Biblical Commentary

Paul's First Epistle to Timothy, Part 2: Gender Roles in Apostolic Christianity

This program is subtitled Gender Roles in Apostolic Christianity, which is a discussion for the end of the presentation. We wanted to subtitle it When All is not ALL, and that is a theme as we present the opening verses of 1 Timothy chapter 2. We opted for the subtitle which we did only because of the current war against traditional gender roles in modern society which is now coming to a crescendo. In the end, God will not be mocked. There are only two genders, and they are determined by the biology of one’s birth. Those genders are given peculiar roles assigned to them byt the Creator, and in the end they will once again assume those roles. Everything else is a sickness spawned by the minds of devils.

Paul of Tarsus having had both Timothy and Titus (the Titus Justus of Corinth) in his company for long periods of time, which is evident in Acts chapters 16 through 18 and in various of his other epistles, we may be confident that these men had learned first-hand how Paul believed that a Christian assembly should be organized, and how Christians should conduct themselves in their daily lives and interactions with one another and with the world outside. We may also imagine that these pastoral epistles among Paul’s letters are very likely not the only epistles which Paul had written to his younger companions, but rather, that they are the only ones which survived.

Paul's First Epistle to Timothy, Part 1: Yahshua [Jesus] Christ is God and His Gospel is for Israel

Now we are going to begin a presentation of Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, as we near the completion of a commentary on the epistles of Paul of Tarsus which we had begun with the epistle to the Romans in the Spring of 2014. This is now the 109th presentation in the series. It may be fitting that the pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus are presented last in order of Paul’s epistles, as they are in most Bibles. However one error that most Bibles make is not to count Hebrews amongst Paul’s other epistles. Furthermore, Philemon belongs with Colossians, and it is not really a pastoral epistle in the sense of those which were written to Timothy and Titus. Going one step further, we have decided to put both of the epistles to Timothy last in order here because we find it appropriate to present 2 Timothy at the very end of our presentation of Paul’s epistles, although 2 Timothy was not actually the last of Paul’s epistles chronologically. When we do finally present 2 Timothy, we hope to make a full explanation of our reasons for that. If we had chosen to make our entire presentation in the order in which Paul wrote his epistles, 1 Timothy would follow Titus, and it in turn would be followed by 2 Corinthians. 2 Timothy would come later, as Paul was under house arrest in Rome when it was written (see Ordering and chronology of the epistles of Paul).

Paul had apparently written his first epistle to the Corinthians not long before he left Ephesus, in what was most likely the Spring of 56 AD, which we had explained in part 3 of our presentation of that epistle. He had initially planned on going to Achaia by way of Makedonia, and spending the winter in Corinth, as he wrote in chapter 16 of that epistle. But some time during the initial stage of his travels Paul decided instead to winter in Nicopolis, which is in Epirus and northwest of Corinth. As we had explained earlier in this series, such as in the opening segment of our commentary on the epistle to Titus, Paul must have received a letter from Corinth in answer to the epistle which we know as 1 Corinthians, and he then decided to delay going to Corinth and spent the subsequent winter at Nicopolis instead. He gave his reasons for that decision in the opening chapters of 2 Corinthians, which was written as he wintered in Nicopolis, and both Titus and Timothy were with him.

The Epistles of Paul – Titus, Part 4: The Mercy of God and Justification in Christ

The opening remarks to the podcast have been published separately under the title Dating the Passover.

In the last portion of this commentary on Titus, we had made a few brief remarks on the closing verses of Titus chapter 2, and promised to elaborate on a few things when we resumed. So to begin this evening, we shall repeat those verses, beginning from Titus 2:11 where Paul wrote:

11 For the delivering favor of Yahweh [א interpolates “the Savior”; the text follows A, C, D, and the MT which varies slightly] has been displayed to all men, 12 teaching us that, rejecting impiety and the lusts of this Society, discreetly and righteously and piously we should live in this present age,

Paul’s words seem to take it for granted that men should understand the favor of Yahweh once they hear the message of the Gospel. But the lesson to be learned is not merely a personal lesson in admonitions to do or not to do certain things. Christ would not have had to die on the Cross for that, and it is unlikely that His enemies would have even killed Him for that. Rather, the message of the Gospel is much deeper than that: in large part it is a historic lesson, that the children of Israel were alienated from Yahweh their God for their sins, and they were oppressed and ruled over by the enemies of God and man because of their alienation. But they were reconciled to God in Christ when He died on their behalf, which made their reconciliation possible according to His law. All of the nations to which Paul had brought the Gospel were descended from those ancient Israelites who had been alienated from Yahweh their God, and who have to learn the lesson which Paul describes.

