Based on my first two studies of
the Gospel, I have been asked, how does the Gospel relate to the gentiles,
specifically, John 3:16. I consider this
to be a good question, although I assumed it was covered within the confines of
the previous two articles.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
This verse will need to be broken
down a bit. Frist, we can notice that God loved the world, whereas in the Old
Testament we know God loves all of Israel. God gave up His son to death. He did
this so that whoever believes would not perish, but have eternal life with
YHWH. So, lets look at these two questions.
If He loves the world now, how
can we reconcile this with the Old Testament?
What does this verse mean when it
says “believes”?
We will start with the reconciliation
with the Old Testament and how God’s love for Israel translates to God loving
the whole world. This idea can be found in the idea of the fullness of the
gentiles.
Romans 11:25
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this
mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the
Gentiles has come in
If we go back and compare a
similar verse found in the book of Genesis we may be able to start connecting
the dots.
Genesis 48:17-19
Now when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him;
so he took hold of his father’s hand to remove it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s
head. And Joseph said to his father,
“Not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his
head.” But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know. He also shall
become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother
shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.”
Joseph is asking his father
Israel (Jacob) to bless his sons. Joseph fully expected Israel to give Manasseh
the first born blessing, but this was not how it played out. Israel says
Ephraim will be the greater of the two and he was to receive the first born
blessing. It is Ephraim who will become the multitude of nations.
The Hebrew word used for the
phrase “shall become a multitude” is mĕlo' and its meaning is fullness. “Of nations” comes from the Hebrew word gowy and
its meaning is Nations. With this understanding, we can conclude the descendants
of Ephraim will become the fullness of the gentiles. This is exactly what we
read from this verse. Now, with all in mind, we can go back a bit further to the
promise given to Abraham.
Genesis 17: 2, 4,6-7
And I will make My covenant
between Me and you, and will multiply
you exceedingly.”
As for Me, behold, My covenant
is with you, and you shall be a father
of many nations.
I will make you exceedingly fruitful;
and I will make nations of you, and
kings shall come from you. And I will
establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in
their generations, for an everlasting
covenant, to be God to you and your
descendants after you.
YHWH told Abraham that His
covenant will be with him. He says Abraham will be multiplied exceedingly. “I
will make gentiles of you”. He is giving him an everlasting covenant for him
and his descendants. Why does he do all this?
Genesis 26:4-5
And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I
will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be
blessed; because Abraham obeyed My voice
and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.
Abraham kept all of God’s laws
and commands. YHWH says with his seed all the gentiles of the earth will be
blessed. So, we have a direct connection
here with Abrahams seed, and Ephraim being linked to all the nations of the
gentiles. This is the direct link to God loving the whole world. He did love
the whole world because the world was filled with His chosen people. This was
all part of His plan. Knowing this, we must connect Ephraim with the House of
Israel.
1 Kings 12: 20-21
Now it came to pass when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had come back, they sent for him and called him to the
congregation, and made him king over all
Israel. There was none who followed the house of David, but the tribe of
Judah only.
And when Rehoboam came to
Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of
Judah with the tribe of Benjamin
1 Kings 11: 26
Then Solomon’s servant, Jeroboam
the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite from
Zereda, whose mother’s name was Zeruah, a widow, also rebelled against the
king.
There are several things to take
away from these two passages. First, Jeroboam was the king over the northern
kingdom of Israel which became known as the House of Israel. Rehoboam became
king over what was known as the southern kingdom of Judah. Second, Jeroboam was
a servant of King Solomon. Third, Jeroboam was a descendant of Ephraim. Knowing
the king of the House of Israel is descended Ephraim, it makes sense that the house
of Israel is sometimes referred to as Ephraim. To take this a step further, we
know the House of Israel had been taken captive into Assyria and from there
scattered among the nations of the world. The House of Judah was later taken
into captivity into Babylon, but they returned back to the land of Israel. So
why did the House of Israel not come back? I believe it is directly linked to
the following prophecy and the law YHWH gave.
Ezekiel 4:3-8, 13
Moreover take for yourself an iron plate, and set it as an iron wall
between you and the city. Set your face against it, and it shall be besieged,
and you shall lay siege against it. This will be a sign to the house of Israel.
“Lie also on your left side, and lay
the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the
days that you lie on it, you shall bear
their iniquity. For I have laid on you the years of their iniquity,
according to the number of the days, three
hundred and ninety days; so you shall bear
the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when you have completed them, lie
again on your right side; then you shall
bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year.
