Archive for March, 2007

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Tzav 5767 – The High Priest of God

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Joh 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Heb 9:26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Lev 6:29 All the males among the priests shall eat thereof [the sin offering]: it is most holy.
Lev 7:6 Every male among the priests shall eat thereof [the trespass or guilt offering]: it shall be eaten in the holy place: it is most holy.
Lev 10:17 Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the LORD?
Psa 110:4 Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

It is a time honored principle that a leader bears some responsibility for the behavior of his subordinates. In eating the sin and guilt offerings, the priests symbolically (and possibly in some real, tangible way) took the sins of the penitent into themselves. They took responsibility before God so that the people could be reconciled to him.

Yeshua’s sacrifice, being an order of magnitude greater than any animal sacrifice, and being offered on the altar in Heaven, opened the door for all of us to surrender our guilt to him. We have but to trust in God and make our allegiance to him.

No other human sacrifice would have been sufficient. Every blood sacrifice must be perfect. Yeshua, the Son of God, is a King-Priest like Melchizedek, and he is perfect and sinless, and he gave up his life willingly. Another person’s death would have been ineffective for the purpose of atonement, so it would have been murder and nothing else. Yeshua’s death was murder, but it enabled our salvation. Like rescuing an animal on the Sabbath, it was a choice between which action effects the greater reconciliation of man to God: preventing one murder or enabling the salvation of billions. In shedding his perfect blood, he took all of our sins, whether intentional or not, upon himself.

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Political Cesspool

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

A wall of a large, elevated cesspool collapsed today in the Gaza Strip. The cesspool was apparently uphill from the Arab village, Umm Naser. (Is that insane kind of setup normal!?) The reporting of the incident is, of course, skewed, but here are some possible facts I’ve garnered from several different sources:

  • Something was going on to dramatically increase the inflow into the cesspool in recent days.
  • Three or four people are dead, around twenty-five people are injured, and many more might be missing.
  • Hamas showed up, maybe to help, maybe just to cause more trouble. They shot at government officials who apparently showed up to sight-see.
  • Israel sent troops to assist in evacuation, cleanup, and transportation to Israeli hospitals. I’m not sure if the PA and Hamas actually allowed them to help.
  • Arab AP writer, Ibrahim Barzak, appears to have deliberately worded his article to make Hamas look better and Israel look worse.
  • The U.N. had warned the PA about this cesspool in 2004.
  • Funding was available to build a new waste water treatment facility, however the project was unable to proceed because Palestinians (Hamas?) continued to use the area to fire rockets into Israel.
  • Palestinian officials are blaming Israel for their own bizarre setup, which is beginning to look to me like an actual set up. I.e. the cesspool was placed and engineered to fail.

Sewage flood in northern Gaza kills 4
200 Missing in Gaza Cesspool Disaster
Flood of sewage in Gaza Strip village kills at least three people
IDF Offered Assistance in Gaza Without PA Request
Four dead, thousands evacuated in Gaza sewage flood

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Jews and Christians Will Meet in Yeshua

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:22-43, and Luke 8:41-56 all tell the same story regarding an older woman and a young girl who were both healed by Yeshua. In each account, a pious Jewish man asks him to heal his ailing, twelve-year-old daughter. As Yeshua follows the man to his house, a crowd gathers around him, and a woman who has had an issue of blood for twelve years touches his tzitzit and is instantly healed. He then leaves behind the crowd and brings the young girl back to life. It seems like two separate events, but the older woman’s story is made a part of the young girl’s story by being inserted into the middle of it. While the story is completely true, it is also a parable told through real life events.

