"...In Fellowship With Him We Were Healed!"

"He was pierced for our defiance; he was crushed for our crookedness; he bore the punishment for our peace; and in fellowship, with him, we were healed."  

Isaiah 53:5

New Proposed Rendering

A pair of students of the Bible with an understanding of Hebrew were doing a study of the "suffering Messiah" passage in Isaiah (52:12-53:12) and had one of those "aha!" moments when they'd noticed something different about the text in Hebrew when compared with common translations and even a quotation of 53:5.  The thing is the Masoretic Text reads as presented above.  However, most English translations render the last clause as "and by his stripes, we were healed."  Added to that is that the LXX translates it that way and Peter, or whoever later translated it into Greek if Peter originally penned it in Hebrew, used the LXX as their source for the quotation of this verse.

(Isa 53:5)  וְהוּא֙ מְחֹלָ֣ל מִפְּשָׁעֵ֔נוּ מְדֻךָּ֖א מֵעֲוֹנֹתֵ֑ינוּ מוּסַ֤ר שְׁלֹומֵ֙נוּ֙ עָלָ֔יו וּבַחֲבֻרָתֹ֖ו נִרְפָּא־לָֽנוּ׃

The problem is a classical study in being careful when reading Hebrew to see what is there instead of what one expects to see.  That's because the two words with such radically different meanings are so close that in Hebrew with vowel points added the differ by one dot, that is all, just one dot.  That dot is called the Dagesh Forte and it tends to have the force of doubling the letter so that, for instance, if placed in a chet ( ח ) it will give us two of them ( חח ).  It also takes certain consonants with a soft sound and hardens it.  This is what we have here.  In the verse above the second bet ( ב ) doesn't have the dagesh forte so that the word is Chavurato H2270 which comes from the Hebrew word chavar that according to Holladay's A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic LexiconOf the Old Testament means a "comrade, companion," hence to fellowship with. (pg. 94)

However, sometime before the birth of our Lord and before the invention of vowel pointing somebody misread it as Chaburato H2250, meaning "to bruise, stripe, wound, blow.  (BDB as I couldn't find the word in the more up to date lexicon).  So it was translated as "wounds" or "stripes" in the LXX and early translations of the Bible in many languages based on the LXX used that so that when folks finally started going to the Hebrew text they never noticed the missing Dagesh and continued reading it as if it had it.  The error was further compounded by placing the word Chavurato in Hebrew lexicons as an example of a variance of the word  Chaburato.  How the error crept in is a matter of speculation, however, the most likely scenario is that the Egyptian translator of that portion of the Old Testament didn't have Hebrew as his first language and made an honest mistake.  But there is something else, another factor I will get into in a moment.

When the vowel pointing was invented the scribes preserved the standardized articulation of the words of the Tanakh as they knew it.  And other such pointed versions have the same articulation here.  So this was how they understood it should read.  And why not?  Plug that translation of the clause into the passage as a whole and it fits with thoughts such as him "justifying many" (Vs. 11), "see his seed" (vs. 10), and "he will divide the spoil with many" (vs. 12), and others.  So this translation of the verse states and essential truth of Christianity, that all have to enter into fellowship with our Lord or know him as their personal savior to have eternal salvation.

To stress the importance of this is that this is an example of why we need to pay attention to what is in the text instead of reading what we expect to see in it.  We have further confirmation of this understanding of the verse in the New Testament since Is. 53:5 was apparently the source for what Paul wrote to the Phillippians:

"be found in Him; not having my own righteousness of Law, but through the faith of Christ, having the righteousness of God on faith, to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, having been conformed to His death, if somehow I may attain to a resurrection out of the dead."

(Php 3:9-11)  

Lastly, I would like to point out something.  Whether by simple mistake or deliberately done (we do know from tradition that some passages were deliberate to confuse gentiles and hide some things by the translators), Providence overruled the matter and turned the alteration into a messianic prophecy which saw fulfillment.  So what we see here is a passage and it's variant in another language both having fulfillment, both of them!  How amazing is that?

Until next time!

I am the LORD: that is my name

"I am Jehovah; that is My name; and I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to engraved images."

