Education

The Modern Practice of Tithing in Light of Christ Fulfilling the Law: Part 3

Adam Maarschalk 3 Comments

This is the third post in a series on tithing, as it’s taught in many churches today. This series examines all 17 Bible passages which speak of tithing, and is taken from a term paper I wrote in 2006.  The first post included the series outline and an introduction, and covered the two passages where tithing was mentioned prior to the Law of Moses (Genesis 14:8-24 and 28:8-22). The second post examined how tithing was prescribed and practiced under the Mosaic Law (in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). This post will look at how tithing was enforced by a king (Hezekiah), a reformer (Nehemiah), and two prophets (Amos and Malachi). My references will be included in the final post.

———————————————————————————–

III. A King, a Reformer, and Two Prophets Restore Tithing

In Walter Kaiser’s book, “Toward Rediscovering the Old Testament” (1987), he says that the Law of Moses was the basis for much of the teachings of the Biblical prophets. Often they came along when Israel had strayed far from the Law, and challenged the people to return to God’s ways. Kaiser says that there are literally hundreds of citations and allusions in the Major and Minor Prophets to just two Law passages, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 (p. 182).

More than once in Israel’s history, the tithing system God had ordained was grossly neglected. The poor and the needy were left to fend for themselves. The Levites were not taken care of, and they in turn failed to support the priests and the tabernacle. It was at such points in Israel’s history that God sent Hezekiah, Nehemiah, Amos, and Malachi with a word from heaven.

Passage 8: II Chronicles 31:4-12

Moreover [Hezekiah] commanded the people who dwelt in Jerusalem to contribute support for the priests and the Levites, that they might devote themselves to the Law of the LORD. As soon as the commandment was circulated, the children of Israel brought in abundance the firstfruits of grain and wine, oil and honey, and of all the produce of the field; and they brought in abundantly the tithe of everything. And the children of Israel and Judah, who dwelt in the cities of Judah, brought the tithe of oxen and sheep; also the tithe of holy things which were consecrated to the LORD their God they laid in heaps. In the third month they began laying them in heaps, and they finished in the seventh month. And when Hezekiah and the leaders came and saw the heaps, they blessed the LORD and His people Israel. Then Hezekiah questioned the priests and the Levites concerning the heaps. And Azariah the chief priest, from the house of Zadok, answered him and said, “Since the people began to bring the offerings into the house of the LORD, we have had enough to eat and have plenty left, for the LORD has blessed His people; and what is left is this great abundance.” Now Hezekiah commanded them to prepare rooms in the house of the LORD, and they prepared them. Then they faithfully brought in the offerings, the tithes, and the dedicated things; Cononiah the Levite had charge of them, and Shimei his brother was the next.

The most common dates given for Hezekiah’s reign are 715-687 BC., soon after the Northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria in 722 BC. Hezekiah ruled over the Southern kingdom of Judah, which didn’t fall to Babylon until 586 BC. Reinstating support for the priests and Levites was just one of his many reforms. He had already cleansed the temple (29:3-19), restored temple worship (29:20-36), gathered all Israel to keep the Passover (30:1-27), destroyed idolatrous high places (31:1), and reappointed the priests and the Levites to their divisions (31:2).

The priests and the Levites needed the support of the people in order to devote themselves to God’s law. Under Hezekiah, the people again brought their food offerings, and their tithes of oxen and sheep and other holy things. Azariah, the chief priest, testified that the priests suddenly had more than enough to eat, and the Lord was blessing them. Storage rooms were prepared in the temple for the offerings, the tithes, and the dedicated things.

Passage 9: Nehemiah 10:28-39

Now the rest of the people—the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the Nethinim, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and understanding—these joined with their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes— …And we made ordinances to bring the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of all trees, year by year, to the house of the LORD; to bring the firstborn of our sons and our cattle, as it is written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and our flocks, to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God; to bring the firstfruits of our dough, our offerings, the fruit from all kinds of trees, the new wine and oil, to the priests, to the storerooms of the house of our God; and to bring the tithes of our land to the Levites, for the Levites should receive the tithes in all our farming communities. And the priest, the descendant of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive tithes; and the Levites shall bring up a tenth of the tithes to the house of our God, to the rooms of the storehouse. For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the offering of the grain, of the new wine and the oil, to the storerooms where the articles of the sanctuary are, where the priests who minister and the gatekeepers and the singers are; and we will not neglect the house of our God.

Nehemiah came to Jerusalem in 445 BC. His reforms occurred around 435-430 BC, about 150 years after Judah went into exile in Babylon. He was a contemporary of Malachi, who also referred to worship at the restored temple (Malachi 1:6-14, 2:7-9, 3:7-10). Cyrus the Persian had given the Jews permission to return to their land, rebuild their temple, and reinstitute the sacrificial system. Nehemiah took a prominent role in reminding the people of God’s code of conduct given to them in the law. Ezra the scribe read the Law of Moses before the people for days (Nehemiah 8:1-18), and the people responded with fasting, confession, and loud cries of repentance (9:1-38).

This passage, quoted here, is very significant regarding tithing and the Law. We see that the people as a whole “entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD [their] Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes.” The vocabulary used here should be very familiar.

When the Israelites were still in the wilderness, Moses communicated in detail the Law God had given him. His address closed with these words: “‘Cursed is the one who does not confirm all the words of this law.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen’” (Deuteronomy 27:26). The nature of the curse is given in detail in Deuteronomy 28:15-68. In Nehemiah’s day, they once again heard the law, said ‘Amen,’ and affirmed that they were under obligation to obey all of God’s commands, and thus under a curse. We’ll see this curse brought up again when Malachi proclaims his message, and again when we look at the New Testament.

The first fruits offerings and the tithes were once again reinstated. The tithes for the Levites came from the land, and they were to receive them “in [their] farming communities.” A priest was to be with them when they received the tithes, and only then were they to bring a tenth of their tithes to the House of God.

Many are aware of Malachi’s use of the term “storehouse,” but do not know that true “storehouse tithing” was already spoken of here in Nehemiah 10:37-39. The storehouse and the storerooms literally contained grain, new wine, and oil for the temple workers.

Russell Kelly (2006) recalls that earlier sections of Scripture speak of the Levites living on borrowed land in farming communities. Only a small percentage of the Levites worked in the temple at any given time. They were responsible to bring the Levitical tithe to the temple. Only 1 % of the crops and herds of the people were brought there, to be consumed by the priests and Levites serving on site. The other 9 % remained in the farming communities.

Therefore, 90 % of the tithe (grain, wine, oil, animals, etc.) the people brought to the Levites never made it into the temple, but instead remained in the 48 cities where the Levites dwelled. Also none of the “festival tithe” and none of the “poor tithe” made it into the temple storehouse.

As Russell Kelly (2006) points out, Numbers 18:21-24 instructed the people to tithe to the Levites, and this command is repeated in Nehemiah 10:37. Numbers 18:25-28 instructed the Levites to give a tenth of this amount to the priests, and this command is recalled in Nehemiah 10:38.

Passage 10: Nehemiah 12:44

And at the same time some were appointed over the rooms of the storehouse for the offerings, the firstfruits, and the tithes, to gather into them from the fields of the cities the portions specified by the Law for the priests and Levites; for Judah rejoiced over the priests and Levites who ministered.

This passage again states that the tithes, together with offerings and first fruits, were brought into the temple storehouse from the fields. These tithes, consisting of farm produce, were for the priests and Levites. Workers oversaw the operation of the storehouse.

        Passage 11: Nehemiah 13:4-13

Now before this, Eliashib the priest, having authority over the storerooms of the house of our God, was allied with Tobiah. And he had prepared for him a large room, where previously they had stored the grain offerings, the frankincense, the articles, the tithes of grain, the new wine and oil, which were commanded to be given to the Levites and singers and gatekeepers, and the offerings for the priests. But during all this I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Then after certain days I obtained leave from the king, and I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly; therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense. I also realized that the portions for the Levites had not been given them; for each of the Levites and the singers who did the work had gone back to his field. So I contended with the rulers, and said, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” And I gathered them together and set them in their place. Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain and the new wine and the oil to the storehouse. And I appointed as treasurers over the storehouse Shelemiah the priest and Zadok the scribe, and of the Levites, Pedaiah; and next to them was Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah; for they were considered faithful, and their task was to distribute to their brethren.

It didn’t take long for Nehemiah’s reforms to collapse. Tobiah, who had earlier opposed his efforts to rebuild the city walls, had now infiltrated the temple while he was away from Jerusalem. Tobiah was sleeping in a large room in the storehouse! This is where the tithes of grain, new wine, and oil, and other items meant for the Levites, singers, gatekeepers, and priests had previously been kept. The Levites working in the temple were not receiving their portions. The Levites and singers had left their assignments and gone back to their fields. It’s possible that they had already left before Tobiah moved in, rather than being chased out.

When Nehemiah came back and discovered all this, he was grieved and asked why the house of God had been forsaken. He threw out Tobiah’s personal belongings, had the storerooms cleansed and replenished, and appointed new treasurers over the storehouse. The people once again began to contribute their tithes of grain, new wine, and oil.

Dr. Thomas Constable (2004) is the Department Chairman and Senior Professor of Bible Exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary. In his study notes on Nehemiah, he explains that Nehemiah went to Babylon in 432 BC to report to King Artaxerxes (verse 6). It’s not stated how long he was there. Dr. Constable surmises, “The prophet Malachi reproved the Jews in Judah for the same sins Nehemiah described in this chapter, and conservative scholars usually date his prophecies about 432-431 B.C. Therefore Nehemiah may very well have returned to Jerusalem about 431 B.C.”

Passage 12: Amos 4:1-5

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring wine, let us drink!” The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, the days shall come upon you when He will take you away with fishhooks, and your posterity with fishhooks. You will go out through broken walls, each one straight ahead of her, and you will be cast into Harmon,” says the LORD. “Come to Bethel and transgress, at Gilgal multiply transgression; Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days*. Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, proclaim and announce the freewill offerings; For this you love, you children of Israel!” says the Lord GOD.  

This prophecy came some 300 years before Nehemiah’s time. It was directed toward those in the Northern Israeli kingdom of Samaria who oppressed and crushed the poor while living in luxury (4:1). God swore that judgment would come to them (4:2-3). He then used irony to beckon the people to Bethel and Gilgal, main worship sites, but to transgress rather than worship. With biting sarcasm, He told them to bring their tithes, offerings, and sacrifices to Him.

(*The NKJV indicates in a footnote that an alternative translation to “days” in verse 4 is “years,” recalling the command in Deuteronomy 14:28 to lay aside a tithe every third year for the Levites, strangers, orphans, and widows. A number of Bible versions do choose to translate this as “years,” among them the NIV, KJV, and Young’s Literal Translation.)

In any case, it is quite fitting that God would ironically tell them to bring their sacrifices, tithes, and freewill offerings, which they loved to do. From the time of Moses, God had always made needy people a primary concern. Now His people were ‘majoring on the minors, and minoring on the majors.’ The obvious point is that these external practices were secondary to what God desired most, love toward Him and love for their neighbors, especially the poor. This passage helps to illustrate what Jesus later said, that the entire Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:34-40), and that certain matters of the Law were “weightier” (23:23).

Passage 13: Malachi 3:5-12

“And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien— because they do not fear Me,” says the LORD of hosts. “For I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. “But you said, ‘In what way shall we return?’ “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” says the LORD of hosts; And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,” says the LORD of hosts.

Malachi, like Moses and Amos, picked up the theme of the plight of widows, orphans, and strangers, adding one more segment, wage earners. All were being exploited, and judgment was coming. The sin of the “sons of Jacob” went deeper than failing to tithe and give offerings. They didn’t fear God, Malachi said. One resulting symptom was that they had again stopped keeping God’s ordinances. Who was God talking to?

It’s helpful to see this passage in the context of the entire book. The “word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi” (1:1) was addressed primarily to the priests. He addressed their mocking questions throughout the book (1:2, 1:6, 1:7, 1:12-13, 2:14, 2:17, 3:7, 3:8, 3:13-15). There is no indication that God ever stopped addressing them. He chastised the priests for despising His name, and failing to honor Him by offering polluted offerings (1:6-8), including the stolen, the lame, and the sick (1:13).

