Archive for March 2008
What Is Truth? Who Is Jesus? Was He married? What did He Look Like? Answers from Scripture and Other Ancient Writings.
There is much misconception and misleading doctrine concerning these puzzling questions in this world today. However, deep research of the Hebrew and Greek, as well as geneaology, and other ancient writings reveal closer truths than most people realize. Books and movies of deception, and even television documentaries are leading the masses into a dangerous and destructive mind-set. People are accepting these lies as if they were following a soap opera. When, in fact, the Holy Bible provides the truth with proper study and understanding…IF people are willing to take the time, and make the effort to search it out. Jesus warned us of these deceivers many times, and most are not heeding His critical words. Jesus and His Purpose has not changed since He ascended to the Father…but we have! I, truthfully, am astonished at how easily the sheep are blindly led to whatever deceptive doctrine suits their fancy! Guess what? God warned about this throughout the Scriptures! What true knowledge do we really have of Him and His Plan? In a word…none! “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.” (Hosea 4: 6). That is a very severe warning! Remember, God is the same yesterday, today…and forever. He will not change, nor will He be mocked. Did His Son, Jesus, echo this warning? “Not everyone that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” (Matthew 7; 21-23).
Contrary to popular belief, God’s love is NOT unconditional…there are many “Ifs” throughout His Word!
Time and again, in the Scriptures, you will read, “Behold me, behold me“…or “seek my face“. It is very clear in Jeremiah 4: 21-22, “How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.” You may have noticed in this blog a plea to save the lives of wolves in this nation. It has amazed me that those wolves have been leading the sheep to Jesus and the Word! When Jesus said, as He sent the disciples out to preach the Gospel, “Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves“, He was denoting men as wolves. But, God does work in strange and mysterious ways. He abhors the murdering of His animals, as proven by Isaiah 66: 3, and in Hosea 6: 6, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” The wolf shall dwell with the lamb on God’s holy mountain, therefore He loves them dearly. It must have grieved Him terribly when He made the first sacrifice of animals that Adam had named, as a result of the original sin in the Garden of Eden, to provide coverings for Adam and Eve. That is Genesis 3: 21. Did God, in the beginning, intend for us to eat the meat, or flesh of animals? NO! “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat“. Genesis 1: 29. But, since that original sacrifice in the Garden, animals have paid the price for men…as atonement for sin. And, man still slaughters animals…for profit, for food, and for evil sport. You can read of the inhumanity and cruelty everywhere.
Is this God’s will? NO! “He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a MAN; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck…Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.” (Isaiah 66: 3). What will God do about these evils? “I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear; but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.” (Isaiah 66: 4). Moreover, what about the evils done to mankind? Do we plead for the widows and the fatherless? These are very tough times, and the “beginning of sorrows“. “For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.” (Isaiah 9: 16). “WOE unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed. To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!” (Isaiah 10: 1-2). That is a heavy and dangerous WOE from God! Cruelty and corruption are unacceptable in His eyes, as well as those who do not do HIS will, but selfishly and sinfully pursue their own pleasures and lusts.
So, the Lord sent His Son, Jesus/Yahshua, to be the Salvation of the world. “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me.) to do thy will, O God….He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.“ “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say, his flesh.” (Hebrews 10: 5-20). “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” (John 18: 37). “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5: 17). The law still applies today, which is the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses! Did you think those laws were obsolete, and that we will not be judged by them?
In truth, for what purpose did Jesus/Yahshua come to this earth, and partake of a flesh and blood body? He came to do the will of Him Who sent Him! He now sits at the right hand of the Father. Where is the right hand of the Father? Attached to His right arm! “WHO hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?” (Isaiah 53: 1). His arm is His Power. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5). Does this sound like One Who came to the earth to marry, and to beget children? He tells us to plead for the widows and the fatherless…not to cause them to be that way! This idea is an insult to God, and especially as He had already divorced the House of Israel! “And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.” (Jeremiah 3: 8).
For Jesus to have married, and even produced a child would have gone completely against His divine purpose for all of mankind! Of marriage, Jesus told us, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19: 4-6). A more clear answer lies at the foot of the cross as Jesus gave His life for us. ”When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” (John 19: 26-27). God’s law would have mandated that a wife would have been given priority. But, Jesus clearly addressed His mother! So much for the DaVinci theory! Jesus was not married, to Mary Magdalene or anyone else. He will be though, when He returns to claim His bride…His Church! “For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.” (Isaiah 54: 5).