Isaiah  42:8 LITV

Why the difference between the King James Version and the Literal Version by James Green, who, by the way, is a staunch Trinitarian who used the Received Text, the same one behind the Jing James for the New Testament, for his translation?  The reason is simple.  In this verse, we find a proper name there unique to God himself, which he declared to be his name to time indefinite (Ex. 15).  Do Mr. Green chose to translate that name as we have it in English and put it there instead of the substitute we mostly see used by most other translators based on a Jewish myth that God's name is too holy for use and the pronunciation has been lost to mankind because of that.

Before we go on we might as well remind out traders of a few things.  We think by now our readers have caught on that we are not Trinitarians because we do not believe the Bible supports or teaches that doctrine.  Instead, we believe that the doctrine misleadingly labeled Arianism after one of its most able defenders who became the center of a controversy in the early 4th century A.D. is what the Bible teaches.  We also believe that our God can do pretty much whatever he wants within his self-imposed limits.  So that means that he can take a created being and place him on a level just below him and authorize him to:

Php 2:9  Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 

Php 2:10  That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 

Php 2:11  And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

This still stays within what God says about there being no other God equal to him (Is 49:9*).  Yes, I do believe that declaration by Paul and recognize that God has placed his son, Jesus, as the agent of everyone's salvation.  So that name is important to me.

So why should we concern ourselves with God's name if that of Jesus is the one given to us to bow to and acknowledge?  Well, Jesus taught us to pray "Hallowed be thy name." (Matt. 6:9).  So, while God gave him such an exalted position and name it was not to the point of totally displacing his own which is in conformity with both Is. 49:9 but 1 Cor. 15:24-27 where it is made clear that Jesus is not on God's level, but subjected to him for all he has so high a level of being and honor himself.  To do that as good children in God's household and coheirs with Jesus we have to know the name of our father and God.  So where do we get God's name from?

From the Hebrew text, the Bible was written in.  So let's start with the above verse in Isaiah from the Hebrew 42:8:

Isa 42:8  אני יהוה הוא שמי וכבודי לאחר לא אתן ותהלתי לפסילים

This is how it appears in any modern Hebrew text written without the vowel points.  The word in red is God's name and is spelled yod he vav he, or YHVH when transliterated.  Something important to know id that although Spoken Hebrew had vowels, in ancient times written Hebrew did not.  As time went by certain consonants were used to indicate certain vowels as in the case of the highlighted vav in the word following God's name.  Okay, so how do we know how to pronounce God's name?

Well, the only reason we are going down a little longer road for this is because of a Hebrew myth that the pronunciation of God's name is lost.  That has resulted in a lot of confusion, especially since some efforts were made by Rabbinically dominated Jews to hide the pronunciation and keep it hidden from all but the privileged few students of imminent Jewish sages. To give the Jews their due this was not as selfish as it sounds on the surface.  There was a good reason.

For what follows I need to credit a Jewish scholar named Nehemiah Gordon, though I have verified it through my own sources, such as Chabad.org.  Nehemiah tells the story of what happened in his Open House video series on youtube and it's both simple and understandable.  Emperor Hadrian had the Jews revolt on him, the famous Bar Kochba revolt and put it down.  In the aftermath, he decided to destroy the Jewish faith altogether and forbade both the teaching of the Torah but the public use of God's name as well.  At the time it was still the custom of Jews to greet each other as Boaz greeted his workers in the book of Ruth (2:4) and that verse was the reason they did.  So Hadrian banned the use of the name.  Several Rabbis would be executed cruelly for their defiance by teaching the Law, but Akiva Ben Yoseph, simply called Rabbi Akiva and highly revered by the Jews today because he died for using God's name in public, or " Kiddush Hashem (the sanctification of G‑d’s name)." *

The way Nehemiah explains it, the surviving rabbis made it a rule to not use God's name "until the Messiah comes."  Of course, they were expecting the Messiah anytime and had no idea he'd already come in his priestly role and it would be a long time before his return.  They teach that the pronunciation was lost, but that isn't true.  The Rabbis had some competition in the form of the scribes, or copyists of the Tanak.  They were responsible for inventing the ingenious system of vowel points which allowed them to preserve the correct articulation of the Hebrew Old Testament without altering the text they had by inventing and adding new letters as vowels.  They came to be called the Masoretes and were likely part of the group today called Karaite Jews who reject Rabbinical laws in favor of the text of the Bible they recognize as sacred.

