THE DIVINE SPARK

 Throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrews were drawn toward the Kingdom of God promised to Abraham. Jesus made it clear, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mat 6:33). “These things” said Jesus are “What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?” (Mat 6:31). Implied is that in the Kingdom of God, God will supply all things.

Jesus implored those who followed Him, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Mat 6:10). “In earth” and “in heaven” is ostensibly in the physical realm and the invisible, but “real estate” of God. He was telling them that if they are in Him, then the Kingdom of God is within them.

In my last two commentaries, I explained that Abraham was a king without any land. The Book of Jasher revealed that he was a king, and that Canaan land was not his; that he was only a resident there. It implied that Abraham was a king without a kingdom, but truly, the Kingdom of God was within him and his seed. The “land” of the Abrahamic Covenant was not so much property in the Holy Land but “Real Estate” in another realm.

There is some argument about the location of the former Garden of Eden. Much of sacred literature and the Bible points to the Kingdom of David as the location of Eden and Jerusalem as “Zion,” the middle of the Garden wherein resided God in paradisical glorified flesh of some sort.

Abraham, as he traveled from Egypt, encountered Sodom and Gomorrah upon the plain of the Jordan River (Hebrew Naral Ha Yarden — “The River of the Garden” in English). Furthermore, as he approached those two cities, according to scripture, “Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, as the Garden of the Lord” (Gen 13:10).

Abraham was in Christ as he entered the former Garden of Eden. How was that possible? Christ, the Messiah,” was in him.

In Shinar, Nimrod insisted on building a tower to stalk God on His “turf” — in the Kingdom of God. Twelve men, including Abram, refused to construct it, and only Abram remained, as the others fled into the mountains. Abram took his stand against the “king-god” Nimrod who was to build the biggest “idol” ever that would make Terah’s (Abram’s father) so puny.

 Abram said,  

  “And now, as He liveth in whom I trust, I will not remove from my place wherein they have put me: and if there be any sin of mine so that I be indeed burned, the will of God be done. And the prince said unto him: “Thy blood be upon thy head, if thou refuse to go forth with these. But if thou consent, thou shall be delivered. Yet if thou wilt abide, abide as thou art. And Abram said: I will not go forth, but I will abide here.” (PS-P 6:10)

 Abide he did! Nimrod’s captain, Joktan, put Abram in the fiery furnace just as Nebuchadnezzar did years later with the righteous three young men!

¹⁶ And they took him and built a furnace and kindled it with fire, and put bricks burned with fire into the furnace. Then Jectan the prince being amazed (lit. melted) in his mind took Abram and put him with the bricks into the furnace of fire. ¹⁷ But God stirred up a great earthquake, and the fire gushed forth of the furnace and brake out into flames and sparks of fire and consumed all them that stood round about in sight of the furnace; and all they that were burned in that day were 83,500. But upon Abram was there not any the least hurt by the burning of the fire. ¹⁸ And Abram arose out of the furnace, and the fiery furnace fell down, and Abram was saved. (Ps-P 6:16-18) 

If God, the man, was in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, it stands to reason that God was in the fiery furnace with Abram. I submit that the flesh of Abram in that flame was made incorruptible so it would not burn; that his genes became like the genes of God. God had made Adam in His Image with His identity. Adam was generated with incorruptible flesh, and in the fire, God put a coat of skin onto him that would be impervious to the wiles of Nimrod who was the flesh of the Wicked One.

What I am implying is that God, rather than allow Abram to be burned, imbued him with the “Divine Spark” from His “Divine Impulse.”

In review of Adam and Eve, God put onto them “coats of skin” (Gen 3:21). Sacred literature points toward coats of the skins of lambs, and maybe that is the “Image” that God put onto them. They were as lambs on the outside, nearly impervious to the fiery darts of the Wicked One, but inside they were incorruptible aft4er be so clothed. Perhaps, God provided for them the “Divine Spark” on them inwardly to afford better protection against the wicked ones! Their glorified flesh was somehow changed into corruptible flesh because they had been made naked, and without flesh.