The older woman is Judah, a part of the nation of Israel as illustrated by the twelve years of her illness. Long before Yeshua was born in Bethlehem, the Jews had abandoned following the Torah as it was given by God to Moses. Instead they had adopted “the tradition of the elders,” which, through its myriad rules, rendered the real Torah “of no effect” (Mat 15:1-20). Still today the Jews follow their rabbis and the Oral Torah in direct opposition to the Written Torah. They claim to follow Torah, yet they don’t. When the woman touched Yeshua’s garments, she wasn’t just touching the cloth. It wasn’t his clothes that she was after, it was the tzitzit fastened on the four corners. Tzitzit represent God’s Law, the Torah, and whenever we see them, we are to be reminded to whom we owe our allegiance and our obedience. The woman healed through touching the symbol of the Torah on Yeshua’s garment represents the Jews who will be restored to spiritual health by faith in God. Their faith will be evidenced by acknowledgement of Yeshua as their Messiah and returning to Torah as he taught it.

The young girl is the Church, which is also a part of the nation of Israel, as illustrated by the girl’s twelve years of life, and by her Jewish father. The Church was born of Jewish believers and gentiles reborn as children of Abraham. The Church is spiritually sick as well. It’s members claim to be Christians–little Christs–to follow the teachings of Yeshua, yet they don’t. They follow the traditions of their elders just like the Jews. The only difference is in which anthrogenic rules they have used to replace God’s. They will return to spiritual health only by obeying the command of Yeshua, “Talitha cumi.” When the girl had been raised, Yeshua did not ask for a glass of water as might be expected. He commanded that she be fed. In Scripture, food often represents difficult spiritual teaching (John 21:16-17, 1 Cor 3:2, and Heb 5:12-14). When the Church has been brought back from the dead, it will be up to his disciples (all Jews in the story, by the way) and her parents (a rabbi and his wife) to feed her.

The Jews claim to follow Torah, yet they don’t. The Christians claim to follow Yeshua, yet they don’t. The two will finally be united in faith and reality when they both practice what they preach. In faith, they must obey Yeshua’s commandments, including those found in the Torah.

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Vayikra 5767 – Five Ways to Reconcile

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

FIVE

5

Five is such a huge number in the Scriptures. There are five pillars of the Gate of Truth, five volumes of the Torah, and five sacrificial offerings by which we can draw closer to God.

I haven’t spent a lot of time studying the sacrifices, so this post is pretty much off the top of my head. Even so, there are hints at some intriguing patterns:

Olah, the burnt offering.

  • Except for birds, the animals are to be killed and butchered by the one bringing the offering.
  • Birds are to be killed by the priest, who twists the heads off, breaks the wings, and spreads the whole animal out on the altar.
  • The flesh and entrails are wholly burned.
  • The blood is sprikled.
  • The hide is preserved. Perhaps this isn’t the image God intended us to get, but I can’t help thinking of my hide having been saved from eternal fire.
  • It is voluntary to the individual Israelite.
  • It teaches us faith and obedience. We don’t necessarily know why God said to do this, only that he did. It is up to Israel to trust and obey without understanding.

Minkhah, the grain offering.

  • Must be unleavened grain. In the Scriptures, leavening usually represents sin.
  • Part is to be burned.
  • The remainder goes to the priest.
  • It is voluntary.

Zevakh Shelamim, the peace or thanks offering.

  • Done out of gratitude to God.
  • Portions of the fat are to be burned.
  • Some of the meat goes to the priest.
  • The rest of the meat forms the main entree of a feast for friends and family of the one who brought the sacrifice. It’s an occassion for a party.
  • It is voluntary.

Chatat, the sin offering.

  • Brought for sins of ignorance, not rebellion or deliberate sin.
  • The high priest offers a bull for himself.
  • If the whole community sins in ignorance, the priest offers a bull.

Asham, the guilt offering.

  • Brought for sins against our fellow men, not for sins against God.
  • The form of the offering depends on the financial state of the offerer.

Notice that there is no Levitical sacrifice for deliberate sins against God, “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” There is only one remedy for such sin, and that is the blood of Yeshua activated in our lives by sincere repentance.