Paul's Epistle to Titus, Part 3: The Cleanliness of God

As we have already discussed at length in the opening segments of our presentation of Paul’s epistle to Titus, when the apostle arrived in the Troad he must have been informed that Titus was in Crete, and that there were some problems there among the assemblies. So in the opening verses of chapter 1 of this epistle we had observed where Paul addressed Titus as a true member of his race, according to the common belief. We interpret that statement to mean that even though Titus was a Greek by race, perceptibly he was of the race of the ancient Israelites, and therefore should be accepted as such. Then after reminding Titus of why he was sent to Crete in the first place, in order to organize the Christian assemblies there, Paul advised him to ensure that elders, which are the overseers or bishops of each assembly, were established, and that the offices be filled by men who had endeavored to maintain a virtuous way of life. The foremost of the examples of virtue which Paul gave was that they were to have been the husbands of one wife, and that they had children without the possibility that they themselves could be accused of disobedience. We also perceive this to mean that men who would be leaders of Christian assemblies should have experience raising families of their own, they should be committed to those families, and that their children in turn must also be true members of the race, since otherwise the men would be chargeable.

Making these admonitions to Titus, Paul advised him that the “Cretans are always liars”, evidently quoting the Cretan poet Epimenides. Since Epimenides was a Cretan, modern commentators interpret the statement paradoxically, but we have asserted that Paul and other early Christian writers did not interpret it in that manner. Rather, they accepted it at face value. The early 2nd century Greek writer Plutarch also accepted the statement of Epimenides as being true, and it seems to have been a common observation, as he even used the term κρητισμός, or Cretan behavior, to describe the act of lying. Paul himself had said of the saying of Epimenides that “13 This testimony is true, for which cause you must censure them relentlessly, that they would be sound in the faith, 14 not giving heed to myths of Judaism and injunctions of men turning themselves away from the truth.” So Paul seems to be using the line from Epimenides as a rhetorical device in order to warn Titus of how important it is that he make certain that the most pious and virtuous men among the Christians in Crete were given the responsibility of supervising each assembly, men who exhibited piety in the conduct of their lives, and not merely men who professed piety with their lips.

At left: Fragment of Titus 1:11-15 from Papyrus 032 dating to circa 200 AD.

Paul's Epistle to Titus, Part 2: Leadership Morality, A Husband of One Wife

In the opening segment of this presentation of Paul’s epistle to Titus we set forth the assertion that Titus is the Titus Justus, or Titios Justus, of the older manuscripts of Acts 18:7, who became a colleague of Paul from the time when Paul had stayed in his house in Corinth, around 49 or 50 AD. We also demonstrated, by referencing Paul’s own statements concerning Titus in his second epistle to the Corinthians, that this epistle was written from the Troad as Paul left Ephesus in 56 AD, and that Titus met with Paul in Makedonia shortly thereafter, spending the winter months with him in Nicopolis of Epirus before bringing Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians to Achaia in very early 57 AD, ahead of Paul’s planned visit there. With that we had asserted that the statement made by Paul here in this epistle, that he had left Titus in Crete, must have referred to an earlier time, to an event which happened between 52 and 55 AD, as Titus was with Paul when he travelled to Antioch after departing from Corinth in late 51 or early 52 AD, something which is evident in his epistle to the Galatians which was written just after that visit to Antioch, or perhaps in Antioch after the visit to Jerusalem which was on the way to Antioch.

Here we are going to make a presentation of Paul’s epistle to Titus, and we are nearing the completion of a commentary on the apostle Paul which we had begun with the epistle to the Romans on March 28th of 2014, nearly three years ago. We have decided to put Titus in order here before Timothy not only because this epistle was written before either of the epistles to Timothy, but also because we find it appropriate to present 2 Timothy last in our presentation of Paul’s epistles.

The term “purity spiraling” began amongst denominational Christians to describe an extreme manifestation of virtue signalling, which we associate with the wayward and hypocritical form of self-righteousness that often affects Christians of all sorts. I am better than you because I don’t do this or say that, etc. etc. But recently the alt-Right has latched onto it and used it to describe the attitudes of racial purists. This evening we are going to take it back for Christians, but we are going to apply it in the way that the alt-Right uses it, to describe a need for the promotion of racial purity amongst Whites everywhere. So to the secularist Jew-lovers of the alt-Right, the term has a negative connotation. But to us it is a positive idea, because as we all know, purity is next to Godliness.