He was still addressing the priests in the second chapter, which begins, “And now, O priests…” He had already cursed their blessings (2:2), but affirmed that He still had a “covenant with Levi” (2:4). The priests had corrupted His covenant, however, and had “caused many to stumble at the law.” The people held the priests in contempt (2:9).

In the next chapter, He was still addressing the priesthood, as indicated by the words, “sons of Levi” (3:3). Their once pleasant offerings (3:4) had been replaced by open exploitation of wage earners, widows, the fatherless, and the alien (3:5), the very ones the tithing laws had been designed to benefit.

The priests were told that they had left God’s original ordinances (3:7), and the Lord called them to return to Him. There is no reason to assume that in the next four verses, quoted often by tithe proponents, God let the Levites off the hook and only rebuked the common people.

The whole system of tithing and offerings was in disrepair. God said they had robbed Him (3:8). He declared once again that they were cursed (3:9), and commanded them to obey Him with their tithes of food (3:10). The temple storehouse didn’t have enough food for the temple workers anymore, because of their neglect. Finally, God repeated His conditional blessing, previously given to Moses. If the nation would obey Him, their vines, fields, and the ground would again bear fruit (3:10-12).

Regarding blessings and curses, God simply restated what was already clear in Mosaic Law. The Law of Moses required the Israelites to keep many laws (of which tithing was just one) in order to receive blessings. They were automatically under the curse of the Law if they failed to keep even one of the 613 commands in the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 27:26, Galatians 3:10).

It seems that the Levites were chiefly involved in robbing God in Malachi’s day. They were the ones who brought the tithe (of the people’s tithe) into the storehouse, so that those working in the temple had food to eat. God’s charge here in Malachi 3 is that they were keeping almost 100% of their portion for themselves, causing the priests and temple workers to go hungry. Regarding offerings, they were also the ones giving inferior food offerings, and sacrificing inferior animals on God’s altar (1:6-8).

Malachi 4:4 summarizes his message well: “Remember the Law of Moses, My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.” It’s precisely because the sons of Levi and their followers were not doing so that they were faced with a curse.

Some, however, view this passage in Malachi very differently. Pastors Carter and Clark (2006) believe that those who fail to tithe today are breaking several of the 10 Commandments, the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 10th. They say, “The eighth commandment forbids theft. God says that to refuse Him the portion He requires is theft (Mal. 3:8).” They say non-tithers are also guilty of breaking the first two commandments, because they can’t “find it in their hearts to return to God a portion of His goodness.”

Carter and Clark maintain that tithing is still required today because the third chapter of Malachi mentions both the day of the Lord’s coming and tithing. Since both are linked together, they say, the world will be “under indictment for theft” (i.e. failing to tithe) when the Lord returns. They also lament the fact that people have forgotten the Law of Moses, including tithing. They imply that we are still to follow the entire Mosaic Law.

Jay Snell (1995) says that the “storehouse” and “My house” of Malachi 3:10 is “where you get fed, whether your church, a book and tape ministry, TBN, a missionary, or a combination of the above, etc.” He says that God asks present day believers to test Him by doing one thing, tithing, and then they can receive the 7 blessings promised in Malachi 3:10b-12. He says they belong to “The Abraham Seed Group,” because Abraham paved the way by giving the first recorded tithe. Abraham “has a good deal going here” for those who also tithe. According to Snell, Abraham had already figured out that he could get “700 % interest” on his tithe investment (p. 11).

He also calls Malachi 3:11 our “blanket insurance policy” against Satan: “But there is a blanket insurance policy that we can have from God against the devourer which stops him from devouring what’s ours, and that insurance policy is tithing” (p. 14).

Anonymous Pastor (2003) agrees with Snell on the point that tithes are still to be given to the storehouse of God. He says the storehouse is “where you receive spiritual nourishment.” He adds that to Israel the storehouse was the Tabernacle, but “to the New Covenant believer [it] is the local church.” He represents many by saying that non-tithers rob God:

IS IT NECESSARY FOR BELIEVERS TO TITHE TODAY? [A.] YES. God admonishes us to tithe (Leviticus 27:30; Proverbs 3:9-10). [B.] If a person does not tithe and present offerings to God, he is robbing God (Malachi 3:8-12). The tithe is not ours to give; it is already God’s possession. If a person only tithes and does not present offerings, he is not giving anything at all to God.

Nathan Foy (2006) would disagree that the offerings spoken of in Malachi had anything to do with money, as is often taught:

Since tithes is used in a plural form is it talking about all 3 types of tithe that were required under law. Secondly, offerings is mentioned in the same context.  The offerings talked about [are] in the first few chapters of Leviticus, which are burnt offerings, grain offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings.  These offerings were primarily animal sacrifices.  We no longer practice animal sacrifices today but tithing is practiced widely in the church.  Why would we still practice tithing and not animal sacrifices when they are mentioned together in Malachi 3:8? Of course most churches somehow switched the definition of offering to mean the amount you give to their church after you give your tithe.  I don’t know where this is Biblical.

Strong’s Concordance (2001) indicates that the Hebrew word, terumah, used in Malachi 3:8 for “offerings,” had nine uses in the Old Testament. It was used on different occasions to describe heave offerings, animal sacrifices and sin offerings, two different taxes, a land offering; and offerings of gold, thread, animal skins, oil and stones for the Wilderness Tabernacle and the Second Temple Period. The two remaining uses were offerings of grain products set aside for the priests, and a portion of the tithe of the Levites to the priests.

In Dr. Constable’s study notes on Malachi (2005), he says regarding Malachi 3:10,

This verse has been used to teach “storehouse giving.” Those who do so view the church building, or the church congregation, as the storehouse into which Christians should bring their gifts to the Lord. Some go so far as to say that it is wrong for Christians to give to the Lord in ways that bypass the local church, for example, giving directly to a missionary. This viewpoint fails to appreciate the difference between Israel’s temple and Christian churches. Israel’s temple was a depository for the gifts that the Israelites brought to sustain the servants and work of the Lord throughout their nation. The Christian church, however, is different in that we have no central sanctuary, as Israel did, nor does the church have a national homeland.

For almost 300 years after Pentecost, Christians didn’t even have buildings of their own which they could call “storehouses.” They lived in nations where it was illegal to be a Christian, much less to receive approval to raise up buildings devoted to Christian worship. The word “church” in the New Testament is not used to describe buildings where God dwelled.

Why is it that in Malachi 3:10-11 the phrases “storehouse”, “food”, “fruit of your ground”, and “the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field” are used? Is God reprimanding Christians in this century through Malachi’s prophecy for not bringing 10% of our income into church buildings, “that there may be [money] in [His] house”?

There is indeed a reason why food is spoken of in Malachi 3:10. As we’ve seen, the tithes under the Law of Moses were food products, not money. It’s also no accident that the blessing promised in verse 11 is that the land would produce fruit and come under God’s protection. The tithes came from the land, and those who tilled the land were the ones responsible to bring the tithes to the Levites.

God designed a brilliant system, which, when its ordinances were followed, benefited everyone. When one link failed, the whole system was affected. The Levites and the priests depended upon this system for their support and livelihood. Without it, the entire Levitical system of worship could not be maintained. In fact, that is exactly what happened, and is one of the reasons why the reforms and rebukes of Hezekiah, Nehemiah, and Malachi became necessary.

Dr. Constable sums up the passage regarding tithes and offerings in Malachi:

The issue in Mal 3:7-12 is not tithing but apostasy. Judah is charged here with abandoning the God who had chosen and blessed them, and turning away from the statutes he had given them to test their loyalty and to mark the path of life he would bless. By retaining for themselves the tithes and other offerings they owed to God, the people showed their idolatrous hearts in placing themselves before God, and they showed their callous hearts in leaving the Levites and landless poor to fend for themselves.

As already noted, Malachi prophesied during the same post-exilic time period as Nehemiah, the reformer. God’s announcement, “You are cursed with a curse” (3:9), should not have been a surprise to the priests, the Levites, or any of the Israelites. If the events of Nehemiah 10:28-29 took place first, they had just recently “entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law, which was given by Moses.” The curse of Malachi 3:9 is nothing less than the curse of the law which Paul writes about in Galatians 3:10-13.

Russell Kelly (2006) makes his application of the passage:

Both the blessing and the curse of Malachi 3:9-11 only lasted until the Old Covenant ended at Calvary. Malachi’s audience had willingly reaffirmed the Old Covenant (Neh.10:28, 29). “Cursed be he that confirms not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen” (Deut. 27:26, quoted in Gal. 3:10). And Jesus ended the curse. “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree” (Gal. 3:13).

——————————————————————————————–

In Part 4, we will look at how tithing was spoken of by Jesus and the author of Hebrews, and also look at tithing in church history.

All posts from this series, and on the subject of tithing, can be found here.

The Modern Practice of Tithing in Light of Christ Fulfilling the Law: Part 2

Adam Maarschalk 5 Comments

This is the second post in a series on tithing, as it’s taught in many churches today. This series examines all 17 Bible passages which speak of tithing, and is taken from a term paper I wrote in 2006.  The first post included the series outline and an introduction, and covered the two passages where tithing was mentioned prior to the Law of Moses (Genesis 14:8-24 and 28:8-22). This post will examine how tithing was prescribed and practiced under the Mosaic Law (in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). My references will be included in the final post.

———————————————————————————–

II. Tithing Prescribed Under Mosaic Law

Kent Hughes, a Senior Pastor, Bible commentator, and author, writes in his book, “Disciplines of a Godly Man” (2001): “There is some confusion today about what it was that God actually required from His people in the Old Testament. Most think it was something like 10 percent, which is a woeful misconception. Actually there were multiple mandatory giving requirements in Israel which came to considerably more” (p. 192). We will later see that there were at least three separate tithes.

Passage 3: Leviticus 27:30-33

And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’s. It is holy to the LORD. If a man wants at all to redeem any of his tithes, he shall add one-fifth to it. And concerning the tithe of the herd or the flock, of whatever passes under the rod, the tenth one shall be holy to the LORD. He shall not inquire whether it is good or bad, nor shall he exchange it; and if he exchanges it at all, then both it and the one exchanged for it shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.

Looking at the context, God was giving Moses laws which were to come into effect when they came into the Promised Land (25:2). In fact, the tithe spoken of here was called “the tithe of the land.” These commands were given while Moses was on Mount Sinai (27:34).

Of all the instructions on tithing in the Mosaic Law, this one appears to be the most general, perhaps even an introduction. Still we can observe several details in this passage, which indicates two types of tithes. The first type of tithe came from the land, either from seeds or from the fruit of trees. It was holy to the Lord. If a person wanted to redeem it, presumably for money, he had to add another 20% of the value to his tithe. The second type of tithe was from herds or flocks of animals. The tenth animal which happened to pass under the rod would be holy to the Lord, even if it was of bad quality.

Monetary tithes were obviously not encouraged. In fact, a monetary tithe had to be 12%. Those who say they tithe today, but do so in money, fall short of this tithing law by 2%. Those who have a garden, but do not tithe on their crops, also fail to keep this law. Those who say the tithe has to be the best 10% apparently have the “first fruits offering” in mind, but these are not the same. These are not the only areas where they fall short of the tithing laws, as we will continue to see.

The tithing laws given through Moses were for a specific nation, in a specific situation, and for a specific purpose. We will see in the next four passages who these tithes were to go to. At the end I will give a summary.

Passage 4: Numbers 18:21-32 (TITHE #1, Parts A and B)

(Tithes for Support of the Levites) Behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tithes in Israel as an inheritance in return for the work which they perform, the work of the tabernacle of meeting. Hereafter the children of Israel shall not come near the tabernacle of meeting, lest they bear sin and die. But the Levites shall perform the work of the tabernacle of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity; it shall be a statute forever, throughout your generations, that among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance. For the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer up as a heave offering to the LORD, I have given to the Levites as an inheritance; therefore I have said to them, ‘Among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance.’

