Sh'mini Atzeret

[Rebbe]

Today is the final day of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. It is followed immediately with the celebration of The Last Great Day, as it is called in certain sectarian quarters. More properly, it is really "the eight day of assembly" (Sh'mini Atzeret). It is not a part of the Sukkot feast, but it follows -- in accord with prophecy as far as its fulfillment -- right on its heels.

To many Christian scholars, while the Feast of Tabernacles is recognised to picture the future thousand year millennial period which immediately flows on from the second Advent of the Messiah, there are also some "scholars" who have twisted, garbled, misrepresented, and wrested what the biblical revelation actually informs us will take place under Yeshua. Instead of the "meek inheriting the earth," in their theology the meek will get caught up into the sky with the descending Christ to return back to heaven and spend the thousand years -- with the earth meantime laying in desolation -- while the saved can spend their time in the libraries of heaven sifting through the record books reading pornography. Should I apologise for such a statement as this? No way!!

One of the Bible Correspondence Courses I took as a 10-year old child (through the influence of my very sweet and especially loved dear Aunt Flo, who happened to also be a Seventh Day Adventist) carried the appellation "The Voice of Prophecy." I still have these lessons in one of my files. One of the lessons outlines candidly how we will be able to enjoy the bliss of heaven by examining the "books" mentioned in the Book of Revelation and reading why it is that Auntie Mabel and Uncle George never got there -- why they missed out on the experience of enjoying the shining glory of God's Face, and Grace! We will be able to recount the past earthly sojourns of all our dearly loved ones (fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, friends) and find out the sins that kept them out of God's Grace. Pretty hideous really. And, what are our sins still doing in heavenly files at the Advent of Messiah? Didn't the cross bring it all to an end? Weren't our sins blotted out... washed away... completely? If so, why did the founder of the SDA religion write that "At the close of the 2300 days, in 1844, began the work of investigation and the blotting out of sins" (Great Controversy, 552).

And why, of why, do the majority of Christians believe in the "desolate earth theory" when hundreds of Bible texts speak of the earth ruled by a Jewish Messiah, from a Jewish Jerusalem, with the 12 apostles reigning over the 12 tribes of Israel, and the world enjoying an authentic peaceful bliss for a thousand years? Why do Christian ministers espouse these supersessionist beliefs which are anti-Semitic in origin and fact, when they do not appear in the biblical revelation, but rather are based on Augustine's "City of God" and the warped allegorical teachings of later church Fathers?

In my extensive library I happen to have a copy, quite an old one in fact, of a book entitled "The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan" written by a prolific 19th century plagiarist in which she quotes, in an effort to prove her millennial desolate earth theory, from Isaiah 24:6. "Because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore has the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned." Then she promptly adds her thoughts, "The whole earth appears like a desolate wilderness..." (page 657).

But she stopped short of completing what Isaiah wrote under inspiration of the Ruach HaKodesh (holy Spirit, or better, Spirit of Holiness). Isaiah tells us plainly as we complete the reading: "...therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left."

This coming Sabbath, I am scheduled to teach further on Paul's "Letter to the Roman Christians" and we have reached the important chapters 9-11 which deal with the purposes of God for the people of Israel.

Did God really intend us to understand what he plainly inspired to be penned? Or, is God the proverbial Village Idiot? Is God the Fast Fading Smile of a Cosmic Cheshire Cat? Supersessionist rabble and other Replacement Theologians -- disciples not of Christ, but of Augustine -- have had their day in court and have been found wanting in so many areas it boggles the mind.

I for one will continue to preach and teach the unadulterated Word of God until I eventually drop. Christ is returning, not to take us all up to heaven for a thousand years in order to read lurid stories of failures, but to reign victorious with his brothers and sisters -- at that time converted into pure Spirit as he is Spirit -- for the entirety of the planetary Millennium.

Christ comes not to destroy the earth as so many think, but to "destroy them that destroy the earth" as I have taken pains to point out repeatedly. The Psalmist tells us that Messiah's enemies "shall lick the dust" (Psalm 72.9). He shall rule with a shepherd's rod of iron. He is not coming back to be recrucified but to bring salvation to earth's masses.

The festival of Sukkot portrays that awesome cosmic event toward which all believers in Yeshua should be looking. Sh'mini Atzeret then pictures the entirety of the salvific will of Almighty God coming into universal effect as telescoped by the apostle Paul in his letters, so often ignored, or distorted and misused.

May we all grow into a Mindscape that is not fearful of casting away unprofitable fables about what others believe concerning God and the biblical revelation, but rather be prepared to personally continue growing into all the truth.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rebbe