When they invented the vowel pointing system and began using it in their manuscripts the Rabbis forbade the full vowel pointing of God's name to hide it pronunciation.  So throughout most of the manuscripts a "clipped" version of the name:

Isa 48:2  אֲנִ֥י יְהוָ֖ה ה֣וּא שְׁמִ֑י וּכְבֹודִי֙ לְאַחֵ֣ר לֹֽא־אֶתֵּ֔ן וּתְהִלָּתִ֖י לַפְּסִילִֽים׃ 

As we see here the name now has three characters added.  Those are the vowel points for "e" and "a" plus a cantellation point.  So now it looks like the name is Yehvah.  To add further to the confusion the Rabbis added a tradition that the vowel points for Lord, or Adonai, were added to signal the reader to say Adonai its stead when reading the scroll in public.  The funny thing is that those aren't the vowel points for Adonai.

Although we personally figured out for ourself the correct pronunciation of God's name for myself using another pathway, that of seeing how it was used in compound names such as Joshua, Johnathan, Jehonadab and the like, Nehemiah stumbled onto it by another path because it seems the scribes messed up when they copied the text and considering the quality of the Aleppo Text supervised by Ben Asher we have a little trouble buying into them messing up.  So they hid the correct articulation of God's name in plain sight by writing it out in some fifty or do places in the Tanak and Nehemiah stumbled onto several of those places on 9/11/2001 while the Towers were falling in New York as he was comparing some texts.  Isaiah 42:9 isn't one of those verses so we are going to move on to another verse from our Leningrad Codex text:

Gen 3:14  וַיֹּאמֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֥ים׀ אֶֽל־הַנָּחָשׁ֮ כִּ֣י עָשִׂ֣יתָ זֹּאת֒ אָר֤וּר אַתָּה֙ מִכָּל־הַבְּהֵמָ֔ה וּמִכֹּ֖ל חַיַּ֣ת הַשָּׂדֶ֑ה עַל־גְּחֹנְךָ֣ תֵלֵ֔ךְ וְעָפָ֥ר תֹּאכַ֖ל כָּל־יְמֵ֥י חַיֶּֽיךָ׃

Now we have it!  יְהֹוָ֨ה  Look at the dot above the ה, that is the vowel "holem" and the sound is "o" as in the word note.  So now we have the name of God written out as YeHoVaH, or Yehovah! You can see it in another ancient manuscript below in the Shema, or "Listen Israel" where it appears three times in the text.

It is from Deut. 6:4 and look how God's name is spelled there, and on down as well.  It is completely written out as Yehovah.  The translation of the verse is "Hear o Israel, Yehovah your God is one Yehovah!"  The next two lines also spell it out, "And you must love Yehovah, your God, with all of your heart."

So there we have it.  From the Bible itself from the two most ancient Masoretic Texts available since we also quoted from the Leningrad Text, which is also a Rabbinic product instead of Karaite and still kept the complete name of God preserved in a few places as well.  We won't get into where the alternative scholars promote of "Yaweh" or "Yaveh" comes from as it is beyond the intended scope of this post.

In English, the name has been Anglicised as Jehovah with one letter pronounced differently than the Hebrew by an accident of history.  In the older English, the letter "J" entered the English language with the consonantal value of the modern "Y," thus replacing the "I" in the older Iehovah.  However, over time the pronunciation of the letter "shifted," or changed, to what we now have.  We will not presume to instruct others as to whether to use the Hebraic as some insist or the Anglicised version of the name.

A final word.  We did state earlier that God has given his son the name "that is above every other name" so that "all knees will bend and confess" his name, Jesus, to their salvation.  I once walked with people who'd forgotten that in their obsession to give honor and glory to God's name and use it perhaps a tad too much to the detriment of our savior.  We are commanded to ask for his name to be holy, and that involves using it aright as well as we call on our Father, Jehovah, as well as our savior, Jesus, as God has commanded us to do.

*1 Lit. "there is no God beside me" or "equal to me" thus admitting that there are other Gods, false ones, but there is none equal to or above him.  Interestingly, we find only one translation in our e-sword which renders the thought accurately and that is Wycliffe's which ironically was translated from Latin:

(Wycliffe)  Bithenke ye on the formere world, for Y am God, and no God is ouer me, nether is lijk me.