(The Tithe of the Levites) Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak thus to the Levites, and say to them: ‘When you take from the children of Israel the tithes which I have given you from them as your inheritance, then you shall offer up a heave offering of it to the LORD, a tenth of the tithe. And your heave offering shall be reckoned to you as though it were the grain of the threshing floor and as the fullness of the winepress. Thus you shall also offer a heave offering to the LORD from all your tithes which you receive from the children of Israel, and you shall give the LORD’s heave offering from it to Aaron the priest. Of all your gifts you shall offer up every heave offering due to the LORD, from all the best of them, the consecrated part of them.’ Therefore you shall say to them: ‘When you have lifted up the best of it, then the rest shall be accounted to the Levites as the produce of the threshing floor and as the produce of the winepress. You may eat it in any place, you and your households, for it is your reward for your work in the tabernacle of meeting. And you shall bear no sin because of it, when you have lifted up the best of it. But you shall not profane the holy gifts of the children of Israel, lest you die.’

The tithes of the Israelites became the Levites’ inheritance. The Levites were responsible to minister in the tabernacle, and could not own land, which gave them limited means of income. God meant for their support to come from those they ministered to. Before giving their tithes to the Levites, the Israelites were to offer them up as a heave offering. The tithes were elevated before the altar, and were presented with an up and down motion (cf. Exodus 29:27, Leviticus 7:34, Numbers 15:20-21).

All the priests were Levites, but not all the Levites were priests. That’s why the Levites also paid a tithe of what they received to the priests (Numbers 18:25-31). They tithed grain and wine, not money. The Levites gave a tenth of the people’s tenth directly to Aaron. Unlike the tithe of the herds in Leviticus 27, they had to give the very best 10%. They were free to consume the other 90% together with their families, as a reward for their service. We don’t see that the priests tithed at all. According to Strong’s Concordance (2001),

“While all the priests had to be from the tribe of Levi, inheriting their office through their fathers, not all Levites could function as priests. For one thing, there were too many of them. Also, some were needed to work in the tabernacle, and later the temple, as maintenance and cleanup people, something that is readily understandable when one thinks of all that was involved in the sacrificial system. The Levites actually lived in various parts of Israel, and they were the welfare responsibility of the Israelites among whom they lived… The Levites, then, were to tithe the tithe they received, giving their own tithe from what they received from the people to the Lord. Part of that tithe was to be a terumah or “heave offering” to the priests, the descendants of Aaron.”

According to Numbers 35:1-8 (cf. Joshua 21), the Levites were given cities to live in, from each tribe of Israel. They were given a total of 48 cities, and could dwell in them together with their animals.

Passage 5: Deuteronomy 12:5-19 (TITHE #2)

But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go. There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, in which the LORD your God has blessed you. You shall not at all do as we are doing here today—every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes— for as yet you have not come to the rest and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you. But when you cross over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety, then there will be the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all your choice offerings which you vow to the LORD. And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion nor inheritance with you… You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain or your new wine or your oil, of the firstborn of your herd or your flock, of any of your offerings which you vow, of your freewill offerings, or of the heave offering of your hand. But you must eat them before the LORD your God in the place which the LORD your God chooses, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, and the Levite who is within your gates; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God in all to which you put your hands. Take heed to yourself that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live in your land.

This passage gives instructions for a second tithe to be given by the Israelites, known as the “Festival tithe.” It was to come into effect some time later, after they crossed over the Jordan into the Promised Land. During that time they were to go to Jerusalem at the assigned times to celebrate. The expenses for these festivals were met by this second tithe and various offerings. They were to eat at least part of the tithe, which was said to be of grain, wine, and oil. They were also reminded of the importance of always taking care of the Levites.

This was a time of rejoicing in God’s chosen place. The tithe had to be consumed there, and not at home. They were to go with their families, their servants, and any Levites who dwelled within their gates. Nathan Foy (2006) speculates, “The ones to raise animals and grow plants were probably the richer people of that day, since the Bible says ‘all who were in their gates.’”

Kent Hughes (2001) says regarding this tithe, “According to Deuteronomy 12…another 10 percent had to be given for an annual celebration-feasting with one’s family, friends, and servants.” He adds that the purpose of this second tithe “was to build religious celebration and mutual community in God’s people” (p. 192-193).

Russell Kelly (2006) links it with the three annual festivals in Jerusalem, the Feasts of Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles (Exodus 23:14-19, Deuteronomy 16:1-17). He says, “According to Deuteronomy 12 and 14, the second religious tithe, called the ‘feast tithe,’ was eaten by worshipers in the streets of Jerusalem during the three yearly festivals.”

Passage 6: Deuteronomy 14:22-29 (TITHE # 2 repeated, TITHE #3 introduced)

You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. And you shall eat before the LORD your God, in the place where He chooses to make His name abide, the tithe of your grain and your new wine and your oil, of the firstborn of your herds and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. But if the journey is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, or if the place where the LORD your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, when the LORD your God has blessed you, then you shall exchange it for money, take the money in your hand, and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses. And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household. You shall not forsake the Levite who is within your gates, for he has no part nor inheritance with you.

At the end of every third year you shall bring out the tithe of your produce of that year and store it up within your gates. And the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are within your gates, may come and eat and be satisfied, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.

The first part of this passage (14:22-27) repeats the second tithe outlined in Deuteronomy 12. The firstborn of their herds and flocks were part of the tithe. Their tithe could be sold for money in case long travel was necessary. This relieved them of the burden of transporting large numbers of animals and produce. At the destination where God placed His name, the money would then be spent on food for each family to consume. Money was not presented to the Levites as a gift.

The last part of the passage introduces a third tithe, to be set aside every third year for the strangers, the fatherless, widows, and Levites living within the gates of the Israelites. There was a blessing attached to this tithe. As Kent Hughes (2001) points out, “This tithe averaged out to 3.3 percent yearly, “thus bringing the total to over 23 percent per year” in tithes required by the Israelites (p. 192-3).

Strong’s Concordance (2000) confirms that this tithe, like other tithes, was made up of farm produce, rather than money. Russell Kelly (2001) says that not everyone was required to tithe. He cites a noted authority on Judaism, Alfred Edersheim, as saying that tithing in Israel was not universal, “because it did not apply to crafts and trades” (p. 247).

Passage 7: Deuteronomy 26:12-15 (TITHE #3 repeated)

When you have finished laying aside all the tithe of your increase in the third year—the year of tithing—and have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your gates and be filled, then you shall say before the LORD your God: ‘I have removed the holy tithe from my house, and also have given them to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all Your commandments which You have commanded me; I have not transgressed Your commandments, nor have I forgotten them. I have not eaten any of it when in mourning, nor have I removed any of it for an unclean use, nor given any of it for the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the LORD my God, and have done according to all that You have commanded me. Look down from Your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Your people Israel and the land which You have given us, just as You swore to our fathers, “a land flowing with milk and honey.”’

This command was also given before the Israelites had actually come into the Promised Land (26:1), and repeats the third tithe given earlier. Here it is called “the year of tithing.” Again the recipients are said to be the Levites, strangers, orphans, and widows. The person tithing needed to be able to say that he had done so according to the correct procedure. He could then pray that his people and land would be blessed.

Russell Kelly (2006) notes that it is “wrong to teach that the poor in Israel were required to pay tithes. In fact, they actually received tithes! Much of the second festival tithe and all of a special third-year tithe went to the poor. In fact, many laws protected the poor from abuse and expensive sacrifices which they could not afford…” He adds that false assumptions on tithing would be minimized if we don’t ignore “the very plain definition of tithe as food from farm increase or herd increase.”

SUMMARY: Looking carefully at the tithes outlined in the Law of Moses, it is apparent that there were three different tithes:

[1] The first tithe is described in Numbers 18:21-32, and has two parts. The first part (18:21-24) tells of the tithes given to the Levites as their inheritance, since they had no land inheritance. It amounted to 10% of one’s livelihood. The second part (18:25-32) shows the Levites tithing from this amount to Aaron for the priesthood.

[2] The second tithe is described in Deuteronomy 12:5-19, and repeated in Deuteronomy 14:22-27. This tithe supported the annual feasts. It was to be taken to Jerusalem and consumed there. The Levites only got a small portion of this tithe, which made up an additional 10% of one’s livelihood.

[3] The third tithe is detailed in Deuteronomy 14:28-29, and repeated in Deuteronomy 26:11-13. It didn’t go primarily to the Levites, but to the needy. It was given every three years, during the “year of tithing,” and was designated for strangers, orphans, widows, and Levites, those who could not provide for themselves. It averaged out to 3.3% of one’s livelihood annually.

Therefore, those who were eligible to tithe needed to set aside an average of 23.3% of their livelihood each year just to fund the tithes for the Levites, the feasts, and the needy. Kelly (2006), Hughes (2001), and Foy (2006) all agree on this figure, and the fact that there were three tithes required of the Israelites. They also affirm that the tithes consisted of crops and herds.

Russell Kelly (2006) indicates just how restrictive tithing was under Mosaic Law:

“True biblical tithes were always: (1) only food, (2) only from the farms and herds, (3) of only Israelites, (4) who only lived inside God’s Holy Land, the national boundary of Israel, (5) only under Old Covenant terms and (6) the increase could only come from God’s hand.”

Therefore, (1) non-food items could not be tithed; (2) clean wild game animals and fish could not be tithed; (3) non-Israelites could not tithe; (4) food from outside the land of Israel did not enter the Temple; (5) legitimate tithing did not occur when there was no Levitical priesthood; and (5) tithes did not come from what man’s hands created, produced or caught by hunting and fishing.

Nathan Foy (2006) paints the picture in personal terms:

“To tithe according to the Old Testament you would have to give up your job and farm so you could raise animals and grow crops to tithe with.  You’d have to find some Levitical priests to give your tithe to.  You would have to celebrate the Old Testament festivals and eat your tithe in the presence of the Lord. For 2 years you would have to give 20% of your herds and crops to God and on the 3rd year you would have to give another 10% to the poor, [totaling] 30% in tithe[s] that particular year.  If you do all this you will be keeping the law of tithing totally.”

————————————————————————

In Part 3, we will look at how tithing was enforced by a king (Hezekiah), a reformer (Nehemiah), and two prophets (Amos and Malachi).

All posts from this series, and on the subject of tithing, can be found here.

The Modern Practice of Tithing in Light of Christ Fulfilling the Law: Part 1

Adam Maarschalk 6 Comments

The following post is the first in a series on the subject of tithing, as it’s taught in many churches today. This series is taken from a term paper I wrote in April 2006, and it examines all 17 passages in Scripture which mention tithing: 13 times in the Old Testament and four times in the New Testament. As noted in the outline below, all sources will be listed in the Reference section in the final part (out of discretion, one source is kept anonymous here).

OUTLINE

A. Introduction
B. A look at the 17 Scripture passages which mention tithing

I. Described prior to the Law of Moses: in the lives of Abraham and Jacob

1. Genesis 14:8-24
2. Genesis 28:8-22

II. Prescribed under Mosaic Law: three different tithes

3. Leviticus 27:30-33
4. Numbers 18:21-32
5. Deuteronomy 12:5-19
6. Deuteronomy 14:22-29
7. Deuteronomy 26:12-15

III. Reforms of King Hezekiah, Nehemiah, and the prophets Amos and Malachi

8. II Chronicles 31:4-12
9. Nehemiah 10:28-39
10. Nehemiah 12:44
11. Nehemiah 13:4-13
12. Amos 4:1-5
13. Malachi 3:5-12

          IV. Spoken of in the New Testament by Jesus and the author of Hebrews

14. Matthew 23:23
15. Luke 11:42
16. Luke 18:9-14
17. Hebrews 7:1-10

C. Tithing in history
D. Ways of viewing the Law of Moses today and a summary of Galatians
E. Tithing in light of Christ fulfilling the Law
F. New Testament giving
G. Conclusion/References

A. INTRODUCTION

Tithing is commonly understood to mean the practice of giving a tenth of anything. The term has a secular use, particularly with regard to finances. However, it is best known as a practice among religious groups. Webster’s Dictionary (1988), in defining the word “tithe,” even notes that it is “especially collected to support churches.”