If so, Adam and Eve were regenned in the image of God. The same goes for Abram. He may have received the genes of God with a Divine Spark more powerful than the fiery furnace. If that was the case, then rather than starting afresh with the genes of man with the flood of Noah to make new creatures, as He promised, God used fire to regen Abram to make the “new creature” Abraham.

In a previous commentary, I pointed out that God delivered Abram from Ur of the Chaldees (Shinar). Hidden in that one word (Ur), is “flame.” It was in Shinar (Mesopotamia) that was Abram’s birthplace, and “Ur” was from the fiery furnace!

Because Abram received the Divine Spark by Divine Impulse because of his great faith, God said, “I will bless his seed” (Ps-P 7:4). To bless with a blessing is “barak barak” in the Hebrew, or to literally “adorn” Abram with “prosperity” (Strong’s Dicitionary). God changed his identity from Abram to Abraham. He looked the same as before but inside Abraham was a new person, indubitably with a new genome made in the image of God like Adam.

The Divine Spark that Abram received because of such strong faith was a new set of genes. As it turned out, Abram misused those genes with Hagar, the Egyptian, and Ishmael was imbued with depravity. On the other hand, Sarah was the relative of Abraham, and although barren, the seed that God had blessed Abraham with by Divine Spark was somehow, and not by coitus, Impulsed into Sarah in the same fashion that Eve was of God and Adam.

It might be obvious by now, but the topic of discussion is about the “Divine Spark” from God. He has used that Spark so many times and still does!

God’s new Kingdom, as it turned out, was inflamed in the flesh of Abraham — in his whole identity — in his genes throughout all his flesh and blood. All God need do was take a sample of Abraham’s flesh and transform Sarai with it as he had done from Adam to Eve. God had “cloned” the DNA of man to make woman, and with Abraham, He cloned Isaac from “Father Abraham” when Abraham was away.

Sure, these assumptions are hyperbolic, but they are based on God’s past performances. God shall someday regenerate as He generated in the beginning, and in the beginning that was with Light. In the end, it shall be by the Light of Fire, and with Abraham, God regenerated Abram by fire with a fiery furnace and a supranatural Divine Spark.

When Jesus came, He revealed the secret to the key to His Kingdom. Jesus said, “Marvel not; ye must be born again” (John 3:7). Do not be amazed, your genes must come from God, because “born again” is literally “engendered from above” (ibid).

Abram, when he was “blessed,” was engendered from above. The old man’s seed was regenerated and would be used to plant a new “Garden” in the Kingdom of God as God had done with Adam (Gen 2:8).

The problem was that the Hebrews thought that Canaan land was the Kingdom of God, but Abraham was content because he knew it was in him!

Lot had picked the land that would turn to “Hell” — Sodom and Gomorrah — but Abraham picked an invisible realm that only he understood.  Lot picked first and picked wrongly. The land turned out to be perishable, but Abraham’s was in his heart wherever he would go!

Now consider the Words of Jesus when queried about the Kingdom of God: 

²⁰ And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, “When the kingdom of God should come?” He answered them and said, “The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation ²¹ … behold, the Kingdom of God is within you…” (Luke 17:21-22)

 The Kingdom of God had already come! It came with the faith of Abraham at the time Abram received the Divine Spark from God when he was blessed. Abraham was content with the invisible Kingdom of God because his seed from the Divine Spark would be citizens of that Kingdom, or that was the plan anyway. Lot had to have the land that he observed, and inside Abraham must have been amused somewhat! However, not so funny, Lot’s bad choice turned deadly for his wife.

All the while that Abraham resided in Canaan land, he was content. That contentment is what “joy” means in scripture. He was contented because he had received the Divine Spark and hence, the Kingdom of God was in him, and the Covenant was that his genes would transfer the Divine Spark to his Divine Seed, of which the Savior was the perfect Divine Spark from Abraham… thus the lineage of Abraham in the book of Matthew.

Jesus came from the womb by the Divine Spark from God above. He was born the son of Man through Abraham’s seed, Mary, and the son of God by Divine Spark when God provided the Impulse to Mary — the Holy Ghost. (This time God skipped the Joseph because God fathered Jesus directly with Impulsing His Identity alone into Mary. Jesus has the flesh of the virgin but the genome of His Father.)

