Posted on 03/20/2021 9:06:36 AM PDT by OneVike
Many may be baffled by this, and some may even disagree, but if you allow yourself to step away from what secular history has told you about the religion of Judaism, you will realize that their is truth in what I am about to share.
Let me begin by stating, there is absolutely nothing “Jewish” about God's revelations to Moses at Mt. Sinai. Everything Moses wrote that God instructed him to write, was distinctly Hebraic. NOT Jewish.
The Jewish religious tradition was born in the late second temple period, by the Pharisees. There are 613 laws that God handed down to Moses, called the Torah. These laws were to guide the nation of Israel and, as Paul told the Galatians, to be a tutor and disciplinarian to guide God's people to their Messiah, Christ Jesus. However, the Pharisees added what is known as the Mishnah, which is an oral tradition of commentaries on the Mosaic Law.
These commentaries include hundreds of man-made rules and traditions that were elevated to the same level of Scripture. Thus, if you broke one of the man made rules, then you were considered guilty of violating the Mosaic Law. Jesus confronted them on this by pointing out their hypocrisy in Matthew Chapter 5 & 23.
The Pharisees were supposed to be the keepers and interpreters of the Mosaic Law. Yet the many rules and traditions they added turned it into a man made legal document, that allowed them to scam God's people. I tend to believe that most of the lower class common folk in the Jewish communities must have thought God and His Priests were crazy, as they probably shook their heads over some of the silly rules, and how they were interpreted and applied? I can see them asking,
However, as bad as that was, there was another problem with the religion put in place by God through Moses. This one had to do with the way the Pharisees and Sadducees had thumbed their proverbial finger into God's proverbial eye, by destroying the succession of the High Priesthood. A succession which God Himself ordained.
We read in Chapter 8 of Leviticus, that God ordained only the descendants of Aaron to be the rightful heirs to the High Priesthood. Sometime after the return from captivity, it was not your genealogy that helped you become the High Priest. Nope, instead it became a position won by bribery, or by having a close relationship with whom ever the power was controlling the region. The last High Priest from Aaron's lineage was probably Jashua.
By the time Jesus walked with the Disciples, the high priesthood fluctuated between Annas and Caiaphas. The decision of who would be High Priest was decided by whomever the Roman governor wanted. By this time Aaron's descendants were just attendants of the building. It is doubtful that the political appointees, who were in and out of office with every whim of the Rome, were ever God’s High Priests.
So the removal of Aaron's descendants from the High Priesthood, put an end to the true Hebrew religious order which God Himself had set in place.
Now I get to how John the Baptist would become the last High Priest. We read in Luke 1:9 that John's father, Zacharias, was chosen by lot to perform the act of offering at the altar of incense.
So it was God's decision, that Zacharias was chosen to burn the incense before the LORD. This job was specifically given to Aaron the High Priest, and only the High Priset. Thus even in future generations, the only one allowed by GOD to burn incense was a the High Priest who was a direct descendant of Aaron. No on else was allowed.
It must be pointed out, that God was so serious about this, that twice He punished those who violated the commandment. The first time was when Aaron son's, Nadab and Abihu offered unauthorized profane fire.
The second time was when king Uzziah tried to burn incense and GOD struck him with leposy for life. Mind you, we are told that "Ussiah did what was right in the sight of the LORD." So he was one of the good Kings of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Yet he violated God's command on who has the right to offer incense.
This is why God chose Zacharias to be in the Temple offering incense. Zacharias was a descendant of Aaron, thus God wanted him in the Temple offering incense when His Angel visited and told him that his elderly wife Elizabeth would be with child, and the child's name would be John. Now John's wife, Elizabeth, was also a descendant of Aaron. Another interesting aspect of this is, the name of Aaron's wife was Elisheba, which is the same as Elizabeth.