Is it Biblical for churches and ministries to compel their people to tithe? Is the modern practice of tithing Biblical? In light of Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, I believe it is not. At the heart of this issue is one’s view of the Law of Moses, also known as Mosaic Law.

The Barna Group (2005), a well-known research company, determined that 65% of American Christians gave part of their income to churches or parachurch ministries in 2004. During the same year, however, only 6% “tithed” to a place of worship.

According to another study by Ellison Research (2006), a marketing research company out of Phoenix, 68% of all clergy in the US say that tithing is a Biblical mandate for Christians today. Pentecostal clergy are the most agreeable, at 95%. On the other hand, 20% of clergy affirm that Christians are commanded to give, but say that no specific amount or percentage is required.

Among Protestant laity, 59% believe that God’s people today are required to tithe. Pentecostals (80%) and Baptists (75%) are the most likely to hold this view.

Among tithing proponents, there is considerable disparity over whether tithes must be paid only to the local church, or whether a portion can also be given to other Christian ministries. They are almost equally split on whether to tithe on net income (48%) or gross income (52%). Clergy, interestingly, are much more in favor of tithing on gross income (72%).

If these statistics are true, then nearly 60% of Protestant Christians in the US believe that tithing is a Biblical requirement, but only 6% practice this belief. Many would say that the 94% who don’t tithe are guilty of disobeying Scripture. Some would even insist that they are under a curse for robbing God.

In looking into this practice, we will take a look at ALL the Scripture passages which mention tithing. Too often, when a case is made for tithing, only a few select passages are chosen to build the case, and they are often not viewed in their proper context.

I also intend to address the following relevant questions:

[1] How many tithes were commanded in Scripture?
[2] Who received the tithes?
[3] Do those who promote tithing today follow the prescriptions under Mosaic Law?
[4] Why isn’t tithing still required of believers today?

By quoting from those who don’t share my view, I do not intend to judge or attack them. Where they are serving the Lord and His people, I appreciate their sacrifice and their hard work. Their teachings and views, as well as mine, are always subject to the light of Scripture.

B. A LOOK AT THE 17 PASSAGES ON TITHING

I. TITHING DESCRIBED PRIOR TO THE LAW OF MOSES

Although Abram’s tithe is the first recorded in Scripture, some teach that he tithed because he was following an eternal principle. Pastors David Carter and Bryce Clark (2006) suggest that the offerings of Cain and Abel were a form of tithe, with Cain being faulted for what he failed to give. They conclude that from the beginning God had set in motion a law requiring either tithes or firstfruits, but Cain held back what was due to God. His sin was that his offering was lacking in quantity. The implication is that those who fail to tithe are like Cain.

Anonymous Pastor (2003) goes back even earlier: “The principle of tithing is one that can be traced throughout the entire Bible. In actuality, it was involved in the Garden of Eden, when mankind took of something which belonged to, or was designated for God.”

Before the Law was given through Moses, there were two accounts of voluntarily tithing. The first story was of Abram’s tithe to Melchizedek, and the second story involved his grandson, Jacob. These are both narratives, which, according to Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart (1993), are the most common form of literature found in the Bible (p. 78). Fee and Stuart point out that in narratives we are not always told how or why the characters did certain things (p. 81). Narratives are more likely to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive.

Passage 1: Genesis 14:8-24

And the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out and joined together in battle in the Valley of Siddim against [4 kings]… Then [the 4 kings] took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way. They also took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. Then one who had escaped came and told Abram… Now when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants… So he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his brother Lot and his goods, as well as the women and the people. And the king of Sodom went out to meet him… Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.’ And he gave him a tithe of all. Now the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, and take the goods for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have raised my hand to the LORD, God Most High, the Possessor of heaven and earth, that I will take nothing, from a thread to a sandal strap, and that I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich’— except only what the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men who went with me: Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre; let them take their portion.”

Abram and his men not only rescued Lot, they also brought back all the goods and people taken from Sodom and Gomorrah. Melchizedek, king of Salem, blessed Abram, and Abram gave him a tenth of all the spoils of war. The king of Sodom then told Abram to keep the rest of the spoils, but to give him the people. Abram, however, gave everything to him, except for what his men had eaten, and a small portion for three of his men.

Abram tithed on the spoils of war, not his income. Any idea that Abram regularly practiced tithing can only be presumed, for it is not in the text. Nor does the text say he was commanded to give this tithe. Abram gave away almost the entire remaining 90% of the spoils to the king of Sodom, whose territory was soon to be destroyed by fire and brimstone.

The Wikipedia Encyclopedia (2006) states that “a one-tenth tax was quite common in ancient Babylonian culture,” as well as throughout the ancient Near East, Lydia, Arabia, and Carthage, “and would have been well known to Abraham.” Carter and Clark (2006) say that because of this fact, Abram “kept God’s law of tithing.” They insist that Abraham tithed frequently, and that this instance illustrates “the tithing law given at Creation.”

Matthew Narramore (2004) would disagree. He says that by tithing on the spoils of war, Abram couldn’t have been following an eternal principle. God gave very different instructions to Israel in Numbers 31, regarding the spoils from their war with the Midianites. No tithe was involved. If Abram followed a universal principle, he says, then God would have required the same from His people in Numbers 31. He adds that Abram didn’t give a tithe on his own possessions. In fact, he tithed on something he had vowed to give away, so it actually cost him nothing (Chapter 2).

Jay Snell (1995), a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, has a different take on it. He believes Abram’s motive was to obtain a steady flow of wealth: “The first of the two things that he did to ‘begin and maintain’ the flow of wealth to himself was he gave a tithe” (p. 3). According to Snell, Abram recognized and tapped into the “Law of Sowing and Reaping.” He says that in order to gain wealth like Abram, we also need to take this same step and tithe (p. 5).

Passage 2: Genesis 28:20-22

Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God. And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.

Jacob made a conditional vow, one that implied He might not even make the Lord His God unless he returned home safely and received protection, company, food and clothing from the Lord. There is no record that Jacob actually fulfilled his vow by giving a tenth back to the Lord, although we can’t assume he failed to do so either. As in Abram’s case, we don’t see that he was commanded by the Lord to tithe.

Going back several verses earlier (28:13-15), we see that God had already promised Jacob that He would be with him, never leave him, protect him, and bring him back to his land! God had also identified Himself as the God of Abraham and Isaac, and repeated the promise He had made to both his grandfather and father. Narramore (2004) notes several things about God’s promise and Jacob’s vow:

[1] It was God’s promise to him and it was based on faith alone. It did not depend on any conditional requirements such as tithes, offerings, or sacrifices… All God wanted Jacob to do was to believe him. God wanted to keep the promise for Jacob just like he did for Abraham, who became the father of faith… Jacob didn’t respond to God’s promise in the same way that his father and grandfather did.

[2] Faith takes God at his word; Jacob did not. Jacob responded to God’s promise by making a vow, which showed his unbelief. He said, ‘If You will do all this, then You will be my God, and I will give you a tenth of everything you give me.’ God had just promised to bless, protect, and fulfill the original promise that he made to Abraham. He didn’t ask for a tithe or anything else… Jacob wouldn’t even commit to having the Lord as his God. God didn’t ask for a tithe. He wanted faith… God didn’t praise Jacob for his vow to give him a tenth.

[3] Just because a story is in the Bible doesn’t mean that it portrays the will of God for the people involved. It certainly doesn’t mean that it is God’s will for us today in the New Covenant. The Bible records many things that men did which were not the will of God (Chapter 3).

——————————————————————————–

In Part 2, we will look at tithing as it was prescribed under the Law of Moses, and we will see just how different it looked from the way tithing is so often taught today. 

All posts from this series, and on the subject of tithing, can be found here.

Who Are the Jews in Israel Today?

Adam Maarschalk 52 Comments

Growing up under Christian Zionist and dispensationalist teachings, I took for granted that the following narrative that was presented to me was the correct one:

The Jewish people in Israel are direct descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God restored them to their land as a nation in 1948 in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are newly-arrived Arabs, mainly from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, who flooded the land when they saw the Jews beginning to come back from Russia, Europe, and elsewhere.

Although it’s been a number of years since I learned that this narrative is far from correct, more recently I’ve learned some details that, if true, take this distortion to the next level. They show the claims of Christian Zionism and dispensationalism to be even further off-base, not only Biblically but also in terms of history. 

I recently read an article written by Schlomo Sand, an Israeli history professor at Tel Aviv University, whose parents were Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. I don’t agree with Sand’s stance on the Old Testament, but he makes some interesting statements regarding the inhabitants of Palestine in the centuries prior to Israel becoming a nation in 1948:

“[After Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 AD], apart from enslaved prisoners, the population of Judea continued to live on their lands, even after the destruction of the second temple. Some converted to Christianity in the 4th century, while the majority embraced Islam during the 7th century Arab conquest.

Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, accepted it as late as 1929, the year of the great Palestinian revolt. Both stated on several occasions that the peasants of Palestine were the descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea.“

[See David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Eretz Israel in the past and present, 1918 (in Yiddish), and Jerusalem, 1980 (in Hebrew); Yitzhak Ben Zvi,Our population in the country, Executive Committee of the Union for Youth and the Jewish National Fund, Warsaw, 1929 (in Hebrew).]

Sand goes on to talk about the large impact of Jewish proselytizing, especially during the Middle Ages, when non-Jews, ethnically speaking, converted to the Jewish religion. He adds,

“The most significant mass conversion occurred in the 8th century, in the massive Khazar kingdom between the Black and Caspian seas. The expansion of Judaism from the Caucasus into modern Ukraine created a multiplicity of communities, many of which retreated from the 13th century Mongol invasions into eastern Europe. There, with Jews from the Slavic lands to the south and from what is now modern Germany, they formed the basis of Yiddish culture.”

[Yiddish, spoken by the Jews of eastern Europe, was a Germano-Slavic language incorporating Hebrew words.]

Sand was an Israeli soldier for three years and fought in the Six-Day War of 1967, so it’s interesting what he says next:

“The Israeli forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 believed themselves to be the direct descendents of the mythic kingdom of David* rather than – God forbid – of Berber warriors or Khazar horsemen. The Jews claimed to constitute a specific ethnic group that had returned to Jerusalem, its capital, from 2,000 years of exile and wandering.

…Since the 1970s supposedly scientific research, carried out in Israel, has desperately striven to demonstrate that Jews throughout the world are closely genetically related… By validating an essentialist, 
ethnocentric definition of Judaism it encourages a segregation that separates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian immigrants or foreign workers… But Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering.“

*Please note that I disagree with Sand when he says that David’s kingdom was mythic.

Arthur Koestler (1905 – 1983) was a Jewish author and journalist from Hungary (later a British citizen) who wrote a book in 1976 titled, “The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage” (available in PDF form here). Koestler’s thesis was that a majority of Jews today have ancestral roots in the ancient Khazar region (corresponding to modern SW Russia, Eastern Ukraine, and Western Kazakhstan), where many members of the Khazar royalty and also of the general population converted to Talmudic Judaism in the 8th century AD and adopted the Yiddish language, which is based on the Hebrew alphabet. Toward the end of Koestler’s book, he summarized its contents with these words:

“In Part One of this book I have attempted to trace the history of the Khazar Empire based on the scant existing sources. In Part Two, Chapters V-VII, I have compiled the historical evidence which indicates that the bulk of Eastern Jewry — and hence of world Jewry — is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than Semitic, origin. In the last chapter I have tried to show that the evidence from anthropology concurs with history in refuting the popular belief in a Jewish race descended from the biblical tribe.”

