Articles
Why, God?
Why, God?
HOW would you like to have five minutes of intimate dialogue with God?
What questions might you ask Him? Why do you allow cancer? Why do you allow war? Why don’t you put an end to starvation? Why did you allow the Holocaust to occur? What happens when we die? Why are some people wealthy while others are poor?
Did you know that many of the questions you might ask God have already been answered…in the Bible?
You’re not sure the Scriptures are really from God? Then take a close look at the Jews God’s chosen people. We have been chosen to be witnesses of the reality of God and His sacred Book. In it, our history has been recorded thousands of years before it came to pass. Throughout the Bible, God inspired His spokesmen to list thousands of prophesies concerning our people…and then caused them to be fulfilled with absolute accuracy.
The Bible warned if we did not follow Moses and the Law (Torah), we would lose our holy city and be scattered to the four corners of the earth. And wherever we ran for refuge, we would be persecuted.1 Despite these dire warnings, God still promised to preserve us as a distinct people.2
The Bible reveals that in the latter days, Israel would once again be restored as a nation.3 Waste cities would be rebuilt and the desert would blossom as a rose.4 Even the ancient Hebrew language long confined to the Holy Books would again be spoken as the national language of Israel.5
But Israel’s biblical history does not end here. After Israel becomes a nation again, the prophets tell us Jerusalem would become a burden to the whole earth.6 An alliance of nations would be raised up to invade Israel. The head of this confederacy would be (Gog) Russia. (Gog is the ancient name of land occupied by Russia.) Other countries in this alliance are specifically named: Persia (Iran), Ethiopia, Put (Libya), Gomer (East Germany) and Beth-togarmah (Soviet Armenia).7 We are even given a description of the atomic warfare to be waged in Israel, predicted when horses were the only known means of transportation.8 How did Zechariah, living in the year 520 B.C., describe the atomic fallout?
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THE Bible not only tells of the future, it demonstrates how the higher laws of this universe operate. The law of gravity, for instance, says it’s impossible for an airplane to fly. But a higher law the law of lift takes precedence.
Unfortunately, most people spend their entire lifetimes without a knowledge of these higher laws of the universe. These laws operate whether or not we are aware of them. Due to our ignorance, we often suffer their consequences.
Let’s take a look at some of the laws found in the very first chapter of the Bible:
God created everything. How? With His spoken word. God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light! He said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. He said, “Let us make man in Our image…” So God created man in His own image.9
Since words are the building blocks of creation, we must be very careful what we say. Words not only create, they also can destroy. Words are like seeds: The same first chapter of Genesis tells us that every seed produces fruit after its own kind. An apple tree does not produce orange seeds. Apples have seeds within them that, when planted, will reproduce other apple trees. We are told that everything has its own seed within it.
Words are the seeds of this earth. If you want strife, plant words of contention. They will eventually reproduce and destroy everything they touch. If you want friendship, plant words of love. You will eventually produce a harvest of devotion. The problems currently in your life have been planted, watered and now harvested out of your own mouth.
Another spiritual law contained in the first chapter of Genesis tells us of the power and authority God has given to man. Only beings with a physical body can exercise this authority and express themselves on this earth. God told Joshua how to operate on this planet. “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate (confess aloud) in it day and night, that you may observe to do all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”10 Note that we must take an active role in cooperating with God to ensure success.
God’s Word operates like a magnet. When we speak it aloud and follow what it says, blessings good health, peace, abundance will follow us. But when we instead speak and do the opposite of God’s Word, curses sickness, unhappiness, poverty overtake us. Proverbs 26:2 tells us, “…a curse without cause shall not alight.”
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LET’S return now to those questions you might ask God: Why does an all-powerful God allow sickness, poverty and war on the planet He created?
The answer is simple: God always acts in accord with His Word.
God gave Adam (man) dominion11 over this earth for a given period of time. The exact date our “lease” on this earth expires is not specifically stated. But when this authority was transferred to Adam, along with it came the responsibility for man not God to subdue his enemies. God would provide the power to back man’s authority.
Adam had it all: The life of God was within him. He had a physical body and he spoke God’s Words. Adam was therefore the “door” of God’s life for all of his offspring. As long as he followed the rules God had given him for his own welfare, the God-man connection remained.