“Therefore you shall set your
face toward the siege of Jerusalem; your arm shall be uncovered, and you shall
prophesy against it. And surely I will restrain
you so that you cannot turn from one side to another till you have ended the
days of your siege.
Then the Lord said, “So shall the
children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, where I will drive them.”
Leviticus 26:18
‘And after all this, if you do
not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
The house of Israel has a
barricade against it due to their compounding sin of disobeying YHWH’s Law.
YHWH says Ezekiel is to lay on his left side for 390 days because of their sin.
This is one day for each year of their sin. Then, 40 days for the sin of Judah.
We then see another prophecy that states the house of Israel will “eat their
defiled bread among the gentiles, where” YHWH “will drive them”. Israel never returned to the land because
they never repented. Not repenting means they did not return to obeying YHWH,
and in their refusal to do so they multiplied their punishment by seven. . There is no mention in the
entire Bible of the House of Israel ever returning to the land. There is no
historical evidence found outside of the Bible that suggests this idea either.
There is evidence found in the Mishna of two Rabbis arguing amongst each other
about this idea.
The House of Israel was sinful for 390 years, and taken captive in the year 722 BC. 390 multiplied by seven is 2730 years of exile. In doing the math on this, the House of Israel’s punishment should have ended right around the year 2009, taking into account the fact there is no year zero. It just so happens that between the years 2008 and 2012 massive amounts of people have turned away from the traditional church model and turned back to the Law of God. I personally fall into this statistic because I started “waking up” in 2011. It was 2008 when I started wanting to read the Bible, I struggled to make time to do this. But, the intent began to grow. In 2011 I began reading the Bible from the beginning and I stumbled onto the Genesis six issue of Nephilim. From there my Biblical studying took off. I noticed that first, the church never talks about what the Nephilim are. This was an issue for me because these Nephilim led to the world wide flood. After that, I chose to read and study the Bible as much as I possibly could and I discovered all of these truths that are rarely, if ever mentioned in church. The punishment of the House of Israel has ended and we want to come home. This the link between the House of Israel and the love of God for the world.
Rabbi
Akiva says, “The ten tribes will not
return, as the verse says (Deuteronomy 29:27), ‘And the L‑rd uprooted them from upon their land, with fury, anger
and great wrath, and He cast them to another land, as it is this day.’ Just as a
day passes and it will never return, so too, they will be exiled never to
return.”
Rabbi
Eliezer says, “Just like a day is followed by darkness, and the light later
returns, so too, although it will become ‘dark’ for the ten tribes, G‑d will ultimately take them out of their darkness.
Here we see the two Rabbis, both
arguing after the death of Christ, on whether or not the House of Israel will
return to the land of Israel. The bottom line here is, they agree the House of
Israel had not yet returned.
Contemporary Jews teach that only
Judah, Benjamin and Levi returned to Jerusalem following their captivity in
Babylon. In an article titled “Where are the Ten Tribes?” in the Jewish
Quarterly Review, Adolf Neubauer distinguished between the ten tribes and the
two tribes that returned from Babylon:
The
captives of Israel exiled beyond the Euphrates did not return as a whole to Palestine along with their brethren the
captives of Judah…. Ezra and Nehemiah give the enumeration only of “the
children of the province of Judah, that went up out of the captivity, of those
which had been carried away unto Babylon, and came again to Jerusalem and
Judah, everyone unto his city.”
Adolf Neubauer lived from
1831-1907 and is considered a modern Jewish teacher and scholar. He too agrees
the House of Israel has not yet returned to the land of Israel.
The House of Israel was sinful for 390 years, and taken captive in the year 722 BC. 390 multiplied by seven is 2730 years of exile. In doing the math on this, the House of Israel’s punishment should have ended right around the year 2009, taking into account the fact there is no year zero. It just so happens that between the years 2008 and 2012 massive amounts of people have turned away from the traditional church model and turned back to the Law of God. I personally fall into this statistic because I started “waking up” in 2011. It was 2008 when I started wanting to read the Bible, I struggled to make time to do this. But, the intent began to grow. In 2011 I began reading the Bible from the beginning and I stumbled onto the Genesis six issue of Nephilim. From there my Biblical studying took off. I noticed that first, the church never talks about what the Nephilim are. This was an issue for me because these Nephilim led to the world wide flood. After that, I chose to read and study the Bible as much as I possibly could and I discovered all of these truths that are rarely, if ever mentioned in church. The punishment of the House of Israel has ended and we want to come home. This the link between the House of Israel and the love of God for the world.
Ill get to the believes portion
in part four.
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