(Latin)  recordamini prioris saeculi quoniam ego sum Deus et non est ultra Deus nec est similis mei

*2 See Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai at Chabad.org

430 Years Where? : The Deads Sea Scrolls and Bible Chronology.

Above is a screenshot I took of a fragment which is part of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection and to reach it I used the identifier 4qedxcex12c.  This is taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls Project online and what we learn from the identifier is that it is from a group of fragments belonging to a particular scroll covering Exodus Chapter 12.  I went looking in the Dead Sea Scrolls to find out what they might show us about Exodus 12:40-41, which records the fulfillment of an earlier prophecy given to Abraham.  The problem is that there are two different variants of this passage and those variants are often cited among Bible Students in regards to the matter of Bible Chronology, and in a wider context regarding Bible veracity.  This is what I found.

Exodus 12:40 reads:

"The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years"

(ESV)

It seems straightforward enough, doesn't it?  However, we run into several problems with that passage, which is from the Masoretic Text (MT).  The first is that it appears to conflict with the prophecy itself which we find at Genesis 15: 12-16 and is as follows:

”And He said to Abram, Knowing you must know that your seed shall be an alien in a land not theirs; and they shall serve them. And they shall afflict them four hundred years; and I also will judge that nation whom they shall serve; and afterward they shall come out with great substance. And you shall come to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall come here again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." 

(LITV)

The first is the difference in years mentioned, and the second is the number of generations.  a quick check of the genealogical record shows that four generations does not cover four hundred years.  It just does cover the time from when Jacob enters Egypt at the invitation of his son, Joseph and the reigning Pharoah until they leave.  So what is going on here?  what appears is the case is that there is a difference in reckoning matters god has set up to confuse things a bit.  Genesis apparently does two things.  The promise counts four hundred years from when the promise was made and the generations which actually resided in Eygpt.  In Exodus Moses, under inspiration, counts the time from when Abram entered the land of Canaan after leaving Haran when his father died.  Stephen invokes Genesis in his exposition in Acts 7:2-6 and Paul invoked Exodus in his exposition to the Galatians, 3:17.  However, even with that realization we are still left with a problem because the scriptures say the sons of Israel spent 430 years in Egypt or do they?

We really have two variations witnessed to in the manuscripts.  The first is found in the Masoretic Text and is as follows:

וּמוֹשַׁב֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָשְׁב֖וּ בְּמִצְרָ֑יִם שְׁלֹשִׁ֣ים שָׁנָ֔ה וְאַרְבַּ֥ע מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָֽה׃ 

    

"The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt."

The second is witnessed to by the LXX, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Bohairic Coptic:

Η δε κατοικησις των υιων Ισραελ ην κατωκησαν εν γη Αιγυπτω και εν γη Χανααν ετν τετρακοσια τριακοντα

And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Chanaan, was four hundred and thirty years.

(Brenton's English Septuagint)

So which is it?  Were they in Egypt the entire 430 years or not.  This is where the fragment above comes in as it is the oldest witness to the text of interest here and Bible Students generally prefer the older witness.  In the catalog of Dead Sea Scrolls, the fragment is listed as following the Masoretic text.  However, as we looked closer we saw reason to question that view.  Here is a close up of the portion of the fragment containing the passage of interest:

What we see here are verses 39 & 40.  Those who can read Hebrew have no problem seeing that verse 39 is completed while verse 40 appears to start on the next line at "land of Egypt..." and this is apparently the basis for the judgment on the part of the cataloger.  Obviously, something is missing here, the portion of the text from the beginning of verse forty to the word "land."  We have no way of knowing the quality of the photo the cataloger had to work with or if he was working with the manuscript itself.  This photo is from the newer enhanced digital photographs now available online for scholars and others with an interest in the Scrolls to consult and of better quality than the other two.  And that's where things get interesting.

Now look at what we circled in red.  That is where the line ends and is a clue to what is missing from the text.  We see a break in the material but right after that is the letter "נ" or "n."  That letter is easily missed even in this image if one isn't careful.  In earlier images, it probably is even harder to spot.  Here is the text again of verse forty with the missing portion in red:

וּמוֹשַׁב֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָשְׁב֖וּ בְּמִצְרָ֑יִם שְׁלֹשִׁ֣ים שָׁנָ֔ה וְאַרְבַּ֥ע מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָֽה׃

And here is what is there with the "נ" and another word, the Hebrew "ארץ" in the text in red, which shouldn't be there if it follows the MT:

  ן ארץ בְּמִצְרָ֑יִם שְׁלֹשִׁ֣ים שָׁנָ֔ה וְאַרְבַּ֥ע מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָֽה׃ 

However, it makes all the difference in the world.  That is because the only way the letter and word would be there at all in that spot would be if the text originally read "The time that the sons of Israel lived in the land of Canaan and the land of Egypt was four hundred ad thirty years."  Add to that the space of the missing text is more consistent with that that than the shorter Masoretic text.  So instead of following the Masoretic reading, as the catalog states, the fragment instead follows the alternate text preserved in the LXX.