Paul's Epistle to Titus, Part 1: Purity Spiraling in Apostolic Christianity

The early manuscript evidence for the epistle to Titus is found in the papyrus designated P32, which is esteemed to date from around 200 AD; the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus (א); the 5th century Codices Alexandrinus (A), Ephraemi Syri (C) and Vaticanus 2061 (048); and the 6th century Codices Claromontanus (D) and 088, which is an unnamed manuscript that may be a little older than that, and in which survive only a few fragments, parts of the first 13 verses of this epistle as well as parts of the final chapters of 1 Corinthians. Additionally, Paul’s epistle to Titus is cited or mentioned in the epistles of Ignatius, which date to around the very beginning of the 2nd century, and also by Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, who are both of the late 2nd century, and by Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian, all of whom wrote in the early half of the 3rd century. However none of these early sources add anything to our knowledge of Titus himself or his work in the ministry of Christ.

The Prophecy of Malachi – Part 5, The Spirit of Elijah

In the opening verses of Malachi chapter 3 we saw a prophecy of the coming of two messengers, and the first was to prepare the way for the second. A similar prophecy concerning the first messenger is found in Isaiah chapter 40, which the apostles in three of the Gospel accounts had cited in reference to John the Baptist. The messenger in Isaiah is said to be a voice crying in the wilderness, to “Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Here in Malachi the second messenger is “the lord … come to His temple” and the “messenger of the covenant”, and that can be none other than Yahshua Christ Himself. Christ is indeed one and the same as Yahweh God for whom the first messenger prepares the way. As we read the words of Christ in the Gospel of John, “I and the Father are One”, and “He who has seen Me has seen the Father!”

Next in Malachi there is a statement which may refer to one messenger or the other, or even to either, where it says “3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.” The first messenger, John the Baptist, did indeed “purify the sons of Levi”, where it is evident that the purpose of his commission to baptize was to ceremonially fulfil the requirements of the law in relationship to Christ, whom upon baptizing he had also declared to be the Lamb of God. If John baptized anyone else, it was only a collateral benefit, and he nevertheless fulfilled the purpose of the law hinted at in Malachi. But before Christ had begun His ministry, when the people wondered whether John was the Messiah, he denied it, and said “I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh... he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. With his baptizing, John had cleansed individual Levites in preparation for the Passover of God, and then he cleansed the final Passover Lamb, as Paul had later written of Christ, in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” In that manner did John prepare the way for Christ. However it is evident that the Gospel of Christ, separating the wheat from the tares, had purged the sons of Levi collectively by weeding out the Edomite Jews from the true sheep, those who had ultimately heard the voice of their master.

The Prophecy of Malachi – Part 4, Preparing the Way of the Lord

When the magi journeyed to Judaea from Parthia to see the Christ child, the infant had already been presented at the temple, and was circumcised according to the law, and had already been moved by His parents out of the manger and into a house in Bethlehem. So by the time that they arrived in Judaea, the Christ child may have already been a year old, and possibly closer to two. And while they apparently acted on information which is now wanting in our sacred writings, the magi were not alone in their anticipation of the promised Messiah. We see the same expectation in many of other people in Judaea, such as the apostles themselves who exclaimed from the beginning that “We have found the Messias,” as it is recorded in John chapter 1, or the Samaritan woman at the well who said “I know that Messias cometh,” as it is recorded in John chapter 4. Additionally, there was the elderly Simeon, described in Luke chapter 2, who was told that he would “not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ”, and did see Him as he was presented in the temple eight days after His birth.

But in the courts of government in Jerusalem there was completely a different reaction, not of joy but of fear and enmity, as we may discern from Matthew chapter 2 where it says: “1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, 2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Judaeans? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. 3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.”

Ostensibly, all Jerusalem was troubled upon the announcement of the birth of a savior for Israel because, as we read here in Malachi chapter 2, “11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.” And not only was Malachi characterizing the reason why there was apostasy in ancient Judah, as we saw in the corroborating testimony of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, but he was also making a prophesy of what was about to become of Judaea in his own near future, and we described the historical record of how that was fulfilled in the absorption of the Edomites and other Canaanites of Palestine in the 2nd century BC, when all of those alien peoples were converted, and brought into the polity of the people of Jerusalem. By the time of Christ, those Edomites and Canaanites had become predominant in Jerusalem, and many of the good people of the nation were pushed to the margins of the society. The result is the divisions among the people and their diverse reactions to Christ which are apparent in the Gospel. For this same reason, when the appropriate time had come, the voice of the godly cried out from the wilderness, and not from the temple of God.

