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Matthew 24:15
So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand) … From Cain to Nebuchadnezzar, everyone who tried to conquer the Jewish, the People of the Covenant, did it forcefully through land and military conquest. In his Jewish Antiquities, Flavius Josephus gives a detailed account of Alexander the Great's visit to Jerusalem and the transpiring events that caused him not to invade and destroy it. Even though Alexander the Great did not conduct a military campaign against Jerusalem, the Hellenic empire is responsible for the historically most successful conquest of the People of God, and that through cultural assimilation. The Western philosophical Greek is as opposite to the Eastern covenantal Jew as day is opposite from night, but is commonly said, 'opposites attract!' When Israel had gotten truly addicted to Hellenism and even had a Greek appointed corrupt Jewish High-Priest, all Antiochus Epiphanes thought he had to do was to send his emissary with a list of reforms to put all of Judaism into his evil hands. He didn't expect the Maccabee revolt. From where I stand, the Maccabees may have won the war and rededicated the Temple, Antiochus Epiphanes may be dead, but the form of Anti-Semitism that he taught is still alive and vibrant. In his great graciousness and compassion Hashem gave us His Messiah. This Jewish, Righteous, and Torah-observant Messiah was high-jacked by Greco-Roman believers who in less than two hundred years displayed Him as a Roman god dressed as a Greek Adonis teaching Greek philosophy. Under a twisted ignorant interpretation of Paul's epistles, this identity theft of our Messiah included the same set of religious reforms initiated by Antiochus Epiphanes which are to stop observing the Sabbath, practicing circumcision, eating according to biblical dietary laws, and studying theology as per the Torah. As a Jewish believer, I find myself in awe that today, my non-Jewish brothers live by the same religious reforms as those pushed by Antiochus Epiphanes and even find myself shunned from their fellowship as one whose, to say the least, theology is overly influenced by Judaism. I wonder what Yeshua would think of the fact that if I want fellowship with non-Jewish believers, I have to live by Antiochus Epiphanes rules. It may be OK for others, but Jewish believers need another Chanukah revolt where with Matthias Maccabee we say "NO" to Antiochus Epiphanes' rules and live our faith in Messiah according to the terms of the covenant Hashem gave to His people. Maybe that Day will be the Day of Messiah. May Hashem give us another Matthias Maccabee who will stand for us and lead us into the cultural battle to defeat Antiochus Epiphanes once and for all! May it be soon Abba, even in our days.
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Hebrews 9:28
Messiah, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. The middle verse of the Hebrew version of the Torah, or the ‘Teaching’ says, Now Moses diligently inquired about the goat of the sin offering, and behold, it was burned up! (Leviticus 10:16). To understand what happens in this passage we must go back to chapter 9 when the grand-priesthood inauguration begins. God, being a ‘consuming fire’ (Deuteronomy 4:24) had established a very serious protocol whereby Israel was to approach Him and Moses gave very specific instructions about it. Nadab and Abihu, two of the sons of Aaron were careless in their application of the protocol and were utterly burned by the fire of God as they approached the Sanctuary in an unauthorized manner (Leviticus 10:1-3). Aaron was obviously devastated and in mourning but he and his other two sons were in the middle of the grand inauguration (Leviticus 9) so they couldn’t stop for mourning; Aaron therefore held his peace (Leviticus 10:3). Some may argue that God’s punishment of Nadab and Abihu was out of proportions and to be qualified as the tantrums of a capricious deity, but instead of reviewing God’s actions, maybe we should review our own sense of what is important and what is not. Intersection with God is not to be taken lightly. There may also be more to the event than meets the eye! Part of the priesthood’s inauguration was that Aaron and his sons were to eat sections of the goat offered as a ‘ollah’, burnt offering inside the Tabernacle precinct. Moses couldn’t find that goat so he searched diligently for it until he discovered that it had been fully consumed. The patriarch then got angry and asked for an explanation to which Aaron answered, "Behold, today they have offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the LORD, and yet such things as these have happened to me! If I had eaten the sin offering today, would the LORD have approved?" (Leviticus 10:19). What happens here is that Aaron reminds Moses that it was unpleasing to God for a priest to do office while in sadness or mourning (Deuteronomy 26:14; 16:11), a theme even found later among Semitic kings (Nehemiah 2:1-2). So because he was uncontrollably saddened at the death of his two sons, Aaron felt he could not do proper justice to that part of the service which he then forewent. Moses was pleased with the explanation (Leviticus 10:20). What is to be noticed here is that this center verse of the Torah verse tells us to ‘search diligently’ for the goat of the sin offering which is an early representation of Yeshua’s atonement. Therefore the central goal of studying to Torah is the search for Messiah. The Talmud explains that the death of Aaron’s sons is not really justifiable, so that it can only be counted as the ‘death of the righteous which creates atonement for others’, a very prevalent theme in Biblical text. Whether we agree or not with the Talmud’s interpretation, since Yeshua is our High-Priest as well as our atonement (Hebrews 9:25), this is an idea that very much fits the theme of the priestly inauguration. May we also spend our lives seeking diligently to approach God through the atonement of Yeshua. |
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