Table Manners (a guide for servants)

.


This is kinda fun. From fellow Tangle user (formerly GodTube) Brother David Guard.

We read in John's account of the resurrection (ch 20:7) that whilst Yeshua's grave clothes were tossed aside, the cloth used to cover his face was carefully folded at the side of the slab where Yeshua lay.

Like me, a fundy who thinks no word or passage in the Bible is wasted, David explains an age-old, and well known Jewish tradition:

When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it. The table was furnished perfectly, and then the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch that table, until the master was finished. Now if the master was done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers, his mouth, and clean his beard, and would wad up that napkin and toss it onto the table. The servant would then know to clear the table. For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, 'I'm done'. But if the master got up from the table, and folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table, because...

The folded napkin meant, 'I'm coming back!'


.

Don't be a prophet. Just share their faith...

.


Usually I think of more creative titles than that. And sorry, it's going to be long, as usual, because this is an interesting topic.

How much faith do you have...and in what? More importantly, could you have the faith of the prophets without trying to be one?

It should be no shock to anyone that I'm a Zionist. If you believe certain stereotypes you'll assume that I a) don't believe in a "two-state" solution b) think all Muslims are evil and must die, and c) constantly drop to my knees and implore God to wipe out Jordan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UN in a glorious fiery apocalypse.

It's none of that, and much more simple. I believe a) Israel's existence is not for political negotiation and, here's the crazy one;

b) Christians should be overflowing with joy at Israel's very existence.

I recently heard a presentation by New York Times bestselling fiction author Joel Rosenberg, who wrote several "political thrillers" (read; apocalyptic thrillers) which caused quite a stir in the US. For example, his novel of January 2001, The Last Jihad , had Islamic terrorists hijacking a passenger airline and flying it on a kamikhaze mission to Washington. Later in the novel a US president leads an unpopular war against Saddam Hussein. Well that's just spooky.

But then, his next novel The Last Days, had Yasser Arafat dying, the US putting pressure on Israel to leave the Gaza strip, and a US diplomatic peace convoy in Gaza being attacked by Islamists. Little over a year later, Arafat was dead, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, under pressure from the Bush administration, was pulling all Jewish prescence from Gaza, and a US peace convoy was attacked in...you guessed it, Gaza.

We were speaking about prophets, right? Well, that's not why I mention this fellow, whose novels are entertaining, scarily predictive, albeit rather plainly written (by his own admission).

It was the way he referred to the plethora of Old Testament prophecies stating, quite clearly, that Israel would be regathered to the land promised by God to Abraham, which got my attention. Previous manifestations of a "national" Israeli entity during OT times simply do not qualify as fulfilments of these numerous verses, for many reasons, among them Amos 9:15-

"I will plant them in their land, And no longer shall they be pulled up From the land I have given them"

Amen! There are lots of other verses like this, declaring a glorious regathering. Lots and lots. Some of them are quite detailed. Those verses had been haunting Jews and Christians for 2,000 years. Here's what Rosenberg said:

The only document on the face of the planet for 2000 years that said that Israel would be reborn as a country, that Jews would come back to the Holy Land after centuries of exile...would by God's grace make the deserts bloom, would rebuild the ancient ruins, would have an exceedinly great army...and would occupy the epicentre of world attention....is the Bible.

And for centuries, critics and sceptics didn't believe that and many Christians did not believe that either. That's where replacement theology developed, because after 500 years of no Israel, 1,000 years, 1500 years...they were thinking, maybe we got those verses wrong. Maybe "Israel" really meant "The Church". 1,800 years go by and even the strongest believers would have thought...maybe we're wrong..."

At the risk of sounding picky, I will qualify the statement in bold: "Replacement Theology"is the idea that all promises to Israel, outlined in the Torah and Tanakh (our Olde Testament) were transferred to the Christian Church. This idea developed very early in our spiritual ancestors' history, with Church fathers such as Justin Martyr and Ignatius. In fact, some would argue it began as early as 60 AD, where Paul wrote to counter it's emergence in Romans 11:1-2, among other places:

I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.



The early "Church" was Jewish. But when Titus crushed the Jews in Jerusalem in 70 AD with a brutal assault in which the temple was destroyed (predicted by our Messiah in Matthew 24) it became dangerous to be Jewish. Then came emperor Hadrian's military decimation of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 AD. He banished Jews (including believers in Yeshua) from Jerusalem, renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, and named the land Assyria Palestina (from which the name "Palestine" was derived in what could effectively be called a historic typo). He did this to completely anul all Jewish affection for the land, a public attempt to banish them physically and spiritually. Of course he didn't count that to attempt this, was to attempt to do battle with the God of the universe.

