The Meaning of the Magi...Matthew nativity pt 4

https://billrandles.wordpress.com/2019/12/15/the-meaning-of-the-magi-matthew-nativity-pt-4/ ^ | 12-12-19 | Bill Randles

[genetic homophobe]

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[MHGinTN]

BTW, Pastor, have you found 1 John 3:9 yet?

[MHGinTN]

Beautiful message, BTW.

[scrabblehack]

Is it known that the Magi came from Persia?
Isaiah 60:6 points to Sheba as a possibility (which is East of Bethlehem):

The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD.

[Ezekiel]

Picture a stopwatch. It starts “from the going of the command the restore and build Jerusalem”… This decree of Artaxerxes, occurred in 444BC and is recouted in Nehemiah 2.

The 'end times' is about people not knowing how to tell time. Even big hands and little hands confuse many, a veritable "confusion of face."

Daniel 9:23 At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth...
Daniel 9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment...

Nehemiah 1:1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chisleu...
Nehemiah 1:6 Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night,

God said that He'd destroy the wisdom of the wise. Scholars debate and decide when events occurred in ancient times, then followers follow the theories while the God of the living operates in real time.

These Magi had studied Daniel’s prophecies copiously for centuries. Thus they would have known that the time was near for the Messiah to present himself, and they knew to be aware and to understand the star and it’s meaning.

The letter chet has a value of 8 and represents chai, life. It's also the number associated with the Messiah in that 8 transcends the physical world of 7.

asterisk: "little star"

a house in Hebrew is a beit [בית], same as the letter bet [בית], same as a "byte" [בית], which is comprised of 8 bits, because binary... base 2. A 2 is the letter bet, located on the Hebrew keyboard on the "C", but who's looking there.

Matthew 2:9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. 11 And when they were come into the house...

Everyone knows the Christmas story, when all the relatives and whoever else descend upon the family home for Christmas. Christmas Vacation is a classic.

The Singing Cowboy sang "Here Comes Santa Claus" when "the Law" descended. He *owned* the Angels.

Aunt Bethany made perfect sense when she exclaimed, "Play Ball!"

Those who have no heart for God, even if they are familiar with scripture, will not seek Him, and will not find Him.

Bethlehem: "house of [ginger] bread"

[Paisan]

we have seen his star in the east

In my KJV, east is capitalized, meaning that the Magi were consulting their astrological charts - back East.

A skeptic once asked me to explain how the Magi, while traveling west, could be following a star in the east, or behind them.

East, in the KJV translation means from the direction of the rising sun.

[mosesdapoet]

You can’t light the tree till Chirstmas eve mother would exclaim
Jesus wasn’t borne till holy Christmas day
So it was the tree remained till three kings were well upon their way
On the feast of Holy Family,was it was taken down,
only then was it hauled away
The tree was there for all to see
So it was as we strung the popcornChristmas day
So it was the tree remained till three kings were well upon their way
On the feast of Holy Family,was it was taken down,
only then was it hauled away
The tree was there for all to see
So it was as we strung the popcorn and cranberries on on threaded line
first the lights of course and cranberries on on threaded line
first the lights of course changing bulbs to see if they were seen
Then leaded icicles that dad would toss with glee
The tree sat in the window till Holy Family day
Those who were missed were seen throughout the days
and especially on Three Kings (Jan 6th) day those who missed their gifts
The paperboy,the mailman,not forgotten on that day

On This “Little Christmas”
January 6th

Once Upon a Time and not too long ago
The Twelfth Night Of Christmas
was celebrated with a ball
From the Day of Babes Birth
and the 11 thereafter
kith and kin were paid a visit
and friends from far and near
once were paid a call
So on this day I pray in the spirit that this date recalls
Let the gift of homage of kings gain
in the spirit of the days this season yet remain
ere it wane
Be thine Blessings Great
and misfortunes thee none befall

from my poetry page
http://www.theusmat.com/natdesk.htm

[Paisan]

My mistake. It is the RSV...

[ealgeone]

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

*****

Key point from this verse....they worshipped Him.

The gave gifts to Him.

Additional key point.

Mary is called His mother....not Mother of God. They did not worship or "venerate" her.

[pastorbillrandles]

Yes I have fond it, elaborate on what you are getting at....

[David]

Picture a stopwatch. It starts “from the going of the command the restore and build Jerusalem”… This decree of Artaxerxes, occurred in 444BC and is recounted in Nehemiah 2.

We are told, that in 69 weeks, (483 years(, Messiah the Prince would come and die, but not for himself but for the people”. This would bring us to the year 33 AD. (At this point the Divine stopwatch stopped. ;eaving 7 more years for God to complete his program for Israel).

