ON LOVE AND HATRED

   David Jeremiah said that God loves us and expects nothing in return. I know that he was trying to define “unconditional” love, but that missed the mark! God always expects something in return for his love, and that is that He be loved back.

  The first occasion of the use of loving God is way into the scriptures. Some expressed love for the son (Abraham of Isaac), the love for the wife (Isaac for Rebekah), Isaac for meat, Jacob loved Rachel, Shechem loved (lusted) for Dinah, Israel loved Jacob, but not until years later did God mention love.

  God was effectively saying, You all love each other, and even food, but what about me? So then, God commanded that He be loved so as to be included in the lovefest:

⁵ Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ⁶ And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exod 20:5-6)

  Not one time theretofore had scripture said that anyone loved God, not even Abraham. They feared God and revered Him, but godly love was not in their vocabulary nor in their hearts!

  Let’s stop there for a moment and get personal: Few have said that they love me, and if they did express it, it was because I expected them to say it. Perhaps it came across that I demanded to be loved so the few who have said are only following commands.

  What hurts the most is that some of those who should love me the most, never express any love. Yes, I am jealous of those fathers whose sons and daughters say they love them so much. Even the alternate non-Christian guys on the reality show, “Alone”,  express how much they love and miss their father, wives, and children. When I see that, I am jealous of their loving relationships.

  Now back to God: “I, the Lord God AM, a jealous God.” Let that be made clear: I AM (Anoki, meaning Yah Himself), the Yehova Elohim El qanna El. “Ganna” means jealous, but all the other words in that expression means that He, and He alone is God, and that He ought to be loved as well.

  He even pointed out who He IS: Elohim El, the three on one! That he should be loved in Body, Mind, and Soul — as the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus expressed so many years later: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Mat 22:37).

  It was good that the patriarchs loved others, but how about loving God? The Greatest Commandment was written on stone, seems to be a command, but is an expectation. God’s “Greatest Expectation” is that He be loved. The first four “commandments” were those expectations and how to metricize them. The subsequent six are how to metricize loving others, which the patriarchs already knew, but God wanted to point out that His Greatest Expectation is that He be loved firstly.

  Jesus implied the same thing when asked about the greatest of the commandments: to love Him with all the strength available, and to apply that intensely felt love to others as well… love others as you do yourselves. [i]

  The First Commandment in Exodus is the First Commandment written in the Book of Matthew. God still expected to be loved as He loves us — in the heart, mind, and soul. That is how He loves us and is with all three of His substances.

  Since mankind is in His image, God expects love from all three of our substances. The question has always been the same as He asked Simon Peter, “Lovest thou me more than these?” referring to the disciples. He asked that question three times, perhaps for the Father, Himself, and the Holy Ghost… or perhaps three times for heart, mind, and spirit? Do you love me with all three of your substances?

  Jesus was jealous! Do you love Me more than the others? Peter affirmed that he did. Then Jesus said to feed His “sheep”. In other words, show your love for me by expressing it. Feed them the Bread of Life from me. Of course, Jesus is the Bread of Life. [ii] Well, if you love Me, show it by elevating Me.

  Why would both, the Father and the Son, be jealous? Because they are both the same God. Jesus is the “heart” of God who expressed love in the flesh. The “Word” is Jesus who expressed love in thought.

  What about love for the Holy Spirit substance of God? “Unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven” (Luke 12:10). Blasphemeo from the Greek is “revile” the Holy Ghost of Jesus. He too is jealous! God must be loved on all respects regardless of his state, whether He is there in Word, Body, or Spirit. When he was there only in Word and Spirit, nobody said, “I love you,” so he commanded it.

  In the Commandment how much love is revealed: “Shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me.” In that passage, “mercy” is “checed” in the Hebrew or “loving kindness”.  God would demonstrate love for them by showing kindness, and what did He expect from them? Their love (ahab), essentially to breath back (Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon) on Him, the Breath that He breathed on Adam-kind.

  Well, God breathed life into man. That was love. He shared His Holy Spirit with man, to fully make Adam in His Image.

  The Holy Spirit is not only Power but virtue. When Jesus loved, virtue left Him. [iii] That was to heal the woman with a “blood issue”. Just think of all the virtue that Jesus gave up healing all of us because of  our blood issues!

  When God created Adam, He lost some virtue. He gave that loving kindness to Adam, and He expected Adam to breath it back in return.

