The Bible is a book of historical lessons. History repeats itself because human nature has never changed. From the Book of Judges, we can learn some important lessons pertaining to the end times. For example, the Western nations including America have lost their way morally and spiritually. They have lost their conscience and are past the ability to repent. This is because they don’t even know what repentance is or what to repent of! Only YHVH’s judgments unto repentance remain to awaken these so-called Christian nations spiritually as this video reveals.
Category Archives: Scripture
On Laban and His Modern-Day Babylon the Great Counterparts
Genesis 31:19, Household idols. Heb. teraphim, from rapha meaning “to heal, make healthful.” The ancient pagans viewed these idols superstitiously as good luck charm for good health and prosperity.
But there is more. In ancient Babylon, each family had a shrine where it worshipped its household gods, which were in the shape of clay figurines. These family gods served as guardian angels of the home, and would be left to the eldest son, who, acting as the family high priest, would perpetuate the family’s idol worship after the father’s death. The theft of these household idols left Laban in a very agitated state in that he was willing to pursue Jacob to retrieve them, by force, if necessary.
The reason is that these gods conferred the right of primogeniture (to the firstborn son), and acted as a title deed to the father’s inheritance. Thus, Rachel must have stolen her brother’s inheritance thereby making Jacob the legal heir of Laban’s estate (Manners and Customs of Bible Lands, pp. 119–120, by Fred H. Wight; TWOT, p. 980).
Genesis 31:43, These daughters are my daughters. Laban claims that Jacob’s wives and children belonged to him. Laban was also steeped in the idolatry of Babylon having in his possession idols or images called teraphim (Gen 31:19, 34–35). Is there a modern counterpart to this? Does modern Babylon want to control and possess the wives and children of redeemed Israel, indoctrinate them in its pagan religious system and then keep Jacob’s modern descendants from returning to their spiritual and physical homeland and birthright inheritance, and from returning to the Torah-faith of their fathers?
Are governmental systems (e.g., public education and Child Protective Services, social welfare programs, various government regulations that have greatly diminished or eliminated many of our personal freedoms), socio-political organizations (e.g. ACLU, UN) and greedy corporate systems (banking systems that enslave people through debt, corrupters of our food supplies that destroy people’s health, pharmaceutical companies and the mainstream medical establishment that enslaves people’s minds and bodies through drugs) modern-day Labans who want to kill, steal and destroy for the benefit of money and power?
Revelation 18:13 says that Babylon the Great traffics in the souls of men. This speaks at Continue reading
Trying to buy immortality when it’s a free gift??? How stupid!
Trying to buy immortality when it’s a free gift??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’re very smart! Instead of paying some doctor gobs of money to help you to attain immortality with no guarantees attached, why not get immortality the old fashion, biblical way? And free of charge no less!
Humans can be so defiantly arrogant, enormously obtuse and patently blind to the free gift of salvation through Yeshua that has always been there right in front of their faces! Those rich dudes don’t have anything on us little peons brain-wise. We get immortality for free and we’ve got this one figured out! —Natan
From the UK Standard at http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/survival-of-the-richest-how-londons-superrich-are-trying-to-buy-immortality-a3118071.html
Survival of the richest: how London’s super-rich are trying to buy immortality
![](http://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2015/11/18/22/RICHEST2.jpg)
Jacob: The Law of Reaping and Sowing
Genesis 28:22, I will surely give the tenth. To whom would Jacob ultimately tithe? We don’t know, but Jacob may have been making a prophecy about his descendants bringing their tithes and offerings to the house of El or the temple that would eventually be built on that exact spot.
Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28 was his first, life-changing personal encounter with the Elohim of his fathers (Gen 28:10ff). What is his response? It was to serve YHVH and to worship him by giving him one-tenth (a tithe) of his increase (verse 22). What prompted this response on Jacob’s part? Why was such a response appropriate? When did you have your first encounter with your Heavenly Father and Master? Have you faithfully used the first fruits of your increase to honor, worship and express gratitude to him ever since? If not, why not? Scripture calls not tithing “robbing Elohim” and that as a result a curse may be on your finances (see Mal 3:8–11). Proverbs 3:9 lays out a solid truth about how tithing is a form of worshipping the Creator. “Honour [glorify] YHVH with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase, so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”
The Scriptures reveal the importance of the spiritual law of reciprocity: You reap what you sow (Gen 8:22; Gal 6:7–9). If you don’t sow you will not reap. If you sow evil or good you will reap the same. Jacob had to learn this law the hard way. In Job 4:8 we read, “Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.” Jacob gained the birthright through posing as Esau (a deception) and Laban in turn deceives Jacob by putting Leah under the veil posing as Rachel in Jacob’s Continue reading
Some Thoughts on Yeshua’s Judgment of the Sheep and Goats
Matthew 25:31–46, The nations will be gathered.
The Goat and Sheep Nations Judgment
Matthew 25:31–46 describes Yeshua’s judgment of the sheep and goat nations. Some see this event as occurring at the beginning of the Millennium. Others see it as a process culminating at the end of the Millennium with the release of Satan from his bottomless pit prison after which he will tempt the nations to rebel against King Yeshua. The last scenario seems unlikely, since those who follow Satan’s rebellion will receive immediate judgment upon arriving at Jerusalem to confront Yeshua. They will be devoured by fire out of heaven (Rev 20:9). No mention is made in this passage of a judgment between the sheep and goat nations. There’s only swift judgment upon Gog and Magog.
