In the beginning, when God created the universe. A continuing commentary on the Gospel of John 1:1-3.

Posted on 01/31/2025 by remso

 

“In the beginning, when God created the universe.”

I don’t know about you, but I have had some odd conversations about this very thing. The conversations sound a lot like this:

  • When did time begin?

  • Do you mean God was just hanging out in space and decided to create a universe?

  • Was God just bored?

  • What do you think He was doing before He had any light?

  • Wasn’t Jesus enough?

This is my attempt at a short explanation of when time began. I chuckle as I write this because I don’t do short very well.

How about the legitimate question: When did this all begin? Another way of pursuing this peculiar train of thought is to ask when we initiate the timing of things based on what we see in scripture. Truth be known, there is no legitimate answer unless God solved this chronology by starting the clock with mankind’s fall in the garden.

The Jewish community begins their chronology of man based upon the garden moment when Eve was deceived and then handed the “deadly” fruit to Adam. However, they don’t seem to notice that this action made us all accountable for the death penalty. Anyway, this makes humanity a mere 6000 years old. If I sound annoyed or troubled, that would be because Adam and eventually Eve were in place upon the earth long before the garden incident, and God said to Eve, now you will have pain in childbirth. That statement cannot make sense unless she was already producing babies without pain. If that is the case, what was the impact of sins’ emergence from the garden upon anyone previously born outside of the garden? Interesting question, is it not. Primarily, the effect that concerns us is the genetic damage in both Adam and Eve that affected every human being thereafter.

I recently glanced at an article that asked who Cain was afraid of. Well, if we hold to a tight chronology of humanity based upon what we see in the garden, then there are no other people on the earth, yet Cain fears for his life, finds a wife, and builds a (small) city.

Now, as to the possibility that God was merely floating out in space, I do not know the answer, nor does anyone else. Spending time on the idea hurts my head, so we won’t. Sadly, there are many things we do not know, but like Dinosaurs, there is no denying that they happened, so we take what we know and do the best we can with it.

I do not think anyone can legitimately answer most of these questions; however, they do open some interesting doors of thought about God’s magnificence if you are willing to let His Word speak to your heart.

Let’s dive in.

“IN THE beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.” [Isaiah. 9:6.] John 1:1 AMP

Before we go one step further, let’s see what Isaiah 9:6 adds to this.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given: and the government shall be on his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

You would be correct if your initial assumption were that Isaiah was talking about Jesus, the Son. But note that it says, “his name shall be called …, The mighty God, The everlasting Father.”

If we grasp that John is writing to a Jewish community of believers and trying to make a point about the supremacy of the Messiah, saying, “The Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself,” does just that. (Hopefully, you understand that Jesus was God at this point.)

Many hold fast to the idea that the Apostles went about preaching to Gentiles.
What would have given us that idea?
Well, Jesus did go to the Samaritans, but we saw the disciples struggle with that idea (racism and prejudice run deep.) We do not have strong evidence that the majority of the disciples displayed strong emotion against Matthew, a Jew who had legally robbed the Jewish community and turned his back on his Jewishness by working for the Romans.

Let’s see if I can change your mind. 

Jesus sent out the disciples with these instructions: 

“Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel—God’s lost sheep.” Matthew 10:5-6 NLT

Later on, we can read that Paul and Barnabas took the gospel to the Gentiles.

“Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and declared, “It was necessary that we first preach the word of God to you Jews. But since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we will offer it to the Gentiles.” Acts 13:46 NLT

In the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas are sent to Jerusalem to address the apostles and elders about the teaching that says: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” (You find this in Acts chapter 15)

Pushing the new Gentile converts to be circumcised may not sound like much to many, but this is an exceptionally Jewish concept and teaching. The primary purpose the Apostles and early church elders forwarded such an idea was because of their conviction that salvation through Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was a Jewish benefit.

Sure, there was room for exceptions, and we see that with Peter and his interactions with the Roman Centurion and his family. Read about this in Acts chapter 11, but take note of this.

“So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone.” 
Acts 11:19 NAS95

 While Peter eventually stood to say something, agreeing that God had accepted the Gentiles through his ministry, we do not see Peter taking this message further than the Roman Centurion’s home. While Foxes Book of Martyrs may point out something historically different, we, in general, do not see the disciples dealing with anyone else but Jews in scripture. 

Much time has passed, and John’s understanding of this God-man he walked beside has deepened. However, while Jesus walked with them, they did not grasp who he was. 

Is it possible that John’s understanding of Jesus was based upon what he might have comprehended from the writings of the Prophet Isaiah? Anything is possible, and we cannot exclude the idea merely because we do not see it in scripture. We do not see dinosaurs in scripture, but there is no denying they were here.

We just looked at Isaiah 9:6, where it says, “His name shall be called …, The mighty God, The everlasting Father.” Is it possible that the Holy Spirit saw fit to establish and validate the Son all at once by pointing out that they are one and the same, and yet individual, capable of being the “son” that is given? Absolutely!

The following is the verse with the Strong’s numbers integrated into the passage.

John 1:1 NASB: “In the beginningG746 was the WordG3056, and the WordG3056 was with GodG2316, and the WordG3056 was GodG2316.”

I want to focus on the phrase “In the beginning.” The variations on translating this are wide: 

  • The ERV (Easy to Read Version) states, “Before the world began, the Word was there,” which implies a time frame.

  • If you were to use the Literal Version, it italicized the word “the” to indicate that it was added for clarity. The LITV conveys a process.

When I read from one of the most used translations, the NIV, I get this, “In the beginning was the Word.” “In the beginning was the Word” strikes me as little more than a statement of fact, but doesn’t that present a problem as the mind immediately wants proof. 

Since our “Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge” reference to “in beginning” leads to other passages, let’s see what they say. 

In the beginning: 

Genesis 1:1 NET. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The statement is comparable to what John said, and every Jewish reader would have had the loud tone of their teaching Rabbi in their head as their mind turned back to Genesis and the Torah. This was the beginning of history; their story and knowledge of the Holy begins here.

Here, though, in Genesis, the Hebrew word is: רֵאשִׁית / rê’shı̂yth / ray-sheeth’. From the same as H7218, the first, in place, time, order or rank (specifically a firstfruit): – beginning, chief (-est), first (-fruits, part, time), principal thing.

Strong’s concordance points us to the origin or base word H7218 – רֹאשׁ / rô’sh /roshe. From an unused root apparently meaning to shake; the head (as most easily shaken), whether literally or figuratively.

Based on the Hebrew, I see that I could have also said, 

  • The first thing –

  • The order of things –

  • The principal thing (this opens another line of thinking in me.)

  • And finally, I might have said, the chief thing.

    (Again, another line of thinking entails the idea that multiple things were to be done.)

    Since God knows the end of a matter before it ever starts, He knew that putting an end to a mutiny, such as Satan’s, had to come. He could have restored the world without us perpetuating the problem, but here we are, and therefore, we are a part of the plan.

The phrase “in beginning,” indicates a process. That means creation could have been an aspect of the process.

I briefly touched upon the Hebrew word rê’shı̂yth, but what about the Greek word for beginning, the place where we started? 

“In the beginning.” In Greek, the word is ἀρχή / archē / ar-khay’. From G756; (properly abstract) a commencement, or (concrete) chief (in various applications of order, time, place or rank): – beginning, corner, (at the) first (estate), magistrate, power, principality, principle, rule.

Once again, we have the idea of a process that opens the door to other things. 

The TSK references continue with the following:

Colossians 1:17 NASB: “He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together.”

Suggesting that Jesus was right there, in the nothingness, before creation.

Ephesians 3:9 NASB “and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;.”

Since we have pointed out that the Word was God – 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 MKJV) 

Then, when we look at Ephesians 3:9, we can understand that God and Jesus are considered one and the same.

I will finish this portion by adding verses two and three.

John 1:1-3 MKJV, In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2) He was in the beginning with God. 3) All things came into being through Him, and without Him, not even one thing came into being that has come into being.

Let me point something out, “and without Him, not even one thing came into being that has come into being.” That happens to include you. 

The question has come up lately: Are you comfortable with your relationship with the Father? 

The answer, for me, is an immediate yes, but my mindset tends to interpret this as speaking about His love for me.

I know He loves me. This statement, on my part, is not a boast; this came out of times of stress and pain when I cried out to God. It develops the trust one builds when someone sticks by you, especially when you do not think you deserve it. However, it does not always override the negativity in my head, which comes from a lifetime of abuse in which co-dependency was unwittingly taught; I hope that was the case.

An acquaintance recently commented about perpetrators getting minuscule sentences while the abuse they inflicted stays with the victims for their lifetime. Understanding what I am saying requires you to think outside the box. Perpetrators may not be criminal in their actions because, in some cases, they only use words as their weapons. However, the damage haunts you forever. I deal with the effects of that very thing to this day, holding memories of abuses inflicted by others as far back as elementary school – we are talking about a time frame that extends beyond fifty years. My fiancee does not understand, but neither do I most of the time. Though I wish it could go away, my only hope is in the peace I obtain through my relationship with Jesus Christ.

Question: Had Jesus, knowing how things would turn out, submitted Himself to take on the form of a man? 

One piece of evidence that fuels a thought such as this comes from the many pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus Christ (Theology likes to use the word Christophany) throughout the Old Testament. If the Messiah created with a human inclination, then he would have done so with a concern for the beauty of nature, which we humans are so taken with, as it would have become a part of His thinking. Although I am getting ahead of myself, John 1:14 clearly tells us that the Word became flesh many times.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
(John 1:14 NASB)

The word “became” comes from the Greek word ginomai. The Word Study Dictionary defines it as “to begin to be, to come into existence or into any state, or simply to be.“

1 John 1:1 NASB “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life–”

John and many other disciples unashamedly testified to some essential things that many feel comfortable denying or ignoring.

  • We heard. Many events have sounds and memorable sayings associated with them. 

  • We have seen with our eyes. We saw people’s lives change because of the miracles.

  • We touched with our hands. While touching has some wide latitude, it could be taken to mean they felt the Son of God.

In a translation such as the LITV, the word “the” is italicized, indicating that it was added for clarity.

John 1:1 LITV “In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I could read this, “In beginning.” A read like this applies no parameters to how this should be understood. The Septuagint, where it reads “en arche,” conveys the idea of a point of commencement, simply to begin, or it is indicative of a process.

Since John seems to lean heavily upon Genesis 1:1 as a prophetic witness, you would think that we would see the same treatment of the word “the” in the Genesis record. However, a proper study of the Genesis account proves that it could be read in the same manner but by using a singular Hebrew word, rê’shı̂yth.

Now, let’s ponder the phrase “the Word” momentarily.

 Joh_1:14; Rev_19:13

The phrase is simple enough. It is (as Strong’s concordance points out) “… in other words, pointing to one thing, the person of Jesus in all His forms.

I already pointed out how John 1:14 tells us that the Word became flesh. Suddenly, I find my thoughts swimming in muddy water, and here is why.

Here I am in January 2023, and lately, one trend has been to ask an artificial intelligence application to provide an image of God. Some results are effeminate, homogeneous, ethereal beings with a single eye where the forehead should be.

When people try to play the race card and say that “we” have created a white God, I point out that there is the possibility that God is nuclear energy. I say that because Moses was NOT allowed to look at the face of God, as it would kill the man. Instead, Moses was allowed a fleeting glimpse of the backside of God as He moved away. As a result of that moment, Moses glowed for quite a while, so much so that the people asked him to cover his head.

“It came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses’ hand as he was coming down from the mountain) that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him.” (Exodus 34:29 NASB)

We know that Moses was on that mountain for 40 days and nights, longer than a human can live without water and food, but we have no chronological timeline of when specific things occurred. The point here is we do not know how long Moses glowed.

And yet, when the Pharisees demanded that Jesus show them the Father, He merely said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. We see Jesus, and therefore, the Father, through His word.

