Tag: babylon

Parashah Behar (Mount) Leviticus 25-26:2

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Even though the English title is “Mount”, the translated Hebrew text is ,”And the Lord spoke to Moses IN Mount Sinai, saying:…”. I just wanted to point this out because I think it is interesting that from Moses’s view (since he wrote this) he wasn’t on the mountain, but inside it. Perhaps there was a cave or a sheltered area God provided for Moses? After all, he was there for 40 days and nights, and to provide a sheltered area for him to sleep and be comfortable in would have been the least God could have done, right?.

This parashah is all about Sabbath for the land and Jubilee Year. Just as we rest from our work every 7th day, the land rests every 7th year. And every 7th year of years (in other words, the beginning of every 50th year) there is a Jubilee Year. In that year all people and property revert to their God-given owners.

I say “God-given owners” because Joshua divvied-up the land among the 9 1/2 Tribes (remember that Gad, Reuben, and the 1/2 tribe of Manasseh settled on east side of the Jordan) after they had conquered Canaan. Because the land was divided among the tribe by lot, meaning God ordered who got what, clearly it was “God-given.”

In the 50th year, on the 10th day of Tishri, which God declared as the Day of Trumpets (known today as Rosh Hashannah) the Jubilee Year begins, although it isn’t officially announced until Yom Kippur.  In the Jubilee Year all property reverts to the original owner, and all slaves are set free. There are also rules regarding how to pro-rate the value of the lands and slavery work results so that when Jubilee Year comes the people who were buying back or selling back would receive a fair value.

Let’s start with the Sabbath year for the land. The law about leaving the land untouched for an entire year means that in the 6th year you would need to have enough produce to be able to sustain your family and all your possessions (animals and slaves) for three years: the 7th year you wouldn’t be farming or planting, you would be living off what was done from the 6th year harvest. Then, in the the 8th year,  you would have to plant, and you wouldn’t see that harvest until the 9th year.  So the 6th, 7th and 8th years you are living off the 6th year harvest. Now, God promises that He will provide enough for 3 years in the 6th year, so obeying His 7th year Sabbath commandment is the same test of faith He gave us in the desert. Back then, we were to gather one day’s worth of manna for 5 days, and on the 6th day we were to gather enough to last through the Sabbath, because no manna came down on the 7th day. If you gathered more than you were supposed to, the manna turned bad overnight, but what was gathered on the 6th day stayed good for 2 days. This miracle from God, which He had provided to His people for 40 years in the desert, would be applied to the Jews living in the Land, as well.

From what we read in the Tanakh, though, it appears the commandment regarding the Sabbath yer for the land was rarely obeyed. Ezekiel mentions it as one of the reasons for the upcoming destruction, and in the next Parashah (Leviticus 26:32-35), where God tells us all the punishments He will bring upon us for disobedience, He warns us about what will happen if we disobey giving the land it’s Sabbath year:

I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled.  I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins.  Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.  All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

The letter Jeremiah wrote to the Israelites in captivity in Babylon (Jeremiah 29) he says that the captivity will last 70 years, which would indicate that the land had not had it’s Sabbath rest for nearly 490 years prior to the Babylonian exile.

We have been given free will to choose what we will do, and when it comes to our relationship with God, that free will allows us to find peace and joy forever, or to turn from God, disobey and ruin our eternity. God will help and direct us to make the right decision, but He will not force us to accept it. The people had seen His provision for 40 years in the desert, and also the miraculous salvation from enemies He provided throughout the times of the Judges; even after we sinned by asking for a king, God still provided for those kings that were righteous before Him. All this provision, all these miraculous events, have been passed down in the oral history (the Tanakh was not completed until, at the earliest, 450 BCE, although it may have not been until much later, around 140-116 BCE- scholars can’t agree) and was known by all the people living in the Land, well before Jeremiah’s time.  And today we have even more evidence of God’s provision, most importantly the evidence of Messiah, Yeshua.

Yet, we still disobey, we still ignore, we still reject (as a people) God and His commandments. Oy! And worse, still: many, if not most, are not even repentant! They make excuses and give justification (from a human viewpoint) for their disobedience. When we make excuses instead of asking for forgiveness, we are not repentant. And lack of repentance means that the forgiveness we ask for will not be given. God is wonderfully merciful, but He isn’t stupid: if you don’t really feel sorry and rueful for the sin you commit, I believe you can ask all you want, call on Yeshua, jump up and down and recite the Torah backwards, but it won’t help.

God doesn’t care about what we do to be forgiven, He cares about how we feel when we ask for forgiveness:

1 Samuel 15:22– Samuel said, “Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.

Psalm 51:17– The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.

God wants us to repent of our sins, not just go through the motions of asking for forgiveness without truly being repentant.

To pull it all together, we need to be aware that God will provide for us when we obey, and when we reject Him and His good laws, He will make sure that what He wants done will be done, from anything as simple as withholding blessings, as to complete desolation of our land.