The Prophecy of Malachi – Part 3, Universalism Rebuked

In the opening verses of the prophet Malachi we see that Jacob and Esau are compared in an allegorical dialogue where Jacob is told that he is loved, and in turn he asks why while expressing a greater concern for Esau. We have asserted that this is prophetic of the very times in which we live, where Christians of European heritage, who are for the most part descended from the ancient Israelites, typically show greater concern for the accursed Edomite Jews than they do for their own people.

That is the transcendental, or far-vision fulfillment of this prophecy, as we have before described of the prophets of the Bible that many of their prophecies have a dual fulfillment, one for the closer future of the time of the prophet, and one for the distant future. We hope to have most clearly illustrated this phenomenon of prophecy in our commentary on the prophet Zechariah.

However, in order to set the stage for the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy, which today is right before our very eyes, there must have been an earlier and more immediate fulfillment. But the immediate fulfillment has a history which is not so clear, since perhaps as many as 300 years after the prophet had written these words, the remnant of Judah in Jerusalem thought it fitting to forcibly convert all of the Edomites in Palestine to their own religion, circumcising them and converting them into what had became known as Judaism. The Edomite King Herod later built many great cities throughout Palestine, and that seems to represent an immediate, albeit incomplete, fulfillment of the prophecy. However if the Edomites had not been infiltrating into or converting to Judaism, the later end of this prophecy we cannot imagine happening as it is before our very eyes, materializing in what we have termed as Christian Zionism.

The Prophecy of Malachi – Part 2, The Corrupted Priesthood

Before we offer our summation of what we had seen in Malachi thus far, I want to say a word concerning the so-called trinity doctrine, which we do not think is a doctrine at all. Yahweh our God is real, omniscient, and omnipotent – but He is also One, regardless of how He chooses to manifest Himself. So He can be God the Father, and God the Son, the burning in the bush, the rock in the desert, or the fire on the mountain. When the apostles realized that He had overcome death, they proclaimed Him as God not because Jesus somehow became as God, but because they themselves realized that He was God, knowing from the implications of the Scripture that He was Yahweh who had promised that He would redeem Israel.

The trinity doctrine is the first of heresies. There is no real support for it in the original Scriptures, except for the coincidence that in the apostolic age God manifested Himself first in two ways, from the spiritual plane and in the form of the Son of David, and then in a third way which is referred to as the Holy Spirit, which is not really a third at all but rather is only another manifestation of the first two. When Christ was near to His departure and He promised the apostles a Comforter, He proclaimed “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.” But the word for comfortless in that passage is from the same Greek word from which we derive the English word for orphan, and it really means fatherless, showing that Christ is also God the Father as well as God the Holy Spirit.

The trinity doctrine is a dangerous heresy because it leaves space for antichrists to claim that they can worship a part of the deity which is somehow void of Christ. Therefore Christians are deceived into imagining that Jews and Muslims and other antichrists ultimately have the same God, which is a lie and a deception. Therefore the trinity doctrine is a compromise with devils. The antichrists themselves introduced this doctrine so that they can maintain a facade of legitimacy, but beneath the veneer there is every form of wickedness. They lay claim to a piece of the Godhead and a path to piety without Christ, when the Gospel informs us that “6 Yahshua says...: ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one goes to the Father except through Me!’” Then almost immediately after that He said “He who has seen Me has seen the Father!” So Christians must understand that Christ being Yahweh God manifest in the flesh, no part of the deity could possibly be void of Christ! Therefore all of the devils must be rejected: there is no room for devils in the Kingdom of Heaven, and neither should there be any space given to them here on earth.

The Prophecy of Malachi – Part 1, The Prophet of Christian Zionism

The name Malachi [מלאכי] means my angel, or my messenger. The name is from the same exact form of the Hebrew words for the phrase my messenger [מלאכי] which we see in Malachi 3:1, where it says “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me”, and Malachi himself is certainly the prophet and messenger of the angel, or messenger, which would later precede the Christ, and that messenger was John the Baptist. But the prophet Malachi does not tell us who his father was, nor does he inform us of his whereabouts, and does not tell us the name of the high priest or governor or ruler of the time that he wrote. Therefore his prophecy can only be very loosely dated from the circumstances which it describes.