Another thought I had is that each of these offerings probably lines up with one of the five volumes of the Torah. Possibly also with one of the five volumes of the Gospel. (I am including Acts with the Gospels.) They might line up this way (or they might not):

  1. Olah – Genesis – Discovering God
  2. Chatat – Exodus – Salvation from the ignorance of the world
  3. Zevakh Shelamim – Leviticus – Learning to worship
  4. Asham – Numbers – Growing through pain out of rebellion
  5. Minkhah – Deuteronomy – Fulfillment and standing on our own

(Thanks to Jon Behrens at Restoration Messianic Fellowship for the five central characteristics of the five books.)

A final thought on the gory nature of sacrifice. (Thanks to the Lively Parsha at Aish.) If you’ve ever slaughtered an animal (or a person, I suppose) you’ve had occassion to witness the startling redness of fresh blood, like red paint, and the profound realness of the transition from living creature to inanimate meat. We are real people, not just spirits. We are flesh and blood. That’s the way God made us, and it is how we are supposed to be. We could spend all our time contemplating spiritual matters and thinking about doing good things, and there is a certain amount of value in that. Whoever said, “You are what you believe you are,” was right. But if we neglect the corporeal side of our beings, we become what someone else said: “Too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.” We need such reminders that our different parts are intimately linked, that physical actions have spiritual consequences, and vice versa.

“The life is in the blood,” indeed.

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Wrong Printer Drivers after Upgrade

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

After you replace a networked printer and install the new drivers on the server, sometimes the clients don’t want to use the new drivers. Here’s how to fix it on Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 (NT was too long ago, and I haven’t messed with Vista yet):

  1. Open the Printers or “Printers and Faxes” console on the print server.
  2. Under the File menu, select Server Properties.
  3. On the Drivers tab, find the old drivers and remove them.
  4. On the client computer, delete and re-create the printer connection.

You can do the same thing on the client computer if you only need to fix one. You could probably use SMS or a similar utility if you really had to, but I think removing the drivers from the server will fix this problem 90% of the time.

OK, so it’s not politics, theology, or entertainment. I guess I’m doing computer stuff too.

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P’kudei 5767 – From Moshe to Yeshua

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Exodus 40:34-38

Moses, the man who spent 80 days talking to God on Sinai, could not go into the Holy Place when God’s presence was too strong. How much less are we able approach God directly? Moses was a foreshadow of the Messiah, Yeshua. Moses could not go into the Holy Place when God’s presence was too strong there, but the rest of the Children of Israel could not go in at all. We need a mediator to allow us to approach God. Moses (and the High Priest) was a type of the Messiah, Yeshua. Only they could approach God here on Earth, and even then not whenever they felt like it. Since there is no Temple or Tabernacle here on earth now, Yeshua is our only High Priest in the Tabernacle in Heaven. He is the cover over the tabernacle of our hearts and our mediator before the Father.

1 Kings 8:8-9

When the priests placed the Ark into the Temple for the first time, they pulled the staves part way out so they extended through the veil into the main sanctuary. This either indicates that the might not have been parallel with the veil as in most recreations, but perpendicular, or else that the staves were mounted on the left and right instead of the front and back of the Ark. I suspect the latter was true, so that when it was carried, God’s throne could face either forward or back towards the people. It wouldn’t make much sense for the throne to face left or right. It was probably very dark behind the veil, and the priest might have needed some way to feel his way to the Ark. Alternatively, this could represent how God reaches through the veil to us, because we cannot reach through it to him. I prefer the latter explanation, but I don’t know what is correct.

Another interesting thing is that Kings says only the two tablets of the Law were in the Ark at this time. It could be that the Philistines removed the rod and the pot of manna when the Ark was in their possession, or it could be that those things were never in the Ark at all. Some believe that they were placed before the Ark instead of inside of it. In a way that makes much more sense, since the Ark was quite short compared to a walking or shepherd’s staff as Aaron’s must have been. The idea that the rod represents God’s authority and guidance, while the manna represents God’s providence is not harmed either way. They are in our hearts with God’s Law or they are before our hearts, while the interior is reserved as a special place for the Law. Either way works for me.

