|
|
Let us not forget what we just have learned. It was the soul of the animal as found in it's blood, which when presented in a sacrifice AFTER the prior repentance, confession, and prayer of the sinner, was understood by God as the surrender of that person's soul toward Him. This is what it is all about, and will always be about.
It is not the "blood" but the "soul" in the blood which demonstrates surrender to God and it is later to be understood as seen as placed on the altar where we see the "soul of the offerer of sacrifices" on the altar in lieu of the animal which is but a substitute for the person bringing the animal for sacrifice. The animal was literally the extension of the person bringing the sacrifice. God would not have a human sacrifice his life and blood and place it upon the altar as a demonstration of “communion” and “fellowship” with God; instead the animal was the extension of the person’s life. The person bringing the animal had fed, groomed, and cared for the animal usually. It was part of his life and his life and energy had been invested into the care of the animal. So when the "soul” of the animal was taken and offered upon the altar in the release and placing of the animal’s blood on the altar, then the person by proxy was represented on the altar in communion with God as well. Understand the animal was innocent having never sinned. This was supposed to be a picture of the spiritual position of the person bringing the sacrifice. The person bringing the sacrifice was ALREADY to have repented of his sin, confessed his sin, prayed, and made restitution to his fellowman if needed BEFORE he ever brought the animal to the altar. Then when he had done these spiritual necessities PRIOR to bringing the animal to the altar, then the person’s soul was AT-THAT-MOMENT (atonement) right with God. He was forgiven and his repentance, confession, prayer, and restitution had accomplished for him atonement PRIOR to the animal being offered. “At that moment” his soul was again in right standing and relationship with God. In order to make such a declaration to the world and his fellowman, as well as to God, then he would take an animal and it would be slain and its blood placed on the altar. In so doing, the animal was a CORRECT PICTURE of the spiritual state of the person making the sacrifice for the animal’s soul (in his blood) was on the altar in communion with God and was NOW a true picture of the sacrificer’s soul in communion with God. Besides this, if anyone wanted to eat meat, the animal’s soul had to be given back to God before the flesh could be consumed. So you see in the sacrificial system there were two dynamics at work: atonement and the conditions necessary to eat meat which also contained the Divine image which had to be given by to God.
When, when making sacrifice properly, knew that he had attained something special with God. Christian teaching today is completely devoid of this knowledge and I thank I over the years in my studies He allowed me to find and recover this most needed part of instruction. This knowledge, when properly understood, will go a long way in helping the Christian separate error from truth as he hears taught in his churches.
Whenever the Torah commands that offerings be brought, these commandments use only God's Four-letter Name (yod-hey-vah-hey); the "Tetragrammaton" (I AM). If other names were used, some might err, thinking that there are many Gods or forces, one demanding this offering and another demanding some other offering. Since the Name Elokim represents God as the One Who controls nature, that Name might be taken to imply that there is an angel or a power who has dominion over a particular land or aspect of existence, and that that power requires the offering. The Four-Letter Name is formed of the letters that spell, was, is and will be, meaning that God is eternal. This is not God as He appears in a particular manifestation (Judge, Provider, Life-giver) but God as He is.
This is His Name as the God of Mercy. No one should think that God requires offerings to feed or appease Him. The Eternal One has no needs that man can satisfy for everything is His and nothing is beyond His power!
Answer for yourself: What then is the purpose of the offerings?
You should have seen by now that these offerings provided man an opportunity to unite himself to God to whatever extent it is possible for mortal man to do so through repentance, confession, and restitution.
Similarly, there is a humanly created fire below on the altar and there is the Heavenly fire from above, which God has placed upon Israel's altar. Both of these flames are fed by the offerings of the Jewish people, symbolizing the union of man's spiritual aspirations with God's goals for him. Thus the offerings provide Israel a means for spiritual elevation [drawing closer to God].
All creatures emanate from God and have no independent existence on their own. Man has freedom of choice and his intellect puts great achievements within his reach, but all of this is possible only because God gives him the power to do so. Man could not function or even exist without God. The goal of creation is for man to acknowledge this basic fact; to recognize and proclaim that everything exists because of God and nothing can survive without Him. There are many ways for God's glory to be revealed and recognized. The highest recognition of all is for man to know The Oneness of God, meaning that there is nothing aside from Him. He achieves his ultimate greatness when he recognizes that there is none beside Him (Deut. 4:35). An offering is a demonstration of this concept. It says that its owner is surrendering his possessions to their Source (God). Theoretically, one might expect him to be ready to give even his very life in acknowledgment of God's sovereignty, but that is not His will. God wants man to live, to grow, to thrive, to serve; and God ordains the offerings as man's way to recognize His Oneness. Thus, by offering his possessions [as seen in the animal presented to God in sacrifice], one symbolizes that he has no existence but for God's will.
The efficacy of offerings in obtaining God's favor is comparable to the way food makes it possible for the soul to maintain its attachment to the body. Material food cannot provide nourishment to the soul, which is not a physical entity. It is this nourishment of the body that enables it to remain healthy enough to play host to the soul. Likewise, the "food of the Altar's fire" somehow effects the process that enables the Shechinah to remain among Israel.
The food of the soul is not measured in calories, vitamins, and minerals. Only intellectual and spiritual pursuits can nourish the soul. Torah study, prayer, even meals in celebration of such events as Sabbath and Festivals all have a sacred content that is capable of nourishing the soul. Only in this sense do the offerings constitute food for God. Man's dedication to Him and His commandments provides the nourishment that enables the Shechinah to attach itself to human beings and their handiwork. We think of food in terms of nutritive value, but that is not what sustains life. Man does not live merely because of the bread (material component). He lives through the bread's spiritual component; what emanates from the mouth of God. This is what holds together body and soul and what holds together Godliness and Israel through the agency of the offerings.