We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that there were a number of different versions of the OT text found in the caves of Qumran, all of them dating anywhere from the second-century bc to the first-century ad.  The Masoretic and the LXX represent the two most witnessed to with the Masoretic first followed by the Hebrew-LXX.  Since we don't know the methodology in making that determination we are not going to give the exact percentages here since there are parts of the OT where there is more agreement between the two than differences and the Pentateuch is one of those parts.

But the important point here for us is that the oldest witness to a key Hebrew passage in the Exodus clarifies a problem the Masoretic Text actually makes and resolves an apparent contradiction for us.  God apparently included the land of Canaan in the four hundred years of prophecy probably because it was under Egyptian domination for much of that history and not fully independent.  But it also gives us a starting point marked in the bible beginning when Abram left Canaan which is prophetically important since Paul invoked it in Galatians.

We are living in an exciting time, my brothers and sisters.  We now have the Dead Sea Scroll witness because God broke the small cartel of scholars who kept it under lock and key away from the rest of us.  Many other manuscripts have come to life.  and thanks to the efforts of such men as Dr. Daniel Wallace even more and even in some cases, older manuscripts of the NT in Greek are coming to light.  We have much more in the way of ancient material to work with than Brother Russell had and some of that increases the light thrown on the languages themselves.  And I am sure there will be much more to come in the time left as God makes preparation for the kingdom to come. 

Let's enjoy these times and make the most of them as we complete our course.

Blood Moons

Hello again friends!

We’ve waited until they passed to comment, but the last of the blood moons of this tetrad is history, last night in fact.  So we decided it was time to join those posting on the phenomena and write something about it, and the hysteria which surrounded them to an extent.

As Christians it is our responsibility to examine teachings which come along with a critical eye, as Paul told the Thessalonian to do, and hold on to what is fine (1 Th. 5:21).  That way we don’t become credulous and find ourselves cast about like a wave in the ocean for our lack of faith (James 1:1-8).  That also helps us to keep our peace in times of trouble like this.

So what was all this business about the blood moons and tetrad all ab out and why did it catch peoples imagination the point some were preparing for a desperate situation, and even the end, according to various news reports?  The subject caught my imagination not long before the tetrad began, so we researched it so I could be ready if the subject came up in any of the classes we are a part of, it did.

Basically a blood moon is a red moon, a rare event caused by the angle of the atmosphere the moon is at.  A lower angle filters out all but the red light in the reflection back to earth, though it isn’t a really deep red, it is a red shade all the same.  This is a relatively rear phenomena, though I don’t have the statistics on it at hand.  A tetrad happens when four of them fall on Jewish holidays, another rare event which can be centuries apart.  One of the things which excited people is that we had two in the last century, 1949-50, 1967 and I’m not sure of the last year of it.  Note the years, the first one was a year after the creation of the state of Israel, what the Arabs call the Naqba, or disaster and the second the year of the 1967 six-day war when Jerusalem ended up completely in Israel’s hand, another disaster for the Arabs.  In fact, every blood moon tetrad has either followed or been a harbinger for some sort of important event for the Jews, there was one a few years after the Jews were expelled from Spain, in 1692.  That’s part of what caught people’s attention.

We credit Pastor Hagee with starting this tetrad’s circus.  Somebody, I don’t know who, brought it to his attention and after his study of it he concluded that it would be very significant.  So he put together a program on it for his church, the program also made it onto YouTube, where we watched it in our own research.  It was certainly impressive.  Now, do we blame somebody for popularizing their conclusions on something?  Not at all for sincerely held views.

We’ve already explained what a blood moon is.  But why so important.  Well, first of all our lord spoke of celestial events occurring in the heavens during the final days of this present evil world (Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24-25; Lk. 22:25).  With those words is it any wonder the tetrad caught folks attention and imagination?  In this tetrad a solar eclipse hit Jerusalem, right on the day they celebrated the Passover.  And this blood moon was not only a supermoon, but an eclipse as well.  Since all of this can be predicted with modern science and calculus, there was plenty of time for people to find out about it and speculate.

