Ruling on Bleeding

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"It once happened that due to the great demand the price of pairs of birds rose in Jerusalem until it stood at the level of gold dinars.   Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel declared, 'I shall not sleep until pairs of birds are sold for silver dinars. I swear it by the Temple.'

Thereupon he entered the court and taught the following law:  A woman who was liable to bring pairs of birds for five definite cases of childbirth or five definite cases of zivah must bring one pair of birds for a sacrifice and may thereafter eat of offerings, and the remaining four offerings are not incumbent upon her.  And that very day the price of pairs of birds dropped and stood at a quarter of a silver dinar, which, some say, was one hundredth of the original price." [Adapted from ArtScroll Schottenstein ed. BT Bava Basra 166a]

Now understand this as a ruling of Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel on bleeding.  In this he testified that the tears of the daughters of Israel should yet be dried for the kingdom of heaven was at hand.  How can this be known?

To Adam it was said: "In the day that you eat thereof..."  Thus, in that it was said, "in the day," there was time given for bleeding, and time given for bleeding is time given for prayer.  And the offerings of the Temple are the offerings prescribed by the Torah for the prayer of Israel in this day of bleeding.  Therefore if through inflation prayer and offerings were being brought to nothing the bleeding also of the daughters of Israel was for nothing.

If the bleeding of the daughters of Israel was for nothing then we can see by means of a holiness of spirit through the ruling of Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel that all hope in the word of G-d was gone.  We see that for this reason with the sword of his ruling he slew the dragon of inflation.

And we have learned from the texts of the Good News of Israel and Her Messiah which are hidden in plain sight:

"As Yahoshua went, the people pressed around him.  And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.  She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

And Yahoshua said, 'Who was it that touched me?' When all denied it, Kefa said, 'Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!'  But Yahoshua said, 'Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me'.

And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.  And he said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace'." [From Luke 8]

Now I speak to those who know the Torah.  Here is the light of understanding that radiates from this story when we place it in the setting of the story of Rabban Shimon Gamliel's ruling concerning the price of two birds in Jerusalem:

In Yahoshua the shedding of the blood of the daughters of Israel is consummated.  Through him the eternal prayer of Israel is heard.

See Update On Obadiah post

See this critical update on the book of Obadiah, who prophesied against Edom and against the nations of the age of the Holocaust.  Read here

Did Israel Reject Joseph?

Did Israel reject Joseph? No. Only certain of his brothers rejected him, and some, Reuben and Judah, for instance, were a remnant among the brothers to testify to the love and trust of their father's heart toward Joseph, though they too, personally, may have doubted him.

Joseph is sold by his bothers Wikipedia

For why did his brothers reject him? It was on account of their perception of his replacement theology. For they saw him as putting himself above even his father and his mother. Such would be a violation of the covenant that God made with Abraham, the promise he gave also to Isaac and Jacob alone.
With a righteous indignation Joseph's brothers were offended by him. Of being a mere "Dreamer" they accused him. Should one's dreams outweigh the very word, the very covenant, of God? But in this judgment of Joseph as being an heretic and guilty of the invention of replacement theology his brothers understood neither his dreams nor their father's trust in Joseph.

Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh Wikipedia

For Joseph did not dream of his exaltation above them and above his father and mother in a dream of life but in a dream of death. Therefore his brothers, in their ignorance of this, fulfilled the very words of God in covenant with Abraham. For Egypt would be a parable of death for Israel. And it would be in the fulfilling of this justice of God's sentence upon Adam that Joseph would rule over all his father's household. And it would be in all Israel's repentance toward the heart of their fathers that Joseph and his brothers would reign as one together over the world in their redemption from Egypt, a parable of life.
For the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not made to Abraham to be fulfilled in This World but in the resurrection of the dead.

How Israel is Corporately Redeemed

The corporate understanding, first of Adam, then of Israel, is really the right starting place for understanding the good news of God for the world. If we want to say that the God of the Bible is our God, and that, for example, His ten commandments apply to us, then we must begin by acknowledging that He is our God - not because we lay claim to Him but because He lays claim to us. How he lays claim to Israel is very plain to see. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." It is because of this that Israel is commanded to have no other gods than the God who has corporately redeemed her from Egypt. But how is it seen that God lays claim to us who are not Israelites so that we might understand his ten commandments as applying to us also?

