Shabbat Sabbath

Chapter 2
Who is Israel?

The parables of Isaiah 5 and Matthew 21 show us that God is a farmer who wants to produce good fruit, generally referred to as “grapes.” We know, however, that this is symbolic, rather than literal. The Old Testament knows it as the fruits of the Kingdom, because God’s vineyard was the Kingdom of God. Isaiah 27:6 says,

6 In the days to come, Jacob will take root; Israel will blossom and sprout; and they will fill the whole world with fruit.

That is the promise, and those who believe the Bible do not question this fact. But many differ on HOW this will be accomplished, and through whom. Who will actually bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom that God desires?

When Israel failed to bring forth these fruits in the Old Testament, it was because they worshipped false gods and cast aside His law. The prophets speak of this constantly. So God judged them by casting them out of the land and stripping them of the birthright name, “Israel.” He raised up the Assyrians from 745-721 B.C. to conquer Israel and deport the Israelites to Halah, Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes” (2 Kings 17:6). This was the area around the southern half of the Caspian Sea.

Israel became “Not My People” (Hosea 1:9). God divorced them (Jer. 3:8; Hosea 2:1). He even said He would call His servants by “another name” (Isaiah 65:15), which, for many centuries, made it difficult to identify the “lost tribes of Israel.” The Jewish Encyclopedia makes no attempt to tell us that these lost Israelites are to be found in today’s Jews.

In Romans chapter 1 Paul explained that the sinful state of man was due to a departure from Yahweh their God and the corruption of society which that departure had summoned. In Romans chapter 2 Paul credited the Romans with building a society founded on the rule of law, and contrasted those who had the law of God but did not keep it with those who did not have it and yet maintained the morality found in the precepts which the law represented. Yet Paul explained in Romans chapter 3 that all men sinned, and therefore the righteousness of Yahweh was mercy towards men even in their state of sin. So while men were not judged by God according to the law, it was nevertheless necessary for men to uphold the law.

Paul explained in Romans chapter 4 that the promises of the faith in Christ represented the ongoing fulfillment of the promises which Yahweh had made to Abraham. Paul also explained that the Romans, being descended from Abraham, were a part of that fulfillment. In that chapter Paul further explained that those promises made to Abraham transcended the Levitical law, that they were apart from and were not reliant upon the law. In Romans chapter 5 Paul asserted that eternal life was the promise of the entire Adamic race, which was also apart from the law. With this he explained that sin existed outside of the law, but that sin was not imputed because the law had not been given.

Many have pondered the question as to whether or not we can cook food on the Sabbath. Today, I’d like to examine some evidence that may shed light on this topic. Be it known that my desire is for the truth alone and not to bolster any fleshly desire. (Sirach 4:28) While studying for our Jubilees livestream on 8-23-19, I came across this verse:

Jubilees 2:29

“Declare and say to the children of Israel the law of this day both that they should keep Sabbath thereon, and that they should not forsake it in the error of their hearts; (and) that it is not lawful to do any work thereon which is unseemly, to do thereon their own pleasure, and that they should not prepare thereon anything to be eaten or drunk, and (that it is not lawful) to draw water, or bring in or take out thereon through their gates any burden, which they had not prepared for themselves on the sixth day in their dwellings.”

Reading this re-ignited my desire to search this out. On the surface, reading this verse seems compelling that we are not to cook on the Sabbath, but I wanted to keep looking. It wasn’t until a few days later, someone had shared this verse from Jubilees 50, that seemed to unlock what was really being said above:

Jubilees 50:9

“Ye shall do no work whatever on the Sabbath day save what ye have prepared for yourselves on the sixth day, so as to eat, and drink, and rest, and keep Sabbath from all work on that day, and to bless Yahuah your Elohim, who has given you a day of festival and a holy day: and a day of the holy kingdom for all Israel is this day among their days for ever.”