Posted in Adam, bible study, children, Colossians, creation, Creation, fallen angels, Genesis, strange doctrines, the goal of our instruction, Thoughts on scripture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Significance of John’s Gospel for Jewish Believers. An Overview.

Posted on 01/23/2025 by remso

Having heard the theological breakdowns of John’s gospel, I am acknowledging that these portrayals are most assuredly there. However, all those word pictures seem to do little for me as I am always taken back by the power and depth of this introduction

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Sadly, most of us do not grasp what is being said here; it is a point that goes on for several verses and magnifies the concept that “NOTHING” was made without Him. 

My fiance (at the time) had a run-in with a lady who was an adamant defender of Replacement Theology. (I mentioned this to my men’s group, and a retired teacher was in that group. Immediately, the teacher responded, “This is what Hitler was teaching in Germany as he rose to power. “) The woman espousing Replacement Theology threw her hand up in my fiance’s face several times. It’s the gesture some use when they refuse to leave room for communication. I am unsure how effective it is, but they are telling you, “Talk to the hand,” because I am not listening. As my fiancee tried to enlighten her through simple, apologetic defenses, she included the fact that the Bible is a Jewish book written to the early church, which primarily consisted of Jewish converts. My fiancee made me proud by asserting that we need to come into line with the concept if we want to understand so many of those things we consistently miss – like the entire Book of Revelation. Thankfully, the Pastor came into view and reiterated those same ideas to this lady without full knowledge of what had been said. (It is nice to know you are on the right track, or at least in line with your pastor’s theological position, something we were unaware of previously.)

Why was any of that necessary?

Because reading for understanding will help to quell the false teachings, like Replacement Theology.

Reading for depth is precisely what I want to do with John’s gospel. 

Having done this once before in a group setting, I can tell you it is lengthy. Before you berate me for not being concise, I must inform you that I stumbled upon a commentary by Arthur Pink; his commentary is exclusively focused on the Gospel of John and is as thick as my Four Translation Comparative Bible, and I value the insights I find there.

Why did John write this Gospel?

First, let me comment on the timing. 

We understand that John wrote this gospel about A.D. 90. As a comparison, John wrote the Revelation on the Isle of Patmos about A.D. 96.

  • Luke wrote his gospel about A.D. 56-63
  • Mark, it appears, was writing on behalf of Peter and wrote between A.D. 57-63
  • Matthew, one of the disciples, and like John – a first-hand witness, wrote, according to tradition, A.D. 37. An interesting point here is that Dr. Gary Habermas brought out in an apologetics seminar that I attended pointed out how early eyewitness accounts are the most valid piece of evidence we have of an event; Jesus’ life and death are that event. This is important because Jesus was crucified and rose again in A.D. 36. Matthew gave us a first-hand account within one year of Jesus’ death. Contrast this information with someone like Buddha, who had nothing written about him until 600 to 800 years later.

It is possible that John, having read what the others had said, wanted to make a point, a point that the others seemed to have missed.

Secondly, as we come to understand from the reading of Paul’s missionary journeys, John was ministering exclusively to the Jewish community. 

It is possible that having heard Jesus say, “I have come for the lost sheep of Israel,” John also took this to heart. 

John also witnessed the impact of the Holy Spirit, not only on the life of Peter on the Day of Pentecost but on the number of Jews (over 3000) who came to an understanding that Jesus was the Messiah they longed for. 

Suddenly, there was a great need for a Pastor.

What would that need have looked like to the young disciple John, considering that all they knew about leading people came out of the synagogues, and, even though we do not see this spelled out in scripture, what Jesus might have been teaching them.

The third point I want to consider is that John wrote, almost exclusively, to a Jewish audience. 

One piece of evidence for this comes from Revelation, which was written sometime later. 

Revelation 1:11 KJV Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What you see, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. 

Church. This is the Greek word ekklesia – a compound of G1537 and a derivative of G2564 – and means a calling out, that is, (concretely) a popular meeting, especially a religious congregation (a Jewish synagogue or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both): – assembly, church. 

We can also see from Vine’s Expository of New Testament Words that the word ekklēsia can be interpreted as Assembly. 

1. ekklesia (G1577), from ek, “out of,” and klesis, “a calling” (kaleo, “to call”), was used among the Greeks of a body of citizens “gathered” to discuss the affairs of state, Acts 19:39. In the Septuagint. It is used to designate the “gathering” of Israel, summoned for any definite purpose, or a “gathering” regarded as representative of the whole nation. In Acts 7:38, it is used for Israel; in Acts 19:32 and Acts 19:41, for a riotous mob. It has two applications to companies of Christians, (a) to the whole company of the redeemed throughout the present era, the company of which Christ said, “I will build My Church,” Matthew 16:18, and which is further described as “the Church which is His Body,” Ephesians 1:22; Ephesians 5:23, (b) in the singular number (e.g., Matthew 18:17, RV marg., “congregation”), to a company consisting of professed believers, e.g., Acts 20:28; 1Corinthians 1:2. 

Because some will not buy into this idea of John writing to a Jewish community based upon one witness, allow me to give you another. 

Revelation 2:9 KJV I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not but are the synagogue of Satan.

  • Things to make note of here. Satan does not have a synagogue, but Jews do.
  • However, John was not writing to Jews in general; he was specifically writing to Jewish converts, many of whom were still meeting in their synagogues.
  • Verse 9 above says, “I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not but of the synagogue of Satan.”This tells me that they did not have to give up their traditions – feasts of the Jews – holy days, nor abandon being a part of the life found in the synagogues. For those who wish to espouse the false teaching of Replacement Theology, it does not take much to see that God, even in this example, had not ordered them out of the synagogues but merely desired to become the center of their focus as the living Messiah, the primary person that they, as Jews, were looking for.

The word synagogue appears in several NT books and is not exclusive to John’s writings.

Assuming that John’s most significant impact would be on the Jewish community that is now a believer, why did he think he needed to emphasize, in the most substantial way, that Jesus was God?

Perhaps the answer lies in Revelation 2:9, which says,

“and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”

Christians are notorious for asking, how can I know if I committed the unpardonable sin of blasphemy? The mere fact that you are concerned demonstrates that you have not. So, we ask this question because we do not know what the word blasphemy means or what it applies to.

Jesus answered this question in Matthew 12:32 when He said,

“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”

Another translation may be more precise.

“Anyone who speaks against the Son of Man can be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.” Matthew 12:32 NLT

Go back to Matthew 12 and see what the context is.

The Pharisees had attributed the things He had done to Satan/Beelzebub. So, the relevance comes into play in Revelation 2:9 because this body, considered to be believers, had attributed God’s works to Satan.

If I had understood that this was your frailty, I would have wanted to bring you back to the center, and it would probably sound like this: “The Word was God Himself.”

Posted in bible study, Deception, doctrines of demons, Gospel of John, Holy spirit, Jews, Messiah, pastor, strange doctrines, straying from the truth, Synagogue, Thoughts on scripture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Understanding Joel 2: Hope Amid Darkness

Posted on 01/04/2025 by remso

Jerusalem – Image via Wikipedia

Call me what you wish, but know this. I will deliver what I feel the Lord is telling me to say. The day of the Lord is upon us. Even in the midst of darkness, His word and His Spirit will still be active.

I have chopped up this passage below because of its length and highlighted those things that my spirit feels strongly about.
Although the time to come is not going to be pretty, God will show himself strong through the life of the person who will call upon Him. The word of God will never pass away, and the Holy Spirit of the living God will remain upon this earth, drawing all who will turn to Him.

Joel 2:1-32 NIV Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand— (2) a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. ….a large and mighty army comes, ….. (6) At the sight of them, nations are in anguish; every face turns pale. …… (10) Before them the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine. (11) The LORD thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that obeys his command. The day of the LORD is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it? (12) “Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” (13) Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. (14) Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing— ……… Let them say, “Spare your people, LORD. …… (28) “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. (29) Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. (30) I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. (31) The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. (32) And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the LORD has said, even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.

We, the pathetic Laodicean church, the one He calls lukewarm, who have expressed their distaste for the power and presence of God, will now witness those who have had enough mediocrity rise up in power like never before. This is not about money but my presence in the lives of willing people. I am crying out in the streets for the lost and wayward to come, and I will respond to those who turn to me and press into me. I will, says the Lord, Rise upon the land and show myself strong. Never again will people mock my name. I am calling forth my army. The call has gone out; come. If you will turn to me, desiring me, I will overwhelm you with my presence, and you will know me as you have never known.

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Understanding the Great Sign of Revelation 12:1

Posted on 12/31/2024 by remso

 Yes, I know, I haven’t posted for some time now. Excuses, I have none, but life certainly gets in the way, and I went through a dry spell.

Revelation 12:1 NASB

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;

I am focusing on this passage because, within my relatively small circle of teachers, this was a hot topic for several years, and many of these teachers were not afraid to point out that we are in the season in which Jesus will come to snatch away the church.

If you have been a follower of my posts, then you know I equated this season to the American Baseball World Series. We recently finished the World Series in October of this year. To bring you up to speed on why this is poignant to Revelation 12, the World Series has variables built into the game, and so does the great sign.

The King James conveys Revelation 12:1 in this manner:

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:” 

I advocate studying the simplest words and phrases, so let’s start with this.

A great –

The Strong’s number is G3173. It is the Greek word mégas; fem. megále, neut. Méga. It is an adjective (a word that describes;) and implies great size, largeness, or physical magnitude.

The Word study dictionary also speaks of men or creatures, indicating great size or stature.

Without explanatory details, we can understand that this “sign” is enormous.

Sign –

Sign is the Strong’s # G4592. It is the Greek word sēmeion. It is a noun and means sign, mark, token, or a miracle with a spiritual end and purpose.

An obvious factor is that we know this is NOT a miracle, therefore we will cling to it being a sign, mark or token.

What can I make of this so far?

In John’s writings, it is portrayed as something of tremendous size whose purpose is to mark an end. John wrote about a time in the future, and we live in that time.

Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?

Revelation 12:1 KJV  And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

There appeared –

Feel free to look at other translations if you can access another.

Appeared is the Greek word optánomai. This is Strong’s # G3700 – and the reference implies with eyes wide open.

There is a clear sense that the Spirit wants us to take this in and understand.

If this is the arrangement of stars and heavenly bodies that make up the constellation Virgo, you can be confident that, for us, this constellation did not merely appear in the sky. What changed, and rather suddenly, was that other planets and moving objects, such as moons, comets, and asteroids, combined to create this sign.

According to the website “EarthSky.org”, this was initiated around September 17, 2017, and has continued to demonstrate God’s prophetic word ever since. This “scientific” website also tells us that the constellation represents a harvest goddess.

In searching for answers, I stumbled upon this website: https://www.torahtimes.org/writings/date-clarified/article.html – here, we look at this constellation from a Jewish point of view. Considering that the entirety of our mindset should be Jewish, I thought this would be important. The following are excerpts from their site.

  • “The word “sign” is first mentioned in Gen. 1:141, where it is explained, “Then they will have been for signs and for appointed times, and for days, and years.”

  • “The woman is the constellation Virgo. This is an autumn seasonal sign when the sun conjuncts with it. The sun is also said to be in it in the autumn, or in front of it.”

    The sun’s placement and timing would not seem important; however, it plays a role as the scene demonstrates God’s plan of redemption and salvation of humanity, should they decide to jump on board.

    As a youth, these “night objects” were nothing more than interesting and pretty lights in the sky. What began to change my thinking was that the magi from the east, whom we understand to have been trained by Daniel while he, too, was in Babylonian captivity, the Magi used those lights to lead them to the Messiah. Add to this that Herod ordered the Scribes and Pharisees of the Jews to testify before him as to what sign the Magi had followed and the significance of such a sign. They knew that it was an indication of the birth of Jesus the Messiah, and they had chosen not to ascribe to it as the Magi had.

