July 2011

Matthew Chapter 22 - Christogenea on Talkshoe 07-29-2011

Among the things which we spoke about last week, it was demonstrated from the parable of the vineyard workers, and from Leviticus, how hard it is for us to keep the letter of the law in this day and age. And while Yahweh's eternal morals are encoded into the laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as the entire Bible, we easily lose sight of several Biblical truths. First, the law was created for the benefit of man, and not man for the sake of the law. Second, the Levitical laws were specifically given along with a priesthood to enforce them, for the purposes of the Israelite kingdom and its function in relationship to Yahweh its God. When Israel was divorced from God for its constant unfaithfulness, the entire nation being under the law was liable to the judgement of the law, and therefore the entire nation was liable to death. Yahweh preserved the nation according to His law, as He promised, by dying on behalf of it, thereby freeing the nation from the law of its (or allegorically her) husband! That is what Paul explains in Romans chapter 7. Now we live not under the law, but under the favor – the grace – of our God. We are told that if we love Him, we keep His commandments. Those commandments are not found in the Letter of the hundreds of old laws. They are found in the ten commandments, which encapsulate the Spirit of the Hebrew law, along with the few things which the apostles clarified and the admonition to love our brethren. The law was our – the Israelite nation's – tutor for Christ, as Paul explains in Galatians chapter 4. The Hebrew laws are our ideal, but since none of us can live in this world and strictly keep them, we do not judge our brethren by them. This is proven over and again in Paul and the epistles from the other apostles and the Gospels. 

Matthew Chapters 20 and 21 - 2011-07-22

There is one aspect of Matthew chapter 19, verses 27 and 28, which I did not discuss last week. That is where Peter says to Christ: “Look, we have left everything and have followed You! What then is there for us?” 28 And Yahshua said to them: “Truly I say to you that you are those who shall be following Me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of His honor, and you also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel!” Note that there is never any mention in any of these eschatalogical sayings of Christ about “Israel and the beasts of the field” or “Israel and the Chinese” or “Israel and the Africans”. That is because it is simply not true, and whoever teaches such a thing deceives himself. Yahshua said in John chapter 3 that “unless a man should be born from above, he is not able to see the Kingdom of Yahweh.” Only the Adamic Man has that Spirit of Yahweh which makes him born from above, and in the image and likeness of God. In 1 John chapter 4 that same apostle tells us that we are born of God, as Adam our father also was, and the others are born of the world. We are from above, and all who are not of us are from below. Therefore none of the others shall ever see the Kingdom of Heaven when it is instituted on earth! How can one claim to be a Christian Israelite faithful in the Scriptures, and pronounce otherwise? He is a liar and a fraud!

Matthew Chapters 18 and 19 - 2011-07-15

Last week we discussed once more the Canaanite woman and why Yahshua healed her daughter. Then we discussed the sign of Jonah, the leaven of the Pharisees, the apostles' belief that Yahshua was the Christ as well as the expectation of the coming of the Messiah which was prevalent in Judaea at that time. We also touched upon the phrase “the gates of Hades” and the belief in life after death as it was held by all branches of our race, evident again in the event known as the Transfiguration on the Mount. We also saw the non-scriptural belief of Herod and others in Judaea in reincarnation and we discussed what was meant by John the Baptist's having come in the “spirit of Elijah”. Then we discussed at length what Christ meant when He said that “If one desires to come behind Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me!” We saw, as we presented for an example, how Germany's Christian government under Adolf Hitler actually built that precept into their political philosophy, that an individual should live for the sake of his nation, and devote his life to its well-being. If we all lived in such a manner, that we put the interests of our kinsmen ahead of our own, then we would have heaven indeed.

Very importantly, last week we also saw that the “restoration of all things” is in scripture the restoration of the children of Yahweh to the recognition of the covenants of their fathers, and in the context of Scripture it is nothing more than that. A lot of universalists in Christian identity somehow try to use this phrase, taken out of context, to promote their lies, but they cannot do so with any honesty and they may as well be Catholics. Christ said that the Elijah who is to come “shall restore all things” and when we read of the prophecy of him in Malachi, all we see is the restoration of Israel to their rightful place in the covenants and polity God.

Matthew Chapter 16 - 2011-07-08

Last week we talked about the Canaanite woman of Matthew chapter 15, which has long been a topic of controversy and a subject so often misinterpreted in Christian discourse. Here I have something further which I believe strengthens the arguments concerning the customs of the times and the traditional roles of the suppliant in relation to the man in authority. This is from the book, Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World, by Melissa Barden Dowling, from the chapter entitled “Clemency and Cruelty Under the Julio-Claudians”, pages 169-170:

“Let them hate so long as they fear. Gaius Caligula’s policy toward those who offended him, and those who did not, was carried out in actions of open saevitia [brutality]. His use of fear as a tool of rulership, and his disinterest in even the appearance of mercy, stood in contrast to the averred principles of his predecessors and of most of his successors. For others, clementia [clemency] was the watchword, advertised by princeps. senators, and subjects alike. The reality of imperial crudelitas [cruelty] was inescapable, however, and the proclamations of imperial clemency were often loudest when an emperor's savagery was most sharply felt. Gaius departed from Augustus and Tiberius in discarding the careful assurances of clementia that softened their rule; Gaius's successors did not repeat his error. During the reigns of Claudius and Nero, the dialogue of clementia continued in both imperial and elite propaganda. In fact, the definition of clementia  developed further under the Julio-Claudians, surpassing the scope it had held under Augustus.

“It was under Nero that the first philosophy of clemency was described by Seneca. As part of his theory of mercy, Seneca constructed a parallel philosophy of cruelty, outlining the degrees of irrationality that underlie cruel actions and highlighting the contrasting benefits of clemency. From Gaius’s naked crudelitas: to a sophisticated philosophy of clemency, in the ]ulio-Claudian Age Romans experimented with the vocabulary of power and ultimately created a stronger ethic of mercy to offset the power of the emperor. The normalization of imperial advertisements of the clementia principis and the creation of a philosophy of virtus [manly virtue] incorporating clementia as an expression of a good man's success were the outstanding developments of the ideology and social history of the Early Empire. These developments and the emergence of a parallel philosophy of cruelty, in which the degradation of a man’s nature was expressed through his crudelitas [cruelty], are the focus of this chapter.... “

Christogenea on Talkshoe – Matthew Chapters 14 and 15, July 1st, 2011

XIV 1 At that time Herodas the Tetrarch had heard the report of Yahshua, 2 and he said to his servants: “This is Iohannes the Baptist! He has risen from the dead and for this reason works of power operate in him!”

This is the first time we have seen the name Herod since chapter 2, but this is not the same Herod. There are ten different men named Herod, all of the same family of Edomites, identified in the index to Whiston's Works of Josephus. That first Herod, whom the jews like to call “the great”, is better known as the usurping murderer of the Hasamoneans and the son of the Edomite Antipater. He died just a short time after the birth of Christ, about 1 or 2 BC. He was succeeded by his son, Herod Archelaus, who was so cruel that after only a few years the Romans took the kingdom from him and exiled him to Vienna in Gaul. From that point on Judaea was split into four pieces, and rulers called tetrarchs were set over them, a tetrarch being a ruler of a fourth. Rather, this is Herod Antipas, another son of the first Herod, and he and his brother Philip each received a tetrarchy from Rome.

Herod Antipas was tetrarch over Galilee and Peraea (which was just east of the Jordan). Philip was tetrarch of Gaulanitis, Trachonitis and Panaea, which were all north of Peraea and east of the Sea of Galilee. Some time after Philip's death, another Herod, named Agrippa, was by the emperor Caligula made a king of this tetrarchy, since Philip had left no sons. Herod Agrippa was a grandson of the first Herod by Aristobulus, a son whom Herod had put to death. It is Herod the tetrarch, however, Philip's brother, the Herod who had his brother's wife, who is the Herod so prominent in the Gospels during the ministry of Christ. When John the Baptist upbraided Herod for taking Philip's wife as his own, Philip was still alive – for which see Josephus, Antiquities, 18.5.4. This Herod the tetrarch was later banished to Spain by Caligula (who was emperor from 37-41 AD), and his tetrarchy was added to the kingdom of Herod Agrippa (Josephus, Wars, 2.9.6). It is Herod Agrippa whose death is described later, in Acts chapter 12.