Jesus had the Kingdom of God in Him and He came to Earth to divide the Kingdom to those who would follow Him by faith even as Abram had in the fiery furnace.

“The faith of Abraham” is used as an example of great faith, “So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” (Gal 3:9), meaning that those who have the faith of Abraham are blessed with the Divine Spark just as he was.

It is often thought that Abraham’s great faith was when he was willing to sacrifice “God’s” son, Isaac. That took tremendous faith, but in Ur, Abram sacrificed his own flesh to the flames. That is what God would do. Technically, Jesus was not the son of God, but the manifestation of God Himself in the flesh of a man (John 1:31).

But that was not the end of the Divine Sparking! At Pentecost after Jesus had ascended in bodily shape, the following occurred: 

³ And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. ⁴ And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:3-4)

 After Abram had endured the fire, and nobody else, those in discord with God were confused. God encrypted their speech so they could not unite against Him. Well, when the Divine Spark came on those “of one accord” in Christ (Acts 2:1), the Divine Spark — the flame of the Holy Ghost — changed them inside. To demonstrate the intensity of that “flame” of the Divine Spark, all who were in Christ became new creatures called “Christians” and there in Jerusalem the first Church was built. The “flame” was spread all over the world by the Divine Sparks in Christians. Thus, just as Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is in them (Christians)” that God had the Impulse to change just as at Pentecost.

As it turns out, “born again” is the “blessed seed“ that God plants in the world to endure it to the end when the Spark is Glorified with the intense Light of God in heaven, and they are finally engendered from above!

Of course, there were many patriarchs who received the Divine Spark. For Moses, it was the Burning Bush that made him radiant. God had blessed him from birth when the baby “Egyptian” with a pagan name was renamed “Moses.” Moses had the genes of Abraham as well in his genome!

For those who have faith in God, they are adoptive sons of God who retain the corrupt flesh of the Wicked One. God blesses them with a seed, the same seed with which God planted in Mary to shape Jesus. Afterwards, at His baptism — His alone and no other — the man, Jesus, received the full Identity of God when the Holy Ghost entered Him in bodily shape (Luke 3:22). The initial Divine Spark had grown into a full “Flame” so to speak, and then at the Transfiguration God Sparked the man to imbue Jesus with His own Glory.

As such, the three substances of Jesus became one and the Divine Spark at the Transfiguration changed Jesus to imperishable forever. He by then had the full genome of God, and YHWH was His new identity.

 

PARADISE BELONG: Part 2

The “book” is the writings of Matthew. The first chapter of that book is the generation of the Messiah, called “Jesus.” That He was generated is made obvious by his forthcoming genealogy. God was generated as a man with genes. It began with Abraham, and no further back, according to Matthew because God endowed him with clean genes. That places a great significance on Abraham.

Matthew often wrote of Jesus as the “son of David,” but David was the son (yhios) of Abraham. “Son” in that sense is not the offspring of one father and one mother but the seed of all the progenitors before. Hence, Jesus was the “seed” of Abraham that was promised in the Covenant that God made with Abraham.

The inheritance of the Abrahamic Covenant is repeated from part one of my commentary for memory’s sake: 1) to make of Abraham a great nation 2) to give Abraham's descendants all the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates, and 3) for Abraham to be the father of many nations and of many descendants, and the land would belong to his descendants.  

Therefore, Jesus, as the seed (identity) of Abraham, would be a great nation. Of course, so many thought that Jesus would be the Lord Proprietor of the land of Israel, but the Abrahamic Covenant was esoteric. The “Great Nation” of Abraham was Christianity and the “Bride” of Christ, the Church. The Great Nation was an idea, just as when Abraham was king of Canaan and without any land. Canaan belonged to the Canaanites, and they were “caretakers” in a sense, until the heavenly kingdom would be given to all the heirs of God’s Invisible Empire.

The Covenant was to give all the land of the fertile crescent to “seed” of Abraham. Of course, “seed” is semen and in the head of each sperm is the chromosome of the parent. The flesh of Jesus was from Abraham’s seed through Mary. She passed down in her mitochondrial DNA, the humanity of Abraham, into Jesus. Jesus was of the flesh of Abraham, and as such he was of the “house” of Abraham and was the fulfillment of that promise. Jesus was of the gens (family) of Abraham, and kingship was his birthright from Abraham. As such, Jesus was rightful heir to what God promised Abraham.

