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Thursday 21 November 2013

Gospel in the names: Adam to Noah‏




Adam is related to the Hebrew term Adama which means earth (ground, soil, dirt) specifically of red color since the Hebrew word for Red is Adom. Edom came from Esau which was called such since he was covered with hair and possibly red hair. So, Adam means taken from the red earth and possibly had a red tone to his skin. The meaning of the name Adam can also mean Red Man. The Hebrew word for blood is “dam” which is again red in color.

The name Eve is actually “Havah” which comes from the Hebrew word “Khay” which means living… and “Khay” means alive. So, to say “Jesus is Alive”, you would say “Yeshua khay”.

Their son Cain is more appropriately pronounced as “Khain” which means to get, acquire or to gain. Eve said (Gen 4:1) that she had “Khanad” a man through Yahweh. Cain’s little brother is “havel” and comes from the Hebrew word “haval” meaning to breathe out and means something vain or vanity or waste like a breathe which is expelled from your mouth and has very little weight. Perhaps they gave this name cause of what they were experiencing after their disconnect from the Creator… maybe they were realizing that after the fall, all they had was vanity, in vain… something in waste. Seth or Sheth in Hebrew which comes from the Hebrew word “Shethath” meaning to set, put, place or appoint. We read Gen 4:25. The entire sentence is seeming to be a conversation in Hebrew.

Next is Enosh in Hebrew “Anash” which means to be sick, ill or incurable.

Next is Kanan in Hebrew which is from the same root as Khain.

Next is Mahallel which means Praising El or Praising Elohim

Next is Jared or Yared which comes from the Hebrew word Yarad which actually means to go down or to descend. This has the same root as the name of the river Jordan which in Hebrew is called Yardin.

Next is Enoch in Hebrew “Khanoch” which comes from the Hebrew word “Khanach” which means to dedicate, consecrate, train or teach. The root is the same as the festival of “Khanukkah” which relates to the Macabees a couple of hundred years before Jesus Christ when they drove the Greeks out of Israel and they rededicated (“Khanack”) the altar.

Methuselah in Hebrew is “Methusalakh”. This is a contraction of 3 hebrew words which is Met meaning death or to die, then we have a one letter word “u” meaning “and” then the word “Shalakh” meaning to “Set”. In short it means “Death and Set”. Exactly one year after his death, the Noah’s flood was Set.

Next is Lamech in Hebrew “Lamach” meaning to hit or to strike.

Next is Noah in Hebrew “Noakh” meaning ‘Rest’ or ‘Comfort’. Why the name, we see in Gen 5:29.

Let’s string the names together and get the synonyms.
Adam – Man
Cain – Has acquired
Abel – Vanity, waste
Seth – Appointed
Enosh – Illness, stuck in mortality
But to His praise, God (Mehalleh), will descend to rededicate, to train man and to teach (Enoch) that through His death, he will send to the stricken and wounded (Lamech), comfort and rest (Noah).

Monday 18 November 2013

Why Christians need not be circumcised



To understand whether Christians require circumcision, we need to check out what exactly the Old Testament says. Moses was the greatest prophet who has been face to face with God, not receiving messages by visions and dreams but directly in front of God. He himself says at the time before his departure to the Israelite in the plain of Moab in the form of directives that how they will live their lives into the promised lands in which they are going to possess. He is explaining here the curses and blessings. And in Deuteronomy 30:6, “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” In Deuteronomy, he informs that after going through all the curses, because of disobedience, when they will come back to the Lord, then the Lord will circumcise their hearts. This indicates a framework of ethics, NOT OF RITUALS. This also indicates how the coming prophets will take the lead to give a clear message as to what is important and what God requires from them. 

Moses says in Deuteronomy 10:12, which is the essence of the law, tell us what the God requires: “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. “ Likewise Micah 6:8, "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This is an ethical response. In the same way Jeremiah 4:4 says, "Circumcise yourself to the Lord and takeaway your foreskins of Your Hearts." Now both Moses and other prophets are bringing the message that the ETHICS are more important than RITUAL and this is pleasing to the Lord. 

Paul says in Romans, while he was preaching on this subject, “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in Romans 3:24”. It is true that Christ says, “I have not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it.” Christ has corrected the interpretation of the Law and brought the right spirit for spiritual life. That’s why he gave His message and Agenda of His work in Luke 4:18 giving the right understanding of the Gospel which is related with spiritual life and physical life. 

Jesus has nowhere at all directed to have the circumcision of the flesh. He Himself says He is the Lord of Sabbath. So Paul, following Jesus brought the message in Galatians 3:2, where he says " Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?" He further gives the example in Galatians 2:3 where he says, "But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek." If we read Deuteronomy 18:15-18, ““The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” 

So from these examples and the preaching of Moses, Jeremiah, Micah, Jesus and Paul, we understand that circumcision of the flesh has no value and is not profitable. The only thing that is profitable is the circumcision of the heart.  In alignment with Moses and Jesus, and also that Paul was given an incitement that he was an apostle, not a prophet. The knowledge and revelation he has received was from Jesus Christ. 

To conclude, John 5:45-47 says, “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”” 
Many people ask about circumcision, specifically with those from Islamic background, that since Circumcision was mentioned in the book of Law, why Christians don’t follow the law which ends up with an argument where majority of them blame Paul for changing the law. Well, looking above, we see that there is no contradiction in the teachings of Jesus, and Paul was a true apostle of God. Also, Christians do not require a circumcision. I hope this article helps you. God Bless!