Koestler stated that his research undermined many accusations of anti-Semitism, since many Jews are not even Semitic. His work was understandably considered to be controversial. Some DNA experts were critical or skeptical of it, while others agreed. Dr. Eran Elhalk and Dr. Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin are two geneticists who agree with Koestler’s hypothesis. They conducted a 2012 study at John Hopkins University, finding that the European Jewish population featured a mix of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries. Their work is summed up in this abstract published by Oxford University Press:

The question of Jewish ancestry has been the subject of controversy for over two centuries and has yet to be resolved. The “Rhineland hypothesis” depicts Eastern European Jews as a “population isolate” that emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrated eastward and expanded rapidly. Alternatively, the “Khazarian hypothesis” suggests that Eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars, an amalgam of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries CE and converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Mesopotamian and Greco–Roman Jews continuously reinforced the Judaized empire until the 13th century. Following the collapse of their empire, the Judeo–Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is therefore explained by the contribution of the Judeo–Khazars. Thus far, however, the Khazars’ contribution has been estimated only empirically, as the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus populations precluded testing the Khazarian hypothesis. Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry. We further describe a major difference among Caucasus populations explained by the early presence of Judeans in the Southern and Central Caucasus. Our results have important implications for the demographic forces that shaped the genetic diversity in the Caucasus and for medical studies.

Khazaria in 850 AD, Map Source

Martin Trench, the lead pastor of Gateway Alliance Church in Edmonton, Canada, shared similar thoughts in a closed Facebook group recently and gave permission to quote him:

“[There is a] modern misunderstanding of the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘the Jews.’ Moses and the people of Israel who crossed the wilderness were not ‘Jews.’ They were Israelites. The Jews of the post-Babylonian period until the time of Jesus were also Israelites, with some Edomites mixed in too who lived in Judea, but not in Galilee. And the Jews of today are a different ethnic group – roughly 80% of them are an ethnic mixture of non-Israelites who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages and follow a different religion than the Biblical Israel. They follow the religion of Talmudic Judaism, which was developed AFTER the time of Jesus, not the Old Covenant religion of Israel which requires a Temple, priesthood, and sacrificial system.

The true Israelite Jews in Judea at the time of Jesus either accepted him as the Messiah and so fled to Pella before 70 AD; or they stayed on and fought the Romans in the 66-70 AD war, with many being taken as slaves to Pompeii (which itself was destroyed a few years later by Vesuvius). The survivors who weren’t taken as slaves (because the Romans did not do whole-sale exile, like the Babylonians and Assyrians did – they left most poor people behind) stayed in the land as poor peasants, and the Pharisees, etc. went to different places – mainly Babylon where they wrote the Babylonian Talmud (which is very anti-Jesus and is quite vile and blasphemous). Those were the genuine Biblical Jews, but they were very small in numbers. In the Middle Ages, the Khazar kingdom in Eastern Europe converted to Talmudic Judaism. They were pagans before, known as the “serpent people,” but they had Muslims on one side and Christians on the other, so they converted to Judaism so they could trade with both – they became Ashkenazi Jews, the vast majority of Jews today.”

Concerning the point about “Ashkenazi Jews,” see the Wikipedia entry on this subject for a lot of well-documented information. Notable Ashkenazi Jews have included Theodore Herzl, Albert Einstein, Anne Frank, and Golda Meir.

Concerning Talmudism, interestingly Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel, submitted a new Basic Law to the Knesset in early May of this year that “would establish the Talmud, the core work of Jewish law, as an official basis for Israeli state law” (Source: “Report: Netanyahu Promises Talmud Will Be Israeli Law,” Israel National News).

To whatever degree the above information is true, it doesn’t make Jews today, whether they are Semitic or non-Semitic, any more or any less valuable, human, or worthy of respect. What it does likely do, however, is further confirm that key claims within Christian Zionism are false.

The New Testament already clearly refutes the Christian Zionist idea that ethnic Jews (rather than followers of Christ) are God’s chosen people (see this post and this post and this post and this post for more on this). The New Testament also refutes other such ideas that emphasize Jewish ethnicity over faith. Christian Zionism stands strong on the idea that many of the plans, purposes, and promises of God flow to the ethnic descendants of Abraham, even those who despise God’s Son, Jesus. This is despite the fact that Scripture says all of God’s promises are made to Jesus and His followers (e.g. Galatians 3:16, 28-29). Christian Zionism has also chosen as its foundation the assumption that modern Israel is nothing less than the national gathering of Abraham’s ethnic descendants in fulfillment of Bible prophecy.* Biblically, these claims are far-fetched, and they are looking to be far-fetched historically as well.

*See this article for a refutation of the idea that Israel became a nation in 1948 in fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Here is another brief article of interest on this subject: “DNA of Ashkenazi Jews shows ancient female ancestors were converts from Europe.”

All of our studies related to Christian Zionism can be seen here.

The Land of Palestine From 1896 – 1948 (Two Videos)

Adam Maarschalk 2 Comments

Here are two videos portraying life and society in Palestine from 1896 to 1948. This is great history.

The first video is 2.5 minutes long and features footage from 1896 when there were about 500,000 inhabitants in Palestine, including about 30,000 people in Jerusalem. Jews made up roughly 50% of Jerusalem’s population, but less than 5% of the population elsewhere. Outside of Jerusalem, where more than 90% of Palestine’s population lived, Muslims made up about 85% of the population and Christians made up about 10% of the population.

The second video is 10 minutes long, and features quite a number of still photos spanning the decades prior to Israel becoming a nation in 1948. There are universities and colleges, sports matches, and other evidences of a vibrant society. The music that this video is set to is pretty neat too. This video footage was included in a French documentary called “Palestine, Story of a Land.”

This footage might bring to mind the expression that has been attributed to early Zionists, that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Within the last couple of years I’ve learned some things about the origins and development of this expression. As Diana Muir points out in a well-written 2008 article, it appears to have its roots in a statement made

“by Church of Scotland clergyman Alexander Keith in his 1843 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Keith was an influential evangelical thinker whose most popular work, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy, remains in print almost two centuries after it was first published. As an advocate of the idea that Christians should work to encourage the biblical prophecy of a Jewish return to the land of Israel, he wrote that the Jews are “a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people.”

Muir goes on to give examples of other Christian writers and leaders adopting this phrase in some form before Israel Zangwill in 1901 apparently became the first Zionist to use it, saying, “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country.”

In any case, as these videos show, Palestine had much more of a thriving society before 1948 than many people have been willing to acknowledge. By numerous accounts, Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs also got along quite fine during that time period. For example, Elias Chacour, a Christian Palestinian Arab who was nine years old when Israel became a nation, wrote about a childhood experience he often witnessed in the village of Biram:  

“Many of these Jewish neighbors came to Biram to trade as well. When they stopped by our house for figs, father welcomed them with the customary hospitality and a cup of tar-like, bittersweet coffee—the cup of friendship” (Elias Chacour, Blood Brothers, 2005, p. 24).

If one looks past the awful headlines that are currently dominating the news concerning this part of the world, one can find examples of Palestinians, Jews, and others actively working for peace there. Elias is one of them. May the people of this region soon experience the healing and the restoration that they need.

——————————————————————————–

A reader, PJ Miller, pointed out another interesting video depicting life in Palestine, this one being nearly 180 years old:

Guest Post: The Biblical Heavens and Earth (Part 2 of 3)

Adam Maarschalk 6 Comments

This post continues Steve’s 3-part series on the Biblical heavens and earth, exploring comparisons between Genesis 1, Jeremiah 4:23-27, and Matthew 24:35. Part 1 can be seen here.

The first part of this series showed what the biblical heavens & earth is not: it is not a scientific universe. This second part will look at what the biblical heavens & earth actually is. When we stop trying to understand Genesis 1 in harmony with modern science, it frees us to understand it in harmony with the rest of Scripture. It is then that we learn the creation of the heavens & earth isn’t so much about the creation of the universe, but the creation of the Jewish universe.

A question of biblical context

Genesis is not about the history of the world or of all humanity. Genesis does not tell us where the Eskimoes or the Aborigines come from. Instead, Genesis only tells us about the people and lands in the vicinity of the Holy Land. The creation account is the introduction to the book of Genesis, and Genesis is the introduction to the rest of the books of Moses, the Law of Moses. So the context is not the world, but the Jewish world.

The structure of the six-day creation account

As mentioned in the previous post, the order of creation does not make scientific sense. But this doesn’t mean the creation account is illogical or was written half-hazardly. In fact, Genesis 1 and the order of creation were written with great care and has a logic of its own, even if that logic isn’t scientific.

The creation account is written in a stylized six-day format. The first three days are parallel with and correspond to the last three days. On day one, there is darkness and God creates the domain of light. On day four, God fills the domains of dark and light with the sun, moon, and stars. On day two, God separates the waters above from the waters below, creating the domains of sea and sky. On day five, God populates the sea and sky with fish and birds. On day three, God creates land and plants. On day six, God populates the land with land animals and man, giving them plants to eat.

The six-day creation and the Ten Commandments

The heavens & earth were created over a period of six days, leading to something strange, God’s day of rest. Since God is not flesh, why would He need a day of rest? The obvious answer is that He didn’t need rest. He “rested” in order to establish the Sabbath commandment.

What is interesting about the teaching of the Sabbath in Gen. 2:1-3 is that this is the only passage that speaks of the Sabbath until we get to the time of Moses (Exo. 16:22ff). There is no indication of people observing the Sabbath until this time. The Sabbath is, of course, one of the Ten Commandments. This brings up the question of when the six-day creation account was written. As written, there were no human eye-witnesses, so it must have been revealed. But to whom was it first revealed? It seems likely to have first been revealed to Moses, around the time the Ten Commandments were revealed.

Gen. 1 itself ties the six-day creation to the Law of Moses and the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments is sometimes known as the Decalogue, literally the “Ten Words,” or sayings of God. God is recorded as speaking on ten different occasions in Gen. 1: v.3, v. 6, v. 9, v. 11, v. 14-15, v. 20, v. 22, v. 24, v. 26, and v. 28-30. So Gen. 1 was written in clear view of the Ten Commandments, which had not been revealed prior to Moses (Deut. 5:1-3).

The significance of the six-day creation and the Sabbath

There are two rationales given for the Sabbath commandment: #1. because the heavens & earth were created in six days (Exo. 20:8-11) and #2. because the Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt (Deut. 5:12-15). While YECs cite Exo. 20:8-11 as a major proof of their interpretation, it is actually a major disproof of the YEC view.

The Sabbath not only applied to the Jews and all peoples in the Jewish land, but also to the Jews’ work animals. Furthermore, the Sabbath applied to the Jewish land itself (Lev. 25:1-4). Notice the specificity and limits of this commandment: it doesn’t apply to all people, but only this people; it doesn’t apply to all animals, but only to their animals; and it doesn’t apply to all lands, but only to this land. But using the logic of Exo. 20:8-11, if the entire universe and all living things were created in those six days, then the Sabbath law should apply to everything: to all peoples, to all animals, and to all lands.

But of course, the Sabbath commandment was never a universal commandment (Deut. 5:1-3). Christians are not under the Sabbath law (Col. 2:16) because we are not under the Ten Commandments (2 Cor. 3:7-18) because we are not under the Law of Moses (Gal. 3:24-25). Whatever was created in six days is subject to the Sabbath commandment. If the six-day creation is about the actual universe and all of mankind, then it is bigger than just the Law of Moses and is still applicable to us. But since it is not applicable, it is not speaking of the material universe.

Genesis 2, the parallel creation account

Whereas Gen. 1 appears to describe the creation of our universe, the parallel passage in Gen. 2 interestingly suggests merely the creation of a garden, the Garden of Eden. The Garden’s location is discussed in conjunction with four rivers: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. The Gihon is located in Cush, which is in Africa. The Tigris and Euphrates are in Mesopotamia. Which land lies between Africa and Mesopotamia? The Holy Land. Throughout Scripture, the Holy Land is referred to as the field and the vineyard of God – in other words, God’s garden. So we see that the creation of the heavens & earth is the creation of the Garden, and the creation of the Garden is the creation of the Holy Land.

The parallels between Adam and Israel

Hosea 6:7 explicitly compares Adam and his sin with Israel breaking the Mosaic Covenant. As we shall see, there are many parallels between the two.