So, what happened?  Well, given history the Jews may not be totally out of the woods yet.  However, I submit that some very important things did happen for all I don’t really think Jesus’ words were in anticipation of that, but more in a moment on why.  Three interrelated things did occur which do not bode well for the Jews this tetrad.  The so called Palestinians were given observer status at the UN.  This appears to be in anticipation of declaring them a country and giving them full membership status.  Second, President moved the US away from its traditional relationship with Israel and rumor is may not interfere with statehood for the Arabs in the conquered lands.  Third, the US/Iranian agreement will no doubt accelerate rather than delay Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.  Iran is government by Shia Islamic fanatics who promote terrorism around the world, at times with very deadly consequences.  Given their hatred for Israel and the Jews, that is not a reassuring development.

We would like to point something else out, though.  Jesus’ prophecy has many levels to it, some signs given were common to both the last days of the Jewish polity, and the greater last days.  Wars and rumors of wars would be an instance.  The Jewish rebels of the 60s a.d. thought to take advantage of Rome’s problems with the Germans to the North to free Israel from Rome, it didn’t work.  Look at all the wars we’ve had since the beginning of WWI in 1914.  There hasn’t really been a year since then where somebody wasn’t at war with somebody else, or getting ready for it.

There were signs in the heavens in the first century, witness the sun going dark on Passover 33 a.d. when Jesus died, a similar event to this year’s total eclipse on the Passover.  However, we understand Jesus’ words as coded references as well, signifying conditions which would be present.  One reason for this is that Jesus did introduce a symbolic element when he told his listeners to “watch the fig tree,” a reference to Israel’s future creation in our century.  Given the prophecies of signs in the heaven, and the turbulence of the sea follow right on that one, doesn’t it make sense that it may well be the same sort of prophecy?  Well, Luke was the one who recorded him speaking of the storminess of the sea (22:25).

The bible tells us how to interpret such symbolic language if we are open to it.  In a number of passages we find mankind personified as the sea.  Isaiah presents the sea as telling Zidon that it has not brought forth children, young men or virgins (23:4).  Jeremiah 51:42 likens the armies of the Medes and Persians to a sea as it prophesies Babylon’s conquest by them.  And, finally, Isaiah 57:20 likens the wicked to a stormy sea, something Jesus seems to evoke with his words.  Thus we feel confident in believing that the sea in symbolism is the great mass of mankind.  Think about that for a moment because that view makes for a better understanding of some of the passages in Daniel and Revelation, where we see beasts arising from the sea.  So we see the sea mentioned by Jesus as the stormy masses of mankind.

Even though things of significance, both good and bad, seem to happen to the Jews within a few years, there really is no biblical basis for looking to the blood moons in our estimation.  Given the record, one again, the two of the 20^th century happened in proximity to good events, and the one near 1492 a bad one, nobody really has a basis for concluding either way what is likely to happen if God uses the tetrads as signs.  So while they may be items of interest, the next one is in 2033, they are not predictive of the future, as in good or bad, so Christians have no reason to anticipate, or fear them.  We look to trends to determine where we stand, not dates.  That is the best way for use to let our hearts not be troubled in this day of uncertainty.

The Essential Doctrine of the Christ

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

(Rom 3:23; ESV)

What is the essential doctrine of the Christian faith?  We get different answers to that question depending on who we talk to.  However we propose to use the Bible to demonstrate to our readers’ satisfaction that the Ransom sacrifice of Christ Jesus and the companion teaching of the Restitution of mankind to its lost estate are the essential and central teaching of God’s word and the Gospel.  This is what was foremost in the minds of the Apostles and others as they wrote the books of the New Testament as we will see as we progress in this short consideration of this very important subject.  We will by no means treat this subject comprehensively as there are too many verses and passages to include in the short amount of space we have.  However, I will mention a book which does at the end.

To find out why mankind ended up in the fix it is in we have to go back to the beginning, to the first book in the bible, Genesis.  In the first chapters we are told That God created the heavens and the earth; and then we are told how God spent seven “days,” or more precisely “eras,” preparing the earth for human habitation (Gen. 1).  Towards the end of chapter one and through chapter two of Genesis we are told that to people were created, married, and placed in a garden which provided for all of their needs.  But in chapter three, something happens.  First the woman, Eve, then her husband, Adam, are tempted and break the only law given them by God, the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, as Paul explained to the Roman Christians:  “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).  That, in a nutshell, is why we are in the sorry condition we’re in with sin and death.