For example, in chapter 3 where the prophet addresses the men of Jerusalem in his own time, we read “7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts.” Furthermore, in the opening chapter of the prophecy, in chapter 1 of Malachi, a reference is made to the laying waste of the heritage of Esau, from the viewpoint that it had already happened. During the greater portion of the time of the old kingdom of Judah, Edom was a vassal state, and therefore it was under the protection of Judah. It broke free for a time in the days of Jehoram, and was subjected anew by Amaziah (2 Chronicles 26). Then Edom revolted again in the time of Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28), just before Hezekiah became king. So the kingdom of Edom was fully intact until this time. In the Assyrian inscriptions, it is listed as a vassal state in the times of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, which approaches the Babylonian period. The punishment of Edom is prophesied in Jeremiah chapters 25 and 49 and in Ezekiel chapters 25 and 32, which were written as the children of Judah were about to be taken into Babylonian captivity. It was in the period between the fall of Assyria and the time of Malachi that the mountains and heritage of Edom were laid waste, and the passage concerning “the days of your fathers” found in Malachi chapter 3 is a reference to the period before Jerusalem was destroyed.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 18: The Walk of the Faith

Throughout the early chapters of this epistle to the Hebrews Paul sought to convince his readers that Yahshua Christ is indeed the ultimate prophet and messenger of God, citing many of the Messianic Psalms and attesting that they are prophecies of Christ as the promised Son of Scripture, the Messiah or Anointed Son through whom Israel would ultimately attain salvation. Doing this he illustrated the profession of David that this Son would belong to a priesthood other than that of Levi, and from the Genesis account he showed that this priesthood, after the order of Melchizedek, transcended the priesthood of Levi. In relation to all of these things, Paul had also cited accounts from the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, and held up aspects of the lives of Moses, Joshua, David and Solomon all as types for Christ. And while doing this he sought to show that the entire history and purpose of the Old Testament interaction between Yahweh and Israel was to bring the children of Israel to the New Covenant in Christ, for which reason He is called in other scriptures the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. Then in his discourse on the faith of the Old Testament saints, Paul asserted that their actions were all in anticipation of this assurance of the faith which these Hebrews had now possessed, for which reason they must not reject their Messiah, who is the confirmation of the promises to the fathers.

Convincing the Hebrews that all of these things were so, if indeed they continued to read his epistle to this point, Paul then sought to convince them to depart from their earthly trappings under the Old Covenant and grasp the eternal inheritance assured by the New Covenant, through the perpetual propitiation offered by the transcendent Christ, which is the true substance of the Faith found in the promises to the patriarchs. But, as he illustrates by his explanation, this faith is the faith of history, and the recipients of the promises have not changed with the change in covenants. So we see in Hebrews chapter 11 that Paul extolled the ancient Israelites for turning to flight the armies of the aliens through their faith. Then in Hebrews chapter 12 he warned that those who do not stand correction fail because they are bastards, and not sons. With this illustration he upheld Esau as an example for those who lose their birthright on account of their fornication, or race-mixing, and finally he made an analogy which showed that any beast – ostensibly anyone who is not of the race of the children of Israel – who touches the mountain of God shall be destroyed.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 17: The Mountain of God

In the last several segments of this presentation of Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, we spoke at great length concerning the racial exclusivity of the covenants which Yahweh had made with Abraham and with Israel. This is because this important and most basic doctrine of Christianity is disregarded entirely by the denominational churches of today, who are all worshipping at the Baal altars of Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Hebrews chapter 11, Paul of Tarsus had extolled the Old Testament saints for their ability to turn “to flight the armies of the aliens” through their faith. Then in Hebrews chapter 12, and in relation to his own time, he warned his readers that if they were without discipline then they are bastards, and not sons. The King James Version has chastisement in Hebrews 12:8, where we have discipline. The Greek word is παιδεία, a word which basically refers to the training or education of children. It is derived from παῖς, a word for son. While any or all creatures may suffer trials in this world, only the children of Israel are being schooled through those trials for the Kingdom of Heaven which is to come. As Paul told the Galatians, who were descended from the long-scattered Israelites of the Assyrian deportations, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ”, thusly he wrote here to the Hebrews, the Israelites of the remnant in Judaea, in a very similar way.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 16: The Sins of Esau, No Birthrights for Bastards

Finishing his description of the faith of the Old Testament saints, Paul of Tarsus had referred to them as a “great a cloud of witnesses lying around us”, a reference to either the well-known past history of his Hebrew readers, or perhaps allegorically to the parchments upon which the accounts were written, lying around him as he wrote this epistle. In any event, Paul’s explanations were meant to describe how these Old Testament saints had acted upon their faith, and were therefore accredited for their actions.