This is huge, because when you put all the facts on the table, you can clearly see that John the baptist was uniquely qualified to be a High Priest. He was a child of pure Aaronic Priestly stock, who was specifically sent by God, via a miracle pregnancy to parents who were childless and in their advanced years. Luke 1:7. John would also become a pure Nazarite, because he never cut his hair, never touched dead bodies, nor did he ever drink wine, and he would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. Luke 1:15 John would become be a priest-prophet that would minister in the spirit and power of Elijah. Luke 1:17
John was the most qualified man in history to not only minister to God, but to also mediate things of men before God. Just compare John the Baptist's credentials to the credentials of the imposters who were High Priests of those days. From the womb, John was a Spirit-filled Hebrew, Levite, Nazarite, Aaronic priest-prophet. While the others were pretenders propped up by their father the devil.
Consider this, Christ came to not only die for our sins, but first He had to restore the priesthood for the symbolic prophecy to be filled. Thus after John the Baptist was gone, He could properly assume the position as the last true High Priest. In this case, in the order of Melchizedek.
Think about it. It makes perfect sense that John the Baptist was the true High Priest who was the rightful heir after his father Zacharias. As such, the true High Priest of God would baptize Jesus. The scene of Jesus baptism would be what Aaron did to his sons to sanctify them so they could minister to the Lord in His house. You can also see this as the transition ordained by God.
When you consider the facts. This puts a new perspective on John’s statement
John's priesthood was decreasing while the priesthood in the order of Melchizedek was increasing. John was not a Jew, he was a Levite. A descendant of the father of the Hebrews, Abraham, and a member of the twelves tribes of Israel chosen to be a blessing to the whole world. It seems obvious why God would bypass the religious leaders in everything His Son did. Beginning from the day He was born, God ignored those tending His Temple, and instead notified the shepherds in the fields that His Son has arrived. Instead of going to the Satan's High Priest of the Temple to be washed and anointed, He sent His Son to the High Priest in the field to be washed and anointed. The very High Priest God chose to be born from the Aaronic line as He commanded at Mt Saini. Instead of having Jesus join the Priesthood to be ordained so He could preach in the Temple to His sheep, Jesus went straight to the fields to tend His sheep.
Thanks to John's High Priesthood, Christ was able to fulfill God's command on the proper transfer of the High Priesthood. Eventually Christ would ascend into heaven where he now sits at the right hand of God as our forever High Priest. Then in 70 A.D., God allowed the false priesthood of the Pharisees to end forever. Something Jesus predicted when he told the disciples about the coming destruction of Herod's Great Temple.
Jesus knew the Temple and the sacrificial ceremonies had to be stopped, because He would forever satisfy the need to atone for man's sins. The destruction of the Temple ended any chance of there ever being a descendant of Aaron from ever assuming the High Priesthood again. Thus John the Baptist was the last Aaronic High Priest there would ever be.
I pray those who have ears to hear will, hear His voice and call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen
Judaism was the bastardized faith created during the quiet years by the Pharisees.
>On John the Baptist being the last of the line of Aaron, very well researched and thought out. Which I will look more into. I thank you for what you’ve posted.
And, yes, I agree on the difference between “Hebraism” and “Judaism.” I think the author of the book of “Hebrews,” with all that is taught there, would agree with what you have here.
I do wonder, however, why you haven’t said more about the “bastardized faith by the Pharisees.” Surely you must know that beimg bastardized. it has also been “paganized?”
I refer to the “Babylonian” Talmud, and Kabbalah, the latter an occultic brew of pagan mysticism and magic, conjured up by the Pharisees after the fall of Jerusalem, 70AD. Now being passed off under the name of “Judaism.”
Which neither John the Baptist, nor Jesus, taught.
Well the law was to prove how we needed Christ. However, in the 2nd temple period, the Pharisees added things for the purpose of their greed and control, that were never given by Moses.
As I stated, Jesus chastised them for it.
Mind you, God told us NOT to change what He ordained. The Pharisees did a lot more than just change it, they created whole new laws God never imposed.
Now when Christ came, He was God incarnate and He fulfilled the laws we could not. Jesus was the perfect lamb who never ever broke any of the comandments. Thus the reason His sacrifice was sufficient for our sins, IF, we accept and believe in Him as our Lord and Savior.
Because my focus was to show that John was the Last True High Priest.
More can be said about the way the bastardized faith by the Pharisees.
But doing it here would have distracted from my subject matter.
