The Berean Voice

Hope of Israel Ministries (Church of YEHOVAH) Volume 2, Number 3 May-June 2001

Inside....Inside....
Page 2 From the Editor Page 3 Just Who or What Is the "Antichrist"? Page 23 Hope of Israel Mail Bag Page 28 The Nature of PreExistence in the New Testament Page 40 The Idol Shepherd of Zechariah Page 48 Telltale Signs of a Cult Page 49 The House of Israel Page 53 Rejoice in YEHOVAH's Sabbath Day! Page 65 Hidden "Codes" in the Biblical Text?

Just Who or What Is the "Antichrist"?

Page 71 12 Proofs That Yeshua DID NOT Pre-Exist! Page 90 Archaeology and the Bible Page 94 The New School Prayer Page 95 Back Issues of The Berean Voice Magazine

Beginning in the Flesh

Most people in the Churches of God (and other worldly churches) do not seem to understand the importance of believing exactly what YEHOVAH says about His son Yeshua's beginning. As incredible as it may sound, the doctrine of a pre-existent savior was being promulgated even before Yeshua the Messiah was born -- before the days of the apostles. But, in fact, this doctrine was CONDEMNED by the apostles who called those who taught it Antichrists! Hope of Israel Ministries (Church of YEHOVAH) The Berean Voice Magazine P.O. Box 6772 Thousand Oaks, CA 91359-6772, U.S.A. Website (West Coast): http://hope-of-israel.org Website (East Coast): http://hope-of-isreal.net E-mail: kiwihope@netscape.net Editor and Director: John D. Keyser Contributing Writers: Anthony Buzzard David Maas Technical Advisor: Sean Keyser It is VITAL for us to understand how important it is to believe in the Savior sent by YEHOVAH -- the Savior who was BEGOTTEN by YEHOVAH, who was conceived in his mother's womb -- who was NOT pre-existent. Those who preach the doctrine of a pre-existent Savior are proclaiming another savior -- NOT the one proclaimed through the Holy Scriptures! They are, according to the apostle John, Antichrists: "And every spirit that does not confess that Yeshua Messiah STARTED IN THE FLESH is NOT of YEHOVAH. So this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world" (I John 4:3). -- John D. Keyser Now everyone agrees that for any man to come into the world -- to be born -- that man has to begin in the flesh. He has to be conceived in his mother's womb and delivered 9 months later. This means that man has to be begotten, and then he has to be born. Our savior Yeshua was begotten by his Father, YEHOVAH, in the SAME way that every human being in this world is begotten by his father! He was conceived in his mother Mary's womb, and started life in the womb!

Hope of Israel Ministries -Preparing the Way for the Return of YEHOVAH God and His Messiah!

Just Who or What Is the "Antichrist"?

Some say the Bible plainly teaches that the Antichrist will not be revealed until after the rapture. Others say the Bible plainly teaches that the Antichrist will be revealed before the rapture takes place. Meanwhile, many spend their time speculating on whom the Antichrist will be! Is he Bill Clinton? England's Prince Charles? How about Juan Carlos of Spain? Saddam Hussein? Take your pick! With a careful study of the scriptures you can know the TRUTH about this important subject!

Ralph Woodrow John D. Keyser

Who hasn't heard of the term "Antichrist" these days -- it gets a lot of publicity on religious radio and TV programs, and in religious tracts and prophetic books. Some of these books are sensational and scary, as are numerous motion pictures dealing with this theme. The common conception is that the "Antichrist" will be an atheistic politician who will explode on to the world scene in the near future with vast control of air power -- including rockets, bombs, computers, spy satellites -- and cause all manner of hell to break out on this earth. As far back as World War I, many believed that the German Kaiser would be the dreaded man of sin -- the Antichrist. A few years later it was Joseph Stalin. When the New Deal was instituted in the Unites States, some thought that Franklin Roosevelt was at least the forerunner of Antichrist. Others believed Hitler or Mussolini were likely candidates. Herbert W. Armstrong, in his early writings, certainly believed that Mussolini was a more than likely the Antichrist. A book published in 1940 echoed Armstrong's theory by asking the question: "Is Mussolini the Antichrist?" and the author , John R. Rice, answered: "He may be. I know of no reason why he should not fit the description of this terrible man of sin...He is evidently an atheist" (World-wide War and the Bible, p. 212). Another writer even claimed that Mussolini had fulfilled forty-nine of the prophecies concerning the Antichrist! Others have thought the Antichrist will be Nimrod, Nero, or a Roman Emperor resurrected from the dead. Some believe it will be Judas Iscariot. After comparing John 17:12 with 2 Thessalonians 2:3, M.R. De Haan proclaimed: "Judas, then, will be the Antichrist" (Thirty-five Simple Studies on the Major Themes in Revelation, p. 184). Author Dan Gilbert put it this way: "Antichrist will be Judas come to earth again!" (Who Will be the Antichrist? p. 21).

Some believe the Antichrist will be assassinated and that Satan will raise him from the dead. Oral Roberts writes: "The Bible tells how, right in the middle of his rise to power, Antichrist will be assassinated. The devil will then make his big move. He will raise Antichrist from the dead in an attempt to reproduce the Holy Trinity" (How to be Personally Prepared for the Second Coming of Christ, p. 36). Though often differing on details, futurists all believe the Antichrist is someone yet to appear on the world scene and, with each passing year, promote this leader or that as the most likely candidate. Candidates range from Prince Charles to King Carlos of Spain to William Clinton and Saddam Hussein! Take your pick! In contrast to the futurist position taken by many modern preachers is what we will call the FULFILLED interpretation -- that the prophecies concerning the man of sin or Antichrist have found their fulfillment in the PAPACY -- the succession of popes that rose to power in Rome following the fall of the Roman Empire. To some this viewpoint will appear too ridiculous to even consider -- and it will be cast aside immediately. But before doing this, surely the evidence for this position should be carefully weighed and investigated. Right or wrong, many noted men through history all believed that the prophecies of the man of sin had found their fulfillment in the Roman Papacy. Men such as Wyclif, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, Tyndale, Foxe, Newton and Wesley -- to name a few. Should we not, as Bereans, at least inquire why these men believed this way? When all the evidence is in you will be surprised to find that the fulfilled interpretation will not seem as absurd as some have thought!

Held Up By the Roman Empire

When the Christians at Thessalonica supposed the day of Yeshua's coming was right at hand, Paul explained to them that certain events had to happen before that time. There would come "a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed." And before that man of sin could be revealed, something else would need to happen. There was something restraining -- holding back -his appearance -- something that would need to be taken out of the way. Notice: Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed...(2 Thessalonians 2:5-8). Though Paul does not identify this "restraining" by name, his words show it was not something unknown or obscure to the people of the time. He knew what it was. The Christians at Thessalonica also knew what it was. Solid evidence shows that the Christians of the early centuries believed it was the ROMAN EMPIRE that was in the way -- the fall of which would bring on the man of sin. When they were accused of holding this belief, they did not deny it. Their reply was that they did not wish the fall of the Empire, for its fall would bring on the Antichrist. As Lactantius put it: "Beseech the God of heaven that the Roman State might be preserved, lest, more speedily than we suppose, that hateful tyrant should come" (Baron Alfred Porcelli, The Antichrist -His Portrait and History, p. 49). Justin Martyr spoke of Christians praying for the continuance of the restraining Roman Empire, lest the dreaded times of Antichrist, expected to follow upon its fall, should overtake them in 4

their day (LeRoy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, p. 19). Hippolytus believed the breaking up of the fourth empire, Rome, would bring on the Antichrist who would persecute the saints (ibid., p. 271). Tertullian said: "What is the restraining power? What but the Roman State, the breaking up of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon [its own ruins]?" (ibid., p. 258). Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth century, speaking of this same prophecy said: "This, the predicted Antichrist, will come, when the times of the Roman Empire shall be fulfilled....Ten kings of the Romans shall arise together...among these the eleventh is Antichrist, who, by magical and wicked artifices, shall seize the Roman power" (Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies, p. 463). Jerome, noted bishop and translator of the early church, stated: "He [Paul] shows that that which restrains is the Roman Empire; for unless it shall have been destroyed, and taken out of the midst, according to the prophet Daniel, Antichrist will not come before that" (Jerome, Commentaria, Book 5, chapter 25). "Let us therefore say what ALL ecclesiastical writers have delivered to us, that when the Roman Empire is destroyed, ten kings will divide the Roman world among themselves, and then will be revealed the man of sin" (Porcelli, op. cit., p. 49). Ambrose said the Roman Empire was that which was holding back the appearance of Antichrist and that "after the falling or decay of the Roman Empire, Antichrist would appear" (Newton, op. cit., p. 463). Chrysostom stated: "One may naturally enquire, What is that which withholdeth?" He answered that it was the Roman Empire and that "when the Roman Empire is taken out of the way, then he [Antichrist] shall come. And naturally. For as long as the fear of this empire lasts, no one will willingly exalt himself, but when that is dissolved, he will attack the anarchy, and endeavor to seize upon the government both of man and of God" (Chrysostom, Homilies, pp. 388-389). "We have the consenting testimony of the early fathers," writes Edward B. Elliott, "from Irenaeus (130-200 A.D.), the disciple of the disciple of St. John, down to Chrysostom (347-404) and Jerome (331-420) to the effect that it was understood to be the Imperial power ruling and residing at Rome" (Horae Apocalyticae, Book 3 p. 92). The Expositor's Bible Commentary states: "There is no reason to doubt that those fathers of the church are right who identified it with the Empire of Rome and its sovereign head" (Denny, Commentary on Thessalonians, p. 325). Also, after many pages of carefully documented proof for his statement, researcher Froom says that the "restraining" power impeding the development of the "man of sin" was interpreted in the early church as the Roman Empire (op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 150). H. Grattan Guinness remarks: "The early writings of the fathers tell us with remarkable unanimity that this "restraint" or hindrance was the Roman Empire as governed by the Caesar; and that on the fall of the Caesar, he [the man of sin] would arise" (Romanism and the Reformation, p. 119). Clarke's Commentary adds that the UNITED testimony of the church leaders of those first few centuries was that the restraint which was to be removed was the Roman Empire (Adam Clarke, Vol. 6, p.569). The Encyclopedia Britannica clearly says this was universally believed by Christians everywhere (1961 edition, article: "Antichrist," Vol. 2, p. 60). 5

Now we can clearly understand why the apostle Paul was careful -- when writing about it -- not to mention the restraint by name. To teach that "eternal Rome" would fall and be broken up would have brought on unnecessary conflict with the leaders of the Empire within which they lived. And, especially when writing to the Christians at Thessalonica, would this caution be in order. It was at Thessalonica that the Christians had been accused of doing things "contrary to the decrees of Caesar" and believing in "another king, one Jesus" (Acts 17:7). Wisdom dictated that Paul should simply write: "Remember...when I was yet with you, I told you these things?" (2 Thessalonians 2:5). Jerome understood exactly why Paul was so careful in this matter: "If he had chosen to say this openly, he would have foolishly aroused a frenzy of persecution against the Christians" (op. cit., Book 5, chapter 25), and Chrysostom added: "Because he said this of the Roman Empire, he naturally glanced at it, and speaks covertly and darkly. For he did not wish to bring upon himself superfluous enmities, and useless dangers" (Homilies, p. 388-389). Now that we understand it was the Roman Empire that would fall -- the fall of which would bring on the man of sin -- we have a TIME FRAME for the prophecy! Since the fall of Rome is now long past, it is strongly inferred that we should look for the rise of the man of sin in a HISTORICAL context -- not the future! More of this in a moment. If we look again at Paul's prophecy (2 Thessalonians 2:6-7) we find that he mentions that something ("what") was restraining -- and also someone ("he). "What" is neuter in gender; "he" is masculine. Paul plainly referred to the Roman Empire as "what," and the Caesar as "he." Logically, then, if Caesar would have to be "taken out of the way" for the man of sin to come to power, we have a STRONG INDICATION of WHERE the man of sin would rule. As an illustration, let's suppose we would like to build a home on a certain piece of property -- but another building was in the way. Obviously it could not be said that the old building was in the way -- and needed to be taken out of the way -- unless it was occupying the exact spot where the new house was to be built! Understood in the context of the prophecy we are examining, the man of sin would rise to power in the exact same location that the Caesar ruled -- Rome! The man of sin would be a Roman power! Therefore, we now know WHERE the Antichrist would rise to power and we know WHEN! Looking into history, what power rose up in Rome following the fall of the Empire? All the evidence points to the PAPACY. The highly esteemed Biblical commentator, Albert Barnes, has well said: "To any acquainted with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, nothing can be more manifest than the correspondence of the facts in history respecting the rise of the Papacy, and the statement of the apostle Paul here" (Barnes' Commentary, p. 1115). The breaking up of the Roman Empire and the removal of the Caesar from power in Rome took place over a period of some time. Records the historian Alexander Flick: "The removal of the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople in 330, left the Western Church practically free from Imperial power, to develop its own form of organization. The Bishop of Rome, in the seat of the Caesars, was now the greatest man in the West and was soon forced to become political as well as spiritual head" (The Rise of the Medieval Church, p. 168). Cardinal Manning wrote: 6

"The possession of the pontiffs, commences with the abandonment of Rome by the emperors" (quoted by Clarence H. Hewitt in The Seer of Babylon, p. 113). Finally in 476, the last Western Caesar, Augustulus, was forced out of office by the Goths. With the fulfillment of this prophecy the mighty Roman Empire of the Caesars had passed from the scene of human history. The "restraint" was now fully ek mesou -- "out of the way." According to what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, the stage was now cleared for the next scene in this immense prophetic drama -- the rise to power of the man of sin. H. Grattan Guinness wrote -The mighty Caesars had fallen; Augustus, Domitian, Hadrian, Diocletian, were gone; even the Constantines and Julians had passed away. The seat of sovereignty had been removed from Rome to Constantinople. Goths and Vandals had overthrown the western empire; the once mighty political structure lay shivered into broken fragments. The imperial government was slain by the Gothic sword. The Caesars were no more, and Rome was an actual desolation. Then slowly on the ruins of old imperial Rome rose another power and another monarchy -- a monarchy of loftier aspirations and more resistless might, claiming dominion, not alone over the bodies, but over the consciences and souls of men; dominion, not only within the limits of the fallen empire, but throughout the entire world. Higher and higher rose the Papacy, till in the Dark Ages all Christendom was subjected to its sway (op. cit., p. 61). Once it is admitted that the Roman Empire under the rule of the Caesars was that which was holding back the appearance of the Antichrist, it is clearly evident that the Papacy -- rising to power at the time and place indicated -- met all the requirements of the prophecy. How, then, can preachers and evangelists of the futurist viewpoint project this prophecy into the future? Interestingly, these same people conveniently ignore all the evidence about the Roman Empire being the "restraint" and promulgate nonsense such as the following -"The hindering influence in this passage is, of course, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in and through the lives of Christians today" (William W. Orr, Antichrist, Armageddon, and the End of the World, p. 11). "This One who hinders the man of sin must be the Holy Spirit. At the rapture of the saints, we believe, the Holy Spirit will be taken out of the way of the man of sin so that he may be revealed" (John R. Rice, The Coming Kingdom of Christ, p. 125). These writers merely echo the theory spread by Scofield -- who was influenced by the propaganda of the Jesuits -- that the restrainer "can be no other than the Holy Spirit in the Church, to be 'taken out of the way'" (Scofield, Scofield Reference Bible, p. 1272). But as Oswald Smith has rightly pointed out in his book Tribulation or Rapture -- Which? regarding the verse under consideration: "There is no mention of the Holy Spirit at all. That is a Scofield Bible assumption. The Holy Spirit and the church remain to the end of the age" (page 8).

The Holy Spirit Is Not the "Restraint"

Most Christians recognize that Yehovah's holy spirit within the Church is a great force against evil -- but this was not the restraint of which the apostle Paul wrote. He clearly told the Thessalonians that the coming of Yeshua to gather the Church would NOT take place until after the man of sin would be revealed -- see 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3. To then turn right around and say the 7

Church would be taken out of the way BEFORE the man of sin would be revealed, would be a direct contradiction and totally unscriptural! We have seen, in the preceding pages, the reason WHY Paul was so careful not to mention the restraint by name when writing to the Thessalonians. But if the restraint had been the holy spirit or the Church, there would be absolutely no reason for this caution. As a matter of fact, Paul mentions the Church and the holy spirit several times in his epistles to the Thessalonians -- see 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 5, 6; 2:14; 4:8; 5:19; etc. It is also a fact that there is no record of anyone believing that the restraint mentioned by Paul was the holy spirit until the latter half of the fourth century -- and we only know of this belief because Chrysostom REJECTED IT! Notice: "Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit." But he goes on to point out that the restraint was the Roman Empire and could NOT be the spirit: "Wherefore? Because if he [Paul] meant to say the Spirit, he would not have spoken obscurely, but plainly." What Chrysostom rejected was a theory about the restraint being the grace of the spirit in connection with spiritual gifts. It had nothing to do with the dispensational idea of the spirit being taken out of the world in a secret rapture of the church. Comments Hogg and Vine, the teaching that the holy spirit will be taken out "seems to be of quite modern origin; there is, apparently, no trace of it in early writings on the subject" (The Epistle to the Thessalonians).

The Proof of Daniel

Those who adhere to this viewpoint face serious problems of interpretation. They teach that after the Church is gone, Yehovah will turn to the Jews -- a believing remnant of which will preach the gospel of the kingdom into all the world. They will be so empowered, some ask us to swallow, that they "will become the mightiest evangelists this world has ever seen" (Hyman Appleman, Antichrist and the Jews, p. 12). According to Hal Lindsey in his popular book on prophecy, "They are going to be 144,000 Jewish Billy Grahams turned loose on this earth -- the earth will never know a period of evangelism like this period....They are going to have the greatest number of converts in all history"! (The Late Great Planet Earth, p. 111). As much as Billy Graham might be gratified by this, the fact is that this idea is total nonsense! Those of a discerning nature might ask HOW these Jews will be so empowered if the holy spirit, which convicts and converts, is taken from this earth? If you look into the arguments given to explain away this glaring discrepancy, you will find them to be totally weak and unconvincing. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the restraint of which Paul wrote was the holy spirit or even the Church. We have solid, incontestable evidence that the early Christians believed it was the Roman Empire that would be taken out of the way -- and then the man of sin would be revealed. We also know it was Paul's practice to PROVE what he taught from the scriptures. In this case, his teaching about the fall of the Roman Empire was based on Daniel 7, to which we will now turn 8

The Little Horn

In vision, the prophet Daniel saw four great beasts which symbolized four kingdoms that were to rule the earth (Daniel 7). 1/. The first beast was like a lion with eagle's wings, but the wings were to be plucked off (Daniel 7:4). Even as the lion is king among the animals of the forest, so the empire which held first position in the vision was Babylon. In due time its "wings" were plucked off and mighty Babylon fell from its exalted position. 2/. The second beast was like a bear and it had three ribs in its mouth (Daniel 7:5). Even as a bear is less courageous (as well as less noble) than the lion, the second kingdom, MedoPersia, was less in glory. It fell short of Babylon in wealth, magnificence, and brilliance. the mention of "three ribs" in the mouth -- between the teeth where a bear crushes its prey -- is a reference to the fact that Medo-Persia crushed the three provinces that made up the Babylonian kingdom -Babylon, Lydia and Egypt. 3/. The third beast was like a leopard with four wings and four heads (Daniel 7:6). The third kingdom, the Grecian Empire of Alexander the Great, was symbolized by the leopard which is noted for its quick movements and remarkable swiftness by which it springs upon its prey. In a similar fashion, the conquests of Alexander were amazingly rapid. At the age of 32, it is recorded, he had conquered the world and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. The four heads on this leopard beast symbolized the four kings who ruled after the death of Alexander: (1) Cassander ruled over Greece and the surrounding country, (2) Lysimachus ruled over Asia Minor, (3) Selecus ruled over Syria and Babylon, and (4) Ptolemy ruled over Egypt. 4/. The fourth beast that Daniel saw was "dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it, and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns" (Daniel 7:7). The fourth world kingdom was the Roman Empire. As the prophecy said, it was dreadful, terrible, and strong; it did indeed tear down the whole earth; and it stands out as quite diverse from the other empires of history. The meaning of the ten horns on this beast is explained in verse 24: "These ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings [or kingdoms] that shall arise." It should be noted that in Daniel 7 the words "kings" and "kingdoms" are used interchangeably. The prophecy speaks of four kings (verse 17) and goes on to speak of these as four kingdoms (verse 23). There is no contradiction here -- if there is a king, there is of necessity a kingdom. Macchiavelli, the Roman historian, described the Empire as being divided among the various Gothic tribes -- their number being TEN: Heruli, Suevi, Burgundians, Huns, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons. These have ever since been spoken of as the ten kingdoms that rose out of the Roman Empire. "I considered the horns," continues Daniel, "and, behold, there came up among them another LITTLE HORN, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things" 9

(verse 8). This "little horn" would make war against the saints (verse 21) and would think to change times and laws (verse 25). Altogether there are EIGHT things that we should notice concerning the little horn: 1/. The little horn was to be A ROMAN POWER. A horn on a beast is that which grows out of a beast. Since we already know that the fourth beast was Roman, so also must the horn be Roman! Does the Papacy fit this description? Without a doubt! The Papacy rose to power at the time and place indicated by Bible prophecy. No one in their right mind can question the fact that the Papacy is Roman. Its very seat is in Rome. Its very name is Roman Catholic -- an amazing point of identification even in our time! 2/. The little horn was to be revealed in power among the TEN KINGDOMS into which the Roman Empire was divided. We have seen that Rome was indeed divided into ten kingdoms. The Papacy did indeed rise to power among these ten kingdoms -- following the fall of Rome. 3/. The little horn was to pluck up three of the other horns, the interpretation being that "he shall subdue three kings [kingdoms]" (Daniel 7:24). Did the Papacy subdue three of these ten kingdoms? Notice what Eliott says: "I might cite three that were eradicated from before the Pope out of the list first given, viz., the Heruli under Odacer, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths" (op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 139). History records that the Heruli were overthrown in 493, the Vandals in 534, and the Ostrogoths in 553. 4/. The little horn would rise up among the ten horns (kingdoms), but would be "diverse" or "different." Has the Papacy been a kingdom that has been different from other kingdoms that rose up out of the fourth beast? Yes -- without a doubt. Other kingdoms have claimed temporal power, but the Papacy claimed spiritual power as well. THE PAPACY IS THE ONLY GOVERNMENT RISING FROM THE RUINS OF ROME THAT MADE SUCH CLAIMS. It has claimed its diversity is as the sun compared to the moon. H. Grattan Guinness said it well: Is not the Papacy sufficiently diverse from all the rest of the kingdoms of western Europe to identify it as the little horn? What other ruling monarch of Christendom ever pretended to apostolic authority, or ruled men in the name of God? Does the Pope dress in royal robes? Nay, but in priestly garments. Does he wear a crown? Nay, but a triple tiara, to show that he reigns in heaven, earth, and hell! Does he wield a scepter? Nay, but a crosier or crook, to show that he is the good shepherd of the Church. Do his subjects kiss his hand? Nay, but his toe! Verily this power is 'diverse' from the rest, both in great things and little. It is small in size, gigantic in its pretensions (op. cit., p. 28). 5/. The little horn was pictured with a MOUTH -- "a mouth that spoke very great things" and "great words against the most High" (Daniel 7:20, 25). This suggests PRIDE AND ARROGANCE. By teaching corrupt doctrines, the Catholic Church has spoken AGAINST Yehovah. It should be carefully noted that the prophecy tells what this little horn would do, not what he would profess to do. He professes to speak the words of Yehovah, to define the doctrines of Yehovah; but in reality he speaks things that are totally unscriptural and -- in some cases -- even totally opposite to scripture.

10

Among the many claims made by the popes over the centuries, especially arrogant is the Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII: "All the faithful of Christ by necessity of salvation are subject to the Roman pontiff, who judges all men....Therefore we declare, assert, define, and pronounce, that to be subject to the Roman pontiff is to every human creature altogether necessary for salvation"! The Papacy has had a mouth claiming things that no other bishop had claimed before. The edicts of the Pope are considered final; his utterances infallible; his decrees irreformable. 6/. The little horn of Daniel's vision "had eyes" and his "look was more stout than his fellows" (Daniel 7:20). Because a horn on a beast does not normally possess eyes, such symbolism stands out vividly. This horn, therefore, is a power with foresight, intelligence. With such eyes it would be a seer. Does the Papacy fit this image? The Pope claims to be the overseer of the whole world-wide church! He claims to watch over, to shepherd or pastor, more people than any other leader -- secular or religious! His look is more stout than others and is greatly feared, for he claims to be the possessor of the keys to the kingdom of heaven. 7/. The little horn was to "make war with" and "wear out the saints of the most High" (Daniel 7:21, 25). The early Christians were persecuted by the Jews, with later persecutions thrust upon them by the pagan Roman Empire. These were minimal and amounted to almost nothing compared to the massive persecutions inflicted upon Christians by the Roman Catholic Church. The war against the saints here described was to be carried out by a power that would rise out of Rome following the breaking up of the Empire. Looking into history, we find that century after century of persecution fell upon the saints by a power that rose out of Rome. That power was the PAPACY -- and none other. Christians who would not bow to Papal claims were horribly tortured, tested, and tried during those terrible centuries. Pope Innocent IV issued an official document which clearly stated that these "heretics" were to be crushed like venomous snakes. His soldiers were promised property and remission of all their sins if they killed a "heretic"! Unfortunate victims of the Inquisition were stretched and torn apart on the "rack." Some were crushed and stabbed to death in "iron virgins." Other devices used included the thumb-screw, an instrument made for disarticulating the fingers and "Spanish boots" which were used to crush the legs and feet. Pinchers were used to tear out fingernails or were applied red-hot to the sensitive parts of the body. Every imaginable method of torture was used by these fiendish men representing the Pope. Those who wouldn't bow to the Pope's system were shut up in caves and dungeons, were nailed to trees, tormented with fires, scalded with oil or burning pitch; melted lead was poured into their eyes, ears, and mouths; they were scalped, skinned, flayed alive; heads were twisted off and eyes gouged out; women were defiled, their breasts cut off; babies were brutally beaten, whipped, stabbed, dashed against trees -- in front of their own parents -- and then thrown to hungry dogs and pigs. It has been estimated -- conservatively I believe -- that fifty million Christians were killed during those Satanic centuries of Papal persecution. This makes Adolf Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein seem like rank amateurs. Let me ask you this -- if such treatment as this, inflicted on generation after generation, is not the "wearing out of the saints of the most High," then what is? All other persecutions against Yehovah's people were brief and mild in comparison. 11

Those who hold to the futurist interpretation, however, commonly think of the Antichrist as a super-politician who will drop highly destructive bombs from jet planes. As one such author says, Antichrist will "plunge the nations into the last great atomic war" (M. R. De Haan, Will the Church Go Through the Tribulation?, p.25). But this is not what the Bible is talking about here. The dropping of bombs upon cities would not distinguish between saints or sinners. In fact, this kind of war would kill more sinners than saints -- for obvious reasons! But the war of Daniel 7 was clearly NOT to be mass destruction of the people as a whole -- it was specifically described as war against the saints! 8/. Finally the little horn would "think to change times and laws" (Daniel 7:25). Daniel said that Yehovah is the One that "changeth the times and the seasons" (Daniel 2:21), but this "little horn" in his arrogance dares to even meddle with Divine things! If he were to merely change civil laws, this would not be too significant -- politicians commonly do this. But for him to tamper with Divine laws demonstrates his blasphemous character. In the arena of human affairs, the Papacy has annulled the decrees of kings and emperors; it has thrust its long arm into the affairs of this world's nations; it has brought rulers to its feet in abject humility. In religious affairs, the Pope claims infallibility in pronouncing doctrine. By exalting himself to such forbidden heights -- and millions have fallen for this dogma -- it is evident that he has thought to change Divine things. He has done away with days and observances originated by Yehovah, and has instituted the observance of days for which there is NO scriptural basis whatsoever. He has instituted rituals and rites that were borrowed directly from paganism, and has set himself up as the final authority on matters of doctrine. We see, then, that the little horn would be a Roman power, would rise among the ten kingdoms into which the empire was divided, would pluck up three of the other kingdoms, would be diverse, would make great claims, would be a seer, would wear out the saints, and would seek to change times and laws. Understanding this prophecy, the early Christians knew that the Roman Empire -- the fourth beast -- would be broken up and its demise would bring on the man of sin. Now since the man of sin -- the little horn of Daniel 7 -- would make war against the saints, Paul correctly concluded that the man of sin would have to come to power BEFORE the saints would be gathered at the second coming of Yeshua! (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). It all fits neatly together.

The Man of Sin

Continuing now in Paul's prophecy, we see that he links the man of sin with a falling away. "That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed..." (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). The Greek word that is here translated "falling away" is apostasia, defined by Strong's Concordance as "defection from the truth." It is from this word we get our English word "apostasy." This was not to be a falling away from religion into atheism, but rather a falling away that would develop within the confines of Yehovah's Church. As R.C.H. Lenski wrote: "This is apostasy. It is, therefore, to be sought in the church visible and not outside the church, not in the pagan world, in the general moral decline, in Mohammedanism, in the French 12

Revolution, in the rise and spread of Masonry, in Soviet Russia, or in lesser phenomena" (The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistles, p. 433). Has this "falling away" already happened -- or is it still in the future? Those who have studied church history know the answer. The original New Testament Church of Yehovah was filled with truth and spiritual power. But as time passed by, even as the inspired apostles had warned (Acts 20:29-30; 1 Timothy 4:1-3; 2 Peter 2:2-3), there began to be subtle departures from the true faith. The mystery of iniquity was at work. Compromises were made with paganism. Finally, what the world recognized as the "Church" in the fourth and fifth centuries had actually become the FALLEN church. Only if Christianity had remained doctrinally pure through all the centuries until now, could the apostasy be yet future. This has obviously not been the case. As the falling away gathered steam, the bishop of Rome rose to power claiming to be "Bishop of bishops" and insisted that the whole Christian world should look to him as head -- and to ROME as the headquarters for the church. Through the ensuing centuries this apostasy has continued with a "man," at Rome, exalting himself above all others, claiming Divine honors and worship -- a continual reminder for those with the eyes to see that this falling away took place centuries ago. Thomas Newton wrote: "If the apostasy be rightly charged upon the church of Rome, it follows that the man of sin is the pope, not meaning this or that pope in particular, but the pope in general, as the chief head and supporter of this apostasy. The apostasy produces him and he promotes the apostasy" (op. cit.). Albert Barnes expressed it this way: "That his [the pope's] rise was preceded by a great apostasy, or departure from the purity of the simple gospel, as revealed in the New Testament, cannot reasonably be doubted by anyone acquainted with the history of the church. That he is the creation or result of that apostasy, is equally clear" (op. cit., p. 1112)

The Temple of Yehovah

As noted in Paul's prophecy, the man of sin was to "exalt himself above all...in the temple of God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Futurists suppose that Paul was speaking of a future Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; but, unless this verse is the exception, Paul NEVER applied this term to the physical Jewish Temple! Repeatedly he used this expression in reference to Yehovah's chosen people, to the Church -- never to a literal building. Notice -"Don't you know that you people are God's temple and that God's spirit lives in you? So if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you yourselves are that temple" (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). "Or don't you know that your body is a temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from God?" (1 Corinthians 6:19). "You yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house [temple] to be cohanim [priests] set apart for God to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to him through Yeshua the Messiah" (1 Peter 2:5). 13

"What agreement can there be between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God -- as God said, 'I will house myself in them,...and I will walk among you. I will be their God, and they will be my people" (2 Corinthians 6:16). "You have built on the foundation of the emissaries and the prophets, with the cornerstone being Yeshua the Messiah himself. In union with him the whole building is held together, and it is growing into a holy temple in union with the Lord. Yes, in union with him, you yourselves are being built together into a spiritual dwelling-place for God!" Ephesians 2:20-22). The location, then, in which this man of sin would seek to position himself would be, as Barnes notes, "the Christian church" -- NOT the Temple in Jerusalem! To this he adds: "It is by no means necessary to understand this of the temple at Jerusalem....The idea is that the Antichrist would present himself in the midst of the CHURCH as claiming the honors due to God alone....The authority claimed by the Pope of Rome, meets the full force of the language used here by the apostle" (ibid., p. 1114). The man of sin would "sit" in the temple of Yehovah "as God," -- implying he would claim a place of rulership within the church. "Sit" (kathizo) implies a "seat" (kathedra), from which we derive the word "Cathedral" -- the bishop's seat. When the Pope speaks "ex cathedra," he is speaking from his seat officially, such pronouncements being considered infallible. Guinness says: "There, in that exalted cathedral position, and claiming to represent God, the man of sin was to act and abide as the pretended vicar, but the real antagonist, of Christ, undermining His authority, abolishing His laws, and oppressing His people" (op. cit., p. 57). The man of sin is further described as he that "will oppose himself to everything that people call a god or make an object of worship; he will put himself above them all, so that he will sit in the Temple of God and proclaim that he himself is God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4). We understand from this description that the man of sin would exalt himself in great pride, would make great claims, would magnify himself above all others. Similar expressions are found throughout the Bible. The prince of Tyrus was represented as saying: "I am a God, I sit in the seat of God" (Ezekiel 28:2). The king of Babylon, being lifted up with pride, was represented as saying: "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God...I will be like the most High" (Isaiah 14:4-15). Daniel spoke of one who "shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god...for he shall magnify himself above all" (Daniel 11:36-37). Expressions about leaders exalting themselves unto heaven, exalting themselves above every god, sitting in the seat of Yehovah, being like the most High, etc., figuratively describe their pride and arrogance. In the case of the man of sin, he would exalt himself above all others -- above all others IN THE CHURCH! That is, he would not only claim to be "a" leader in the church -- he would actually claim to be "THE" leader in the church. The man of sin would claim to be "as God," exalting himself as head of the church -- a position that belongs only to the Lord himself -"showing that he is God." There is no article before "God" here in the original Greek; the meaning clearly is that the man of sin would claim Divine attributes. "This expression would not imply that he actually claimed to be the true God," writes Barnes, "but only that he sits in the temple, and 14

manifests himself as if he were God. He claims such honors and such reverence as the true God would if he should appear in human form" (Barnes, op. cit., p.1114). Let me ask you this: Have the popes claimed to be above all that is called god, have they claimed to be as Yehovah in the temple of Yehovah, and have they attempted to show that they are Divine? You bet they have! They have claimed to be above all kings and emperors. They have claimed not only the rule of earth, but heaven and hell, also! They have claimed attributes and titles which can rightly pertain to Yehovah only. At the coronation of Pope Innocent X, the following words were addressed to him by a cardinal who knelt before him: "Most holy and blessed father! head of the Church, ruler of the world, to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed, whom the angels in heaven revere, and the gates of hell fear, and all the world adores, we specially venerate, worship, and adore thee!" Moreri, a noted Catholic historian, wrote: "To make war against the Pope is to make war against God, seeing the Pope is God and God is the Pope." Decius said: "The Pope can do all things God can do." Pope Leo XIII said of himself in 1890: "The supreme teacher in the Church is the Roman Pontiff. Union of minds, therefore, requires, together with a perfect accord in the one faith, complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and to the Roman Pontiff, as to God himself." In 1894, he said: "We hold the place of Almighty God on earth." What blasphemous arrogance! On April 30, 1922, in the Vatican throne room before a gathering of cardinals, bishops, priests, and nuns, who fell on their knees before him, Pope Pius XI in haughty tones said: "You know that I am the Holy Father, the representative of God on earth, the vicar of Christ, which means that I am God on the earth." Incredible! The pagan Roman Caesar was called "our Lord and God." For centuries the popes accepted the same title. On the arch raised in honor of Pope Borgia were the words: "Rome was great under Caesar; now she is greater: Alexander VI reigns. The former was a man: this is a god"! Pope Pius X, when Archbishop of Venice, said: "The Pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, he is Jesus Christ himself, hidden under the veil of the flesh. Does the Pope speak? It is Jesus Christ who speaks."

A False Apostle
The man of sin is referred to in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 as "the son of perdition." This same title was applied to Judas Iscariot in John 17:12. By this repetition of the term, the Bible is showing that the man of sin would resemble Judas. To all outward appearances, Judas was a bishop and apostle -- see Acts 1:20, 25). Nevertheless, he "was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein" (John 12:6). Such graphic words could well describe papal practices -- especially during the Dark Ages. Though Judas had received thirty pieces of silver to betray Yeshua, he approached him in the garden with a kiss and the words, "Hail Master"! So also has the Papacy claimed to be Yeshua's apostle and friend, but has betrayed him by promoting doctrines and practices that are contrary to what he taught -- indulgence selling, prayers for the dead in purgatory, payment for masses, relic sales, offerings before idols, etc., etc., etc.

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The man of sin's rise to power was to be accompanied by claims of supernatural signs and wonders. Writes Paul: "Whose coming is after [according to] the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders" (2 Thessalonians 2:9). A full account of all the miracles that have supposedly occurred within this system would literally fill volumes: crucifixes have spoken; images have come down and lit their own candles; idols have sweat, moved their eyes, moved their hands, opened their mouths, healed sicknesses, raised the dead, mended broken bones; souls from purgatory have appeared on lonely roads and begged that masses be said in their behalf; many have claimed that the virgin Mary visited them, etc. All of these "miracles" -- whether supposed, real, or faked -- greatly increased the fallen church of Rome. We see, then, that the man of sin would appear in connection with the falling away or apostasy; he would rise to power within the very framework of Christianity, claiming to be above all others, as Yehovah; his rise to power would be accompanied with lying signs and wonders. We have seen evidence -- point by point -- that these things did indeed find fulfillment in the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church. Some might object to this interpretation on the basis that Paul spoke of "THE man of sin" -meaning an individual man, not a succession of men. But this is not necessarily true. "The" is used in the expression "the man of God" (2 Timothy 3:16) -- a reference to a class of men of certain character, a succession of similar individuals. Also, we read about "the high priest" (Hebrews 9:7) -- meaning a succession of high priests. The church -- the long line or succession of believers through the centuries -- is spoken of as "one new man" (Ephesians 2:15). A single beast in prophecy often represents a whole empire or kingdom in all its changes and revolutions from beginning to end. The four beasts of Daniel 7 are mentioned as four kings, yet the meaning is not limited to individual kings, for each of these kingdoms included a succession of rulers. Grammatically, the expression "the man of sin" could mean either an individual or a succession of similar individuals. There is a strong indication, however, that a succession of men is meant. "He that letteth [or restrains]" was a line or succession of Caesars, so it would not be inconsistent to believe "he that sitteth" would also be a succession of men. Even so, the idea of one man is not eliminated by this interpretation, for there is only one man at a time who occupies the papal office. There is something else we should point out here -- the statement that the little horn would "wear out the saints of the most High" for "a time and times and the dividing of time" (Daniel 7:25). The early Christians, not knowing the times and seasons (Acts 1:7), had no way of knowing that time would continue on for at least another 2,000 years. Consequently, from their prospective, they may have believed the fall of the Roman Empire would be sudden -- in their lifetime -- and that the Antichrist would be an individual who would rise to power and wear out the saints for a literal three and a half years. Centuries later, when the Bible became an open book again during the Reformation, many Christians and students of the Bible came to see that these prophecies had indeed been fulfilled -- though on a somewhat longer scale than might have been originally understood. Rome had indeed fallen, but it was a decline and fall -- taking place over a period of many years. The rise of the Papacy was also gradual -- many years passing before it met all the 16

requirements of the prophecy. The time, times, and dividing of time -- three and a half years or 1260 days -- during which the little horn would "wear out the saints," was understood by many expositors on the year-for-a-day principle; that is, 1260 years. In actual fact, the Papacy did wear out the saints century after century during the period of history known as the Dark Ages -- during which over 50 million people were tortured and killed.

The Antichrist in John's Prophecy

Let's turn now to the books of the apostle John, the only Biblical writer who actually uses the term "Antichrist." Writing at a time when many new doctrines were appearing and the "truth once delivered to the saints" was rapidly being watered down and corrupted, the burden of John's message was for Christians to hold fast to the original faith as taught in the beginning -"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard [from Christ]...declare we unto you....This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you" (1 John 1:1-5). John speaks of the instruction they "had from the beginning" and the word which they had "heard from the beginning" (2:7). "Let that therefore abide in you which you have heard from the beginning. If that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, you also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father" (2:24); "the message that you heard from the beginning" (3:11). He mentions "that which we had from the beginning" (2 John 5) and "as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it" (verse 6). The reason that John placed such strong emphasis on that which was taught "at the beginning," was because many had departed from the original faith into false doctrines. These who had departed he termed "antichrists." "Little children...you have heard that ANTICHRIST shall come, even now are there many antichrists....They went out from us..." (1 John 2:18-19). These "antichrists" -- a type of the Antichrist that was to come -- were not atheists! They were people who professed to be Christians. Scofield was correct when he said: "'Went out from us,' that is, doctrinally. Doubtless then, as now, the deniers of the Son still called themselves Christians" (Scofield, op. cit., p. 1322). Logically, then, if the ones that John used as a type of the Antichrist to come were professing Christians -- ones who had departed into erroneous doctrines -- WHY should we look for the Antichrist somewhere outside the realm of professing Christianity? Even Scofield, in at lest one note, said: "The 'little horn' is an apostate...from Christianity, not Judaism" (ibid., p. 918). The next "Antichrist" passage is 1 John 2:22-26 -Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is ANTICHRIST, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father....Let that therefore abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning. If that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, you also shall continue in the Son and in the Father....These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you" (1 John 2:22-26). 17

Again, those who taught things contrary to that which was from the beginning were termed "antichrist." By teaching such doctrines they denied the Father and the Son. But it was not a barefaced, blatant denial -- for John mentions the seductive nature of these teachings. Some, upon reading the word "denied," assume the Antichrist will be an atheist -- one who denies the very existence of Yehovah -- or at least an infidel! We hear talk about the Antichrist being "the World's number one ATHEIST" (Howard C. Estep, Antichrist's Kingdom, p. 24), or that "the blasphemy of the little horn seems...to be downright, barefaced INFIDELITY" (V.K. Van De Venter, Some Errors of Futurism, p. 8). However, the early Christians had never heard of an infidel Antichrist. Apparently this idea was first taught in a ninth century commentary by Berengaud (Guinness, op. cit., p. 125). Fred Peters, in his article The Mystery of Antichrist, wrote: "When we teach that the Papacy (the dynasty of popes) is the Antichrist, in common with all the great Reformers and Protestants for 1000 years past, we are often told...that the Antichrist has to be an unbeliever, an atheist, an infidel, which the Pope is not Thus with a wave of the hand is the mighty prophetic teaching, that shook the Papacy to its foundation, dismissed....Often an earnest seeker asks of some futurist preacher if the Pope is the Antichrist of the Bible, and the matter is settled in a minute, in the most superficial way, by saying, 'No, for he does not deny the Father and the Son'...and that ends the subject, for the seeker does not seek further along that line, unless he has a firm resolve to know all the truth, and why the old Reformers and Protestants thus taught" (Old Fashioned Prophecy Magazine, reprint of 1942 edition, p. 29). Those "antichrists" that the apostle John mentioned were not atheists, but professing Christians. Their teachings were "seducing" Christians into counterfeit doctrines. Teaching atheism would not have this seductive effect, for it does not even pretend to be a Christian doctrine. What, then, is meant by the statement that they denied the Father and the Son? It was not that they denied the existence of Yehovah -- they denied Him in other ways. They denied Him by claiming to be Christians, yet adhering to false doctrines which were not the original teachings of the church founded by Yeshua. This point becomes clear when we see how this word "deny" was used in the scriptures. 1/. Jude, like John, wrote of the apostasy that was creeping into the Church: "It was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints." Why? "For there are certain men crept in unawares...turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and DENYING the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 3, 4). Notice that these false teachers were so deceptive with their novel doctrines that they "crept in unawares." By their erroneous and counterfeit doctrines, they denied the Lord! Nothing is said that would indicate these apostates denied the existence of Yehovah. If they had come in among the Christians denying the existence of Yehovah, in NO WAY could they have come in unawares. 2/. Peter likewise wrote of apostasy that would develop within the Church. "There shall be false teachers among you, who privily [secretly, in a hidden way] shall bring in damnable heresies, even DENYING the Lord that bought them...and many shall follow their pernicious ways" (2 Peter 2:1-2). Clearly these false teachers were not denying the existence of Yehovah, for that would not deceive those Christians to whom Peter wrote. The way they denied Him was by 18

teaching erroneous and deceptive doctrines. On an earlier occasion, Peter said that the Jews delivered up Yeshua "and DENIED him in the presence of Pilate...they DENIED the Holy One and the Just...and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead" (Acts 3:13-15). The ones who denied Yeshua did not deny his existence. They denied him by rejecting his claims and having him crucified. 3/. Paul used the word "deny" in connection with those who taught false doctrines among the Christians. They are mentioned as "deceivers...who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not." Such were not "sound in the faith"; but gave heed to doctrines that cause men to "turn from the truth....They profess that they know God; but in works they DENY him, being abominable, and disobedient" (Titus 1:10-16). Now that we have considered the word "denied" as used by Jude, Peter, Paul and John, it is clear that atheism is NOT meant. Those who denied the Lord did so by not fully following the original Christian in word and deed. These were called "antichrists." The next passage that mentions "antichrist" is 1 John 4:1-6: Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world...every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of ANTICHRIST, whereof you have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world....They are of the world....We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us [the apostles]; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. Since John and the other apostles had received their instruction directly from Yeshua himself, he could say that those who believed their message were of Yehovah. Those who did not stand for the apostolic faith were "false prophets," their inspiration not coming from the spirit of Yehovah, but the antichrist spirit. John was not dealing here with such things as political corruption, alcoholism, prostitution, brutality, or crime in the streets. True Christians could easily recognize these for what they were. What John dealt with here was the deception of counterfeit doctrines. John warned the people to continue in the truth "as you have heard from the beginning" -the apostolic doctrine -- "for many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an ANTICHRIST...whosoever abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son" (2 John 7-9). In this particular case John was pointing out that deceivers were saying that Yeshua preexisted and did not "begin (come) in the flesh," but this was not a denial of the existence of Yeshua -- this certainly would not have deceived the Christians of the time. Instead, it was an erroneous and counterfeit view regarding the very nature of Yeshua.

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The fact that John especially mentioned a prominent false doctrine of that time -- the teaching that Yeshua had pre-existed before his birth -- does not infer that Antichrist would be limited in his denial to the same doctrines that those apostates held. Neither those who hold the futurist view or those who hold the fulfilled view, limit the errors of Antichrist to this one point of doctrine.

The Meaning of "Antichrist"

Some suppose John's use of the word "antichrist" simply means a person against Christ. But millions of people have been against Christ. Paul, before his conversion, was against Christ or Yeshua. Jews, pagans, and members of non-Christian religions in varying degrees have all been against Yeshua. However, if John used the word "antichrists" concerning people who professed to be Christians -- but who were against Yeshua because of their false doctrines -- we have a very specific point of identification! Since these "antichrists" were a type of the Antichrist to come, there is a very strong inference indeed that Antichrist would profess to be a Christian, supposedly for Yeshua, yet actually against him because of false doctrine. It is a well-established fact that the word "antichrist" can mean one of the following: (1) Against (in opposition) to Christ, (2) instead of (in the place of) Christ, or (3) both meanings. States Edward Elliot in Horae Apocalyticae: "When anti is compounded with the noun signifying an agent of any kind, or functionary, the compound word either signifies a vice-functionary, or a functionary of the same kind opposing, or sometimes both" (Vol. 1, pps. 67, 68). A good example of the word having both meanings can be found within the terminology of the Roman Catholic Church itself. At times in Catholic history two men at one time have claimed to be pope. The one who was considered to be a hostile, self-substituted, usurping pope, was called an "antipope." Such a "pope" positioned himself in place of the Pope, as the pope, but was, as such, against the Pope -- thus an "antipope." For a man, then, to claim to be the head of the Church, in place of Christ, what is this but to be, in reality, against Christ -- or ANTICHRIST? The very reason for this is quite simple: In Ephesians 1:22; 4:15; 5:23; and Colossians 1:18 CHRIST (Yeshua) alone is the head of the Church! In an interesting aside to this, the very title which the Pope of Rome bears -- "Vicar of Christ" -- can only be turned into Greek as "Antichristos" -- that is, the Vice-christ, substitute Christ, or Antichrist! Therefore, the popes have claimed to themselves a title which is the equivalent of the word coined by the apostle John! Just like the "antichrists" of whom John wrote, so also have the Popes DENIED YESHUA by promoting false doctrines that cause men to stray from the faith once delivered. They have even dared to oppose Yeshua by teaching things that are the exact opposite of what Yeshua and the apostles taught!

The Counter Interpretation

Hundreds of books have been written in the contest between Catholics and Protestants. So great was the uproar that in 1516 the Fifth Lateran Council rose up FORBIDDING anyone to write 20

or preach on the subject of the Antichrist. Nonetheless, in Germany, Switzerland, England, France, Denmark and Sweden, the truth about the Antichrist continued to be preached with power and conviction by ministers of various Protestant churches. The scriptures, after a long hiatus, were getting into the hands of the common people. Thousands came to see, within the pages of the Bible, that the Papacy was indeed the Antichrist -- a teaching which dealt havoc to the church of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church quickly came to realize that it must produce a counter interpretation or lose the battle. Records the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Under the stress of the Protestant attack there arose new methods on the papal side" -- special mention being made of the Jesuits Ribera and Lacunza, who founded the futurist school of interpretation. Francisco Ribera (1537-1591) published a 500 page commentary on the grand points of Babylon and Antichrist, the object being to set aside the Protestant teaching that the Papacy is the Antichrist. In his commentary, Ribera assigned the first chapters of Revelation to the first century. The rest he restricted to a literal three and a half years at the end of time. He also taught that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt by a single, individual Antichrist who would abolish the Christian religion, deny Yeshua, pretend to be YEHOVAH, and conquer the world. When Thomas Brightman (1562-1607), a Protestant scholar and reformer, first saw a copy of Ribera's futurist commentary, he was aroused to indignation and fury. Scathingly he proclaimed: "Once they would not suffer any man to scarce touch a Bible, now they produce a commentary to explain it -to point men away from the Papal Antichrist"! For the next few centuries the Jesuit futurist view of the Antichrist was summarily rejected by the Protestant churches. Then, in 1826, Samuel R. Maitland (1792-1866), librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury, became the first Protestant to accept Ribera's and Lacunza's futurist interpretations. States George Ladd: "This futurist interpretation with its personal Antichrist and three and a half year tribulation did not take root in the Protestant church until the early nineteenth century. The first Protestant to adopt it was S.R. Maitland" (The Blessed Hope, p. 38). LeRoy Froom sums it up in these words -In Ribera's Commentary was laid the foundation for that great structure of Futurism, built upon and enlarged by those who followed, until it became the common Catholic position. And then, wonder of wonders, in the nineteenth century this Jesuit scheme of interpretation came to be adopted by a growing number of Protestants., until today Futurism, amplified and adorned with the rapture theory, has become the generally accepted belief of the Fundamentalist wing of popular Protestantism! (op cit., Vol. 2, p. 493). Because of the flood of books promoting the futurist point of view that are widely circulated today, there is much speculation regarding which world leader will soon emerge as the Antichrist of Bible prophecy. Many in the Churches of God are totally unaware of the old, standard, Protestant (and Church of God) interpretation of the Reformers; that the MAN OF SIN rose to power following the breakup of the Roman Empire; that he seated himself above all others (including YEHOVAH) in the church of the falling away; that these things have all found fulfillment in the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Today the Pope has world-wide fame. Thousands attend masses he performs. His travels and activities are given far-reaching news coverage. He is visited by presidents and kings. In the eyes of many, he is a man of peace and good will. Million upon millions of Roman Catholics look to the Pope as the head of the church, a belief that is foundational to the entire structure of Roman Catholicism. If the Pope is the head of the Church, then Protestants and Church of God adherents surely err by not acknowledging him as such. But if he is not, what can be said about a system that makes such a claim? The BIBLE clearly teaches that the head of the Church is Yeshua the Messiah -- and that the Papacy is the Antichrist. For this position there are strong scriptural and historical proofs, as we have seen in this article. Will you ignore these facts?

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HOPE OF ISRAEL M
Thanks for your insight and information regarding Baal Shemen and other ancient mysteries that have been perplexing me...your site is wonderfully informative. A query, if I may?

Hope of Israel Ministries Acct.# 623580206 Dear Mr. Keyser, Enclosed please find my check for $... for an offering before the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Thank you for your prayers on my behalf. A one centimeter cyst was found in the left kidney by CT and Ultrasound scans. Since I am feeling much better, feeling the pain in my left side less often, I have declined a retrograde pylography (an internal camera scope of the urethra up to the kidney), since it too requires anesthesia and may cause bladder and kidney infections. A cyst cannot be removed in this procedure, but would require a surgical operation to drain. And it is not certain whether the cyst is the cause of the pain. Your article in your last magazine about Gentiles again made me take another look in the New Testament as did your article about the God they were worshipping. I have also been studying Mr. Wade Cox's articles at www.logon.org about the Elohim being an extended order. It is clear our prayer and worship should be directed to the Most High, the Father. Mr. Cox also has articles about the role of the Angel of Yahovah as also being the Elohim of Israel. He also has articles about the New Moon. Does the first day of the new week start with the day of the first crescent? Would this day then be called New Moon day and should it be kept as a sabbath? Or is the period before the first crescent (which is the conjunction) the New Moon day observance? Which day would be the first day of the week to begin our count to the first sabbath? Or is the new moon renewal period of darkness all counted as the seventh day sabbath? At this period before the Passover, it looks like our nations of Israel are suffering some of the same kind of plagues: hoof and mouth disease in the cattle and sheep; and shutting off of electricity in California causing a kind of

A I L

What would one think of a person naming their offspring Shemen.." I have met a person with such a name, and was troubled deeply by this individuals very presence, the instance we met, although at the time, I could not put my finger on the "why" of it. Your comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, R.S. COMMENT: A person cannot help what they have been named by their parents. However, if someone understands the meaning of the name they have been given, and revels in it, then their might be reason for uneasiness and concern in this particular case.

B A G

Dear Mr. John Keyser: Please would you be so kind as to send me back dated issues No. 1, No. 5 as well as the new calendar for year 2001. Would you also send me bank details so that we can deposit our offerings and donations for the books. Thanking you, Yours faithfully, M.C. COMMENT: The back issues have been mailed to you. Regarding tithes and offerings, you can deposit them to the following account: Bank One Bank by Mail (OH1-1045) P.O. Box 182796 Columbus, OH 43218 U.S.A.

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darkness. Our Father continue to set apart His firstfruits by the truth for His purpose and keep those who belong to Him through His son, at this time when we acknowledge and reaffirm our acceptance of His son's offering for us and to the end of this age. Sincerely, P.A. COMMENT: We are glad to hear there has been some improvement in your health. Regarding the weekly Sabbath, our article God's Sacred Calendar covers this in some detail. Basically, the New Moon day is determined by the crescent, with the following day being "day 1" of the new seven day week. There can be two New Moon days -- depending on the length of the month. The New Moon day(s) should be kept as a sabbath, and since the New Moon day(s) are always directly preceded by the weekly Sabbath we can have up to three days in a row that are treated as one "long" Sabbath day! The article, as well as our articles Have We Been Observing the Sabbath At the Wrong Time All These Years and The New Moon and the Weekly Sabbath -- Side-By-Side explain this fully. Brother John, Just got through reading the March-April Berean Voice and wanted to let you know how thankful I am. Although I may not agree with every point, the articles which you are providing greatly surpass the vain babblings of the seminaries, showing them for the false prophets that they are. There is no other publication I know of which slices through their fog in such a thorough, provocative manner, and from so many angles. I could go on and on, but I'll end by saying that it now appears that the scales may be lifting from off of True Israel's eyes. We can come out of our deceptions and begin to perceive our role in the real Kingdom, not ending up as those found in Luke 13: 25. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: 26. Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.

27. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. 28. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. Blessings, J.D.B. I began reading your story about whether Peter had been in Rome and had been the first Pope of the Christian Church. In it was a statement that Peter is seen as the founder of the Church. This is inaccurate. Peter was the Prince of the Apostles, this is true, but it was Jesus Christ himself that founded the Church. He did so on the kepha of Kephas, rendered Petros in Greek and Peter in English. This has always been the true position of the Catholic Church. I thought you would like to know so that you can correct your site. Sincerely in Christ, E.L. COMMENT: Due to an inaccurate understanding of Matthew 16:18, the Catholic Church has always insisted that it was founded upon the apostle Peter who became the first "Pope" of a long series of popes -down to our day (the Holy See). The fact is, when history and tradition is consulted, the first Pope of the Catholic Church was none other than Simon the Magician found mentioned in Acts 8:9. As for Yeshua founding the Catholic Church -- this is sheer nonsense. The Catholic Church is an apostate, pagan, corrupted church that the apostle John calls "the great harlot" in Revelation 17:1, and "Babylon the Great" in revelation 18:2 Hi John: I am finding your writings very interesting and informative. In accepting that you are right about the calendar and the sabbath, this will make it impossible for any of us to keep a job in this world unless we are selfemployed. Even then with contracts etc. it will be difficult to keep work. Well, God never said it would be easy to keep His commandments and do His will. We are to step out in faith and even now I am finding that kind of faith hard.