The understanding of this set of prophecies is a critical testimony to the precise accuracy of God's Word and to the truth of His promise of a redeeming savior.

The seventy weeks prophecy is actually of seventy sevens of years from the going forth of the Commandment to restore Jerusalem. The arithmetic of the first sixty-nine weeks is clearly set out in Daniel 9:25 and 9:26: At the end of week sixty-nine, "shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself . . . . "

The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is a clear fulfillment of that description.

So the problem with this description is that 69 weeks of years is 483 years (69 x 7 = 483), not 476 years (444 years plus 33 years minus one because there was no year 0).

Given the recounting of several prophecies in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, scholars have had difficulty identifying either the precise decree from which the 69 weeks runs or the dating on which it is based.

My own interpretation ends the 69 weeks on April 5, 30 AD, not 33 AD, only in part based on what I believe is the correct dating of the decree referenced however the balance of that analysis is beyond the scope of this comment. [It should be noted that the Passover would have occurred on Friday twice during the period in Pilate was Procurator in Jerusalem--once in 30 AD and once in 33 AD.]

Since I also think this article correctly identifies the actual decree that is involved, it is important to understand the factors that apply to the actual calculation.

Artazerxes‘ decree is described precisely in Ezra Chapter 7 where we are told that the decree was rendered in the seventh year of Artazerxes (Ezra 7:8)..

So Ezra 7:8 is to be contrasted with Nehemiah 2 where we are told in 2:1 that Nehemiah’s participation commenced in the first month [Nisan] of the twentieth year of Artazerxes. The 13 year difference is resolved by the authors with the assumption that Nehemiah departed Jerusalem 13 years after the decree had been rendered in year 7. Although that interpretation might be correct, it is inconsistent with Ezra’s description in Ezra 7:8 of his companions on the trip to Jerusalem.

However that still leaves some difficulty because adding 13 years to the 476 years above is 489 years, not 483 years.

To understand the difference we need to appreciate the fact that there are alternative methods for the calculation of the dating of the 7th years of Artazerxes.

The Israelites calculated the reigns of the political head of state from the first day of the first year following the year in which the king took office. On the other hand, the Babylonians calculated the year of the king from the year in which the individual became entitled to be treated as the head of state.

Artazerxes Longimanus succeeded his father, Xerxes, as King. The reign of Xerxes ended in 464 BC when Xerxes was murdered by Artabanus, a Hyrcanian usurper, who reigned as king until he was slain by Artazerxes. Thus the Persian records on which many of the bible scholars have relied reflects a reign of Artazerxes from some point in 464 BC, making year seven the year 457 or 456–too late to fit the 483 year calculation.

On the other hand, the calculation employed by the Israelite priestly class for purposes of Daniel’s description would have commenced in April following the termination by Artazerxes of Artabanus at some point between 464 BC and 456 BC. That date is not certain on the historical record.

[MHGinTN]

Freepmailed

[imardmd1]

PBR: The Magi came from Persia, their ‘school of the Magi’ was believed to have dated all the way back to the days of Daniel the prophet, from his time in the schools of Babylon, and then Persia. (from the article)

scrabbleback: Is it known that the Magi came from Persia? (Post #5)

Paisan: In my KJV, east is capitalized, , , , (Post #7)

========

I think not, in all of these comments.

Daniel and his three friends were of the royal line, deported to Babylon in what is now Iraq. They were emasculated, made eunuchs, and because of their lineage were employed as administrators of the prevailing ruler. They themselves rgerefore had no descendants, and thus could not be a threat to any other royalty lineage. There was no indication that Daniel ever left the region of Babylon, but remained there and served as a chief administrator of the kings ruling from that site.

Because the Temple was destroyed, the education of Jewish boys in religion and government was no longer conducted in Jerusalem. In its place, wherever the dispersed Jews congregated, synagogues and their yeshivas were established for that purpose, and came under the conduct of the Levitical Boblical teachers, all throughout the lands, and have continued to this day as the method.

Daniel, being a devout Jew, would have nothing to do with cooperating with the phony magicians, soothsayers, and "wise men." PBR's attribution to the Magoi of being influenced by Daniel is not only an assumption, but a bad one at that. In fact, the Bible says nothing about the Magoi coming from Persia, or even from the direction east of Jerusalem/Bethlehem. Neither the Bible nor history annals say nowhere that they even existed.