The essential doctrine of Christianity is that God didn’t leave us in that condition and did something about it. Paul carried the thought forward for us, “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Rom 5:18-19).  So the answer was to provide a ransom for mankind, because of one man’s disobedience and sin we all die, but God reversed the situation through the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ (vs. 17).

To understand how that works it is important to understand a very important principle of God’s justice, and it is why Paul emphasized the thought of one man bringing in death and the other life.  That principle is exact equivalency of the punishment fitting the crime.  According to the law:

And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.

(Lev 24:17-21)

This is the famous “an eye for an eye” law.  And the principle here stated is that exactly what was done must be recompensed exactly.  That was why Paul stated in the earlier cited passage from Romans, “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).  So what was lost had to be provided for a ransom.

So what was lost?  What was lost was the perfect life of the first man.  He was created perfect and had the prospect of eternal life before him and every human who has ever lived came from him, including Eve, who was made from his rib.   All of us, with the exception of Jesus, received life from him through all the males who preceded us.  That is how life is passed on, from the male to the female.  So, from God’s standpoint all of us were still in Adam’s loins when he sinned, so all of us received the sentence which was pronounced on him before the conception of his first child.  Jesus gave up his perfect life in order to ransom mankind back from death.  That fact is directly stated in three places, twice by Jesus and once by Paul, though the same thing is presented elsewhere in other terms in God’s word:

Mat_20:28  Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Mar_10:45  For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

1Ti_2:6  Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

That is why a Trinitarian god-man couldn’t provide the ransom necessary.  What was required was a perfect man, a man who existed on the same level of existence as Adam, and we in him, did before his act of disobedience changed everything for us.

But did Jesus live and die to give said ransom?  That is a legitimate question since scholars, some of them nominally Christian and teaching in seminaries, don’t believe it happened, that it was all a myth.  But Paul expounded on the fact of Jesus’ sacrifice and that message to the Corinthians reassures us of the fact of the Christian message.  So, with what we’ve written so far in mind, let’s go through his message:

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; (1Co 15:1)

So Paul state’s right up front that he is about to declare the Gospel, the essential doctrine of Christianity:

By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: (1Co 15:2-4)

So he states plainly that Jesus died according to the scripture, that is what I wrote about from the law, which is only part, and he rose on the third day after his death, which was also prophesied in scripture (Matt. 12:38-40, where Jesus predicts this using Jonah).  Then Paul goes on to prove what he says:

And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1Co 15:5-9)

That is quite a list of people who saw the resurrected Jesus and includes one which is only alluded to in the Gospels without giving any details (Lk. 24:34).  Paul then spends two verses on a personal side note before giving one of the most profound refutations for the notions that Jesus was not resurrected and why it was necessary that he was:

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (1Co 15:12-23)

So there it is, the Essential Doctrine of Christianity.  In a nutshell it is that Adam sinned and was condemned and all of us along with him by virtue of our being in him.  And Jesus was born as a perfect human to provide a ransom for all by ransoming Adam, along with all of his offspring by virtue of the same reasons as the fall, by giving up that life on behalf of us all.  That he did so, along with his resurrection, which was witnessed to by upwards of over five hundred people.  Thus we have a guarantee that he not only was successful, but that all the dead will be resurrected and all given the opportunity of eternal life, each in his own place.

The book I mentioned which does comprehensively treat the subject is The At-One-Ment Between God and Man, and can be purchased here.

By way of disclosure I'm just a Brother in Christ to the folks I linked to and know some of them.  That is the site where I purchase most of my personal literature.

I Believe the Bible

Last June marked the end of our fortieth year as a baptized Christian.  We gave our heart and everything and gave up this world’s ambitions in consecration to our God out of love for what a wonderful God he really is two years earlier, but because our mother did not permit it our baptism waited two years until we reached the age of majority, 18 years.  One bit of reflection on that time of loving devotion to God is that, even though for thirty of those years we fellowshipped with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, those years can be summed up by four words, “I believe the Bible.”

Although our understanding of that book and its teachings were so imperfect for so many years of that time, what God’s word says was first and foremost for me, which made us a thorn in the side of the elders in most of the congregations we were in.  For all of these forty years there have been no creeds for us, only God’s word, because we believe the Bible.