  • The “torahtimes.org” goes on to say that “Virgo is the greatest of the constellations which mark the course of the sun, just as the text says, “a great sign.”” Of all the ecliptic constellations, it is the second largest. The largest constellation is Hydra, but this one does not lie along the ecliptic course of the sun, and it is only slightly larger.

    Significant information.

  • “The sun moves into a new constellation almost every month. In September the sun lies in front of the constellation of Virgo. So this sign is giving us the seasonal date of Messiah’s birth.”

    Wouldn’t it be awesome if this was the year that it marked the return of Jesus, the Messiah, to collect His bride?

  • “Now when the sun is in a constellation sign its glare keeps the stars from being seen. However ancient astronomers back to Persian times (think about Daniel when you read this) knew exactly which stars the sun was in conjunction with even though they could not see past the sun. They determined this by observing the constellation at night in another season and then calculating the sun’s position when it moved into the sign. We must consider that Yoɦanan is seeing with the eyes of the Ruaɦ Elohım (this is the Hebrew equivalent to the Holy Spirit,) in the vision, and that though the constellation is clothed with the sun, he (John the beloved,) is enabled to see it and the selected stars at the head of it.”

    “The stars are there, but he (John) is only shown twelve. There are really many more than twelve stars.

    He is only shown twelve stars because the stars are supposed to give an additional message to the reader. These stars are the twelve tribes of Yisra‘ɛl (Israel). So we see a second message layered within the astronomical sign—about Yisra‘ɛl.

    Later in the passage, we also see that the woman is more than just a constellation.”

    “The position of the moon is given under the feet of the woman. In order to appreciate this we have to know at what angle this sign is typically viewed. As viewed from earth near sunset at the start of the feast day the vision appears like this simulated image. The atmosphere setting for the Stellarium 0.14.1 software has been turned off in the simulation. Otherwise the glare of the sun would fill the whole constellation. This makes the metaphor “clothed with the sun” sensible.”

    “The position of the moon on three days is as follows:

8/30 after sun sets   The Moon is under the hip and not visible.  
8/31 after sun sets   New Moon first visible (Tishri 1) under feet and legs. 
9/1 after sun sets.   Moon under empty space, (Tishri 2)       between Libra and Virgo.

“The correct position is for sunset 8/31(August), which is the beginning of Yom Teruah, a scriptural feast day, also called Rosh Hashanah or the Feast of Trumpet”(s.)

“The sun only covers (“clothes”) the constellation Virgo in the fall, and this recurs every year. Likewise, when the moon is near the sun to the east of the sun, then it is likely to be a new moon. The lineup with the legs shows that it is a new moon. I should note that in Hebrew and also the Greek used by the Jews, the word “feet” also means “legs.”

The lineup of the moon, as described, does not occur nearly as well in other years, and in some years, not at all. This is because the sun varies its location in the constellation as the new moon day moves back and forth for about 30 days. And often the locations are not ideal.”

“Interpreting the Parable of Rev. 12:1-2”

“The simple astronomical explanation given above corresponds to all the details in the passage.”

“The constellation of Virgo is a woman who is clothed with the sun in the fall, and under her feet was the new moon, and there are at least twelve stars near the head.”

The constellation is a sign.”

It is also a great sign.

“At the time of the sign, the woman was in labor to give birth. The only year that matched the sign exactly, and exactly with the priestly divisions, was 2 BC on August 31. (Which happened to be the birth of Jesus.)

Yet, most amazingly, and most incredibly, almost everyone in the Christian world hastens to DENY that this is what the sign means.”

“Yeshu‘a has his reasons, and he stated them in part here (See Matthew 13:10-17)2. Messiah did not just tell parables himself while on earth. But through the Spirit he tells parables in the Scripture. There are quite a number of chronological ciphers both in the Torah and Prophets and also in the Apostolic Writings (a.k.a. New Testament). Revelation 12:1-2 is one of them.”

Wouldn’t it be awesome if God decided it was time for Jesus to come and harvest His bride?

Many tried to make me aware of this sign, and I did what most of you do; I ignored the information because it was too much, and I integrated the demonic association of the stars (astrology) with astronomy, a scientific observation of the universe.

in heaven –

Strong’s #G3772. It is the Greek word ouranos and means the sky; by extension, heaven (as the abode of God).

Now, we can ascertain that this great sign will be in the heavens, the sky, among the stars.

a woman –

Woman is the Greek word gune. It is the Strong’s #G1096 and means a woman, specifically a wife: G1135.

She represents Israel, Eve who is the birth mother that led to Israel, and Jesus.

Assuming you have been paying attention, then you know that the first scriptural reference that demonstrates the plan of salvation and redemption of humanity, even if they should reject that plan, is through the woman Eve, with not only the birth of Israel, once again, but also the birth of Jesus.

Why Jesus?

Since the fall of humanity in the garden, we are ALL tainted in our DNA and carry traits that motivate us to SIN.

The Defenders Study Bible tells us that Genesis 3:15 is

“the first promise of redemption (Gen_3:15) is commonly known as the protevangel (first gospel). In its essence, the gospel (good news) is the message that the Creator is also our Redeemer and coming King and that true faith in Him—faith which produces salvation—will also produce loving obedience to His Word.”

I will tell you that I had never heard the term protevangel until the 70th year of my life. However, I was adept enough to realize that the plan of redemption, though somewhat masked in terminology, was there in God’s adversarial opposition to Satan.

The passage reads like this.

Genesis 3:15 MKJV  And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He will bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.

A more readable translation.

Genesis 3:15 BBE  And there will be war between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed: by him will your head be crushed and by you his foot will be wounded.

Pay attention to words and phrases such as enmity (what does that mean?) and “between your seed and her Seed.”

Enmity can be interchanged with hostility, antagonism, ill-will, and hatred. As you can see, the Bible in Basic English says there will be a war. When you read that the war began long ago in the heavens, you might wonder why it has continued for so long.

In the Gospel of Luke, it is recorded:

Luke 10:18 MKJV  And He said to them, I saw Satan fall from Heaven like lightning.

Satan did not merely trip and fall off the edge; he fought against the heavenly forces and lost. God himself threw Satan out of heaven. You might think that God was sufficient to kill Satan like a bug, but Satan, like the angels, is an eternal being and cannot be killed; therefore, Satan is still alive, and we see him in the Book of Job, approaching God with the Sons of God. Note: God does not waste time with idle threats, and that is why we will also see Satan locked up for a thousand years and then permanently, forever.

Ezekiel also describes the end result of this battle.

Ezekiel 28:15-16 MKJV  You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created until iniquity was found in you.  16  By the multitude of your goods, they have filled your midst with violence, and you have sinned. So I cast you profaned from the height of God, and I destroy you, O covering cherub, from among the stones of fire.

And Isaiah speaks of Satan being brought down.

Isaiah 14:13-15 MKJV  For you have said in your heart, I will go up to the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.  14  I will go up above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.  15  Yet you shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the Pit.

We are still considering Genesis 3:15.

As many will tell you, the woman does not carry the seed but the result of the interaction of a seed from the male with the egg of the woman. In the case of Mary, from the point in which she agreed to be a participant, the Holy Spirit came upon her, and she became merely the carrier of a fertile egg that He created, and that became Jesus.

Why couldn’t God use one of the eggs from Mary’s womb?

Because of the actions of Adam and Eve in the Garden, where they both partook of the fruit that changed their DNA, they impacted the lineage of all humanity.

Let’s assume you don’t believe that could happen.

What do you think is happening when you take a mRNA vaccine that is openly declared to change your DNA? It changes your DNA. This is why God had to make a fertilized egg absent the typical path of fertilization, and Mary simply carried it as a surrogate mother through the birth process. Jesus, by this process, may have looked and acted like a human, but He did NOT have damaged DNA that pushed and motivated Him to sin, as it does us, and, therefore, had no sin.

So, Satan has been in a perpetual war with the seed, the lineage of Eve, ever since that day.

Proof?

Genesis 4:8 MKJV  And Cain talked with his brother Abel. And it happened when they were in the field; Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

The firstborn child of Adam and Eve killed the secondborn over a sacrifice, which was easy to resolve by following the instructions. We, in scripture, do not see the specifics of those instructions, but the understanding that it happened is there if you are willing to look for it.

The “logical” mind will say this verse does not say that Satan killed Abel. It does not have to. We already know that Satan will try to kill off the seed of the woman, and as you continue to study, you will find that God uses people motivated by Satan and his demons to carry out the destructive side of evil.

End notes:

1) Genesis 1:14 BSB  And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish between the day and the night, and let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years.

2) Matthew 13:10-17 BSB  Then the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Why do You speak to the people in parables?”  11  He replied, “The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  12  Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.  13  This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’  14  In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.  15  For this people’s heart has grown callous; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.’  16  But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.  17  For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

 

Posted in Adam, beginning, bible study, Creation, devour, fallen angels, Heaven, Revelation, roaring lion, Satan, Thoughts on scripture, Wife | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Young earth or old earth, is it worth the fight?

Posted on 10/13/2024 by remso

At a time when we may be sitting at the edge of the church’s removal from earth, it seems strange to ask the question,

“Are we dealing with a young earth or an old one?”

Science, with its ties to Darwinian theory and all of those simian-like skulls that we were compelled to associate with evolutionary theories, which were proven to be human manipulations pushed upon the public; that and the growing understanding of how the Smithsonian Institute and its aggressive push toward evolution and crushing of Christian beliefs played a role in our understanding of history, the less I value their input.

In a typical conversation with a young earth advocate who has brutishly advocated for their position, I will frequently bring up the validity of an old earth against a young earth based upon our lack of understanding of the scope of a simple Hebrew word like yôm, or day in the English transliteration.

The Young Earthers typically base their spirited arguments on information they have obtained from Dr. Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis. Dr. Hamm also created the Young Earth creationist organization that operates the Ark Encounter in Kentucky and believes wholeheartedly in the teachings of James Ussher.

According to Wikipedia and information listed by the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, James Ussher obtained a Master’s in Theology by age 20. He quickly became the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland between 1625 and 1656. Many sought his wisdom, and he had the ear of King James of England. His influence extended into every known denomination of the time.

Ussher was best known for his calculation of the age of the Universe, known as the ‘Ussher chronology.’ He determined the first day of biblical creation to be October 23, 4004 BC. By the middle of the 19th century, Ussher’s chronology came under increasing attack from supporters of uniformitarianism, who argued that Ussher’s “young Earth” was incompatible with the increasingly accepted view of an Earth much more ancient than Ussher’s.

In the book Before Genesis, the authors Donna Holland and Dr. Thomas Horn pointed out that Ussher admitted that he assumed several dates. This assumption, as Donna Holland and Dr. Horn have pointed out, “may have been necessary, seeing as scripture is vague on some things like the word used for both a small increment of time or a vast period of undocumented time; and the transliteration of the King James version from “original” sources of Hebrew is influenced by many issues and difficult at best.”

These are things that would have influenced and potentially corrupted someone’s understanding.

  1. Moses documented what he saw, heard, and experienced. God filled in other details, such as the creation of the earth and, in time, humanity—Adam and Eve.

  2. This accumulation of laws, history, and—in the case of Psalms and Proverbs—poetry became the Torah. But remember that until Heidelberg invented the printing press, the Torah was only in scroll form. These scrolls were so valuable that copies were primarily kept in the synagogues. If the scribe “copying” a scroll made a mistake, the entire scroll must be trashed. So, errors may not have been found for many years.

  3. What language did they use to make these Bibles we use? Well, it is safe to say it was NOT English. We know that the Torah may well have been initially written in a form of Hebrew that was banished during Roman oppression. There would have been an eventual struggle to try to recover that language. A problem like this might explain why much of the Bible was transliterated from Koine Greek. Wikipedia gives us this about Koine Greek – it is also known as Hellenistic and Biblical Greek, evolved from Attic, and is a more recent dialect. It is pronounced more closely to modern Greek. It is the dialect in which the New Testament was composed and into which the Old Testament, or Septuagint, was translated from older Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts.