As far as "east" in Matthew 2:1 and 2 is concerned, in no KJV that I have ever read or owned is the word capitalized. If one has a Bible in which it is capitalized, then it is not a KJV at all (maybe a NKJV or "New Scofield Edition"?). All copies of the KJV are consistent and uniform, right down to the punctuation and italicization (except for a couple of known matters not relevant here).

But actually, "east" in these verses ought to be capitalized, for the words in the Greek refer to a place name, not a direction as one would gather from the (wrongly) ambiguously interpreted English.

Here is the difference: in the Greek, the word is ἀνατολή (pronounced an-at-ol-ay'), which in the geopolitical sense is the place name "Anatolia", which refers to the eastern plains of the isthmus of Middle Asian Turkey. That region dates from the time that Greece and Persia fought over that territory, It was called "East" by the Greeks of that day because it was to the east of their homeland, just as a Yankee would call Dixieland "the South." (But today, a Los Angeles native would say that Mobile is in the South, even though Alabama is directly to the east by compass from California.)

What I am saying here is that when the Magoi told Herod, "We in Anatolia have seen His Star," everyone would have known that they came from the lands far to the north of Jerusalem, from the very same direction from which Abraham came down to Canaan, two thousand years before. They did not come from Babylon, or Persia, or India, or China.

OK, if y'all have got this, let me know. Then I will go on and tell you who I presume who the Magoi were descendants of, exactly where they came from, and what star they were referring to.

[scrabblehack]

OK, I see your point. East is capitalized in NKJV, RSV (Revised Standard Version), and NET (New English Translation); it’s lower case in KJV.

[MHGinTN]

Please continue!

[MHGinTN]

Ping me please, if you continue.

[allwrong57]

If Mary’s his mother, is she not the mother of God? I don’t think they’d have to call her anything but his mother, that should be obvious.

[MHGinTN]

One must twist meanings for words to make the false conclusion you raise. In human terms a mother is a progenitor for the gestating being. Jesus existed before Mary, so she cannot be His progenitor, but she can be the Mother to His human body for His Embryo gestated in her body. Thus she is The Blessed Mother of Jesus..

[imardmd1]

imardmd1: . . . who the Magoi were descendants of, exactly where they came from, and what star they were referring to. (Post #14)

To continue:

At one time, all the humans except a very few (eight persond to be exact) had sinned as Adam and Eve, failed to repent (like Cain), and were either ignoring The Creator had begun to worship other gods of their own creation. Therefore God, being disappointed and disobeyed, saw that He could not win them back, and washed the world clean of them, exccept for Noah, his sons, and all their wives.

Coming down off snowy Moount Ararat, they and all the animals sought awarmer arable, farmable land in which to settle and expand. I believe that thet began to repopulate the earth, starting from the region near Lake Van, namely from thst area later to be called Anatolia.

But as they spread, and beginning to depend on some of the animals for sustenance and/or as laboring beasts. And also, they began to re-institute astronomy to know when to plant and when to harvest. I believe that as generations were born, faithfulness to the Creator again began to wane, and be supplanted with the worship of those holding the keys to the positions of heavenly bodies as well as to the exotic animals.

We know now, from archaeology, that in that area a site grew up that existed solely for religious worship, a place that was highly developed in structures, a place now called Gobekli Tepe (in Turcic meaning "Pot-belly Hill") only a few miles northwest of Abraham's birthplace, which was "Ur of the Chaldean mountains," now called Sanliurfa. Here is a picture of Gobekli Tepe, the center of worship:

Worship Center at Gobekli Tepe E

In the other direction, about twenty-five miles to the southwest of Sanliurfa, lies Haran, which the archaeologist have also discovered. That is where Terah and his son Abraham, his grandson Lot settled, not going any further toward Canaan until after Terah died, whence Abraham set off under Gd's guidance, taking lot with him, and leaving Nahor behind in Ur of the Chaldees, the north Syrian land called Padan or Padan-aram (Gen.25:29). This area is also located in what was, in Jesus' time, called Anatolia.

I am going to suppose, without straining the truth, that the people of Padanaram were heavily involved in wotshiping false gods, consistent with being near the huge worship center near them, that Terah's predecessors were involved in it, and that is why God directed Abraham to move far away from his family there, to separate him from that culture and start a new one.

But I also believe that this worship center was also the place where the wisdom of prognosticators of times to plant and harvest inherently claimed the attention of humans over a very broad area, and that this cult controlling the intellectual property of the Aramaic culture persisted from long before Abraham's time right down to that of Jesus.

So that is who the Magoi were, and where they came from. When y'all have digested that, I will go on to my suppositions regarding the star sign of the Messiah of the Jews,