We need to take a step back. I am not sure what approach you take to interpreting the account of Creation in Genesis, but whatever approach anyone takes, it should be clear that if the Bible is read in its own terms of reference it teaches that Adam is defined by God equally as a corporate entity as an individual entity, equally as a family entity that is fruitful and multiplies as an individual entity that can be identified either as a male or a female. Indeed, it can be seen from the Bible that God did not design Adam as a self-sufficient individual or group of individuals who then had the choice to love or not to love, so that the individual could be defined as complete with or with out love and love could be defined as something that was non-essential to the individual's definition by the design of the Creator. To the contrary, it is written of the individual Adam that it was not good that he should be alone; he was not a complete creation like the other creatures until love was an inherent part of his definition, until he - and she - were able to be fruitful and multiply out of love, until Adam was corporate. So then, once Adam was a corporate creature, a creature of love, then the male was defined as an individual in relation to the female and the female was defined as an individual in relation to the male, and so would it be with their offspring. First the corporate, then the individual. In this way God was pleased with his creature and with all of his creation and saw it as being very good. Now before we can understand anything else, we must understand that when God acted to redeem the creature, Adam that he had made, he acted to redeem it in the way that it pleased him to create it, first as a corporate entity, then, out of the corporate the individuals who derived from the corporate.

We also need to look at the question of what it means to say that God, the Creator of all, is uniquely called the God of Israel. Why is this? When correcting the Sadducees for not believing in the resurrection of the dead Yehoshua (Jesus) said to them that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. We understand that the hope of the resurrection to eternal life is not the inheritance of all but only toward those who convert to the way of repentance from sin and of faith toward God. Adam, without repentance, is counted by God as condemned, as though he were dead already. Because Adam is first corporate, (not first an individual), by the design of creation, all who are of Adam are counted as dead, as though they were dead already, (Romans 5, II Corinthians 5). If Adam were first an individual and only then by an act of free will corporate then the condemnation that came upon him for his sin would have come upon him alone as an individual and not upon the whole of his corporate family. We must also see clearly that the promise made of the seed of the woman in the garden was not given to Adam personally but was made as a promise against the serpent and in Adam's hearing. Thus, there was reason there for Adam as an individual to have hope but corporately speaking this was a judgement upon Adam because the promise as a corporate promise for humanity was being given through and therefore to the seed of the woman and not to Adam. Only when, for the first time, God gave Abraham the promise of blessing and of blessing humanity through him and his seed was the corporate promise of good news first given to any sinner. Before this, the same promise was alluded to by God in dealing with sinners, such as in the case of Noah, but the promise itself was not given to Noah or anyone else before Abraham. The covenant with Noah and all creatures only specified a mitigated judgement; this was an allusion to good news but cannot be called the good news itself.

When all there was in the world was the curse of God, suddenly the good news of the blessing of God came in the form of God's promise, which was made both to Abraham and to the seed of Abraham, and was given by God personally to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. We see now that it was possible for God to make this corporate promise of blessing, and therefore of atonement and resurrection unto eternal life, to these fathers of Israel, who were sinners because he made that promise through and to that seed of Abraham who is his holy Mashiach (Christ). This is the understanding of the corporate redemption of Israel as the corporate redemption of Adam. As there is this chosen branch of corporate Adam which is given a new corporate head, the Son of Adam, the Last Adam, (Daniel 7:13; Matthew 9:6; Romans 5, II Corinthians 15), the first Adam is removed from the headship of the redeemed body of humanity. For Christian theology to have said for so long that Christ redeems only individuals and then God assembles them into a new corporate entity that never existed in any form before has only created confusion on every level. For replacement theology to continue to maintain this teaching today, after the Holocaust, is no longer tolerable. It is time for this to be rectified.