Only one other place are “sons of Abraham” mentioned and that was with Isaac and Ishmael (1 Chron 1:28). Both of those two sons were to make a great nation since there was an appendage to the Abrahamic Covenant that applied to Ishmael. As it turned out. Ishmael received the land, and his seed squandered it by miscegenation. On the other hand, Isaac’s part was the heavenly “Israel.”

Both grants, one for land and the other for space, were Paradise. It seems that immediately a great portion of Ishmael’s Paradise was destroyed by fire and brimstone (Gen 19:24). It had been “the Garden of the Lord” (Paradise) before that great fire (Gen 13:10).

Since the Kingdom of David no longer existed because Herod, as an Ishmaelite, squandered the land by killing off all his legitimate first-generation heirs. That left the “Garden of Eden” (Judea) with no king. Then along came Jesus! He was the son of David and the son of Abraham. Because of David whom God anointed, Jesus would be king, and because of Abraham, He would be “King Of Kings.”

Just what is a “king of kings”? Imperators — Caesars. All the kings of the fertile crescent paid tribute to Caesar and were appointed only by his anointing. As “King Of Kings,” therefore, Jesus was not just king of the Jews but a “Caesar.” Whereas, the kingdom of Caesar was on Earth, the Kingdom of Jesus was in another realm. Caesar’s representative, Pontius Pilate, would come to understand that, and had no problem with it, but Herod had tried to kill the newborn king.

Herod could have killed the rightful heir to his kingdom, as he had his own sons. He could have killed the baby Jesus immediately, but Josephus wrote that Herod killed the innocents in death. Without revealing that Herod was dead, his soldiers executed his will by killing off all the contenders for the Herodian throne.

As it turns out the true king — Jesus — escaped death when His parents took him to Egypt. Get this: Herod endeavored to kill the new legitimate king from Hell! He was the “principality” who sought Jesus from Hades: For, Jesus was, “Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come” (Eph 1:21). Even though Herod would not get Jesus when he was alive, after he died the ghost of Herod still pursued Him from another realm. Because Herod endeavored to kill God, just like Judas, he would have Satan in him; he would be the “Antichrist” of that age.

For the third part of the Covenant, Jesus would be heir to the land of the Kingdom of David, and Jews still value that over the “Real Estate” in heaven. Jesus made it clear many times that it was not the kingdom of David that He sought, but the entire Kingdom of God’s whose Estate was in another realm (John 18:36).

They all (Herodians, Hasmoneans, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadduccees, and the soldiers) all missed the point; they were all trying to protect their interests for both the land and their religious Laws. Jesus would be crucified for claiming a far-a-away “land” that could be entered only by death. Ironically, those who murdered Jesus provided for Him a throne whereon He now sets as the “right hand of God,” as Josephus explains; with all the power and authority as a son of Caesar would have.

So, Jesus was much like His progenitor, Abraham — a king whose kingdom was not of material property that was corruptible but incorruptible spiritual property that few will ever see… “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet 1”4). Whereas the Jews still seek land, Christians seek eternal proprietorship of glory — new improved genes from God.

Abraham was an important progenitor of Jesus. As I have written before, it is implied in scripture that Abraham was impotent, but that God endowed him with a Divine Impulse. In other words, Abraham would be the one to fire the “Divine Spark” of God into the barren womb of Sarah. Therefore, the seed of Abraham would not be from Abraham but from God from the loins of Abraham.

Isaac was a chosen and peculiar son (Deut 14:2). His genes were a gift of God to the Israelites. As it turns out, Jesus is “Israel” in the sense that Hs genes were of Israel. Because Jesus was of Isaac, then Jesus is of the genes of the son of Abraham. That makes, Jesus the “Lord Of Lords” because he had the authority and genes of the Lord!

Now for David. Although, God granted the Kingdom to Abraham, it was ruled by David, the son of Jesse. As the “son of Abraham” Jesus had title to the Kingdom of God, and because of David, He had would be the inheritor of the land as well. When Jesus died, He allowed all the contenders fight for the land, and they still do! On the other hand, the “Real Estate” in heaven is a free gift for having the genes of Jesus imbued within from above. As written before, “born again” in the Greek is literally “engendered from above” (Strong’s).