I asked Wikipedia how many forms of Hebrew are known? The response:

    • Biblical Hebrew: Also known as Classical Hebrew, this is the archaic form of Hebrew used in most of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). 

    • Mishnaic Hebrew: Also known as Rabbinic Hebrew, this was the language used in the Mishna, a collection of Jewish traditions written around 200 CE. 

    • Medieval Hebrew: This period lasted from the 6th to the 13th century CE, and many words were borrowed from other languages. 

    • Modern Hebrew: This is the language used in Israel today. It has two main versions: Sephardic Hebrew, also known as Ivrit or Israeli, and Ashkenazi Hebrew, also known as Ladino or Yiddish. 

    • Ashkenazi Hebrew: This dialect is commonly used in Israel, but its popularity is declining compared to Israeli Hebrew. 

    • Sephardi Hebrew: This dialect is spoken by Jews from Spain, Brazil, Portugal, and Italy. 

    • Mizrahi Hebrew: This dialect is spoken by Jews from the Middle East. 

So, under Roman rule, where the Hebrew language, both written and spoken, was banished, the Jewish people had to learn Greek. Thus, Greek and Aramaic became the primary languages of biblical restoration, as we see in Daniel’s writings.

Imagine the collective effort required to recover the entire book of Isaiah, for example. An oral recitation, a shared responsibility, would have been mandatory. The process of picking someone or multiple persons’ brains to recover a rather large document not only adds to the potential for errors but also underscores the sense of community in the restoration of these texts. Many of those documents that were stashed away in the Qumran caves played a crucial role in the restoration of the Torah.

So when you respond to someone (typically a religious zealot who adheres to a literal six-day, 24-hour creation) with yes, but the Hebrew word yôm, which was translated as a day in Genesis 1:5, can also be translated as vast eons of time, the skilled young earth apologist will perpetually try to deter your assertions by pointing out God’s installation of day and night, which, in their minds, clearly demonstrates a 24-hour period.

Sadly, all this talk about 24-hour creation periods doesn’t seem to work without a Sun, and we don’t see that until Genesis 1:16 when we see God placing the Sun in the sky on the fourth day.

Genesis 1:16NASB God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.

The Hebrew word yôm covers a wide range of time concepts. The Word Study Dictionary gives us this.

  • A masculine noun meaning day, time, or year.

  • This word stands as the most basic conception of time in the Old Testament.

  • It designates such wide-ranging elements as the daylight hours from sunrise to sunset (Gen_1:5; 1Ki_19:4);

  • a literal twenty-four-hour cycle (Deu_16:8; 2Ki_25:30);

  • a generic span of time (Gen_26:8; Num_20:15);

    In Genesis 26:8 it is an indeterminate amount of time, likely consisting of days (hence, along time.)

    Genesis 26:7-8 LEB  When the men of the place asked concerning his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” for he was afraid to say, “my wife,” thinking “the men of the place will kill me on account of Rebekah, for she was beautiful.”  8  And it happened that, when he had been there a long time, Abimelech the king of the Philistines looked through the window, and saw—behold—Isaac was fondling Rebekah his wife.

    In the book of Numbers, we see God’s people as slaves in Egypt for a long time.

    Numbers 20:15 LEB  our ancestors went down to Egypt, and we lived in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians mistreated us and our ancestors.

    In Exodus 12:40 we see a reference that spells out how long Israel was there in captivity; that would indicate that “yôm” also meant 430 years.

  • a given point in time (Gen_2:17; Gen_47:29; Eze_33:12).

    In Genesis 2:17, the day was not specified and was certainly to come, but when?

    Genesis 2:17 LEB  but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”

    Genesis 47:29, in speaking of Jacob / Israel, he had lived a full life and at this point they could see his death coming, but no one could say when that would happen. In this case, the yôm (or day of his death) was unknown to them.

  • In the plural, the word may also mean the span of life (Psa_102:3 [4])

    Psalms 102:3 LEB  for my days vanish in smoke, and my bones are charred like a hearth.

  • or a year (Lev_25:29; 1Sa_27:7).

    Leviticus 25:29 LEB  “‘ And if a man sells a residential house in a walled city, then it shall be his redemption until completing a year after his selling; its redemption shall last a year.

    In the NASB version of this passage, the length is spelled out as a full year. This is the Strong’s number H3117 yôm.

  • The prophets often infuse the word with end-times meanings or connotations, using it in connection with a future period of consequential events, such as the “day of the LORD” (Jer_46:10; Zec_14:1) or simply, “that day” (Isa_19:23; Zec_14:20-21).

Zechariah is speaking about the thousand year reign of the Messiah over the earth and specifically the nations participating in the Feast of Booths.

Zechariah 14:20-21 LEB  On that day there will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to Yahweh.” And the cooking pots in the house of Yahweh will be holy, like the sacrificial basins before the altar.  21  And every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to Yahweh of hosts, and all those who sacrifice will come and will take from them, and will cook in them, and there will be no longer a trader in the house of Yahweh of hosts on that day.

Here, in contrast to a 24-hour day, the usage of the phrase “on that day” clearly refers to the entirety of actions that occur during the millennial reign, and it is the word yôm.

The word yôm is used by the Prophet Jeremiah as he addresses the seven years of God’s wrath.

Jeremiah 46:10 LEB  For that day is to the Lord Yahweh of hosts a day of retribution, to take revenge on his foes. And the sword will devour and be satisfied, and it will drink its fill of their blood, for a sacrifice is for the Lord Yahweh of hosts in the land of the north by the Euphrates River.

Having studied our Bibles, we know that this time of revenge is also known as God’s wrath. This is the period between the catching away of the bride of Christ and the millennial reign.

My hope is that I have made it possible for you to read the scriptures with an open mind and are willing to take in other information that would help to make a concept, such as a day a word that can help to answer your questions instead of creating more.

If I can l read Genesis 1:1 with the understanding that Jesus spoke the entirety of the creation into existence; and that Isaiah 45:18 tells us that it was perfect in the day that it was formed, then something cataclysmic happened between verses 1 and 2. It is now easier to understand that the cataclysmic event happened within an indeterminate time frame and that God was now putting things back into order without holding to a 24-hour time frame. 

Posted in assumption, bible study, creation, Creation, creationist, Earth, Genesis, Jeremiah, old earth, undefined time period | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A layman’s commentary on Matthew 24 verses 44 through 51. Be alert because you do not know the hour.

Posted on 09/08/2024 by remso

 Let’s end this dive into Matthew 24.

Our last look into Matthew 24 gave us this:

“Therefore, be alert, because you don’t know on what day your Lord will return. You realize that if a homeowner had known at what time of the night a thief was coming, he would have stayed awake. He would not have let the thief break into his house. Therefore, you, too, must be ready because the Son of Man will return when you least expect him.”
Matthew 24:42-44 GW

In addition to not being deceived, Jesus asks us to be alert and stay awake – not literally. Still, it certainly conveys the idea that those of us who trust in Jesus’ word are to pay attention to the signs we are NOW experiencing.

“Who is the faithful and sensible servant whose master puts him in charge of the household staff, to give them their food at the proper time?”
Matthew 24:45 CJB

Referring to you as a servant would almost be insulting, but Jesus did. I have a question.

Do servants have an option to question the master’s commands?

Not unless they have an extraordinary relationship with the master, but even then, they probably know that there is a line that should never be crossed. Well, if Jesus is calling us servants, then perhaps we should pay attention and be alert.

Who is Jesus referring to when He speaks of servants who have been put in charge of the household staff to give them their food at the proper time?

Since the subject matter is the Jewish people and their culture, then would it surprise you if I told you that He is talking about the religious leadership of Israel.

Can I apply this to myself?

I am and you would be wise to quickly do the same.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary indicates that this is a test and implies that even the care of the earth has been under our influence. I would say that our corporate leaders have failed miserably as we sought the almighty dollar to excesses. It sounds like we are under the law, and to a degree, we are, for the law was the only reasonable substitute since the earth, through Adam, fell under the curse.

The response to the question, “who is the faithful and sensible servant,” comes in verse 46.

“It will go well with that servant if he is found doing his job when his master comes.” Matthew 24:46 CJB

This speaks about God’s judgment, the seven years of wrath that will be poured out upon:

  1. The nations – this includes all who reject Jesus, the Messiah.

  2. The Jewish leadership: for teaching others to reject Yeshua, for rejecting the Messiah, who is spelled out explicitly in the Torah, and all while tormenting those who would accept Jesus as the Messiah.

  3. And He is going to pour out His wrath upon those who have killed the people and destroyed the earth in their quest for wealth.

What is our job?

Preach the good news whenever possible and wait eagerly for His return.

A parable, titled by the modern translators, reads like this.

“You Must Be Ready”

Luke 12:35 CJB “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit,”

Verse 35 should have a familiar ring to it.

It sounds like our Lord pulled aspects from “The Parable of the Ten Virgins,” which we find in Matthew 25:1-13. All of them took oil lamps, while half took additional oil in case the night went longer than expected. Those who did not bring extra oil became arrogant and demanding when their lamps ran out. (Keep in mind that they had the same opportunity to prepare.) Sounds like half of them just weren’t all that interested.

If you are stumbling because of the parable of the ten virgins, then you should know I was accosted by a brother at church, who publicly challenged me as to why I was advocating for Jesus’ soon return. He said, we have been looking for Jesus for over two thousand years, and He hasn’t come back; He is NOT coming back any time soon, so stop already.

Luke 12:36 CJB “like people waiting for their master’s return after a wedding feast; so that when he comes and knocks, they will open the door for him without delay.

Matthew 22 speaks of those gathered from the Gentiles.

“Then he *said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. ‘Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ “Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.”
Matthew 22:8-10 NASB

Let’s look at this portion of the paragraph for a moment.

“ but those who were invited were not worthy.”

Initially, who were the invited?

Israel, or better stated, the descendants of Abraham.

The word “worthy” is the Hebrew word áxios. According to Mounce’s dictionary, it means worthy of or deserving, either good or evil. Initially, God declared Abraham and his descendants áxios, or worthy of good (or evil, which we see in Deuteronomy 28 – the blessings and cursings if you do not follow after God).

Interesting how the slaves, doing what the master said, found in the streets both evil and good, and with these people, they filled the wedding hall with dinner guests. In general. Here is a touch of sarcasm. It does not take long to notice that this group included worthy people like Caleb (he was not a descendant of Jacob and, therefore, a Gentile.)

Aren’t you glad God found us.

But Matthew 22:11 gives us a piece of perplexing information.

“But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he *said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?‘ And the man was speechless.”
Matthew 22:11-12 NASB

Seeing as we have an overabundance of homeless living on our streets, you would be hard-pressed to find any with “wedding clothes.”

Finis Jennings Dake conveys this. 

“The poorer classes would not have festive apparel, and they were therefore provided for by the king from his own extensive wardrobe. This is one of the most interesting details of the parable. It was a special mark of honor to receive a garment which had been used by royalty, and kings sometimes showed their liberality by giving freely to others whom they sought to honor.”

Dr. J Vernon McGee states.

That wedding garment is the righteousness of Christ, which is absolutely essential for salvation, and it is supplied to all who believe.

We see the believers clothed in white.

“He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”
Revelation 3:5 NASB

Once we reach chapter four of Revelation, the church is not discussed, yet there is this peculiar reference.

“Around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads.”
Revelation 4:4 NASB

Could it also be that these, clothed in white garments, represent the church?

The logical answer is yes because there are many other references to the white garments and the bride, which is us, the church.

And we can know what being ready looks like.

“The servants who are ready and waiting for his return will be rewarded. I tell you the truth, he himself will seat them, put on an apron, and serve them as they sit and eat!” Luke 12:37 NLT

Ready and waiting anxiously for his return.

What happens to those who are doing their job?

