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.

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.

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.

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 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 The Use of Hebrews 6 for This Paper

via Wikipedia

Let Us Go On

Without needing to address questions about authorship or audience for the Book of Hebrews we can generalize the principle laid out in chapter 6, which states that we should, God permitting, go on from a foundational level of faith to the level of a perfect or mature faith. But if all would agree that this is desirable for the individual, what about the whole believing community? Has the whole believing community in the 21st century, after all this time, become perfect and mature in faith, like it speaks of also in Ephesians chapter 4 – attaining to a mature stature worthy of standing alongside of Christ/Messiah/Mashiach himself?

Why We Must Go On Corporately

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… > continue