Monday 4 November 2013

Can women be senior pastors?



If a denomination wants to hold to a “traditionalists” view of Kinder, Küche und Kirche for women, they need to know that it is not ancient tradition, and is actually not anywhere near the early church model, nor even up until the industrial revolution; this all comes from a Victorian era idea of what an ideal family life should look like. This, unfortunately, is the outcome of Aldous Huxley’s preaching of Darwin’s model of evolution; in which he taught that women are not as evolved as men, and that they need to be protected from the rough and tumble business life; their constitutions are not up to life outside the home. 

So as to the teaching of the Bible, someone who has done their homework, studying the history, context, archaeological finds, and has done the research, can take all of this scripture and with “proper handling” (see 2 Tim as well) use it for “teaching, reproof, for correction and training in righteousness.” But because we are faulty, fallen human beings, we want it to support our own thesis, or agenda, or denominational stance; because “we’ve always done it that way” more often than not.

Now that I’ve laid that ground work (stick with me here) on 19th and 20th century traditionalism (and we could go back to the 13th century, but I don’t want to write a whole book here!) let’s talk a bit about the late Roman empire of Paul’s day.

Christianity (or earlier just called “The Way”) was actually a splinter faction of an approved religion in the Roman Empire. Jews were protected from things that Roman citizens had to do i.e. sacrifice to the emperor, or serve in the army. This bunch of followers of “The Christ” were ignored by official Rome (see Acts 18:12ff) as beneath the dignity of the court as Gallio said (in 51 AD) “since it involves questions about words and names in your own law—settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.” So Rome at the beginning had no care for this Jewish question. They were only concerned with the Pax Romana.

Within the late Roman Empire, there were strict protocols in a “shame-honor” culture, and weighing heavily on that were a man’s social standing and the behavior of his wife. He could lose his benefactors if his wife “misbehaved” and brought shame to him. When you consider some of the senatorial “rants” against uppity women, who dared to walk around without a head-scarf (a senator divorced his wife for this infraction), and very few women had any protection for being accused of adultery, or if they did not produce an heir, their husband could get another wife, and let’s not even talk about the institutionalized slavery; women had a rough road.

Now, here’s this “new” religion, which says, in Paul’s earliest recorded letter “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28, written in 57 AD), well these new converts were astounded by those words, and like kids at recess with no teacher, went predictably nuts. If you read both 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and the long lecture Paul gave to Timothy in Ephesus (1 Tim) slaves and women needed to be settled down, owners of slaves needed to see their recently converted persons as brothers and sisters and not property, because this religion was so different than anything anyone had heard of before.

Now the teaching in Ephesians about wives submitting to their husbands, is one of those instances of “cherry picking.” That verse needs to be put into its context, you cannot pull it out by itself, although that has been done since the “church fathers” from around 200 AD on.

That teaching actually starts in 4:18 with the teaching against a Dionysian debauchery (drunken celebrations to contact spirits) but to be filled with the Spirit of God. But even further we are to be submitted to each other, (5:21) [as] a wife to her husband. (5:22) There is no second Greek verb there. You are looking at a traditional break. The whole teaching is an analogy to teach how submitted we are to be to Christ: as dependent as a young bride (12 to 14 yrs old) to her 30 + year old husband would be in that day. We need to consider Jesus as our source and supply with the same type of dependence. Then Paul goes further to the larger picture of the whole church…and yes, the next line (v 24 b) states there “…so wives should submit to their husbands in everything” because women had no rights, voice or legal protection. But the next line is the most earth-shaking: “Husbands love (!) Your wives…” A Roman citizen, and new Christian has to LOVE his wife? Husbands didn’t love their wives, that was completely and utterly counter cultural as to be seen as crazy.

Next: the most hotly debated set of verses used to shut-up and shut down more women from ministry since after Paul’s death: “A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority (authentine) over a man…”
First, background of the set of house churches in Ephesus: Ephesus was the home of one of the “wonders of the world”, the Temple of Artemis. These young house churches converted many of the priestesses of Artemis. These women had been taught that only women lead, and men submit. So these women were trying to teach what they thought Christianity was, before they had even been fully trained. The Greek word used here (and the only time in the New Testament) is Authentine, which at that time meant to usurp authority, or even to be the mastermind of a crime; it was a marker word for something really wrong. If Paul had meant any teaching authority, he would have used the general word exousa which is also “authority” but what we would take to be normal leadership. These women as well, would still pray to Artemis for safe childbirth, rather than look to God for their help. If you read the whole book of 1Timothy, you will see, rather than some “fatherly advice” (the Pastoral letters…hmm) it is a supervisor explaining on no-uncertain-terms that Timothy has an out-of-control situation on his hands and to straighten out this mess. 

Now, if these churches were up-ending the cultural norms, by the behavior of their members, this would draw attention to them: which it eventually did under Nero, and after Nero had his moderate advisors killed was when the first persecution of Christians began, and when both Paul and Peter were executed (67-68AD.) After that Christianity was outlawed in the Roman Empire, but it wasn’t until later under other emperors that feeding the Christians to the lions came in vogue.


Article By: Alice E. Guinther. To Know more about Alice, click here.
Image Source: Newlife