God created empires for reasons. The Assyrian empire arose to punish the blasphemous northern kingdom of divided Israel.
From the beginning the breaking of the Law had consequences:
But it shall come to pass, if you will not hearken unto the Voice of the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command you this day; that all these curses shall come upon you, and overtake you. (Deut 28:15)
The curses followed that passage, and among them is this one:
The Lord shall cause you to be smitten before your enemies: you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them: and shall be removed into all the kingdoms of the Earth. (Deut 28:25)
It began with twelve tribes in union,
then due to rebellion, the kingdom of Israel after Solomon split into two:
Israel was the northern kingdom and Judah the southern. Ten tribes made up the
north and two the south.
The Kingdom of David (Israel) was
twelve tribes. One by one the tribes disappeared from history. The tribe of Dan
was the first to flee, first to the north to the Levant and then further north
perhaps to Europe and the Balkans. The Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews of those
two regions are supposed remnants of the tribe of Dan to go their way.
The northern kingdom developed
their own gods, their own holy mountains, and their own temple; and along came Assyria
that had developed as an empire while God remained silent. The Israelites, because
of King Ahab and his seed, sinned against God continually. The kings of Israel degenerated
over time until they were reprehensible to God. They became the lost ten tribes
of Israel. They were not lost but dispersed and separated from God and
the true religion.
To further the corruption, God
allowed the Israelites that were taken away to be replaced by Assyrian Khuthaioi
(Cuthites from Kutha near Babylon). Hence, the Samaritans are a mixed race of
people hardly fully Jewish.
Then came the Babylonian Empire
from the ashes of the Assyrian, and God used them to disperse most of the Jews
eastward, back to their “origins,” so to speak. Theologians call that the “Diaspora”
when the last of David’s Empire was reduced.
By grace, God allowed another
empire to rise from the Babylonian — the Medio-Persian Empire wherein Cyrus and
Darius in increments over seventy years allowed Jews to return to their homeland,
rediscover the Law, read it, and become God’s people again.
The Temple was rebuilt, and
things seemed well, but all the while, the Jews kept the Law but not out of
love of God but obedience. They had become slaves to regulations, and as such
God created the Hellenistic Empire (the Greeks) to rule them. God allowed
Alexander the Great to rise and fall for numerous reasons, but mainly to
prepare the Jews for the coming of Christ.
God allowed the Jews free reign. All
those years they had failed to observe the most basic Law; “You shall have no
other gods before Me” (Exod 20:3). After all the consequences from Deuteronomy
chapter 28, they had learned their lesson well; a kingdom led by the Hasmoneans
came about from the ashes of the Greek Empire. The Hasmonean Dynasty in Judea
kept the Law to perfection and the utmost criteria was that finally the Jews
would worship only one God (Yahweh) and if that tenet was violated
the blasphemers would pay in Hell.
The command was literally to have
no other gods in God’s face. Then along came Jesus who was the face of
God that Moses was forbidden to see.
The Jews failed to worship Jesus
because it seemed to them that Jesus was the unlawful Image of Yahweh
— the Invisible and only One True God. They had learned their lessons from
Deuteronomy chapter twenty-eight but failed to understand that Jesus was indeed
their Yahweh in the flesh of a man.
After the final straw, God removed
the Jews from the face of the earth. They were still there but spread
throughout the Roman Empire. By that time, after the destruction of the Temple
and the nation, only a handful of people populated Jerusalem and things were so
dire that Josephus said that some mothers ate their own children to survive the
curses God warned them about.
God was developing a plan. According to Jeremiah, God said:
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jer 29:11)
God is preparing not just a room for the Jews but a palace in a Paradise in Israel. God gave to John visions of that future and His plans:
And I (John) saw a new heaven and a new earth: for
the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more
sea, and I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great Voice
out of heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will
dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with
them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow,
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are
passed away.
And He that sat upon
the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said unto me, “Write:
for these words are true and faithful.” (Rev 21:1-5)
And He carried me (John) away in the spirit to a great and high
mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of
heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone
most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great
and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names
written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of
Israel. (Rev 21:10-12)
God cursed the Hebrews for that purpose! Their material city was given up for Paradise. The tabernacle, they will find, is not in a building but their tabernacle was God in His “House” so to speak, in the glorious flesh of Jesus.
If you remember, Jesus claimed to
be the “Temple of God” and was rejected. Ironically, for the twelve tribes in
heaven, Jesus will be their “Temple” again after theirs was destroyed by Titus
in 70 A.D.. (Or at least he gets the blame. More on that in the next
commentary.)
Yahweh will restore the great city of Jerusalem, using heavenly material, to wit:
And the foundations of
the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The
first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the
fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh,
chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus;
the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst.
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. (Rev 21:19-22)
What the empires tore down, God will build back better. Foremost, the Temple will not be of bricks or stones, but the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, Jesus, will be the “Temple” within the walls of that city that God will build for the Jews. “What about the Christians?” you ask.
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 2:29)
The Temple will belong to all the
nations but the wall of it is obviously for the Jews, all the missing twelve
tribes of Israel that will be reunited in the end. However, not Jews by circumcision
of the foreskin, but the hardness of their hearts cut away.
Next, the Roman Empire and its purpose
for God will be revealed.
Now for something about the oversized Hebrew letter lamad:
Oversized Lamed
In Deuteronomy 29:28 there is an oversized Lamed:
(To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment