Song of God Lecture 2: Introduction

[Rebbe]

The Song of God

A Fresh Appraisal of the Christian Doctrine of the Ultimate Destiny of Humankind:
IMCF Lectures on God's Universal Salvation

by

Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Rebbe


Copyright © BRI, 1996
Lecture Format © 2016
All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Originally Produced as a BRI Study Manual



Lecture Two
(Previously Introduction)

The time is well overdue for a fresh look at the biblical revelation from the point of view of the Jewish thoughtforms which originally gave us the Holy Bible (and a rich legacy of eastern literature) which literature, incidentally, Christians have seen fit to jettison from that sphere which is covered by the term "Scripture." Equally, the time is overdue for a fresh look at the doctrines of election, perseverance, the justice of God, salvation, Grace, and the origin of evil in the purposes of God.

Never before have Christian book stores been so stocked with such an immense arsenal of printed material many boldly proclaiming, in conflict with one another, that they and they alone are the valiant "Guardians of Truth" and the protectors of the written Gnosis of God.

As a Messianic lecturer I have personally found many of these treatises offensive, not merely to my sensitive mediocre intelligence, but certainly in their often-flagrant violation of first century Jewish thoughtforms, and in their ignorance of the existing Judaisms of the Second Temple Period and the colourful mixed culture of the first century Mediterranean milieu. After all, the volume Christians claim as their own and which they call the "Holy Bible" is Jewish. It is Jewish in origin. It is Jewish in style. It is Jewish in sentiment. It was written by Jews, essentially in Hebrew and Aramaic. Even the "Messianic Scriptures of the Yeshua School (or, Party)," which are termed the New Testament (assuredly a misnomer) was also, with the exception of two works penned by a physician named Luke, penned by Jews as disciples of a Messiah who proclaimed himself a Jewish King in antagonistic renitence to Caesar. And the doctor we know as Luke, for that matter, was very likely a proselyte to the Jewish Faith. He was most certainly in intimate association with a Pharisee's entourage of talmidim (students or followers of a rabbi). Most of the Messianic Scriptures of the Yeshua School contain letters which were not only written to Jews but, as certain scholars are keen to point out, were very likely originally inscrolled in Hebrew (or Aramaic).

But from the time of a certain "Saint" Augustine (354-430 C.E.) the Church of Constantine has eagerly pursued a policy of divorce from any and everything Jewish. Such a concentrated campaign of hostility toward, and dislodgement of the Jews, has been highly successful to say the least. Most Jews today can hardly identify with a Messiah who possessed a Gentilised name like "Jesus" (which is very definitely associated with the god Zeus) and who was surrounded by disciples with similar Christian names like Matthew, John, Peter or James. Even modern versions and translations of the Greek copies of the Messianic Scriptures of the Yeshua School maintain their traditionally popular Mary instead of the beautiful, but Jewish, Miriam. Our Lord's flesh brother Judah had his name shortened to a more acceptable non-Jewish Jude. The primitive Shabbat was early changed, without a scrap of biblical or apostolic authority, to the heathen Sunday, and the Constantinian congregations were licentiously permitted their icons, their sensuous rituals, and their newly baptised, but predominantly pagan feast days and ceremonies. The idolatrous paganisation of Christianity took some centuries to accomplish but today, to the lament of Jerusalem, Athens most certainly reigns supreme. If Kefa (Peter) or Shaul (Paul) were to return today to visit the spiritual Community -- or School -- of Yeshu (the Galilean equivalent of the Hebrew Yeshua: the Galilean dialect dropped the "a" at the end of his name) they would in all probability perceive in revolting astonishment and personal horror only the blatant worship of the Canaanite sky-god Ba'al in the costume of the Grecian Zeus. Certainly, they would scarcely recognise the jealous and sacred worship of the Hebrew Lord.