Adam is not created in the Garden, but rather to the west of the Garden (Gen. 2:7-8). In the same way, the Hebrews became a numerous people in the land of Egypt, which is west of the Holy Land. God then places Adam in the Garden and gives him a law to keep. Likewise, God places the Hebrew nation in the Holy Land and gives them the Law of Moses. Adam breaks God’s law and is driven out of the Garden to the east (Gen. 3:24). Likewise, the Jews broke God’s Law and were driven into exile in Babylon, which is to the east. (This is significant, because it will tie in with Revelation and the new heavens & earth, which we will see in part three.)

The destruction of the heavens & earth

Jeremiah 4:23-26 is key to understanding the creation in Genesis 1, as it speaks of it directly, but in a way we may not expect. “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was formless and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jer. 4:23). Jeremiah has a vision, and it is the undoing of Genesis 1. The words here are unmistakably the words used in the beginning of the Genesis creation account.

What is destroyed when the heavens & earth are destroyed? Jeremiah tells us, “I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a wilderness, and all its cities were pulled down before the LORD, before His fierce anger” (Jer. 4:26). The destruction of the heavens & earth is the destruction of the Holy Land and the Jewish cities. Let that sink in. It is not the destruction of planets or stars or continents, it is the destruction of a small piece of land. But to the Jews, it is the destruction of their whole world. (Also see Jer. 27:5, where God speaks of the earth He created, and yet in context, it appears to only refer to the vicinity of the Holy Land.)

For the sake of brevity, I will not take up the space here to prove the context, since the evidence is abundant and not generally disputed. The headlines in my Bible for the surrounding text are “Judah Threatened with Invasion” Jer. 4:1-18, “Lament over Judah’s Devastation” Jer. 4:19-31, “Jerusalem’s Godlessness” Jer. 5:1-13, “Judgment Proclaimed” Jer. 5:14-31, “Destruction of Jerusalem Impending” Jer. 6:1-21, and “The Enemy from the North” Jer. 6:22-30.  My point in quoting the uninspired sub-titles isn’t to prove I am correct, but to prove the mainstream understanding of Jer. 4:23-26 is that this refers to how the Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple. (Babylon is to the east of Judah, but due to geography, it would approach Judah from the north, hence “The Enemy from the North.”)

At this point, some will conclude that Jeremiah was merely being dramatic and poetic in describing the destruction of Jerusalem, but he doesn’t actually mean Jerusalem is the heavens & earth of Gen. 1. That is in fact how many people take it. But that is not how Jesus took it…

Jesus on the heavens & the earth

Jesus predicted in Matt. 24:34-35 that the heavens & earth would pass away during His generation. This has led many skeptics to mock Jesus for being wrong, and it has led many Christians to develop confused interpretations. But Jesus got it exactly right, and there is a very simple explanation.

The context of this prophecy is clear, Jesus was predicting the doom of Jerusalem and the Temple, and it would be fulfilled in that generation (Matt. 23:34-24:3). Just as Jeremiah prophesied Jerusalem’s doom in his generation, Jesus describes Jerusalem’s coming destruction as the destruction of the very heavens & earth. History testifies that Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed approximately forty years later (perhaps even exactly forty years later – as we do not know the precise year of Jesus’ crucifixion).

Since Jeremiah and Jesus equate Jerusalem with the heavens & earth, it is not surprising then that the Apostle John in Revelation equates the New Jerusalem with the new heavens & earth (Rev. 21:1-2). The New Jerusalem is identified as the bride of Christ in Rev. 21:9-10. This bride arrived back in Rev. 19:7-9, upon the destruction of “the great city” (Rev. 18:1-19:6). The great city was identified as the place where “their Lord was crucified” (Rev. 11:8), which is Jerusalem.

So the destruction of the heavens & earth is the destruction of Jerusalem. And when Jerusalem is destroyed, the New Jerusalem arrives. And when New Jerusalem arrives, so also arrives the new heavens & earth.

The sun, moon, and stars

Some will try to avoid the implication that Jesus was saying the heavens & earth would be destroyed in His generation. One of the ways people try to avoid this is by claiming Matt. 24:35 is a transition away from Jerusalem to the end of the world. But in Matt. 24:34, when Jesus said “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place,” “all these things” includes the destruction of the sun, moon, and stars described in a few verses prior (Matt. 24:29). This corresponds to Mark 13:24-25 and Luke 21:25, which also speaks of the removal of the powers of the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars.

In context, the sun, moon, and stars of the heavens & earth cannot refer to the literal sun, moon, and stars. Then what are they? Let’s go back to Genesis for additional context. In Gen. 1:16, the sun and moon “govern” over the day and the night. In Joseph’s dream, the sun, moon, and stars are symbols for authority (Gen. 37:9-11). So the sun, moon, and stars are symbols for the authorities in the land because they are over the land, giving light to all of those in the land. So when Jesus predicts the end of the sun, moon, and stars, He is speaking of the overthrow of the Jewish leaders when their nation is destroyed, which is precisely what the Jewish leaders feared (John 11:48).

This same symbolism is used in regard to New Jerusalem. In this city, there is no need for a sun or moon, since the Father and Son provide all the light that is needed (Rev. 21:23). The ruler of New Jerusalem is God the Father, and His crowned prince, Jesus Christ, the Son. Therefore there is no need for a mere human king or crowned prince, the “sun and moon.”

Noah’s flood in the New Testament

Although many Christians (especially YECs) believe Noah’s flood was global in scope, the NT suggests it was not a global judgment, but merely a local flood. One of the YEC arguments for a global flood is based upon references to Noah in the NT. They believe Noah’s flood is compared to the future Second Coming, which is the final judgment of all nations and all generations at the resurrection. The problem is, the NT never compares Noah’s flood to the Second Coming. When the NT speaks of Noah in reference to a coming day of judgment, it is always in reference to 70 AD, which was a local judgment. So the YEC argument actually ends up disproving the YEC interpretation.

It is undeniable that in Luke 17:26-29, Jesus compares Noah’s flood to the local judgment against Sodom. In this passage, both Noah’s flood and Sodom’s doom are compared with a third judgment, when “the Son of Man is revealed.” Does this speak of 70 AD, or the Second Coming? The disciples did not understand this to be the global, universal judgment at the Second Coming, because they ask “Where, Lord?” (Luke 17:37). The Second Coming is universal, so there is no “where?”  because it will be everywhere! This is speaking of a local judgment “Where the body is, there also the vultures will be gathered.” This passage lines up with Matt. 24:28, 37-41, and Luke 21:20-24, all of which speak of Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 AD.

In 2 Peter 2:4-8, the Apostle Peter likewise compares Noah’s flood with Sodom’s destruction, as well as to the coming of the day of the Lord (2 Pet. 3:3-13). This day of the Lord is linked with the arrival of the new heavens & earth, which as we’ve seen, is linked to the destruction of Jerusalem and the old heavens & earth. This fits the time frame of the letters of Peter, which were written at the end of his life in the 60s AD, when he said “The end of all things is near” (1 Pet. 4:7). If Peter was speaking of the end of our material universe, then he was wrong. But Scripture is not wrong, and like Jesus, Peter got it exactly right. Peter didn’t predict the end of the universe; he predicted the end of the Jewish universe, which is the heavens & earth.

If the Genesis creation is not universal, why does it sound universal?

At this point you may be wondering, “If the creation is only about the Jewish land and people, and if Noah’s flood was merely local, then why does the Bible use language that sounds like it is speaking about the entire planet/universe?” This is an excellent question, and the answer, as always, is to be found in the context of the Bible.

Although the Bible was inspired by God, remember that Genesis was written by and to the ancient Hebrew. The ancient Hebrew, like all of those who lived at that time, had a scientifically naïve view of the world, similar to how we thought of things as a child before we grew up and became educated about our world. The key, then, is to think as a child.

When I was a child, I had a jigsaw puzzle of the 48 contiguous United States of America. In this puzzle, America was surrounded by blue (there was no Mexico or Canada indicated in the puzzle). Being a child, this puzzle became my view of the entire world – there was only America. I grew up in the height of the Cold War, so the first non-American country I became aware of was the Soviet Union. When I learned of this other country, I assumed it fit somewhere in the puzzle map, and obviously it must’ve been rather small and insignificant(!).

From this example, it is easy to see that we naturally tend to think of our country, our land as the biggest, or at least the center of the world. There may be other lands out there, but they are on the fringe and not nearly as important as our own. Thus our land equates to the whole world, or at least much of the world, and certainly the most important part.

This can be seen in several places throughout the Bible. Both Daniel 4:1 and 4:22 describes Nebuchadnezzar as being king of all the earth. Obviously, both Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel had to be aware there were lands and peoples beyond the borders of ancient Babylon, but in their thinking, Babylon constituted the bulk of the world, or at least the important parts.

The same thinking can be seen in Col. 1:23, where Paul claims the Gospel has been “proclaimed in all creation under heaven.” Paul said this even as he had plans to take the Gospel to places it had not yet been taken! Clearly, then, Paul is only speaking of much of the Roman empire, and equates the Roman empire with being the bulk of the world.

Let’s look at one more example, this time from within the book of Genesis. When God destroys Sodom, which was a local judgment, nevertheless, Lot’s daughters saw it as the end of the world. This is why they hatch a scheme to get their father drunk, that they may have children and preserve their family, and presumably, mankind (Gen. 19:30-36).

So when Genesis describes the creation of the Jewish people and land as if it were the creation of the universe, or the flood as if it was the end of the planet, this is because this is how it was perceived. The earth wasn’t some small speck wandering through the vastness of space, the earth was the universe. The Jewish land wasn’t just a small land in the midst of a large planet, it was the earth. When the flood wiped out their cities, it wiped out their whole world. So when we get to the time of Peter, the destruction of Jerusalem isn’t just the end of a city, it is “the end of all things” (1 Pet. 4:7).

Summary

There are many more points to be made concerning the creation, Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, the sons of God & the daughters of men, Noah’s flood, and the like, but this is to provide an introduction to a different way of thinking: using the Bible to interpret creation, rather than modern science. In short, the creation of the heavens & earth is actually the creation of the Jewish universe. In the third and final part of this series, we will look at what this means for the new heavens & earth.

————————————————————————-

Steve is a teacher and a preacher in the Churches of Christ.

Guest Post: The Biblical Heavens and Earth (Part 1 of 3)

Adam Maarschalk 20 Comments

A couple weeks ago, Steve, who regularly comments here, left a comment regarding “the heavens and earth” spoken of so often in Scripture. He pointed out the relationship between Genesis 1, Jeremiah 4:23-26, and Matthew 24:35. I was intrigued by the little bit that he said, and our brief exchange led to Steve agreeing to send me his thoughts on the subject to be posted. I appreciate Steve taking the time to do this. Here is part 1 of 3:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Well, that certainly sounds simple enough. At first glance, Genesis 1 seems straight forward. But appearances can sometimes be deceiving. Upon closer examination, there are a number of oddities about the creation account. Why does God create light, days, and nights several days before He creates the sun, moon, and stars in order to establish days and nights? If the light on day one is sunlight, wouldn’t it have made more sense to make the sun first? If the light was not sunlight, then what light is it, and where is it now? For that matter, how does it make sense to make plants before making the sun? And why does creation begin with an ocean of water? It doesn’t say God created these waters; they just seem to already be there. And why is the account in Genesis 1 so different from Genesis 2? These are some of the questions I’ve pondered for a long time. Perhaps you have, too.

I would like to thank Adam Maarschalk for allowing me to share this study on his Pursuing Truth blog. This is the first post in a three part series on the biblical heavens & earth, and in particular, how this affects our understanding of the new heavens & earth and eschatology (the study of last things). The posts in this study reflect no one’s beliefs but my own.

To avoid possible confusion, let me make a few statements upfront about my beliefs. I believe the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God. I believe in the future Second Coming, when Christ will return in the flesh on the last day and raise/transform the bodies of everyone who has ever lived, making us immortal and forever abolishing physical death. I believe the new heavens & earth is a present reality here on the earth, and was established in 70 AD.

