all this disagreement is that people are, in one way or another, all broken within their hearts in a manner which makes them unable to perfectly recognize righteousness on their own.  It is possible for people to perfectly recognize righteousness but to do so they need divine assistance.  It was not always so.  Human beings were created able to perfectly recognize and know righteousness, what a righteous practice of love is and what the righteous nurturing of life is.  In the beginning human beings knew what life needed in order to work.

Now they do not.  Not always.  It is for this reason that the God of Israel gave his son to save the world and began this salvation by sending his Spirit into the world to show the world what the way of sin really is, that is to say, what the way that life does not work really is, so that they might also become able to learn what righteousness really is, and, finally, that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man who he has raised from the dead.  It is in this way that people are brought into the righteousness and the life of the one whom God raised from the dead.  The Spirit of God brings the word of God to the place in the heart that is broken by sin, that has become insensitive to righteousness, and heals it.  That place of brokenness is a place of great fear and insecurity, a place that is usually guarded and protected well and few things ever get through to it.  However, when the needs of love and life call for the attention of the heart at the place where it is broken by sin, whether the sin of the first human beings or by one’s own sins or that of others, the heart is unable to respond in the right way.  Thus the individual and the life around the individual becomes more damaged.  However, when the Spirit of God brings the word of God, the word of the Good News of Israel and Her Messiah, into the human heart this process begins to be reversed.  As this process can be seen with the individual, so it will be with corporate Humanity.  There is a heart of corporate Humanity, a spirit of life in the one blood of all.  This spirit of human life God has preserved according to his will and has nurtured and cultivated himself, personally, through the covenant of his word, for the time of ultimate healing.  For that time, God has kept this corporate heart of Humanity beating in Jerusalem.  As we see the individual regenerated and brought into the life of the resurrected suffering Messiah of Israel, so shall it be with Jerusalem, with the corporate heart of Humanity.  For as the waters cover the beds of the oceans, so shall the knowledge of the God of Israel cover the earth.

Why We Must Go On Corporately

Worship of the golden Calf, Oil Painting, 56x67cm, 1962 (WV-Nr.2756), by Margret Hofheinz-Döring via Wikipedia

See the archived post, On The Use of Hebrews 6 for This Paper, to which this post is a continuation.

It is only possible to stand worthy of Mashiach as the Body of Mashiach, that is to say, as Messianic Israel.  As Malkezadek was given tribute by Levi through Abraham so that Levi would be able to preserve the testimony of the firstborn, the testimony of Israel’s corporate redemption through the promise of the firstborn, that is, the seed of the woman, Mashiach, so we also in our generation must overcome our own participation in the sin of the golden calf by confession of the resurrected redeemer of Israel.  This is corporate faith and testimony.  This is the teaching of the Book of Hebrews which we will fully discover when we are ready to go on from the foundation of initial conversion to the level of those able to teach the nations all that the firstborn of Israel were meant to teach them.

>> so it is that it will be in this sense that the Book of Hebrews is read in these studies and in the paper

Let Us Go On

>> which will be written through the use of these studies as well as others like them.

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. }}

 

How We Go On To Perfect Maturity

by Fergal OP via Flickr

First read my Notes on The Sermon on The Mount. They can be found on my Hearing Seven Thunders blog here, or on my Mellow Wolf Matthew Files site, here.

From the understanding presented in these notes on the Sermon on the Mount it can be seen that to go on to perfect maturity we need be attached to the Messiah of Israel in the actions of God whereby he brings good news to Israel – and so to the world.  This is the good news of forgiveness to Israel and of faith for the world.