God’s will WILL be done, one way or another; I don’t want to speak for you, but as for me, well, I want to be in God’s will as much as possible. Being outside His will is not a good place to be.

Finally! The long awaited sequel is out, “Son of…..

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If you are a Baby-Boomer like me, you remember the great movies that had sequels. For my younger readers, that’s when you find out what happened after what you are watching. Today they’re all about prequels, finding out what happened before what you are watching occurred.

We had “Son of Kong”, “Son of Paleface”, “Son of Zorn”, “Tarzan Finds a Son”…movies that took the popularity of the original and continued the story line.

To me, that’s exactly what the New Covenant writings are all about. Growing up Jewish, all I ever heard about Jesus and the New Covenant was that Jesus was Jewish, a Rabbi, and he started a new religion called Catholicism. I was also told that the New Covenant is their bible, not ours. Oh, yes- and all the other Gentile religions came out of Catholicism.

Now I know the truth is very, very different. Nearly 20 years ago, when I first started to look for God and wanted to finally decide about what relationship, if any, I was going to have with Him, I researched for myself; I read the New Covenant (a Messianic version, which bold printed everything that was directly from the Old Covenant, so nearly every page had 1/3-1/2 of it bold printed), I talked to mature Christians who were open and knowledgeable about their Hebraic roots (thank the Lord He directed them to me), and eventually (after I decided to believe before I actually did believe) I learned the truth about who Jesus (His real name is Yeshua) was, and is, and who is the real creator of modern day Christianity.

Oh, in case you’re interested, Christianity as it is known and practiced today did not come from Jesus- it came from Constantine and the Council of Nicene.

The Old Covenant is all about God, really. Yes, we learn of the Jewish people, their good times and their bad; we also learn of the other people of those days. We read about the events that happened to both Jews and Gentiles, the destruction of the Northern kingdom of Shomron (Israel), the destruction of the first temple, exile to Babylon and the last king, Zedekiah, which was about 570 some-odd years before Yeshua. After him the only other major event, before the New Covenant events, was the Maccabees and the story of Hanukkah, about 400 years before Yeshua. This is where the OC ends, still waiting for the Messiah to come.

Despite all the events, peoples and kings, the one character in the Old Covenant that is steadily seen and heard throughout the book, who is the progenitor, hero, and star of the show, is God.

The New Covenant also mentions God throughout it, but the real star is Yeshua. Therefore, we could call the Old Covenant the “Story of God” and the New Covenant, “Son of God.”

Now the title to today’s post seems to make sense, doesn’t it?

Just like the old sequels, the first book introduces the hero and leaves us with a promise of more to come. The Messiah never appeared, although He had been mentioned and prophesied about throughout the book. With the NC, we have a culmination of writings about this guy Jesus who claimed to be the Messiah, and also said He was the Son of God.

And if you ask me, He did a pretty good job of proving that what He said was true!

“Jesus” was used for His name because the Greek’s had no reference for a name which meant “God’s salvation”, so they used Jesu, which means nothing in and of itself, but sounds like “Yeshua.” That’s right- “Jesus” is a Latin-ized version of a transliteration that has no etymological root.

The OC promised a Messiah to bring the Jewish people back to God, and also that the Jewish people would be a blessing to the world; eventually, the final promise is of paradise with all the nations of the world worshiping God. That is, worshiping God as He told us we should in the Torah. The NC is the continuation of that story, introducing the promised Messiah, showing how He proved who He was/is, and ending with a number of epilogues (the Epistles) that showed how the truth of Messiah was spread throughout the world. This book has no sequel because the end is eternity with God and Yeshua. All the bad guys are destroyed, the world is created anew, and those that have been faithful to the King have been rewarded with eternal peace and life forever in the presence of the King.

Nice ending; nice “Son of” sequel; all-around nice story. The best part of the whole thing is that it is real-life, and those who accept the truth of it are also part of the story, along with the Father and the Son, and we all end up in Paradise together.

 

 

Judgement isn’t Coming- It’s Here

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Paris, Paris, Paris- that’s all the rage now. People change their FaceBook page to reflect the Parisian flag, they post requests to pray for Paris, it’s the top story in all the papers.

I remember Paris back in the day when it was the safe house for all terrorists. The Parisian government allowed known terrorists to go there and would not extradite them. Now the ones who were protected are biting the hand that fed them, because these terrorists have no honor, no concern for anyone, and no morals.

Sounds like the ancient Babylonians, or the Assyrians, doesn’t it? And didn’t God use those people, as horrible as they were, to exact His judgement?

I am not against sympathizing with those who lost loved ones in Paris. I am fed up with the superficial sympathy we feel. We are all so “damaged” today, but by Tuesday the top story will be about some dog found stuck in a ditch, or some cutesy kid who is collecting for the homeless. And those people in France who are attending funerals and recovering in hospitals will be totally forgotten.