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In a couple of years I will be able to retire and in New Zealand be on a pension. Now I am working as an independent contractor to Kiwi Dairies and it allows me the freedom to keep the sabbath as you have explained if I want to. It's amazing how easy anything can be if you decide to do it instead of finding all sorts of excuses. Thank you for the hard work and writing you are doing to make it easy for us to make decisions and get closer to God. Regards, A.M. Hi, I was reading your article (I think by Grant Jefferies) and have a couple of questions. It was said that either a replica, or the real ark may have been spirited back to Israel some years ago. Why would the Bible point out that the Holy of Holies' curtain was cut by a Heavenly sword (showing God was no longer there, and that Jesus had come, and is the way to get to God), later in Revelation shown to be in Heaven. I am inclined to feel there well may be a replica of the Ark, that would pass carbon 14 tests, etc. (since it's also very old). That would be touted as proof God is still with the old religion, but would, in my opinion, strike at the very heart of Christian faith (because the Ark was taken the moment the Messiah, the Lamb, was killed). I guess my question is, why doubt the tremendous, wonderful, amazing reality of the Ark being taken safely to Heaven, as indicated, just because of the cover up, and centuries old false claims that the Ark really wasn't there, and that therefore, there was no significance, to the Holy Ark (representing God Himself, and access to Him) being taken by the Father, when they killed His son? Thanks, N. COMMENT: You may have a point here. There is overwhelming evidence that YEHOVAH God's Shekinah Glory was residing in the Temple in Jerusalem during the time of Yeshua. Since the Bible states that the Ark had YEHOVAH's mercy seat on top of it (Exodus

25:21) and this was YEHOVAH's throne (verse 22), it would be illogical to think that YEHOVAH resided in the Temple during the time of Yeshua without the Ark and its attached mercy seat. When YEHOVAH's Shekinah Glory vacated the Temple just before the Roman armies surrounded Jerusalem, and eventually went back to Heaven after hovering over the Mount of Olives for a while, it is conceivable (as you say) that YEHOVAH took the Ark with Him as it was no longer needed after Yeshua became our High Priest and access to the Father. When Y EHOVAH's Shekinah Glory returns to this earth (Revelation 19:11) and resides in the new Temple built by Yeshua after his return in Revelation 14:14, it is quite possible that the real Ark and mercy seat will return with Him. The Ark purported to be in Ethiopia and /or any others than may be hidden under the Temple Mount or in Mt. Pisgah are all more than likely replicas that have no significance to YEHOVAH, and are an attempt to keep alive the pre-Yeshua Old Testament religion that has come down to us in the corrupted form of Judaism. Gentlemen/Ladies: Shalom in the name of Yahweh the Righteous! May Yahshua forgive all the sins of the faithful! I have recently become introduced to the Messianic faith, and I have also read a few articles in your magazine. In the back cover, additional articles can be obtained. A nominal donation is suggested, and I wanted to tithe to your ministry anyway, so please expect an institutional check (I am currently in prison) in the mail very soon (in the amount of $...). The articles that I would like you to send me are: 1) "Have We Been Observing the Sabbath At the Wrong Time All These Years?" 2) "The New Moon and the Weekly Sabbath -Side-By-Side" 3) "God's Sacred Calendar" 4) "A Unique Lunar-Based Calendar" 5) "Mysteries of Babylon and Pagan Sabbaths" I also request that you put me on your mailing list for

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"The Berean Voice" magazine. I am certain that the reading materials you send me will provide me with excellent guidance. I will tithe again to your ministry at my earliest opportunity. May Almighty Yahweh bless and prosper the work of your hands. Shalom! Sincerely, N.J. Dear Mr. J. Keyser: I am thankful very much to God and to you since I read your magazine issued Nov. and December -- The Berean Voice -- especially the article Should There Be "Government" In the Church of God? You explained the real plain truth of the truth -- you knocked me down on my knees. Please forward to us, for a whole year, the magazine -- The Berean Voice. I am a poor man only and we are now experiencing economic crisis here in the Philippines -- but this is not important. But what is important is your article -- the real bread -the only hope of today's confusion. Please send. Goodbye and our Almighty Father and Jesus Christ bless you so much. Respectfully yours, F.M.S. Dear Israel, I thank you so very much for your [bi]monthly magazine. I have a lot of Bible studies come my way, but I enjoy The Berean Voice magazine the most, I find myself reading and studying them over and over, it just don't end. I truly thank God for handing me a great gift to help me to understand God's word and Israel. I love to study the end times and prophecy. I only wish that there was more that I could receive to understand the Greek and Hebrew prophets which deal with the end of the age. I don't have a concordance to help me and I have been hoping that your study Bible would get to me. I have been looking forward to your Bible to start my study with your help. Well, I better let you go. Please remember me in your prayers as I study God's word. Yours in Christ,

C.N. COMMENT: I assume that you are referring here to the Hope of Israel Bible Correspondence Course. The course is up for review to incorporate all the new truth that has been revealed during the last year or so. Please be patient since there are not enough hours in the day to do all the things I would like. Dear Mr. Keyser, In the Nov.-Dec. 2000 issue of The Berean Voice magazine you stated that God's name is "Yehovah" instead of Yahweh. I read in a history book of Israel that Yahweh was the only accepted name accepted by the Hebrews as the Heavenly Father's name, and that Yehovah or Yehowah was a hybrid word, a name made by merging the consonants of Yahweh (YHWH) and the vowels of the Hebrew name for Lord (Adonai). Yehovah or Jehovah is a name that doesn't appear in any language. Also, I am interested in obtaining the address of the Assemblies of Yahweh in Bethel, PA so I can write to it and receive information on its church. Will you please send any information to the above address. I really enjoyed the articles in last December's issue about Simon the Zealot and the catacomb identified as the burial site of the Barsabbas family members. I appreciate historical and archaeological information that verifies the facts of the Christian faith. Sincerely yours, T.D. COMMENT: Regardless of what you read in other publications, it is simply NOT TRUE that YEHOVAH is a corrupt and mistaken form of the Massoretic vowel pointing taken from "adonai." Nor is it an "evil name," as some have ignorantly charged, based on the Hebrew term hovah, which means "ruin" or "disaster." This Hebrew word hovah is from hayah -- which can also mean to "happen." It has no grammatical connection to the Divine Name. The combination YE-HO-AH makes much better grammatical sense. In Hebrew "YE" represents the future or imperfect of the verb "to be," "HO" represents the present, while "AH" represents the past. In other words, this form of God's Name would have specific meaning and not be merely a repetition of vowel sounds. Quite

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literally YEHOAH means "shall/is/was" -- that is, the Eternal, the Ever-living One who will be, is and always was. This is WHY the pronunciation YEHOAH is preferable -- or even the more popular form, YEHOVAH, since it clearly reflects this profound meaning. YAH would then be the contracted or shortened form of this full Name, taking the first and last sounds together. I just received The Berean Voice and I wanted you to clear something up for me. On page 18 you gave a list of Jesuit-inspired Futurist deception spreads to America's Protestant churches and seminaries. I was not sure if you meant that these Bibles were not ones we should read. I know that most of the people on the list preach the Rapture but some of them I didn't think they did, so I was not sure what the list meant. Can you recommend a good study Bible. I have been using the Companion Bible and have a lot of information from the Worldwide Church of God that was under Herbert Armstrong, and as well have studies from Garner Ted Armstrong. I have seen how the Worldwide Church of God has changed under Joseph Tkach and this has confused me. I want to keep myself straight and don't want to get off track. I have also listened to studies with Arnold Murray. I don't agree with everything that everyone says and check things out for myself. Can you please help to recommend a good study Bible. I have downloaded the Bible Study Courses on your website but have not started them yet. Some of them were off-line and I could not download. Will they be available soon? Please recommend a good study Bible or will you offer one? Also, some of the older Bibles mentioned in your article about The Story of the Pagan Christian Logos are they available since they are outdated. Thank you for your help. P.J. COMMENT: The list you mention in the March-April issue of The Berean Voice refers primarily to those preaching about the Futurist viewpoint of prophecy -not necessarily the Secret Rapture. Some preach the Rapture, some don't. This doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't use the Bibles they promote, but we should be careful. Most of

the so-called study Bibles have a theological bias of one form or another. I use many different Bibles in my research, comparing the way they rend the scriptures I'm interested in. Sometimes you have to go back to the original Greek and Hebrew to get the true meaning of a verse. One Bible and commentary that I use frequently is the Jewish New Testament and the Jewish New Testament Commentary by David H. Stern. Others I use are the Septuagint and Tanakh for the Old Testament, and commentaries such as Clarke's. Sorry I can't be more specific. Regarding the Hope of Israel Bible Correspondence Course, it is up for review and will be vastly changed in certain areas as a result of what we have learned is recent years. Hi John, By the way, as I was deleting my sent files, I re-read what I had written you the other day and wanted to clarify something. When I am speaking of the "Jews" in Jesus' day, I'm speaking primarily of the "authorities," (i.e. Pharisees, Herodians, etc.). Obviously many "Jews" (of Judah and Benjamin) were His sheep. But whoever those "Jews" were who kept looking for an "occasion to stone Him," were not. (John 10:22-38). I'm a little paranoid about making any such statements these days. It seems like no matter what I say about "Jews" it suddenly is "antisemitic." Just want to let you know that's not my intent. AND, that whatever I may write with regard to your works is okay to be taken with a "grain of salt" if necessary. I'm correctable! Blessings, J. COMMENT: Me too! As long as we remain willing to be corrected by the word of God, there's hope for us! I appreciate your input and consider what you have written me. I will comment on that more in the next issue of the BV. I can understand your paranoia regarding what you say about the Jewish people -- or more specifically, their beliefs. People just don't seem to see the difference between condemning a group's religious practices and condemning the people themselves. Was Yeshua antiSemitic? By today's standards, I guess so!

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The Nature of Pre-Existence in the New Testament

Jesus Christ came into the Mediterranean world at a time of deep religious ferment. Many faiths and philosophies were competing for the allegiance of that world -- and all of them were more congenial to that pagan Roman world than were the teachings of Christ. The religion now known as Christianity, which became established as the official religion of the Roman Empire during the time of Constantine, appeared to reject the "cult of the gods" and the "cult of the Emperor." "Christianity" appeared to differ from the Mystery Cults; yet it embraced all the KEY doctrines of the pagan Mystery Religions. This included the concept that their God (Christ) was preexistent. However, the Bible (including the New Testament) nowhere promotes this pagan concept.

Anthony Buzzard
"Within the Christian tradition, the New Testament has long been read through the prism of the later conciliar creeds...Speaking of Jesus as the Son of God had a very different connotation in the first century from that which it has had ever since the Council of Nicea (325 AD). Talk of his preexistence ought probably in most, perhaps in all, cases to be understood on the analogy of the pre-existence of the Torah, to indicate the eternal divine purpose being achieved through him, rather than pre-existence of a fully personal kind" (Maurice Wiles, The Remaking of Christian Doctrine, The Hulsean Lectures, 1973, London: SCM Press, 1974). "The mainstream churches are committed to a certain doctrine about Jesus, but specialists in early Christian thought are questioning the arguments by which that doctrine was reached. New Testament scholars ask if the New Testament teaches it at all, and historians wonder at the gulf between Jesus himself and fully-developed Christianity. These questions are very unsettling, for they imply that Christianity may be in worse condition that was thought. It is perhaps not a basically sound structure that needs only to be modernized, but may be in need of radical reconstruction...The New Testament never suggests that the phrase 'Son of God' just means 'God'" (Don Cupitt, The Debate About Christ, London: SCM Press, 1979, p. vii, 4). Yet evangelicalism insists on that equation if one is to be considered a Christian! "When the Jew wished to designate something as predestined, he spoke of it as already 'existing' in heaven" (E.G. Selwyn, First Epistle of Peter, p. 124.). 28

Thus "pre-existence" statements in the New Testament really have to do with foreordination and predestination. It was the Greeks who misunderstood Jewish ways of thinking and turned Jesus into a cosmic figure who entered the earth from outer space. But is such a Jesus a human being? Is he the true Messiah of Israel? Many dedicated Christians are currently exercised about the Gnostic and mystical tendencies affecting the church. But many are unaware that philosophical, mystical ideas invaded the church from the second century onwards via the "Church Fathers," who were steeped in pagan philosophy and laid the foundation of the creeds now called "orthodox." The seed of Trinitarian doctrine was planted in the thinking of Justin Martyr, the second century Christian apologist who "found in Platonism the nearest approach to Christianity and felt that no break was required with its spirit and principles to pass into the greater light of Christian revelation." "The forces which operated to change apostolic doctrine were derived from paganism....The habits of thought which the Gentiles brought into the church are sufficient to explain the corruptions of apostolic doctrine which began in the post-apostolic age" (G.T. Purves, D.D., The Testimony of Justin Martyr to Early Christianity. New York: Randolph and Co., 1889, p. 167.). Intelligent Christians need to be informed of these corruptions and how they are currently "canonized" as Scripture by many. Discernment means learning the difference between revealed truth and pagan, philosophical teachings which originated outside the Bible yet affected what is now called "orthodoxy." I would ask the reader to consider the disastrous effects of not paying attention to the Jewish ways of thinking found in the Bible, which was written (with the exception of Luke) by Jews. Clearly if Jews do not mean what we mean by "pre-existence" we are liable to misunderstand them on basic issues about who Jesus is. There is a huge difference between being predestined or foreordained and actually pre-existing. Greek philosophy believed in a "second God," a non-human intermediary between the creator and the world. The true Jesus, however, is the "man Messiah," the one Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). "To us Christians there is one God, the Father, and one Lord Messiah" (1 Corinthians 8:4-6). Note carefully Paul's definition of the One God. The New Testament is a thoroughly Jewish book. Its writers were all Jews except probably Luke (who, however, is as Jewish as any of the writers in terms of his obvious delight in the Jewish salvation [John 4:22] offered in Jesus to both Jew and Gentile). Modern Bible readers approach basic biblical issues with an entrenched Greek outlook on life. This they have inherited from the churches and early post-biblical creeds which overlooked the fact that Jesus was a Jew who thought and taught in Jewish categories. There is an anti-Semitic tendency in traditional, creedal Christianity which must be recognized and forsaken. It has dramatically affected Christian doctrine. It has affected the way we define the person of Jesus, the Messiah. The idea that the soul separates from the body and survives consciousness apart from the body is a thoroughly unJewish idea (this is well established in the Old Testament perspective -and the New Testament teaching about the nature of man is based on the Old). Modern readers of 29

the Bible are shocked to discover that in the Bible the whole man dies and goes into unconsciousness ("sleep") and is returned to life only by the future resurrection of the whole person. Traditional Christianity persists with the mistaken notion that man has an "immortal soul" which survives death. Many Bible readers have not paid attention to the statement of the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible: "No biblical text authorizes the statement that the soul is separated from the body at the moment of death" (Vol. 1, p. 802.). The notion that Jesus was really alive and conscious before his birth in Bethlehem is also a very unJewish idea. Human beings in Hebrew thought do not exist consciously before they are born. The pre-existence of souls belongs to the world of Greek philosophy and was held by some church fathers (notably the philosophically- and mystically-minded Origen). But they did not derive this idea from the Bible. Part of repentance is the willingness to admit we have been deceived, that we have not had sufficient information to make good decisions on Bible issues. One most important fact we need to know before we attempt to understand who Jesus was is this: "When the Jew said something was 'predestined,' he thought of it as already 'existing' in a higher sphere of life. The world's history is thus predestined because it is already, in a sense, pre-existing and consequently fixed. This typically Jewish conception of predestination may be distinguished from the Greek idea of pre-existence by the predominance of the thought of 'pre-existence' in the Divine purpose" (E.C. Dewick, Primitive Christian Eschatology, The Hulsean Prize Essay for 1908, Cambridge University Press, 1912, pp. 253, 254.). Our Scholar goes on to tell us that this typical mode of Jewish thought is clearly illustrated in 1 Peter. This reminds us immediately that Peter did not abandon his Jewish ways of thinking (based on the Hebrew Bible) when he became a Christian. Peter's letter is addressed to "the elect according to the foreknowledge ( prognosis) of God the Father" (1 Peter 1:1, 2). Peter believed that all Christians were foreknown, but that did not mean that we all preexisted! Peter's doctrine of future things is permeated by the same thought that all is foreordained in God's great Plan. God sees everything laid out before Him. Those who have the gift of the spirit will share God's outlook and in faith recognize that the realities of God's plan will in the future become realities on earth. According to Peter the Messiah himself was foreknown, not just his death for our sins but the person Messiah himself (1 Peter 1:20). Peter uses the same word to describe the "existence" of the Son of God in God's plan as he did to describe the "existence" of the Christian church (verse 2). Though the Messiah was foreknown (not known, but foreknown, as was Jeremiah the prophet before his birth, Jeremiah 1:5), he was manifested by being brought into actual existence at 30

his birth (Luke 1:35). This is a typically Jewish way of understanding God's purpose for mankind. He executes the Plan at the appropriate time. The sort of "preexistence" Peter has in mind is the sort that fits the Jewish environment, NOT the Greek atmosphere of later, post-biblical Christianity. States E.G. Selwyn in First Epistle of St. Peter -"We are not entitled to say that Peter was familiar with the idea of Christ's preexistence with the Father before the incarnation [we are therefore not entitled to claim that Peter was a Trinitarian!]. For this idea is not necessarily implied in his description of Christ as 'foreknown before the foundation of the world,' since Christians are also the objects of God's foreknowledge. All that we can say is that the phrase pro kataboles kosmou [before the foundation of the world] affirms for Christ's office and work a supramundane range and importance....Peter has not extended his belief in Christ's divinity to an affirmation of his pre-existence: his Christology is more like that of the early chapters of Acts than of John and Paul" (Baker Book House, 1983, pp. 248, 250). While we disagree that Peter's idea of Jesus is different from that of Paul and John, we can see that Peter (as the leading apostle -- Matthew 10:1) would have had no sympathy with either a Trinitarian or Arian (cp. modern Jehovah's Witnesses) view of Jesus. We note also that for Peter the future salvation of the Christians, the Kingdom they are to inherit at the return of Christ, is likewise waiting in heaven "ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:10, 11). The Second Coming is thus to be an "apocalypse" or unveiling of what is now "existing" but hidden from our sight. So it is said of Jesus that he was "foreknown," and waiting to be revealed in God's good time (1 Peter 1:20). Neither the Kingdom nor Jesus actually existed in advance. They were planned from before the foundation of the world. Paul uses the same concept and language about the future resurrection and immortality of the saints. He says that we already "have" a building from God, a house fit for the coming age" (2 Corinthians 5:1). This is the proper translation of aionios, i.e., belonging to the coming age of the Kingdom, not "eternal." This does not, of course, mean that the body of the future is temporary. It confers immortality and thus lasts forever. The acquisition of that body is nevertheless the great event of the coming age introduced by the resurrection. Our future resurrection body already "exists" in God's intention and may be thought of as real because it is certain to be manifested in the future. In that sense we "have" it, though we obviously do not yet have it literally. The same is true of the treasure we have in heaven. It is promised for our future. We will receive the reward of the inheritance (Colossians 3:24) when Christ brings it from heaven to the earth at his future coming.

Foreordination Rather than Literal Preexistence

Having grasped this elementary fact of Jewish (and biblical) theology and thinking, it will not be difficult to adjust our understanding of other passages where the same principle of "existence" followed by actual manifestation is found. Thus Jesus says in John 17:5: "Glorify me [now] with the glory which I had with you before the foundation of the world." On the basis of 2 Corinthians 5:1 a Christian in the future, after the resurrection at Christ's return, will be able to say that 31

he has now received what he already "had," i.e. laid up for him in God's plan. Christians are said to have treasure in heaven (Mark 10:21), that is, a reward stored up with God now and destined to be conferred in the future. This is only to say that they will one day in the future "inherit the Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world" (Matthew 25:34). When Jesus says that he "had" the glory for which he now prays (John 17:5), he is merely asking for the glory which he knew was prepared for him by God from the beginning. The synoptic way of expressing the same idea is to talk of the Kingdom "prepared before the foundation of the world" (Matthew 25:34). That glory existed in God's plan, and in that sense Jesus already "had" it. We note that Jesus did NOT say "Give me back the glory which I had when I was alive with you before my birth." This notion would have been completely foreign to Judaism. It is quite unnecessary -- and indeed wrong -- to read Gentile ideas into the text of Scripture when we can make good sense of them as they stand in their Jewish environment. The onus is on those who believe in literal preexistence to demonstrate that the texts cannot be explained within their own Jewish context. The so-called "preexistence" of Jesus in John refers to his "existence" in the Plan of God. The church has been plagued by the introduction of non-biblical language. There is a perfectly good word for "real" preexistence in the Greek language (pro-uparchon). It is very significant that it appears nowhere in Scripture -- but it does in the writings of Greek church fathers of the second century. These Greek commentators on Scripture failed to understand the Hebrew categories of thought in which the New Testament is written. The so-called "pre-human existence" of Christ in the Bible refers to the prior existence of Jesus in God's Plan and vision. Preexistence in the Bible does not mean what it meant in later creeds: the actual conscious existence of the Son of Man before his birth at which time he entered the earth and the human condition by passing through the womb of his mother. A Jewish and biblical conception of preexistence is most significant for Jesus' understanding of himself as the Son of Man. The Son of Man is found in the book of Daniel. He "preexists" only in the sense that God grants us a vision of him in His Plan for the future. The Son of Man is A HUMAN BEING -- that is what the words mean. Thus what John wants us to understand is that the human Messiah was in heaven before his birth (in God's Plan) and was seen in Daniel's vision of the future (Daniel 7; John 6:62). Jesus at his ascension went up to the position which had been previously prepared for him in God's Plan. No text says that Jesus WENT BACK (upostrepho) to God, though this idea has been wrongly imported into some modern English translations of the Bible to support "orthodoxy." Such mistranslation of the Greek "go to the Father" as "go back to the Father" tells its own story. The translation of the Bible has been corrupted to mirror traditional, post-biblical ideas of who Jesus is. The Son of Man is not an angel. No angel was ever called a "Son of Man" (= member of the human race -- with good reason Jesus' favorite self-title). To call the Messiah an angel would be a muddling of categories. Hence scholars rightly report that the idea of preexistence for the Messiah "antecedent to his birth in Bethlehem is unknown in Judaism." The Messiah, according to all that is predicted of him in the Old Testament, belongs, in his origin, to the human race --

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"'Judaism has never known anything of a preexistence peculiar to the Messiah antecedent to his birth as a human being' (Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp. 128-32, 248, 252). The dominance of the idea in any Jewish circle whatever cannot seriously be upheld. Judaism knew nothing of the [literally] preexistent ideal man" (Charles Gore, Belief in Christ, 1923, p. 31). To claim to "be before Abraham" (John 8:58) does not mean that you remember being alive before your birth. That is to think like a Greek who believes in the preexistence of souls. In the Hebrew thought of the New Testament one can "exist" as part of God's Plan as did also the tabernacle, the temple, repentance and other major elements of the Divine purpose. Even Moses preexisted in that sense, according to a quotation we will introduce later. John the apostle could also say that Christ was "crucified before the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8). This gives us an enormously valuable clue as to the way the New Testament writers understood "preexistence." There are multiple examples of past tenses in the Hebrew Bible which actually refer to future events. They are "past" because they describe events fixed in God's counsels and therefore certain to be realized. Bible readers disregard this very Jewish way of thinking when they leap to the conclusion that when Jesus said he "had" glory with the Father from the foundation of the world (John 17:5), he meant that he was alive at that time. Certainly in a western frame of reference the traditional understanding is reasonable. But can we not do the Messiah the honor of trying to understand his words in their own Hebrew environment? Should not the Bible be interpreted in the light of its own context and not in our later creeds?

No Preexistence for Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke

There is a deafening silence about any real preexistence of Christ in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and Peter, and the WHOLE of the Old Testament. Not only do they not hint at a pre-human Son of God, they contradict the idea by talking of the origin (genesis) of Jesus (Matthew 1:18) and his begetting as Son (Matthew 1:20) in Mary's womb. This verse is mistranslated in our versions of the Bible: The text does not refer to conception, but to "begetting" by the Father through the holy spirit. It is the action of the Father which brings the Son into existence. The Son of God -- the Messiah -- is a supernaturally created person, the Second Adam. Note also in Acts 13:33 the reference to the "raising up" of Jesus which refers to God's bringing him into being. Verse 34 mentions his subsequent resurrection. Also note that for Arians and Trinitarians, who think that Jesus was begotten in eternity long before his conception/begetting in Mary, this would be a second begetting. Justin Martyr is perhaps the first church Father to speak of a begetting of the Son prior to Genesis (i.e. prior to Creation). But he provides no scriptural support for such an ante-mundane begetting of the Son. According to the Bible the Son of God was begotten -- as are all human beings -- at the time of his conception in his mother's womb. Justin differs from Matthew by saying that the Son came "through" Mary. Matthew holds that he came from Mary. This points to the shift of thinking that has taken place by 150 A.D. -- a shift that provided the seed of the later Trinitarian formulation.

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Luke knows nothing of such an idea. Unprejudiced readers will see (as acknowledged by a host of biblical experts) that the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and Peter is A HUMAN BEING originating at his "begettal" and birth as do all other human persons. HE HAS NOT PREEXISTED! Matthew even speaks of the "genesis" of Jesus in Matthew 1:18. It is a serious imposition on the Gospel of John to understand him to teach a different sort of Jesus than Matthew, Mark and Luke -- one who is really an angel or God appearing as a man. Such a non-human Messiah is FOREIGN not only to the rest of the New Testament, but to the whole revelation of God in the Old Testament in regard to his definition of the coming Messiah. Deuteronomy 18:15-18 expressly says that the Messiah is to rise from a family in Israel. The Messiah is expressly said in this important Christological text not to be God but God's agent born to the family of Israel. All Jews who looked forward to the Messiah fully expected him to be a human person -- not an angel -- much less God Himself! Though the Jews had not understood that the Messiah was to be born supernaturally, even this miraculous begetting was in fact predicted (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). A "pre-human" Messiah, however, is nowhere suggested. According to Isaiah 44:24 God was unaccompanied at the original creation. Jesus in the Gospels attributes the creation to the Father (Mark 10:6; Matthew 6:30; Luke 12:28) and has no memory of being the agent in the Genesis creation. If Jesus had really been the creator of the Genesis heaven and earth, WHY does he have no memory of this? WHY does he expressly say that God was the creator? The answer is that Jesus worked within the Jewish and biblical framework of the scriptural heritage he had received and which he "came not to destroy." The spirit of God is available to all believers. As they learn to think as God does, they will share the concept that "God speaks of things which do not exist as though they did" (Romans 4:17). It is a mistake to confuse "existence" in the Plan of God with actual preexistence, thus creating a non-fully human Jesus. The Christ of biblical expectation is a HUMAN PERSON, supernaturally conceived. The supreme glory of his achievement for us lies in the fact that he really was a human being. He was tempted. But God cannot be tempted -- James 1:13. The "Rock" apostle (Peter) whom Jesus appointed to "feed my sheep" has given us a marvelous lesson in how to understand the meaning of preexistence as foreknowledge and predestination. It was Peter whose recognition of Jesus as the Messiah was greeted by the excited approval of Jesus (Matthew 16:16-18). Peter and John understood that the glory which Jesus already "had" is the same glory believers subsequent to the time of Jesus (and therefore not yet born when Jesus spoke) also "had been given" (John 17:22). This means only that things which are fixed in God's counsels "exist" in a sense other than actual existence. We must choose whether to understand the language of the New Testament as Americans or Europeans or as sympathetic to Jesus and his Jewish culture. A verse in Revelation speaks of things "being" before they were created. "They were and were created" (Revelation 4:11). Their creation followed from God's original Plan to bring them into being. The use of the verb "were" is interesting in light of an alternative reading in John 17:5 which speaks of "the glory which was with you." This would be a statement about the preexisting glory (not the pre-human Jesus) which Jesus prayed to have bestowed on him (John 17:5), and also on his followers (John 17:22). (See Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, 1970, p. 34

743). Also note that Augustine -- and many other early commentators -- find NO EVIDENCE for literal preexistence in John 17:5. A knowledge of the background to the New Testament reveals that Jews believed that even Moses "preexisted" in the counsels of God -- but not actually as a conscious person: "For this is what the Lord of the world has decreed: He created the world on behalf of his people, but he did not make this purpose of creation known from the beginning of the world so that the nations might be found guilty...But he did design and devise me [Moses], who was prepared from the beginning of the world to be the mediator of the covenant" (Testa ment of Moses, 1:13, 14). If Moses was decreed in the Plan of God, it makes perfect sense that the Messiah himself was the purpose for which God created everything. All things may then be said to have been created on behalf of the Christ. Out of respect for God's revealed Plan and in honor of the human Savior, we should seek to understand his identity in the context of his own Hebrew setting. A fine statement of the Jewish understanding of "preexistence" is given by the Norwegian scholar, Mowinckel, in his famous He Who Cometh -"That any expression or vehicle of God's will for the world, His saving counsel and purpose, was present in His mind, or His 'Word,' from the beginning is a natural way of saying that it is not fortuitous, but the due unfolding and expression of God's own being [cp. John: "the Word was with God and was God"]. This attribution of pre-existence indicates religious importance of the highest order. Rabbinic theology speaks of the Law, of God's throne of glory, of Israel and of other important objects of faith, as things which had been created by God, and were already present with Him, before the creation of the world. The same is also true of the Messiah. It is said that his name was present with God in heaven beforehand, that it was created before the world, and that it is eternal. "But the reference here is not to genuine pre-existence in the strict and literal sense. This is clear from the fact that Israel is included among these pre-existent entities. This does not mean that either the nation Israel or its ancestor existed long ago in heaven, but that the community Israel, the people of God, had been from all eternity in the mind of God, as a factor in His purpose....This is true of references to the pre-existence of the Messiah. It is his 'name,' -- not the Messiah himself -- that is said to have been present with God before creation. In Pesikta Rabbati 152b is said that 'from the beginning of the creation of the world the King Messiah was born, for he came up in the thought of God before the world was created.' This means that from all eternity it was the will of God that the Messiah should come into existence, and should do his work in the world to fulfill God's eternal saving purpose" (p. 334). The proposition introduced by Gentile, philosophically-minded "Church Fathers" that Jesus was either a second "member" of the Godhead (later orthodoxy) or a created angel (Arians and, in modern times, Jehovah's Witnesses) launched the whole vexed problem of the nature of Christ in relation to the Godhead and put under a fog the true Messiahship of Jesus and his Messianic 35

Gospel about the Kingdom. Jesus of Nazareth is what the Word (God's Wisdom) of John 1:1 became. He is the unique expression, as a human being, of the Wisdom of God. It was the Wisdom of God which existed from the beginning, and that Wisdom became a person at the conception of Jesus. This explanation leaves intact the great cardinal doctrine that the One God is the Father and that Jesus is the Lord Messiah -- not the Lord God. Note Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29ff; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; 1 Timothy 2:5; John 17:3 and 5:44. It was the early Greek Church Fathers who confused the issue of Jewish/Christian monotheism by introducing the idea of a "numerically second God." It is most significant that Paul often speaks of the gospel as having been hidden in the counsels of God from "ages past." See Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:26; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2; cp. 1 Peter 1:20 and Revelation 13:8. He also says that the Son of God "came into existence" from a woman and from the seed of David (Romans 1:4; Galatians 4:4). It is unimaginable that Paul could have believed in the preexistence of the Son. It would be untrue to say that the Son came into existence at his birth, if in fact he had always existed. It is far more reasonable to suppose that Paul agreed with Peter that the Messiah was hidden in the divine counsels and then revealed in the fullness of time. Paul believed that "all things have been created in Jesus" (Colossians 1:15). He did not say they had been created "by him." Finally, it is most unreasonable to claim that "Wisdom" in Proverbs (i.e., "Lady Wisdom") was in fact Jesus, the Son, preexisting. It should not be difficult to discern that "Wisdom" here is a personification of a divine quality -- not a person. The proof of this is found not only in all major commentaries but very clearly in the text itself. "I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence...." (Proverbs 8:12). If Wisdom is really a (male) Son of God, then who is Prudence? Preexisting purposes and personifications are all part of the literature of Judaism. A preexistent, non-human Messiah is not. A Messiah who is not a human being approximates much more closely to the pagan idea of preexisting souls and Gnostic "aions." It was that early invasion of paganism which unfortunately began to corrupt the faith -- just as Peter and Paul warned in 2 Peter 2 and Acts 20:29-31. That intrusion of paganism resulted in some very strange language about Jesus. His "prehuman existence" signals the fact that he is really not a human being. He has existed as an angel before being born. This is close to the idea of "the gods coming down in the likeness of men." Such a Jesus sounds like a pagan savior figure. There were many such cosmic saviors in the GraecoRoman world. But there was only one Messiah, whose identity was given long in advance of his birth. He was foreknown (1 Peter 1:20) and would arise from the House of Israel as an Israelite of the tribe of Judah (Deuteronomy 18:15-18; Acts 3:22; 7:37). That important text in Deuteronomy actually states that the promised agent of God would not be the Lord God, but His spokesman (Deuteronomy 18:16, 17). Christians should be careful to claim allegiance to that Savior. To worship a Savior with wrong ideas about him runs the risk of worshipping another Savior. The creed of Jesus is the right creed for Christians (Mark 12:28ff). As so many scholars know, that creed is not a Trinitarian creed. The One God of Israel and of Jesus was and is the Father (John 17:3; John 5:44; 1 Timothy 2:5; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6), "the One and only God" (John 5:44), "the only true God" (John 17:3).

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John 1:1
Christology, the study of who Jesus is, has to do with a reasoned statement about the relation of Jesus to the One God of Israel. There is no doubt that for the early Christians Jesus "had the value and reality of God." This, however, does not mean that they thought Jesus "was God." It has been held by some that John presents Jesus in metaphysical terms which would appeal to people in the Greek world who thought in terms of abstract ideas familiar to Hellenistic thought. "Orthodoxy" claims John as its bridge to the world of Greek metaphysics -- the metaphysics which helped to mold the Jesus of the Church Councils. We suggest that we should first see if John can be readily understood in terms of his otherwise very Jewish approach. Why should we attempt to read John as though he were a student of the Jew Philo or of Gentile mystery religion? Why should John be claimed as a supporter of the dogmatic conclusions of the much later Church Councils? Should we not make sense of him from the Old Testament world of ideas? "What we do know," says a leading Bible scholar, "is that John was steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures. If we wish to understand the historical ancestry of John's Logos [word] concept as he himself understood it, we have to go back to those Scriptures" (C.J. Wright, "Jesus the Revelation of God," in The Mission and Message of Jesus: An Exposition of the Gospels in the Light of Modern Research, 1953, p. 677). It is a considerable mistake to read John 1:1 as though it means "In the beginning was the Son of God and the Son was with the Father and the Son was God." A similar very misleading paraphrase in the Living Bible reads: "Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is Himself God. He created everything there is -- nothing exists that He did not make" (John 1:1-2). THIS IS NOT WHAT JOHN WROTE! The German poet Goethe wrestled with a correction in translation: "In the beginning was the Word, the Thought, the Power or the Deed." He decided on "deed." He comes very close to John's intention. What the evangelist wanted to say was: "The Creative Thought of God has been operating from all eternity." As a leading British Bible scholar wrote, "When John presents the eternal Word he was not thinking of a Being in any way separate from God, or some 'Hypostasis.' The later dogmatic Trinitarian distinctions should not be read into John's mind....in the light of a philosophy which was not his....We must not read John in the light of the dogmatic history of the three centuries subsequent to the Evangelist's writing" (C.J. Wright, Jesus the Revelation of God, p. 707). To understand John (and the rest of the New Testament) we must pay close attention to John's cultural heritage which was not the world of Greek philosophy in which the dogmatic creeds were formed some three hundred years later. When John is read in the light of his Hebrew background he provides no support for the doctrine of a Jesus who is "God the Son," an eternal uncreated Person in a triune godhead: "An author's language will confuse us, unless we have some rapport with his mind....The evangelist John takes a well-known term logos, does not define it, but unfolds what he himself means by it....The idea belonged to the Old Testament, and is involved in the whole religious belief and experience of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is the most fitting term to express his message. For a man's 'word' is the expression of his 'mind'; and his mind is his essential 37

personality. Every mind must express itself, for activity is the very nature of mind....Thus John speaks of the 'Word' that was with God, and was Divine, to express his conviction that God has ever been Active and Revealing Mind. God, by His very nature, cannot sit in heaven and do nothing. When later in the Gospel Jesus says, 'My Father works up till now' he is saying what the Evangelist says in the first verse of the Prologue. "John's language is not the language of philosophical definition. John has a 'concrete' and 'pictorial' mind. The failure to understand John [in his prologue] has led many to the conclusion that he is 'father of metaphysical [i.e., Trinitarian] Christology,' and therefore responsible for the later ecclesiastical obscuration of the ethical and spiritual emphasis of Jesus....The evangelist did not think in terms of the category of 'substance' -- a category which was so congenial to the Greek mind" (ibid., pp. 707, 711). In an illuminating article in Biblical Review J. Harold Ellens points out that titles such as Son of God, as used at the time when the New Testament was written -"were never meant to designate the figures to whom they were applied as divine beings. They meant rather that these figures were imbued with divine spirit, or the Logos. The titles referred to their function and character as men of God, not to their being God. Thinking of a human as being God was strictly a Greek or Hellenistic notion. Thus the early theological debates from the middle of the second century on were largely between Antioch, a center of Jewish Christianity, on the one hand, and Alexandrian Christianity, heavily colored by neo-Plationic speculation, on the other. For the most part, the Jewish Christians' argument tended to be that they had known Jesus and his family and that he was a human being, a great teacher, one filled with the divine Logos...but that he was not divine in the ontological sense, as the Alexandrians insisted. The arguments persisted in one form or another until Cyril of Alexandria's faction finally won the day for a highly mythologized Jesus of divine ontological being. Cyril was capable of murdering his fellow bishops to get his way. "By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, this Alexandrian perspective of high Christology was dominant but not uncontested by the Antiochian perspective of low Christology. From Nicea to Chalcedon the speculative and neo-Platonist perspective gained in creasing ground and became orthodox Christian dogma in 451 CE. Unfortunately, what the theologians of the great ecumenical councils meant by such creedal titles as Son of God was remote from what those same titles meant in the Gospels. The creeds were speaking in Greek philosophical terms: the gospels were speaking in Second Temple Judaism terms....The Bishops of the councils should have realized that they had shifted ground from Hebrew metaphor to Greek ontology and in effect betrayed the real Jesus Christ." It is not difficult to understand that the Bible is abandoned when fundamental terms like Son of God are given new and unbiblical meanings. The Church Councils under the influence of Greek speculative neo-Platonism replaced the New Testament Son of God with a God the Son fashioned by philosophy. When a different meaning for a title is substituted for the original a new faith is created. That new faith became "orthodoxy." It insisted on its dogmas, on pain of excommunication and damnation (the Athanasian Creed). Nicean dogmatic "orthodoxy" lifted Jesus out of his Hebrew environment, twisted John's Gospel in an effort to make John fit into "orthodoxy's" 38

philosophical mold. And so it has remained to this day. A revolution is needed to reverse this tragic process. It will come when Christians take personal responsibility for getting in touch with the Bible and investigating it with all the tools now at our disposal. A key to proper biblical understanding is to recognize that the Bible is a Jewish library of books and that Jesus was a Jew steeped in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). The hidden paganism in Christianity needs to be exposed. The history of orthodoxy shows signs of a spirit which is far removed from the spirit of Jesus. Those who have questioned "orthodoxy" have often been roughly handled. For an illuminating example of misguided religious zeal and cruelty, see the account of Calvin's savage persecution and execution of the Spanish doctor and scholar who questioned the doctrine of the Trinity, in Marian Hillar, The Case of Michael Servetus (1511-1553): The Turning Point in the Struggle for Freedom of Conscience, 1997. One commentator asks: "How is it that the religion of love has been responsible for some of the worst cruelties and injustices that have ever disgraced humanity?....The church has persecuted more cruelly than any other religion....Our religious beliefs are propped up on the traditional scaffolding, and many of us are intensely annoyed if the stability of this scaffolding is called into question. The average Catholic [and the same applies to many Protestants] relies on the infallibility of his Church, which he has usually accepted without investigation. To own that his church has been wrong, and has sanctioned heinous crimes, is almost impossible for him" (Dean W.R. Inge, A Pacifist in Trouble, 1939, pp. 180, 181).

Monotheism
Neither Paul or any writer of the Bible ever stated that "there is One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit." No example out of thousands of occurrences of YEHOVAH (OT) and God (NT) can be shown to mean "God in two or three Persons." The Triune God -- and the Biune God before the birth of Christ -- is totally foreign to the Bible. The words of Paul need careful consideration: "There is no God but one....To us there is One God, the Father" (1 Corinthians 8:4, 6). There is also one Lord Messiah, Jesus (1 Corinthians 8:6), but He is the Lord Christ (Luke 2:11; Psalm 110:1), the Son of the One God, His Father. The two major players in the Bible are described in a precious, divine oracle quoted in the NT more than any other verse from the Hebrew Bible -- Psalm 110:1. There the One God "YEHOVAH" speaks to David's Lord, who is addressed as Adoni ("my Lord"). Adoni in its 167 occurrences never means the One God. It refers always to a human (or occasionally) angelic superior, other than God. Jesus is the Lord of David of whom Psalm 110:1 speaks. He was appointed Lord and Messiah -- appointed by God, his Father (Acts 2:34-36). Out of respect and honor for Jesus the Messiah, Christians should adopt his Jewish creed in Mark 12:28ff.: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." God is one Lord. Jesus is another Lord. That makes two Lords, but the creed knows of only one Lord who is God (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:28ff.). That is the creed of Jesus and therefore the original and authentic Christian creed. It is also the creed of Paul. May we all joyfully embrace that creed and align ourselves with the Jesus the Messiah of history.

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The Idol Shepherd of Zechariah

In the Book of Zechariah there is a little known prophecy about one who is called the "idol shepherd." This man is clearly the chief shepherd of an idolatrous and apostate church system, and he himself is an idol or object of worship within this system. In all the centuries since Zechariah, only one personality, or dynasty of men, fulfills this prophecy -- THE POPES OF ROME. This article uncovers the truth about the "idol shepherd" and the blasphemous doctrines he promotes.

John D. Keyser
Most people are acquainted with the concept of Yeshua as the Good Shepherd who gave up his life for the redemption of his Father's sheep. The sheep know his voice and they follow Yeshua as he leads them to eternal life -- and no man can pluck them out of his hand. However, in the Book of Zechariah we find a little known, and even less understood, prophecy about one who is described as being the "idol shepherd," one whose entire description is the direct opposite of all that the Bible teaches us in relation to the Good Shepherd -And YEHOVAH said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd. For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that which is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces. Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened (Zechariah 11:15-17). The Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament renders these verses as follows: And YEHOVAH said to me, Take yet to thee shepherd's implements belonging to an unskillful shepherd. For, behold, I will raise up a shepherd against the land: he shall not visit that which is perishing, and he shall not seek that which is scattered, and he shall not heal that which is bruised, nor guide that which is whole: but he shall devour the flesh of the choice ones, and shall dislocate the joints of their necks. Alas, for the vain shepherds that have forsaken the sheep! the sword shall be upon the arms of such a one, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be completely withered, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened. Then, in the Jewish Tanakh, we read -40

YEHOVAH said to me further: Get yourself the gear of a foolish shepherd. For I am going to raise up in the land a shepherd who will neither miss the lost [sheep], nor seek the strayed, nor heal the injured, nor sustain the frail, but will feast on the flesh of the fat ones and tear off their hoofs. Oh, the worthless shepherd who abandons the flock! Let a sword descend upon his arm and upon his right eye! His arm shall shrivel up; his right eye shall go blind. The Word of YEHOVAH -- which came by such prophets as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel -- frequently warns us against such false shepherds who are nothing but wolves in sheep's clothing, hirelings who seek to deceive and destroy the very elect of YEHOVAH. In these few verses Zechariah warns us against one false, cruel and deceptive shepherd in particular -- one who by his total inability to perform the duty of a spiritual shepherd, shows that he is in fact a stranger to, and an enemy of, the good news of the Kingdom of YEHOVAH. This false shepherd is indicted first of all for the tasks he has failed to do: He has failed to heal the injured, sustain the flock or minister to the very needs of those who are "lost sheep" -- obviously a reference to the House of Israel, the cast off, divorced, dispersed people of YEHOVAH, put away for their sins and described by the prophet Hosea as Lo Ammi -- "not My people." Instead, this false shepherd has taken care of his own needs and desires, feeding himself and those loyal to him, while at the same time discarding YEHOVAH's true flock and actually turning upon the flock and devouring them. This personality is, then, more clearly described by the use of the all-important expression: the IDOL shepherd. He is not merely the chief shepherd of an idolatrous and apostate church system, but he himself is actually set up as an IDOL -- or object of worship within that system. In all the centuries since the time of Zechariah until now, only one person -- or to be more accurate, one dynasty of men -- fits the description given: THE POPES OF ROME. In order to demonstrate this more clearly, we must now look at the IDOL SHEPHERD -1. 2. 3. 4. Feeding himself at the expense of the flock. Devouring the flock. His system of idolatry. He himself as an idol.

Following this, we will go on to examine YEHOVAH's judgment pronounced upon the idol shepherd.

Feeding Himself at the Expense of the Flock

Roman Catholicism is not merely a monolithic religious system, or a world-wide political conspiracy, it is also a system based upon greed and the love of money -- the very thing Yeshua said was the root of every evil. Truly it can be said that the popes of Rome have "feasted on the flesh of the fat"! One of the chief means by which the Papacy has enriched itself at the expense of the people is by means of the pagan doctrine of Purgatory. By this heinous teaching -- first proclaimed an Article of Faith in 1439 by the Council of Florence and subsequently confirmed in 1548 by the Council of Trent -- the Church of Rome teaches that all who die at peace with the church, but who are not perfect (pretty much most of us!) must suffer purification in a mythical intermediate state, or place for departed spirits. 41

The Creed of Pope Pius IV states -"I constantly hold that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful." Bellarmine taught that -"There is absolutely no doubt that the pains of purgatory...endure for entire centuries." Thomas Aquinas claimed that -"It is the same fire that torments the reprobate in Hell and the just in Purgatory." This very Satanic doctrine has often been referred to as "pick-pocket purgatory" and the "gold mine of the Papacy" because, in order to release their unfortunate loved ones whom they believe to be in this place of torment, deceived Roman Catholics will pay the priest to say special masses to release the souls from Purgatory. Money -- often large amounts -- is set aside by faithful Catholics when alive, in order to obtain their quick release from the prison house of souls. Frequently during their lifetime, devout Catholics will go on pilgrimages to IDOL-SHRINES and supposed holy places, hoping to earn merit which will reduce the time spent in purgatory. And, of course, all of these things can be obtained at a price! Salvation is for sale in the Roman Church and, by this cruel deceit, the Papacy -- the IDOL SHEPHERD of Zechariah -- has amassed a fortune running into the billions. Closely linked with the doctrine of Purgatory is the belief in INDULGENCES -- pardons for sin that can be earned or purchased in this life. It was this horribly corrupt practice, advocated throughout Germany by the monk Tetzel in order to raise money for the building of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, that impelled Martin Luther to nail his famous Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in Wittenburg and thus launch the Reformation in Europe. In case anyone thinks this rotten practice of indulgences ended with the Middle Ages, let us read what the authoritative Twentieth Century Roman Catholic book The Question Box has to say -"An Indulgence...is a remission of the whole, or part of the temporal punishment due to forgiven sin, granted by the Pope and the Bishops out of the Church's spiritual treasure, which is made up of the infinite redemptive merits of Jesus Christ, AND, the superabundant merits of the saints." Indulgences can be bought for saying the Rosary, wearing the Agnus Dei, or the Scapular of the Blessed Simon Stock, or you can share in the storehouse of merit by joining the Confraternity of the Miraculous Medal, or the Society of the Perpetual Novena. In times past Indulgences were even given to those who murdered Protestants and Church of God brethren in the name of the Catholic Church -"a plenary Indulgence was offered to all who took up arms against the Hussites, Albigenses and Waldenses" (Catholic Dictionary, p. 442).

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In addition to this, the Roman Catholic Church has reaped rich financial rewards from such events as the "Holy Year" and pilgrimages to shrines, e.g. Lourdes, Fatima and even places like Knock in Ireland. These have become big financial tourist businesses. There can be little doubt that the IDOL SHEPHERD in the Vatican has fed and enriched himself and his hierarchy at the expense of his poor, spiritually deluded flock.

Devouring the Flock

Not only is the Papacy of Rome a system which is characterized by inordinate greed, corruption and vast wealth, but it is a system infamous for its cruelty and persecuting zeal. This, as we shall see, fits perfectly into Zechariah's description of he "shall dislocate the joints of their necks" -- tearing in pieces those who fall under his control. The burning of heretics was first decreed in the Seventh Century and the bloodthirsty Inquisition was established by the Pope of Rome to stamp out all opposition to his dictatorial rule and his false doctrines. This Inquisition was responsible for burning and torturing MILLIONS of Protestant and Church of God martyrs. At its tribunals, the accused were denied all legal representation and they never knew the identity of their accusers. Torture of the most horrific kind -- including stretching people on the rack and "dislocating their necks" -- was used for days on end to obtain confessions -- and those convicted were usually tortured again after their trials in order to obtain evidence against their family and friends. Far from repenting of these disgusting crimes, twentieth century Roman Catholic spokesmen have defended them, saying -"Far from being inhuman, they (the Inquisitors) were as a rule, men of spotless character and...admirable sanctity...not a few have been canonized by the Church" (Catholic Encyclopedia, VIII 31). And -"There is nothing exceptionally cruel or intolerant about the statute...which provided that heretics convicted before a spiritual court and refusing to recant, were to be handed over to the secular arm and burnt" (ibid., V 441). I wonder what sort of "spiritual court" they are talking about here? Certainly NOT YEHOVAH's court! In addition to such "legalized" persecution, the Catholic Church was responsible for inciting crusades, wars and civil wars which resulted in the cruel slaughter of more tens of thousands of Protestants and Church of God people. In the book The Israel of the Alps we read in detail of the fierce persecution of the Vaudois or Waldensians by the forces of the IDOL SHEPHERD. Here are a few extracts to illustrate our point: One Bernadino Cento was covered with pitch, and burned alive in the market place of Consenza. Another martyr, Mazzone, was stripped naked, his body shredded with iron whips, and the mangled frame then beaten to death with lighted brands. Some victims were flayed alive, and some flung from a tower summit. One of the latter named Samson, was a young man of prodigious strength. As his mangled body, still breathing, lay on the 43

ground, the Viceroy passed and inquired, "What carrion is this?" "It is a heretic who will not die," was the answer. With a kick at the dying man's head, the Viceroy said, "Let the pigs come and eat him." Soon the barbarous order was executed, and the poor creature had to suffer the pain of his flesh being torn from his body by the unclean beasts, set on him by a beast more unclean and foul than they. Since the days of the 1641 massacre the land of Ireland has witnessed many wars of genocide designed to drive the Protestant population into the sea. One such time of murder and mayhem occurred during the 1790s when the Irish Protestants suffered cruelly at the hands of the Roman Catholic persecutors called the "Defenders." The historian Sibbett records that -civilians were mistreated, cattle maimed and crops destroyed...the most shocking barbarities were perpetrated in the County of Louth and neighbouring counties. In one year the Defenders plundered the homes of 180 Protestant families. These attacks culminated in what is called the Forkhill Massacre, a fiendish attack by Catholics on the home of Alexander Barclay -- the Protestant schoolmaster in the village of Forkhill in South Armagh. On the night of February 1, 1791, a gang of armed Roman Catholics burst into his home, cut out his tongue and chopped off the fingers and thumb of his right hand. They did the same to his wife, and also hacked off her breasts -- an injury from which she died. Her brother also had his tongue cut out and the calves of his legs hacked away. Not improving with time, it was in this very area that Catholics slew several Protestant families in one night in 1922 in the infamous "Slaughter of Altnaveigh" and it is in this same district of South Armagh that the Roman Catholic terrorists of the I.R.A., I.N.L.A. and the "Catholic Reaction Force" have waged a war of genocide over the past many years, killing the heads of Protestant households, and participating in such bloody atrocities as the massacres of Whitecross, Tullyvallen and Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church, where Protestants were slain as they worshipped. Without a doubt -- Rome never changes.

His System of Idolatry

Not only is Catholicism a system of cruelty and greed, but the chief characteristic of the whole Papal organization is BASE IDOLATRY, hence the inspired Zechariah calls the Papacy the IDOL SHEPHERD. The worship of images, idols and religious relics is a heathen practice clearly forbidden in the Word of YEHOVAH. For some three centuries after Yeshua, the early Christians chose martyrdom rather than participate in idolatry. But when Christianity became the state religion under Constantine, all this began to change. The heathen temples became "Christian" churches, the pagan idols were given the names of Saints and were soon being venerated. The pagan worship of the mother goddess, which had originated in the city of Babylon and spread to pagan Rome as the cult of Cybele, now evolved into the worship of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven. It was in the city of Ephesus -- infamous for its worship of the goddess Diana -- that a Church Council, in 431 A.D., declared Mary to be the "Mother of God." As the idolatrous practices spread and increased throughout so-called Christendom, they received official legality in 788 A.D. at the Second Council of Nicea.

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In these Ecumenical times, the Vatican seeks to conceal and deny idol worship within its church, but the decrees of the church make its position crystal clear -"I most firmly assert that the images of Christ and the Mother of God...and also of the other saints, are to be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration are to be given to them" (Creed of Pope Pius IV). Also -"It is also right to honour the sacred images of Jesus Christ, and of the Saints...We also honour the relics of the Saints" (Compendium of Pope Pius X). And further -"The Saints reigning together with Christ are to be honoured and invocated that they offer up prayers to God for us, their relics are to be venerated" (Creed of Pope Pius IV). Not to be outdone by the Papacy we find the following -"Besides honouring the Saints directly in themselves, we also honour them indirectly in their relics and images...the Church requires the relics of the Saints to be inserted in all altars where Holy Mass is offered" (Students Catholic Doctrine by C. Hert). "The Commandment does not forbid the making of images" (The Catechism, Canon Cafferata). "The Saints...together with Christ are to be honoured and invoked because they offer prayers to God for us" (ibid.). Many Roman Catholic Catechisms purposely omit the Second Commandment forbidding image worship, and seek to conceal this by splitting the Tenth into two parts. Rome even seeks to divide worship into three distinct types: 1. LATRIA -- To be given to God. 2. DULIA -- To be given to the Saints. 3. HYPERDULIA -- To be given to the Virgin Mary. In spite of all denials to the contrary, Catholic handbooks and manuals of worship clearly expose the facts. In the Good Friday Service of Adoration of the Cross, we read -"Behold the wood of the Cross -- Come let us adore...We adore thy Cross...Sweet wood, sweet nails...Hail then, O Cross!" In St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral of New York can be found the following prayer to Saint Theresa -45

"Saint Theresa who...became a mirror of angelic purity...cast a glance of pity on us as we leave all things in thy hands. Make our troubles your own, speak a word for us to our Lady Immaculate...beg her as Queen...by her powerful intercession, to obtain for us the graces we yearn for." The devotion goes on: "Little Theresa of the Child Jesus, remember your promise to make good things on earth. Drop your shower of roses over all in need." To add to this blasphemy, we are told -"The person who finds this prayer should copy it 20 times, and bring it to a church each time. On the 11th time, your prayers will be answered." Catholic idolatry reaches new heights in the worship of the Virgin Mary. The present Pope John Paul II has made a point of visiting idolatrous Marian shrines around the world to show his devotion to this pagan tradition. In May 1982 he visited the Fatima Shrine in Portugal to show his gratitude to Our Lady of Fatima for supposedly saving his life from assassins the previous year. And, on March 25, 1984, he held a special ceremony in Rome to consecrate the entire world to Mary. Special groups are set up within Roman Catholicism to encourage Marian devotion. These include The Legion of Mary, The Archconfraternity of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, The Central Association of the Miraculous Medal, and the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima. Roman Catholics are encouraged to participate in the Rosary devotions in which ten times as many prayers are given to Mary as to YEHOVAH. The book The Glories of Mary, by the Roman Catholic "Saint" Alphonsus Liguari, goes as far as to state: "We often obtain more promptly what we ask by calling on Mary, than on Jesus." What blasphemy! We could go on and on to give many more examples of blasphemous and idolatrous worship of the Virgin, the Saints and their images and relics -- but this article would get out of hand if we did!

The Pope Himself As an Idol!

Probably the very depths of idolatry are reached in the iniquity of Romanism with the worship of a sinful man, the Pope. When the Pope is crowned the following words are addressed to him -"Receive this Tiara, adorned with three crowns, and know that Thou art Father of Kings and Princes, Ruler of the World and Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth." At the enthronement of this so-called Vicar of Yeshua, the Pope is lifted up by the Cardinals and made to sit upon the High Altar in St. Peter's Basilica. The Cardinals in their Scarlet and Purple Vestments, kneel before the newly elected Pontiff and kiss his feet, hands and face --

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worshipping him as a god. This takes place at least five times during the ceremony, which is called the Adoration. It is important to realize that the High Altar in St. Peter's Basilica is the very place where the Reserved Sacrament, Rome's Wafer God of flour and water which they inform us has been changed into the body and blood of Yeshua, is kept and adored. When the Pope is enthroned ABOVE the High Altar and its Wafer God, he ceases to be merely a false shepherd and becomes the IDOL SHEPHERD OF ZECHARIAH'S PROPHECY, accepting the highest place of honor, veneration and worship that can be given to a mortal man. It is also interesting to note that while sitting as a god above the High Altar, his feet, hands and face are kissed. Kissing as a religious exercise is one of the oldest known forms of idolatry, and it can be found mentioned in Job 31:27 -- where Job declares that he has not been guilty of joining in the pagan practice of kissing his hand to the sun. We should also note that the kissing of idols and images was practiced by the worshippers of Baal in the days of Elijah. Listen to what YEHOVAH actually told the prophet -"I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him" (1 Kings 19). It should therefore be obvious that the kissing of the Pope is nothing but a continuation of the ancient idolatrous worship associated with the heathen god Baal. At the coronation of Pope Innocent X, the following words were addressed to him: "Most Holy and blessed father, head of the church, ruler of the world, to whom the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are committed, whom the angels in Heaven adore, and the gates of hell fear, and all the world adores, we especially venerate, worship and adore thee." There can be no doubt that the whole dynasty of popes fulfills the prophecy of the IDOL SHEPHERD.

The Doom of the Idol Shepherd

Zechariah leaves us on a note of encouragement -- assuring us that the IDOL SHEPHERD is destined to doom and destruction. The prophet writes that -"The sword shall be upon his arm and upon his right eye, his arm shall be clean dried up, and his eye shall be utterly darkened." There was a time when the popes of Rome ruled over Western Europe, holding undisputed sway and excommunicating and overthrowing kings and emperors at will. Such was the power of the Papacy that one particular pope boasted: "I can do almost all that God can do."

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The arm and the eye of the IDOL SHEPHERD symbolize the spiritual and political power of the Papacy, and both of these have indeed been darkened, consumed and dried up since the time of the Reformation. YEHOVAH's Word, the Bible, has been freely distributed leading multitudes of Roman Catholics out of the cage of the IDOL SHEPHERD and into the fold of YEHOVAH's true church. Internally, the modern Papacy faces revolt and dissent at every turn within the ranks of both clergy and laity. The nations that once wielded the sword on behalf of the Vatican -- Spain, Portugal, France and Italy -- are now democratic countries within the framework of modern Europe. In February 1984, many of the special privileges granted to the Vatican by Mussolini under the Lateran Treaty of 1929 were stripped away. We are living in the prophetic era which will see the "stripping and burning" of the harlot church system spoken of in Revelation 17 and 18. Soon Yeshua will return to gather up the lost sheep of the House of Israel and his Father YEHOVAH will return shortly thereafter in His Shekinah Glory to finally destroy what remains of the Papal IDOL SHEPHERD by the "brightness of His coming." Until that day we must continue our witness to all people that salvation is to be found in YEHOVAH God alone through His High Priest Yeshua the Messiah. Salvation cannot be found in any pope, priest or pastor, not in any image, idol, saint or miraculous medal. "For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which [or through which] we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Telltale Signs of A Cult

1. 2. It encourages isolation -- both intellectual and social. It promotes leaders who claim a special, exclusive ministry, revelation or position of authority from YEHOVAH. It teaches that the group is the only true church, or maintains a critical stance regarding established Christianity while consistently praising and exalting its own leaders and ministry. Use of intimidation by warning that members who leave the group will go to hell or suffer some other calamity. It requires that members give substantial portions of their income to the group or leaders. Emphasis is on loyalty to the church, resulting in almost total absorption on one's life into its activities. It exercises control by the leadership of the private lives of group members. It discourages dissent or any questioning of the leaders teachings or directives. Criticism, even if constructive, is redefined as rebellion. Emphasis on authority, obedience and submission is vigilantly maintained. Demonstrations of loyalty to the leader and to the group are expected.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. Attempts to leave the group or reveal embarrassing facts about the group or its leaders are met with threats. Refugees of the group are faced with confrontations by cult adherents who encourage or coerce them back into the group's control. -- Taken from William F. Dankenbring's Prophecy Flash magazine.

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The House of Israel

Scotland's Clans
Parallels with Patriarchal Practice in Israel
"This land you must divide among yourselves, the clans of Israel." This is Moffatt's rendering of the relevant passage in the 47th chapter of Ezekiel. It relates easily to ancient Scottish usage. The family is, and must ever be, the Divinely ordained nucleus of human society. It is mysteriously exemplified in the Nature of God in the Person of the Father and the son. "Clan" simply means "children" as being the natural extension of the family, and consisting of kinsfolk who are united by blood relationship in a common lineage. Community life is organised under the rule of hereditary chiefs descended from the original founder. The Scriptures make it clear that the clan is Divinely ordained. God's people of Israel, whether they approve or not, are divided into clans descended from the sons of Jacob. This ordered development of the family has never been superseded by God. The destiny of His Israelites in the present Latter Days is foretold according to their clans. It is difficult for these to be recognized after the millennia of transition; but the changes which they have undergone through the centuries cannot conceal them from the Omniscient Creator. In the Ezekiel prophecy and the Revelation vision, the clan system is shown as being intact at the end of the age with the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem named after the clans of Israel. Could anything be more positive? In Scotland, at least, this Divinely ordained system has continues through the ages and still survives. Although scattered throughout the world, clan societies still keep the ancient loyalties and traditions alive. Gaelic, the ancient tongue of the Highlander still thrives, as the yearly mod testifies. The Hebrew word Moed means an assembly. The ancient Highland Games are still popular. In pre-Christian times, Scotland was inhabited by a multitude of clans, each with its territory, chief and Druid. The chiefs came under the provincial righ -- the district king. The Druids -- priests, bards and lawgivers -- were an order of hierarchy organised in a college under a chief Druid, faithful successors of Israel's Levites. The Scottish clans, like Homer's Achaeans and Danaans, were not democratic, but aristocratic. There was no democratic election of chiefs: the chief himself appointed his successor. A dying chief would call for his successor and bestow his blessing upon him, just as Jacob did to his sons. The Celtic Church followed the same Israelite custom. At Iona, of the first eleven abbots, nine were of the same family as Columba who was, of course, of royal blood. Columba chose his cousin Baithene, to be his successor.

Head of the Clan

A clan chief had his "Ard Chillean an Tighe" (gentleman of the household), generally consisting of "A Seanachaidh" -- the genealogist of the Chief's house; "Am Bard" -- the bard; "An Clarsair" -- the harper; "Am Fear Sporain" the treasurer; "Am Fear Braitaich" -- the standard-bearer; "Am Piobaire" -- the piper; "An Gille More" -- the sword or armour-bearer; "An Cupair" -the cup-bearer; "An Cleasaiche" -- the jester. Tribal bards were still in existence in many clans as late as the 18th century. The ancient office of RiSeannachie with supreme jurisdiction in genealogy and preserving the royal pedigree evolved into the present Lord Lyon King of Arms. The inauguration of a new chief was a richly traditional service. It took place at a sacred stone (a true Israelite custom indeed) on which was carved the clan's heraldic emblem. The chief, dressed in white, was led to the stone and presented to the assembled clan. A religious service was held with an address suited to the occasion. Then the bard gave an oration, dramatically describing in verse the exploits of the chief's ancestors and the history of the clan. Then the Seannachie delivered the insignia, the rod and sword to the new chief and, falling on bended knee, recited the genealogy in Gaelic. Then he proclaimed: "The blessing of God on thee." The clansmen shouted: "God bless him!" Then the chief gave an oath to be a loving father to the people.

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The clan, being a family with the chief as its father, encouraged a personal relationship between its members which was very different from the modern development of the State with its impersonal bureaucratic control. The aristocracy of the clans was similar to that of Homer's ancient Greeks with their intimate relationship between nobles and people, characterised by respect and dignity without servility. The snobbery which has so bedevilled modern society had no place in the patriarchal benevolence of the clan. The law of succession amongst the clans was closely related to the Divine law of succession given to Israel and recorded in the 27th chapter of Numbers. Under Celtic law women could own land and a woman could be a chief. Chieftainship of a clan was transmissible through a female, as with the Zelophehal law in ancient Israel. Any attempt to introduce the Euro-Babylonian Salic Law in Scotland has inevitably been repudiated as alien to her traditions. The distinctive Highland dress did not originate in Scotland but was brought by early colonisers, as the sculptured stones testify. Virgil describes the tartan garments worn by the Celts: "Their cloaks are striped and shining." Tartan, a man's status within the clan was shown by the number of colours he wore. Servants wore one colour; farmers -- two; officers -- three; chieftain -- five; Druids -- six; the king -- seven. The ancient Celtic Church continued the tradition and the clergy wore a quiet tartan. The original use of tartan in this manner perhaps throws light on the seemingly unaccountable jealousy aroused by the "coat of many colours" bestowed -- perhaps prematurely -- by Jacob on his favourite son, Joseph. In their ministry, the clergy of the Scottish Church wore a tartan robe consisting of eight colours to signify that when engaged in spiritual matters their power was above that of the king. In the Communion, the sacred vessels were covered with two tartan veils which related the sacrament to the clan. The wearing of tartan by the clergy was banned by the Reformers who, unfortunately, were unable to discern between Roman and Celtic traditions. Eventually the chieftain's tartan became that of the clan and was worn by all its members. The bagpipes have been a favourite instrument with the Scots from earliest times. Some historians believe that they were used in the Temple at Jerusalem. An old tradition relates that the shepherds who were present at

the Nativity expressed their joy on the bagpipes. The ancient name for the instrument was pythaula, a word of ancient Greek origin. It is significant that the Celtic word is piob-mhala. A terracotta dated 200 B.C., on which was portrayed a piper, was found at Tarsus. Another was discovered in ancient Nineveh. A Greek sculpture shows a piper, dressed like a Scottish Highlander. A similar portrayal is found on Greek coins. Athenian shepherds played bagpipes and ancient historians claim that they were invented in Arcadia. A stone found near Boness in 1870 showed a party of Roman soldiers dressed in kilts being led by a piper. Of course, many Celts served in the Roman armies. The heraldry of the Scottish clans is considered by many to be the purest in Europe. Experts agree that armory began on tribal standards and was reproduced on shields. We know from Scripture that the tribes of Israel had standards with emblems appropriate to "their father's house." Many references to such standards are found in ancient Celtic poetry and history. Every clan chieftain had his An Brataich -- hereditary standardbearer. Many of the emblems found in clan heraldry -the lion; the wolf; the bull; the eagle; the unicorn; the serpent; the hart; stars, arrows, galleys, mountains, thistles and battle-axes are undoubtedly Scriptural emblems used by Israel. The coming of Christianity did not greatly affect clan customs. The Celtic Church was a clan church: hereditary and monarchistic rather than episcopal. Historians have compared the Druids and Celtic clergy with the Levitical priesthood. It is obvious that there was little opposition by the Druids to Christianity. Their religion was closer to Christianity than was any other. One possible reason for this high standard of the Celtic clergy is that many of them had been Druids from noble families, with centuries of hereditary religious tradition behind them. The traditions of both the Druids and the Celtic Church were deeply rooted in their past and many of them go back, surely, to the clans of Jacob -his tribe of Israel. -- W.F. Finlayson

The Tribal Emblems of Israel

Though short, the blessing of Asher does promise him some pleasant things, as we read in Genesis 49:20, "Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties." Just what is meant by "royal dainties" is uncertain, but in that day it seems that they would

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include wine, and this would require a cup or some similar vessel to put it in. From this came Asher's emblem, a covered Cup or Goblet. The blessing given to Issachar is recorded in verse 14. Of him it states: "Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens." Here we see that the animal to which he is likened, and which became the emblem of the tribe descended from him, was a Laden Ass. The blessing given to Zebulun is recorded in verse 13. It says: "Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for an haven of ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon." Although this does not actually liken him to any animal or object, it certainly relates him to a haven or harbour and to ship traffic, and thus to ships. As it would be difficult to picture either a harbour or ship traffic on an ensign or banner, the alternate was to represent Zebulun as a Ship, and so a Ship became the emblem of the Tribe of Zebulun. Strangely enough, however, the territory allotted to the Tribe of Zebulun in ancient Israel was inland. It had no harbour and apparently did not touch the sea at any point. It would seem, therefore, that this blessing was prophetic of some future time, after Zebulun had left Palestine. In considering the blessing given to Joseph we must remember that his descendants were divided into two tribes, bearing the names of his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh. Consequently, the blessing given to Joseph was in part inherited by both of these tribes, and in part divided between them. The part of the blessing which concerns our study is recorded in verses 22-24, where we read: "Joseph is a faithful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall: the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." Joseph is here likened to a Bough or Branch, which, in view of other statements in the Bible referring to Israel as an Olive Tree (Romans 11:24), has always been understood to be an Olive Branch. In the next verse enemy archers are said to shoot at Joseph and, as the archers shoot arrows, it follows that there is an implied relationship between him and some Arrows.

Later, in his blessing of the descendants of Joseph, Moses said: "His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh" (Deut. 33:17). Here Joseph is likened to an Ox and to a Unicorn. We should also note the repetition of, and emphasis on, the word "horns." In the blessing given by Moses, therefore, we see that Joseph is likened or related to an Ox, a Unicorn and a Horn. When these are added to the things to which he is likened in the blessing given him by his father Jacob, we see that Joseph is likened or related to: an Olive Branch, some Arrows, an Ox, a Unicorn and a Horn. These were then inherited by and divided between Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, with the Ox, the Unicorn and the Horn becoming the emblems of the Tribe of Ephraim, and the Olive Branch and a Bundle of Arrows the emblems of the Tribe of Manasseh. In blessing Benjamin, the youngest of his sons, Jacob said, as recorded in verse 27: "Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil." In this blessing Benjamin is definitely likened to a wolf, and so a wolf became the emblem of Benjamin and of the tribe descended from him. In considering the various animals, objects and other things mentioned in Jacob's prophetic blessings of his sons, it is important to note that, while each of them was likened or related to some one animal or object, or to some personal characteristic, which then became his official emblem, some of them were likened or related to more than one. Consequently, some of the tribes had only one emblem while others had two or more. These are listed on the next page. In the list, under the heading "Primary Emblems," we see the official emblems of the Twelve Tribes as displayed on their ensigns in accordance with the command: "Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch...with the ensign of their father's house." Those listed under the heading "Secondary Emblems" are the additional likenesses mentioned in connection with some of the tribes in the blessings given by Jacob and later by Moses or, as in the case of Simeon, they were adopted to commemorate some historic event. These were not the official emblems of the tribes and,

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THE EMBLEMS OF THE TWELVE TRIBES Primary REUBEN SIMEON JUDAH DAN NAPHTALI GAD A Man A Sword A Lion A Serpent A Hind or Stag The Leader of a Troop (sometimes a number of Tents) ASHER A Covered Goblet ISSACHAR An Ass under a Burden ZEBULUN A Ship MANASSEH An Olive Branch EPHRAIM An Ox BENJAMIN A Wolf
so far as we have been able to discover, were not used during the early years of Israel's history. Nevertheless, these secondary emblems would not be forgotten. Later, in some cases, they were used by a section of a tribe to distinguish it from the rest and, in one or two cases, secondary emblems of one tribe became the recognized emblem of a group of tribes. A count of the emblems as listed above shows twelve official or primary emblems and twelve secondary ones. Actually, the lions listed as secondary emblems of Dan and Gad, being indistinguishable from Judah's primary emblem, were not ordinarily used. Thus the total number of tribal emblems actually used was twenty-two. That all of these would survive the early emigration from Israel, the later downfall and deportation of the Israel nation and nearly three thousand years of war, separation and migration is very unlikely. Yet the amazing thing is that of these twenty-two tribal emblems of ancient Israel, at least nineteen are, or until very recently have been, emblems of one or another section of the Celto-Saxon people. As history records few, if any, instances of a family, tribe or people willfully adopting the emblem of

Secondary REUBEN SIMEON JUDAH A Body of Water A Castle Gate Three Lions, a Sceptre, and a Grape Vine DAN A Horse, and a Lion GAD A Lion MANASSEH A Bundle of Arrows, and the Number 13 EPHRAIM A Unicorn, and a Lion

anyone else as their own, it follows that if we find people using one of Israel's tribal emblems today it is certainly possible that they are, at least in part, descendants of "lost" Israel. If, however, we find a people using two or three of these emblems, their Israelitish origin becomes something more than a possibility. But if we find a people, or group of related peoples, using nearly all of these emblems and that they have done so as far back as their historical records and legends go, then their Israelitish origin is no longer a possibility or even a probability, it is a certainty. -- W.H. Bennett

The Emblem of Royal Judah

Judah was the leading tribe of the "brigade" which included Issachar and Zebulon. They marched, and camped together on the east side of Israel's foursquare Wilderness complex. The Royal Lion of Judah was the emblem of emblems. It moved westwards with the migrations through the territories known to antiquity as "Scythia." It appeared, through intermarriage, with the leaders of those nations. Today -- most of their thrones having been "cast down," as prophesied by Daniel -- it stands supreme as the chief heraldic symbol of the surviving House of Judah in Britain and the Commonwealth.

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Rejoice in YEHOVAH's Sabbath Day!

Many ask, "How should I keep YEHOVAH's Sabbath day?" This article gives you the principles that will enable you to observe YEHOVAH's Sabbath day as He intended. Yeshua the Messiah said, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27). He didn't say it was made for the Jew, but for man -- for all human beings everywhere on earth. Since the Sabbath was made for man, it was made when man was made -- during creation week. Read the account in Genesis 2:2-3: "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he RESTED on the SEVENTH DAY from all his wok which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." In Exodus 20:8-11, we read YEHOVAH's instruction about the Sabbath -- the fourth of YEHOVAH's Ten Commandments or Words: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

Sabbath a Special Sign

The Sabbath is very special to YEHOVAH. It is a memorial of creation -- a special sign -identifying YEHOVAH as Creator and those who keep it as His people. Notice Exodus 31:14-17: "Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you....Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. "It is a SIGN between me and the children of Israel forever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed."

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Throughout much of their history, YEHOVAH's people -- ancient Israel -- rebelled against YEHOVAH, and failed to observe the Sabbath. They ignored it and trampled all over it. Notice: "Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths....But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness...and my sabbaths they greatly polluted..." (Ezekiel 20:12-13). Because of this sin, the ten tribes of the House of Israel went into captivity and lost their identity. They became known as Gentiles, because they forgot YEHOVAH's Sabbath!

People Punished for Sabbath-Breaking

YEHOVAH warned the people of Jerusalem that if they did not keep His Sabbath holy, He would destroy the city. "But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched" (Jeremiah 17:27). The people did not listen. They continued to break the Sabbath. The result was the sacking and destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and the capture of its citizens (Jeremiah 52:12-30). After a number of years YEHOVAH brought some of the House of Judah back to Jerusalem. The people rebuilt the city and acknowledged the Sabbath. But even then, many began to break the Sabbath. Nehemiah "contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? "Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath" (Nehemiah 13:17-18).

Men Make Sabbath a Burden

Upon receiving Nehemiah's correction most of the people repented and began observing YEHOVAH's Sabbath. However, human nature has a tendency of going to extremes. After the death of Nehemiah, religionists in their zeal to keep the Sabbath holy began to legislate in minute detail what a person could and could not do on the Sabbath day. By contrast, YEHOVAH had given the people basic spiritual principles and expected them to apply those principles accordingly. "Not good enough," said the Pharisees, the leading religious party. "The people don't have the knowledge, understanding and wisdom to do that. We must tell the people what they may do and what they may not do." And the Pharisees did just that. They established thirty-nine (39) main categories of prohibited work alone. This was done to effect a norm for Sabbath observance that would be universal. Speaking of the rabbis who enacted these rules, Rabbi Solomon Goldman, in his book A Guide to the Sabbath, says on page 28: "Uniformity, they believed, could be achieved, not by the enunciation of general principles, but by sharp and detailed demarcation of the areas of what is 54

forbidden and what is permitted, by prescribing even for the remote contingency, by governing the apparent trivial circumstances of daily life and by strict definition of terms. Life itself, they felt, 'consists of a multitude of minimals.'" However pure their motives (and there is some doubt about that) and desirable their objectives the rabbis, by their strict legislation, caused the Sabbath day to become an institution of itself. They made the Sabbath a BURDEN, not a blessing for man as YEHOVAH designed it.

Sabbath Made to Serve Man

Yeshua said the Sabbath was made for you (Mark 2:27). You were not made for the Sabbath. It was made for you, to help you, to enable you to live a happier and more abundant life. It was not made to be a burden. YEHOVAH did not intend for a human being to so fret and worry about breaking the Sabbath that he would fear to do anything on that day. That is why this article is not an encyclopedic compilation of do's and don'ts for every possible situation which might arise on a Sabbath day. Our Creator knew that we would need a period of rest from our normal duties every seventh day. Each of us tends to become overly absorbed in our daily cares during the week. YEHOVAH foresaw this. He set aside the Sabbath day as a time when we can completely forget our routine work. Then we can spend more time on those activities which help us better understand our relationship with YEHOVAH. From the very beginning, YEHOVAH intended His Sabbath to be a day of joy and supreme delight -- a special day of blessing and happiness!

What Does It Mean to "Rest"?

YEHOVAH is concerned with two overall aspects of your life on the Sabbath. First, he wants your time to be free from responsibilities and activities. Secondly, he wants your mind free from thinking about those daily responsibilities and activities. This makes you FREE to properly worship YEHOVAH God on this day. Certainly we can physically rest more on the Sabbath. But the main emphasis is to "rest" from your normal toil and activities on this day. You should serve YEHOVAH with your mind on the Sabbath. Those who can't or don't control their minds call the Sabbath "bondage." They eagerly wait for the end of the Sabbath to be about their ways and pleasures which they have been thinking about all day long anyway! Once you are able, on the Sabbath, to get your mind and thoughts on YEHOVAH's purpose and YEHOVAH's ways, you will find out what a real delight and joy the Sabbath is! "Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord" (Isaiah 58:14). How do you accomplish this? Devote the additional free Sabbath time you have to extra Bible study, extra prayer and extra meditation! This is the one day of the week when you don't have to worry about getting to the job, making payments, building fences, working out schedules, cleaning house. Remember, we are to take care of ALL our responsibilities during the rest of the week. 55

But the Sabbath day is free time -- free from all your daily cares and worries -- free to be completely absorbed in YEHOVAH and His Word.

YEHOVAH's Instruction
Notice YEHOVAH's positive instruction on the Sabbath: "If thou turn away thy foot [that is, don't trample on it] from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord" (Isaiah 58:13-14). Let's understand the principle of Isaiah 58:13-14. What does "your ways," "your pleasure," "your words" mean? 1/. Your ways. This means course of life, mode of action -- that is, your employment, enterprises, finances, the serious business of making a livelihood. You should not involve yourself in working at what you normally do during the week -- those things by which you feed, clothe and care for yourself physically. This includes working around the house, sewing, cleaning, washing the car -- all the things that pertain to your physical maintenance during the normal course of the week. 2/. Your pleasure. Forsaking one's pleasure does not mean that the Sabbath is to be a rigorous day of abstinence. The principle is that we should avoid having our mind, time, and energy taken up in hobbies, sports and pleasure-seeking. The Sabbath was not designed for activities such as hunting, fishing, golfing, swimming, card playing, movies, television, boating -- those things which take up the majority of our "leisure" time. This would also include the many time-consuming hobbies such as "ham" radio, wood-working shop, stamp collecting, etc. 3/. Your words. This is the spiritual application of the first two principles. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). We talk about what we are thinking. Our words show what is going on in our minds and hearts. This is obviously the most difficult of all! We may cease doing our ways and our pleasures, but it is much more difficult to cease thinking or talking about them. Here, again, we shouldn't become "Pharisaical" about this. It doesn't mean you can't mention or discuss "physical" things. There is no such regulation as: "You may not spend more than 30 seconds talking about cars on the Sabbath." You simply apply the principle by putting your mind on the positive purposes for which the Sabbath was made.

Sabbath Begins at Sunset

In order to keep the Sabbath holy, we need to know when it occurs. Man begins his days at midnight, but YEHOVAH's days begin and end at sunset. Notice Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31. In every case the evening precedes the morning. Furthermore, YEHOVAH God commands us to celebrate His holy time from "even to even" (Leviticus 23:32. That is, from sunset to sunset. Unfortunately, determining which day of the week in our Gregorian calendar of today the Sabbath falls on is not quite so simple. The calendar of today has lost contact with the original 56

week that YEHOVAH implemented, and the Sabbath day can fall on any day of the week -- including, occasionally, Saturday. According to all authorities the present seven day cycle is artificial -having NO relationship to any natural phenomena. Yet, back in early times, the Babylonians and the Hebrews had rest days or Sabbaths that coincided with the phases of the moon, and appear to have derived this understanding from a common Semitic antiquity. Author Eviatar Zerubavel, in his book The Seven Day Circle, states that "a continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history paying no attention whatsoever to the moon and its phases is a distinctly Jewish invention. Moreover, the DISSOCIATION of the seven-day week from nature [i.e. from the phases of the moon] has been one of the most significant contributions of Judaism to civilization" (p. 11). While we disagree with this being a "most significant contribution...to civilization," this quote shows that the present weekly cycle was changed by the Jewish authorities from a cycle anchored to the moon's phases to one that is completely dissociated from the moon and its phases. Zerubavel goes on to say that "the Jewish and astrological weeks evolved quite independently of one another. However, given the coincidence of their identical length, it was only a matter of time before some permanent correspondence between particular Jewish days and particular planetary days would be made. A permanent correspondence between the Sabbath and "the day of Saturn" [Saturday] was thus established no later than the first century of the common era, and Jews even came to name the planet Saturn Shabtai, after the original Hebrew name of the Sabbath, Shabbath. Moreover, as they came into closer contact with Hellenism, their conception of their holy day was evidently affected by the astrological conception of Saturn as a planet that has an overwhelming negative influence...There are traditional Jewish superstitious beliefs about demons and evil spirits that hold full sway on the Sabbath, and an old Jewish legend even links the choice of "the day of Saturn" as the official Jewish rest day with the superstition that it would be an inauspicious day for doing any work anyway!" (p. 17). While the Jewish sabbath day was indeed influenced by pagan astrological lore, Sabbath observance had been established by YEHOVAH long before at Creation -- and long before the astrological week even came into existence. YEHOVAH's true weekly cycle and Sabbath day obviously preceded both the making of the calendrical association between "the day of Saturn" (Saturday) and the Sabbath and the naming of the planet after the latter. Whereas astrology named the day of Saturn after the planet, Judaism did that the other way around!

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For more information about YEHOVAH's Sabbath day and how to determine when it falls, write for the following articles: Have We Been Observing the Sabbath at the Wrong Time All These Years?, From Sabbath to Saturday: The Story of the Jewish Rest Day, The New Moon and the Weekly Sabbath -- Side-By-Side, and YEHOVAH's Sacred Calendar for 2001. YEHOVAH's Sabbath is the seventh day on His true calendar and, since YEHOVAH's days begin at sunset, you should keep YEHOVAH's Sabbath beginning at sunset the previous evening and ending Sabbath evening at sunset. The approximate time of the sunset may be found in most newspapers in the weather forecast section. If this information is not available, the sunset may be determined by observing the light as it diminishes before the twilight approaches. Or, if you can see the sun, you would begin to observe the Sabbath when the sun is ready to fade away over the horizon.

Prepare for the Sabbath

In order that we may have our minds free from last-minute duties on the Sabbath, YEHOVAH has commanded that we prepare for it the day before -- known as the "Preparation Day." Exodus 16:23-25 shows that we should do our heavy cooking, roasting, boiling, etc., on the preparation day prior to the Sabbath. YEHOVAH does not want us to clutter up His Sabbath with long hours of cooking. Does that mean we cannot eat a fine, sumptuous meal on the Sabbath? Not at all! The Sabbath is a feast day. But it does mean that we should plan ahead. Let's say we want to prepare a nice roast for the Sabbath. But this may require cooking it for two or three hours. What should we do? Here is one way to handle the situation. Cook it on the preparation day (the day before the Sabbath) until it is almost but not completely done. Then, on the Sabbath, you can simply "warm it up." In this way the time involved will be kept down to a minimum on the Sabbath, and the roast will not be dry. The same holds true for any kind of baking. Baked goods can be prepared ahead of time, kept in the refrigerator, and brought out to be eaten on the Sabbath. Elaborate salads and dressings should be prepared separately ahead of time, and saved until the Sabbath. There are some things which cannot or need not be done before the Sabbath. Obviously we would not normally fry or scramble an egg on the preparation day, store it in the deep freeze and then thaw it out and eat it Sabbath morning. One word of caution though, concerning the preparation day. It is only one day. Don't make the mistake of leaving daily duties -- such as housecleaning, baking, cooking, grocery shopping, house repairs, car washing, etc. -- until the preparation day before the Sabbath! Do this and you will find the Sabbath may be a day of total collapse rather than a peaceful day of rest and relaxation with enough energy to communicate with YEHOVAH! The day before the Sabbath is a day that prepares us for the Sabbath, not a day to catch up on what we should have been doing all week. 58

By using the preparation day properly we will be able to enter the Sabbath in a spirit of rejoicing and worship toward YEHOVAH. Now let us briefly discuss some specific questions which arise in regard to the Sabbath.

