Commentaries and Podcasts

Ecclesiastes, Part 2: Vanity and Deliverance

Presenting the opening chapters of Ecclesiastes, we showed how this work was attributed to King Solomon from the earliest times, and also how it accords very well with the life of Solomon, once we realize that it must have been written in the later part of his life. Only in the life of Solomon do we find someone who could have had the experiences of this writer, who called himself the Preacher but who also claimed to be a son of David and king over all Israel. Then in addition to these assertions, there is also the confession of an abundantly opulent lifestyle which the historical Scriptures describe for us in the life of Solomon. Writing this book, the Preacher is now reflecting back on that life and assessing its value.

Ecclesiastes was written to lament the plight of man, that none of the works of man seem to be of any benefit to him at the end of his life, because he must leave the fruits of them to others. Realizing this, the Preacher turned to mirth and decadence, but neither did he find any satisfaction in those things. Making our own assessment of his words, we explained that the Preacher had purposely employed skepticism as a teaching method throughout his discourse. All is vanity, he proclaimed, but what he really meant to say is that all is vanity without God, something which is further revealed to us as we make our way through these subsequent chapters of his work.

Ecclesiastes, Part 1: Methods of The Preacher

Before beginning a commentary on Ecclesiastes, let me first make the confession that none of my commentaries on Scripture are founded on worldly learning. I never went to Bible school, I never studied other mens’ commentaries, and I have little idea what the supposedly learned men say about most aspects of Scripture, or about individual books of Scripture. Neither am I going to research any of them for any particular commentary. With only a few exceptions, on the infrequent occasions where I have tried to read a popular commentary on a portion of Scripture, I have been disappointed, and sometimes even angered by what I have seen. For the most part, my only experience with the popular commentaries is through the editing work which I have done for Clifton Emahiser, who quotes from them frequently.

So when I write my own commentaries, I seek out only what information I can glean from or about the oldest available manuscripts, and I base my commentaries on what I have come to understand from Scripture itself and from classical histories and whatever I remember from my own readings of these and other works, such as the apocryphal literature or the ancient inscriptions of the neighboring cultures. Therefore, whether I say anything new, or whether I repeat anything old, for me to contend with or to mimic any of the traditional commentaries is not premeditated. Rather, I only seek to provide a discussion of Scripture through the lens of that proper covenant theology which is found in our Christian Identity understanding.

Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, Part 5: Censure and Exhortation

This will be the 121st presentation in our commentaries on the Epistles of Paul of Tarsus, and, at least for now, it shall be the final segment of the series. Here we conclude an endeavor which we began on March 28th, 2014, with our first presentation on the epistle to the Romans. We praise Christ for having had the opportunity to do this, and we pray that all of those unrighteous skeptics of Paul’s epistles take the time to read or listen to this work. As we have said many times in the past, Paul’s epistles were the glue by which the message of reconciliation in the Gospel of Christ was adhered to the lost sheep of the Houses of Judah and Israel – the anciently scattered tribes who are those for whom Christ had come. The importance of this within the greater history of our Adamic race cannot be overlooked. In the history of Israel, Paul was every bit as important as any of the ancient prophets – for it is he who truly understood and taught the relevance of the prophecies and histories of the children of Israel in the light of the Gospel of Christ, even if the world has been blind to the truth of this message for at least the last 1800 years. In the formative years of the Roman Church, imperialism prevailed over identity.

But as we have explained elsewhere, and in diverse ways, while this is the last epistle in our presentation, it is not the last of Paul’s surviving epistles in the order of their writing. We have not presented these epistles in the order in which they were written. Rather, we adhered to the order found in the King James Version of the Bible, with a couple of exceptions. We moved Hebrews to precede the pastoral epistles, as we believe that it belongs with the nine epistles which Paul had written to other Christian assemblies. We also moved Philemon and presented it along with Colossians, since Philemon was a Colossian and Paul wrote to him individually concerning his slave Epaphras at the same time that he wrote his letter to the Colossians.

Aside from the first three presentations of this epistle, perhaps last Saturday’s program, The Gospel of Goddard? Or the Gospel of Christ?, would be a good prerequisite for this program, as there is a fair amount of convergence in the subject matter.

Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, Part 4: No Mercy for Narcissists

So far in our presentations of this second epistle to Timothy, we have focused on Paul’s declaration of The Nullification of Death which is in Christ Yahshua, an understanding of which should in turn lead us to Rejecting the Religion of Fear. Then we discussed his admonition in regard to Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, especially in relation to those earlier subjects. While there are other topics which Paul has discussed here, we chose to illustrate these themes to a greater extent because they are representative of some of the most important components of Paul’s messages throughout all of his epistles. For example, he explains in Romans chapter 5 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15 both what the nullification of death means to our Adamic race, and why and how it shall be effected. Then he adds to those explanations with certain statements and allegories which he had made in 1 Corinthians chapters 3 and 5 and elsewhere. So here we have endeavored to show that Paul’s message is consistent from the beginning of his ministry to the end, and that it is also consistent with the oracles of Yahweh found in both the prophets and in the Gospels.