Taking a scientific approach to the creation of the heavens & earth

Since many readers will undoubtedly find the conclusions of this study unusual, allow me to explain how I reached my present conclusions. I first began to read and seriously study the Bible as an adult. My first major area of study was Christian evidences – is the Bible true? Because if the Bible isn’t true, then who cares what it says? Naturally, this led to the study of the creation account in Genesis, especially in regards to science. What does it say about the age of the earth, and what about evolution? I did not even consider non-scientific interpretations because #1 it seemed to plainly be speaking of a step-by-step, scientific process of creation, and #2 I assumed all non-scientific interpretations were the domain of liberals who didn’t really believe the Bible.

It is possible to read Genesis 1 with an old earth interpretation, and while it comes close to approximating the views of modern science, it was never a perfect fit. And the more one interpreted it in conformity with modern science, the more forced the interpretation sounded. On the other hand, the young earth reading of Genesis 1 seemed more natural, but it was incompatible with modern science, and it did not explain the peculiarities within the text.

Houston, we have a problem

At this point, I reached an impasse – I was dissatisfied with both the old earth and new earth interpretations, and yet I couldn’t see it any other way. I kept thinking, “If only I could understand it the way the Jews did in the days of Moses…” But how would they have understood it? They certainly wouldn’t have read it in view of evolution or the controversy over the age of the earth!

I got the feeling I was missing a key piece of the puzzle, and if I could just find that missing piece, the creation account would suddenly make sense, or at least make more sense. But I had no idea what that missing piece was. After several years of study with little to show for it, I threw my hands up in frustration and put aside the study of creation. Until…

A paradigm shift

One day I was in the Bible section of a library looking for something to read. One of the books caught my eye, a book on Genesis. The book was Genesis Unbound, by a Dr. John Sailhamer. Skimming the back cover, I came across one of the most ridiculous interpretations of creation I had ever heard – that the first two chapters of Genesis are not really about the creation of the universe. Ha, what a joke! So I checked it out on a lark for the entertainment value. I couldn’t wait to go home and see how he would try to argue such an absurd interpretation.

But when I started to read the book, the joke was on me. Here was a serious book, written by a serious scholar, who took the Bible seriously, and he made sense. Instead of reading the Genesis creation in view of modern science, which was entirely foreign to the original context, he read it in view of the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. Whoa, Nelly! To quote a Third Day song, this new approach “hit me like a bomb.”

I had always wondered at the first chapter of the Bible being about science, when the rest of the book was not at all about science. Now it made sense – the beginning of the Bible wasn’t about science, either.

Hit by another bomb

Genesis Unbound dropped another bomb into my lap by pointing out Jeremiah 4:23-26. If that passage doesn’t ring a bell, do yourself a favor and go read it right now. No really, I’ll wait. :^) There is an undeniable connection between this passage and Genesis 1, and yet this passage is not talking about the destruction of the universe but Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians (more on this in part two of this series).

I don’t think Dr. Sailhamer understood the full significance of Jeremiah 4:23-26. In retrospect, I suppose it was because his views on eschatology prevented him from seeing it. At this point having yet to do a serious study of eschatology, I had no such blinders. This passage not only greatly affected my understanding of the Genesis creation, it would also have a major influence years later when I began my study on Revelation and eschatology (especially Matthew 24:34-35). Despite having major differences with it, Genesis Unbound was clearly a step in the right direction.

The end of the age of science

But let’s get back to the question, how would the ancient Jews in the time of Moses have understood the creation account? How would the Apostles have understood it? Paul H. Seely wrote a series of articles on how the ancients viewed the earth, sky, and seas, and compares it to how the Bible describes these things. The articles can be found here:

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely-Firmament-WTJ.htm

http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/seelypt2.pdf

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely_EarthSeas_WTJ.htm

To summarize the articles, as they are quite lengthy (but well worth your time to read in full), the ancient Israelites believed the earth was a flat circle, the sky was a solid, upside down bowl, and there were two oceans, one above the solid sky, and one that was below and encircled the earth. This was not only the view of the ancient Jews, but it was also the common Christian view held for the bulk of Church history.

So when we read Genesis 1 in view of a spherical planet orbiting the sun, an infinitesimal speck in a vast universe, and a Heaven that lies beyond the boundaries of our material universe, we are reading Genesis 1 out of context. To put it bluntly, we are reading it all wrong.

The solid sky

Many years ago, I recall reading a debate between a conservative Christian and an atheist over whether or not Genesis 1 spoke of a solid sky, the “firmament.” Since at this point I was already convinced the Bible was true (based on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ, the fulfilled prophecies in Christ, the kalam cosmological argument, etc.), and I knew that the solid sky was false, I didn’t pay much attention to the actual arguments. I “knew” the arguments for the firmament were false because they had to be false, and that was that. Now that I no longer had such a simple view of creation, I was free to examine the arguments in the historical and grammatical context of the Bible and go wherever the evidence led. And that led to a solid sky.

Young earth creationists (YECs hereafter) often accuse others of reading their views of science into the Bible, but they do the very same thing. The ultimate argument even YECs make against understanding the sky of Genesis 1 as a solid firmament is because it is scientifically not so. But if we follow the YEC’s advice and go with a simple, literal reading of creation, we find a solid sky.

On day two, God creates an “expanse” or “firmament,” depending on your translation. The correct translation is “firmament,” but for the sake of argument let us go with “expanse” for now. This expanse separates the body of water into two bodies of water, one above the expanse, and one below the expanse. The waters above the expanse are commonly believed to be the clouds, or the atmosphere, or a water canopy (how some YECs explain Noah’s flood). But we shall see this is not correct.

On day four, God creates the sun, moon and stars, and they are placed “in the expanse” (Gen. 1:14). But remember, the waters above are “above the expanse” (Gen. 1:7). The water above is the same as the water on the earth, as they were once one body of water, and now this water is above the sun, moon, and stars. Which scientifically doesn’t make sense. I understand some may want to read it another way, or may feel they need to read it some other way, but this is what the text says. At the end of the day, we will either respect the Bible and submit to what it says, or we will submit the Bible to what we say. There is nothing in the historical context, or the text itself, that would justify reading multiple firmaments. In my view, this refutes the young earth, old earth, and any other scientific interpretation of creation.

Corroborating the solid sky

There are any number of biblical passages that reaffirm this interpretation of Genesis 1. Here, we will look at but a few that are consistent with this understanding.

The Bible depicts not only an ocean above the firmament, but this is also the location of Heaven, where the throne of God is. The firmament is seen as being made of a solid glass or crystal, hence God is seated above the crystal sea (Exo. 24:10, Eze. 1:22-26, Rev. 4:5-6 & 15:2). Proverbs 8:28 tells us that when God created the skies above, He made them “firm.” Although the firmament was solid, there were gates in it so people and angels (and water, in the case of Gen. 7:11 & 8:2) could pass through.

The premise behind building the tower of Babel (which means “gate of God”) appears to be if they built a tower tall enough, they would be able to reach the firmament and break into Heaven itself. This is also assumed in the divinely inspired dream God gave to Jacob in Genesis 28:12-17, the famous ladder/stairway to Heaven. Again, the thinking here is that if one had a ladder or stairway tall enough, one could climb all the way up to the very “gate of heaven,” and enter into Heaven itself.

In 2 Corinthians 12:2, Paul speaks of being taken “up to the third heaven.” He wasn’t sure if it literally happened, or was just a vision, but he obviously believed it could have been a literal event. In the mind of the ancients, the first heaven was the near sky where the birds and clouds were. The second heaven was the higher sky up to the firmament, which included the sun, moon, and stars. And above that was the Heaven of God. So the way to get to Heaven, in their thinking, was to go straight up and through the firmament. Which is exactly how Jesus is depicted as ascending into Heaven in Acts 1:9-11. And when Jesus returns at the Second Coming, He will descend from Heaven into our clouds in the very same way (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

The impact on inspiration

All of this is not a problem for the more liberal minded among us, but what about those of us who consider ourselves (as I do) Bible conservatives, one who believes in God, believes the Bible is true, and takes the Bible seriously? It should first be noted that inspiration was never as simple as it first seems. Divine inspiration did not rule out the need for consulting other sources (Luke 1:3-4), and obviously did not grant omniscience (1 Cor. 1:16). Even Jesus, during His human life on earth, did not make use of His divine omniscience (Matt. 24:36).

Take Jesus’ ascension into Heaven as described in Acts 1:9-11. Even the most steadfast YEC knows that if you board a rocket in Jerusalem and blast off, when you reach the clouds, you ain’t gonna see Jesus. If you continue to go up, you’ll eventually break through the atmosphere into outer space. And guess what? You still ain’t gonna see Jesus. Because we know what the ancients didn’t – that Heaven isn’t up there. Heaven must be in some other realm altogether. And presumably the only way to get from here to there is to be miraculously teleported into Heaven.

So the only way to go to Heaven is to go “POOF!” And yet, Jesus didn’t go to Heaven that way, He instead went up into Heaven. Which is interesting, seeing as how Jesus was the Creator of the universe, and that He was from Heaven, so we know He was under no confusion as to the layout of things. Instead of going POOF, He deliberately goes up in conformity with their preconceived notions of the universe and Heaven. Jesus does not bother to explain to the Apostles, “Now you probably expect me to go up into Heaven, but that is based upon a scientifically inaccurate view of the universe and the location of Heaven.” Regardless of how we think Jesus should have done it, that is the fact of the matter.

So for those of us who respect the Bible, we should acknowledge the fact that God revealed Himself through the scientific views the ancients already had, even if they were inaccurate. Why didn’t God bother to correct the Bible’s human authors about the shape of the earth, or the nature of the sky, or the location of Heaven? For those of us today with a modern scientific perspective, that would provide further evidence for the inspiration of Scripture, but perhaps it would have provided (the appearance of) evidence against the inspiration of Scripture for all of those who don’t have access to modern science. Which would include everyone for thousands of years, and even many Christians today who still do not have access to modern science. It is important to remember the Bible wasn’t written solely for our generation or for our part of the world.

Also, God apparently used their beliefs to teach certain spiritual truths. God used their belief that Heaven was literally above the earth to teach that Heaven is on a higher plane, that is, a higher moral plane. This also reinforces a major point that God Himself is on a higher moral plane than any man, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways… For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9) and “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). If we aspire to go to Heaven, we must repent and purify ourselves, and be purified by God, hence the transformation of our mortal natural bodies into immortal spiritual bodies at the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:44-53).

Summary

The goal of this first post in this series has been to show the need to rethink the biblical heavens & earth. In part two, we will examine what the biblical heavens & earth actually is, and in part three, the new heavens & earth.

————————————————————————-

Steve is a teacher and a preacher in the Churches of Christ.

Debate: Michael Brown and Don Preston On Romans 11:25-27 (Video and Notes)

Adam Maarschalk 11 Comments

As announced earlier, a debate took place on June 3rd between Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Don K. Preston regarding Romans 11:25-27. The debate lasted for 1 hour, 45 minutes and was moderated by Dr. James White of Alpha & Omega Ministries. Don K. Preston is an author, pastor, and the president of Preterist Research Institute (websites 1, 2, and 3), and Michael Brown is an author, professor, and radio host (websites 1, 2, and 3). Both men have authored 22 books each.

The key questions for the debate were as follows: “Does Romans 11:25-27 state that there will be a national turning of the Jewish people to God? Are there any Old Testament promises made to ethnic Israel that remain to be fulfilled?” Both men had 17 minutes each to make their initial case, 12 minutes each to rebut the other’s arguments, 15 minutes each to cross-examine the other, and five minutes each for concluding statements. Here’s the video of the debate, followed by the less-than-perfect notes I took while watching it. (I’ve also included the video time markers for each section of the debate, and my additional thoughts are in red font.)

A. Introduction by Dr. James White (0:00 – 3:53)

B1. Michael Brown’s Initial Case (3:54 – 20:54)

According to Michael Brown, Romans 11:25-27 is about “ethnic, national Israel” and a future “national turning of the Jewish people.” (Will the unsaved Palestinians and expatriates living in Israel be excluded from this national turning because they’re not Jewish? Will Jews living outside Israel be excluded as well?)