It is not without reason, therefore, that it has been said that Christian textbooks are not easily, nor readily, subject to revision. Modern dogmatism is ever the arch-enemy of faith and an authentic Gnosis. Indeed, the history of the Christian church over the past two millennia bears undeniable witness to the reliability of this assessment. Not including the infamous Crusades, in matters of faith and following the dictates of dogmatism the disciples of Augustine with the blessing of the Popes, enthusiastically set about to utterly root out of the British Isles every vestige of the original Celtic church which happened to follow the Nazarene "Way." Roman Catholic dogmatism later sent Anglicans to the stake, Protestants acted in kind, and the dogmatism of Anabaptists put Romanists to the sword. The Anabaptists were in turn drowned by Papists and Protestants alike. Then came Henry Tudor. As a result of his orgy of plunder, England's irreplaceable artworks of antiquity were all melted down or sold off leaving little England on the verge of economic ruin. Certainly she was aesthetically destitute. Under the covenant of Christian love the Jewish people, who gave us the Christian Bible, fared little better at the hands of the church than they did at the hands of intolerant, racist, unregenerate Gentiles. The Roman Catholic Inquisition hunted down and exterminated the Christ-killers wherever she encountered them, unless of course these "murderers of God" saw a way out of their doom by donning the papist vestments and Catholic conversion robes.

Christian textbooks rarely mention the virulent anti-Semitism of some of the church Fathers, nor do they always document the deplorable treatment of the Chosen People of God during the Inquisition and the Crusades. (The quotations following are excerpted from Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews, 1965.)

Perhaps the greatest preacher and expositor of the Christian Faith (greater by far than the mighty Spurgeon) was John Chrysostom (347-407 C.E.). This bishop of Constantinople and "Doctor of the Church" was called the golden-mouthed.

"The synagogue? Not only is it a theatre and a house of prostitution, but a cavern of brigands, a "repair of wild beasts," a place of "shame and ridicule, the domicile of the devil, as is also the souls of the Jews." Indeed Jews worship the devil; their rites are "criminal and impure"; their religion is "a disease." Their synagogue... is... a den of thieves... an abyss of perdition... I hate the synagogue also. How can Christians... "have the slightest converse" with Jews, "most miserable of all men," men who are... "lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits." Are they not "inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil" whom debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat. They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim... God hates the Jews and always hated the Jews... I hate Jews also."

And what of the great Father of the Reformation, Martin Luther? The man who uncovered the great Pauline Article of "Justification by Faith (alone)" also gave us the holocaust. Adolf Hitler was Martin Luther's most adoring fan.

Near the end of his life Luther raged at the Jews "in a language that at least equalled in violence anything uttered against them before or after. With biting sarcasm and occasional scatological insult, he renewed all the old charges of the past: Jews are poisoners, ritual murderers, usurers; they are parasites on Christian society; they are worse than devils; it is harder to convert them than Satan himself; they are doomed to hell. They are, in truth, the anti-Christ. Their synagogues should be destroyed and their books seized; they should be forced to work with their hands; better still they should be expelled... from their territories."

Nobody can possibly deny that the history of the Christian Church leaves a lot to be desired. One thing for sure, 2000 years and 21,000 denominations, sects and cults later is an indication that fallen angels embodied in heretical doctrinal dogmatisms are now a powerful elite ever moving against faith and the Gnosis of the children of light.

Actually, I make no apology for the fact that these present lectures are penned from a Christian perspective. For again, I am a Messianic believer. And yet, even as a Christian I am the first to admit, albeit humbly before my God, that I struggle to be gracious toward both contemporary parochial fundamentalism and certainly that which can only be termed a blind peremptoriness which arrogantly argues that this planet on which we live, and move, and have our being (to quote my brother and spiritual Guide, Shaul) is the vital centre of Our Father-Mother God's material order. In the myopic view of Fundamentalism God is ever, only and always intrigued by the history of humankind's 6000 (!) year sojourn of rebellion on planet Earth, and for all eternity the Lord God has had nothing else on his mind but the salvation of man. But true faith finds its genesis in the revelation of Gnosis, and thus faith is ever and always opposed to ignorance. It is never discovered in, nor does it court the favour of raw, unprincipled, crass unknowingness. Rather, faith is preoccupied with the glory of God.

Having said this, it is not my purpose in this work to "major" on what some people feel are the "minors," the non-issues concerning the events which led to our current worldly paganisation of the universal church. These lectures are only preoccupied with theological alternatives to a dogmatism which argues even against itself in such matters as the ultimate fate of the lost. I am concerned with those biblical issues that concern the destiny of believer and non-believer alike. Controversy has ceaselessly waged between the school of Calvin and that of Arminius over the Atonement. As these lectures will show, one cannot truly appreciate the doctrine of the Atonement without a vital acknowledgment of other related teachings -- election, perseverance, the justice of God, salvation, Grace, and the origin of evil in the pulsating Sacred Heart of THAT which is "the Everything of the Everything."

The Song of God series of lectures is now being made public and gratis for the first time, and the reader will find in them a series of humble and unpretentious studious efforts dealing with the Salvific intention of God toward a lost humankind. The lectures will endeavour in themselves to grant a full and total appreciation of the thoughtforms of the Jewish world of the Second Temple Period which brought forth "the Word."

For almost two millennia the central doctrine of salvation has been startlingly not salvation, nor the self-emptying Salvific Nature of a God who is Wholly and Altogether Love, but the horrendous doctrine of an eternally burning hell-fire in which a loving God will sentence finite creatures to an infinite destiny of everlasting torture.

As a Messianic Jewish lecturer, it is my view that Jerusalem must once more take precedence over Athens and it is my opinion that seventeen hundred and fifty years of imposed Greek thought on a wholly Jewish book is quite long enough.

QUESTIONS & ANALYSIS OF LECTURE TWO
(Previously Introduction)

The Messianic Rebbe wrote: ".... the history of humankind's 6000 (!) year sojourn of rebellion on planet Earth..."

I mention humankind's supposed 6000 years of recorded history ONLY from the perspective of an "IDEAL biblical chronology." The reason for my hesitation is simple and straightforward.

In the first century Rav Shaul (the apostle Paul) gave wise counsel concerning arguments about genealogies -- he said to avoid them (1 Timothy 1.4).

FACT: We are on very safe ground when it comes to the last two millennia of world history, from the birth of Mashiach unto today. We know there have been 2000 years that have passed.

FACT: We are also quite safe, chronologically speaking, when it comes to the period of King David to the time of Christ. He lived 1000 years before Yeshua was born.

FACT: Historically, we can also chronologically date the precise time of father Abraham who lived a thousand years before David and 2000 years before Christ.

Having said all that, prior to Abraham we are on highly shaky ground. Moses was supposed to have lived just 800 years after Noah's flood. Yet when Abraham ventures into Egypt he is confronted by a Pharaonic dynasty and a Canaanite civilisation that is already lost in antiquity.

According to a Bible chronology (and different authorities will very rarely be in agreement in this matter) the Deluge of Noah occurred 1656 years after the Creation which means that this disastrous and catastrophic event happened just 2400 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

We can read books written by Christians, of course, which chronologically date the Deluge to approximately 2400 years BCE. And this, they all claim, is so self-evident that only a fool could deny it. They ask with one united voice: Why can't the world admit that this event occurred back then?

Well, the reason for the world's negative response is easy to explain. There is no evidence outside the Bible to substantiate that the Deluge did in fact occur when the Bible appears to say it did. I have studied the books by Whitcomb and Rehwinkel and a host of others. Despite their "deluge" of words, diagrams and other impressively assorted information, they cannot establish from historical records, nor from science, that this awful event happened when they claim it did. The proof is just not there!

Listen! The genealogical records of Genesis (in particular) must be approached with the utmost caution. What we are dealing with in Genesis is what can only be termed an "IDEAL" chronology. This is because the Hebrew word for "begat" (yalad) allows for an interpretation that suggests "was the ancestor of" as well as "was the father of."
 
This seems to be a much more tidy assessment and allows for a far earlier destruction of the earth (and primarily by water) for which the evidence of geology allows -- a cataclysm that can be dated to circa 10-12,000 BCE. Not only so, but Chinese and Egyptian records, for only two accounts, do not permit a flood of gargantuan proportions within the last 7-8000 years of their own written history.

When attempting to work out biblical genealogies and chronologies one must exercise the utmost caution or we will find ourselves in water more murky and cataclysmic than that which engulfed much of the earth's surface in the days of Noah.

THUS CONCLUDES LECTURE TWO