We cannot attain unto these actions on our own, as individuals.  Although we may “turn the other cheek” as individuals and in relation to the events and people in our lives as individuals, this will not bring the revelation of the defeat of the fear of death to the world.  Only God’s own design of “turning the other cheek” by and with the Messiah of Israel toward corporate Humanity, as He chose and nurtured it and called it His own Humanity, can bring the revelation of the victory of faith over fear to the whole world.  This is Messiah’s godly action of turning the other cheek to Israel and then Israel’s godly action of turning the other cheek with him to Rome and to all the nations, and all our turning the other cheek with the Messiah of Israel and with Israel to all Humanity in its enmity toward the God of Israel.  For if we turn the other cheek in our own name we are the blind leading the blind into the ditch.  If we do so by attachment to the Messiah of Israel we are a light set on a hill, opening the way for the whole world unto the God of Israel, the God of righteousness, justice and mercy, that the world might come before Him in repentance and hope and not in defiance and rebellion.

God will bring this testimony about in a full and complete final witness.  First, He will bring it about as a witness to Jerusalem and Judah by his ingathered remnant of the followers of the Messiah of Israel in a role like that of the son of Joseph.  Then He will bring it about through the witness of Jerusalem and Judah, together with all Israel, a witness to all nations, and then the world will know that the God of Israel is the Creator of heaven and earth.

We can only go on unto perfection with the Messiah of Israel with Israel

The Straight Gate

Eastern <Hulda> gates    Wikipedia

Through the calling of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Adam, for the sake of repentance, is given power to establish righteousness in This World at every point of openness in the Law, for every moment of question of what the will of God is in Israel, for corporate Adam.  But not one point of openness or question in the Law in This World is the gate into the World To Come.  For that gate is composed of the combination of all points of openness and every point designed for questioning and searching in the Law – all combined into one.  And the power to establish righteousness at that point, in order that Adam might walk uprightly through that gate, in accordance with the Law of God, is given only to the True Tzaddik, the True Righteous One, the Son of Adam.

For the gate of the point of the Law that opens into the World To Come can only be opened from the side of the World To Come.

Now the antinomian says, If it is true that only the Son of Adam can open the gate into the World To Come, and if it is true that gate into the World To Come must be opened from that side, then all that they do who labor to establish righteousness at every point of the Law they do in vain.  But the truth is that the gate into the World To Come is straight and the way unto it is narrow, like a narrow bridge that crosses over the sin of This World and is not defiled by it.  Every point of openness in the Law of God is only a point of openness for the sake of presenting a lesson in repentance for Adam, and the lessons of repentance for Adam would be infinite and endless were it not for the knowledge of the soul of the Son of Adam.  For only by the knowledge of the soul of the Son of Adam can all the lessons of repentance in every moment of question and searching in the Law of God be gathered into one lesson that has a beginning and an end.

Thus every point of openness and question in the Law must be decided and every lesson of repentance for Adam must be learned. And all must be learned according to the measure of the knowledge of the soul of the Son of Adam.

Until Adam’s lessons of repentance are all learned according to the measure of the knowledge of the soul of the Son of Adam the Son of Adam will not open fully the gate into the World To Come.  For until that time Adam will not be ready and prepared to find it.  Should Adam enter through that gate to eat of the Tree of Life before their corporate repentance was complete, before it had completely prepared them for the judgment of Truth, they would not find that Tree to be life to them but would find it to be eternal destruction.

Antinominanism therefore is found to be the evil inclination in Adam toward resisting repentance, and those who fight in the end for antinomianism are found to be fighting against the soul of the Son of Adam.

Therefore, to straighten the way for Adam on the left hand and to straighten the way for Adam on the right hand, the Son of Adam elevates the lowest sinner from the dunghill to the place of the Temple mount, but he does not cause them to enter into the Temple immediately but causes them to wait there.  He does this in order that the truth of God’s glorious grace is magnified in Israel, lest the wisdom of those who are wise in the lessons of Adam’s corporate repentance is over magnified in the last days.  Nevertheless, he does not allow those whom he raises up by the demonstration of God’s grace alone to the exalted hights of the Temple mount to enter immediately into the Temple but causes them to wait at the wall of the gate until those who come up through all the points of repentance in the Law arrive and become their teachers and receive from them the charity of a share in the gift that has been given to them.  For, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” and only then when all the souls of Adam have become one in one school will the soul of Adam be measured according to the soul of the Son of Adam and be prepared in repentance for the full opening of the gate into the World To Come.