  The Holy Spirit is meant to be shared, just as Adam did with Eve when he breathed life unto her from the curvature of his side. [iv] The Holy Spirit is meant to be shared, and once Jesus came, it was no longer by breathing on them, but feeding them the Word.

  As a sidenote: Why the masks? Why can we not breath love on others? Why the mention of the “blood issue”? Perhaps because the vaccine presents an issue to our own blood! And it does — the manufactured messenger RNA substitutes for the true DNA to restore (sic) normality, or so they claim. The mRNA is a blood issue so strong and cunning, that I will not take the “fiery dart of the wicked.” [v]

  So far as love is concerned, it is God desiring mercy, or our own loving kindness for Him.

  On the other hand, hatred is mentioned long before love, and Wow! this is profound: “They (her mother and sister) blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, ‘Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them” (Gen 24:60). But was not Eve “the mother of all living?” [vi] She was, but her seed failed God. Now, Rebekah would be the new “Eve”. “Living” in this context are those on whom God had mercy; to wit: those of the Abrahamic Covenant.

  Her “Seed” would Be Jesus, the Possessor of the gate — the Cross. Jesus possessed the gate of those who hated Him, and about everyone there at the crucifixion were full of hatred, and most still are!

  Hate, in the Hebrew is “sane” — an adversary against God — to be our own god. Truly, that is spiritual insanity, but even Satan accused Adam and Eve of that attitude. [vii]

  Hatred is not an emotion; it is an attitude of total independence from God. When science, philosophy, and even the media deny God, they are haters. But as usual, the first to hate call all the others the “haters”! “Hatred” is a superior attitude and self-esteem rather than Christ-esteem. It is any that are making a name for themselves above God.

  So, there we have it: hatred is adversariness to God and love is kindness to Him.

  In the Greek, the words are miseo and agape. The former is “to persecute” — be adversarial, and the latter, “goodwill”. (Strong’s Dictionary). So, “hatred” is still those who are adversaries of God and fellow men, and “love” is having good will toward God and man. Why else would the angels sing about the birth of Rebekah’s seed? “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14).

  Rebekah would be the “mother” of goodwill — those whose hearts are loving, and non-adversarial to God and others. Unfortunately, just as with Eve, Rebekah’s seed were also of the Wicked One. They are the “tares” in the world from the “Parable of the Tares”.

  Rebekah could not make them loving, but her “Seed” would. The purpose of Jesus; sing it, is ““Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.” “Glory” is doxa in the Greek — to exalt God. He is above all things. Compared to Him, even we are to be diminished. Hence, we sing the Doxology, or should!

  It seems that God expected love from mankind as He did from angel-kind. Not only to be loved but exalted above all things, even ourselves and others. In other words, social justice (Commands 6-10) is insufficient! God is loved by exultation via the first four commandments that are together, “The Greatest Commandment”; then God would not be jealous of the love of persons in the remaining Commandments.

  Hence, “love” is not an emotion in the Lexicon of God but and attitude of “goodwill” toward God and man. In that God is with us in Spirit only, then to demonstrate love for Him, that is done toward peace on Earth and loving kindness for our fellow men. Doing that, without exalting God is as “filthy rags” to Him. [viii]

  For our children and our mates, they can say “I love you” or they can demonstrate it by visitations. For God, saying “I love you” is not sufficient, but visiting God regularly is His expectation. Only those in His Last Will and Testament will be rewarded with his invisible “Estate” just as our heirs should not expect part of the estate unless love is demonstrated — that the heirs visit the father before the probation of his will! 

  That is what God wants from His children! Just come visit me, my children, so that I feel loved. Rest here in My bosom and I shall Comfort you in the end! 

 

 

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[i] Mat 22:39

[ii] John 6:35

[iii] Mark 5:30

[iv] Gen 2:21

[v] Ephes 6:16

[vi] Gen 3:20

[vii] Gen 3:5

[viii] Isa 64:6

THE EXTENT OF DREAMS

   In Scripture there are dreams. Hidden within the dreams of scripture are immediate prophecy, but much in scripture is hidden prophecy. In other words, the reader cannot see the far-future for the near-present! For Egypt, the Pharaoh’s dream was seven years of plenty followed be seven years of famine. That dream came true when Joseph, called Zaphnathpaaneah, was thirty years old.

  The first thing that struck me is, Why the importance of Joseph’s age, and secondly, Why a new name? The name may mean, “He speaks; God lives”. His age matters because he was the age of Jesus, and perhaps the age of maturity of Adam, the former during His ministry, and the latter because of his creation as a man. A second thought for the name is “Revealer of Secrets”. Perhaps both names apply!

  “The Word” in scripture is pre-incarnate Jesus. The Word became flesh; to wit: “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 1:14). Joseph’s new name revealed a theretofore secret; that the Word speaks, and God lives in the flesh. The Pharaoh saw Joseph as God in the Flesh who even had dominion over the weather and crops.

  John beheld Jesus as the Word; he “beheld His Glory”!

  In like manner, “And Pharaoh said unto his servants, ‘Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?’” (Gen 41:39) In other words, can we find a man with the Glory of God in him? He answered the question himself: “And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, ‘Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art’” (Gen 41:40). Pharoah, the good one, found Glory in Joseph. Of course, that means that Joseph is an antitype of Jesus. It was him who saved the pagan Egyptians from perishing, and it was Jesus who saved pagan mankind from the same destruction!

  Now this is my opinion based on scripture: That the seven prosperous years were the days of creation, and that the seven years of famine is the seven thousand years of existence. In the former, God planted the Garden — a “Garden” seeded with human seed: “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen 2:8).

  My guess is that you never thought of it that way… that God’s “garden was not only trees and vines that he seeded there, but the seeds of animals and adam (man). Of all the kinds (species), man had dominion over them all. He was the prime crop with which God took special care, Him personally breathing life unto him — Virtue and Spirit — that none of the others had.

 The seven days of creation were the “seven good years” before the crop failed. But that is all the crop that was good. Tares grew among the crop, and those were the seed of the Wicked One fathered by Cain. Cain was born and subsequently “crop failure” occurred when Adam sinned. The time clock was then reset from “days” to “years” since God’s time is not our time. Jesus later said, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 4:7).

  There it is: Jesus is the “Revealer of Secrets” that Pharaoh named Joseph, “Zaphnathpaaneah”. Who cares what Pharaoh named Joseph unless it was significant? Pharaoh saw Joseph as a type of Jesus who would save them from drought in the hellish place of Egypt. Not only that prophecy but the long-range purpose for Joseph; to save the seed that would grow Jesus. By that, I mean the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who planted a new smaller “garden” that would grow immensely.

  The new “Garden” would grow to spread over all the Earth. The seven thousand years after the creation would be the “seven years” of famine. During those seven years, God would preserve mankind just as Zaphnathpaaneah did Pharaoh’s kind and with Jacob’s kind.

  God would not be a respecter of persons [i] when it came to preserving the entire crop planted from Adam! All the Egyptians would be “Jews” inside, as Paul later explained: “He is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart” (Rom 2:29).

  What made this Pharaoh a “Jew”? He blessed Joseph with distinction as the representative of God, and even made Joseph his son by law. Joseph found grace, both from God and from Pharaoh, and then Pharaoh became a “spiritual Jew”.

  What about the end of the seven years of famine? “And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands” (Gen 41:57). “All the countries came to Joseph” to preserve themselves.

  The seven “years” of the curse will end. What is the curse of mankind (adam-kind)?

  And unto Adam he said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen 3:17-19)

  The curse would last “seven years”, or seven millennia, and then it would end. The curse was a seven- thousand-year famine, commencing with the original sin of Adam. With that said, this year, 2021, is anno mundi (year of the world) 5782, and near the sixth day when the “famine” ends on the seventh. Based on original sin, before Adam began to perish, then the “famine” will end in about 218 years or so, or it could be eminent since there are two ways of calculating biblical time.

  What happened at the end of the famine? The wholesale perishing ceased and there became a new day and year.

  What happens when the famine ceases in the “seventh year”; AM 6000-7000, or the seventh “day”? Jesus comes to reign a thousand years! Did the good Pharaoh see times of good harvest in the end of those 14 years, or was he looking from the beginning to the ending; when Jesus reigns for the last day?

  After the seven years of famine, a “day eight” began with Moses. The “eighth day” in spiritual terms is eternity. After Jesus reigns, eternity begins with a new heaven and a new earth. John saw that; perhaps Pharaoh did as well:  

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the Tree of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: (Rev 22:1-3)

  In the end, the curse of the famine in the countries of Egypt and all over the world ended. The “countries”, or nations, were healed, and the land again became plentiful and the crop prosperous. Joseph was a Jesus type; in typology, to Pharaoh, he was the Tree of Life. “He speaks; God lives” (Zaphnathpaaneah). Joseph was the living representative of God; He spoke and God lived in the hearts of men. The good Pharaoh got it right.