So, replacement theology crept in, partly because it was expedient for safety reasons to appear as non-Jewish as possible, but also because the emerging Gentile influence amongst believers was becoming hostile toward all things Jewish. Post Constantine and Augustine, it was all over. Keeping the sabbath was mocked, Passover was replaced by the inherently pagan Easter. Being Jewish was no longer simply illegal to Rome, it was illegal to The Church.

But I digress (just for something new). Joel Rosenberg's point is that Replacement Theology was either a symptom or cause of a massive lack of faith amongst believers. It was sadly predictable that the notion of the "Christian" God still caring for the remnant of Jews, those Christ-killers, was ludicrous. And, as such, those mountainous Bible verses boldly predicting the regathering of Abraham's physical descendents into the physical land, could not possibly be as they seemed.

You should never, ever, try to out-think God.

The Dresden Synagogue, one of the first to be torched during the Nazi Krystallnacht pogroms of 1938.

As a result we had the Christian Church in charge of Inquisitions, forced conversions, pogroms, the Czars of Russia massacres, and so much more. It culminated in a near universal Church silence as Jews in 1930's Europe began to disappear, after their synagogues were burned, while Hitler's intentions were so overtly clear. Oh, by the way, a historical tidbit to the above picture: As the synagogue lay a smoking ruin in November, 1938, a local street urchin walked past and yelled out to the dazed onlookers "This fire will return! It will do an about-face and come right back to us!"

7 years later, the Allies inflicted a horrific firebombing of Dresden, all but wiping out the old city in a 1,500 degree man-made firestorm, killing around 25,000 people. Were we talking about prophets?

Anyway, back to the church's sad theology leading to complicity in the holocaust: Perhaps I'm being unfair. We laud the heroic actions of Deitrich Boenhoffer and Corrie Ten Boom. Indeed we should. But there should have been 2,000 Boenhoffers. There should have been 10,000 Corrie Ten Booms.

I'm not trying to vilify the Church. I'm trying to point out what a lack of faith gets you. All this...and then in May, 1948, the nation of Israel was born within the very land God had ordained.

Let me tell you about a little-known man of great faith. His name is John Charles Ryle, former Bishop of Liverpool. He was interested in bringing as many people as possible into a faith in Jesus. His sense of urgency was driven by an appreciation of prophecy. He took God at His Word. He was particularly interested in the rebirth of modern Israel.

Who says I always hang it on Anglicans? A great man, was Bishop Ryle!

A collection of his sermons form a book called "Are you ready for the End Times?". Ignore for a moment that the title makes it sound like a shrill evangelical, Left-Behind style announcement of Jesus' imminent return, that Gog and Magog (also known in the internet age as Blog and Mablog) are arming and we must all sell our houses and get ready. It is actually a calm, pragmatic, humble and loving admonishment to take God's word seriously.

When Bishop Ryle didn't know what a prophecy meant, he said he didn't know:

"Much of the discredit which has fallen on prophetic study has arisen from the fact that many students, instead of expounding prophecy, have turned prophets themselves."

Indeed. But here's what he did know. First, on replacement theology:

We have gotten into a vicious habit of taking all the promises spiritually, and all the denunciations and threats literally. The denunciations against...the rebellious Jews, we have been content to take literally and hand over to our neighbours. The blessings and promises of glory to Zion, Jerusalem, Jacob and Israel, we have...comfortably applied them to ourselves and the Church of Christ.

This man of faith nails the very problems which replacement theology bred, this monstrous snowball born from lack of faith. He suggests that it's all well and good for us to insist of the Jew that they must accept Christ as their Messiah from various OT prophecies, BUT...

...suppose the Jew asks you if you take all the prophecies of the Old Testament in their simple literal meaning....Will you dare tell him that the glorious Kingdom and future blessedness of Zion...means nothing more than the gradual Christianising of the world by missionaries and gospel preaching? ...Do you not see that you are cutting the ground out from under your own feet, and supplying the Jew with a strong argument for not believing (in your messiah)?

Then he gets down to business, the literal regathering of Israel. He spoke of their condition prior to their regathering:

Though Israel has been scattered, they have never been destroyed...Romans, Danes, Saxons, Normans, Belgians, French and Germans have all in turn settled on English soil...have lost their national distinctiveness...But not so with the Jews. Dispersed as they are...there is a national vitality among them stronger than any nation on earth. Go where you will, this wonderful people is always the same.

He quotes from those rich passages that are so dear to us Zionists: Isaiah 11:11,12. Ezekiel 37:21. Hosea 1:11,3:4,5. Joel 3:20. Amos 9:14-15. Obadiah 1:17. Micah 4:6-7. Zephaniah 3:14-20. Zechariah 10:6-10. Jeremiah 30:3,11. Those passages, among others, which seem to have God saying to us "How many times must I tell you?", and yet are still dismissed as allegorical by so many claiming to be in His Body!

He then asks of the believer, is anything impossible for God?

I see no ground for refusing to believe that God may yet do wonderful things for the Jewish People. It would not be more marvellous to see them gathered once more into Palestine.

You see, Bishop Ryle was writing these sermons in the 1890's. And we, in this age, have been privileged enough to see exactly what Bishop Ryle longed for through faith.

He also made this powerful admonition;

(Do not)...for a moment suppose that the future gathering of Israel depends on anything that man can do...the promises of God concerning Israel will all be fulfilled in due season. Israel will be gathered; and all the alliances and combinations of statesmen, and all the persecution and unbelief of apostate churches, shall not be able to prevent it.

Amen, amen, and amen, Bishop Ryle! I can't wait to meet him in the Kingdom. We have so much to talk about.

This man warned against self-proclaimed prophets, yet sounded for all the world like a great prophet himself. But really, he was just a man of great faith. He paid attention. Are you?

Some legal issues

Or: "No problem with Paul".

One of my bents is that Christians, new or otherwise, run the risk of being fodder for the professional atheists of the world like Dawkins or Hitchens or conspiracy nuts like Dan Brown. There will always be claims of contradictions in the OT and the NT. Unless we understand why they appear so, but actually aren't, we'll struggle to explain our faith to anyone or worse, to ourselves.

Much of the Paulene letters look this way, one minute extolling the virtues of obeying the Torah and the next, appearing to downplay the Torah's importance. We need to understand not just the context, but the spiritual climate and audience to which he was speaking. Even Peter acknowledged that Paul's stuff was a little tricky to understand (2 Peter 3:16).

Those who are uncomfortable with the idea of the Torah being relevant to modern Christians often cite those very parts of Paul's letters which place less emphasis on the Torah. Here's some examples:

Romans 10:4, “Messiah is the end of the Law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

This is my favourite bad Bible translation! In English, "end" can mean "finish, no more, kaput" etc. It can also denote a conclusion or completion, i.e. my hand is on the end of my arm. That doesn't mean I no longer have an arm. The Jewish Bible translation has that verse as "For the goal at which Torah aims is Messiah". Much better!

By the way, you can tell the serious Bible scholars: they're the ones who spend more time arguing about which is the better translation than, say, about the seriousness of divorce or something. But I digress. What would one of my rants be without a good digression?

Ephesians 2:15-16: “Having abolished in His flesh the enmity that is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two thus making peace. And that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.”

This is used as another "Jesus abolished the Law" passage, but not so. The only way you can twist that is to substitute the word "enmity" with"Torah". The enmity referred to here is clearly a literal one- alienation, antagonism, separation... between Jew and non-Jew. Because earlier in that same chapter it says:

Ephesians 2:12-13 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Near to what? The Commonwealth of Israel. Chosen by YHWH. It's saying that Yeshua's death brought us into the Law.

Colossians 2:13-15. “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross ”

This is often assumed to mean that The Torah was nailed to the cross with Yeshua. It's a dodgy interpretation at best. Firstly, the Torah was given to alert us to our sin. It's like a spotlight. It doesn't save us, it warns us that we need saving. Secondly, some historical context:

In those times, when you were jailed for a crime(s) there was kept a written list of things you'd done for which you were jailed. It also included the terms of your incarceration. Somebody had to pay for these crimes with the exact terms of the incarceration. If the prisoner escaped, the jailer had to finish off those terms. (This explains why Paul's jailer was about to off himself after the earthquake which opened the cell doors in Acts 16:27.)

When the sentence was completed, the list of ordinances was marked with the word (in Greek) tetelestai. In that context it meant "paid in full". This is from where we derive the term "he's paid his debt to society".