“Truly I say to you that He (Jesus) will put him(the servant that does what He asks) in charge of all his possessions.”
Matthew 24:47 NASB

Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth speaks to this very thing.

“Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”
2 Corinthians 5:9-10 NASB

Here, we will be rewarded by Christ. Jesus ended this portion of His talk like this.

”But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Matthew 24:48-51 NASB

Consider this excerpt.

“the master of that slave will come on a day when he (the evil slave) does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites.”

I always hear this; no man knows the day or the hour. I suppose the implication is that you should wait anxiously for Him, but that is not the end of the story.

Paul said we are not in the darkness that we should not know, and Paul states that it is for us to know.

Paul, having taught the Church body in Thessaloniki that Christ is going to come back for His bride, the Church, but somebody came afterward and frightened them into believing that they had missed the rapture, the catching away of the church. (The Greek word for rapture is harpazo, and the Latin is rapio. Nonetheless, he is coming back. Since the collective signs are happening around us rapidly, it behooves us to look for Jesus.)

So, “that slave” who does not expect Him will be in the dark about the timing and return of our Lord.

A few paragraphs earlier, I talked about the brother in Christ who berated me for encouraging people to look longingly for Jesus. I know this brother, and he leans toward legalism, but I think it is necessary for him to keep his life in order. I lived my life under a constrained religious legalism, and no, thank you, that is not for me. It was for freedom that Christ has set me free, and I will not allow anyone to try to put me back into that bondage.

Does living in freedom condemn me to hell?

One brother in Christ likes to think so, and he creates rules in his head that those outside of his head have to live by. He will tell you that everyone who does not accept Jesus NOW will have NO chance to accept Him after the Church leaves this earth.

Is that true?

The answer is an emphatic NO, as the Holy Spirit will still be on earth, drawing as many to Jesus as will come.

Is it true that grace will indeed be gone? What that means to those who come to Christ during the seven years of wrath is that you will have to prove your allegiance to Christ by losing your life for your testimony, but not to worry, Jesus will be there to escort you into eternity.

Did you know that I learned how to sin as a Christian?

Yes, thinking too long on that thought will get my head spinning. All I know and now lean on is I am so glad that God found me and sought me out.


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On whose account that this calamity struck. A look at Jonah based on chapter one of Jonah’s book.

Posted on 07/26/2024 by remso

My morning men’s group recently finished reading Tozer’s Obedience To Christ. The brother who “leads” was on business trips and vacations for a month, so we finished Tozer without him and then put a vote out to the group as to which video we should watch next. It was a short list, and one of the options was The Book of Jonah by ERIC MASON. I am very familiar with the Book of Jonah, and this seemed like it would have been better than the other options; it was not.

What problems did I have with this version of Jonah?

The primary thing is that Eric sermonized every segment of his video teaching. An example from the group questions download reads like this: You have to spend an extra moment trying to ascertain who the “he” represents (clue: it is all about Jonah).

  • He hated Assyria, of which Nineveh was a major urban center.

    If you have read your scriptures, then you should know that there was a deep hatred of the Assyrians within the Jewish community. Considering what scripture tells us about the Assyrians, Jonah’s lifetime of harmful interactions with the Assyrians would understandably feed into his racism and hatred. 

    What are you trying to tell me when you say Nineveh was a major urban center? You make it sound like we have communities separated by nothing more than a mere stone’s throw. How about hundreds of miles?

  • He feared how the people would treat him.

    Which people group is Pastor Eric talking about, the Jews or the Assyrians?

    If it is the Assyrians, a Jew might expect to be violently killed.

  • He saw Israel as more deserving of God’s love than Nineveh.

    We are not told this by the scriptures, so we are left with only assumptions. However, the Jews express thoughts like this with consistency.

  • He had the right theology but the wrong disposition.

    How deeply inset was the Torah that they chose to call it theology? Probably none; it was the Law. If I must look at Jonah and wrap him in religious clothing according to his disposition, what would that have been?

    Up to the point God asked him to take a message of destruction to the Assyrians, there was NO disposition that any of us would have seen.

    Take note, disposition is a reflection of your temperament.

  • His personal preferences conflicted with God’s character.

    Amazingly, most people miss this obvious point, although, even today, most people do not understand God’s character. If the Ninevehites had not reacted as they did, God would have burned them to the ground, just as He did with Sodom and Gomorrah. Something that falls under the assumption is that we all hold beliefs about God.

  • He refused to love the unlovable.

    It seems rather evident that we don’t see Jonah’s end, and therefore, anything we say about him is an assumption with no legitimate basis.

Essentially, everything Pastor Eric Mason said was comparable to handing out a study guide on Jonah, similar to what most churches pass out to their Sunday school classes. These study guides are designed to elicit thinking in a certain way while eliminating any notion of free or spirit-led thought. Well, now that you have a feel for how I feel about this video teaching, let’s look at what the scriptures tell us.

Jonah

Dr. Frank Turek, a Christian Apologist, points out that one of the main things that makes God’s word believable is that God makes sure that you are aware of the hiccups, glitches, and things that appear to be failures.

A couple of those would be:

  • Adam’s fall (some would call what Adam did treasonous) in the garden, and, in what seems like moments later, Cain, the firstborn under “sin,” killed his brother Abel. (Read Genesis 3.)
  • And how Moses, the man who led Israel out of Egypt, killed an Egyptian, was found out, and ran to the desert for forty years.

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,”
Jonah 1:1 NAS95

Jonah’s background is shown to us in 2 Kings 14.

“In the fifteenth year of Amaziah, the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.”
2 Kings 14:23-25 NAS95

From this, we know: Where Jonah hails from – Gath-hepher; Who his father is, Amittai – if that helps you; and what his only reference is – he prophesied that “the border of Israel, from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of Arabah, would be restored,” and it was by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash king of Israel.

What follows is information derived from Dake’s Bible notes.

a    [word of the LORD]The word of Jehovah came to Jonah, the contents of which are stated in Jon_1:2. The same message was repeated with little variation when the prophet was finally ready to obey (Jon_2:2). This or a similar expression is found seven times in the book (Jon_1:1;Jon_2:10;Jon_3:1,Jon_3:3;Jon_4:4,Jon_4:9,Jon_4:10).

b    [Jonah]Jonah was a historical character (Jon_1:1;2Ki_14:25)—the only man so-named in the O.T.—which adds to the fact that he was a type of Christ. The name is spelled “Jonas” in the N.T. (Mat_12:39-41;Mat_16:4;Luk_11:29-32). Peter’s father was named “Jona” or “Jonas” (Joh_1:42;Joh_21:15-17). Both Peter and Jonah (2Ki_14:25) came from Galilee, so the statement of the Pharisees in Joh_7:52 is not true.

Date and place: Written in Palestine about 853-824 B.C.

Author:Jonah (Jon_1:1;Jon_2:1;Jon_4:1;2Ki_14:23-27;Mat_12:39-41;Mat_16:4;Luk_11:29-30).

Theme: The book is a story of a bigoted Jew who, after being chastened by the Lord for disobedience, preached to and converted the whole city of Nineveh.

Purpose: To show why the destruction of Nineveh and the Assyrian empire was delayed by God for almost a century; to illustrate the fact that God’s mercy and salvation are for both Jews and Gentiles who will repent and turn to Him; and to typify and illustrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as seen in notes on Matthew_12:40.

Pastor Eric Mason seemed to imply that Jonah’s message was meant to bring about the salvation of the Ninevehites.

I suppose that was God’s intent, even though there was nothing stated to describe how they should demonstrate their salvation. Fortunately, we serve a merciful God who looks at the heart, but even though they put on sackcloth and ashes, their “salvation” only lasted about a hundred years.

The Biblical Illustrator tells us.

“We read, in the Second Book of Kings, about Jeroboam II., the powerful and able and sinful ruler of the Northern tribes under whom Amos and Hosea lived and preached, that “he restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God which He spake by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.”

God’s command to Jonah.

“Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and proclaim to it that their wickedness has come to my attention.”
Jonah 1:2 CJB

At this point, there is NO explanation of what will happen to Nineveh. Watch how Jonah responds to this directive.

“But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the face of Jehovah. And he went down to Joppa, and he found a ship going to Tarshish. And he gave its fare and went down into it in order to go with them to Tarshish, from before the face of Jehovah.”
Jonah 1:3 LITV

Upon receiving his orders, Jonah flees to Tarshish, thinking that God won’t be able to find him there. (What gave you that idea?)

Dr. J Vernon McGee gives us this.

“Instead of going in that direction (to Nineveh), he does a very strange thing. He goes down to Joppa and buys a ticket on the first boat for Tarshish. Tarshish was a city founded by the Phoenicians on the southern coast of Spain. It was the jumping-off place of the west.”

” And (Jonah) went down into it in order to go with them to Tarshish.”

He found out where the ship was going, paid the fee, and went down into the hold to take a long nap. If you have ever been fishing on a modern boat, you would know that there are always particular smells, like diesel fuel, fish, and bleach. This, of course, is not primarily a fishing boat, and there was no diesel engine to foul the air or bleach to wash the decks, but there had to be smells associated with an older boat and the familiar rocking of the ship that is working to get you seasick. Sleeping seems to make all that go away.

If you don’t believe that he went below, stay tuned. Scripture will soon support my assertion.

Before I go another step, I want you to remind yourself, who is writing this narrative?

The obvious answer would be Jonah.

Would you dump your failures on your future audience?

Shockingly, God has Jonah do just that. I have heard it said that such honesty is one of the things that make the Biblical narratives so believable.

“The LORD hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up.”
Jonah 1:4 NAS95

Parts of the story to hold on to:

  • A great wind;

  • an associated storm on the sea;

  • and the fact that the ship was about to break up.

If you recall, the Apostle Paul was being taken to Rome when the ship he was on did break up, but that had more to do with stormy conditions that were throwing the ship into the rocky coastline. In the case of Jonah, there was no rocky coastline, it was merely the severity of the deep water conditions that were about to tear the ship apart. How he managed to sleep through this I will never know.

“Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep.”
Jonah 1:5 NAS95

The things I have heard in studying this book with others. There the assumptions that every one on the ship were devout Jews.

Momentarily we will see that Jonah had gone incognito so that the captain and the men would NOT ask too many questions.

Notice that these guys prayed to their particular god. Since that did not seem to be helping, they began to throw the cargo overboard as though lightening the load would help. All the while, Jonah slept.

“So the captain approached him and said, “How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”
Jonah 1:6 NAS95

“So the captain approached him and said, “How is it that you are sleeping?”

Unless you are very tired, it takes a lot to fall asleep through all that rocking and yelling. I am quite sure that they were yelling at each other.

“Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”

The captain did not let him sleep. There was no need for Jonah to call upon god, as he knew why the ship men were taking a beating; and, besides that, Jonah did not want god to know where he was or why. How foolish, God knows everything.

As the narrative progresses we will see that Jonah knew that God did care about people, especially those that are innocent.

“Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.”
Jonah 1:7 NIV

“Cast lots”? This is the Greek word gôrāl: The Word Study Dictionary tells us it is “a masculine noun indicating a portion or lot. A lot was cast, probably a stone or stones, to decide questions or appoint persons for various reasons; for apportioning land (Numbers 26:55; Numbers 33:54; Joshua 18:6, Joshua 18:11)”

It comes across like they were throwing dice.

“They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.”

Isn’t that amazing how that happened?

“Then they said to him, “Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
Jonah 1:8 NASB

“Then they said to him, “Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us?”

What a bizarre way of thinking. I suppose we are to simply ignore their barbaric technique for extracting information and the assignment of responsibility.

At this time, the primary method of identifying that someone was a Jew was the tassels that hung below their clothing. Google’s AI overview tells us that “Jewish people wear tassels, or tzitzit, as a reminder of the commandments of the Torah.”