In one day hundreds were killed or hurt in Paris, that’s true. On the other hand, in 2013 the number of American deaths, PER DAY, was almost 90 people. From automobile accidents. You can’t really stop someone from setting off a bomb, but you can drive more carefully, you can drive without texting, you can drive only when you’re sober. We can prevent more automobile accidents, but you can’t really prevent someone who is determined to hurt other people. Oh, maybe now and then, with good intel and a very liberal attitude about privacy, you might. Still, over a hundred died  that one day in Paris, in an attack that is totally unique in current Parisian history. The Paris deaths were from one day of terror, and only the one day- it started, it’s over.

Ninety Americans die every-single-day!  From something that is preventable.

We need to keep things in perspective- murder is murder, whether terrorists do it to us in public places or we do it to each other in cars. The difference, to me, is that there is so much violence of humans against humans that we can’t always see when it is human based or if it is an act of God.

Yes, I am saying that I believe these terrorist groups, groups like ISIS, Al-Queda, or whoever they are, are being used by God as His weapon of judgement. He has done this throughout the past, using powerful enemies that are ruthless, destructive, immoral and unrighteous to render His totally righteous judgement on those that have earned His wrath. America has rejected God, France and God, well, what’s to say about that? And the other countries of the world being attacked are just as worthy of judgement as the ones who have been attacked.

“Yeah, well, then why is Israel being attacked, huh?  If Israel is being regathered and they have already been judged, which you have said before, Steve, then why is Israel being attacked? Huh? Why? Yeah, Answer that one. Huh?”

Good question, here’s the answer- because they are God’s’ people. They are being attacked by the forces of the enemy: they are not being judged by God. That’s the difference- Israel is being attacked, as they always have been, by the forces of the enemy, especially now as they draw closer to God and are starting to acknowledge the truth about His Messiah. Israel is under demonic attack, whereas (I believe) the nations of the world are now coming under judgement.

Remember that the Prophets told us eventually the entire world will come against Israel- that is part of the plan, and it has not happened yet. It is still in the future (and, I believe, not the distant future.)  The judgement against the Goyim (the nations) is already happening.

We should prepare ourselves for the real battle, which isn’t of governments or nations, but of the spiritual world. The way to defeat terrorism is not to be terrorized. That can’t happen without God, without accepting His Grace and knowing that whatever a person does against you, you are secure in the future because you have been saved from the second death- that is the one to be afraid of. The first death comes to all, it is natural, it is transitory. It is the second death, the eternal death that results with either being in God’s presence or in the Lake of Fire, which is what we should be terrorized of!

Terrorists are nothing- they are a bunch of murderers who use their god as an excuse to kill others so they feel better about themselves. Their judgement will come, too- just as it has happened in the past. If they read the bible that counts, they would think twice about what they are doing because no one who has come against Israel has survived. No one. They are doing God’s work against the Nations now, but their time will come, and their judgement will be terrible. Just ask the Assyrians (oh, wait- they’re totally destroyed); well, then, ask any Babylonian about….oh, no, you can’t . They’re gone, too.  The Romans? Nah- all their military are Swiss. Maybe the Egyptians? They’re still here, but not much of a military power anymore.

Mark my words, it won’t be God who will stop these terrorists- the enemy will be the one to overpower these terrorists! They are nothing more than the warm-up act for the big show, when the enemy of God creates the one-world rule. He will do so by eliminating these groups to secure his position as a man of peace. He will seem to save the world, to bring peace and order, and to be the one we should worship since he did what God could not. This will be his demonstration of power, and it will fool many, even many of the righteous will turn to the enemy, because they expect God to stop the terror so when the enemy does this they will mistake him for Messiah.

I believe this is what will happen in the very near future, maybe even in our lifetimes. I did not gain this “knowledge” from a dream, or a vision. In fact, I think it is just common sense . It’s the logical conclusion that one should come to when one reads the word of God, looks at what He has done in the past, and understands He is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. Think about that- if God is the same, always and forever, then doesn’t it just make sense that what he has done in the past he will do in the present, and continue to do in the future, in the same way?

Terrorism is terrible- duh! That’s why they call it, “Terrorism”. And it is not new- it may have a new name but it is the same as it has always been; at it’s roots it is bad people doing bad things to innocent people. It started with Cain and hasn’t changed since then.

We can’t stop terrorism- it is a part of civilization, it is the way humans are, and it can be the rod of judgement that God uses. It will never go away, it will only change it’s shape, it’s name and it’s targets. But what we sow, we shall reap, and God will judge those He is using to bring judgement upon the Nations. Be assured, be comforted in the midst of the terror, that vengeance will be taken and judgement will be done to those who are performing these terrible acts of murder.

In the meantime, don’t get confused by those pushing for less gun control or those blaming President Obama, or any other policy reform stemming from these events. This isn’t about any of them, and it’s certainly not about Paris. This is about the truth of God’s word, the prophecies of the bible, the arrival of the Acharit HaYamim (End Days) and the establishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth.

The time to think spiritual is upon you- get your head out of the Earth and into the Clouds.