Christians have the “seed” planted when they first believe, but when Jesus comes for them, they will be regenned from above! That believers are the “Church,” and the Church is the “Bride of Jesus,” means that Christians will be inseminated by the Divine Spark to become glorified as Jesus Himself was at death (John 7:39).

That Jesus was both a son of David and Abraham and of their genome, then Jesus is rightful King of the Jews. But who is a Jew? Not the one that was born a Jew:

²⁸ For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: ²⁹ But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Rom 2:28-29)

 Jews, because of the Covenant, are outwardly identified by the cutting-away of the foreskin of the genitalia. Anybody with great caution can identify Jews. However, that is because of the flesh. But a Christian is a Jew inwardly because the whole “flesh” has been cut-off. The use of the word, “heart,” is symbolic; it is not just with all the heart, but the heart, soul, and mind (Mat 22:36-39). That is with your entire existence — the entire image, your identity — your genes, in which mankind was made. The “heart” is the seat of all knowledge, will, and desires. None of those are obvious in reality but are very much so in spirit!

To be an heir, with entitlement to God’s Estate, the person must be in Christ, or better said, with Christ in you. Just how are the genes of Jesus implanted into a sinner? First, the sinner must be cleansed  for the implanting. The Holy Ghost is the “Living Water” that washes away all sin, and once that is done, the “Holy Ghost” of Jesus plants His seeds to grow a mature Christian — one who is like Christ but not perfect like Christ… not Him but in His Image just as when Adam was glorified in the beginning!

No longer is genealogy significant because now the genes of God’s children are not passed down by worthless DNA in the flesh (Tit 3:9) but spiritual “DNA” from Jesus Himself. Jesus carried the genes of God and Man as the “son of God” and the “son of Man.” Our genes have been corrupted to the extent that mankind is depraved; so depraved that even biogeneticists cannot help! Only by the Blood of Jesus with His genes can any sinner be saved. 

TO WHOM DOES PARADISE BELONG

 The New Testament introduces itself to the reader, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Mat 1:1). With that said, the Book of Matthew, written by the tax collector, Matthew, is a book of genealogy, specifically of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David and the son of Abraham.

Not revealed in the Bible, but found in extraneous sacred writings — The Book of Jasher, is that Abraham was a king without his own country. He was king of the Jews (Hebrews) in absentia, so to speak. Abraham was from Ur and God gave to Him the country of Canaan that would someday be called, “Israel”. Therefore, Israel was a “promised land” that existed only in the mind of God, and in the mind of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  (It is supposed that the “real estate” existed in most people’s minds, including the Ishmaelites.) Matthew has declared that Jesus was of the rightful heir to that invisible empire!

The promised land was more than what is thought of as “Israel” but the entire Kingdom of David from the Nile to the Euphrates River in the shape of a rainbow. For some of his posterity, it would be the fertile crescent that appears on the flag of Islam.

                                                                              Islamic Flag

 

 

Why would that be? Because God promised to both Jacob’s (Israel) twelve sons and Ishmael’s twelve sons the same empire. To this day, the Muslims claim the fertile crescent as their own and believe that Jews only “squat” on their territory, and Jews feel the same way about the Ishmaelites.

Just who is rightful owner and heirs of the Holy Land? Matthew thought that a significant issue to bring up in the book that he wrote.

The entire Bible is about the “Last Will and Testament of God.” The Old Testament begins with its origin and improvement, its temporary division, and its partial restoration. Matthew, when there was no king in Israel as during the ministry of Jesus, the kingdom had been divided, and he declared Jesus to be the rightful “King of the Jews” through his mother, Mary, from kings Abraham and David. He would be the king and Savior that God promised to Abraham when He covenanted with Abraham.

The Abrahamic Covenant is a covenant of three parts: 1) to make of Abraham a great nation (Gen 12:1-3), 2) to give Abraham's descendants all the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates (Gen 15:18-21), and 3) for Abraham to be the father of many nations and of many descendants, and the land would belong to his descendants (Gen 17:2-9).

