The Two-Hundred-Ninety-Sixth (The King)

You may be wondering why we went so deep last week into what kingship meant in the region of Mesopotamia, Israel and Egypt during ancient times.  We’re going to talk about that this week because it’s something that I was not aware of previously and it is one of the things I’ve come to realize is necessary to understand in order to fully understand Yeshua’s role.  In fact, because I hadn’t understood it yet, I had come to the incorrect view of the progression of YHWH’s relationship with His people.

However, the only reason I really started to get into how kingship was viewed in that region during those times is because I came to realize that a long-held belief I had held was not actually true.  We’re going to get into that this week, too.  Fair warning though, this is another hot topic that seems to evoke strong emotions in people!      

I just ask, as I have previously, that you take a moment to at least read without judgment to see if anything jumps out as undeniable truth to you.  Ask the Holy Spirit to soften your heart, removing any previously held dogma, to enable you to identify truth.  As always, I don’t expect or desire you to take my word for anything.  I am just a man.  Study these things for yourself and let the Holy Spirit lead you to the truth.  

Last week, we talked about how the king was the embodiment of people in the region and time typically called the ancient near east.  Specifically, in YHWH’s people Israel, the king was never considered a full deity or having any supernatural powers related to being a partial deity or a deity in certain circumstances, unlike other ancient near east cultures.  We also have talked in the past few weeks about how YHWH’s sacrificial system and the governmental structure for His people were similar to the pagan societies, but only because the spiritual basis behind those pagan societies came from how YHWH created everything and those societies intended to use those spiritual aspects in a rebellious and sinful way rather than the way YHWH intended them.

The reason it’s important to review this is because in many respects, all throughout time, the war, or challenge, of YHWH’s people has been to prevent being influenced by pagan views and beliefs or, if they have infiltrated, to purge them.  We read about this all throughout scripture, and YHWH was forced to divorce His people because they were unable to adequately purge the paganism from themselves once it had infiltrated.  Over the past few years though, as we’ve seen and noted multiple times, it seems YHWH is leading His people with a divinely concerted effort to purge paganism once again.

In our testimony, this started with a realization of how deeply integrated the spiritual aspects of YHWH’s creation are in what we see physically.  Starting with understanding that there really are spiritual beings called demons influencing mankind, and how man is actually a spiritual being in a physical body (rather than a physical being with a spiritual side), we then began to read and understand scripture differently, or more accurately I would say.  Following that came the “light bulb” moment, along with the Holy Spirit-given boldness and confidence, that man’s teachings today didn’t align with YHWH’s teachings, His instruction given in scripture.

There wasn’t a really good reason why, either.  It all seemed to just point to a more subtle form of rebellion, but the same spirit of rebellion that had pagan societies (and even Israel, at times) worshiping other gods and even sacrificing their children to them.  In fact, while more subtle, it almost seemed worse, because it was being done in YHWH’s name, claiming that it was sanctioned by Him, rather than it being done in the names of other gods as it had been in the past.

This realization, that YHWH’s instruction is still expected of Him for His people, led to putting the puzzle pieces together that explained what His instruction meant, why it was given, and subsequently what His overall plan for man’s redemption really was.  The fact that it was a betrothal or marriage contract, understanding that faith includes belief and obedience, and that grace and righteousness are given through faith, showed us that YHWH married Israel and had to divorce them due to continued transgression of the contract, but also showed us that He intended to have a new marriage as a follow on to that redemption.  This is where the confusion and inaccurate belief came in, though.

The reason for coming to the wrong conclusion about the actual process of redemption and re-marriage of YHWH’s people is because of a belief that nearly every Christian and every believer holds, just like we did at the time.  This belief, this doctrine, is generally just accepted.  Sometimes they hold it out of fear because people are called heretics if they don’t agree with it, and sometimes they hold it because it just doesn’t make sense and they are told it requires an understanding that’s too high for man to grasp.  His ways and His thoughts are just so much higher than ours, right? (Isaiah 55:9)  

The problem with that logic is that it naturally prevents man from engaging in critical thought in order to seek out the truth.  Through this logic, we get to a point in our study and our thinking where we just give up because we tell ourselves we can never understand it.  Yes, YHWH has things that we will always struggle to understand because we don’t have the full picture that He does, but this isn’t one of them.  And let me tell you, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.  

So, what is this thorn in our side that we can’t get rid of?  What is the topic we study where we feel that thorn?  It’s the doctrine of what’s commonly called the trinity.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

If you’ve ever struggled with understanding how there can be three Gods in one, don’t worry.  Everyone does.  Even the most well-read, well-studied theologians throughout history.  Some will even admit that they don’t fully understand it or how it works.