Christians, even Identity Christians, sometimes see faith as some mystical substance which can rather magically save them regardless of what they may do in this world. They have it all wrong. While none of us are perfect, we must at least endeavor to keep the commandments of Yahweh our God and the expectations of Christ if we expect the favor of God. We can go back to our description of the Roman jailer in Acts chapter 16, which we had also discussed when we presented Hebrews chapter 4 here a couple of months ago. There we said, in part, that:

… as it is described in the Book of Acts, once the warden of the jail where Paul and Silas were kept realized the power of Yahweh, the God of Paul and Silas, when the earthquake had opened the doors of his jail, he went to Paul and inquired what it was that he must do to be “saved”. The jailer, who was about to slay himself fearing what would happen if any of the prisoners escaped, was a Roman pagan. Therefore he had no consciousness of the possibility of eternal life in Jesus. He only sought earthly salvation from the punishment he expected for which he nearly killed himself…. [But when he was about to do so Paul intervened and we read:] “28 But with a great voice Paul cried out saying ‘Do nothing evil to yourself! For we are all here!’ 29 And requesting a light he burst in and coming trembling fell before Paul and Silas, 30 and leading them outside he said ‘Masters, what is necessary for me to do that I be saved?’ 31 And they said ‘Believe in the Prince Yahshua and you and your house shall be saved.’”

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 15: Sons or Bastards

As we have proceeded through Hebrews chapter 11, we have sought to understand Paul’s reasoning in his descriptions of the faith of the patriarchs from a historical perspective: that the Old Testament accounts describing the lives of the patriarchs and saints exhibit that their faith was a Christian faith long before the advent of Christ Himself. In that respect, the Old Testament saints were Christians before the time of Christ, and they were never Jews. Paul spoke in this same regard in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, where he was describing how it was that the ritual elements and ceremonies of the law were being left unemployed, and speaking of those who were disobedient in the past he said that “14 Yet their minds were hardened; even to this day today the same veil remains upon the reading of the old covenant, which not being uncovered is left unemployed in Christ. 15 Then until this day, whenever Moses is read a veil lies upon their hearts. 16 But when perhaps you should turn to the Prince, the veil is taken away.” So according to Paul of Tarsus, the Old Testament scriptures are only for Christians, their significance is only revealed to those who accept Christ, and therefore nobody else has any authority to even comment upon them.

We have also sought to clarify some obscure details of Scripture, while elucidating the historicity of the accounts themselves. Here, as we approach the close of Paul’s famous discourse on the faith, we shall continue in that same endeavor. The historicity of the Old Testament is constantly being attacked by critics of modern denominational Christianity, and especially by critics of the Jews as well as by Jews themselves. What those critics do not realize is that the denominational churches have never actually taught Christianity, the Jews can never possibly understand it, and the Jews are neither the subjects nor the true heirs of the Old Testament Scriptures. First century Christians themselves insisted that the so-called “Gentiles”, the people of the nations of the Greco-Roman οἰκουμένη, were indeed the true subjects and heirs of the Scriptures, who had been alienated from Yahweh God many centuries before Christ. They also attested that the Jews are Edomites, not Israelites, and the historians Josephus and Strabo fully support that attestation. The Scriptures themselves, in both Old Testament and New, also support all of these assertions.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 14: The Faith of History

Throughout Hebrews chapter 11 Paul of Tarsus discusses the faith of some of the ancient patriarchs of the Adamic race, down through Abraham, and then continues in that manner with Jacob and some of the later experiences of the children of Israel. It is this second portion which we shall commence with here this evening.

Presenting the first part of the chapter, we hope to have better explained Paul’s definition of faith from our own translation and commentary, and also to have better elucidated what Paul had intended where he described the substance of that faith. The King James Version has Hebrews 11:1 to read that “… faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, and we believe that this rather poor translation leaves a lot of room for error where people imagine that anything which they hope for may be labelled as “faith” in a Christian context. While Yahweh God indeed provides for His people, the faith of which Paul speaks in this chapter is a specific faith, and not what anyone imagines for themselves.