The genealogy of Jesus begins with Abraham because his is the Promise. Matthew realized that Jesus was the rightful proprietor of the Kingdom of David as the seed of both King Abraham and King David.

Jesus was born in 6 B.C., as many figure. Herod died in 4 B.C. Matthew recognized, and probably said so to many because of his profession, that Jesus was “rightful heir” to King Herod and not any of Herod’s sons, sister, or even his brother. If you were Herod, what would you do? What most kings do; seek to destroy the pretender to the throne! He tried that with all pretenders, including with whom he thought was the main contender — Jesus as the son of David. (Think out that saying would intimidate the old dying king!)

Jesus did not pretend to the throne of the Kingdom of David, but to a Kingdom in another realm. Pontius Pilate was trying to establish if Jesus was in fact “king of the Jews.” Why would he care? Pilate was ex officio “king” as prelate of the Roman Empire. Only Caesar could appoint kings. Was Jesus breaking Roman Law by disrespecting Caesar? Jesus clarified who He was, “My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence” (John 18:36).

Pretenders to the throne always fought, but that would not be the Way of Jesus, albeit it would be the way of Muhammad — the “son of Ishmael.” (Note that Judas would be the “son of Ishmael” because he was from the Ishmaelite city of Kerioth. Also note that the one to plan the murder of a king would often be the king!)

Jesus settled ownership of the Kingdom of David when Judas hung himself as so many failed pretenders often did. Although the man who would be king, and was rightful heir by the competitive Abrahamic Covenant, Jesus, the son of Abraham and David would be King in the everlasting Kingdom in heaven!

How was Judas a contender for the inheritance of Judea? Well, there was an appendage to the Abrahamic Covenant that many fail to notice. God added a hidden condition to the Abrahamic Covenant:

¹⁹ And God said, “Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name ‘Isaac:’ and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. ²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. ²¹ But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. (Gen 17:19-21)

 One thing God failed to reveal to Abraham was that those two “great nations” were on the same property. The Abrahamic Covenant was conditional after all; it would depend on something: God would explain the conditions further to Moses because at that time, the Israelites were without land or country. Where is what you promised Lord? To Moses, God explained, “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (Lev 26:12). That was the condition for the real inheritance!

They had not been His people although He had been their God. When will they obtain the “land”? When God would walk among them!

Matthew began the genealogy of Jesus — the time when God would walk among them, just as He told Moses. As it turned out, over the years, the Kingdom of David has been the land of the sons of David’s but thereafter, it has always been nobody’s and everybody’s land. Proprietorship has changed hands many times, and according to the British Mandate from WWI, Israel had become everybody’s land. When WWII ended, a small part of the Davidic Kingdom became the land of “Israel” in 1948.

However, as Jesus revealed to Pilate, “Syria” (then the estate of the Romans that included Judea) was not His claim, but a Kingdom in another realm. [1]

Therefore, Matthew as tax collector determined to whom the “taxes” would go! Maybe he was thinking of the revenue that went to the Romans and the sacrifices bought to pay for the sacrifices. He was the one contracted by Caesar to decide the amount and sources of revenues.

A tax collector was chosen for a reason; he would know to whom the taxes go. As it turned out the real King of the Jews validated Matthew: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Mat 22:21). Gold and silver would be given to Caesar but self-sacrifice to God! Jesus effectively ruled that Caesar was king of kings of the land of Israel but Himself the “King Of King and Lord Of Lords” of Paradise in heaven. The land would belong to whomever squatted on it, but the invisible fertile empire would belong to Himself and His adoptive children. Thusly, Jesus “executed” the terms of the Abrahamic Covenant to the “Will of God,” and it would be probated when God suffered death.

Next, thoroughly examine the key verse in expository: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” That will follow in the next commentary.

 

 

 

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[1] I have always claimed that the land may belong to the sons of Japheth but the invisible empire to those who are Christians outwardly but Jews inwardly (Rom 2:29). While the Jews and Arabs still fight over the land, the invisible empire is available to all. If God would promise you a destroyed Paradise on Earth or a glorious Paradise in heaven, which would you choose? Both parties of the Covenant to this day choose Paradise lost.