Update 2007/03/21: Edited for one error and added a bit to the paragraph re the orientation of the Ark.

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Is God Irrational?

Friday, March 9th, 2007

“Come, let us reason together.”

God is very often counter-intuitive. He acts based on a much greater knowledge base than we do. But God is never irrational. He is the inventor of the physical laws on which all of our science is based. He is a God of order, rules, hierarchy, and reason. He is not the author of chaos and confusion. Understanding that “equals” does not mean the same thing as “is,” if God says a=b and b=c, then you can be certain that a=c. He does not reveal a truth in his written word and later flatly contradict that with a spiritual revelation.

I was told today that interpeting the Bible rationally instead of spiritually is the basis of heretical sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons. That assertion is obviously false. The facts are exactly the opposite.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t come to their doctrines through a rational interpretation of the Bible. They were founded on prophetic revelations that were contradicted by the plain meaning of Scripture. Later, they had to change the Bible to justify their reasoning, rather than letting the Bible speak for itself. By the very plain testimony of Scripture, Russell and Rutherford were both false prophets.

The same is true of the Mormons. Joseph Smith didn’t acquire his doctrines through honest Bible study. They were given to him by looking into a hat with special goggles. If that’s relying on reason, then…well, I don’t even know what, because nothing in the universe can be known or understood.

The heart is deceitful above all things. If you ever receive a spiritual revelation that contradicts the written word, then you are hearing from demons. God cannot be discerned with reason, nor can all of his laws. But that which he has already told us can be relied on completely. God is not the author of lies or of confusion. He is a God of order and reason.

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Jack McDevitt Illustrates Human Gullibility

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

I like reading Jack McDevitt. He’s a good story teller. I couldn’t pass up this little gem, though.

Odyssey, page 28: “MacAllister stared down out of the taxi at the network of bridges and islands that was modern Tampa….Beautiful from the air. A prime example of the human capability to make art out of bad news. But the oceans were still rising, and they’d have to redesign the place yet again when the ice cap went into the water or the next big hurricane came along.”

Odyssey, page 29: “[The report of mysterious black spaceships] fit with an idea for a new book, a history of human gullibility. In eighty-six volumes. How people make things up, and other people buy in. Organized religions. Notions of national or racial superiority. Political parties. Economic boobery…earn indulgences by killing Arabs….lunatic Jihadists…astrology…”

Update: Here’s another good one.

Odyssey, page 78: “Back in the good old days, Dryden would simply have bought Taylor. Or tried to. There would have been big campaign contributions. But that sort of thing had gone out two centuries earlier. The country had been taken over briefly by a corporate autocracy and hopelessly corrupt politicians. Money bought access. But the Second American Revolution had happened, people began taking the Constitution seriously again, and the practice of renting and buying congressmen had been stopped by the simple expedient of getting money out of the campaigns. Contributions of all types became illegal. Campaigns were funded by voters.”

What a hoot! I wonder if McDevitt actually believes what he wrote or if he was consciously trying to be funny.
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How Many Animals Did Moses Load onto the Ark?

Monday, March 5th, 2007

The question was recently asked in jest by Jay D over at Vox’s blog. Of course, we’ve all heard it a dozen or more times, and maybe even fell for it once. However, zero is not the only correct answer. It depends on how you want to apply the word ark. Moses did oversee the construction of an ark, and there were at least the semblances of animals hammered into its cover. According to Ezekiel, cherubim have four faces, each resembling a different earthly creature: man, eagle, ox, and lion. The cover of the Ark of the Covenant held sculptures of two cherubim looking down at the Ark. So how many animals did Moses load onto the Ark? Six. Two eagles, two oxen (or bulls), and two lions.

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Catastrophic Geology and the Flood

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Huge ‘Ocean’ Discovered Inside Earth
“Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.”

Earth’s Crust Missing In Mid-Atlantic
“Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle – the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick – is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface.”

It sounds as though Creation scientists’ theories regarding the Noahide Flood and catastrophic plate tectonics might not be so far-fetched after all.

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