Rather, Paul says in Hebrews 11:1 that “faith is expecting an assurance, evidence of the facts not being seen.” So while other references to faith may have other implications in other contexts, here in this context Paul explains that faith is the expectation that the assurances, which are the promises which were made by Yahweh to the patriarchs, would indeed be kept. That is the faith which Paul describes here, and subsequently he writes about the deeds of the patriarchs which were predicated upon that faith. As the apostle James said in his single epistle, “faith without works is dead”, so claiming to have faith is useless unless one acts in accordance with one’s profession of faith. There may be fulfillments of faith in other aspects, such as Yahweh’s fulfillment of the wants and needs of His people, but that is a separate issue.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 13: The Substance of the Faith

Throughout the first 209 verses of this epistle to the Hebrews, Paul has argued that Yahshua Christ is the Son who was promised in the Psalms of David, and He is the Lord which David had anticipated, to whom also the Melchizedek priesthood was appointed forever. Paul also explained that His coming had marked the initiation of the new covenant for the children of Israel promised in Jeremiah chapter 31, which Paul had also cited. Because these things in the prophets had now come to pass, Paul had argued that the Levitical priesthood and the works of the law which it dispensed – which are the rituals, sacrifices and ceremonies – were eclipsed by this new practice of the faith in Christ, something which was actually the expectation of the prophets from the beginning. Doing this Paul also discussed some of the other implications of the coming of the new covenant in Christ, especially making point of the fact that apart from Christ, there is no other propitiation for sin, and for that reason, with Christ alone man has access to God.

Now here in Hebrews chapter 11 Paul discusses the faith of the ancients, and how they did the things which they were credited with because of this faith which had now come in the person of Christ. Paul, speaking to so-called “lost” Israelites of the Assyrian captivity, wrote in Galatians chapter 3 that “22 ... the writing has enclosed all under fault, in order that the promise, from the faith of Yahshua Christ, would be given to those who are believing. 23 But before the faith was to come we had been guarded under law, being enclosed to the faith destined to be revealed. 24 So the law has been our tutor for Christ, in order that from faith we would be deemed righteous. 25 But the faith having come, no longer are we under a tutor; 26 for you are all sons of Yahweh through the faith in Christ Yahshua.”

Now that does not mean that anyone who claims to believe something is a son of Yahweh. Rather, the faith in Christ must in accordance with the promises of the Old Testament which Christ had come to fulfill. For that reason Paul informed these Hebrews that Christ “is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” And for that reason Paul also told the Galatians, in chapter four of his epistle, that “3 Just as we also, when we were infants, we were held subject under the elements of the Society. 4 And when the fulfillment of the time had come, Yahweh had dispatched His Son, having been born of a woman, having been subject to law, 5 in order that he would redeem those subject to law, that we would recover the position of sons.” As we had seen earlier in this epistle, the Society or “world” of which Paul speaks was that society of the children of Israel established at Sinai, as Paul had used the term in Hebrews 9:26.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 12: The Transcendent Christ

“On many occasions and in many ways in past times Yahweh had spoken to the fathers by the prophets. At the end of these days He speaks to us by a Son...” Writing this, Paul had opened this epistle to the Hebrews in a very poetic fashion, and we are not sure that our translation has given the overall poetic quality of the entire epistle sufficient merit. Then with this statement, throughout his epistle Paul had focused on the prophecies concerning that Son in the just-as-poetic Psalms, employing the words of David which concerned both a priesthood and a relationship between God and man that were not a part of the active religious paradigm at the time of David himself.

Doing this, Paul had demonstrated the fact that as he wrote these words, the time for the Levitical priesthood had come to pass, as the children of God have a new priesthood in Yahshua Christ, and that these things were indeed prophesied of by David. And as we had also seen in Paul’s explanation of the prophets, this new priesthood is actually an old priesthood, and therefore it transcends the Levitical priesthood which was destined to be both temporal and temporary from its very foundation. David prophesied of a coming Son who would rule forever under the auspices of an ancient priesthood that was superior even to Abraham, and connected that priesthood to the promise of a new covenant which is therefore superior to the Old Covenant maintained by the Levitical priesthood. Here Paul has finished his exposition of these things in the Psalms, employing also the prophecy of a new covenant found in the writings of Jeremiah, and now he is about to offer his final conclusion.