But Adam violated the rules and died. Many times death in the Bible means separation from God. Adam was still alive physically after he disobeyed God, even though God said he would die (spiritually) for disobedience. His God connection was severed and an intruder took over the rule of the earth. Why didn’t God stop this attack? Because He had transferred authority (dominion) to Adam. Since a physical body was necessary to express authority, the intruder Satan used man to carry out his purposes. Adam had become the door of spiritual death to all his seed.
Fortunately, God had a plan to break this satanic connection and restore man to his original position of righteousness and spiritual authority: In the third chapter of Genesis, God said the seed of the woman would ultimately crush the head of Satan.12 This Messiah would open the door of life to all who would believe in Him.
In preparation for this unusual seed, through which God could covenant with man directly. He found a man who believed Him and His Word: Abraham.
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AT the time of Abraham, men practiced a ritual known as blood covenants. The Hebrew for covenant is “brit”; it means to cut, with the flow of blood. Two men cut themselves (or an animal substitute) and intermingled their blood in a sacred merger of two lives into one. When the covenant was consummated, each party completely pledged their loyalty, protection and finances to the other.
God cut a blood covenant with Abraham. A substitute an unblemished animal was sacrificed and the covenant was sealed with the blood of circumcision.13 God became the provider of all that was needed to Abraham and his seed.
An example of how this covenant operated occurred in Egypt when the blood of a lamb was painted on the doorposts of Jewish homes to validate the passover. The angel of death could not harm the first-born of the Israelite community when he saw the blood of the covenant. Only the first-born of the Egyptians were slain.14
The system of Temple sacrifices in effect throughout the entire Old Covenant was based on God’s original blood covenant with Abraham. The Scriptures tell us the life of the flesh is in the blood.15 God accepted the blood of an unblemished animal sacrificed in the Temple as a covering (atonement) for sin. A priest, or Levite, stood between us and God. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a descendant of Aaron sacrificed an animal for the sins of the nation.16 As commanded in the Law, only a sacrifice made in the Temple by a descendant of Aaron was acceptable to God.17
God has always allowed us to have free will. We can follow His plan of protection or do our own thing and suffer the consequences. Whenever we strayed beyond this fence of protection, the devil could attack us. But as long as the Jewish nation obeyed the Torah, they were covered protected by the blood of the sacrifice. This blood was symbolic of the new covenant that God was going to make with man.
The blood covenant based upon animal sacrifice was only temporary; it was insufficient because it could never restore man to this standing in which Adam had originally related to God.
The prophet Jeremiah tells us a new covenant would be cut between God and man that would restore our God-connection:
“Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers…But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, says the Lord, I will put My law in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people…For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”18
As previously pointed out, the legal entry and requirement for authority on this earth is a human body. Though God sought to cut His new covenant with man, all men were tainted by the fallen nature of Satan, inherited through Adam’s spiritual death. Blood passed on by the father in natural birth is contaminated by the father’s sinful nature. God could not enter the heart of man because of the sin which separated them.
Miriam, a young, Jewish virgin, believed God and His Word and was blessed among all women. God spoke to her and she conceived a child by the power of His Word, planted as a seed within her.19
Thus, God’s Word became flesh with the power to live a sinless life.
The Word of God incarnate was both fully God and fully man. The “Word” of God’s Name was Yeshua, Hebrew for salvation, healing, deliverance, safety and preservation.20
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ON Passover almost 2,000 years ago, Yeshua became the sacrificial lamb. His blood was shed and the new covenant was cut and accepted by God. All previous (animal) sacrifices were but shadows pointing toward this ultimate blood covenant.
Under covenant law, everything of God’s was now at Messiah Yeshua’s command…and everything of the Messiah’s was at God’s disposal.
The real benefit of this new covenant was that Messiah had become the door to the life of God.
Under the new covenant, as many as believe in the Messiah receive the same benefits as He does. Our God-connection has been restored. God’s own nature flows through our blood. Our sins are not merely covered; they are remembered no more.
All ancient blood covenants had memorials to remember the covenant. Jacob and Joshua left stones piled high to always remember their relationship to God.21 Often, the parties to a covenant would also share a memorial meal. Messiah’s last Passover Seder was the memorial meal in which we as co-heirs to the covenant promises are to participate often as a reminder of our restored relationship with God. This is the true meaning of the Passover Seder.
As blood covenant brothers with the Messiah, we are granted authority. We have the right to invoke the power of His Name against the enemy, the devil, who is the instigator of all that steals, kills and destroys.
“And whatever you ask (demand of the devil) in My Name (Yeshua), that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”22
Since “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses,”23 we have the authority through Messiah to demand to walk in divine health.
Messiah said, “…whatever you bind (stop) on earth will be bound (stopped) in heaven, and whatever you loose (allow) on earth will be loosed (allowed) in heaven.”24
God will allow anything you will allow.
We must assert this authority over the devil and reclaim the ground he has stolen from God in the lives of our loved ones. God doesn’t do the stopping alone; it’s our job…He’s given the authority to us!
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HOW can you know for sure who this Messiah is?
Throughout the Old Covenant, God has given us many key words about the Messiah’s identity:
We are told He would be born in Bethlehem.25 We learn His ancestry would be reckoned through King David.26 In fact, His ancestry is so specific in Scripture that only one person in all of history could qualify. We are told He would die before the second Temple was destroyed.27 (It was destroyed in 70 A.D.)
We hear that He would be rejected by His own people.28 He would die by crucifixion29 yet be resurrected.30
History tells us Yeshua Jesus of Nazareth fulfills these prophecies. Read for yourself this account of the Messiah, written 700 years before the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us:
“Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
“Surely he has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken; Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”31
If Yeshua is not the Messiah, who then is? Since the acceptable Old Covenant sacrifices were required to be presented in the Temple, why did God allow it to be destroyed? If Jesus is not the Messiah, there is no biblically-prescribed way of forgiveness of sin.
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YOU can share in the life of God and be a partaker in the new blood covenant by planting a seed with your own spoken word. Say this prayer aloud, believing it in your heart:
“Dear God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: I believe Yeshua is the Messiah. I make Him my Lord. I place His life within me by faith and know that my sins are all removed.”
The life of Messiah is now inside of you. You are in covenant with God through Yeshua’s blood sacrifice. He promises never to leave you not now, while you bodily inhabit this earth, nor later…
You cause the life of God to grow in you by feeding yourself spiritual food. This is done by reading the Bible. By confessing aloud the promises of God every day, you’ll actually begin to change your life! Faith will continue to grow by meditation (reading, thinking about and speaking aloud) regularly on the Word of God.
Faith is trust in God’s Word…regardless of how circumstances may seem to appear. This type of faith is exemplified in the life of Abraham, who was promised a son when he and Sarah were over ninety years old. Abraham didn’t deny impossible circumstances; he changed them by believing the promises of God.
“…God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to (natural) hope, in (supernatural) hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be. And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore it was accorded to him for righteousness.”32
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BY belief in Yeshua, the Bible says we are clean and can come into God’s presence. You may not feel clean. You may not even look clean. But God honors His Word. And He says you are the righteousness of God in Messiah Yeshua.33
So hold your head up high! You are accepted in the beloved. You are more than a conqueror. You are God’s workmanship. And he loves you unconditionally.
If God is for you, who can be against you?
He has made us Mishpochah family united in a new covenant of love.
Bible References
| 1Deuteronomy 28:15-68 2Jeremiah 31:35,36 3Jeremiah 16:14,15; Isaiah 11:12 4Amos 9:14,15; Isaiah 35:1 5Jeremiah 31:23 6Zechariah 12:2-3 7Ezekiel 38:1-8 8Zechariah 14:12 9Genesis 1:3,9,26 10Joshua 1:8 11Genesis 1:26 12Genesis 3:15 13Genesis 17:11 14Exodus 12:7 15Leviticus 17:11 16Leviticus 23:26-28 |
17Leviticus 1:5 18Jeremiah 31:31,32a, 33,34b 19Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18 20Matthew 1:21 21Genesis 28:18-22; Joshua 24:26 22John 14:13 23Matthew 8:17 24Matthew 18:18 25Micah 5:2 26Jeremiah 23:5-6 27Daniel 9:26 28Isaiah 53:3 29Psalm 22:14-18 30Psalm 16:10 31Isaiah 53:1-6 32Romans 4:17-22 33II Corinthians 5:21 |