Audio Fail. But Here is the Written Script of "Intimations Of Immortality."

[Rebbe]

To All:

With regret we are unable to share the audio recording of the very lively interactive Yeshiva lecture (Hebrews Lecture 49) as we experienced an epic recording equipment malfunction. Our sincere apologies indeed.

Therefore we have decided to share the written lecture for those who might be interested in perusing it.

Kol Tov to all who love the teachings of the Lord Yeshua.

Rebbe

OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING FAITH IN HEBREWS
LECTURE 49

Copyright © BRI/IMCF 2023 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)


CAUTION: BRI/IMCF Yeshiva notes are not available to the general public. They are not for distribution. They are not for reproduction. The notes may also bear little or no resemblance to the actual audio or video recorded BRI/IMCF Yeshiva lecture.


“All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners who had settled down alongside of a pagan population upon the earth. For people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a fatherland. If they had been reflecting about the land that they had left behind, they would have had constant opportunity to bend their way back again” ((Hebrews 11.13-15)

When I was in my early teens and was acquiring enormous knowledge and understanding from the synagogue to which my mother had introduced me, I had ample evening opportunity to wrestle intellectually with my largely agnostic father over biblical and theological issues. He would often confront me (occasionally after consuming a number of beers) claiming his argumentative nature was motivating me through a biblical principle of “iron sharpening iron” (as he saw it) for my ultimate benefit. I think there was more to it than that, as he was a free-thinker and earnest searcher for truth himself but was staunchly arrogant when it came to disagreeing with me over some of the contents of the Bible – especially when those contents constellated around the observance of the fourth commandment.

As I deeply respected my father I tried (almost relentlessly) to not “lose my cool” even as his temper flared, suggestive of that last schooner which he had been consuming at the local “watering hole” with his work mates prior to arriving home at dinner time. But I was stunned in one of our final biblical contentions when I was witness to his carnal sin nature (yetzer hara) surging to the fore in a theological conflict with me. In order to make his point (I cannot recall what the subject or topic of conflict actually had been) he quoted a text of supposed Scripture to establish his dominance over my own understanding. I retorted that his “sacred text” did not exist, that he had “made it up” on the spot. I anticipated a bleeding nose but instead he caught me off guard with a hesitating confession that I was right and he had indeed falsified the quote.

We never argued again about the biblical revelation, and we never engaged any further into any biblical discussions until decades later when I called in to see him just a week or so before he died. Strangely, he was not in any way argumentative that day and he sat quietly while I shared some information with him about Yeshua's Mum being buried in Kashmir.

Such an experience as my father's attempt to prove a point by creating a Scripture out of his own mind was repeated at a BRI/IMCF Yeshiva we were holding in a Community Centre in the south-east rain-forests of Queensland in the 90's when the wife of our BRI business manager in attempting to make her case over some issue about the Torah, did what my Dad had done years before and quite adamantly quoted a Bible scripture that simply did not exist. As the supposed quotation involved an argument about the holy Spirit of God I forcibly warned her to immediately drop the pretence. I reminded her that God the Father does not tolerate anybody tampering, distorting, misrepresenting, and falsifying His Word. She was very quick with an apology and public admission that her quote did not come from the Bible.

Brethren, some people will even stoop to promoting a lying text if it tends to satisfy their ego.

One uninspired monk, some centuries after the resurrection of Christ, even inserted a false text in 1 John 5.7 in order to prove the Trinity doctrine. It appears in the AV (KJV) as,

“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

Unlike some other distortions in the modern versions of our Bible, which remain unnoticed by most scholars, this text has been finally recognised and refuted as footnotes in most Bibles concur.

ARGUMENT: WE ARE NOT IMMORTAL
The Christian sectarians of the 19th century have done a great job of convincing multitudes of the faithful of the main historic branches of the Church – those who are actually students of the Bible and its revelations and who seek to grow in knowledge and understanding of the Word of God – that any belief in present immortality of the human being is a satanic fabrication. Their modern disciples can quote their proof texts “to the max” when they do their early Saturday morning home door-knocks, and millions of sincere individuals who desire answers to the meaning of life are being “taken in” by their apparent scholarly approach to the subject. The time has come to be more faithfully imbued with the spirit of a right education – a re-education of the biblical revelation!

It is becoming clear to a number of sincere biblical students that the Roman Church very early in the Constantinian period set its stooges to the task of destroying every mention (or insinuation) of Essenism from the pages of the sacred biblical text. It was certainly in Rome's interest to distance itself from anything and everything Essene – and they almost succeeded in their dastardly task. However, in hindsight, the Lord God YeHoVaH evidenced His heavy hand helicoptering over their negated efforts – in His Gracious holy Spirit superintendence –  by limiting the number of incidents of “overwriting” that were then taking place. In fact, we have been left with a number of texts in the Bible which these editors missed in their entirety and which related to the primitive Messianic Movement's original Essene roots and connections. The scrolls of Enoch were of particular Essene origin, so Enochian references in the “NT” especially were acutely analysed by the Romanists to ensure an appropriate neutralisation if it were felt necessary.

As I mentioned in Lecture 42, the most famous of these Enoch passages which were excised is located in 1 Peter 3.18-20 where these Simonites replaced the name and person of Enoch – in respect of his preaching to the wicked imprisoned spirits in the gloomy depths of Tartarus in the epoch of the Noachian Deluge – with that of Christ. They did a very messy job in disregarding the fact that the scrolls of Enoch could possibly one day be rediscovered (which they were, eventually, in the course of time).

As this textual passage now appears in the KJV and a host of other Bibles: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.”

Moffatt and some other translations have restored the original reading: “Christ himself died for sins, once for all, a just man for unjust men, that he might bring us near to God; in the flesh he was put to death but he came to life in the Spirit. (It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the imprisoned spirits who had disobeyed at the time when God's patience held out during the construction of the ark in the days of Noah – the ark by which only a few souls, eight in all, were brought safely through the water.).”

Modern scholars in the sectarian divisions of the One Faith have followed the zealous Simonites by simulating priestly attempts to reinterpret biblical passages to favour the doctrines of their ancient church but in the modern sectarian case it is curiously those passages which relate (or possibly could be construed as suggestive of) human immortality. Indeed, the subject of personal immortality – that a “Divine Spark of Deity” embeds humankind – is the one topic with which all sectarians are in united agreement: Man possesses zero immortality.

Again, all sectarian divisions utilise the very same textual passages that seem to point to intrinsic mortality (Genesis 2.17; 3.22-24; 1 Kings 11.43; Job 4.17; 14.12,21; 19.23-27; Psalm 6.5; 13.3; 88.11,12; 115.17; 146.4; Ecclesiastes 9.5,6; Isaiah 38.10,11). In doing so, they have become tragically myopic overlooking the fact of progressive revelation – a vital principle of hermeneutics which strangely is disregarded in many argumentative biblical pursuits.

But getting back to the purpose of the Simonites to dissuade the masses from any references in the Bible (especially the “NT”)  to the Dead Sea Qumran Community connection in the rise of the historic Christian Church, all indications of the soul's immortality in respect to the subject of transmigration (reincarnation) were also necessarily tampered with. But they overlooked Job's realisation that when he died he expected to be reborn from another mother (Job 1.21,22).

“And [Job] said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither [to my next mother's womb]: the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor attributed folly to God.” 

They equally were sloppy when they failed to notice ancient patriarchal anticipations of what they would experience at death. As a prime example, Jacob's utterance seems to possess more than a hint that he would again see his dead son in Sheol.

“I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (Genesis 37.35).

Is this just Jacob's poetic rambling? Surely Jacob did not expect to see his son in his own personal grave – for the sectarians ignorantly narrow the description of Sheol to the six foot deep pit into which the dead are lowered in their exorbitantly priced coffins – but rather in the realm of Sheol, beyond the grave. Consider these phrases as well (Genesis 15.5; 25.8; 49.33).

ARGUMENT: WE CERTAINLY POSSESS AN IMMORTAL SPIRIT
Being acutely aware of the WAR Satan is waging at this moment against the children of the Lord God YeHoVaH we of all people ought to be taking every possible opportunity to study and inculcate the truth as we locate it in the Scriptures of God. We ought to be rehearsing these truths often – MEMORISING SCRIPTURE – so that God's Word will not be erased by clever arguments that some are able to fire at will in our direction.

Finis Jennings Dake, in his Annotated Reference Bible (1963), makes some of the following points (although not in the order and language I have used).

(1) At death, “The spirit [ruach] returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12.7). The spirit of man, the spirit IN man (Job 32.8) called “the inner man of the heart” in the Bible (1 Peter 3.4; Ephesians 3.16; 2 Corinthians 4.16; Proverbs 20.27), is invisible and non-material. It was not designed nor created as or from “dust.” God is SPIRIT and we are made in His IMAGE (Genesis 1.26,27). We must therefore be immortal in our spirit as God is immortal AS Spirit. So, “God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity” (Wisdom of Solomon 2.23).

(2) All texts used to teach soul-sleep speak exclusively of the body which was made from dust and which will return to dust. The body is mortal. The soul and spirit in man were never created out of dust in the first place. It is only the physical body that dies (or, sleeps). James tells us that the body is dead when the spirit of man departs (James 2.26). This same text informs us that the body is the only part of a human being that can physically die. When the “inner man,” the life of the body, leaves the body then death has ensued.

(3) The soul and spirit were not created (did not materialise) out of dust and therefore will not die. Our Lord Yeshua warned that while men can kill the fleshly, material, physical human body they are unable to destroy the soul (Matthew 10.28). God, who created both body and soul is quite capable of bringing about total annihilation of both.

(4) The soul and spirit constitute the invisible portion of man and therefore cannot be seen as we can see the fleshly body we wear. Peter spoke of the body as his “tent” in which his true self dwelt. He even stated that when it was time to die we ourselves put it (the body) off as we would our clothing. Notice it carefully now,

“And I consider it appropriate to keep stirring you up with reminders, as long as I am in the tent of this body. I realise that I will soon lay aside this tent of mine, as our Lord Yeshua the Messiah has made clear to me” (2 Peter 1.13,14).

“I will soon lay aside this tent” means a bit more than “I will soon die.” He states “I will set aside” this body. He will accomplish this act of surrendering to death. This is often the case with everyone in the last degree.

(5) When at death our very thoughts perish (Psalm 146.4) our spirit continues to have a consciousness (Revelation 6.9-11; Hebrews 12.22,23) and this holds true even in Sheol (Luke 16.19-31). Certainly, the prophet Ezekiel believed that an Egyptian Pharaoh of his day and age was conscious in Sheol (Ezekiel 32.27-31). Furthermore, the prophet recognises that communication can emanate from Sheol to those who are capable of listening (Ezekiel 32.21).

(6) We are mortal human beings, but we possess a DERIVED immortality from the One who created us in His own IMAGE. We do not possess an inherent natural immortality of and by ourselves. Our immortality, derived from our Creator who alone has immortality in Himself, connects us in unity through His DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS. As Paul noted, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17.28).

THE ENIGMATIC PASSAGE IN ISAIAH
As to continued consciousness in Sheol we have the revelation in Isaiah of Nebuchadnezzar's (or is it Nimrod's) entrance into the Realm of the Dead. And what does this passage record?

“Sheol is stirred... it rouses the SHADES to greet you” (Isaiah 14.9 Hebrew).

If those who teach soul-sleep are right and we do not possess what they refer to as an “immortal spirit,” (really, “a Spark of Divinity”) then why does the prophet Isaiah proclaim the descent of the king of Babylon into the netherworld of Sheol in vivid and dramatic terms which can only be understood within the context of a doctrine of immortality?

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit” (Isaiah 14.12-15).

It does not matter if a defunct theology claims this as a description of a Luciferian primordial attack on God's throne – the myth of the original rebellion of one who through pride became the Dark Lord. While this idea is utter nonsense, holding to it as the truth makes no difference when we consider that the historical personage to whom Isaiah is directing his dirge is none other than Nebuchadnezzar or perhaps, as some rabbinic authorities suggest, Nimrod (Isaiah 14.4). All authorities who are authorities, even those who claim to believe in a doctrine of soul-sleep, recognise that a powerful despot is in the forefront of Isaiah's mind. And he sees the dictator of Babylon (and both personalities were Babylonian kings) destroyed by YeHoVaH, with a rejoicing Israel in a song of scorn taunting and mocking her former oppressor (Isaiah 14.3).

As the unidentified tyrant arrives in Sheol he is greeted by pagan kings who preceded him but while they possess a form of consciousness they are nothing of their former selves. Rather, they are shadowy replicas – shades – of their majesty and greatness. The Babylonian emperor will lie in mud and filth and will be covered in maggots and worms.

HEBREWS CONTAINS A SECRET
The unknown writer of Hebrews speaks of the possibility that some believers could – in the exercise of their free will – change the direction of their journey at death and RETURN to the earth to complete their mission of service on the planet more perfectly. Intriguingly, some considered Catholic “Saints” have understood this same possibility (as have the Buddhists). One such example who comes readily to mind is St Therese (the “Little Flower of Jesus”) who believed in an ultimate universal salvation. She also wrote in her diary that she would be willing to come back after she died to help and encourage people of her Faith (and others) to come to an understanding of God's love for them. It was her desire to help and guide fellow believers in Christ in their trials and in their sufferings. In her own words, “After my death I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven in doing good on earth.”

Paul intimated his own desire (if God was to will it) to “be birthed again and again until Mashiach be formed in you [the ekklesia]” (Galatians 4.19,20 Greek). The letter to the Hebrews also speaks of the open possibility for some who would deem it better to return (“turn back” or better “bend their way back again”) after their death for the same noble purpose. It remains true however, that we all have the option of turning down the offer of return... personally I do not think I would like to come back for yet another life here below. The way I feel at the moment, this one is my last human experience, and I think a lot of my students feel the exact same way.

What I am discussing is the concept of a Bodhisattva – in Buddhism the saint can, if he or she so wishes, turn back from the next stage of their spiritual journey to be of continued assistance to their friends who have not as yet departed this life. The unknown author of the circular letter to the Hebrews describes in chapter 11 saints who had died in faith, saying that they sought a heavenly country, not one on this earth. Again, these people who had died could have had opportunity (if they so desired) to “bend their way back again” (Heb 11.15 Greek) to this earth to further their purposes.

When we grasp the fact that the original Messianic Movement of Yeshua (called later the Christian Church) had its origins in the Qumran community of the Dead Sea Sect and in turn Qumran had its initial roots in the arrival of Theravada priests of the Buddhist faith, we can better appreciate the importance of this idea of “bending themselves back to earth” on their way to the heavens.

As we noted in Messiah's Mum “Few Christians realise there was an extensive missionary penetration by Buddhist monks into the lands of the Bible from India, including Persia, Syria, the far-flung outreaches of the Parthian Empire and Babylon itself, from a very early date. Scholars are beginning to admit that the influence of Buddhism (especially of the Theravada school) was widespread in the days of the Fifth Procuratorship of Judaea. There can also be no doubt that Buddhist influence among the Judaisms of the Intertestamental Period (roughly from Malachi to the coming of Yochanan the Immerser) can be felt in the Jewish writings of the time.

“The Silk Road provided a bridge for missionaries from the Far East to the Mediterranean. Syria, Egypt, and Greece recorded strong and popular Buddhist settlements. Again, so few realise that Indian trade with Babylon (and Mesopotamia in general) was established long before the sixth century BCE and an early Buddhist narrative, the Baveru-Jataka refers to the specialist importation into Babylon of Indian peacocks... Indian elephants were also used in the military expeditions of the Assyrian despot Shalmaneser III, and Israel's Solomon bedecked the entire nation of God with Indian teak and sandalwood and also introduced the magical delight of the colourful peacocks (1 Kgs 10.22). The Temple of God was no stranger to materials purchased from Hindu and Buddhist commercial interests... If the Magi were Buddhists... it would explain the flight of the holy Essene family to a centre of protection in Egypt. For, not only did Egypt include a population of a million Jews at this time, but Alexandria especially, was known to be a popular city for Jewish people – its colony about 200,000 strong. Alexandria also boasted a number of prominent Buddhist missionary schools, called Viharas (meaning an academy), long predated the birth of Yeshua.

“The Essene connection with these schools becomes at once apparent when we realise that the Theravada Buddhists were none other than the Egyptian Therapeutae, and the Therapeutae – according to no less an authority than Philo Judaeus (who was a contemporary of Yeshua) – were associated with the Essenes of Syria and Judaea. That the strong colony of Theravada Buddhists, located at Alexandria, and to which source of refuge the Holy Family fled, were associated with the Essenes of Syria and Judaea is now beginning to be tentatively admitted by a few scholars. The mystery of the identification of the sectarian Therapeutae which has long puzzled scholars, has now been solved with the excellent groundbreaking work of Professor Zacharias Thundy who specialises in the application of linguistics to religion. The word Therapeuta is of Buddhist origin. Therapeuta (“Sons of the Old Ones”) is derived from Theravada (“Teachings of the Old Ones”). Added to this, Philo mentions the Essenes in the same context as the Magi of Persia and the Gymnosophists in India”
(Glenys Evelyn Gosling, Messiah's Mum, 2009, 26,27,35,36).

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life's star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.”

- William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality.

THIS CONCLUDES THE CURRENT LECTURE