Fire on the Sabbath

Many wonder about Exodus 35:3. Should a fire be kindled on the Sabbath day? If not, how can one prepare a simple meal? What about people in very cold climates? Can't they build a fire to keep warm? Let's notice Exodus 35:3 and its context. This scripture says: "Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day." The original Hebrew word for "kindle" means to prepare a consuming flame, a flame that would devour -- that is, a fire! The question is, why mention such a fire in connection with the Sabbath? Read the context of chapter 35 and you will see. The Israelites were building the tabernacle and needed a fire large enough to work metal. The Israelites were so zealous for building the tabernacle, that Moses had to tell them to stop bringing unneeded materials for its construction. And YEHOVAH knew that if He did not stop them, the Israelites would work right through the Sabbath on the tabernacle. This was not a cooking or household heating fire. This had nothing to do with personal cooking -- with turning on your kitchen stove. It was an industrial fire. On the other hand, fires of the proper type were commanded by YEHOVAH to be kept burning. Notice Leviticus 6:13: "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out." Here is a sacrificial fire (from which the priests in the wilderness cooked their meat) remained burning on the Sabbath. In Exodus 35:3 YEHOVAH God was not referring to a cooking, sacrificial or personal heating fire -- but rather, a fire which is used for work that should be done only on the other six days of the week. It is certainly permissible to light a fire for heat in wintry weather or to warm up food.

Sabbath Travel
What about traveling on the Sabbath? Some people are confused about the meaning of "a Sabbath day's journey" found in Acts 1:12. This was a custom and tradition of the Jews. It is not a Biblical command of any sort. The rabbis tried to legislate exactly how far a person could legally walk on the Sabbath. The distance they arrived at was 2,000 cubits -- which is about three quarters of a mile. Anyone who traveled more than this distance on the Sabbath became guilty of breaking the Sabbath in their eyes.

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But YEHOVAH never legislated on this point. There is no special command anywhere in the Bible defining travel on the Sabbath. However, one shouldn't walk or drive so far on the Sabbath as to become unduly tired or have his worship of YEHOVAH interfered with. As far as YEHOVAH is concerned, taking a refreshing walk is fine so long as it doesn't turn into a "hike." Driving to a nearby park to enjoy a relaxing family picnic is fine so long as it doesn't turn into a long trip. The questions you need to ask yourself are these: "Why do I want to travel on the Sabbath? Do I need to travel on the Sabbath? Is it to worship and glorify YEHOVAH? Will this traveling help me to keep YEHOVAH's Sabbath holy? Or is it merely for such pleasure-seeking which will deprive me of the ability to properly worship YEHOVAH? You will have to ask and answer these questions for yourself, and act accordingly. It is not wrong to have a picnic lunch with the family or friends on the Sabbath. This could be a beneficial diversion and a relaxation. However, our thoughts should always be centered on YEHOVAH -- His ways, His purpose, His creation -- on this day.

Sabbath Visitors
From time to time unconverted friends and relatives may come to visit on the Sabbath. What should be done? There are no hard and fast rules regarding this. Again, every set of circumstances is different. We must learn to use wisdom in each and every case. If visitors are old friends or relatives from out of town who have traveled some distance to visit you, then be as hospitable as possible. Invite them in. Let your light shine. If visitors are neighbors or in-town relatives, be hospitable and friendly. However, if certain individuals make it a practice of visiting you on the Sabbath, it might be best to tactfully tell the people involved that you believe this day to be YEHOVAH's Sabbath, and ask if you could get together with them some other time. Every situation requires a different answer. You simply have to act with wisdom as the problem arises. Of course, if you are living a Christian life, the chances are close friends, neighbors and relatives already know you keep the Sabbath.

Instruct Your Children

The Sabbath affords a wonderful opportunity for you to train and teach your children. YEHOVAH inspired Solomon to write: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). This command would certainly apply to teaching your child to keep the Sabbath. However, you should remember that even sweet little children are self-centered. They understandably lack the comprehension to keep YEHOVAH's Law like an adult can. With this principle in mind, 60

encourage older children to study some profitable books, or to play quiet, subdued and educational games. It is all right for young children to play quietly on the Sabbath. But they should, however, be taught to rest from their routine work, homework or boisterous play on the Sabbath. They should be instructed in a kind and straightforward manner that the seventh day is holy to their heavenly Father, and that they can show their love for Him by refraining from their usual play on that day. Your children should be taught these things gradually and only as their age makes it possible for them to understand. If trained properly from infancy, a ten- or twelve-year-old child should have enough respect for YEHOVAH's Sabbath that he (or she) does not spend his or her time reading "funny books" or watching TV programs on that day. At first, keeping the Sabbath may seem strange to your children, and they may be annoyed at not being able to do the things they used to do on that day. But you, as a parent, can do a lot to offset any such resentment. Make sure you spend time with your children -- especially if they are young. Walk with them. Talk with them. Have a family Bible study. Read them stories from the Bible. Encourage them to ask questions about YEHOVAH or the Sabbath. There are many things you can do on the Sabbath that will appeal to your children if you will only think about it: A family picnic; a walk in the woods, park or merely around the block. If you really follow through with this principle, it won't be long before your children begin to associate the Sabbath with family togetherness.

Don't Push Your Family

When YEHOVAH begins to open a person's mind to His truth, one of the biggest problems to be wary of is trying to cram that knowledge down the throats of others. DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE! Yeshua tells us to let our light shine (Matthew 5:16). That is what we should do. Set the right example. If your husband or wife is uninterested, don't force YEHOVAH's truth upon him or her. If you do, you will soon find relations between you and your mate strained. Only YEHOVAH can open a person's mind and lead him or her to understand the importance of the true Sabbath day (John 6:44, 65). You should keep the Sabbath, but don't preach to other members of the family. You should certainly tell them, if they ask, why you don't do certain things on the Sabbath. But let it go at that. Be very careful when dealing with your children -- especially teen-agers. By the time a youngster reaches his teens, he has a personality and a mind of his own. Don't suddenly inform him that he can't go to school on the Sabbath day, when it falls during the week. He is liable to feel that you are unreasonably curtailing his freedom and lowering his image amongst his peers -- and he may resent it. 61

Some teen-agers go right along with their parents, and there is no problem. Other teens rebel. You need to size up your teen-agers. You need to understand them: how they think, what they like and dislike, what their needs are and what is really precious to them. Then you need to ask YEHOVAH for wisdom, understanding, insight, to know how to approach your teen-agers with the subject of the Sabbath. Any decisions about their Sabbath conduct and activities should be made very carefully and with wise counsel. Also show them the positive side of YEHOVAH's way. Make YEHOVAH's way the fun way of life -- the kind of fun that's fun today and next year -- with NO kickbacks. In other words make YEHOVAH's way so attractive to your teen-agers that this world's way will lose a lot of its appeal to them. You need to really love and work with your children. Don't be an iron-fisted autocrat who lays down the law, and woe be it to the one who dares to disobey. Rather, be a loving parent. Show real concern for your children. Children and teen-agers must have confidence in their parents. Put the accent on building this confidence.

Farm Problems
Farmers have special questions concerning the Sabbath. For example, is it all right to care for livestock on the Sabbath? Yeshua showed very clearly that feeding and watering stock is necessary on the Sabbath and permissible (Luke 13:15). The same principle holds true for milking cows. However, if you are spending an excessive amount of time caring for dairy cattle or livestock on the Sabbath, then you should either learn to better organize your work or cut down the number. YEHOVAH does not want us to be slaves to our occupation. What about the sale of farm produce on the Sabbath? Amos 8:5 and Nehemiah 13:15-19 show that we should not transact any business on the Sabbath. To avoid this problem, you should make this fact known tactfully. But if your neighbor is in real need of food, it wouldn't be wrong to give it to him. This brings up another problem. What if a neighbor has an emergency and asks to borrow one of your tools on the Sabbath? In this case it is an "ox in the ditch" situation and it would be all right to lend it to him. On the other extreme, suppose a neighbor habitually wants to borrow some item from you on the Sabbath? If he is that close a neigh, he certainly should be aware of your convictions. If not, you could tactfully tell him the Sabbath is holy to you, and that you don't normally loan out your tools on that day. Of course, with the Sabbath falling on different days of the week, it may not be too much of a problem.

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There are, of course, any number of situations between these two extremes. They should be handled with love, concern, wisdom and with the overall purpose of the Sabbath in mind.

Handling Emergencies
What do you do when an emergency arises on the Sabbath? Yeshua said: "Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?" (Luke 14:5). Many misunderstand this statement. Some may wonder if their job is an ox in the ditch situation when they are required to work on the Sabbath day -- as will frequently happen when the Sabbath falls during the week. The principle of the ox in the ditch applies to genuine emergencies like personal injuries, burning houses, power failures, accidents and other occurrences (natural disasters -- tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) which would entail injury or loss of life or of personal property. It is not an ox in the ditch situation when your job requires you to work on the Sabbath. Neither does the principle apply to those who "push their own ox into the ditch" by acquiring or keeping a job where they can't negotiate to have the Sabbath day off, or by "putting off" work which should have been done during the other days of the week. Nor does it include harvesting or plowing on the Sabbath -- even if there has been bad weather or machinery breakdowns during the other week days. YEHOVAH says, "Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing [better translated, "plowing"] time and in harvest thou shalt rest" (Exodus 34:21).

Procuring Food on the Sabbath

In Matthew 12:1-5 Yeshua clearly showed that it is not wrong to procure food on the Sabbath if one is without food and is hungry. If, for some reason, you are caught away from home on the Sabbath, it is not wrong to eat a meal in a restaurant or cafeteria. Some people living in today's gigantic metropolises do not have cooking facilities. There would be nothing wrong for such people to buy a meal on the Sabbath. Perhaps one should also consider moving to an apartment which does have cooking facilities.

Dishes on the Sabbath

Some women have wondered if it is all right to wash dishes on the Sabbath. YEHOVAH does not specifically state how many dishes we may wash on the Sabbath. Washing dishes is an everyday physical act that could detract from the Sabbath. Some women simply rinse, neatly stack and cover soiled dishes and utensils, waiting until after the Sabbath to give them a final washing. Others use paper plates, and thus avoid some of the problem. Still, if necessary, it is not wrong to wash dishes or utensils on the Sabbath. Time spent at this task should be kept to a minimum. YEHOVAH does not want us to clutter up His Sabbath by spending a lot of time washing dishes or doing other household chores.

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But that doesn't mean that you should leave the house in shambles! Again, use wisdom. Do what is necessary. But don't get involved in housework.

Television and Radio

Often a person will ask if he can watch television or listen to the radio on the Sabbath. This is another area where YEHOVAH does not specifically legislate. But the principle is clear. YEHOVAH's Sabbath is holy. Most television programs consist of sports events, movies, variety shows or other such programs. They do not help you to keep YEHOVAH's Sabbath day holy. Therefore, you should not be spending valuable time on YEHOVAH's Sabbath watching television. The same holds true for radio programs. There can be exceptions, however. It is not wrong to listen to a particularly good news program on the Sabbath. Also, from time to time, some special documentaries showing prophecy being fulfilled are broadcast on the Sabbath. But be sure you do not use such liberty as license to keep the television or radio on for an excessive amount of time -- thus breaking the Sabbath. A certain amount of relaxing, subdued, enjoyable background music can add to the Sabbath atmosphere, and help make it a delight. But listening to secular music for sheer entertainment to while away the Sabbath is a sin. What pleases YEHOVAH is our participating in singing songs and psalms of praise to Him -- especially on the Sabbath.

Enjoy YEHOVAH's Sabbath

As you can readily see, multitudes of questions could arise about keeping the Sabbath. However, most of those questions can be easily answered if we keep in mind the basic purpose of the Sabbath day. Remember! The Sabbath is YEHOVAH's day -- the day He made holy. It is not only a day of physical rest and relaxation from the toil of the week, but it is also a spiritual BLESSING. It is a day that renews our bond with YEHOVAH. Use YEHOVAH's Sabbath! Use wisdom in observing it! Be BALANCED in your approach to the Sabbath. Be neither hypocritical, self-righteous, Pharisaical; nor haphazard, sloppy, unmindful. So KEEP HOLY the day YEHOVAH made holy! REJOICE in the blessings and opportunities that the Sabbath affords, and remember that it is an identifying sign of direct relationship between you and your Creator. Make Way
He comes to judge the nations and to reign -- on the throne of ancient Israel -In David's city -- New Jerusalem -reclaimed by Britain from the infidel As foretold in Daniel's prophecy; the power of Evil curbed, the power of Love set free.

Make way through the turmoil of the times. Make a highway for the Prince of Peace... Clear a path through trial and turbulence. Bid violence subside and anger cease. Make way through the chaos of the world. A royal route prepare for Yeshua the king... Make way for the lord of all to ride -the road of glory, truth and light to bring.

-- Patience Strong 64

Hidden "Codes" in the Biblical Text?

David Maas
During the last decade the notion that hidden codes are "embedded" in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament (OT) has become of great interest to evangelical and some Jewish circles. The idea has grown sufficiently in popularity to spawn over two dozen books (including at least one New York Times bestseller), several commercially available software packages (for "decoding" the codes), a number of television interviews and program episodes about the code, and at least one commercially viable Hollywood movie. The classic example used to demonstrate ELS occurs in Genesis 1:1-5a. Starting with the last letter of the first word of the Bible, the tau roughly corresponding to our "t," and counting forward in intervals of forty-nine characters, one discovers that the Hebrew word for "instruction" or "law" ( torah) is spelled out every fiftieth letter. (Chuck Missler, The Cosmic Codes, pp. 126-129). We will return to this example in a moment.

The relatively recent awareness of the Code is due to technological advances. Prior There are different nuances and complexi- to the advent of the modern computer it was ties to this Code depending on which propo- extremely tedious to find such "codes" by nent one listens to, but the underlying counting Hebrew characters manually (the bamethodology is quite simple. The Code is re- sic thought that "hidden codes" of various ferred to as "Equidistant Letter Sequences," or types exist in the Hebrew text goes back at ELS. The theory is that hidden words and sen- least to the Kabbalah of medieval Jewish tences can be found "embedded" in the He- mysticism (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. brew text of the OT by counting Hebrew 337-343)). Yet today computers running apletters at equally spaced intervals. That is, a propriate software can quickly scan the Heperson can locate certain meaningful words or brew text and detect a variety of "embedded phrases, such as "hammer" and "anvil," if he messages" (several such programs can be examines the letters at sequences that were downloaded from the Internet). By using comequally spaced in the Hebrew text. Thus, "if he puters Code proponents claim to have discovfound the first letter of a significant word such ered thousands of words and sentences as Torah, and then, by skipping forward seven "embedded" in most or all sections of the O.T. letters he found the second letter of the word Torah, he would continue to skip forward the The import assigned to the ELS codes is same number of letters to see whether or not that their existence "proves" that the Bible, at the complete word Torah was spelled out in least the OT, is "divine rather than human in the text at equally spaced intervals" (Grant origin" (some Code proponents also claim to Jeffrey, The Signature of God, pp. 255-256). have discovered messages "embedded" in the Greek text of the NT (Grant Jeffrey, The 65

Mysterious Bible Codes, p. 169-179)). Because numerous authors wrote the OT over a period of about one thousand years, it is for all practical purposes impossible for thousands of coded messages based on ELS to have been "encoded" in the OT text by human design. Therefore, the argument goes, the only reasonable conclusion is that the Code (and thus the OT) is divine or supra-human in origin. Scholars of various disciplines have offered a variety of criticisms of the Code. Mathematicians argue that statistically such "codes" or patterns will occur by chance in any text of similar length to the OT, particularly one that includes no vowels as in the Hebrew text (John Weldon, Decoding the Bible Code, p. 94). Hebrew grammarians point out the liberties that Code proponents take with the consonantal Hebrew text. In biblical Hebrew vowels were not written, only consonants. Vowels were supplied when someone read the text. In many cases which vowels are supplied affects not only pronunciation but also the meaning of a word. For example, the common Hebrew noun for "word" (dabar) is written with the consonants d-b-r, the two vowels (-a-a-) being supplied by the reader. Yet the same three consonants supplied instead with the vowels -e-e- ( deber) form a word meaning "pestilence." This and other characteristics of the Hebrew language make it fairly easy to find or force specific meanings into a given string of consonants (Phil Stanton, The Bible Code: Fact or Fake? pp. 35038). Others point to the failure of Code proponents to consider the thousands of textual variants that exist among the various manuscripts of the OT. Variant readings that add to or delete letters from the Hebrew text, whether or not they change the substantive meaning of a passage, will certainly affect any "Code" based on counting character intervals between letters. But there is one problem with the Code that completely invalidates it. First we must ask

the question: do we today have a version of the Hebrew text that is letter-for-letter the same as the text as originally written?

A Basic Premise
By its very nature the ELS Code demands the acceptance of an essential presupposition, namely that the Hebrew text we have today is letter-for-letter precisely the same as the text originally penned by the various authors of the OT. That is, in order for the Code to work, not only must our present Hebrew text preserve the same number of characters as contained in the original, but the letters also must be in the same order as first written. This necessity is easily demonstrated with a simple example. In the character string "sdwdClko wOqwo dDpo kjEmnx" the word "code" is found by using every fifth letter. However, by simply inserting the single character "e" after the " C" ("sdwdCelko Woqwo Ddpo k Jemnx")my "code" now produces the nonsensical word "cwdj.) Hence my Code is invalidated by a change of one or more characters. The thesis that today we have a pristine copy of the original Hebrew text is the issue upon which the validity of the Code stands or falls. Code proponents instinctively understand the necessity of accepting this premise in order for the Code to work. Thus they either state or infer that the Hebrew text we have today has been preserved without change or error since its inception. Note the following comments: "The three Torahs in use worldwide among the Jews -- the Ashkenazi, the Sephardi, and the Yemenite -- have only nine letter-level variations total in the entire 304,805 letters of the text!" (Chuck Missler, The Cosmic Codes, p. 123). "Details of today's world are encoded in a text that has been set in stone for hundreds of years, and has existed for thousands of years. 66

950 AD (Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, pp. 15-22). What of the centuries prior to that period? A fundamental goal of the Masoretes was to establish a standard Hebrew text from among at least three competing older textual traditions, each with its own set of variant "Jesus Christ, Himself, affirmed that the actual readings numbering in the thousands if not tens letters composing the Scriptures were directly of thousands. Few of these textual variants afinspired by God and were preserved in their fected the substance of the OT. Most involved precise order throughout eternity" (Grant Jef- differences of spelling and the like that would, frey, The Signature of God, p. 258). however, affect the number and order of characters. "All Bibles in the original Hebrew language As to the claim that the Isaiah scroll found that now exist are the same letter for letter" at Qumran contained "only a handful of single(Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code, p. 194). letter or punctuation differences," the statement "When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, is totally false. Over forty-five hundred spellincluding the complete scroll of Isaiah, the ing variants exist between the Isaiah scroll and most remarkable aspect was the absence of the Masoretic Text (Ernst Wurthwen, The discrepancies when compared with our current Text of the Old Testament, p. 32). And the copies of Isaiah. Only a handful of single- claim that the oldest complete manuscript of letter or punctuation differences were found! It the OT (1008 AD -- Codex Lenengradensis was this rigor that has preserved the remark- (ibid., p. 35)) is "nearly the same" as the OT able encodings that are still with us today" books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is, at (Chuck Missler, The Cosmic Codes, p. 123). best, completely misleading. As priceless as the scrolls of Qumran are, a complete copy of In several of the preceding quotations the the OT HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND. Discovkey point is missed. The question is not ered at Qumran were one complete Isaiah whether all present versions of the Hebrew scroll, one almost complete Isaiah scroll, and text are in agreement, but whether or not they fragments from all the rest of the OT books preserve the character arrangement as origi- except Esther. The majority of the manuscripts nally written. Due to the work of a group of found at Qumran were from extra-biblical Jewish scribes known as Masoretes (from Jewish writings. There is simply insufficient which the name of the present Hebrew text, the data upon which to claim that the Dead Sea Masoretic Text, is derived) the Hebrew text Scrolls demonstrate that we have in the Mawe use today was indeed "set in stone" hun- soretic Text a pristine copy of the original text dreds of years ago. The Masoretes established of the Hebrew Bible. Codex Leningradensis an elaborate system of regulations governing is still the oldest complete manuscript of the the copying of OT manuscripts. They also entire Hebrew OT in existence. fixed the meaning of words by inserting vowels amongst the consonants. Their efforts were The Key Issue so successful that textual variants between medieval manuscripts and those printed today are It is to be remembered that the books of the rare. However, the work of the Masoretes oc- OT were written over a one thousand year pecurred between approximately 600 AD and riod from approximately 1400 BC to 400 BC. 67

There is a complete version from 1008 AD that is nearly the same, and fragments of all but one book of the entire Old Testament have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are more than 2000 years old" (Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code, p. 38).

Prior to the advent of the printing press all copies of OT books were copied by hand (Ellis Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism, p. 37). Regardless of how careful a scribe was errors occurred due to the nature of manual copying. Many (but not all) of the textual variants in both OT and NT manuscripts can be explained as scribal errors. However, a problem more fundamental to the Code than scribal error exists. During the period in which the OT was written Hebrew was a living language, an everyday language spoken, written and read by the Israelites. As with all living languages Hebrew underwent orthographic or spelling changes (as well as changes in syntax). The relevancy to the Code is that Hebrew scribes incorporated many such modifications to Hebrew spelling practices into the text of the OT. This was not due to carelessness or a lack of reverence for the biblical books. Scribes were merely keeping the language of the Bible in harmony with current usage. This is no different than "modernizing" the spelling of Old English words from documents authored hundreds of years ago (e.g., changing the second person plural form of the pronoun "ye" to "you").

the name David. In older or archaic Hebrew the name is spelled with the three consonants d-w-d while in later Hebrew the spelling is dw-y-d. In both cases it is pronounced dawi d and both forms occur in the Hebrew Bible. However, in the latter case y (or yod) has been added to indicate a long vowel. Hebrew grammarians refer to the use of a consonant to mark a long vowel as matres lectionis (Latin for "mothers of reading"). Ancient Hebrew scribes incorporated matres lectionis into the biblical text to indicate long vowels. As one preeminent authority on the text of the OT wrote:

"Text transmission prior to 300 BC was also based on a predominant consonantal spelling. As initially written, most early Old Testament books would have been written in an exclusively consonantal text. From about the ninth century on, certain consonants came to be used to indicate vowels. These 'helping' consonants are called matres lectionis, literally 'mothers of reading.' They were first used to indicate final long vowels (beginning in the ninth century BC) and later (beginning in the eighth century BC) they were also used to indicate medial long vowels. Matres lectionis were subsequently added to the Old Testament text [emphasis added], but not in a completely Hebrew was originally written with a systematic way" (Ellis Brotzman, Old Testapurely consonantal alphabet (Frank Moore ment Textual Criticism, p. 40). Cross, Jr. and David Noel Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography, p. 56). No characters Complicating the matter is that the dates for existed for representing vowels. All of the the first usage of matres lectionis are approxiearliest books of the OT were written with this mations. Did the practice begin in the early or exclusively consonantal text. Beginning in the late ninth century? Was the practice impleninth century BC certain consonants began to mented consistently throughout Israel or did it be used as "helpers" to mark long vowels. grow gradually by region? Was there a long That is, a consonant was inserted within a syl- transition period to the new spelling method in lable to indicate that a specific long vowel such a non-technological society? Did a bibliwas to be pronounced. This "helper" letter cal author writing his original text during the was not pronounced and did not affect the ninth century initially use matres lectionis or original pronunciation or meaning of a word. It not? We have no way of knowing the answers served to communicate to the reader that a to such questions. We know the use of matres long vowel was present. A good example is lectionis began around the ninth century from 68

non-biblical inscriptions. But did biblical scribes adopt these improvements into the text of the OT as quickly as they came into use in popular literature or at a later date? Such unknowns make any effort to restore the original character sequence of the OT text by removing matres lectionis (and other orthographic changes) from the Hebrew text essentially impossible. When the earliest books of the OT were originated matres lectionis were not used (Angel Saenz-Badillos, A History of the Hebrew Language, p. 66), yet they occur thousands of times just in the five books of the Pentateuch, the portion of the Bible in which most of the Bible codes occur. To return to our earlier example, in Genesis 1:1-5a at least twenty-one matres lectionis occur within this string of text. None of them were original. Remove them and the "hidden code" torah ceases to exist though the meaning and pronunciation of the passage remain unchanged. Ironically the spelling form used for torah in Genesis 1:1-5a by Code proponents is a later form of to rah which uses the letter vav (corresponding to our "w") as a mater lectionis ( mater is singular, matres plural) to mark the long "o." Hence Code proponents are using a spelling form of to rah ( t-w-r-h) which postdates the Mosaic writings rather than the more archaic form (t-rh) to find "codes" in the very oldest section of the Bible.

but later the letter vav ( w) was used as in the Masoretic Text (ibid., p. 58). In fact, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls even use two consonants in places to mark a single long vowel such as alef AND vav for a single long o, a practice not used in the Masoretic Text. Third, during the rabbinic and Masoretic periods as the Hebrew text was being "set in stone" there were some attempts by scribes out of due reverence to the original text to remove some of the later spelling forms in order to restore the older spelling patterns. However, such efforts were implemented inconsistently and only partially (which is another reason the Masoretic Text displays such a mixture of Hebrew spelling practices throughout).

In Summary
The adoption of matres lectionis into the Hebrew text of the OT by early Israelite scribes is only one of many problems with the popular ELS Code and represents only one of many such changes in Hebrew spelling habits incorporated by scribes into the OT text. My purpose has not been to study exhaustively all aspects of the Code or to present a complete description of the history of the biblical text's transmission, but rather to show one of the KEY reasons why the ELS Code is invalid.

I believe that the spirit of God inspired the books of the Old Testament as originally written. Nevertheless, orthographic changes to the Three additional issues further complicate text of the Hebrew Old Testament did occur the matter. First, matres lectionis and other or- and thousands of textual variants do exist. We thographic changes were incorporated into the ignore such facts at our own peril. The good OT text inconsistently. The Masoretic Text is news is that most of these anomalies affect "itself a mixture of orthographic forms from only spelling (and other minor issues) and every stage in the history of Hebrew spelling" have little impact on the meaning of passages. (Frank Moore Cross, Jr. and David Noel Due to the efforts of textual critics we can be Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography, p. confident that we have a version of the He59). Second, which Hebrew consonants were brew text that is generally faithful to the origiused to mark which vowels changed over time. nal. Yet the thousands of orthographic changes For example, when matres lectionis first came that affect the number and order of characters into use the letter he ( h) marked the long "o" make any "Code" based on exact sequences of 69

letters completely void. That Code proponents can find "hidden messages embedded" in the Hebrew text is not disputed. But the only possible conclusions are that they exist either due to pure chance or possibly the Masoretes deliberately rearranged the letter sequences of the Hebrew text to produce the Code. This latter possibility is extremely doubtful, as there is no evidence from any of the Jewish writings of the period to indicate such as effort was undertaken and it would go against everything for which the Masoretes stood. The problem with Christian "fads" like the Code is that they only serve to further discredit the cause of Christ and Scripture in the eyes of a lost world. Many believers hop on such bandwagons because they seem to offer spectacular evidence for the divine authorship of the Bible. The sensational always makes for an effective sales tool. Yet the Code should warn us of the danger of accepting every new fad and idea uncritically. Perhaps this Christian tendency stems from the subtle evangelical attitude that views Scripture, spiritual catchphrases, sacraments and church traditions almost as if they were magical talismans rather than tools to help lead us to truth. That the Code was not original to the OT text is clear to

anyone familiar with the history of the transmission of the Hebrew text. And one does not need to dig too deeply to find the relevant information. Sadly, a number of non-believing critics of Christianity have taken the small amount of time necessary to research this very same data and have posted papers on the Internet ridiculing the Code, which are readily available and free. To these critics such "Christian" fads only substantiate their view that believers are gullible fools easily taken in by fantasies and myths. Rather than pursuing serious study and unbiased inquiry of Scripture we have many Christians using their computers today to find the "deeper, hidden messages" buried behind the plain text of Scripture. As Allon Maxwell has so aptly put it, many believers are using their computers "for a form of divination" (Allon Maxwell, Bible Digest, p. 92, February 1999). The human desire to find easy answers and short cuts is as understandable as the appeal of the sensational, but when it comes to the study of Scripture there is no substitute for serious individual research. Unfortunately, the desire to "search Scriptures daily to see if these things be so" scarcely exists in the Body of Christ, at least in North America.
used as a title for YEHOVAH. It designates human superiors of all types (father, king, owner, etc.) and sometimes angels -- but never YEHOVAH. So Psalm 110:1 is a most precious testimony to the truth that the Messiah is not YEHOVAH Himself but the son of YEHOVAH, David's son and David's superior, lord. The RV, RSV, NRSV and the 1973 version of the NASV read correctly, "the Lord said to my lord...," using the lower case "l." The Knox translation reads "the Lord said to my Master." One modern paraphrase version helpfully writes in Matthew 22:43-45 (note the small "l's"): "He said to them, 'How is it that David in the spirit calls him lord, in the words, "The Lord said to my lord, 'Sit at my right hand till I put your enemies under your feet'"? If then David calls him lord, how is he to be his son?'" (The Bible in Living English, Steven F. Byington).