As we have mentioned, another theme of this epistle is found in Paul’s warnings to his younger companion concerning the character of many of the men who were at one time or another associated with his ministry. In the closing verses of this epistle, in chapter 4, he will make brief mention of a few others. But now, as we proceed with 2 Timothy chapter 3, Paul issues a more general warning concerning character, and evidently while he is speaking of the “last days” this also serves as a warning to Timothy, and to Christians in general, to be wary of men who display certain types of behavior, when such men are encountered.

Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, Part 3: Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth

In the first two presentations of this epistle, we discussed at length the nullification of death which is promised in Christ, and the need to reject the religion of fear which was first taught by the Pharisees, then capitalized upon by the Roman Catholic Church, and which is now being used for advantage throughout all of the denominational churches, to keep the people in bondage to sin and death. But each and every member of our White Adamic race has a promise of eternal life, because it was for that reason that we were created, and Yahweh our God cannot fail. For that same reason, however, we must cease from sin, lest our eternal life be an existence spent in a state of everlasting contempt – as it is described in Daniel chapter 12.

However if we love our God, we shall love one another, and then even if we do sin, we have a propitiation in Christ, as the apostle John also explained where he wrote in chapter 2 of his first epistle: “1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Of course, the sins of the world can only be the sins of the children of Israel, as only the children of Israel possessed both the law and these promises of forgiveness, mercy and grace. But John’s world, the world that mattered to him, was the society of the children of Israel. So he distinguished between those who loved God, and those who could not love God, and he said “4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. 6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” As Christ had said in the Gospel to certain of His adversaries, in John chapter 8, “ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.” Those men were completely disassociated from Him, simply because their origin was not His origin, and because their father was not His Father, as He had explained to them.

Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, Part 2: Rejecting the Religion of Fear

Contrasting the religion of the Sadducees with that of the Pharisees in his Wars of the Judaeans, Book 2, the Judaean historian Flavius Josephus had said “164 But the Sadducees are those who compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, 165 is at men's own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to everyone, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades.” Of course, the Pharisees which Josephus wrote about were the successors of those who rejected Christ, and while Christ despised the Sadducees completely, and while for many reasons He had also criticized the doctrines of the Pharisees, the Pharisees nevertheless believed in the eternal spirit of man which the Sadducees had rejected, and the judgement of good and evil.

A few centuries later, following after the model of the Pharisees, the Roman Catholic Church continued the doctrine concerning punishments and rewards in Hades. Then they used that doctrine not only to put fear in the hearts of the people, but to reap profits from them. However speaking of His ἐκκλησία, Christ had said in Matthew chapter 16 that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Christ was not speaking of an institution when He said that. Rather, the word ἐκκλησία describes those whom He had called, which are the body of the people of Israel, as it was also used throughout the Greek Scriptures. So in Brenton’s Septuagint we read from Psalm 21, which speaks prophetically of Christ Himself: “20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my only-begotten one from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion's mouth; and regard my lowliness from the horns of the unicorns. 22 I will declare thy name to my brethren: in the midst of the church will I sing praise to thee. 23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye seed of Jacob, glorify him: let all the seed of Israel fear him.” In that passage the word church is from the plural form of ἐκκλησία, and it refers to the collective masses of the children of Israel. In the King James Version of the Psalms, the corresponding Hebrew word is translated as congregations.

Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, Part 1: The Nullification of Death

Here we begin our presentation of Paul’s second epistle to Timothy. This is the last in our series of commentaries on the epistles of Paul of Tarsus which we had begun with the epistle to the Romans in the Spring of 2014, and it is now the 117th presentation in this series. Undertaking this endeavor, we did not present Paul’s epistles in chronological order, but rather we found it appropriate, with a couple of exceptions, to present the pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus last in order of Paul’s epistles, and also present the other epistles as they are ordered in most Bibles. One exception was the epistle to Philemon, which is not truly a pastoral epistle and which in its historical context is connected to the epistle to the Colossians, so we presented it along with that epistle. Another is the epistle to the Hebrews, which was certainly written by Paul although most Bibles order it to follow Paul’s pastoral epistles, preferring to separate it because they are not certain of the authorship. So we moved it to precede Paul’s pastoral epistles, because we are confident that Paul was its author.

If we had presented the epistles of Paul in chronological order, we would have had to begin with the epistles to the Thessalonians which were both written during Paul’s sojourn in Corinth, around 50 or 51 AD as it is recorded in Acts chapter 18. Then the epistle to the Galatians was written during Paul's stay in Antioch which is described in Acts 18:22-23. The first epistle to the Corinthians was written as Paul was planning to end his three-year sojourn in Ephesus in 56 AD, described in Acts chapter 19. As we know from 1 Corinthians, there was another epistle written to the Corinthians which preceded it, but which is now lost, and that was probably also written from Ephesus.