Michael distinguishes this entity, Israel, from “the Gentile church.” (I’m not sure what “the Gentile church” is, since there is no Jew or Gentile in Jesus Christ, and no distinction – Romans 10:12-13, Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11.) Paul is looking forward to the full inclusion of Jews, says Michael, not just a remnant. The “partial hardening” of Israel is partial in that it’s not for all time. This hardening, though, is still on Jewish hearts to this day.

–The “fullness of the Gentiles” refers to salvation for Gentiles.
–The church is not Jacob (in reference to Jeremiah 31).
–The wolf is not yet laying down with the lamb. (Paul demonstrates otherwise in Romans 15 by quoting from the same section of Isaiah 11 where it’s predicted that the wolf would lay down with the lamb. Paul applied this passage to Gentiles, in his day, putting their hope in Christ along with Jews. See here for more details.)
–We haven’t yet seen the renovating of the universe spoken of in II Peter 3. (I personally see Peter’s prophecy as speaking of the burning of the Jerusalem temple and the destruction of the old covenant system in 70 AD, as did Eusebius, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and others in church history. See here for more.)
–The new covenant was inaugurated with the remnant, but not yet with the nation as a whole.
–“If words mean anything, _____________ has not happened” (in reference to a number of things that Michael Brown believes have not yet been fulfilled).
–The expression “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26) will not necessarily include all Jews, but will include many of them. (Is this because it won’t include Jews living outside Israel, or is this an admission that God only promised to save a remnant from Israel? I was surprised to hear Michael Brown say this.)

B2. Don Preston’s Initial Case (21:41 – 38:37)

Don Preston agrees that Romans 11:25-27 deals with ethnic Israel, and adds that verses 28-29 deal with ethnic Israel and Jewish unbelievers. Don lists the following Scriptures as providing the background to Paul’s teaching here: Deuteronomy 32:18, 43; Isaiah 26:21, 27:10-13, 59:1-21; Jeremiah 31; and Daniel 9:24-27.

–Both judgment and salvation are in view in Isaiah 26-27 and in Isaiah 59, including judgment for the shedding of innocent blood (themes in Matthew 21, 23; Revelation 6, 16-19; etc.).
–Hosea predicts both the divorce of Israel and God’s promise of remarriage for Israel. This is what Paul is speaking of in Romans 11. The remnant of Israel was to be joined with new covenant believers from other nations, and all of them made one in Jesus.
–God would slay the kingdom, but preserve the family.
–“Paul is dealing with the climax of Israel’s covenant history” in Romans 11.

C1. Michael Brown’s Rebuttal (39:16 – 51:13)

–The temple has not yet been rebuilt.
–Israel has not yet welcomed Jesus back (Matthew 23:39).
–Atonement has been made, but not yet received by national Israel.
–Isaiah 60 predicts that Israel would rise and shine, but this hasn’t happened yet. (What if the light that would shine was Jesus, and a remnant of Israel would rise with believers from other nations and shine with His light? See here for more.)
–Israel’s return from Babylonian exile in the 6th century did not happen with the expected and predicted glory. Those prophecies only happened in part.

C2. Don Preston’s Rebuttal (51:33 – 1:03:33)

–In I Peter 1, Peter said that the prophets looked into the salvation we have experienced in Christ, and they did not understand the time or the manner of its fulfillment.
–Hosea 3 predicted that the 10 northern tribes of Israel would be without a temple, altar, ephod, and sacrifices until the last days when David would be their king.
–In II Peter 2, Peter writes to the 12 tribes of the diaspora, referring to them as a royal priesthood called to make spiritual sacrifices. Jesus, of course, is exalted to the throne of David. Hosea’s predictions for Israel were fulfilled in Peter’s day.

D1. Michael Brown’s Cross-examination of Don Preston (1:04:36 – 1:19:36)

Michael Brown posed this question to Don Preston: “How was all Israel saved in 70 AD and how is there no longer hardening on Israel today?” The following are some of Don’s replies to this and other questions that came up:

–God never promised to save the entire nation of Israel. In fact, Paul quoted Isaiah in saying that only a remnant would be saved (Romans 9:27-28).
–The remnant of Israel was transferred from the old covenant body to the new covenant body. “All Israel will be saved” = The full number of the remnant will come in.
–Any hardening of Jewish hearts in Israel today is not in fulfillment of Romans 11:25, which was a prophecy for Paul’s generation.
–James, who also addressed the 12 tribes, testified that he was among the first fruits gathering of Jewish believers (James 1:18).
–Don addresses the fulfillment of Isaiah 2, in context of Isaiah 2-4, and Jesus’ application of portions of Isaiah 2 in Luke 23:28-31.

D2. Don Preston’s Cross-examination of Michael Brown (1:19:53 – 1:34:54)

Don Preston posed this question to Michael Brown: On what basis can we reject or look beyond instances when the New Testament writers spiritually apply Old Testament promises that, on the surface, appear to require literal or physical fulfillments? The following are some of Michael’s replies to this question:

–If a later interpretation undermines an earlier prophecy, it has to be discounted.
–“If the New Testament writers made void the words of the Old Testament prophets, then it’s the New Testament writers who have to be rightly questioned” (1:22:40). “Consistent interpretation says they made nothing void. They just gave further insight into the meaning of the prophets.”

Don Preston posed this question to Michael Brown: Was the establishment of the kingdom truly at hand when Jesus said it was? The following are some of Michael’s replies to this question:

–Yes.
–“We’ve been in the last days for the last 2000 years.”
–We are in the transition age that has many “untils.”

Don Preston posed this question to Michael Brown: Peter said, “The end of all things is near” (I Peter 4:7), and Paul said that the consummation (or the goal) of all previous ages was upon his generation” (I Corinthians 10:11). What is the significance of these statements if we are still waiting for the events of the last days to take place? The following are some of Michael’s replies to this question:

–“I take all those things seriously, including I John 1:18” (“Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour“).
–We live in a holy tension now, as many prophecies are not fully realized.
–“In Isaiah 49 the Messiah appears to have failed in His mission to Israel. And the Lord says to Him, ‘not only will you regather the lost tribes of Israel (national restoration), but You will also be a light to the nations.’ Hence, Isaiah 42 speaks of a persevering until.” (??? I had a hard time understanding what Michael meant here.)
–The national repentance of Israel (Zechariah 12:10-13) hasn’t happened yet.
–“We are living in the last hour.” (How is this possible if John said it was the last hour in the first century, nearly 2000 years ago? This would mean that “the last hour” has lasted longer than the entire old covenant age, which was 1300 years. See here for more.)

E1. Michael Brown’s Closing Statement (1:35:33 – 1:40:34)

“The Israel that is hardened, that has rejected the Messiah, will be the Israel that turns back fully.”

E2. Don Preston’s Closing Statement (1:40:47 – 1:45:49)

–“Isaiah 27 and Isaiah 59 foretold that the salvation of Israel would take place at the time of the judgment of Israel for shedding the innocent blood of the martyrs.”
–Jesus said this blood, from the beginning of Israel’s history until His generation, was going to be held to Israel’s account in Jesus’ own generation in the form of judgment.
–The time of the putting away of Israel’s sin in Daniel 9:24-27 is confined to the 70 weeks and the related destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, as Michael Brown concurred earlier in the debate. Therefore, the putting away of Israel’s sin in Romans 11 occurred no later than 70 AD.
–Judah had to be divorced in the same way the 10 tribes were, according to the Old Testament prophets and Jesus. In Matthew 22 those who rejected the wedding invitation persecuted and killed God’s servants. Jerusalem, the principal city of Judah, was to be burned at the time of the marriage promised in the Old Testament. This happened in 70 AD, and this is also in accordance with Revelation 18-19 where Babylon the Great (earlier identified as “the city where our Lord was crucified – Rev. 11:8) was to be burned just before Jesus married New Jerusalem. God married the remnant of Israel along with believers from all other nations.

——————————————————————————

Final thoughts: This was a very civil debate, which was great to see. Both men showed a high level of respect toward the other. I wish Don Preston would have given his perspective on “the fullness of the Gentiles” and also that he would have said more about “the partial hardening” that was on Israel. I understand that there were time pressures, however.

Personally I believe that only Jesus’ generation in Israel was under this hardening, in accordance with Jesus’ frequent statements that they were an evil, wicked, vile, faithless, and adulterous generation; and in accordance with His declaration that they had dull hearts, ears hard of hearing, closed eyes, etc. (see Matthew 13:10-17).

Concerning “the fullness of the Gentiles,” I personally believe this is not related at all to Gentiles being saved, but rather to the Gentile nations that had dominion over Israel from the time of Daniel onward: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. This period would end with the 3.5 year trampling of Jerusalem by the Gentiles (compare Romans 11:25 with Luke 21:24 and Revelation 11:1-2). The significance is that New Jerusalem, the new covenant community, is free (Galatians 4:21-31).

God’s promise of a new covenant for the house of Israel (Jeremiah 31) has been fulfilled in the church, the spiritual house built on the foundation of the apostles (ministers of the new covenant – II Cor. 3:5-6), with Jesus as the Chief Cornerstone (Ephesians 2:11-22).

Your thoughts on this debate are welcome in the comment section below.

Identity Crisis: The Israeli ID System

Adam Maarschalk 4 Comments

Today I saw this graphic, shared by Stephen Sizer on Facebook, and found it to be informative, although it certainly doesn’t touch on every issue concerning the Israeli/Palestinian situation. The statistics are said to be valid as of 2011. This graphic illustrates a range of disparities between three groups of people when it comes to freedom, restrictions, living access, and voting:

  • 5.9 million Jewish citizens in Israel
  • 5.5 million Palestinians in Israel, East Jerusalem, West Bank, and the Gaza Strip
  • 5.7 million Palestinian exiles/refugees with no access to Israel or the Palestinian territories

Graphic courtesy of Electronic Intifada and Visualizing Palestine

Jonathan Welton: Daniel’s 70 Weeks Prophecy Is About Jesus, Not An Antichrist

Adam Maarschalk 13 Comments

(Note: This post includes a full-scale teaching illustration below the following introduction.)

The last quarter of the 20th century featured many prophecy charts, based on dispensationalism, depicting a future “Rapture,” 7-year tribulation, Antichrist, series of seal/trumpet/bowl judgments, Battle of Armageddon, etc. When I was younger, I saw a few of these charts in person, and a number of others when I watched “A Thief In the Night” (1972), “A Distant Thunder” (1977) and “Image of the Beast” (1981); all available here.

Charts and illustrations can be good teaching aids. Based on my study of church history, however, the vast majority of respected leaders in the first 1800 (or so) years after Christ would have been horrified to see a lot of these (dispensationalist-based) charts. As my personal journey has taken me away from the pre-trib Rapture/premillennialist view I grew up with, and toward fulfilled eschatology, I’m glad to see that new charts, illustrations, and similar tools are being created which are a lot more sound and Biblical (in my opinion). In a couple of previous posts, I’ve highlighted two such illustrations by author Jonathan Welton, one on Daniel 2 and the kingdom of God and another on John’s use of “ge” (land) versus “kosmos” (world) in the book of Revelation.

Welton’s newest illustration concerns the 70 Weeks prophecy in Daniel 9. Seeing this prophecy differently was a major turning point in my own journey. Previously I was led to believe that Daniel saw a future Antichrist who would make a 7-year political covenant with Israel, then break it 3.5 years later, before presiding over another 3.5 years of planet-wide turmoil and catastrophes. This was to be the 7-year tribulation period. The text (Daniel 9:24-27) says none of these things. I can’t forget how stunned I was when it was pointed out to me, online, that the covenant of Daniel 9:27 is parallel to Jesus’ words on the night He was betrayed by Judas:

“Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering…” (Daniel 9:27).

“For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

Each “week” in Daniel’s prophecy represents a period of seven years. We also know that Jesus laid down His life as a sacrifice after 3.5 years of ministry (“…in the middle of the week…”), and that His sacrifice brought an end to the sacrifices and offerings under the old covenant. There went the idea that sacrifices must be restored in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem in our future. There also went the only Scriptural basis (so I thought) for a 7-year tribulation period. Jonathan Welton does a great job bringing this and more out in his latest illustration: