The Two-Hundred-Eighty-Eighth (A Scripture-Based Lens)

Have you ever confronted someone, maybe even a child, asked them why they did a certain thing, and their answer kept changing?  What you can be sure of in that situation is that whatever they tell you, it’s not the truth.  Sometimes there’s a smidgen of truth underneath all the lies, a smidgen on which the lies are based, but sometimes there’s not.

We’re certainly not seeing anything like this publicly in the world today, right?  What we’re going to do this week is not talk too much about specifics of the things we’re seeing, but we are going to use some examples because the goal this week is to get us to understand how to look at things through a scripture-based lens.  There are a lot of non-scripture-based, or scripturally-false, lenses out there that are presented as scripture-based because they use snippets of scripture out of context.  As believers, we are tasked with testing everything, and Yeshua warned that there are times where even believers are prone to being deceived (Matthew 24:24).

Now, Yeshua was warning the disciples at the time of what they would be encountering in the near future, but that doesn’t mean what He said isn’t useful to us today.  As we’ve seen time and time again, scripture contains patterns of how things have happened throughout history.  If believers could have been deceived at that time, they certainly can be deceived today.  And I submit to you for consideration that in many ways we all have already.

It's unfortunate, but many times believers are deceived simply because they don’t know what scripture actually says.  Someone in some position of authority, like a pastor, a theologian, a politician, a military leader, etc., mentions some verse in scripture and rather than verify that what is being said, and how it’s being used, is valid in the context of what is written, the believer takes it at face value.  Maybe these authority figures can even quote the verse verbatim, although many can’t even do that, so it makes it seem like they’re well versed in what they are saying.

What’s worse is that if enough of these authority figures say the same thing it turns into something people consider “common knowledge,” completely disregarding that the “knowledge” is blatantly false.  Once it reaches that point, the effort it takes to change someone’s mind about it increases significantly.  This “knowledge” becomes a foundation on which various other false beliefs are built, all of which seem logically valid, but are ultimately built on sand.  It gets to the point where even the foundational “knowledge” gets so muddy and convoluted it’s not recognizable as its original form because the false beliefs on top of it have created different lenses through which to view it.

If those statements don’t quite make sense to you, we’ll get to an example of what I’m referring to in a moment.  First, we need to talk about how we form our scripture-based lens, and how to use it.  Then, we can take a look at examples so we can look through our lens and see why the scripturally-false lenses out there today are false and what might happen if we use those false lenses to view the world.

It may be blatantly obvious, but it needs to be said.  In order to form our scripture-based lens, we must use scripture, in context, to do it.  A verse or snippet here, or a passage there, is not adequate in order to form an accurate lens.  Let me tell you, there are a lot of Christian doctrines, political views, and lifestyles out there that are based on snippets of scripture.  This lulls the believer into a false sense of security by leading them to believe that whatever lifestyle they live, political view they have, or doctrine they espouse is aligned with the truth, aligned with righteousness, and aligned with YHWH and Yeshua’s expectations for how Their people live.

The only way to use scripture in context to form the scripture-based lens is by not just reading scripture but studying it.  You have to dig into what it says, what connections it makes across time and across books, the context in which it was written, and the language in which it was written.  Today, that is certainly much easier than it was even fifty years ago because of all the easily searchable reference material, like Strong’s Concordance, for example.  But most of all, you have to study scripture starting from the spiritual aspect and then moving into the physical aspect.  

We have done these things week after week in our studies, so I won’t belabor how they’re done.  I do want to emphasize looking at the spiritual aspect though, because it’s so important to start there.  It is also the hardest thing to do because the physical aspect is so ingrained in us by the world.

In order to look at the spiritual aspect of scripture, you first have to figure out how to identify it.  Depending on what it is, you have to use different methods to do this, but overall, it’s about finding the patterns.  For example, we’ve found out through patterns in scripture that throughout history being a people of YHWH is not about any specific physical lineage.  It’s not about whether you have the same genes as some historical figure because you’re a physical descendant from him, and it never has been.  It's about faith and obedience to YHWH (which in the Hebrew mind are synonymous).