  Jesus died. God spoke and Jesus lived. Egypt was resurrected from the famine, the world from sin, and Jesus from the dead.

  Now you know the rest of the story of Zaphnathpaaneah. 

(picture credit: Michigan Drought Mitigation Center; "The Dust Bowl")

 

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[i] Acts 10:34

SHADOW OF THINGS TO COME - Part 2 of 2

 

PART 2

 

  I have written before about the butler and baker of the Pharaoh… the good Pharaoh of Joseph in, “In Search of the Holy Grail”. [1] The focus on that was that the silver chalice of the Pharaoh represented the “cup” of Jesus’s person. Everyone is in search of the Holy Grail because their own “cups” are empty. Specifically, the cup of Jesus that he desired to be passed was a vessel. [i] The vessel of Jesus is His Soul, and that vessel was filled with the Holy Ghost when John baptized Him; to wit: “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased’” (Luke 3:22).

  Several remarkable things are in that verse: (1) The Holy Ghost (hagios pneuma) was sent from the heavens to Jesus. The Father poured His Living Water, from His “belly”, into the vessel of His Son.

  Hagios, “The Most Holy Thing” came forth pneumatically, as the movement of air (Strong’s Dictionary). Its appearance was not that of a dove, but its glidepath was. Of course, the Father is the Most Holy Thing as “I AM THAT I AM” (Yahweh). So, God is Spirit, but look what else: He is “Voice” speaking the Word and the Father has “bodily shape”. In other words, the Father sounds as Jesus would sound in Word, and looked like Jesus would look. The bodily shape of God would appear as the vessel of His Son. Truly, Jesus is the Image of His Father, and like Father, like Son.

  The difference between the Father and Son is “substance” alone. Jesus has the Voice of His Father and speaks the Father’s Mind, but the Father is of different “Flesh”. Nobody can explain the substance of the soul, but sacred literature describes it as the shape inside and including the epidermis. The soul of Jesus was His “cup”, and it was filled with the substance of the Father from head to toe, from front to back, and to all His extremities. The cup of Jesus could not be passed because it is His Cup.

  With that said, the soul of each person would look like them except it is of a different substance. Adam, for instance, was molded of clay. The hagios pneuma from God could leak out. “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). The physical substance of Adam was flesh made from the elements of the Garden. God formed that substance into clay and made the physical image of Himself. Adam would have looked like Jesus because their spiritual image is the same. Hence, Jesus is the Son of Man.

  But when the Father breathed life unto Adam through his nostrils, then the pneuma took the shape of Adam’s body. Aph (nostrils) is the face, the countenance, or the forehead; and even all of those things. With Jesus, the Father would have done the same thing as with Adam. He would have come down like a dove on the forehead of Adam, his countenance would be the countenance of His Father as His Mind would become the Mind of His Father, and likewise Jesus would take the mark of God on His forehead. Paul wrote about the mark of God:

¹⁶ Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. ¹⁷ Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (Phil 3:16-17)

  The mark of the Beast is on the forehead or in the hand. [ii] It appears that the mark of God is in the mind, and those so marked have a changed countenance that Jesus referred to as “born again” [iii] The mark of the Beast may not be a physical mark upon the flesh, but an invisible mark upon the soul… the bodily-shaped substance preserving the flesh and containing the Spirit. It can be seen who is marked and who is not! Marked persons walk the same rule as Jesus. The “rule” is “good will” or agape love.

  Those with the mark of the Beast can be identified, perhaps, by the mark of the same substance — by the rule of the Beast… the Law of Sin. [iv] Ezekiel saw the mark that would be put on the abominable, but he saw it as ink, [v] not with a literal inkwell but as a “cup” (ibid). Ezekiel saw the “cup” of Jesus marking the abominable, not for the Besst, but to mark them for God. Jesus would look for the beasts, then mark the abominable ones with Living Water, as all those who would not take the mark of God would perish.

 If anyone is looking for physical markings, both the Mark of God and the Mark of the Beast are on the cranium, which, by the way, is “Calvariae” in the Latin. The place of the cranium (cranion in the Greek) is Calvariae Locus in the Latin.