This word comes from the root tele'o which means "it is finished". Do those words sound familiar?

Okay, back to our legal issues.

Colossians 2:16-17, "So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths,: which are a SHADOW of things TO COME but the substance is of Christ."

Well that smacks me on the wrist for caring about the feasts! Or maybe not. First of all, observe the tense. ARE a shadow of things TO COME. ARE is in Greek este (similar to modern Latin based languages such as Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) and it is a clearly defined present tense. This is just as much referring to the second coming of Messiah as the first, which happened before this book was written. Perhaps it refers to both that which happened and that which is yet to happen, but by no means does it abrogate the importance of the feasts.

To be really contentious I'm going to quote one of my favourite Bible commentators from the 18th century, Matthew Henry:

...but here the apostle shows that since Christ has come, and has cancelled the ceremonial law, we ought not to keep it up...to continue the ceremonial observances, which were only types and shadows of Christ and the gospel, carries an intimation that Christ has not yet come and the gospel state has not yet commenced. Observe the advantages we have under the gospel, above what they had under the law: they had the shadows, we have the substance.

Matthew Henry is a classical commentator and I would safely suggest that much seminary-based theology derives from his ilk. I love his stuff generally but he has no doubt been influenced by post-Constantine theology which was at times extremely anti-Jewish (this explains a few problems with seminary based theology). In any case I completely disagree with Sir Henry at least for the inappropriateness of his wording if not the whole implication: Sure, the ceremonial sacrifices can rightly be viewed as Henry does. They are done away with and completed by Yeshua, chronologically speaking.

But the verse talks about festivals, sabbaths and dietary requirements. The Festivals, for example, are YHWH's "appointed times", which He asked us to keep. Secondly, they are vital prophetic events marking different points on YHWH's timeline for the redemption of humankind. Not all the events pointed to by each feast have happened yet.

A surprised-looking Matthew Henry

Another point about this, albeit slightly anecdotal, is that shadows don't exist without the substance which casts it. A shadow results from light being shone on the substance. Wouldn't you love to be in the shadow of the Messiah?

Besides, a few verses later it says

Colossians 2:20-22 ...why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances, "Don't handle, nor taste, nor touch", (all of which perish with use), according to the precepts and doctrines of men?

This is clearly warning against following the doctrines of men, not an instruction to avoid Torah. An elementary piece of advice, one would think. Overall, these passages admonish believers not to not judge other believers on their observance of the holy days (or not) whilst still acknowledging their importance. Remember, according to Isaiah 66 and Zechariah 14, these holy feasts will be celebrated in the reign of Messiah on earth! Sounds like fun...if you've ever seen a Sukkot celebration .

Romans 7:4-6, “So, my brothers, you also died to the Law through the body of Messiah, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the Law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”

Again, this is my whole point; if Paul really means from this that we may now totally disregard the Law (Torah) , this his writings, and indeed the whole Bible, are confused, contradictory and we may as well become humanists. It also shows how much of a bummer the chapter breaks can be, given they were inserted so much later. A few verses later in chapter 8, Paul speaks of the "Law of Sin and Death". That's the "Law" he's talking about here in verse 6. Note this means we have been released from the consequences of sin and death, not freed from the events of sin and death themselves.

Lastly, this, which I happen to think is extremely helpful (just like the Torah!):

Acts 15: 19-21 Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, sexual immorality, things strangled, and [from] blood. For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath."

We quickly notice the first bit but are slow to understand the second. It simple; let's not scare people away from Yeshua's saving grace by telling them they have to wear funny coloured tassles and can't eat yummy bacon or shrimp. But every Sabbath they can hear the Law preached in the synagogue (remember that "Christianity" began in synagogues) . Then throughout their faith walk they should hopefully grow in knowledge of what is pleasing to God.

Is that any different to today? We can't stay babes in Christ forever, suckling on the milk of grace whilst letting the heart stay where it is- loving what the world loves instead of what God loves.

My little exercise here might seem a little antagonistic but it highlights the challenges of Paul's ministry. One moment he was dealing with extreme legalists who tried to tell new believers they had to be circumcised to be saved (ouch), the next he was dealing with hideously liberal anti-Jewish types who went out of their way to ignore YHWH's Law, and who were grounded in pagan idolatry.

Basically, Paul had the same problem then as we have now.

Here's another reason why appreciating the Torah is a well-considered choice:

(Yeshua said:) "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher". Luke 6:40


.