Q & A:
If it is true that the Messiah is not God, but the son of God, why is it that the Messiah is given the divine title for God, Adonai, in Psalm 110:1? I read that this is so in the NASV marginal note to Acts 2:36. I am sorry to have to point out that there is a serious factual mistake in what you read in that source. You may have to ask someone who knows Hebrew, but the word for the Messiah in Psalm 110:1 is not in fact Adonai (the Lord God in all of its 449 occurrences) but the different word adoni which always means a superior who is not YEHOVAH. Strong's Concordance unfortunately does not let you see the important difference between Adonai and adoni. Adoni is never

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12 Proofs That Yeshua DID NOT Pre-exist!

The plan of YEHOVAH has been overlooked by the people in this world because they have accepted the PAGAN DOCTRINE of a pre-existent savior who did it all for them -- which has been taught to them by the SERVANTS OF SATAN. This pagan doctrine was contrived for the purpose of BLINDING people's minds to the TRUE Savior sent by YEHOVAH, and to YEHOVAH's true plan of bringing His sons to perfection. The following proofs show that Yeshua NEVER EXISTED prior to his human birth in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

John D. Keyser
1/. Hebrews 6:13, 16. In Hebrews 6:13 and 15 we read -"For when YEHOVAH made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by NO ONE GREATER, He swore by Himself. "For men indeed swear by the GREATER, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute." In the these inspired verses we find that there was NO GREATER BEING by Whom to confirm this promise to Abraham. However, this goes against the doctrines of the Trinity and of the PRE-EXISTENCE -- for if Yeshua pre-existed as an equal to the Father as many believe, this promise would have been ratified by BOTH the Father AND the Son. This is because neither one would be greater than the other. But, we are clearly shown in these scriptures that (1): Not only was Yeshua NON-EXISTENT at the time the promise was made to Abraham, but (2) we find that YEHOVAH the Father is greater than the Son. This emphatically disproves the pagan Christian doctrines of the Trinity and of the pre-existent Savior. 2/. Matthew 24:36. Note carefully this statement which Yeshua made -- which also proves there is no one greater than YEHOVAH -"But of that day and hour NO ONE KNOWS, no, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father ONLY. Now, if Yeshua was -- as some teach today -- YEHOVAH (or God) of the Old Testament, then he would be "The Father" and he would know the day and hour of his Second Coming! But he clearly shows here that he does NOT know that day and hour -- ONLY the heavenly Father knows. 71

Similarly, if Yeshua had pre-existed ALONGSIDE the Father from at least the Creation as an equal or "second God," then he would have been a being who possessed ALL KNOWLEDGE, just as the Father does, and he still would have known the day and the hour of his return. 3/. I John 5:7. The Old Testament prophets nowhere promulgated a doctrine about a "pre-existent savior" -- and neither did Yeshua or the apostles in the New Testament. But the pagans, anxious to incorporate this doctrine (which was one of THEIR oldest and most honored) into their "Christian" religion, went so far as to ADD verses to the Bible to prove their doctrine of pre-existence and the Trinity. This is something the scriptures adamantly condemn. Here is a verse that was ADDED for this very reason -"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (I John 5:7). What is wrong with this scripture? Simply this: This entire verse is NOT even found in the Greek writings before the year 400 A.D.! The apostle John NEVER wrote this -- nor would it have ever entered his mind! The later translators knew this verse was ADDED and bogus, yet they failed to italicize it, which is a standard practice to show the reader that those particular words and phrases were added. This, in itself, proves that those in control of translating the scriptures were those who embraced the doctrines of paganism -- and NOT the every word of YEHOVAH! The Emphatic Diaglott, page 803, shows this verse MISSING in their translation -- and also explains WHY -7. The received text reads, "For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth." This text concerning the heavenly witnesses is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the 15th century. It is not cited by any of the Greek ecclesiastical writers; nor by any of the early Latin fathers, even when the subject upon which they treat would naturally have led them to appeal to its authority. It is therefore evidently spurious; and was first cited (though not as it now reads) by Vigilius Tapsensis, a Latin writer of no credit, in the latter end of the fifth century; but by whom forged, is of no great moment, as its design must be obvious to all. -- Improved Version. Adam Clarke, in his Clarke's Commentary, goes on to tell us: Verse 7. There are three that bear record] The Father, who bears testimony to his Son; the Word or Logos, who bears testimony to the Father; and the Holy Ghost, which bears testimony to the Father and the Son. And these three are one in essence, and agree in the one testimony, that Jesus came to die for, and give life to, the world.

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But it is likely this verse is not genuine. It is wanting in every MS. of this epistle written before the invention of printing, one excepted, the Codex Montfortii, in Trinity College, Dublin: the others which omit this verse amount to one hundred and twelve. It is wanting in both the Syriac, all the Arabic, Ethiopic, the Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian, Slavonian, etc., in a word, in all the ancient versions but the Vulgate; and even of this version many of the most ancient and correct MSS. have it not. It is wanting also in all the ancient Greek fathers; and in most even of the Latin. The words, as they exist in all the Greek MSS. with the exception of the Codex Montfortii, are the following:"6. This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water alone, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one. 9. If we receive the witness of man, the witness of God is greater, &c." The words that are omitted by all the MSS., the above excepted, and all the versions, the Vulgate excepted, are these:[In heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one and there are three which bear witness in earth.] However, we will allow the book Forgery in Christianity, by Joseph Wheless, to explain why this was not deleted by some of the later Bible versions -Erasmus first detected the fraud and omitted the forged verse in his edition of the Greek Testament in 1516. (New Comm. Pt. III, p. 718-19.) This verse 7, bluntly speaking, is a forgery: "It had been willfully and wickedly interpolated, to sustain the Trinitarian doctrine; it has been entirely omitted by the Revisers of the New Testament." (Roberts, Companion to the Revised Version, p. 72) "This memorable text," says Gibbon, "is condemned by the silence of the Fathers, ancient versions, and authentic manuscripts, of all the manuscripts now extant, above four score in number, some of which are more than 1200 years old." (Ch. xxvii, p. 598.) Speaking of this and another, Reinach says: "One of these forgeries (I John v, 7) was subjected to interpolation of a later date...If these two verses were authentic, they would be an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity, at a time when the gospels, and Acts and St. Paul ignore it. It was first pointed out in 1516 that these verses were an interpolation, for they do not appear in the best manuscripts down to the fifteenth century. The Roman Church refused to bow to the evidence...The Congregation of the Index, on January 13, 1897, with the approbation of Leo XIII, forbade any question of the authenticity of the text relating to the "Three Heavenly Witnesses." It showed in this instance a willful ignorance to which St. Gregory's rebuke is specially applicable: 'God does not need our lies.'" (Orpheus, p. 239.) But His Church does; for without them it would not be; and with out the forged "Three Heavenly Witnesses," there would be not a word in the entire New Testament hinting the existence of the Three-in-One God of Christianity. The Holy Trinity is an unholy Forgery!

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The first perpetrator of this FRAUD added the pagan doctrine of the Trinity to the Bible -that there are three gods in one: the Father (one), the "Word" (Yeshua; two) and the Holy Spirit, a personified third god (three). However, the other perpetrators of this false doctrine are just as guilty of deception since they DID NOT remove this verse from subsequent versions of the Bible when they uncovered the truth about it! In naming the second person of this Trinity the "Word," the perpetrators of I John 5:7 were also promulgating the FALSEHOOD of the pagan concept found in John 1:1 (KJV) -- which says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Take note that the word "Word" is CAPITALIZED in this verse -- in order to make it appear as though this were speaking about a being or a person. And, in this particular case, the translators of the King James Version did want you to believe that the "Word" was God, and that "He" was "in the beginning WITH God" -- that "He" was pre-existent and equal with YEHOVAH. It is interesting to note that in the Chaldee Targums (paraphrases of parts of the Old Testament written in the Chaldee language) we find that YEHOVAH is called "the Word of the Lord" and equated with the Shekinah Glory! It is, in fact, common practice in the Targums to find the word LORD (YEHOVAH) translated "the Word of the Lord" -- notice: KING JAMES VERSION. Numbers 10:35, 36: "And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, LORD [YEHOVAH], and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when it rested, he said, Return, O LORD [YEHOVAH], unto the many thousands of Israel." This latter part becomes, in the Targums: CHALDEE TARGUMS. Numbers 10:36: "Return now, O WORD OF THE LORD, to Thy people Israel, make the glory of Thy SHEKINAH to dwell among them, and have mercy on the thousands of Israel." Now look at Numbers 11:20: KING JAMES VERSION. Numbers 11:20: "Because that ye have despised the LORD which is among you." CHALDEE TARGUMS. Numbers 11:20: "Because ye have contemptuously rejected THE WORD OF THE LORD whose SHEKINAH dwelleth among you." The Greek word "Logos" was very dear to pagan minds; but, nevertheless, should properly have been translated "MANIFESTATION" or "SHEKINAH GLORY" in this case -- and certainly not confused with Yeshua the Messiah! The MANIFESTATION OF YEHOVAH was with YEHOVAH "in the beginning," and it was YEHOVAH's manifestation (Greek possessive form). YEHOVAH's manifestation (or 74

Shekinah Glory) was with him in the beginning, and His manifestation was His very own, as we see in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, where YEHOVAH said: "Let there be light; and there was light." 4/. John 1:14. In John 1:14 we find that according to (or by) YEHOVAH's manifestation (Shekinah Glory) flesh was CREATED. That Yeshua was born after being BEGOTTEN by YEHOVAH and being CONCEIVED by his mother Mary, is a scriptural FACT. Of course -- like any other baby -- YEHOVAH's Shekinah Glory was not with Yeshua at his birth; he had to LEARN YEHOVAH's laws and commandments and way of life as he grew. But when he reached the age of about 30 years old and had entered into YEHOVAH's ministry, he was the walking, speaking manifestation (dabar-logos) of YEHOVAH, because he knew the truth of YEHOVAH, he obeyed the truth of YEHOVAH, and he proclaimed the truth of YEHOVAH! And what is YEHOVAH's "truth"? Psalm 119:142 and Psalm 119:151 show that YEHOVAH's LAW and COMMANDMENTS are "the truth." Indeed, Yeshua the Messiah was YEHOVAH's manifestation in the flesh -- CREATED IN THE FLESH ACCORDING TO (OR BY) THE SHEKINAH GLORY of YEHOVAH. And, in the same way, each saint or true Christian should also be the "manifestation of YEHOVAH created in the flesh," -- for we should all obey in the same way that Yeshua did. It should be apparent to any honest person by now that in the BEGINNING WAS THE MANIFESTATION OF YEHOVAH, and this MANIFESTATION was the power of YEHOVAH. The same manifestation (Shekinah Glory) was in the beginning with YEHOVAH and, according (or by) YEHOVAH's manifestation, His Son was created IN THE FLESH and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory; the GLORY of the only begotten of the Father -- full of honor and truth. The word for word Greek translation of John 1:14, from The New International Version Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, is as follows -"And the Word flesh became and tabernacled among us, and we beheld the glory of him, glory as of an only begotten from a father, full of grace and of truth." This same deception is continued by the translators in John 1:14 (KJV) which says: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. The word which has been translated "MADE" in the above verse, is word #1096 in Strong's Greek Dictionary -- and means: 1096. ginomai, ghin'-om-ahee; a prol. and mid. form of a prim. verb; to cause to be ("gen"-erate), i.e., (reflex.) to become (come into being),

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Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament, by Joseph H. Thayer, shows that the word means -1. to become, i.e. to come into existence, begin to be, receive being: absol. Jn. i 15, 30 (....); Jn. viii. 58 (....); 1 Cor. xv. 37 (....); ek tivos, to be born, Ro. i. 3 (...); Gal. iv. 4 (....); Mt. xxi. 19 (...., come from); of the origin of all things, Heb. xi. 3; ...., Jn. i. 3, 10. The words that have been translated "only begotten" in this scripture are actually only one word in the Greek -- #3439 in Strong's Greek Dictionary and means -3439. ..... monogenes, mon-og-enace'; from 3441 and 1096; only-born, i.e. sole:- only (begotten, child). As you can see, word #3439 comes from the word #3441, which means: ONLY, and word #1096, which means: TO CAUSE TO BE, COME INTO BEING, TO EXIST -3441. .... monos, mon'-os; prob. from 3306; remaining, i.e. sole or single; by impl. mere:alone, only, by themselves. 1096. .... ginomai, ghin'-om-ahee; a prol. and mid. form of prim. verb; to cause to be ("gen"-erate), i.e. (reflex.) to become (come into being). The correct translation in the Greek confirms even more that Yeshua the Messiah was BEGOTTEN -- which means he was caused to be, in other words, BROUGHT INTO EXISTENCE. Therefore, the correct translation of John 1:14 is as follows: According to (or by) the manifestation [Shekinah Glory] flesh was created; and dwelling among us, who are flesh, and we beholding his glory, was the glory of the ONLY BEGOTTEN of the Father, full of honor and truth. 5/. Galatians 4:4. Yeshua "CAME FROM" the Father, just as you and I "came from" our fleshly fathers. Yeshua clearly had a beginning -- and the apostle Paul tells us what that beginning was -But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. Again, the word translated "MADE" in this scripture is word #1096 in Strong's Greek Dictionary, and means -1096. .... ginomai, ghin'-om-ahee; a prol. and mid. form of a prim. verb; to cause to be ("gen"-erate), i.e. (reflex.) to become (come into being), Thayer's Greek Lexicon again shows us word #1096 to mean --

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1. to become, i.e. to come into existence, begin to be, receive being: absol., Jn. 1. 15, 30 (....); Jn. viii. 58 (....); 1 Cor. xv. 37 (....); ...., to be born, Ro. i. 3 (...., come from); of the origin of all things, Heb. x1. 3; ..., Jn. i. 3, 10. As a result, the CORRECT translation of Galatians 4:4 should be: But when the appointed time had fully come, YEHOVAH set forth His son, coming into existence from a woman, coming into existence under the subjection of the Law. Yeshua the Messiah came into existence from a woman -- and came into existence under the Law. All this was done by the manifestation or Shekinah Glory of YEHOVAH, fulfilling His plan for a Savior -- SENT for you and me. All the scriptures agree that Yeshua came into EXISTENCE in the FLESH -- and not one second before! However, due to the corruptions of the translators, KEY verses in the Bible were changed by ADDING words or by DECEPTIVE renderings. History shows that we have Constantine the "Great" -- the so-called "savior" of Christianity -- to thank for helping to establish a corrupted and pagan Christianity that features the doctrines of a PRE-EXISTENT SAVIOR within a Trinity. 6/. John 17:5. In John 17:5 we read the following -And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. To the untrained mind it sounds as though this verse is upholding the teaching that Yeshua pre-existed before his fleshly birth. But, by comparing the Greek text to the English translation and then letting OTHER SCRIPTURES interpret this scripture for us, it becomes very obvious that this scripture was also TAMPERED WITH -- TWISTED to fit prevailing pagan concepts! The New International Version Greek-English New Testament by Alfred Marshall, shows the Greek word for word translation of this verse: 5. and now glorify me thou, Father, with thyself....with the glory which I had before the the world to be with thee. The first word underlined and translated "I HAD" is the IMPERFECT FORM of the Greek word "echo" -- word #2192 in Strong's Greek Dictionary. This word means: to have to hold. However, Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament shows this word to mean: TO HAVE IN STORE! Notice -.... to have a thing in readiness, have at hand, have in store: Therefore, the word translated "I HAD" can -- and should -- have been translated "I AM TO HAVE." This glory that Yeshua is said to have, is to be BEFORE the world TO COME. The next word underlined -- translated "BEFORE" -- is word #4253 in Strong's, and means: PREVIOUSLY; that is, "PREVIOUS" to the world TO COME -77

4253. .... pro, pro; a prim. prep.; "fore," i.e. in front of, prior (fig. superior) to:- above, ago, before, or ever. In comp. it retains the same significations. The third word underlined -- translated "TO BE" -- is shown by A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament (by Ethelbert W. Bullinger) to mean "COME": elvai (pres. infinit.) to be, 33; be, 12; to have been, 1; have been, 1; that...am (art, is, are, be), 27; that...was (were), 10; had been, 1; that...may (might, should) be, 6; to be made, 1; come, 1. Now let's read this verse in the way that it should have been translated -And now, O Father, You glorify me beside Your own self, with the glory which I AM TO HAVE with You BEFORE the world to come. Yeshua was only asking YEHOVAH to glorify him beside the Father -- or at the right hand of YEHOVAH's throne -- with the glory that he HE HAD IN STORE with the Father -- BEFORE the Kingdom of God (YEHOVAH) and BEFORE the NEW WORLD that is to come. Yeshua knew full well that he was to die and be resurrected by YEHOVAH. He also knew that he was to be allowed to take his rightful place at the right side of YEHOVAH, and that is exactly what we find in the other scriptures that interpret this scripture. Notice Hebrews 1:1-3 -Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle (the one sent) and High Priest of our profession, Yeshua the Messiah; who was faithful to Him: YEHOVAH, Who BEGOT HIM, just as Moses was faithful in all his house. Now this one (Yeshua) was counted worthy of more GLORY than Moses, since he who has built the House of YEHOVAH has more honor than the House of YEHOVAH. This GLORY was in fulfillment of Biblical prophecy -- and this glory was only to BEGIN to take place in a certain time period. In the following verses we find written: Hebrews 1:13: But to which of the angels has He (YEHOVAH) ever said: sit at my right hand -until I make your enemies your footstool? Psalm 110:1: YEHOVAH said to my ruler and king: sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool. 1 Peter 1:11: Examining closely to what things, or what manner of season, which the spirit that was in them made clear to them, when it testified BEFOREHAND to the sufferings of Messiah, and the GLORY THAT WOULD FOLLOW. 1 Peter 5:1: The elders who are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of the Messiah, and ALSO A PARTAKER of the GLORY THAT WILL BE REVEALED: 78

We must realize that we too can look forward to this SAME glory that Yeshua will receive. Just as the apostles looked forward to this glory, so should we. Notice 2 Peter 1:3: As His holy power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and holiness, through the full knowledge of Him Who called US to GLORY and virtue. This was the very glory that Yeshua was talking about -- glory he knew he would receive because it was written in the prophets! He knew he would RECEIVE this glory AFTER HIS RESURRECTION -- he did not have this glory before his human birth! Yeshua the Messiah, as the only BEGOTTEN son of YEHOVAH, will always have the honor of being at his Father's right hand -but he did not receive this honor (glory) until AFTER his resurrection! The word translated "glory" is word #1391 in Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, and means: 2. magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, a most glorious condition, most exalted state; a. of that condition with God the Father in heaven to which Christ was raised after he had achieved his work on earth: Lk. xxai. 26; Jn. xvii. 5 As the Bible says, Yeshua will receive his glory and then his enemies will be made his footstool. In 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 we clearly see that the last enemy that will be destroyed is DEATH -- but we also can see that YEHOVAH will always be exalted as THE SUPREME HEAD over ALL, even by Yeshua himself, who sits at YEHOVAH's right hand -Then the end, when he (Yeshua) will have handed over the Kingdom to YEHOVAH, to our Father, when he (Yeshua) will have destroyed every other rule, and every authority and power. For he (Yeshua) MUST REIGN until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For YEHOVAH has put all things under his feet. But when it says that everything has been put under him, it is clear that THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE YEHOVAH HIMSELF, Who put everything under Yeshua. When He has done this, then the son himself WILL BE SUBJECT TO HIM Who put all things under him, so that YEHOVAH may be acknowledged as THE SUPREME HEAD OVER ALL. Clearly, when Yeshua returns to this earth (as pictured in Revelation 14:14) he will have all authority to destroy all other rules, authorities and powers. He will reign on earth until he has put all enemies under his feet and then, when YEHOVAH's Shekinah Glory returns to this earth (Revelation 19:11) to reside in the Temple built by Yeshua, Yeshua will hand all power over to Him and become subject to Him -- acknowledging that YEHOVAH is the SUPREME HEAD over ALL. Yeshua will then become our High Priest, ministering to YEHOVAH his Father in the Temple of YEHOVAH! Yeshua was NOT speaking of "past glory", nor of a "past life" -- as countless deceived people have believed. Unfortunately, people are deceived because of the pagan lies that the translators have inserted into the scriptures! Yeshua was speaking of the glory he WAS to RECEIVE after he was resurrected; the glory of the only BEGOTTEN son of the Father, full of mercy and truth! 79

The glory of being the ONLY begotten son of YEHOVAH -- the FIRSTBORN from the dead, is the glory Yeshua has NOW, and will forevermore have! But -- and let this sink in -- Yeshua DID NOT have this glory previously, because he simply DID NOT EXIST before he was begotten by YEHOVAH and born as a flesh and blood human being! Read 1 Peter 1:19-20: But with the precious blood of Messiah, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who truly was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was MANIFEST in these last times for you; who through him we do believe in YEHOVAH, who raised him up from the dead, and GAVE HIM GLORY; that your faith and hope might be in YEHOVAH. 7/. I Timothy 3:16. Another verse which is used by those who have been deceived by the pagan ideas of the translators is found in I Timothy 3:16 in the King James Version. However, this "translation" is simply NOT FOUND in most of the other modern versions! In the King James Version this reads -And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. The Concordant Version of the Sacred Scriptures -- written in the ancient Greek form -reveals that the word "WHO" -- NOT the word "God" -- was originally in the text! Furthermore, The Emphatic Diaglott shows us that the word "God" was NOT in the Alexandrian Manuscript -nor was it in almost all of the other ancient manuscripts. Notice -Nearly all the ancient MSS., and all the versions have "He who," instead of "God," in this passage. Taking this theme further, the book Forgery in Christianity (by Wheless) informs us -In the King James or "Authorized" Version we read: "Great is the mystery of Godliness: God was manifest in the flesh," etc. (1 Tim. iii, 16.) In the "Revised Version" this "God Manifest" forged interpolation is shamed out of the text, which there honestly reads: "He who was manifested in the flesh," etc. Thus the great "mystery of godliness," premised in the text, is no longer a mystery; and the fraudulent insertion into the text by some overzealous Christian forger, seeking to bolster up an "apostolic" pedigree for the later "tradition" of the divinity of the Christ, is confessed. The Revised Standard Version of the Bible has corrected this verse, saying -Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. The CORRECT translation of this verse should read as follows --

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And without controversy, great is the secret of holiness: HE WHO WAS MANIFESTED IN THE FLESH, was justified in spirit, was seen by angels, was preached to the Gentiles, was believed on in the world, was received up into HIS GLORY. As you can see for yourself there has been blatant forgery and deception carried out by the translators of YEHOVAH's Word -- deception perpetrated in order to promulgate the LIE of a "pre-existent" savior who was God manifested in the flesh! Don't fall for it! 8/. Hebrew 1:8-9. Another scripture that has deceived many in the Churches of God who quite often use these verses to "prove" that Yeshua was pre-existing being, is that of Hebrews 1:8-9. Some use these verses to claim Yeshua was an angel, while others use it to claim Yeshua was God. Notice what the King James Version says -But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. The way these verses have been translated in the King James Version would have those with a shallow knowledge of the Bible believe that Yeshua is here called "God"! However, a little research into the Bible will reveal that Hebrews 1:8-9 is a DIRECT QUOTE from Psalm 45:6-7 in the Old Testament. Notice how it is rendered in The Holy Name Bible: Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies; whereby the people fall under Thee. Thy throne, O Elohim, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of Thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore Elohim, Thy Elohim, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. The Lexicon In Veteris Testamenti Libros, by Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, shows that the word "Elohim" was used to REPLACE the Name of YEHOVAH (p. 51). This is corroborated in A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Brown, Driver and Briggs, which says that Elohim was inserted "often by editorial change for an original YHVH" p. 44). The Name of "YEHOVAH" was replaced by the PAGAN title "Elohim" in Psalm 45:6-7. Unfortunately, this is not the only translation problem encountered in these verses. Notice the author's comments in The Anchor Bible, Psalms I -The eternal and everlasting God has enthroned you! The scepter of your kingdom must be a scepter of equity. You must love justice and hate iniquity, because God, your God, has anointed you. has enthroned you. Vocalizing kisse' ka, a denominative piel from kisse', "throne." The only evidence for this proposal is its manifest good sense, its concordance with the Ugaritic-Hebrew proclivity for coining such verbs (Biblica 44 [1963], 204f.) and, negatively, the unsatisfactory nature of the numberless solutions which have been proffered on behalf of this crux interpretum.

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In other words, kisse' ka lohim is stylistically parallel to vs. 3, berak ka lohim, "God has blessed you," and stylistically and semantically parallel to vs. 8, m sah ka lohim, "God has anointed you." Some commentators (as early as 1790) have felt that a verb is needed here and have accordingly supplied hekin or something similar; cf. King, A study of Psalm 45 (44), p. 79. There have been many different solutions offered in solving the problem of correctly interpreting this verse. But see how this verse is translated from the Hebrew in The Holy Bible, Second Part, Division 2 -Thy throne, GIVEN OF GOD, endureth for ever and ever: the sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. As we just saw, the Name of "YEHOVAH" was replaced with the word "Elohim." Therefore, by putting the name of "YEHOVAH" BACK into this verse -- along with the true translation of the Hebrew text -- we get the TRUE TRANSLATION of Psalm 45:6-7. Notice! Your throne, given of YEHOVAH, is for ever and ever; the scepter; ruling staff, of your kingdom is a scepter; ruling rod, of righteousness. You, too, have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore YEHOVAH your FATHER has anointed you with the oil of gladness over your fellow men. And this is EXACTLY how Hebrews 1:8-9 should have been translated -- because it is a DIRECT quotation! We know that the author of the Book of Hebrews (Paul) was not saying anything that was not already in the Book of Psalms, because he was quoting from it. Psalm 45:6-7 is a prophecy that will take place when Yeshua is crowned king under his Father YEHOVAH. Yeshua did NOT "have" this throne when the Psalms were written -- because he did not yet exist! And Yeshua does not "have" this throne even at THIS TIME because all things have not YET been out under Yeshua, referring to the world to come -- as pointed out in Hebrews 2:5-8: For it is NOT to the angels that He has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking; for one brings testimony in a certain place, saying: What is man, that You are mindful of him, or the son of man, that You visit him? You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor, and did set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet. In putting everything in subjection under him, YEHOVAH left nothing that is not subject to him -- but at this time we do NOT YET see all things put under him. Notice the last part of verse 8 closely: These things are NOT under Yeshua yet, but they will be one day soon -- because this was in YEHOVAH's plan from the very beginning! Therefore, Psalm 45:6-7 and Hebrews 1:8-9 are the SAME prophecy which will take place in the near future, concerning the only begotten son of YEHOVAH -- but they do NOT teach of any pre-existent god-savior!