In the next post, learn what Jesus actually looked like, long hair and all…proven from Scripture and other ancient texts. Also, find out if He was, indeed, a vegetarian. The answers will astound you! To be continued….
Who is Jesus…from the beginning?
“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Period. We are not told when, but science and archaeology, even through dinosaur bones, tell us it was millions of years ago. “And the earth was without form, and void.” (Genesis 1:2) Whoa! Something happened between verse one and verse two, for God did NOT create the heaven and the earth void and without form. He created it to be inhabited! Read Isaiah 45: 18. The word “was” in the second verse is actually “became” in the Hebrew manuscripts. Perhaps there was a rebellion of one of the sons of God named Lucifer/Satan? Does this mean that there were three earth and heaven ages? The Apostle Peter tells us, “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; Whereby the earth that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth , which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thouand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (II Peter 3: 5-8). That third age, or eon, is yet to come…at the return of the Messiah Yahshua/Jesus. Does this mean that God took eight days for Creation…which would actually have been eight thousand years? The answer to this would explain some age-old Bible questions.
Most people believe that Creation took place in six days, and God rested on the seventh, and that completed Creation. The Apostle Peter just told us that one day to God is a thousand years to us. We must also understand that those “created”, bara in the Hebrew, and spoken into being, happened on the sixth day as male and female…not named Adam. However, as Genesis 2 confirms. there was an eighth day creation, or formation, of the Adam, from whom God took a rib, tsala (as curved) to make his wife Eve. The first DNA (Helix curve?)had been accomplished. That formation, yatsar, of the Adam and Eve occured in the Garden of Eden, and was for the purpose of a perfect ancestral generation through which Messiah would come. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1: 8). “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” (I Corinthians 15: 45). The word or name Adam in the Hebrew means “To show blood in the face, to flush or turn rosy, red and ruddy”. The eighth day creation of the Adam and Eve answers the nagging question of: How did Cain go to the land of Nod, and take a wife? The answer is that there were people, from the sixth day creation, already on the earth! And…all races could NOT have come from one couple…Adam and Eve!
So, what really happened in the Garden of Eden? According to Genesis 3, the serpent, or the “tree of knowledge of good and evil“, both of which represent Satan, beguiled Eve. Was it a fruit, or an “apple” that caused the original sin in the garden, and that caused Adam and Eve to suddenly feel shame at their nakedness? The Apostle Paul tells us that it was not. “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (II Corinthians 11: 3). If we take that word “beguiled” back to the ancient Greek, we find that the word is “exapatao” which means to seduce wholly! Simply, we need only look at what the LORD God said to the serpent in Genesis 3: 15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The Hebrew word for seed is zera or zara, which means to disseminate or to conceive seed. In John 8: 37-38, Jesus, in addressing the Pharisees, makes it very clear by declaring, “I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.” He goes on to really lay the truth on them in verse 44 with, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” Did He say they were Jews, or of the House of Judah? No, yet they sought to kill Him! Jesus makes it most clear in Revelation 3: 9, when He explains, “Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.” Those are the ones who crucified Him, not the House of Judah! The seed of the devil, and of Cain, the firstborn twin of Abel, was the seed that was anti-Christ from the beginning. Incidentally, Cain is NOT listed in Adam’s genealogy! This should help to explain the error of anti-Semitism throughout the centuries and, after all, Jesus/Yahshua was a Jew (Hebrew)…of the king-line House of Judah, and of the priest-line of Levi. There are twelve tribes of the House of Israel, not just the House of Judah! Of the wicked which Jesus addressed, who are also considered false prophets, how shall we recognize them? “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7: 16). They may look just like we do, as do the tares, but by their deeds, good or evil, we shall know them.
After the original sin in the Garden of Eden, the Lord said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” (Genesis 3: 22). Just as the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the devil, the tree of life was Jesus Christ. Note how we can eat of the tree of life and live forever. Today, symbolically, we eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ, which is known as Communion…or the Eucharist. Well, that was foretold way back in Genesis…in the beginning! “So he drove out the man ; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims , and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Genesis 3: 24). The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” (Deuteronomy 18 : 15 and 18). “For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: Whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak,“ said Jesus in (John 12: 49-50).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” (John 1: 1-2). Jesus was and is the Living Word of God…and IS God…from the beginning! “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” (Isaiah 7: 14). “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.“ (Matthew 1: 23). Jesus said,”…he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.“ (John 14: 9 and 6). “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. (John 12 ;44-45). “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6 ; 40). That promise would apply to all who have been born since Jesus walked the earth. So, how could we, after two thousand years, seeth the Son, Jesus? We will find out in our journey of truth.