RECOGNIZING JESUS IS GOD

 

Jews, to this day, believe in the coming of the Messiah, failing to believe that the Messiah has already come, and that they missed the occasion. Not that they were not there, but they missed the “Baptism” of Jesus in His own blood!  They supplied the baptismal, the Romans provided the “Ladder” out, but both nations missed the Holy Ghost.

Jesus had been baptized by water and the Holy Spirit remained on Him (John 1:33). When He was baptized in His own “Living Water,” once He was “rebaptized,” the Holy Spirit left Him, as “He gave up the Ghost” (Luke 23:46).

Hence, it is not baptism in water that is efficacious but “baptism in the Holy Ghost” because it was not water that was the gain, but death, as Paul said, “For to me to live is Christ; to die is gain” (Phil 1:21), noting that Jesus was the only one on whom the Spirit remained after water baptism.

The point here is that water baptism does not make a Christian. Scripture does not say, Marvel not; ye must be baptized, but “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). So, the must be is not water but something else.

Jesus told the story of the vipers in the wilderness in the days of Noah (John 3:14). Although the water from the rock of Meribah that Moses struck revived them, God made it clear that it was neither Moses nor the water that preserved the Israelites from the Amalekites, but Himself.

¹¹ And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. ¹² And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. (Num 20:11-12)

 God had told Moses to smite the rock, but Moses did so twice — once for God and once for himself. It was as if Moses trusted himself more than God. As the name “Moses” means “water,” then Moses at that point, as well have become Poseidon, the god of water.

With the story of the fiery serpent on the pole (Num 21), which came just after the water of Meribah, it became clear that water is not saving but God is! The serpent on the pole symbolized Judas as dead in his tree, and the Name of the Lord — Jesus — would do that. Jesus revealed the Way to salvation, and that was trusting Jesus for putting away the “Serpent,” Satan, in Judas (John 13:27) on Good Friday, 33 AD. For them it was to trust in what Jesus for what He would do.

It was not water that is soterial but trusting in Jesus. That is the reason that Paul did not baptize, but a few, but persuaded many to become Christians (Acts 8:14), and “persuaded them (others) to continue in the grace of God” (Acts 13:43).

Now for my point: Rene’ Discartes, a baptized Jew, wrote, “Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?” (Montefiore 2011, 389). Montefiore thought that a baptized Jew was significant. I was baptized a Christian when I was in my teens. Baptism did not make me a Christian, but I was persuaded to be a Christian when I realized that, like the Israelites, I could not save myself from the “Serpent” but Jesus had already done that in 33 AD!

For years, I was baptized in sin and once I understood how I had been misled, I was baptized again; that time in the “blood of Jesus,” so to speak, because I had been persuaded that water was not soterial but trusting Jesus is!

That Descartes was baptized is not necessarily bad but if he was only baptized, it was insignificant. If he had not been persuaded, then he remained a Jew inwardly as well as outwardly.

Descartes believed in their Judaism. If he believed only in the Law, then he remained amiss. The Law had become nothing than mere belief in Moses. The Israelites, over the years, seemed to forgotten the episode with the vipers but only remembered the water from the rock in that Moses had become their god. As such he would be the antitype of Poseidon: “In his benign aspect, Poseidon was seen as creating new islands and offering calm seas. When offended or ignored, he supposedly struck the ground with his trident and caused chaotic springs, earthquakes, drownings and shipwrecks” (Wikipedia 2001-2022).

Perhaps the Greeks created Poseidon from Moses. After all, Greeks and Egyptians had many of the same gods with only different names. Perhaps Pharoah, as well, saw Moses more as “Poseidon” with his control over land and water, than a representative of the True God.

Even if that is not the case, God wanted to prohibit Moses (the antitype of Poseidon) from entering the Promised Land.

The “cherubims” guarding the gate to Paradise were Amalekites, of the germline of Esau, the Edomite  (Adamite). It was Adam’s own “seed” and namesake that would prevent Moses from entering into Paradise just as implied in scripture: “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” (Gen 3:24).

Moses would not see that “Tree of Life” until he saw the genes of God engendered in Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, which some believe was Mount Hermon — their “Mount Sinai.”

Ironically, Mount Sinai is Mount Horeb — the same place that water came from the rock of Meribah.

Now back to Descartes’s question: “Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?”

As it turns out, Judaism is not the Law of Moses nor baptism in water. Judaism is finding grace like Noah who found grace (Gen 6:8) but avoided the water. Grace saved him from water and from the ante-diluvian “Poseidon.” It was not water that saved Noah but that he found grace. All that water was evidence that Noah had found grace because it was not soterial but great tribulation!

However, Descartes had something correct — Judaism is the early practice of Christianity. That the Jews got it wrong, excepting the patriarchs and prophets, does not negate Judaism. When reading the Decalogue, poetry, and the prophets; ask yourself the question: What has this to do with Jesus?

Look intensely and the “Re-erection” (Resurrection) of the heaven and the Earth can be found in Revelation just as the “Erection” of the heaven and the Earth is found in Genesis. Examine Genesis chapter three and discover the gospel of Jesus and the first finding of grace (Gen 3:21).

Noah found grace, but he did nothing to find it; God merely clothed Noah in the same manner as He had Adam, and then Noah worked because he trusted God… not for five minutes, or even a day, but his trust endured for 120 years!

The flood confirmed what Noah believed; that God saves! Not by coincidence, that just happens to be the theophoric Name, “Jesus.”

In fact, the entire Old Testament is the religion of Judaism and is the story of pre-incarnate “Jesus.” Maybe Descartes knew that because it is written in the New Testament:

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² The same was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴ In Him was life; and the life was the light of men… ¹⁴ And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-4, 14)

John made Judaism and Christianity symbiotic — the former is the story of Jesus in Word, and the latter is the story of Jesus in deed. The former is the story of God in Spirit and the latter the story of God in the flesh of a man.

Those who focus only on the New Testament omit half the story, even half the gospel. Judaism was all about the grace of Jesus which Paul called the “Mystery of God” that in the God/Man Jesus is, “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:1-3).

If Judaism is disregarded, then grace remains unfound. That you exist was by grace, so if the Creator — the God of Judaism — is blasphemed, so is Jesus who created.

When Descartes stumbled upon Jerusalem in the early 19^th century, he stumbled upon YHWH in Jesus. That he understood that, perhaps he was more than baptized, but was persuaded that Jesus is God. Many modern Christians still fail to understand that, often saying, “God and Jesus,” as if making the Father the God of Judaism and Jesus the God of Christianity.

Because Judeo-Christian failed to understand that throughout history is why the Jews crucified Christ and why Christians continue to persecute Jews.

That is not to say that Jews are Christians, but the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets were most certainly pre-Christ “Christians.”

What did most miss? That Judaism was the “Garden” that God planted in preparation for Paradise that has grown into Christianity. Jerusalem is that Garden and it is shared by all. It is at the threshing floor of Ornan whereon God threshed them out on Calvary — the bad seed from the good — to grow them gloriously.

What the Jews missed John made clear:

⁸ He (Jesus) was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. ⁹ That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. ¹¹ He came unto his own, and his own received Him not. (John 1:8-11)

 The problem, therefore, with Judaism is that Jews failed to recognize that it was Jesus who killed the serpents when Moses held up the tree with the lifeless serpent in it! They still, to this day, fail to see that. Apparently, the Jew, Descartes saw that, and perhaps he was baptized in the blood of the Savior! Only God knows how deep his trust went and how long it endured. 

(Picture credit; The Times of Israel)