It seems likely, therefore, that one of first orders of Yeshua’s official business upon his return to the earth will be to judge between the sheep and goats. Here he will separate the wicked from the righteous who have survived the wrath of Elohim at the end of the age just prior to Yeshua’s second coming. This is like a mop-up operation after a great war. Those who have shown kindness to the saints will be allowed into the kingdom of Elohim during the Millennium, while those who didn’t will be cast into the lake of fire. This appears to be an initial purging of the spiritual wheat from the chaff at the beginning of Yeshua’s millennial reign. Those who are left are presumably those who didn’t take the mark of the beast and hence won’t be destroyed with those who did (Rev 19:20). They showed their faith by their actions, and King Yeshua’s grace will be extended to them and he will give them an opportunity to receive eternal life. Perhaps these are those who are implied in Revelation 16:2 who refuse to take the mark of the beast and worship him during the wrath of Elohim period.
Some Bible teachers view the judgment of the nations not as a one-time event that occurs at the beginning of Yeshua’s millennial reign, but as an on-going process during his reign. This could be the case, since Yeshua may give the nations time to accept his rule and learn the truth of the gospel little-by-little.
Whether those of the goat nations will be cast immediately into the lake of fire isn’t clear. The lake of fire is mentioned in Revelation 20 at the end of the Millennium and in conjunction with the white throne judgment. Perhaps Yeshua will allow the goats to remain on the earth, and they will be those rebels he will be forced to rule over with his rod of iron, and who will refuse to come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem annually. Perhaps they’re the ones who will eventually be deceived into rebelling against Yeshua at the end of the Millennium when the devil is released from the pit (Rev 20:7–10).
Jacob’s Ladder Explained—YHVH’s Plan of Salvation from Genesis to Revelation
Introduction to the Study of Genesis 28:10–22
Jacob’s vision of a ladder to heaven is one of those enigmatic Scriptural passages which has befuddled the keen intellects of many Bible scholars down through the ages. Perhaps the deeper elucidations of Jacob’s vision has escaped the reader as well. If so, you are not alone, for well-known Christian commentators such as Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke have stabbed at its meaning realizing it has something to do with the Person of Yeshua the Messiah and his heaven-ordained ministry to reconcile earth’s inhabitants to their Heavenly Father and Creator. Keil and Delitzsch don’t even connect this dream to the Person of Yeshua. Other than vague explanations as to the dream’s interpretations, these esteemed scholars have nothing more to proffer the reader. Little if anything is said of the allegorical meaning of the ladder, the dust, the stones (plural) becoming a stone (singular) or of the significance of “the place.” Even the unusually insightful biblical scholar Arthur W. Pink in his book, Gleanings In Genesis, though he draws 101 parallels between Joseph and Yeshua the Messiah, can gives us no more insights into the spiritual and prophetic implications of Jacob’s ladder than do Henry and Clarke. This is some of the best that Christianity has to offer on this subject.
Now what does the best of rabbinic Judaism have to offer us by way of explanation of Jacob’s dream? It goes without saying that their interpretations will be devoid of any references to Yeshua, but can we learn anything else from them. After all, they have been studying this passage for more than 3800 years! Rashi, viewed by some as the greatest Torah expositor of the last 1000 years has little to add to our understanding as does Samson Raphael Hirsch, the great nineteenth-century Torah teacher. The Baal HaTurim in his Torah commentary adds some interesting insights relating to the subsurface or hidden meaning of some of the Hebrew words used in the text that not only confirm the simple or plain meaning of the text, but add depth to it as well on an allegorical or prophetic level. We will cite a number of other Jewish scholars who between them contribute greatly to our understanding of the text. But for all their collective wisdom, they, not surprisingly, fail to connect the meaning of the ladder to YHVH’s plan of redemption and salvation for mankind. They fail to see the big picture and master plan involving the Messiah, the Living Word of Elohim sent from heaven to redeem lost mankind.
Both the Christian scholars and the Jewish sages are blind in part since both have rejected half of the key to unlocking the full depth and panoramic understanding of this vision. The former has, to one degree or another, rejected its Jewish or Hebraic roots and the relevance of the written Torah to theological understanding and lifestyle, while the latter has rejected Yeshua, Living Word or Living Torah sent from Heaven to give us wisdom, understanding, redemption and salvation. Each side is spiritually blind in part to one-half of YHVH’s truth (Rom 11:25). Both have stumbled over the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence (Isa 8:14). The Christians have rejected much of the truth of the written Torah, while the Jews have rejected the spirit of prophecy as revealed through Yeshua, the Living Torah (Rev 19:20). To understand the heart of the Father as revealed in his written word, Yeshua said that it would take both spirit and truth (John 4:23–24). With these thoughts in mind, let us proceed to understand this vision of Jacob.
The Text
Let’s now read the text in Genesis 28:10–22 pertaining to Jacob and his dream of the Continue reading
Blog Scripture Readings for 11-15 Through 11-21-15
Aside
THIS WEEK’S SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION:
Parashat Vayetzei — Genesis 28:10 – 32:3 (2)*
Haftarah — Hosea 12:13 (12) – 14:10 (9)*
Prophets — Judges 18:1 – 21:25; I Samuel 1:1 – 3:21
Writings — Psalms 41:1 – 47:9
Testimony — Matthew 25:31 – 27:31
Most of this week’s blog discussion points will be on these passages. If you have general comments or questions on the weekly Scripture readings not addressed in a blog post, here’s a place for you to post those. Just use the “leave a reply” link below.
The full “Read Through The Scriptures In A Year” schedule, broken down by each day, can be found on the right sidebar under “Helpful Links.” There are 4 sections of scripture to read each day. One each from the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, and from the Testimony of Yeshua. Each week, the Torah and haftarah readings will follow the traditional one-year reading cycle.
* Verse numbers in parenthesis refer to the verse number in Christian Bibles when it differs from the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh.
Weekly Blog Scripture Readings for 11/15 through 11/21/15.