Jonah did not want them to know he was a Jew. I assume because as a Jew he carried great responsibility, and he chose to not have anything – namely the tzitzit that would have exposed his identity.

They demanded, “tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us?”

“Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
Jonah 1:9 NLT

Look at what Dr. J Vernon McGee tells us about this.

“I am a Hebrew“—that meant a lot. The Hebrews were known to be monotheistic; that is, they worshiped one God, never an idol. They had no other gods before them but worshiped the God, who is the Creator. Jonah says, “I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.” Jonah tells them that he worships the God who made the ocean which they could see right before them being so stirred up by the storm. He made the sea, and He made the dry land also. I think these sailors knew about Israel, but they were pagan and had no knowledge of the living and true God.”

How did they react to what Jonah told them?

“Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, “How could you do this?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.”
Jonah 1:10 NASB

At this assertion by Jonah, “the men became extremely frightened.” “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”

They said to Jonah, “how could you do this?”

The passage tells us that Jonah told them exactly why he was on the ship, which explains how they suddenly knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord.

“So they said to him, “What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?”–for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.”
Jonah 1:11 NASB

Is this like throwing a baby into the mouth of a volcano and hoping that the volcano stops rumbling?

Not very logical. Moving on.

“For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.”

When the narrative begins, Jonah has gone down into the hold and gone to sleep.

In time, as the boat was at sea, a storm came up and the crew did there best to deal with it, but the storm was severe enough to begin breaking the boat apart. After the captain awakened Jonah, Jonah responded with this bizarre reply.

“He (Jonah) said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you.”
Jonah 1:12 NAS95

What promise from God was Jonah leaning on that prompted him to tell the crew to throw him into the sea, from which there would be no coming back?

A passage that Jonah may have known comes from King David.

“When David saw the angel, he said to the LORD, “I am the one who has sinned and done wrong! But these people are as innocent as sheep—what have they done? Let your anger fall against me and my family.”
2 Samuel 24:17 NLT

The Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament is bold enough to tell us this.

“He (Jonah) willingly endures the punishment, desiring to perish and not let others perish on his account,” Jonah confesses that he has deserved to die for his rebellion against God, and that the wrath of God which has manifested itself in the storm can only be appeased by his death. He pronounces this sentence not by virtue of any prophetic inspiration, but as a believing Israelite who is well acquainted with the severity of the justice of the holy God, both from the law and from the history of his nation.”

I am not so sure that we can assign such nobility to Jonah, especially if we have read the entirety of the narrative. They heard what Jonah said, and, for the moment ignored it.

“However, the men rowed desperately to return to land but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them.”
Jonah 1:13 NAS95

You almost get the impression that they thought he had lost his mind. The obvious factor was the severity of the storm and the associated waves. Anyone going in that water is not going to live.

Up to this point, I have avoided the terminology suicide, and why?

Because the religious connotations are that those who do such commit self-murder and, therefore, are lost to hell’s flames forever. I know this because it was a rant that I heard frequently in my household.

And so, what do we do?

We avoid and dance around the obvious because it is too uncomfortable to talk about.

And yet, how do we see God handle this case with Jonah?

He brings Jonah back to life and uses Jonah as an example of the course of action that Jesus would have to travel to bring salvation back to humanity. Jesus angrily retorted to the scribes and pharisees.

“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”
Matthew 12:38-41 NKJV

We had this discussion during the course of Pastor Eric Mason’s video teaching, how that this was NOT Pinocchio, nor did Jonah have a card table and a candle that never gave up it’s light. The leader of our group, almost as if he was trying to admonish me, said Jonah was made to live for three days in the belly of that fish. If you insist on buying into that claim, then you might as well pull Matthew chapter 12 from your bibles, as you are scoffing in the face of God’s power and Jesus’s activity from the cross to the throne.

If this challenges you, then you need to rethink death. Killing the body is only a passing thing, and since the body carries the genetics passed on from Adam, then to us. Sorry, but this body must die because we cannot take this sin-broken body into eternity with us. That is why the soul is preserved, and we are given new bodies.

Romans 6:4  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:9  knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.

And one day soon, death will no longer have mastery over us.

1 Corinthians 15:21  For since by a man (Adam) came death, by a man (Jesus) also came the resurrection of the dead.

If you are still breathing, then this resurrection is primarily symbolic through the acceptance of Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:26  The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

To abolish something is to permanently get rid of it; this will only happen at the Bema seat of Christ, which is an aspect of our being caught up to be with Jesus.

What I just gave you was the shortlist, as this theme is an integral part of our life in Christ.

Do you know why Jesus did not approach Lazarus’s tomb until the fourth day after death?

Because the Jews wholeheartedly believed that the soul stayed in the body until the third day. The fact that Jonah is spoken of in this manner allies itself with Jesus’ own death that was to come and how He, too, was thoroughly dead when He came off that cross.

Read the eleventh chapter of John’s gospel, and you can take in the entirety of the story, but pay close attention to these words.

“So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days.”
John 11:17 NKJV

Jesus waited so that there would be no questions as to whether He, through the power of God, raised Lazarus from the dead or if it was just a fluke. As Monty Python used to say in several of their comedy skits, he’s only half dead.

This discussion would be null and void if Jonah had been anything other than dead.

“Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to return to land, but they could not, for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them. Therefore they cried out to the LORD and said, “We pray, O LORD, please do not let us perish for this man’s life, and do not charge us with innocent blood; for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You.” Jonah 1:13-14 NKJV

They understood that Jonah would die in those waves. Isn’t it odd that there is no talk about suicide or the aftermath of murder?

Maybe God is not as focused on that as we are with our religious ideals and traditions.

And so, into the ocean, went Jonah.

A thought that keeps running through my mind is the number of people who commit suicide by police officers. While most of us realize that running at a police officer with a knife or a pellet pistol is a sure way to die, few of us call it suicide.

Whatever their nationality, these men knew that there was a responsibility for the insupportable death of a human.

“So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows.”
Jonah 1:15-16 NKJV

However, they picked up Jonah, and he, like Jesus, went compliantly.

What was the idea behind Jonah being thrown overboard?

I believe that God fully intended to halt Jonah’s escape and change his direction. God also used Jonah as a future analogy for Jesus—this is where Jonah’s death played a role.

Look, you can try to sell people fairy tales, but the reality is that God made the laws of physics. Apply vicious winds to any large body of water, and you will have waves sufficient to sink boats. I have seen this on two occasions, and I had to steer our little fishing boat out of one of them.

Even if you could stop the wind, it would still take several minutes for the waves to calm down.

Does information like this make the Bible a book of lies?

Hardly, but what it does show us is the influence humanity has upon the telling of the story. In the case of Jonah, did he, as he was splashing wildly in the deadly waves, time the situation in order to relate how long it took for the seas to calm? I scarcely think so as he had other things on his mind, especially since most people who commit suicide really don’t want to and will try to fight what they have done. And we are about to meet an extremely large fish that had been specially ordered for the purpose of taking Jonah into its mouth.

“Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”
Jonah 1:17 NKJV

How long can you stay alert without oxygen?

About 15 seconds.

How long can your brain live without oxygen?

About 4 minutes.

What kind of fish is capable of swallowing a human?

A Basking shark. It swims about exclusively in the BAsking SharkMediterranean Sea, and though it is NOT meant to be a man-eater, it can undoubtedly open its mouth wide enough to suck a human inside. Considering that a human is merely an annoyance to a fish that feeds on krill, it becomes evident that God had to motivate this fish to grab Jonah, hang on to him (underwater) for three days, and then spit him out (dead) on a beach, most likely in the region of Aleppo Syria. I would imagine that it was a short conversation.

Here, we end chapter one of Jonah, but I have inserted several provocative terms and assertions, such as suicide, murder, and the death of Jonah.

Why?

I have had these discussions with “fellow believers,” and I am aware that many choose to believe that Jonah remained alive in that fish for three days. This false belief, based on tradition and a lack of knowledge, forces you to ignore logic, reason, and physical laws that govern our ability to live and breathe—which God made and integrated into our daily lives.

When it comes to death, there are several forms and applications.

  1. Physical death, which is the cessation of breath, is what most of us associate with death.

    No doubt, there is a loss of friendship and companionship.

    Does your inability to breathe kill your spirit?

    The answer is no, although I suspect many people have, in a sense, killed their spirits.

  2. The other death has everything to do with your spirit or soul. The perplexity is that the soul is eternal, made in the image of God, who is a spirit. So, death, as far as God is concerned, is eternal separation from God.

The more important question you need to answer is, what kind of death did Jonah experience?

Obviously, he ceased to breathe, and yes, his body died because of that action. Held in the mouth of that big fish, Jonah began to decompose. Another obvious problem that feeds into our traditional supposition is that Jonah remained alive inside that fish. A part of our being able to understand what the book of Jonah is telling us lies in how he writes. This takes us into Jonah chapter 2, where he speaks as though he is alive. Ask yourself, could God have given him an in-depth review of his life in those moments on the beach where he regained his mental capabilities? Could Jonah have been given a recollection of what happened to him in those first 15 seconds before he blacked out?

Think about the unimaginable possibility of a dead Jonah getting spewed upon a beach and then having any awareness of what had just happened. The most reasonable solution is that God deposited all these thoughts into Jonah’s head and heart, including the events that brought Jonah to the beach in Syria. Many of you see this as nothing short of preposterous, but that is exactly what I think when you try to convince me that Jonah remained alive inside the belly of this massive shark.

Consider Moses. Scripture implies that the history of humanity on earth was passed on to Moses, and he re-conveyed that information to us through the books of Genesis and Exodus. If you were to be honest, you would have to say that there are things in Genesis alone that can make your head swim, such as Cain, who, having killed Abel, says, surely people will find me and kill me. People, where did he get the idea of people? I say this because the false but common understanding is that there are now only three people on the earth.

Surely, Moses struggled to understand the things he was asked to write, and even more incredulous, he was asked to believe them.

This can only be God.

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” one will be taken and one will be left.” ?? Matthew 24:40-44

Posted on 07/02/2024 by remso

We ended the last study looking at Matthew 24:36-39, as Jesus compared what the times would be like when He comes back as the Messiah that the Jews long for.

Most Bibles title this section “No one knows the day or the hour,” it immediately references Noah and how the flood shocked everyone on Earth.

So, let’s set aside assumptions for a moment and try to figure out what Noah said or did that would potentially eliminate the ability of these “people” to argue that they did not know what was coming. Now, lacking any rain, I might give them some grace for their lack of understanding about something as tactile as rain, seeing as they had never seen or experienced rain.

I can work off another assumption: Noah explained that the water would also come gushing out of the earth. You cannot convince me they did not drink or collect water from underground springs.

To initiate a response, we have to start with this truth: We were told that Noah was a preacher of righteousness.

“… but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;”  2 Peter 2:5 NKJV

Let’s camp here for a moment.

Preacher is the Greek word kērux from G2784, meaning a herald of divine truth.

So, with this information, I recognize that Noah was a messenger of divine truth.

Some will say something stupid like that might have been true for Noah, but not for me. I am not adept at logic, but I know enough to understand that a statement like this is an unsound and quickly challenged opinion because the one espousing it cannot substantiate any truth in their argument.

Consider that for 99 years and a few days, Noah could not substantiate his claim either, but that did not stop him from building this enormous vessel.

When the flood came, God affirmed His support for Noah and his claims; thereby, God corroborated Noah’s claim that rain, sufficient to cover the highest peaks of the earth and wipe out everything that breathed air, was coming. I might add that a logical assumption would be that Noah pointed to the ark as the only method of salvation, a type of Christ.

If I can be direct, righteousness has always been a troublesome word for me.

Why?

Because righteousness has always had works attached to it.

For example, Bible study. Suppose you are doing Bible study to meet someone else’s demands, typically a demand to meet some organizational and religious standard. In that case, you are doing works to meet a demand to live in a particular manner so that God may find you acceptable.