They will tell you that it’s not modalism, and they’ll call it something different like trinitarianism, but that’s essentially what it is at its core.  If you’re not already aware, modalism (also called Modalistic Monarchianism because any academic worth their salt likes to create more terms for the same things) is the belief that YHWH is One Person who shifts between the “faces” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Since that doctrine has some verses that are rather difficult to explain according to its view, it eventually morphed into trinitarianism.  This is the view that YHWH exists simultaneously as three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The way they figured to get around the difficult verses for modalism is to transition from a view that YHWH “changed” from one Person to another into a view that YHWH is always the three Persons and thus He can appear, or in some cases be heard, simultaneously as any of the three.  One of those difficult verses was Yeshua’s baptism.  In that event, the people present could hear YHWH, see Yeshua being baptized, and see the Holy Spirit descend on Yeshua in the form of a dove (Matthew 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22).  Modalism prevents this event from even being possible because it requires YHWH to shift from one Person to another, not being able to be multiple People at one time.

In my opinion, the reason modalism and trinitarianism came about is because people without the background of being Israel were trying to explain what they read in scripture based on their own background, as I believe happens for many false beliefs and doctrines.  Did you know that the Israelites, and subsequently the Jews during the time of Yeshua, never believed in a YHWH of three co-equal entities?  In fact, to believe that would be akin to believing pagan views like the many gods the Greeks and Romans had.

Tell me, what’s the difference between the Greek myth of Zeus and his father Cronus being so equal in power that the son, Zeus, could overthrow his father and exile him, compared to the view that there are three Gods that are co-equal in power and co-existent?  Maybe that’s too far of a stretch of comparison for you, but we’ll get into some verses later that shows you don’t actually need trinitarianism to explain or interpret any of what you read in scripture.  Trinitarianism is not required in order for you to understand YHWH, Yeshua, and the Holy Spirit, and I would submit that it actually hinders you from fully understanding Them and Their relationship with each other.  

The reason many believe you have to have trinitarianism is because they are under the false belief that YHWH Himself had to die in order to redeem mankind.  I was certainly under that belief, and to go back to the previous account of our testimony, it led to the misunderstanding that Yeshua’s death had to be YHWH’s death in order to release His people from their previous marriage to Him.  If you read those previous studies on His marriage covenant with His people, you’ll see that explanation clearly in them.

However, as we identified last week and reminded ourselves of this week, the king is his people.  Therefore, his death is the death of his people.  In fact, as we noted last week, the pagan rituals of Egypt and some Mesopotamian societies included this correlation in their ceremonies.  The descent into death of the king was the descent into death of his people, and his resuscitation from death of their goddess was the people’s resuscitation of their goddess that gave them favor in the upcoming season of harvest.

Just days before Yeshua was crucified, the people praised Him as their King (Luke 19:38, John 12:13).  His riding into Jerusalem on the colt was a fulfillment of a prophecy where He is called their King (Matthew 21:5, John 12:14-15).  As we noted, He was anointed by YHWH at His birth, a sign of His anointing by YHWH as their King.  When Yeshua died on the cross, His death was the death of Israel and their subsequent release from the marriage to YHWH they had entered into at Mount Sinai.  Yeshua doesn’t have to be YHWH in order for His death to mean YHWH’s redemption of man.

In fact, when you really think about it, Yeshua’s death means that He can’t be YHWH!  The saying is that He was 100% God and 100% man (a 200% being?!), but YHWH can’t die.  He is immortal.  If He could die, He would have limitations and therefore could not be the all-powerful Creator of the universe.  So, you say, yeah, that’s why Yeshua gave up the Spirit and that’s why He said, “why have you forsaken me,” right (Matthew 27:46-50, Mark 15:34-37, Luke 23:46, John 19:30)?  Well, if the “100% God” part was given up before death….then YHWH didn’t die.  And that means the basis of belief that YHWH had to die in order for man to be redeemed still remains unfulfilled, which means Yeshua’s sacrifice meant nothing and we are still not redeemed from death to this day.

That’s not even counting the fact that fathers are not their sons and sons are not their fathers.  I am not my dad and my son is not me.  My son is an image of me, as I am an image of my dad, but we are not, and cannot be, the same person.  But, you say, Yeshua said He and the Father are one (John 10:30), right?

Did you know that the Greek word for “one” there is the same one used in the Septuagint when translating “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother…and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24)?  The Hebrew word in that verse that was translated to Greek for the Septuagint is echad which can mean one as in a number, or simply being unified in purpose.  I think we can agree that when a man and wife marry they do not physically or even spiritually become conjoined as one singular being, and therefore we cannot require that Yeshua meant a similar conjoining for Him and YHWH.

Not only that, as we read on from Yeshua’s statement we see that while the Pharisees stated that He claimed to be God, He actually corrected them and said He was saying He’s YHWH’s Son (John 10:33-36).  He did not say, “why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God.’”  Why do the majority of Christians and believers, then, believe that’s what he was saying?  Because they’ve been conditioned, as I was, to believe that’s what He has to have been saying based on the entering assumption of trinitarianism, the assumption that He is YHWH.

Let’s take a step back for a moment and look at some other aspects of scripture that support not requiring trinitarianism to explain it.  First, we went over the sacrificial system for the past few weeks, and what did we realize?  Not only did the sacrifices clearly point to Yeshua’s ultimate sacrifice, they established that the requirement was a life for a life, blood for blood (Leviticus 17:11).  

There were sins, like murder, that required the death of the individual committing them, but in general, the sacrificial process involved a “lesser” being, an animal, sacrificed for a person’s sins.  In no case was there required a “greater” being as a sacrifice.  For example, if a murderer was a common person, they didn’t require a leader in the assembly to be killed for the commoner’s sin of murder.  In the same way, for the whole congregation’s sin of rebellion, they didn’t require the king’s or priest’s death as the representative of the people.  Therefore, the sacrificial system did not require a higher being like YHWH to be sacrificed in order to redeem man, it simply required a Man to be sacrificed who had no sins of His own.      

Another aspect to recognize is that the prophecies of Yeshua’s sacrifice did not require Him to be YHWH.  In fact, in the most direct prophecy out of all of scripture it shows that He isn’t YHWH.  When Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Isaac, Isaac was not Abraham, obviously (Genesis 22:1-19).  No one can argue that this event wasn’t an actual, physical prophetic event that represented the exact thing that Yeshua did on the cross.  However, most will look past the blatant fact that Abraham wasn’t sacrificing himself and believe that Yeshua is YHWH.

When you see all these things and think about them, you start to wonder why you didn’t see them that way before, right?  And when you study them without coming from a viewpoint of trinitarianism, you start to realize that there’s another way to understand things.  That’s the experience I had, at least.  Some of the most “convincing” proof texts for trinitarianism suddenly didn’t actually prove it at all.

As you look into other passages for yourself, here are some things to keep in mind.  The term “God” is just a general term, just as the term “Lord” is.  Just because “A” is called “God/Lord” in a verse and “B” is called “God/Lord” in another verse doesn’t mean A = B.  There are many places where people are called lord in scripture, and there are certainly places where other spiritual beings besides YHWH are called gods.  

In the same way, just because YHWH is stated as doing something and then Yeshua is stated as doing something doesn’t mean They have to be the same Person.  For example, a common trinitarian argument is that because scripture states that because Job said YHWH alone “treads on the waves” (Job 8:9) and Yeshua walked on water (Matthew 14:25), then Yeshua has to be YHWH.  Unfortunately, that means Peter is also YHWH, because he also walked on water (Matthew 14:29).  So then, how did Yeshua, and for that matter Peter, do it?  As we discussed a few weeks ago, Yeshua did things by the power of YHWH, not because He was YHWH Himself (Acts 2:22, 10:38).

Once you start walking down this path, other verses start to make more sense as well.  For instance, when Yeshua told the rich young ruler that only YHWH is good (Mark 10:18).  Or, how about when it says He grew in favor with YHWH (Luke 2:52).  What about when He told the disciples to believe in YHWH and in Him (John 14:1), or when He said no one can come to the Father except through Him (John 14:6)?    

When Yeshua prayed to YHWH was He praying to Himself?  When He said, “not My will but Yours be done,” (Luke 22:42), or that He doesn’t seek His will but the will of the Father that sent Him (John 5:30), if They were the same Person how could They have separate wills?  How can He be an Heir to Himself (Hebrews 1:2) and a joint-heir with us (Romans 8:17)?  When Paul states that for us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Yeshua (1 Corinthians 8:6), why did he specify them individually and didn’t, in fact,  call Yeshua God?  Why didn’t he throw the Holy Spirit in there as well, if they are all one?  I mean, in context he’s trying to point out that while the world, the pagans, identify many gods, we believers only have one God, right?  

As you can see, you have to do some pretty talented mental gymnastics in order to explain these verses in the context of trinitarianism.  Whereas, the belief that YHWH is the One Creator God of the universe fits with all these verses, as well as all the others throughout scripture and the overall message in scripture in general.  There’s no need to create a trinity that no one fully understands and requires manipulation of the plain text in order to prove.  Yeshua’s all-redeeming sacrifice is sufficient to save us from death without it.

I hope you take some time to study this out for yourselves with the leading of the Holy Spirit.  Then, you and I can both look forward to when Yeshua hands the kingdom to YHWH (not Himself!) so YHWH can be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:24-28)!  

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)