Daniel addresses a question raised during the last study of 2nd Samuel 15 about David’s going the Mount of Olives to pray with a covered head and bare feet in this excursus. In many places in the Bible, covering a man’s head is an act of shame or mourning. Why does God command His priests to wear head coverings? Why did Paul write in 1st Corinthians 11 that a man should pray or prophesy with his head “uncovered”?
Category: Apostolic Writings
These studies cover the writings by the closest shelakhim (apostles) of Yeshua haMashiakh (Jesus the Christ). Commonly called the “New Testament,” this standard canon includes the four Gospels, the letters and the Apocalypse (Revelation).
Yeshua had authority to heal paralytics, forgive sins and call tax collectors to His select 12 disciples. The punchline and the context of these stories and the parables Yeshua told are crucial clues to the meaning of Yeshua’s parables and miracles. A common interpretation of the parables of the cloths and wineskins is that Yeshua is teaching that one needs to unlearn the Torah to learn the gospel, but parables of the same time period employing the same symbols have a different point.
Part of Yeshua’s calling was to heal the sick and there was no disease that caused more Jews to tremble than the prospect of leprosy. Once a priest diagnosed a person with leprosy, that person was an outcast, shunned in the community and compelled to live a life of loneliness. Healthy people who came into contact with a leper were considered unclean, too. Yeshua’s healing of these lepers is very significant because he not only healed them with his words but with his touch. Some claim that Yeshua’s cleansing of lepers in this fashion was a rebuke and a refutation of the Levitical system but Yeshua’s healings actually uphold the Levitical system because he commands the lepers to go back to the priests to have their healing confirmed so they can rejoin the community of believers.
We know that Yeshua loves us and we love Yeshua. Sometimes God the Father is left out of the loop of affection. We forget the fact that everything Yeshua ever did was because of His Father. We don’t think about the fact that God loves us even more. Yeshua did nothing that was not approved by the Father. God has set aside this time as a time of protection and sanctification. He gives us His sincerity and His truth. We don’t become unleavened because of us but because of Him.
Richard also presents his views on the role of Yeshua in Creation and the identity of the Holy Spirit.
Many Christians think of Yeshua’s sacrifice as a personal sacrifice, a sacrifice by one Man Who died for us as individuals. His dying thoughts were about the people He was coming to die for. His dying thoughts were about what may happen to all the people at the Last Day and how many of them will not be prepared to face the wrath of God.
On the surface it appears that the apostles just jumped at Yeshua’s offer without thought or consideration, but there was far more consideration in their decision to follow Yeshua than we could ever imagine.
We are approaching a time when our minds should be centered on the words and deeds of the Messiah. We are called upon to examine our lives in preparation for the Passover. Are we living the way the Lord want us to live? In most Passover celebrations, we ignore or give brief mention to Yeshua’s betrayal at the hands of Judas Iscariot, one of His own Apostles. The bible tells us that Yeshua was glorified by this act, yet many in the Christian church heap lots of condemnation on Judas for what he did.