Maybe I will do a commentary on it sometime, because I do agree with you.
OH, and if I do, I would also probably tie in how the Roman Catholic Church parallels with Judaism in the way they twisted things.
Basically, the Roman Catholic Church recreated the Sanhedrin and the Priesthood, only they did it for Christianity.
I would start a huge argument though, and that is something I must truly pray over so I can do it truthfully and in a delicate way.
Who knows. If the Holy Spirit leads me I will.
Mind you, I did not set out to write what I wrote. I started with a short post of a thought on FaceBook, and as I was finalizing it, it ballooned into what I posted here.
That happens to me a lot. A simple comment I write will turn into a 5 page commentary that I write when the Holy Spirit leads me.
I also want to add, that in all that some tribes changed, and even Moses allowance for divorce, they were not condoned by God.
True, men always created grey areas where God uses black and white with no middle grey area.
We are constantly looking for loopholes, but try as we may, or do as we do, there are none.
Thus the reason Jesus told His disciples that man cannot, which proved we needed a perfect forever Sacrifice as the mediator..
However, Jesus wants us to live with our errors by asking for forgiveness, and trying harder to be right. Instead of creating grey areas to justify our weaknesses.
God is against divorce, what Christ did was die for the sins. We repent, and gain forgiveness. However, Gods searches the heart, and while divorce is wrong, and even Christians get divorced, God sees the reason in the heart.
Christ said only for sexual sin can one justify divorce, but if one cheats, the other one better not be the type who led them to it.
If we are to forgive another 70 x 7, then where is the forgiveness for the sin.
If then one keeps sinning, then we learn it is OK to put one away in divorce if they are not saved. Since continual willing sin proves one is not one with Christ.
This even God says to do so is OK, since God’s commandment under Moses said death was the penalty for one who commits harlotry. Remember the woman caught in adultery? Christ also said let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Remember, all of God’s punishments were the max you can give, under Christ it is forgiveness to the max. So while divorce is wrong, if a Christians divorces their spouse for adultery, then they are as guilty for not forgiving them.
You then will say, but who can be iso forgiving for such a violation of ones marriage vow? To which Jesus said, man cannot, thus we need Christ. Yet as I said, if you are truly in Christ, then why would you not forgive instead of divorce?
Tye Babylonian Talmud was the written down Oral Torah of the Pharisees.
Rabbinical Judaism is the reimagined Pharisees sect of 2nd temple Judaism.
Christianity is the other surviving sect of 2nd temple Judaism
Clement of Alexandria taught that the bestowal of the six blessings necessitated the end of biblical Judaism within the seventy weeks (9:24). He referred to the Temple’s destruction in the language of Daniel’s weeks. He wrote, “Vespasian rose to the supreme power and destroyed Jerusalem, and desolated the holy place” (STO, XXI, 142–143).
Origen (185–254 A.D.) was a student of Clement of Alexandria. It seems quite certain that he agreed with his teacher that the terminus ad quem of the seventieth week was the destruction of the Temple. “The weeks of years up to the time of Christ the leader that Daniel the prophet predicted were fulfilled” (TPR, IV:1:5).
Jesus is the successor to Melchuzedek who brought wine and bread to Abraham. Similarly Jesus in the Euch6gives us eternal life giving bread and wine.
If you want to know more about John the Baptist mission read about the Mandaens. They are the continuation of John’s disciples who did not follow christ
It is translated as “salvation is from the Jews “.
car le salut vient des Juifs
porque la salvación viene[a] de los judíos
Vos adoratis quod nescitis: nos adoramus quod scimus, quia salus ex Judaeis est
Ihr betet an, was ihr nicht kennt; wir beten an, was wir kennen, denn das Heil kommt aus den Juden.
क्योंकि उद्धार यहूदियों में से ही है
कारण यहूदी लोकांकडूनच तारण येते.
, bo zbawienie pochodzi od Żydów
In 16th century English it meant the same as in today’s English saying “salvation comes from the jews”
Also note that “the Jews” in Jesus’s time were multiple sects. One of these were the Jesus movement which became Christianity
And the most prominent other sect was the Pharisees who became rabbinical Judaism after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD
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