The opening remarks to this program are found in the Christogenea forum under the topic Answering Anti-Christ Memes 
 

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 11: Perpetual Propitiation in Christ

In the earlier chapters of this epistle to the Hebrews Paul sought to persuade his readers of the temporary nature of the Levitical priesthood as opposed to the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek which is inherited by Yahshua Christ, as David had announced in the Psalms. Then with Hebrews chapter 8 Paul began comparing the temporary expiations for sin which were under the law to the eternal propitiation for sin which is in Christ. In Hebrews chapter 9 Paul connected the propitiation for sin in Christ directly to the promise of a new covenant which is found in the prophet Jeremiah, and we have seen that the children of Israel have an eternal inheritance which is not dependent upon any works or sacrifices made by men, but which is solely dependent upon the promises which Yahweh had made to Abraham. The keeping of the promises to Abraham being the ultimate reason for the making of a new covenant, we also see that only the children of Israel, those who were under the old covenant, could possibly have any part with Christ under the new covenant. Doing all of this, Paul has cited a fair portion of the Old Testament scriptures in order to confirm his assertions, and we hope to have elucidated many of the scriptures which he had not cited but which further support those assertions.

Here in Hebrews chapter 11, Paul continues to contrast the propitiation for sin which was under the law to that which is in Christ, but we must be careful to distinguish the fact that Paul never sought to set aside the commandments of the law. Rather, in Hebrews chapter 9 Paul made a reference to “dead works”, which is a reference to the rituals, sacrifices and ceremonies of the law and not to the commandments themselves. In fact, since Paul of Tarsus had written in Romans 4:15 that “where no law is, there is no transgression”, and in Romans 5:13 that “sin is not imputed when there is no law”, if the commandments of the law are done away with then Paul would never have had any further need to discuss or to describe either sin or forgiveness. Yet where Paul said in his first epistle to Timothy that “Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after”, we see that Paul believed that men can still sin, so the commandments of the law must still be in effect, and Paul never attempted to set them aside.

Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Part 10: The Eternal Inheritance

Presenting the first part of Hebrews chapter 9 we felt that we should elaborate on the common nature of sphinxes and cherubs, the importance of which should not be understated. While the first sphinx-like creatures appeared in Egyptian monuments as early as the 4th dynasty, which is perceived to have begun around 2600 BC, by 1450 BC the sphinx was employed as the symbol by which the Israelites had signified the presence of Yahweh their God, in the inner chamber of the temple and on the ark of the covenant itself. Then after the Israelite settlement of Canaan, variations of the Hebrew cherub, or sphinx, began to appear throughout the lands surrounding the Mediterranean, as well as in the architecture of the Mesopotamian nation-states. So the spread of these cherubs, or sphinxes, seems to coincide with the spread of the early Israelites and their influence throughout the ancient world. The sphinx, or cherub, seems to be one of the oldest Aryan religious symbols, and it is no mistake or coincidence that it was used to represent the presence of the God of Israel. To us, the use and spread of the sphinx, or cherub, in this manner also seems to represent the promise that Yahweh would call His son out of Egypt, the primary reference being to the children of Israel, which is found in Hosea 11:1.

Where Paul mentions the ark of the covenant, we also made it a point to demonstrate that the ark was never present during the period of the second temple, and down to the time of Christ, or even to this very day. We did that to make another point. When presenting Hebrews chapter 8 we illustrated the fact that the kingdom of Judah, as well as Israel, was divorced from Yahweh God. So just because the few from Judah who returned to Jerusalem had built a new temple and continued in their traditions does not mean that the divorce from the kingdom itself did not occur. The people of second-temple Jerusalem had never properly constituted a kingdom, since they were ruled by Levites rather than the rightful kings of Judah, and for most of their history they were under the yoke of three of the different beast empires (Persian, Greek and Roman) of the prophecy of Daniel. Furthermore, since there was no ark of the covenant in the temple, then there was no mercy seat, and there were no tablets of testimony which represented the nuptial agreement between Yahweh and Israel recorded in the book of Exodus. So during the second temple period, the sacrifices could not have been effectual, according to the law which required those things for propitiation from sin. Therefore the people of Judaea, those of the circumcision, were actually existing under the same conditions that the Israelites of the dispersions were living under, which is alienation from God with no propitiation for sin. As we have said earlier in this series of presentations, the entire purpose of the 70-weeks Kingdom, as it is described in Daniel chapter 9, was to bring forth the Messiah, and in that same manner Paul explains here that the entire purpose of the Old Covenant itself was in preparation for the Messiah, Yahshua Christ, who would exhibit the true way to life.