By understanding that example and recognizing it, we were able to realize that there was another pattern shown in scripture: the pattern of a remnant.  The line of faithful, obedient people was continued throughout history, through a subset of the overall population, while the majority of the population descended into rebellion and disobedience.  And the pattern has always been that the disobedient were destroyed in some way.  

In the flood, the disobedient and rebellious were physically destroyed (Genesis 7:21-23).  The same occurred at Mount Sinai in the judgment for the golden calf (Exodus 32:19-28).  When it came to later in Israelite history, the rebellious and disobedient were destroyed as a people.  They were conquered by empires and whoever survived was sent to the four corners of the earth, separated and never to be one physical nation again.  For the Kingdom of Israel, this occurred when the Assyrians took over (2 Kings 17:6-20).

This is clearly described in scripture, and it’s directly related to the biggest example of a Christian, spiritually-false lens that is now public and pervasive in society today.  It is so pervasive that complaints are being made that military commanders are telling their personnel what we’re doing in the Middle East right now is ordained by God.  I warned you we would be looking at examples!  

Just in case you don’t want to click the link and read the verses yourself, here are the pertinent ones.  “All this happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God…”  “Yet through all His prophets and seers, the LORD warned Israel and Judah…”  “They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God…”  “So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel…afflicted them…until He had banished them from His presence.”  

In that event, the tribe, or kingdom, of Judah remained, but look at what it says there: “even Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God.”  Why did they remain then?  Because YHWH’s plan included a Messiah, His Son, that came from the tribe of Judah and was a descendant of David (1 Kings 11:13, 32).  

Remember what we’ve said as we’ve studied scripture regarding how to determine if a doctrine or belief is false.  If you can find a passage or verse that contradicts it, then it is false.  You have to take that passage or verse in all of its context when determining if it’s contradictory, though!

The scripturally-false lens is that the creation of the country of Israel today, and the people who live in it, are the fulfillment of spiritual prophecy of a restoration of YHWH’s people.  It’s false for so many reasons, but the main one pertinent to our current example is that the same judgment that occurred to the Kingdom of Israel also occurred to the Kingdom of Judah.  The judgment was delayed by YHWH to allow the fulfillment of His plan for the salvation of mankind, by His Son coming to be sacrificed for our sins, but it occurred nonetheless in 70AD as executed by the Roman Empire.

We don’t have a 2 Kings 17 equivalent scriptural writing to state that this is the case for Judah, but a study of scripture tells us it is true because the patterns align.  In YHWH’s curses for not following His commandments, nearly all of them were fulfilled in the siege and destruction of Samaria, the capital city of the Kingdom of Israel.  The more specific of these curses were their sons and daughters being given to another nation and going into captivity, as well as eating their own children during a siege by their enemy (Deuteronomy 28:32, 41, 53). This is shown in scripture to have occurred, even to the specifics of them eating their own children (2 Kings 6:29).

These events in Samaria show how it looks physically when YHWH rejects His people and their descendants, as proven by 2 Kings 17.  The same exact events occurred in 70AD for Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, as recorded by Flavius Josephus.  We don’t even have to hang our hats on his word either, because Yeshua prophesied of it.  He talked about the Temple being destroyed and alluded to what women and children would experience during the siege (Matthew 24:1-2, Mark 13:1-2, Luke 21:5-6, Luke 23:28-30).  In fact, all the references to Babylon in connection with Jerusalem’s destruction were blatantly showing that the same things that happened during its first destruction by the Kingdom of Babylon were going to happen again through the Roman Empire.  The book of Lamentations is written about the first destruction of Jerusalem, and it records mothers eating their children (Lamentations 4:10) just like what happened in Samaria and was prophesied in the curses.

The destruction of Samaria and fall of the Kingdom of Israel occurred in 722 BC, and there hasn’t been a restoration of it since.  What makes us think that despite this, the Kingdom of Judah would receive restoration?  Not only that, what makes us think that YHWH would restore the kingdom even while they are still in disobedience and rebellion?  The only reason Judah received a stay of judgment compared to Israel was to fulfill YHWH’s plan to bring the Messiah as the righteous Branch from David (Jeremiah 23:5, 33:15, Isaiah 4:2, Isaiah 11:1).  In other words, once that part of the plan was complete, which occurred when Yeshua was born, unless Judah repented and became faithful and obedient to YHWH once again, Judah had to receive the same judgment that was imposed on Israel.