Do you realize that God loved you enough to send His Son Jesus to earth so that He would be slaughtered to purchase your life back to Himself?

In doing this, He acquired us all back into His legal possession. But don’t worry—you don’t have to go with Him if you don’t want to, and many are choosing that path. Having realized that this is the situation, all I can think about anymore is how soon you will find me, wrapping my arms around at least one leg and weeping for joy.

Righteousness – this is the Greek word dikaiosunē

Thayer’s definition explains that: “1) in a broad sense, it is the state of him who is as he ought to be, righteousness, and the condition acceptable to God. 1a) the doctrine concerning the way in which man may attain a state approved of God.”

Since Jesus directed the small crowd to consider the days in which Noah lived, let’s add one last thing.

Before the command to build the ark, we have nothing that tells us how Noah lived his life.

Note to self: We can assume things all day long, but that is a useless endeavor unless there is evidence to validate such assumptions. One such piece of evidence provides a provocative lineage.

Adam – Seth – Enosh – Kenan – Mahalalel– Jared– Enoch– Methuselah– Lamech– (this is where it gets interesting)

“Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years and became the father of a son. Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the LORD has cursed.”
Genesis 5:28-29NAS95

Adam walked with God.

We can assume that Eve also walked with God, but not as Adam did because of her action with the fruit. (Admittedly, this is an assumption, but a good one.)

This following assertion is NOT an assumption, but few will read and pay attention to the details involved with God putting humans on earth.

Day is the Hebrew word yôm. It is from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day(as the warm hours), whether literally (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figuratively (a space of time defined by an associated term), (often used adverbially): –age.

Pay attention to the word age. In the Greek, this is eon, meaning an indeterminate time frame. So, if you choose to argue for the idea that we see here is a strict 24-hour time period, then perhaps you can tell me what brand of watch God used.

In Genesis 1 verse 23, we see the arrival of the fifth day. Carry this forward to Genesis 1:26-28, and we see God speaking to others and saying,

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image; in the image of God, He created him; male and female, He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:26-28 NAS95

Let that information hang there for a moment.

Next, God decreed a seventh day and rested, which moves us into Genesis chapter two and, though not kept track of, the eighth day and beyond.

Another logical assumption we must resolve is, how do we explain when Adam shows up?

We have made huge assumptions about Genesis 1:26-28, but I can tell you now that those assumptions are only correct if they are based in spirit.

While the terminology upholds your argument, explain how God speaks to the “male and female He created and calls the creation him?

We are introduced to Adam in Genesis 2:7 but not to Eve until an indeterminate time later (a yôm.)

“Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
Genesis 2:7 NAS95

Some time later.

“Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
Genesis 2:15-17NAS95

Did you see Eve in that conversation?

Neither did I.

So the only instruction about the one tree that cannot be eaten from has been given to Adam alone.

Your assumption should be, how did she learn about the tree?

Where is Eve?

She has yet to be formed.

Now, there is no denying that she has been a spiritual being with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but she has NOT been physical.

“The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.”
Genesis 2:20-22 NAS95

Until Genesis chapter 3, nothing defines when or how Eve obtained information about “the tree.”

If God did not tell Eve about the tree, then who did?

Having handed dominion over to the man, Adam, it was his job to tell Eve. This same principle applies when it comes to Cain and Abel.

Adam had dominion over the earth, was the groundskeeper, and had the right to touch any tree in any manner he deemed necessary. Specifically, his instructions were, DO NOT EAT FROM IT, which for an indeterminate amount of time was not a problem.

A wee bit of a side trip, so let’s get back to assumptions related to Noah.

If you do the math, you will find that Adam was well beyond 600 years when Enoch was born.

Since the scriptures do not tell us, I will ask. Where did Enoch learn what it was like to walk with God?

A logical assumption would be Grandpa Adam.

Interesting, why did no one else ask Adam what it was like?

Good question. Maybe they did, but it did not strike them the way it struck Enoch.

Enoch, we are told, walked with God.

Here is a logical assumption. Enoch did this for many years, but if the others did the same thing, Enoch took it one step further; he believed and trusted in God as no one had since Adam. Finally, we are told Enoch walked with God and was no more.

What does “was no more” mean?

I do not know. The narrative about Enoch continues in the New Testament; there, Enoch is referred to as a prophet and implies that he never died. This plays into Enoch being one of the prophets returning to earth in the last days. The logic behind that is that it is appointed unto man to die once, and then the end comes for them. This previous statement bothers many people because they fear death, but consider the fact that the human body comes with a “sin” damaged genetic strain. We all have it. The only way to get past it, or bypass it, is to kill the body. Doesn’t the scripture teach us that we will all be tried with fire? It does; therefore, I am convinced that this body, as we know it, will be burned at the Bema seat of Christ. Our soul, which lives on forever, will be placed in a shell that looks a whole lot like the one we are currently in, only better, say around 35 – 40 years old, when it worked well.

Enoch produced Methuselah. Now stop here a moment.

What do we know about Methuselah?

He was the oldest man on earth. A feat, no doubt, but in the world in which we live, I see no purpose for it. So, for God to point this out means that he was a sign to this evil and violent world. If you read the post just before this one, then you would immediately have made a connection with Hamas (violence) and Allah (corruption.) Methuselah stood in the faces of those who were taken by the fallen angels and corrupted.

Many have said that Methuselah means—when he passes, it will come. The only “it” we should make and associate with would be the all-encompassing flood.

All of the men named in that lineage, except for Noah, had other sons and daughters, but we have NO information on any of them, and we have no indication that any of them followed after God. This forces us to make huge assumptions about the women folk, and that is that they were taken, at will, by the fallen angels, forced to have some form of sexual relation, and Nephalim or, if it suits you, giants were produced through this interaction.

So much for my introduction.

Almost abruptly, Jesus moved on with this.

“Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  41  “Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left.  42  “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.” Matthew 24:40-42 NAS95 

Some will read a passage like this and decide that it is nothing less than an example of an unjust God, as He snatches some to eternal life while others are left to burn up with the earth. If you think this way, you are merely displaying your foolishness and refusing to search the scriptures for yourself.

The context is wrapped up in Jesus talking to His Jewish disciples about a specific time frame covering the last three and one-half years, after which He returns as the warring Messiah. We Gentiles foolishly assume that He is talking to us, the church because it says one will be taken and the other will be left. This has nothing to do with the church, as we will have been taken up in the catching away of the church.

You can call it the Rapture if you must.

The commentator, Albert Barnes, wrote concerning the phrase “One shall be taken” – “The word “taken” may mean either to be taken away from the danger – that is, rescued, as Lot was Luke_17:28-29,or to be taken away “by death.” Probably the latter is the meaning.”

In his Midwest style, Dr. J Vernon McGee tells us, “He still is not talking about the Rapture. After all, what is our Lord talking about here? “As the days of Noe were.” Who was taken away in the days of Noah?“They knew not until the flood came and took them all away.” They perished in the Flood.”

If I were to answer Dr. McGee’s question, it would read like this: The unrighteous were swept away in the flood narrative.

Applying this to Jesus’s conversation with His disciples, I can assume that the unrighteous are captured or killed when He says, “one shall be taken.” That idea is alarming and confusing when you think about it, but it is only so because, once again, we incorrectly apply the scenario to the church. Keep in mind that being religious does not make you righteous.

The people in the account that Jesus speaks of are similar to the people that we witnessed assaulting Israel on October 7th of 2023, and, as you well know, they slaughtered without regard. That day, there were more than 1,200 deaths, not counting the wounded, and more than 240 people, including infants, that were taken captive. Since then, many of those captives have died in Gaza.

Why bring this up?

Because savage brutality, as we have already witnessed, is precisely what those who are left after the catching away of the church can expect to experience, and I think that this attack will happen shortly after Israel goes to war with Hezbollah in the North.

Several Bible commentators referred to what life was like pertaining to Noah and the flood, and life was merely routine. The populace, both then and now, did not care about the zeal I felt or the need to heed my calls to study; they did not believe what “the Watchmen” were pointing out coming destruction, and therefore, as we see, one is killed, and the other manages to escape with little more than their life.  

The time of the end is finally upon us.

“Therefore, be alert, because you don’t know on what day your Lord will return.”  Matthew 24:42 GW

Many years ago, singer/songwriter James Taylor sang, “Keep-in my eyes on the Holy Land.” Something tells me that at some point in his life, he knew that Israel would play a central role in end-time events.

Matthew 24:42 is another passage that people will throw in our faces when we talk confidently about Jesus Christ’s soon return. The problem with their logic is that they apply this to the church when it is talking to the Jews; I am talking about context. The Apostle Paul clearly stated that we are not in the darkness.

“For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.  3  While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.  4  But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief;  5  for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness;”
1 Thessalonians 5:2-5 NAS95 

Number 1. Paul told them he did not have to teach this message to them once again. Why not? Because he had already done a thorough job of teaching them. If you feel like you are lacking, then invest some quality time in the Books of Daniel and Revelation. Oh, there is more, but those two books are related to each other and will answer many of your questions. A little wisdom: ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you into the truth about what is to come.

Number 2. Sure, Jesus is coming as a thief in the night, but only for those who are not prepared and awaiting His return. Paul even explains that these are some of the people who will be saying peace and safety. I used to think that it was Israel alone that was saying peace and safety, but several groups, like the UN and the World Economic Forum, have also cried out for these things. Truth be known, these words do NOT mean what you think they mean when they say them.

Number 3. Consider those words that Paul is saying. If necessary, allow them to be spoken deep into your heart. You are NOT in darkness; you are not a part of the night if you belong to Christ, and the world will not overtake you. This is not a secret society. Jesus wants you to understand and then share this truth with others.

“But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.  44  “For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.”
Matthew 24:43-44NAS95

If the context is exclusively about the Jewish community, then who would be the head of the house?

The rabbis, Pharisees, Jewish ruling council, and whoever else decides what chapters and verses the attendees can and cannot read in the Old Testament. Did you know that they tell the attendees to stay away from the Book of Daniel and NOT to read Isaiah 53, why is that? Because they do not want those who follow their teachings to find Jesus, the Gentile Messiah. How foolish.

Are you alert and ready? This has nothing to do with stockpiling food and water but has everything to do with putting your hope and faith in the one who gave Himself to redeem you back to Himself.

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Here’s a brief diversion from Matthew 24: Two of the most common actions in today’s world are violence and cursing.

Posted on 06/18/2024 by remso

Two of the most common actions we see on the news today are associated with the words curse and violence.

Have you ever wondered where those two words originated?

Well, the word curse comes from the Hebrew word ‘âlâh, and yes, it sounds just like the name of the Islamic god, Allah.

It is NOT a name but a verb that describes, in this case, a state of being, and yes, ‘âlâh is a state of being.

The word  ‘âlâh, according to the Word Study Dictionary, is described as “A verb meaning to curse, or to put under oath. It is used in many cases of persons bringing curses on themselves if they are guilty of doing wrong.” (As a side note, 1/3 of the angels who followed Satan in his rebellion brought curses upon themselves.)

Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew Dictionaries add that the word ‘âlâh can mean to be put under oath or to be put under a curse.

The King James concordance shows 42 instances of the word ‘âlâh, six under Strong’s number H422 and 36 under Strong’s number H423. I can’t tell what the differences are.

Some interpretation options are oath, swear, swearing, adjured, and curse. Webster’s dictionary tells us that adjured means to plead, charge, press, entreat, and beseech.

In the KJV, the translators used the word oath instead of curse to represent ‘âlâh. The Literal Translation of the Bible states that “an oath be exacted of him to cause him to swear.”

The other word I mentioned was violence.

Violence, in my mind, is much more dramatic as it is a word that we see in the news daily, and it has its roots in Hebrew.

An online post from The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle conveys this,

“Language is a strange commodity. Sometimes there is within it a “play on words,” but at others there is no “play” but rather a mysterious, unexplained truth.”