No one enjoys discussing eternal punishment. Even those who believe it’s biblical would rather avoid the topic, focusing instead on Jesus’ love, servant leadership, sacrifice, and resurrection. While Jesus was truly meek and humble of heart, it may surprise you that Jesus spoke about the topic of hell more often than any other biblical figure. This article will examine the concept of “outer darkness.” Jesus told three parables, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, in which He referred to the “outer darkness.” In these stories, it’s clear the outer darkness isn’t a pleasant place. Jesus described a situation in which we wouldn’t want to find ourselves. Is it hell? Is it a “suburb” of Heaven? Why are people sent there? Why is it dark? Matthew records Jesus referring to the outer darkness in Matthew 8:12, Matthew 22:13, and Matthew 25:30. Each verse mentions the activity of people sent there as “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That’s not something people do unless they are in great inner or outer torment. The verses are very straightforward…

For those of us familiar with images of the occult, we often know that they will use a goat, especially those in Satanism circles. So why does the creature of a goat represent the devil? Didn’t he appear as a serpent in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3)? In this article, we’ll explore the symbolism of goats in Scripture, what Scripture has to say about goats versus sheep, and why Satan is ultimately a goat. Goats represent a number of things in Scripture, but to go to the source, we need to explore one of the most famous Jewish Holidays: Yom Kippur, otherwise known as The Day of Atonement. During this holiday, two goats would be used (Leviticus 16). One, the azazel goat, would have all the sins symbolically placed on it when the high priest laid hands on it. Once the sins “were placed” they would drive the goat out into the desert, thus driving out Israel’s sins into the desert. For more information on the two goats used during Yom Kippur, check out this article here. The goat here, the azazel goat, represented Satan, or evil. No wonder Jesus found Satan out in the…

Thus far, we’ve not seen a specific connection between Gog and the Watchers or the giants. There is certainly data that will connect Gog to Bashan/Hermon and the Satan figure, Baal, but these other elements are wanting. What’s needed is an evil, Satan-like figure who is also a Titan-giant in Second Temple Jewish thinking that can also readily be connected to crucial Antichrist passages like Daniel 7–12. Amazingly, such a figure is well known from ancient texts: Typhon.

Typhon is almost entirely unknown among Bible students. The description from the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible contains elements that should be familiar to readers from the previous chapter of this study, where we discussed the relationship of the Titans, Watchers, and giants:

Typhon appears in Greek myths as the opponent of Zeus or even of all gods. He is the youngest son of Tartaros and Gaia.… The name resembles Zaphon and there seem to have been connections between Typhon and Baal-zaphon. According to Apollodorus, Bib. 1.41, Typhon flees to Mount Kasios, the mountain of Baal-zaphon…. Hesiod describes the struggle between Zeus and Typhon for the rule over gods and men after the defeat of the Titans. Zeus eliminates Typhon with his lightning and throws him into the Tartaros (Theog. 820–868)…. Gradually Typhon became associated with the Giants (Hyginus, Fab. 151; cf. Pindar, Pyth. 8.17–18). From the sixth or fifth century bce onwards Typhon is identified with the Egyptian god→Seth (possibly already Pherecydes according to Origen, Contra Cels. 6.42; Herodotus 2.144; 156; 3.5; Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. hist. 1.21–22; 88; passim in Plutarch, De Iside)…. Although Typhon is not mentioned in Dan[iel] 7–12 or Revelation it is quite possible that the typhonic type which was taken from Greek and Egyptian mythology was incorporated into passages of these apocalyptic writings in order to emphasize the appearance of foreign rulers as the tyrannical eschatological adversary. The vision in Dan[iel] 7 shows not only correspondences with Canaanite mythology, but also with texts on Seth-Typhon (especially concerning the eleventh horn). The battle against heaven and the stars in Dan[iel] 8:10–12 and Rev[elation] 12:4; 7–9; 13:6 of the little horn, the dragon and the first beast corresponds with the role of Typhon, who according to Apollodorus, Bib. 1.39–40, touches the stars with his head and attacks heaven.[i]

It is crucial to realize what this short citation means. Scholars have established secure textual and conceptual links between Typhon, Daniel 7–12, a central section of the Old Testament for Antichrist typology, and Antiochus IV, whom all scholars of biblical eschatology recognize as the prototype for the Antichrist.

The major study of this material is that of van Henten, who writes:

In the Greek mythology from early authors such as Hesiod and Pindar up to and including Nonnus of Panopolis, who wrote in the fifth century A.D., Typhon figures as an appalling giant raving at gods and men…. In many texts of this group the struggle between Typhon and Zeus constitutes the central theme. In his hubris Typhon launches an attack on the Olympic gods whose uncontested leader is Zeus…. The literary character of Daniel 7 is vastly different from the mythological texts of this group. All the more striking, therefore, are the similarities to be found between the characterisation of Typhon… and the typification of the eleventh horn and its actions in Daniel 7.[ii]

Van Henten goes on to introduce and illustrate numerous points of comparison, among them:

• Typhon’s insolent words against Zeus and the little horn’s against God (Daniel 11:36–37);
• Typhon’s war against the entourage of Zeus for supremacy of heaven and the little horn’s assault on God and His holy ones (Daniel 7:21–27; 11:36–37);
• The mutual contempt for existing laws (Daniel 7:25);
• The fact that Typhon, like the eleventh horn, has both human and animal features (Daniel 7:8, 20–21; 8:5–9, 21)

The point of all this is that, for Second Temple Jews, the notion that the great end-times enemy would be either the personification or the manifestation of supernatural evil associated with Bashan/Hermon and the giant offspring of the Watchers would not have sounded strange. Second Temple Period Jews would have recognized that the nature of the end-times enemy of the Messiah derived from a complex set of ideas that included these elements. Consequently, the defeat of the Antichrist signaled the final victory over the Watchers and their spawn.

Did the Lord’s disciples and early church fathers consider the Book of Enoch to be sacred scripture? Let us review a bit of the evidence.

The Epistle of Barnabas

This ancient epistle is perhaps the earliest Christian source that cites material from 1 Enoch as Scripture. Nickelsburg writes:

Writing ca. 135–38 c.e., probably in Egypt, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas paraphrases 1 Enoch 89:56, 60, 66–67 with reference to the destruction of the temple, introducing his source with the formula, “For Scripture says” (λέγει γὰρ ἡ γραφή, 16:5). To support the notion of a new temple, he quotes loosely 1 Enoch 91:13, again introducing it as Scripture (“For it is written,” γέγραπται γάρ, 16:6).[i]

Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr’s Second Apology, written between A.D. 148–161, presumes the Watchers story—that they cohabited with human women and taught humankind forbidden knowledge. Justin therefore holds them responsible for the proliferation of wickedness among humanity. Justin “recognizes the parallel between the story of the watchers and Greek myths about the amours of the gods.”[ii] This is of interest because Justin clearly considers the Jewish version (i.e., 1 Enoch) to be superior in its truthfulness. The opinion suggests that Justin considered 1 Enoch inspired, but we cannot be certain since it is not cited as Scripture in his work.

Irenaeus

Irenaeus was the bishop of Lyon. He lived ca. A.D. 130–200. His writings make it quite evident that he knew 1 Enoch in some detail and accepted the accuracy of the Watcher story. Of interest is what he says in the tenth chapter of Irenaeus Against Heresies (sec. 1):

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one,” and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess”8 to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send “spiritual wickednesses,” and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.[iii]

The occult is permeating American society in ways that have never occurred in the past. Across social media, entire generations are being deceived by practices such as “manifesting” and remain unaware of the spiritual doors they are opening. According to the outlet Oxygen, manifesting is “A once-niche, New Age movement, it had been swiftly swept up by the mainstream. As of now, the hashtag ‘manifesting’ has almost 15 billion views on TikTok, while YouTube channels based on the subject regularly incur an audience of millions.” For those not raised in the social media era, the term “manifesting” is not unheard of, but this new practice and trend has completely flown under the radar of many Christians…

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As curriculum awareness grows across the United States, parents are now sounding the alarm over the Satanic Temple (TST)’s efforts to create after-school clubs for students. Parents say they are worried about the impact it may have on young children’s view of faith. In December of last year, a TST “After-School Satan Club” was approved at a Virginia elementary school, resulting in backlash from parents distributed by the push to indoctrinate young children into Satanism. Since then, TST has announced plans to create new clubs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, with religious advocates taking note of the trend…

Hillsong Church operated a lucrative speaker’s circuit, or “celebrity preacher’s scam,” that netted as much as a million dollars in extra income for high-profile preachers, according to whistleblower documents recently made public. As previously reported, some of those involved in this “scam,” like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer, were friends of Hillsong founder Brian Houston and Australian evangelist Christine Caine—the two who allegedly invented the “scam.” But other preachers had to “buy their way into this exclusive, reciprocal speaker’s circuit” by using their church’s money (3% of tithes and offerings) to become members of the Hillsong Family, the whistleblower documents state.

Thanks to these documents, we now know which churches and pastors belonged to the Hillsong Family and participated in this alleged scheme. And we have compiled a list of the Top-10 Hillsong Family Donors below.

In return for their hefty donations, these pastors would reportedly get several perks, the documents state. These included invitations to speak at Hillsong events, garnering large honorariums and profits from merchandise sales the pastors could pocket themselves. Hillsong Family pastors would also be invited to join Brian and Bobbie Houston at “luxurious” Hillsong Family retreats “a couple times a year,” the documents state.

Egypt unveiled the discovery of long corridor inside the Great Pyramid of Giza on Thursday, the first to be found on the structure’s north side. The corridor, which measures 9 meters (nearly 30 feet) by 2 meters (more than 6 feet), is perched above the famous structure’s main entrance and was detected using a scan, authorities said. The function of the chamber is currently unknown, although such corridors often lead to further archaeological discoveries…

Researchers digging in the ancient city of Aizanoi have announced the discovery of many new artifacts and works. But the discovery of an “almost intact” statue of a giant man with one foot takes the archaeological biscuit. The ancient city of Aizanoi was founded as a  Phrygian city on the western end of the  Phrygia kingdom, in the present-day Çavdarhisar district of the western Anatolian province of Kütahya in Turkey. Aizanoi was home to the Aizanitisians, Phrygians,  Greeks, Romans and Byzantines and the site was rediscovered by European travelers in 1824.  The German Archaeological Institute  began excavating in 1926 and works resumed in 1970, with them having accelerated significantly over the last two years. At this site, that’s listed on the  UNESCO World Heritage  Tentative List , over the years archaeologists have unearthed ancient stone heads and bodies depicting Greek gods and goddesses such as  Eros, Dionysus, Aphrodite and the demigod  Herakles. This season, archaeologists greatly added to their expanding haul from this site and they have announced the discovery of…

The year was 1998. I (Allie Henson) had made the short drive to a rural location to attend the meeting all townspeople had been made aware of. The small, makeshift room was filled with people who gazed curiously at the displays on the snap-together plywood walls. Folding metal chairs made up several rows in the middle of the room, where those gathered for the informational meeting were soon to be seated. Charts and laboratory photographs lined the walls of this temporary, portable building. It had the feel of a traveling carnival’s funhouse: room corners, held together by folding hinges, could be spotted by the careful observer, and one could somewhat effectively track where the collapsible structure’s joints would fold flat once the assembly was over and it was time to take the nomadic production to the next town. But, unlike any carnival that’s anticipated and voluntarily attended, this was a mandatory meeting for all registered residents of the tiny town. The government had sent out notice that all citizens were to be here to witness the unveiling of the military’s new, revolutionary super-weapon…

A bald, thin man wearing glasses and a lab coat called attention to those who were milling about the room; as he did, people agreeably sat down, expectant smiles across their faces. A modest team of qualified, professional-looking people then began to introduce the groundbreaking technology that had been genetically designed in a laboratory to guarantee victory against all enemies in what would likely be all future warfare.

A small door on the left side of the room opened, revealing a sign indicating that all attendees were to line up, single file, and prepare to walk through to the other side. As it swung open, the man in the lab coat announced proudly, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the Splicer.”

A hush fell over the audience members as they craned their necks to try to see what was in the next room. When I got through the door, I realized that the makeshift nature of the presentation seemed to have elevated. This wasn’t just one portable room, but rather was one of many connected into a small labyrinth of cheap plywood walls posing as a transportable government office. I began to get the feeling that we were somehow being toyed with, but the wowed expressions on faces around me told me I was alone in my suspicion. We were then ushered into little circus-like cars, much like the kind a carnival ride would sport, which then took us on a “moving display”: We were taken through a series of rooms filled with photographs, posters, and charts—and there was even an audio file that played the voice of a man narrating various facts about the Splicer’s development. As we sat in these mini cars, we were carried from room to room, and in each one, we were given another portion of the Splicer’s story to cover its conception, its visionary scientists, and the series of pioneering methods by which the weapon had been designed.

I (Donna Howell) was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. My friend, David, was receiving treatment for a longstanding medical condition. Nita Horn was with me, though she stood a little farther off in the corner of the room. All three of us were afraid.

“Something isn’t right,” David said, shaking his head with worry and clutching at his bedcovers. “This facility. My treatment. Something is wrong here, and I mean spiritually.”

We had little to go on, save for a feeling. “Something” was a vague word, but it was strangely accurate in describing a common enemy around us that threatened our very lives while smiling nurses and doctors looked straight past it. The color scheme wasn’t typical of a hospital’s usual stark-white, “sanitary hues” decor. The cupboards that lined the walls all the way around the room were stained dark, more like what would be found in a funeral parlor than in a cheerful recovery room. The walls were muddy-brown wood paneling characteristic of the 1970s, and the carpet was a sickening, burnt-urine yellow. Even the cream-colored phone on the wall looked aged and dingy, sun-bleached of its vitality in some spots and stained in other spots from the oil residue left after years of fingertips pressing on and around the numbered buttons. These environs made the fresh, snow-colored pillows on David’s bed look bombarding and out of place, as if they would be infected with disease by mere exposure to the atmosphere.

Yet, the eerie ring of danger that pulsed and throbbed in the room with every heartbeat warned of a kind of attack that has nothing to do with exposure to viruses or sickness. David was right about that. Something was pure evil here, and we needed to get out immediately.

Suddenly, I saw six orbs of light appear down the hallway in front of me. Their flight path was erratic and nervous, like hummingbirds: zoom, hover, dip, stop; zoom hover, dip, stop… I pointed in excitement and shouted “Angels!” as the lights jerked their way around to the bed.

The dream about angels I (again, Donna Howell) had wasn’t the first time the Lord has rattled me lately. Another moment was equally radical, but it happened so fast—and while I was wide awake. It was unlike anything I had previously experienced, and it couldn’t be chalked up to a dream or any kind of “imaginings” because of the speed at which it occurred and the multiple tiers of revelation it immediately brought.

It was about 7 o’clock in the evening. My husband, James, was talking about mowing the lawn. I was engaged in the conversation, which, for my part, involved trying to figure out who was going to watch the kids during work hours the next day so James could tend to our too-tall grass.

Without any warning whatsoever, from nowhere at all, absolutely right in the middle of a sentence about grass and childcare, my mind’s eye was taken to the floor of a dark, murky, underwater place. Some kind of arm—I’m not sure if it was biological or mechanical—reached out and swept away a giant layer of mud from the surface of an enormous, transparent container. Within it, the face of a being was looking off to the left, eyes wide open and alert. The instant the muck was brushed aside, the being inside the container sensed the movement and snapped its attention forward, focusing its intense gaze upon me.

No longer are the linguistic services of algorithms and machine learning bots the reserves of global marketing elites. Unless you’ve been asleep these last few weeks you will know that 2023 has already marked the beginning of what will be remembered by our children as the first steps in an artificial intelligence revolution. Perhaps the most well known new language-based AI bot is ChatGPT. Based on OpenAI, this online tool now provides writers with the ability to reword, restructure and enhance written work, as if they had researched and written the articles themselves. At the other end of the AI scale, in the halls of academia, a new artificial intelligence bot has been developed that will soon offer armchair archaeologists the ability to piece together ancient texts. Professor Enrique Jiménez, at the Ludwig Maximilian University…

Robotics startup Figure, which launched in 2022, has spent the last half year quietly developing a bipedal humanoid robot. That robot, named Figure 01, has just been unveiled publicly. Modeled after the human form, Figure 01 walks on two legs and is intended to do manual labor that currently relies on actual living humans. With a labor shortage in the U.S. that numbers in the millions, Figure’s humanoid is designed to do the jobs people don’t want (or don’t have the skills for), and to eventually tackle more advanced tasks like caring for the elderly or even cooking meals. Key to Figure’s robotics approach is its reliance on artificial intelligence to enable its robots to learn and improve their abilities. As movements and performance evolves, the robots can progress from basic lifting and carrying tasks to more advanced functions…

ChatGPT and other new chatbots are so good at mimicking human interaction that they’ve prompted a question among some: Is there any chance they’re conscious? The answer, at least for now, is no. Just about everyone who works in the field of artificial technology is sure that ChatGPT is not alive in the way that’s generally understood by the average person. But that’s not where the question ends. Just what it means to have consciousness in the age of artificial intelligence is up for debate. “These deep neural networks, these matrices of millions of numbers, how do you map that onto these views we have about what consciousness is? That’s kind of terra incognita,” said Nick Bostrom, the founding director of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, using the Latin term for “unknown territory…

In what may be its greatest achievement yet, a striking number of Temple Mount activists now make up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most famous of whom is Itamar Ben Gvir, the Kahanist star of the last election who is now national security minister. With the surging movement at his back, Ben Gvir has returned the Temple Mount to the Israeli zeitgeist, inflaming tensions that have been steadily rising for years. As the Temple Mount movement has grown, it has spread across borders and religious lines: Christian supporters of the movement have become crucial donors of both money and political support. (Many evangelicals believe the Third Temple will be inhabited by the Antichrist, which will be followed by massive bloodshed as Jews will be forced to choose between conversion or death, and, finally, the Second Coming of Jesus)…