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9/. Daniel 3:25. Those who try to deceive you will more than likely use Daniel 3:25 to "prove" that the son of God was pre-existent. Don't fall for it! This scripture, in the King James Version, reads as follows -He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. The first thing you should realize is the fact that there are many sources out there that know this verse has been mistranslated -- Clarke's Commentary is one of them -Verse 25. Is like the Son of God.] A most improper translation. What notion could this idolatrous king have of the Lord Jesus Christ? for so the place [verse] understood by thousands. .... bar elahin signifies a son of the gods, that is, a Divine person or angel; and so the king calls him in verse 28: "God hath sent his ANGEL, and delivered his servants." And though even from this some still contend that it was the Angel of the covenant, yet the Babylonish king knew just as much of the one as he did of the other. No other ministration was necessary; a single angel from heaven was quite sufficient to answer this purpose, as that which stopped the mouths of the lions when Daniel was cast into their den. It is quite amazing that there are people who say this fourth person was Yeshua. They, of course, are trying to deceive you into thinking that Yeshua was alive at the time. But even a cursory examination of this verse indicates that there is absolutely NOTHING here that names Yeshua or says that he pre-existed! Now, let us notice WHAT was said -- and by WHOM. The statement made in Daniel 3:25 was spoken by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon -- just as Daniel 3:24 clearly states. Nebuchadnezzar was a pagan who had just made an image of himself and had commanded all in his kingdom to worship it. He then cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego into the furnace because they refused to worship this image -- they would worship YEHOVAH only. It was this same Nebuchadnezzar who made this statement in Daniel 3:25: "...the fourth looks like the son of the gods." Are we to suppose, then, that this pagan king who was trying to kill the servants of YEHOVAH, said: "...the fourth looks like Yeshua, the Son of YEHOVAH"? This is EXACTLY what the deceivers would like you to believe! YEHOVAH has many angels, and he does send them to help us at times -- like the ones YEHOVAH sent to help Lot and Abraham. The Bible also shows that many times these angels have the appearance of HUMAN BEINGS -- and this is exactly how King Nebuchadnezzar described the fourth man in Daniel 3:25. He did NOT say: "...I see Yeshua...". Neither did he say: "...I see the Son of YEHOVAH...". Do not allow anyone to deceive you about this!! 10/. Proverbs 30:4. This verse -- in the King James Version -- reads:

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Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell? Once again, this particular scripture is TWISTED by the false ministers in the world who claim that it teaches that Yeshua was already in existence at that time. But this verse in NO WAY refers to Yeshua -- and it is hard to believe that any serious student of the Bible could use this verse to justify such an understanding. But, sadly, they do. Correctly translated, this verse reads: Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound up the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is HIS NAME? What is THE NAME of His sons? Tell me if you know! Here is a copy of Proverbs 30:4 from the Greek Septuagint Version, from which this verse was translated -Who hath ascended up to heaven and come down? Who hath collected the winds in his bosom? Who hath infolded the water in a mantle? Who hath a dominion over all the ends of the earth? What is his name? or what the name of his sons? The Anchor Bible, Proverbs, on page 176, corroborates this translation and plainly says that the sons who are being spoken of refer to the HEAVENLY HOST -- in other words, the ANGELS! Notice what it says -4. Who has ascended the sky. Cf. Job xxxviii 3-38; Isa xl 12ff.; Unless his name is known, neither god nor man can be known as real' cf. Gen xxxii 29; Exod iii 13; Isa lii 6. his sons'. The divine beings of the heavenly host; cf. Ps lxxxii 6; Job xxxviii 7. Surely you know. Cf. Job xxxviii 5. This was NOT speaking of Yeshua going back and forth from heaven to earth, this was speaking of YEHOVAH's MESSENGERS -- the angels! Yeshua was not an angel, as the Bible clearly states -Hebrews 1:13 -- But to which of the angels has He ever said: Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool? Hebrews 2:5 -- For it is not to the angels that He has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. Hebrews 2:16 -- For truly, He does not take hold of angels, but He takes hold of the seed of Abraham. There are absolutely NO direct statements to the effect that any beings existed beside YEHOVAH before He created the angels. But, there are MANY direct scriptures which say emphatically that YEHOVAH was ALONE at creation, and that there was NONE BESIDE HIM!

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Isaiah 43:11 (King James Version) -- I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour. Isaiah 44:6, 8 (King James Version) -- Thus saith [YEHOVAH] the King of Israyl, and his redeemer [YEHOVAH] of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside ME there is NO GOD. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a GOD beside ME? yea, there is NO GOD; I know not any. Isaiah 45:5 (King James Version) -- I am [YEHOVAH], and there is NONE ELSE, there is NO GOD beside ME: I girded thee, though thou has not known ME. 11/. Isaiah 9:6. It is generally known in scholarly circles that the King James Version of the Bible contains literally THOUSANDS of mistakes and deliberate fraud. The trouble is, even though the scholars admit this fact no one wants to buck the system and correct these mistakes! No one, it seems, wants to suffer the persecution this entails. The King James translation of Isaiah 9:6 is just one of these cases of deliberate fraud foisted off onto deceived people. This translation infers that the SON (Yeshua) was the "mighty God"; that he was the "everlasting Father" -- in other words, that he was PRE-EXISTENT! Let us set the record straight and present the TRUTH about that lie. Isaiah 9:6 in the King James Version has KEY words that are mistranslated -For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. The first word underlined -- which has been translated "Wonderful" -- is word #6382, from word #6381 in Strong's Hebrew Dictionary -6382. .... pele', peh'-leh; from 6381; a miracle:- marvellous thing, wonder (-ful, -fully). In its original form this word was not the adjective "Wonderful" in Isaiah 9:6, but the NOUN "wonder" -- and it is also part of the phrase pele-yaotz, as the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament shows. The word "Counsellor" -- although relatively accurately translated -- is translated from the Hebrew word "yaotz," word #3289 in Strong's Hebrew Dictionary; but the word "yaotz" is clearly shown from the previous reference to be part of a PHRASE -- not words with separate meanings! If you check it out for yourself you will see that this phrase actually means: "WONDER of a Counselor"! See how deceptive the translators have been? The "WONDER" of the Counselor is the Ideal Ruler foretold to come -- which The Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (p. 419) clearly and emphatically shows. Now, WHO is this "Counselor," of Whom this child who is to be BORN is to be a "WONDER" or an Ideal Ruler? In the next words mistranslated in the King James Version we find the answer to this question. The words "MIGHTY" and "GOD" in the King James Version -- as well as other mistranslated versions -- were translated from the Hebrew words "GABUR" AND "EL," words #1386 and #410 in Strong's Hebrew Dictionary. According to the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (p. 149), the word "GABUR" is a word that means "mighty." 85

The Soncino Talmud, The Babylonian Talmud, Seder Nezikin, Sanhedrin, 94a, translated by Dr. I. Epstein, shows the word "EL" to mean "judge" in this particular place! For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called [i] Wonderful, [ii] Counsellor, [iii] Mighty, [iv] Judge.* * For this meaning of el, cf. Ex. XXI, 6; XXII, 8. Yes, judgment has been given into the hands of Yeshua the Messiah -- just as Acts 10:38-42 emphatically tells us -How God [YEHOVAH] anointed Jesus [Yeshua] of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God [YEHOVAH] was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed by hanging on a tree. Him God [YEHOVAH] raised up on the third day, and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God [YEHOVAH], even to us who ate and drank with him after he arose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God [YEHOVAH] to be JUDGE of the living and the dead. Yeshua will be the JUDGE appointed by YEHOVAH, whose JUDGMENT -- according to YEHOVAH's judgments -- will bring peace to this earth. And because Yeshua the Messiah will command that each and every word YEHOVAH has spoken is to be obeyed -- completely -- Yeshua will BE "The Prince of Peace." The Hebrew words "el" and "gabur" -- when properly translated -- would be written in this fashion: "JUDGE OF THE MIGHTY." Therefore, Isaiah 9:6 is translated word for word as: For a child is born to us, a son is given to us, and is called His Name, Wonder of the Counselor, the Judge of the Mighty Father Everlasting, Prince of Peace. As a result, Isaiah 9:6, when properly translated into modern English, will read as follows: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulders. And his name will be called the WONDER of the Counselor, the JUDGE of the Mighty Everlasting Father -- the PRINCE of peace. As pointed out, the COUNSELOR is "The Mighty, Everlasting Father -- YEHOVAH Himself! As the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (p. 810) points out, Isaiah 9:6 is showing that this "WONDER" (Yeshua the Judge) of the "COUNSELOR" (YEHOVAH the Father) -- Yeshua Messiah who is the Ideal Ruler -- was YET TO COME when this prophecy was spoken! Yeshua DID NOT exist in the time of Isaiah the prophet, but he was prophesied to come later.

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And -- and please take careful note of this -- Yeshua WAS NOT "The Mighty God, the Father" -- as the fraudulent translators of the King James Version of the Bible, as well as the rest of the deceived world, would like for YOU to believe! When this scripture is properly translated it agrees totally with all the other inspired scriptures of YEHOVAH. It was not the inspired prophets of YEHOVAH who were trying to teach of a "pre-existent god-savior." It was the PAGAN TRANSLATORS -- adding to or deleting from the original inspired word of YEHOVAH, who caused this grave error to be taught to this whole deceived "Christian" world as "doctrine." 12/. Ephesians 3:9. Here is a scripture that fools the unlearned into believing that it was Yeshua who was "the Creator." In fact, many of the Churches of God teach that "in the beginning there were TWO GODS," and that "one god decided to become the father god and the other decided he would be god the son." This is totally ridiculous! Let us try and understand WHY some have become CONFUSED -- and also WHAT the real meaning of this verse is. Ephesians 3:9, in the King James Version, reads -And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: By just reading this verse it is easy to think that YEHOVAH the Father gave orders to create all things, and that these orders were carried out by Yeshua the Messiah. Once again, this world has been DECEIVED into believing this LIE because the LAST THREE WORDS in the King James Version were ADDED to this scripture by the translators! These last three words were NOT in the original manuscripts! The Emphatic Diaglott, as well as The Interlinear GreekEnglish New Testament clearly show that these words were added. By adding these last three words to the King James Version, the whole meaning of Ephesians 3:9 has been ALTERED! Clarke's Commentary (p. 445) shows these words to be missing in many manuscripts! Notice -But the words ...., by Jesus Christ, are wanting in ABCD*FG, and several others; also in the Syriac, Arabic of Erpen, Coptic, Ethiopic, Vulgate, and Itala; as also in several of the fathers. Griesbach has thrown the words out of the text; and Professor White says, "certissime delenda," they are indisputably spurious. The text, therefore, should be read: which from the beginning of the world had been hidden in God who created all things. No inferiority of Christ can be argued from a clause of whose spuriousness there is the strongest evidence. This verse, from The Ryrie Study Bible, New American Standard Version, reads -and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; The Revised Standard Version shows these words are NOT in this translation: and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 87

Correctly translated, therefore, this verse should read -And to make all men plainly see how this secret is administered; which has been hidden in YEHOVAH from the beginning of the ages, Who created all things. Merely by leaving out the fraudulent words ADDED by uninspired men, we see that the apostle Paul was saying that great secret was hidden in YEHOVAH Who created all things -- NOT in Yeshua who came into existence later! That Yeshua created everything was totally unknown to the Apostolic Fathers. One of the earliest non-Biblical statements of Christian faith is found in a book of 16 short chapters known as The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The author of this book is unknown, but historians have dated it to before or about the year 100 A.D. The Didache deals with concepts people would need to know to become Christians. In chapter 7, it prescribes baptism "in the name of the Father and of the son and of the holy spirit," the same words Yeshua used in Matthew 28:19. But it says absolutely nothing about the three being equal in eternity, power, position and wisdom, or that Yeshua created everything at his Father's command. In its 10th chapter, The Didache includes the following confession of faith in the form of a prayer: We thank you, Holy Father, for your holy Name which you have made to dwell in our hearts; and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you have made known to us through JESUS YOUR SERVANT. Glory to you forever! YOU, Almighty Master, CREATED EVERYTHING for your Name's sake...And to us you have graciously given spiritual food and drink, and life eternal through Jesus your servant (The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 3, pps. 166-7). Clearly, there is no sign of Yeshua having created everything is this passage! In fact, it emphatically states that YEHOVAH created everything! In The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, Edwin Hatch quotes the foregoing passage and then says -In the original sphere of Christianity there does not appear to have been any great advance upon these simple conceptions. The doctrine upon which stress was laid was, that God [YEHOVAH] is, that He is one, that He is almighty and everlasting, that HE MADE THE WORLD, that His mercy is over all His works. There was no taste for metaphysical discussion (p. 252). It should be CLEAR to any honest-minded person that deliberate deception, by deceived men, has taken place in the King James Version of the Bible -- deceitful men whose sole ambition was to deceive you and lead you astray! And because these deceitful men have led thousands away from the every Word of YEHOVAH, they have successfully led them away from the TRUE SAVIOR sent by YEHOVAH!

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Yeshua warned us of false messiahs and religious impostors, whose purpose was to deceive and be deceived. However, it is difficult to grasp the extremes to which these deceivers went to in order to bring forth a "pre-existent god-savior" who "did it all for you," so all you have to do now is simply "believe." The REAL PERSON behind these deceptions is, of course, Satan the Devil, whose sole purpose is to destroy mankind. The religious impostors who altered the Holy Scriptures of YEHOVAH and those who believe these same lies, are all headed for the same destruction. In Matthew 15:14 we read -Let them alone. They are BLIND LEADERS of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, BOTH will fall into the ditch. It is high time for US to remove the blinders and shake off the DECEPTIONS of this generation and come to the realization of the TRUTH of YEHOVAH! Or, as the apostle Peter said in Acts 2:40 -- "SAVE YOURSELF FROM THIS PERVERSE GENERATION!"

Why Yeshua Could NOT Have Pre-Existed

One could easily say, "Sure, he overcame, he was a God, but we are only human beings." Or one could say, "Sure, he overcame, he was an angel." But the fact is, Yeshua was neither "god" nor "angel" -- he was a FLESHLY HUMAN BEING who overcame! Hebrews 2:17 plainly tells us the following -For this reason he had to be MADE LIKE his brothers in EVERY WAY, in order that he might BECOME a merciful and faithful High Priest in service to YEHOVAH, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Yeshua suffered ALL the temptations which all other human beings suffer, as Hebrews 2:18 most emphatically records -For in that he himself has suffered, being tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. The FACT of the matter is, Yeshua HAD to be human, in order to PROVE that YEHOVAH's created mankind CAN OVERCOME! Yeshua the Messiah HAD to PROVE that, yes, it is possible -- with the help of YEHOVAH's holy spirit -- to RESIST SATAN! Yeshua was BORN flesh and blood. It was absolutely necessary for our Messiah, our High Priest, and our Savior sent by YEHOVAH, to be born flesh and blood -- in order that he could, in his OWN HUMAN SELF, PROVE that totally righteous beings COULD be developed from flesh and blood beings. And, in PROVING that flesh and blood COULD OVERCOME, he also proved that YEHOVAH's plan from the beginning -- the building of the perfect God (YEHOVAH) family from flesh and blood mankind does work! Since Yeshua himself, being flesh and blood, OVERCAME, even though he suffered and was tempted, we too, being flesh and blood, can OVERCOME, even though we suffer and are tempted. 89

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE

Jericho -- The Walls DID Come Tumbling Down!
In the spring of 1997, two Italian archaeologists conducted a limited excavation on the ancient tell of Jericho. Lorenzo Nigro and Nicolo Marchetti, working under the auspices of the new Palestinian Department of Archaeology, excavated for one month on the fringes of Kathleen Kenyon's west and south trenches. Their dig was the first foreign expedition in the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank since self-rule began in 1994. After their excavation, Nigro and Marchetti announced they found no evidence for a destruction from the time of Joshua. While it is too soon for the academic community to see details of their discoveries, their announcement suggests their excavation was conducted to disprove the Biblical account of Joshua's capture of the city. Is it further possible that the Palestinian Authority supported this dig for the express purpose of denouncing any Jewish connection to the site? As to their evidence, Dr. Bryant Wood, Director of the Associates for Biblical Research and one of the leading experts on the archaeology of Jericho, recently responded. "It matters little what the Italian archaeologists did not find in their month-long dig. The evidence is already in. Three major expeditions to the site over the past 90 years uncovered abundant evidence to support the Biblical account," he said. A Wood went on to point out, John Garstang (1930-1936) and Kathleen Kenyon (1952-1958) both dug at Jericho for six seasons and a German excavation directed by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger dug for three. All found abundant evidence of the city's destruction by fire in a layer related to the Biblical date of 1400 BC. In September 1997, Dr. Wood visited Jericho and examined the results of the Italian excavation first hand. Incredibly, he found the Italians had uncovered the stone outer revetment wall at the base of the tell with part of the mudbrick wall built on top of it still intact. In the balk of the Italian excavation, at the outer base of the revetment wall, Wood noticed the remains of the collapsed mudbrick city walls which had tumbled. Not only did the Italians find the same evidence uncovered in the earlier excavations, it fits the Biblical story perfectly! "The Italian excavation actually uncovered most of the critical evidence relating to the Biblical story," said Wood. "But even more exciting is the fact that all the evidence from the earlier digs has disappeared over time. We only have records, drawings and photos. But the Italians uncovered a completely new section of the wall which we did not know still existed. I had my photograph taken standing next to the wall where the mudbrick collapse had just been excavated. Unfortunately, the Italian archaeologists, the Palestinian Authorities, the Associated Press and most of the world doesn't realize any of this. It is a sad commentary on the state of archaeology in the Holy Land, when the purpose of an excavation at a Biblical site is to disprove the Bible and disassociate the site with any historical Jewish connection. But that's why the Associates for Biblical Research is in business. Please pray for our efforts. Pray for the removal of all obstacles blocking the publication of Dr. Wood's technical study of the pottery of Jericho.

Pharaohs and Kings Confused

Over the past several years, British historian David Rohl has captured the imagination of many Bible students and at the same time created quite a stir among scholars. Through his book Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest (Crown, 1995) and a video by the same name, Rohl has attempted to completely overhaul ancient Near Eastern chronology. His purpose is to tie together Biblical personages and events to similar sounding references in ancient historical records. To bolster his case, he quotes a number of experts in their respective fields of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Assyrian and Israelite history. While the scope of his work is vast and hinges on a number of technical issues, it can be summarized as follows. Rohl proposed a realignment of ancient Near Eastern chronologies, shifting dates up to 350 years. His work attempts to fill the gaps we presently have in ancient chronologies, allowing the identification of

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Biblical personages with ancient representations known from other sources. The material Rohl focuses on is quite technical. His case centers on dropping the 21st Egyptian Dynasty (1069-945 BC) into being contemporary with Egypt's 22nd Dynasty (945-715 BC). This allows him to connect names and events from ancient history with similar sounding Biblical events and people, even though they were separated by as many as 350 years. Admittedly, Rohl's idea is quite appealing to those frustrated by the lack of connection between Biblical and secular history. Conservatives want to tie Biblical events to ancient history, and the connections he makes sound reasonably and offer some interesting possibilities. Due to the technical nature of his work, however, few are capable of responding authoritatively. Consequently, his work has received widespread media attention and has become popular among conservatives. But all is not well in Rohl-land! One of the experts who appeared in Rohl's videos is Egyptologist Dr. Kenneth Kitchen, a conservative evangelical scholar. Kitchen says he was interviewed in his Liverpool, England home by Rohl on May 17, 1995, for seven hours. Kitchen only appears in Rohl's three-video series for a total of about three minutes. Professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, Kitchen was not at all happy with Rohl's finished product. Sour grapes? Probably not. Angry that he did not get more air time? I doubt it. Kitchen later said he had great reservations about giving the interview because he understood Rohl's arguments all too well. "The easy way out," he said, "was simply to say, 'You are 90% rubbish -- go away' which would be academically justified" (personal communication). But for all experts to respond that way would allow Rohl to go forward with no detractors. So Kitchen agreed to the interview. According to Kitchen, most of the interview was spent with Kitchen demonstrating to Rohl why his theories are wrong and do not work. In retrospect, Kitchen said he later realized that Rohl was only looking for sound bites, not new information. "It is clear, now, that he had most of his filming already in the can by May 17th, and his book virtually ready for press" (personal communication).

In particular, Kitchen said he demonstrated evidence which directly contradicted Rohl's views. With Rohl's main focus on Egyptian chronology, Kitchen's specialty, he provided Rohl with primary evidence from several vital genealogies of the 21st and 22nd Egyptian dynasties. In addition, he presented continuous lines of high priests for Amun (in Thebes) and Ptah (in Memphis) going through both dynasties. Kitchen said Rohl communicated he was unaware of this material. Furthermore, Kitchen answered Rohl's two great anomalies in Egyptian chronology -- the cache of royal reburial near Deir el-Bahri and the lack of Apis bull burials for the 21st Dynasty. Finally, Kitchen provided parallels in the Assyrian King List, the Assyrian Eponym List and the Babylonian King List, with crosslinks illustrated by the synchronous history and Chronicle P. Additional links to New Kingdom Egypt and Hatti, plus markers showing which kings of Assyria successively built in the national shrine at Assur, also bolstered Kitchen's case. As a coup de grace, Kitchen brought out what he called "one totally damning little text" (personal communication) from Deir el-Medina in west Thebes. It precisely dated the Nile inundation at a specific time, an occurrence which takes place only once every 1460 years. As far as Kitchen is concerned, Rohl's proposed "corrections" of ancient Near Eastern chronologies was dead in the water (Kitchen 1995: xlii-xlvi). While Rohl's books and videos appear to make a convincing case for his side, he unfortunately chose to ignore contradictory evidence from Kitchen and other scholars. Consequently, while Rohl's work sounds good, it simply does not work with the known facts of Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Palestinian chronologies. Rohl's efforts focused on eliminating the gaps in ancient Near Eastern chronologies. Yet, it must be understood that these gaps are not unaccounted periods in the history of those civilizations. They only represent our incomplete and uneven knowledge of these histories. Thus, it is all right for us to have gaps; they do not invalidate the known facts. It is not possible to simply drop or add 350 years to these chronologies, despite the supposed connections Rohl makes by doing so. While the Associates for Biblical Research staff, too, is often at odds with conventional chronologies, it is important to be honest with the known facts and deal

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with them. Rohl has only used selective facts which fit his views. This may sell books and videos, but is not good scholarship. Rohl's efforts are creative and not bad in themselves. Unfortunately, they do not stand up with the corpus of known evidence. The real problem is that Rohl is aware of this, but goes ahead anyway. It is good for business, but bad for a better understanding of the Bible and the ancient world. In fact, ill-founded efforts like Rohl's actually hurt other scholars who are honestly trying to make the same type of connections between the Bible and secular history.

found in the Andes of Peru are found to have been covered with a thin layer of fish paste, which apparently promotes preservation. In the grave with Cherchen Man were three adult women. Two of the corpses were not very well preserved, but the third remained in excellent condition. Cherchen Woman was over six feet tall and was buried wearing a dark red robe onto which had been painted a pattern of swirls and spirals. The spiral pattern is interesting because it offers some clues to the origins of the Cherchen people. The Cherchen spirals are very similar to those found in the Aegean and also on tombs in Ireland. The oldest mummies come from Loulan in the Taklamakan Desert. Their clothing is not as colorful as the Cherchen mummies, but their bodies are just as well preserved. While the Cherchen mummies date from about 1000 B.C.E. (around the time when Saul and David ruled in Israel), the Loulan mummies date from about 2000 B.C.E., the era of Abraham and the patriarchs. The Beauty of Loulan is the premier mummy of the region. Four thousand years after her death, her face is serene and lovely. Like a supermodel, her face appears on wall posters and CD covers of recordings by local musicians. Who were the mummies? The best evidence suggests that they were Tokharians, an Indo-European nation that must have emigrated to the Tarim Basin from much farther west. Frescoes that the later Tokharians painted of themselves making gifts to Buddhist monasteries show the donors with light brown or even red hair, handlebar mustaches and occasionally full beards, high-bridged noses -- clearly not Mongolian or Chinese. Physically, the Tokharians resemble the huge, blonde, pale-eyed Celtic warriors the Greeks and Romans went up against in ancient times. Furthermore, linguistically, the Tokharians share more features with the Celtic languages of the Scots, Irish, Welsh, and Bretons than with any other Indo-European language. This similarity of Tokharians and Celts extends into textile technology, too. Archaeological evidence shows us that the Celts have been weaving plaid twills, or tartans, for 3000 years at least. In fact, the Bronze and Iron Age ancestors of the historic Celts wove woolen plaid cloth that is almost identical to modern examples from Scotland. The chief difference is that the ancient plaids contain no more than two or three colors, while the modern tartans are generally

The Mummies of Urumchi

In the museums of Urumchi, the windswept regional capital of the Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western China -- what we know as Chinese Turkistan -- a collection of ancient mummies lay at the center of an enormous mystery. The oldest is 4000 years old -contemporaneous with the much more famous Egyptian mummies. But these prehistoric people are not Oriental. They are Caucasian -- tall, large-nosed, and blond with round eyes (that may have been blue). And they are wearing beautifully preserved woolen clothes woven in a pattern we would recognize as tartan plaid. What were these blondes doing in the foothills of the Himalayas? Where did they come from? Were they Celts as their plaid clothing suggests? In The Mummies of Urumchi, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, author of Women's Work, pieces together the history of these mysterious people, the world to which they belonged, and their connections to the West. One of the oldest mummies is Cherchen Man. In life, about 1000 B.C.E., he stood six foot six inches tall. He was buried wearing a two-piece suit of purplishred-brown wool, soft white deerskin boots, and gaudy strips of red, yellow and blue wool wrapped around his feet and legs like stockings. When the mummies were first brought to the museum, they were disrobed so that grave dirt and any mold or fungus could be cleaned off the corpses. The curators found that the better preserved mummies had been painted with some substance that left a fine yellow dust or fuzz on their bodies. Laboratory tests disclosed that the dust was an animal protein, but gave no other specifics. It's interesting to note that mummies

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multicolored. When Israeli archaeologists uncovered bodies on the fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea they found traces of a similar plaid cloth. Step-by-step, Elizabeth Wayland Barber leads her readers through the evidence, drawing upon her expertise in textile history and her discoveries in the museums of western China. At the end she presents us with the most conclusive evidence yet that the mummies of Urumchi are related to the modern Scots and Irish and are, therefore, descended from the tribes of Israel.

the walls, and fought with great courage; and admiring the subtlety of his undertakings, and believing him to be the author of the Egyptian's success...she fell deeply in love with him; and upon the prevalency of that passion, sent to him the most faithful of all her servants to discourse with him about their marriage. He thereupon accepted the offer, on condition she would procure the delivering up of the city...and that when he had once taken possession of the city, he would not break his oath to her. No sooner was the agreement made, but it took effect immediately; and when Moses had cut of the Ethiopians, he gave thanks to God, and consummated his marriage, and led the Egyptians back to their own land" (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 2, 10:2). Irenaeus, an early church father, summed it up in these words: "When Moses was nourished in the king's palace, he was appointed general of the army against the Ethiopians, and conquered them, when he married that king's daughter; because, out of her affection for him, she delivered the city up to him."

Moses and the Ethiopian Woman

Moses, who was used of YEHOVAH to bring the Israelites forth from Egypt, was married to an Ethiopian woman. Many have been puzzled about this. We recall that Miriam and Aaron -- the sister and brother of Moses -- had some differences with him "because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman" (Numbers 12:1). The details of this dispute are not given. What they did not like about this Ethiopian woman is not explained in the Bible. Steven tells us that Moses, being raised in Pharaoh's household, was well-educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in deeds (Acts 7:22). Again, the Bible does not explain what these deeds were. But Josephus, the noted Jewish historian of the first century of our era, fills in the details about the deeds of Moses and also the Ethiopian woman! Egypt had become involved in a war with the Ethiopians. Moses was appointed general of the Egyptian army. He was very successful in this position, which explains how he was mighty in deeds. "He came upon the Ethiopians before they expected him; and, joining battle with them, he beat them, and deprived them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians" (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 2, 10:2). Finally Moses and the Egyptian armies besieged the royal city of Ethiopia called Saba. It was well fortified and difficult to take. This is where "the Ethiopian woman" comes into the picture. According to Josephus, her name was Tharbis, the daughter of the king. "She happened to see Moses as he led the army near

An Etruscan Link with Israel of Old

The British Museum conservation department has reassembled -- from a handful of fragments -- and put on display a rare specimen of "Etruscan" culture. This is a ceremonial siren vessel, believed to date from the 6-7th century B.C. and attributed to Lydia, in Asia Minor. It is accepted that there were large colonies, descended from both of the ten northern and two southern tribes of Israel -- who had been carried captive by the Assyrians into exile in Media, and had subsequently moved westwards under pressure from further east. They settled, at least temporarily, in the regions of Asia Minor and the Aegean. It was to Christian communities among these that the apostles (particularly Paul) preached and wrote. It is hard to escape the claim that the mysterious Etruscans, idolatrous and gentilized though they had undoubtedly become, contained a substantial proportion of "Israelites of the Dispersion." In this connection, we need always to remember the pre-Exodus "breakaway" of an enterprising section of the tribe of Dan who moved to Greece well in advance of the westward trekking main body of Israel. -- Wake Up! October, 1980

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The New School Prayer

This prayer, which is a sad commentary on American society today, was written by a teenager in Bagdad, Arizona. This is incredible! May YEHOVAH have mercy on His people Israel! Now I sit me down in school Where prayer is against the rule For this great nation under God Finds mention of Him very odd. If Scripture now the class recites, It violates the Bill of Rights. And anytime my head I bow Becomes a Federal matter now. Our hair can be purple, orange, or green, That's no offence; it'a a freedom scene. The law is specific, the law is precise. Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice. For praying in a public hall Might offend someone with no faith at all. In silence alone we must meditate, God's name is prohibited by the State. We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks, And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks. They've outlawed guns, but first the Bible. To quote the Good Book makes me liable. We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen, And the "unwed daddy," our Senior King. It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong. We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong. We can get our condoms and birth controls, Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles. But the Ten Commandments are not allowed, No word of God must reach this crowd. It's scary here I must confess, When chaos reigns, the school's a mess. So, Lord, this silent plea I make: Should I be shot, my soul please take! Amen. 94