Let us take the example of Hamas, which, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York City research center, is “the largest, most influential political fundamentalist movement” in the Muslim world.

By one means or another, Hamas aims to convince the world of its deep desire to eliminate Israel and establish there instead the 23rd religious Muslim state.

Hamas is an Arabic acronym for “Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya,” which means “The Islamic Resistance Movement.” But “hamas” is also an Arabic word that means “zeal.”

Although Arabic and Hebrew are sister languages, the Hebrew meaning of “chamas” is “violence,” according to the Hebrew-English volume of Reuben Alcalay’s Hebrew-English, English-Hebrew dictionary. “Cruelty” and “injustice” are additional definitions, but not “zeal.”

Truth is thus stranger than fiction. For Israel and for Jews everywhere, “chamas indeed means violence, in its terrorist form.”

I recently started listening to Pastor Mark Driscoll as he preached for almost an hour about how violence/Hamas has permeated our very existence since sin has come into our lives.

Want proof?

Genesis 6:11 NKJV:  “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence (Hamas.)”

Sin was then passed along genetically through human interaction, and this change happened the moment Adam and Eve partook of the fruit. We see the results of that sin when Cain kills Abel.

Genesis 4:8 NKJV  Now Cain talked with Abel, his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

His actions demonstrated that the offspring of Adam was filled with châmâs – (Hamas- violence).

The Strong’s concordance details this in the KJV.

Genesis 6:11KJV+  The earthH776 also was corruptH7843 beforeH6440 God, H430 and the earthH776 was filledH4390 with violence. H2555

From the Strong’s Concordance.

H2555חָמָסchâmâsFrom H2554; violence; by implication wrong; by metonymy unjust gain: – cruel(-ty), damage, false, injustice, X oppressor, unrighteous, violence (against, done), violent (dealing), wrong.

H2554 חמס châmas.BDB Definition: 1)to wrong, do violence to, treat violently, do wrongly, 1a) (Qal) to treat violently,

The point of this “teaching” is to make us aware that Allah and violence are infiltrated into our mindsets to the point that we think nothing of its impact on our lives.

My son-in-law cannot accept the possibility that Islam, a violent ideology, can be the religion of the world shortly. Oh, it will not be voted in by reasonable people, but it will be forced down our throats by violent followers of Islam.

A video was recently posted about a confrontation on a subway in a European country. The Muslim said to a person, off camera, that we cannot see, “You are an Israeli journalist! My Quran tells me that I should hit you in the head.” In many cases, they do not restrain themselves, and you will not just be hit; you will be killed. 

If you don’t think that is true, then I suggest that you pay attention to the Northern African nations, like Nigeria, where they slaughter people in the most heinous ways merely because they are Christians.

Posted in bible study, Genesis, guilt, Islam, Israel, Jews, war, Warfare | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A layman’s commentary on Matthew 24, verses 36 -38. As it was in the days of Noah.

Posted on 06/09/2024 by remso

 Previously, I covered Matthew 24:36, where Jesus, in speaking to His disciples, said, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” I spoke about how this directive to the Jewish people had nothing to do with the church.

The question they asked was this.

“…, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

You can take the time to study this out by reading Matthew 24:2,3.

For the Jews, the sign of His coming speaks specifically to Revelation 19:11-16. We know this, for they have always been looking for a warring Messiah.

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”
Revelation 19:11-16 NIV

Jesus spoke of many things related to eschatology—end-time events that happen to affect the church. Most of those things fall under the category of Jacob’s troubles.

Jacob’s troubles come specifically out of Jeremiah chapter 30.

“Ask now, and see, Whether a man is ever in labor with child? So why do I see every man with his hands on his loins Like a woman in labor, And all faces turned pale? Alas! For that day is great, So that none is like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, But he shall be saved out of it.”
Jeremiah 30:6-7 NKJV

What would cause people to act like they are in so much pain that they are in labor like a woman?

Fear and distress, beyond human comprehension, is the only reasonable answer.

On that note, we move into Jesus’ defining comment, in which He paints a picture of what it will look like when this time comes.

WE ARE ALMOST THERE!

“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
Matthew 24:37-39 NIV

Let’s stop here for a moment to consider what life might have been like in Noah’s day.

  1. “The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” 

Try to imagine living in an atmosphere like this.

How did Noah and His family manage to come through this onslaught meant to disable people and disallow them the ability to obtain life and salvation through sacrifice and still be considered righteous?

Having spent a good deal of time listening to Dr. Chuck Missler, I came to the understanding that the fouled integration of fallen angels into the human strain through some form of deviant sexuality played a massive role in this pervasive and ever-present mental attitude.

One of the answers to my question lies in the repeated method of revealing a narrative that, to some degree, exaggerates the numbers. If you think that this makes God a liar, then let me remind you that virtually everything we know about God and His methods has been related to damaged humans – by the way, we are all damaged; with knowledge like that, you should be able to see that you cannot keep the tainted humanity out of the delivery. The Book of Jonah might be an excellent example of this.

  1. “So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

I have two ways of looking at a statement like this.

The first and safest thing to do is to figure out the context.

Here, Jesus is answering their questions pertaining to when He would come back as the warring Messiah (although they did not specifically ask Him that. Lacking specifics, we need to remind ourselves that, at this time, there was NO church. History demonstrates the Jewish resistance to the idea of church, primarily because of what they will refer to as the Gentile Jesus.) One way to think about “the coming of the Son of Man,” would be to put it in the context of the church. Since I just covered that subject, then you should realize that the catching away of the church (the rapture,) is NOT the answer.

The second and most Jewish way of comprehending this statement is to imagine it as the time when Jesus comes back to finally rescue the Jewish people. (At least what is left of them, as two-thirds pf them will soon be killed. Something almost every one of us broken humans do when thinking about this scenario is to see the dead as permanently removed from the picture, but that is not the case. Those martyred during the time of God’s wrath will be resurrected and will reign with Christ for a thousand years. Those from among the Jews that survive will have their hearts turned to God. All the rest of the dead, including most Jews, will be brought before the throne of God at the end of the thousand years; there, God will separate the dead into two groups, and those deemed the sheep will be given entrance to a changed and righteous life. The others will go off to eternal punishment as they follow their leader into his hell.)

  1. “ For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.”

    Right off the bat, let’s set something straight. Living your life is NOT, as a rule, a bad thing. As I type these words, I am reminded that the fallen angels were taking whomever they wanted and, by their interactions, changing the genetics of the offspring to one that had NO hope for salvation, like themselves. These changelings were also, in time, propagating their own damaged offspring. Now, that should begin to change the atmosphere around Noah.

    The verse tells us that this attempt at living a “normal” life continued until the day Noah entered the ark, which is quite telling.

    What do we know?

    Noah was a preacher of righteousness. The last known “normal” human outside of Noah’s family may have been Methuselah, and his death allowed God to pour out His wrath upon the earth. You don’t hear much about the others, like Noah’s kinfolk, but none of them came to get on the ark.

    Does that mean that they were all tainted and un-salvageable?

    Apparently.

    Genesis 6 is where this conversation between God and Noah began. However, chapter six does not tell us how long it took to build the ark and then stock it with animals and food; yet, Genesis 6:18 says something remarkable.

    “But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark–you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” Genesis 6:18 NASB

    It is fairly clear that God knew no one else would come (we do not see the evidence of that until we get to Genesis 7:7,) and yet Noah preached.

No one told these people that they would not be permitted on the boat, but God knew that something prevented them. We are likely to give it any number of titles, such as arrogance or self-will, but few are willing to admit that the fallen angels polluted the majority of humanity on earth. Most will not accept that these people were now like the fallen angels and unsalvageable.

  1. “…up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.”

    Matthew 24:39 tells us this. “…they didn’t know what was happening until the Flood came and swept them all away. It will be just like that when the Son of Man comes.”

    “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” Hebrews 11:7 NKJV

    They had never experienced rain and, therefore, could not understand the concept. Do you think it was possible that they had no grasp of great bodies of water – in which a person could drown? The Bible leaves out many of these details; it does, however, tell us of Peleg, a descendant of Noah, and in his day, the earth was severely shaken and split. Again, the Bible leaves us to hunt for answers, but it is probable that this shaking had much to do with the Pangaea – the separation of the continents. If you were based in the plains of Shinar, it might have felt like the center of the earth (it might have been.)

    So, to say that it will be just like that could easily imply tremendous unbelief and distrust. Most of us are just like that.

What did Noah warn of?

A massive flood that will cover the entirety of the earth and kill all breathing things. Now, you can’t have a punishment without correction and warnings of things to come.

If these people whom Noah preached to and demonstrated by his own life had no hope due to the corruption of their genetics, then why waste breath warning them and offering them salvation?

Things that make you say, Hmmm. I must admit that I am following some of the statements from the Book of Enoch, which tells us that they (the Nephalim) had lost their hope of salvation, but that makes no sense, and we can see why in Genesis chapter 6.

“the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Adonai said, “My Spirit will not live in human beings forever, for they too are flesh; therefore, their life span is to be 120 years.” The N’filim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; these were the ancient heroes, men of renown.” Genesis 6:2-4 CJB

Just for the fun of it, who are these characters, and where did their relatives come from?

 

Genetic testing of one of the skulls indicated that half the ancestry could be traced to the Middle East, while the other half was unknown.

Brian Forester discusses the genetic testing results on his YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/PP9B6l_burY?si=aOugQot9XRiT4p6C

Skulls like this have been found all over the world.

Wikipedia conveys that “Elongated skulls of three women have been discovered among Viking-era burials during the eleventh century at Gotland, Sweden.”

Science.org – https://www.science.org/content/article/strange-elongated-skulls-reveal-bulgarian-treaty-brides-ancient-germany. Tells us:

“In a handful of medieval Bavarian farming hamlets populated mostly by blue-eyed blondes, more than a dozen women with dark hair, dark eyes, and unusual elongated skulls would have stood out. A new DNA study suggests that these women, whose striking skulls have been unearthed from nearby grave sites, were high-ranking “treaty brides” from Romania and Bulgaria, married off to cement political alliances.”

Sciencealert.com – https://www.sciencealert.com/mystery-strange-elongated-skulls-finally-solved-deformed-artificial-cranial-bavaria. reveals that:

“In fact, the legacy of artificial cranial deformation across human history is so abnormal and ‘other’ it’s sometimes presented as evidence of extra-terrestrial life. A new genetic analysis reveals otherwise – but also sheds light on cultural practices so distant and forgotten, they’re almost alien. If not for their misshapen skulls these otherwise unremarkable skeletons – discovered by researchers in Bavaria during the 20th century – might never have been noticed by scientists.”

“Archaeologically, they are not that different from the rest of the population,” geneticist Joachim Burger from the University of Mainz explained to National Geographic. “Genetically, they are totally different.”

Is it possible that the extremely large and unknown humanoids (Nephilim) were due to the influence of fallen angels?

Scripture indicates that it happened then and after (the flood) and, therefore, should not be ruled out.

Look at what Genesis 6 tells us.

Genesis 6:4 NAS95  “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward,…”

Scripture does not plainly define what is meant by the term “afterward,” and therefore, we have to apply the context, which is the destruction of “all” things that breathe air. With evidence, such as David killing Goliath, who was a descendant of giants, then we can know that the humanoids returned after the flood, by the same methods. Sincc it is rare to see a giant, then it is possible that they returned in other forms, such as Yeti, Sasquatch, or Alien grays.

In the book of Numbers, we find this.

“We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes. And that’s also how we seemed to them.” The children of Anak came from the Nephilim.”
Numbers 13:33 NIrV

An unusual aspect of this narrative is that the spies from Israel stopped and had a conversation with these “giants” that scared them.

L.A. Marzulli has spoken of interviews with people who claimed to have been taken. Those who escaped had one thing in common, they used the name of Jesus against their captors – the alien grays.

You do not have to be a useless victim to the wiles of the devil.

 

 

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