In my next installment in this series of emails I will speak specifically about how Israel as a corporate entity can be forgiven when even the majority of the Jews have yet to recognize the person and work of their Mashiach (Messiah).

May Israel's Savior save us in all our thought and words and actions.

John 8:6

In tractate Bava Basra 54a of the Babylonian Talmud, in speaking about the process of laying claim to property, one method that is refered to is that of drawing a picture upon the property, (such as upon a building), to show one's ownership of the property by beautifying it.

In John 8:6 we read that Yehoshua knelt down and drew or wrote upon the ground. This 'mark' is the only 'mark' that Yehoshua is recorded to have made by hand. He made it directly on the Land of Israel.

Repentance, Resurrection and Regeneration

Abraham was born cursed by God with all other people in his father, Adam, but God promised him blessing and to be a blessing to all families. Upon the basis of this promise of blessing repentance came to mean something far more in Israel than it could ever mean outside of the realm of this promise. This is the true meaning of Israel's 'baptism' in the Jordan river.

Only with the promise to Abraham could repentance bring hope in the face of the curse, yet repentance was possible for Adam even under the curse of God. Still, the possibility of Adam's repentance could never itself alter God's curse. It was not repentance under the curse of God that brought the promise of blessing into the world. It was the grace of the will of God alone.

*** Valley of the Jordan River near Beth Shean ***

The promise of blessing came as a word from God that would somehow overcome the curse of God. It could not simply take the place of the curse which came as an act of God's righteous justice on account of sin. Somehow the blessing of God promised to Abraham would have to transcend the curse of God without ever altering the judgement of God which decreed the curse, including the curse of death, for Adam's sin and all subsequent sin following in the wake of Adam's sin.

Repentance under the curse of God could have no reward other than its own goodness. Even if it brought forgiveness this would not entail a change in the word of God. This principle can be seen if illustrated by a case where someone murdered a loved one of a judge. After the judge passed a death sentence upon the murderer, it might come about that the murderer repented of the sin. It might also happen that a relationship ensued between the repentant murderer and the judge resulting in the judge personally forgiving the murderer. This would not change the sentence, just as it would not bring the murdered person back from the dead. For the death sentence did not come from the personal relationship between the judge and the murderer in the first place but from the justice of the law, which is applied to all people in the same way.

If after the sentence is carried out the judge were to have the power to raise the murderer from the dead it would then matter greatly whether the murder had been repentant or not and whether the judge had forgiven the murder or not. And indeed, God, who created all things from nothing had the power to raise the dead. Accordingly, the promise of blessing given to Abraham has everything to do with the resurrection of the dead.

When Abraham believed the promise of God he received the hope of the resurrection of the dead, and when anyone else believes the promise of God to Abraham, the promise of blessing, they receive the hope of the resurrection of the dead. In receiving this hope the soul receives a spirit from the power of that resurrection itself. This spirit is life that comes from the World To Come, the New Creation, the spirit of regeneration. In crossing 'through' the Jordan River Israel passed corporately into the world of God's promise, the world where repentance and regeneration were two aspects of one action. When all Israel came down to the Jordan to the prophet Yohanan to be immersed the confession was being made that the original crossing was spiritually deficient and needed rectification and completion in Israel's heart.

Poetic Commentary on Yehoshua's Prayer

Our Father who is in heaven - Israel's Father, our Father, who is in the Heaven of heavens alone,

hollowed be your name - Re-create our heart and lips with your name.

your kingdom come - Lift your kingdom, your daughter, up into your arms, your warm embrace.

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven - Flood the earth with the knowledge of your name and with those who do your will, as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread - Give us again today a share of your existence, for we can create no existence on our own.

And forgive us our debts - Forgive us the debts we owe to your Life-Giving Word, even those damages caused by the wind of our wings, as we forgive the debts that are owed by others to us.

And lead us not into temptation - for, even if we take one step without your Presence, light itself becomes a temptation to us.

But deliver us from evil - Deliver us from ourselves, for, without your Presence, we always turn the wrong way and fall into evil.