Having now come to the understanding that it was a life lived above sin that was so pleasing to God that He accepted such a life as an offering and atonement for one’s sin, it should behoove you to rethink what you believe about atonement as a Christian. If you were to do some comparative religious study you will see the preponderance of evidence of how pagan concepts of salvation are woven into Pauline theology. I have shown you the Biblical teachings of atonement and have not mentioned Paul’s theology once. The reason I have not is that nowhere in the Jewish Masoretic Palestinian text are such Pauline concepts of atonement found. Only when you read the fraudulent and mistranslated Greek Scriptures, which the Rabbis did not translate, do you begin to find such ideas surfacing in the text (http://geocities.com/faithofyeshua). But never fail to understand that such concepts cannot be found in the Jewish Scriptures from which the Greek translation emanated. Somebody “fixed” the Greek translation to read differently.And sadly for you, these altered and paganized Greek mistranslation became the foundation for your Christian Old Testament. To make matters worse, your New Testament quotes from the fraudulent Old Testament (http://www.faithofyeshua.faithweb.com). Over and over as you read your Christian Bible you only reinforce and rehearse error! You need to know that. But that happened over 2000 years ago and who knows? Well I do, and others do who have studied enough to see it! The Jews have always known. It is the secularized Jews of today who don't. It is time someone told you! The righteous Jews know this and have known this since 200 BC when the Greek translation was understood by them to be a corruption of the Jewish Scriptures. History records 3 attempts of the Jews to correct such a forged Greek translation but sadly their efforts were not to overtake the popularity of the already translated LXX (Septuagint).
Understand an animal’s soul represented the soul of one making the sacrifice, and we, as non-Jews, today are beneficiaries of having the Jew’s soul (Jesus) given in place of ours along with their prayers for our sin. Jesus is the archetype for all of Israel. He is the greatest of all the "Suffering Servants" of the God of Israel. But in this lesson we must no longer overlook the importance of a life lived above sin which procures one’s redemption and not the inert blood of the animal or of Jesus. Lives lived honoring God through faith and obedience atones. Your Covenant requires it! Such is the message of Bet Emet as we are called to live like Jesus and not just “believe in Jesus.” It has been my experience as a Pastor over the years to encounter multitudes of Christians who trust in Christ’s blood instead of understanding the importance of his life, symbolized by his soul in his blood, as lived in obedience to God as a form of atonement, or even their own lives, as lived pleasing to God for their OWN atonement. We must walk out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are co-laborers with God in our own salvation through faith and repentance. Such a mistaken understanding of our redemption since not being taught the truth from a Hebraic perspective has caused multitudes of Christians to trust in the acclaimed miraculous powers of the blood of Jesus instead of focusing of the miraculousness of a life lived above sin. Such a false sense of security in “blood” instead of “lives lived holy before God and man” unconsciously causes the believer to not regard sin with revulsion as he should. We tend to view sin as less harmful than it is, and compromise with sin lies at the door.
The bottom line for all Christians to understand is that we have heard way too much preached about Jesus and far too little studied from the texts of the Jewish Bible which tell us exactly and accurately who he is as well as his original mission. If we had studied the original sources available to us, we would not be so mixed up theologically in Christianity today which boasts over 2000 different denominations all maintaining they have the truth about Jesus while at the same time being the most violent and crime ridden nation in the world.
SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE MESSAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH…LOOK AT THE FRUIT OF THIS MESSAGE IN OUR COUNTRY WITH A CHURCH ON EVERY CORNER AND TELEVISIONS FILLED WITH THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE OF GRACE WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ONE'S OWN SIN! JUST LOOK OUT YOUR DOOR AND ASK IF THAT IS THE BEST THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN DO????????
I don't plan to get into why the Christian message at this time but suffice to say that the Christian message is corrupted due to it's pagan content over Jewish content as we see for example in the alteration of Jewish texts in the real Hebrew Isaiah for example but let it suffice to say as shown beyond question on many of our other sites that we are in this sad state today because instead of being a true follower of Jesus and his Jewish faith we are camped at the feet of pagan Rome and Paul's antinomianism (anti-Law). May God forgive our laziness of letting others tell us what to believe instead of us studying to show ourselves approved unto God. I just showed you part of the problem. Implicitly we are led to not revere the Laws and Commandments of God because of the solar teaching that “Jesus died for me” and my get out of jail card saves me. This comes straight out of sun worship as you have seen on this site and others. As a Pastor I saw such falsehoods lived out in the lives of the congregation year after year. When there is no Law, no Commandments, no requirements, no accountability, then there is no righteous fruit and we have our newspapers filled with horror story after horror story. And sadly few can count on their lives being a sufficient atonement for their sin because they have been taught a pagan sun-godman story which allows his followers to get away with anything. Emotionalism is a sorry substitute for knowledge.
Answer for yourself: For after all if saved by the blood of Jesus, what need do I have to live like Jesus and not disobey the commandments of God? Isn't Jesus my “grace card”?
Answer for yourself: If saved by the blood of another, what does a little sin mean…what can it hurt?
Answer for yourself: See the tragic thinking involved in focusing upon the blood of Jesus instead of the life of Jesus lived above sin? Now look out your window to the world and see what the fruit of 1700 years of erroneous teaching has grown!
Shalom.