The scripture-based lens includes these spiritual concepts from scripture, and when we look at what’s happening in the world today through this lens we can recognize that it’s far from being YHWH-ordained.  To be clear, this lens is not created based solely on this aspect of scripture.  It includes the entirety of scripture.  I think it’s time we believers stop creating an artificial separation between the things that happen in the world and what’s in scripture.  The only time we connect the two is if we’re trying to figure out if the events of Revelation are happening today!

Our stance about whatever is happening in the world and whatever we hear prominent people talk about should be formed solely from the scripture-based lens.  When someone claims that YHWH (if that’s even who they’re talking about when they say “God”) planned something out, He ordained it, or that what they’re doing is biblical, we always need to be evaluating that through what scripture says.  I heard a clip the other day of someone saying that it’s biblical and honoring of her late husband for her to take over his business after his death.  Tell me, where in scripture does it say that?  Where does it talk about a widow taking over her husband’s business after his death?  There are certainly verses about submitting to your husband and respecting him, but nowhere does it talk about taking over and running his business.

I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day, a believer, where we talked about how it’s essentially impossible to know the truth about anything in the world today.  They stated that they wanted to at least have an opinion on what’s happening, and so I asked what is the point of the opinion if it’s based on false information?  Their response was that what they really wanted was to not be bamboozled.  They had realized that there were many things in their life that they had been bamboozled by the world on, so they didn’t want to be bamboozled anymore.

That’s certainly something to strive for, but what does that really mean?  To not be bamboozled by the world means you know the truth.  And how do we know the truth?  The only thing that we know is true is YHWH’s Word.  Therefore, in order to know the truth about what’s happening in the world or the truth about what someone is saying to you, you have to look at it through the scripture-based lens (not the scripturally-false one!).

If someone tells you that they killed someone else because they thought they were going to attack, your stance should include the fact that scripture does not allow that as justification for killing.  If someone is killed in self-defense or protection of the home, that’s a different story (Exodus 22:2).  In fact, that same commandment does not even allow for justification if that death occurred after sunrise, meaning the thief was likely visible by the home’s occupant and could have been apprehended rather than beaten until death (Exodus 22:3).  

If someone tells you that it’s YHWH’s will that a third temple be built in Jerusalem, your stance should include the fact that YHWH was the one that destroyed it in the first place because of Judah’s rebellion and disobedience.  If He destroyed it because of rebellion and disobedience, why would He allow it to be rebuilt in rebellion and disobedience?  If He wouldn’t let David, a man after His own heart (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22), build the temple because he had shed too much blood (1 Chronicles 22:7-8), why would He allow a nation that has shed so much blood do so?  It’s not in YHWH’s character, according to scripture, and the only way we know that is by studying scripture.

Let me be clear: there is nothing righteous, holy, justified, or YHWH-ordained about what’s happening in the Middle East, according to scripture.  As believers, that is what we should be seeing through our scripture-based lens.  It’s not anti-patriotic or anti-Semitic to say that or hold that view.  Also, as an aside, there’s recognition that needs to be made about what Semitic even means.  The word Semite comes from the name Shem, which was one of Noah’s sons.  All descendants of Shem are Semitic, and they include essentially everyone in the Middle East!    

It’s time for believers to stop being bamboozled by looking at the world through scripturally-false lenses.  Please, study scripture for yourselves and seek out the truth so you can build your own scripture-based lens with which to view the world.  YHWH does not want His people to put down their lens to see what’s on television or in the news and then pick it up to see what’s in their church or Bible.  He wants us to keep the lens up to our eye and look at everything through it.  Take time this week to start building your lens, if you haven’t already.  If you have started, take time to continue building it, or even finish it.  I have a strong feeling that what we’re seeing all around the world today is only going to escalate, and more rapidly, and that lens is the only way to figure out what it all means.  If you don’t know where to start, or have questions about how to build it or what you’re studying in scripture, please don’t hesitate to reach out.  

We hope you have a great week!  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!  

-Rob and Sara Gene

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The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life

(1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)