  The mark is not on the flesh of the forehead, as most expect, but inside the cranium. Just why do you suppose “Calvary”? Why “The Place of the Skull”? Because the mark is in the mind and the cranium is the preserver of the brain; the part of the body housing the mind.

  Why do you suppose that Paul endeavored to persuade Agrippa and all the others to become a Christian” To take the Mark of God… that unseen mark that is only detected by a changed countenance.

  Adam was marked as entirely good. He would have been the perfect man if not for the Serpent. Since sin, like Adam, we have all missed the mark: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. The Mark of God is “glory” — in His Image and existence in His Presence. Coming short of that is missing the mark, and that is one of the definitions of sin.

  How can the Mark of God be detected? By whose way people walk; walking the Way of Jesus with the Law of God or the way of Satan with the Law of Sin?

  In other words, the flesh is a reflection of the soul. Certainly, if the cup is cracked on the outside, what is inside will seep out. Satan’s way is a gradual seeping out of the Holy Spirit into the world so slowly that it goes unnoticed.

  Now what has this all to do with the butler and baker? It is about which will perish. Which has the Mark of God, and which has the Mark of the Beast.

  Nobody took the mark, but Joseph saw their countenance. He saw just whom carried the true cup and who carried the permeable basket. Joseph saw their marks!

  At the crucifixion, who would take the Mark of God? Those who were near to Jesus; the abominable thief on the cross and the abominable centurion who pierced him.

  The apostles stood at a distance. The did not receive the Mark of God until after Jesus ascended, then the Holy Ghost of Jesus came down and marked them as with fire. Their souls were singed and they were branded by the Holy Ghost and all their countenances changed!

  I am inferring that the Living Water from the belly of Jesus sprinkled on those two sinners, and they were baptized by Living Water, the true and only efficacious baptism! [vi]  

  The centurion and thief were born again the same way that Adam was created a new creature. God breathed life into their craniums at “The Place of the Cranium” and their minds were changed. Calvary should change the mind of us just as it did for those two men.

  Before, Longinus (the centurion) had only seen the flesh of Jesus, but he marveled: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). He saw the man (flesh) of Jesus but when he pieced the man, the “cup” spilled out Living Waters from His belly just as he had said to the woman at the well — that abominable woman!

  What did Longinus see? Perhaps the Spirit of God in bodily shape. He saw the Ghost of Jesus leave Him just as the apostles did when He was baptized. Longinus was marked by water from the Cup of Jesus.

  When Jesus was baptized, He alone had the Holy Ghost remaining on Him. [vii] It would remain in Him since the pneuma permeated the soul of Jesus and would still be there when He gave up the Ghost at His death. Longinus saw that! He saw the vessel of Jesus emptied of the Spirit of God, perhaps in bodily shape, just as it had entered!

  That invisible “shape” of Jesus is in true Christians who have been persuaded to take the Mark of God. The Place of the Cranium, Calvary, is where the Persuasive Mind of God shares His Spirit and marks the “beasts” (the abominable) as adopted children of God.

 (picture credit: Wikipedia; "Eye of Providence")

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[1] (https://kentuckyherrin.blogspot.com/2021/03/in-search-of-theholy-grail-part-2-of-2.html).

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[i] Mat 26:39

[ii] Rev 13:6

[iii] John 3:7

[iv] Rom 7:23

[v] Ezek 9:3-4

[vi] Ephes 4:5

[vii] John 1:33

SHADOWS OF THINGS TO COME Part 1of 2

  ‘Antitypes” are things or persons that foreshadow a futuristic event or person. Antitypes can either be alike or opposite in typology. Paul wrote:

¹⁶ Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: ¹⁷ Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. (Col 1:16-17)

  Those things — meat, drink, etc. — and events foreshadowed Jesus. They are statutes of the Law of God… “the Law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things” (Heb 10:1).

  The Pharaoh of Egypt is an antitype. The Pharaoh, in the time of Joseph, was a good Pharaoh who was likely not Egyptian but a Hyksos. The latter were rulers from foreign lands, and specifically the Levant. If my hypothesis from scripture is correct, the Levant — Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordon — was about the middle of Eden. Nobody knows the origin of them but that they were Semitic peoples, and thus “cousins” of the Hebrews.

  Pharaoh welcomed Joseph into his dynasty as second in charge because he saved Egypt from perishing. Egypt is generally the antitype for sin, but it too can have opposite connotations. The good Hyksos Pharaoh is and antitype of Jesus, and the evil Pharaoh of the time of Moses was the antitype of Satan.

  The story of the Exodus begins, “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph” (Exod 1:8). In the interim between Joseph and Moses, the population of the Hebrews grew as well as the degree of sin. Egyptians had regained Egypt and a new dynasty prevailed; a dynasty wherein Pharaoh (now let us say “king” to distinguish them), was the antitype of Satan and Egypt sin.

  What had happened through the years? God preserved Egypt because inside there were Jews at heart (and by blood), just as in apostolic times: “He is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (Rom 2:290.

  Pharaoh was a Jew inside although by blood he was a Semite, and not a Hebrew per se (from Eber, Shem’s son). The new “King” would be from Ham’s son Mizraim.

  To the Hebrews, the name Mizraim would mean “double distress” (Abarim Publications). Spiritually, that is certainly true — they went from evil in the days prior to Joseph’s Pharaoh to good in the days of Joseph to evil again with Moses’s king.

  God preserved Egypt but Satan restored his little kingdom there. Always, when God preserves, the righteous person or nation becomes even more jeopardized. And like Egypt is “lost” to this day, any of God’s people that He preserves can fall away.

  Paul said it well: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thes 2:3). That day came for Egypt when the Jews there fell away from the true God. The king of Moses’s time, by then, was a self-anointed “god” and to this day, the god of Egypt is an unknown God that they call, “Allah”. Thus, Egypt also foreshadows the dangers of falling away from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to any other false god.

  “Falling away” in that passage is apostasia in the Greek. (Strong’s Dictionary). It means “to forsake” God. Note that it does not mean that God would forsake them!

  By the time of Moses, the Hebrews had all but forsaken God. They lived in sin much as if they were Mizraimites, and not Semites. I have written before that the genes of Cain somehow overcame the flood. Since Ham was disrespectful of his father, Canaan was cursed. His mother was most likely one of “the daughters of men” (from Cain in Gen 6:4). Egyptians, as Mizraim, would be of the Wicked One just as Cain. [i] During the time of the Joseph’s Pharaoh’s dynasty, Egypt was ruled by Semites. The Wicked One had been overcome by the seed of Shem.

  Between Pharaoh and king, the nation of Egypt had returned to the seed of Mizraim. It had fallen away from Pharaoh and accepted a “king” that was not of the same blood nor spirit. Never can anyone have two masters; they must choose one above another. [ii]

  The Egyptians accepted the king as Pharaoh. What is in a name anyway? In doing that, the Egyptians were apostate. On the other hand, the Hebrews who would follow Moses and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were reprieved. They had not, at that time, completely fallen away. There remained hope for them, and the Book of Exodus was what the Hebrews did with that grace. Eventually, all but a few lost hope, and were either slain by God using vipers and such until none made it to Paradise.

  Satan, in the body of the king, endeavored to snatch them back. After all, he was a god! He insisted that the Hebrews be as the pagans, and he would be their god and not Yahweh. Whereas Yahweh removes bonds and makes men free, kings chain their servants to their thrones.

  That describes the periods leading up to the exodus, and the exodus describes the journey of Christians once they were safe in the hands of God. Nowhere did God use force like the king did. The Pharoah of Joseph’s time allowed the Hebrews to come and go as they pleased!

  Hence, Egypt represents the world as well. The Hebrews there were symbolic of Christians who must live in the world and are chained to its customs and the law of sin. Paul explained that dualism to the Roman Christians:

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members… I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Rom 7:23, 25)

  Original sin was also in Paul. Neither was he without sin. He described the dualism inside himself — his mind served God, but his flesh was bound by the law of sin. His mind was free, along with his spirit, but his flesh belonged to another. That is the situation in which the Hebrews in Egypt found themselves — they were willing to serve God but even after exiting from the place of sin, they still served sin.

  The flesh can be moved but the spirit must follow. In spirit, the Hebrews of the exodus were “spiritual Egyptians”. Their blood had become tainted by mingling with Mizraimites, and their spiritual DNA, by then, had been with the Wicked One and not with The Righteous One!

  In the next installment, I will continue with the baker, the butler, and the dream that Joseph interpreted. He told them of its immediate meaning but inside the interpretation was so much more!

(picture credit: Bigstock; "Shadow of a Man")

 

 

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[i] 1 John 3:12

[ii] Mat 6:24