Because we believe the bible we’ve been called a cultist because we don’t believe in or preach “the essential doctrine of Christianity,” the Trinity Doctrine.  But, really, where in God’s Word are we told that the Trinity doctrine is the essential doctrine of Christianity?  For forty years we’ve studied the bible from stem to stern, including in its original languages and we find no statement to that effect anywhere to be found.  What we do find are plain statements from Christ’s own mouth to the effect that “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to My God and your God,”  “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God’” and more (John 20:17; Revelation 3:14).  In fact, we find no indication of a trinity in God’s word.  Theologians rely on taking verses out of context and some really imaginative reasoning to “prove” their “essential doctrine.”  Even some of them through the years have admitted that a plain and objective reading of God’s word just doesn’t lead one to the conclusion that there is a trinity.  Now why would they say that?

The Old Testament

Throughout the Old Testament one concept reigns supreme, that there is no God in the sense we commonly use the word but one.  The “Shema” to Israel bears a powerful witness to that fact: “Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: and thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. 6:4-5; ASV).  That statement is unambiguous and even names the God who is alone in that category.  There can be no misunderstanding of that verse when not read through the lens of so called “theology.”

The bible does call others “god,” or “god’s,” including men (Ex. 7:1; Ps. 82:6) and it acknowledges many times the existence of other gods, inventions of men or demons, false gods in other words (Deu. 6:14, 2 Chron. 13:8,9  and much more).  In the case of men the word, “god” is used of officials as well as the word “lord” as the essential meaning of the word to the Hebrews is encapsulate in the early written form of the word El, a bull and a shepherds staff conveying the idea of a powerful leader.  But the bottom line is simple, and consistent, throughout the Old Testament, “But Jehovah is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting King: at his wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide his indignation” (Jer. 10:10).  There is only one True God.

The New Testament

But Trinitarians point out that the Trinity is a revelation from the New Testament.  But we contend that the Old Testament picture of a single, all powerful God whole and complete in and of himself holds true throughout the New Testament.  We’ve already pointed to several plain statements from our Savior Jesus Christ on the matter.  But there is more.

When questioned about what the greatest commandment in the law was, Jesus quoted from the Shema, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Mat 22:36-37).  Thus, Jesus established himself as an observant Jew, whose views on the Unitarian nature of God were consistent with the Old Testament and his fellow Jews.  Nowhere do we find him asserting a Trinitarian viewpoint on God.  In fact, he called himself the “son of God” (John 5:25, 11:4), a fact acknowledged by the Leaders of the Jews themselves (Matt 27:43).  The one time the Jewish leaders tried to twist his words around to have him saying that he was himself God, Jesus hastened to correct the false impression they were trying to make (John 10: 30, 34-36).  Taken together with the statements of his earlier it is plain that he never asserted a Trinitarian relationship or even equivalence with God.

Demons acknowledged him as the son of God, as did their master, the devil, in a backhanded kind of way (Matt. 8:29; 4:3,6), and they should know.  During his first advent his disciples called him the son of God many times (Mk. 1:1; John 11:27).  And even the Angel Gabriel so identified him to Mary before his conception (Lk. 1:26,35).  The Apostle Paul called him that at Romans 1:4; 2 Cor. 1:19; Eph. 4:13 and many other times in many variations on that theme.  So we find it witnessed to that he was God’s son instead of God himself throughout the New Testament.  Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians makes a very plain statement to the subordination of Jesus Christ to his God, that he is in no way an equal (1 Cor. 15:24-28).  And these are no obscure verses; they are many and plain so that the testimony of the scriptures is plain if we do not go at them with any preconceptions.

That testimony is so plain that the Arian view of God and his son not only predates the Arian controversy, but persisted down through the ages with men and women going to often horrible deaths rather than deny the bible’s clear testimony in the matter.  Michael Servetus was one such man who was chained naked to a stake roasted alive for hours at the order of John Calvin because he refused to recant his denial of the Trinity Doctrine in favor of Arianism.  An entire people were “excommunicated” for their Arianism, the Goths and Visigoths.  They are much maligned in history for their beliefs, though evidence of their tolerant nature towards Trinitarians has come to light in recent times.

So I believe the bible.  We believe it whether our investigation of its teachings agree with what is held by the wider Christian community or not.  When it doesn’t, we must follow the evidence wherever it leads, because we believe the bible.