The Kingdom of God is rarely discussed on Christian talk radio, yet it is an overwhelming theme throughout Yeshua’s teachings recorded in the New Testament. Consider the spiritual implications of the line “your time has come to shine all your dreams are on their way” in Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Perhaps it is the time for the Firstfruit saints to shine like the sun and have their dreams come true, as described by the prophet Daniel. Those times may be close at hand.
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).
It’s difficult to feel “blessed” when life is difficult, when bad and evil things of our existence seem to dominate. However, one of the promises God makes throughout the Bible is that He will bring “woe,” or judgment, to the evil of the world. “Blessed are,” or “happy are,” those who trust that God will make good on those promises.
Yeshua outlined duties for His 12 closest disciples, and these instructions help guide us today.
There are three main classes of interpretation: 1. Yeshua is heralding the “end of Torah” and the “beginning of Grace.” 2. Yeshua was simply correcting unwarranted additions to the Torah. 3. Yeshua is talking about a “higher standard” for the Torah.
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”?
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.