Deep Questions for Christian/Jewish Dialogue #1 Trinity

I am asked, do you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity?

I respond, Let me ask you a question, so that I am sure I understand what it is that you are thinking when you ask this question.

When you read that The Word become flesh, how do you understand this? Did the Word become flesh or was his body only a garment?  When his body was raised from the dead, was it a mere garment that was raised?

For it is written, The LORD God breathed into his nostrils and he became a living soul.  Since Adam, the first human, became a living soul through the unity of the body and the spirit, how do you understand the Messiah to have become a living soul?

Was only the spirit divine or was the body also divine? Or how do you say that also the human soul, which lives through the union of body and spirit, in Mashiach was the Word of God?

If the Word did not actually become flesh but only put on the body like an article of clothing, if Mashiach is not the Word of God being human in both spirit and body, what does it mean to you to say that the Word became flesh and lived among us?  If the body of Mashiach is not both human and divine at once, how is Mashiach a living human soul and the son of Adam at all, and how is it that the human soul and body were raised as one from the dead?

So then, when you ask if I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, are you asking if I believe that the human soul of Mashiach is a member of the Trinity?

I would ask you a further question. Do you believe that the Messiah of Israel is one root soul of all Israel?

If you do, does your understanding of the Trinity illuminate this relationship? Ought we to speak of things that are over our heads?

Will the day come when it is brought to light that Christians have killed one another, either literally or socially, over concepts of God that they never even should have tried to speak about?  For there is no way to come to the Father except through the revelation of the Mashiach of Israel, our soul, which revelation is yet to be made fully known in all creation.

Then the knowledge of the God of Israel will fill the earth like the waters fill the oceans.  Then no one will challenge their neighbor, questioning them and threatening them, saying, Do you know the true doctrine of God?

Then Yehoshua Knowing...

What does it mean, "You will seek me and not find me"?



Yochanan/John 6

:15 

Therefore, Yehoshua, knowing that they are about to come and to seize him that they might make him king by force, departed alone again to the mountain, withdrawing by himself.



Comment

The record shows that everything that happened to Yehoshua was about the people's desire for an anointed Prophet King like Moshe. Indeed, they looked for a son of David, but one like Joseph/Yehosef, who would rule over all nations through the power of his personal righteousness and unique relationship with HaShem.

Indeed, Yehoshua would be that Anointed One, but the people would have tried to make him that King by force. This is what the rulers of the Jews who lived in the territory of Judea were determined to prevent from happening. Yehoshua, in obedience to the direct order that he received from God, his father, determined to use the will of the rulers as his own way of escaping the will of the people to make him King by force. 



Yochanan 7:34-36 based on OJB


34 You will seek me and not find me and where I am you are not able to come.
 35 Therefore, those of  the territory of Yehudah said to themselves, Where is this man about to journey that we will not find him? Surely he is not about to sojourn to the Golus, those in exile to be found among the Yevanim (the Greeks) to teach the Yevanim? [Mishle/Proverbs 1:28]
  36 What is this word which he said, "You will seek me and will not find me and where I am you are not able to come"?

Comment

This pattern of dramatic tension between the people and the rulers of the Jewish Nation around Yehoshua that was set up during his ministry to Israel on earth can be seen to repeat throughout history.  This tension was later taken over in the relationship between the people of the nations who were drawn to Yehoshua/Jesus, on the one hand, and the later rulers of the Jewish nation, the rabbis, on the other hand.  Like in the case of the Jews of the Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem, where so long as the people saw his power they wanted to make him the king of Israel by force — and the rulers determined to do whatever they needed to do to stop this — so a Christian society developed manifesting itself in forms like the Christian Roman Empire, the Crusades as well as many more subtle forms that wanted to make Yeshua/Jesus King by force.  

Against this effort, the rabbis continued to stand firm, simply by refusing to acknowledge or accept him as the king or Messiah of Israel.  And Yehoshua himself, according to the purpose of God, continued to use this effort of the leaders of the Jewish nation to his own ends.  For he will remain concealed at the right hand of God and will never be revealed by God to the world openly until Jerusalem with her Torah leaders become  ready to embrace him.  And they will not become ready to embrace him, certainly, until the many peoples who follow after him cease trying to make him to be the king of Israel by their own force.

Concealment and Revelation of Mashiach

See:

The Concealment and Revelation of Mashiach and The Good News

After that Yehoshua made atonement for his own people Israel who did not receive him, he was taken up into heaven and concealed there from the world.  This concealment is the aspect of grace which is created in his offering for Israel and continues on.  Read more...

The Name of Yehoshua’s Father - part 1

The Introduction the Series The Name of Yehoshua’s Father (is here).

Part 1

"Holy Father, keep through your own name…" Yehoshua refers to his Father's name distinctly. Not only so, but prays that those who are given to him by his Father would be kept in the name of the Father.

Yochanan/John 17:11
"Holy Father, keep through your own name those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are."

12 "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name:

those that you gave me I have kept…"

Was Yehoshua's prayer that those who would be known as belonging to him would be known by the Father's name? If so, what is the meaning of his statement that, while he was in the world, he kept those given to him in his Father's name?

Historically Christianity has identified those who belong to Yehoshua by the use of the title of "Christ" as a name. That is, they have "Jesus the Christ", which in Hebrew is, Yehoshua HaMashiach, as a single and complete name. When Gentiles began to be converted to faith in the Good News concerning him, they began to be called Christians, Messianics.

It would seem, then, that Christ/Messiah was the name in which they were kept. But is this so? Though this may be the name by which they are called in this world, is this the name by which they are kept unto the eternal world? Is this what Yehoshua was praying for to the His Father?

Indeed, by contrast, the one people that seem to have been kept in the name of the Father since Yehoshua left the world is the Jewish People. Was Yehoshua saying that the Jewish People was given to him by his Father and that what he had accomplished in the world was to preserve the Jewish People in the name of his Father? Was it with this understanding that he was praying that the Father would continue to preserve the Jewish People in the Father's name ~ until all souls that the Father would give him would be included with the Jewish People as one Israel?

Christian theology is not equipped at the present to understand a possibility like this, because it has no comprehension of corporate Humanity, or that the Jewish People is chosen and kept by G-d as a corporate entity.

At this point, we are left with an open question. We can look more closely at this question by considering the words of Yehoshua in the letters to the Seven Assemblies in the Book of the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach. We will do this in the next post in this series, The Name of Yehoshua’s Father - part 2. Look for that post later in the month of June, 2016.

School Children and Cities

"This world is only sustained by the breath of school children learning Torah."  BT Shabbat 119b

Because this day and this world is only for the purpose of repentance, it is not as it was before sin entered the world, for then the day and the world were for the purpose only of obedience.  But now, the world is only a prison for correction and the day of the world is the time of the sentence for correction.

However, because the day and the world is for the purpose of repentance, it is governed inside this prison just as if all life were not under the sentence of death.  The world is governed from Above by the same law as it was before sin entered the day and the world. It is governed as if it was for the purpose of pure obedience, so that the need for correction can be measured.

Once the measurement is taken and the repentance that is purposed is accomplished this day and this world will end, having no more purpose, and whosoever and whatsoever remains under the dominion of sin will be destroyed together with the day and come to an end together with the world.  But insofar as the day and the world has been brought under the dominion of repentance it will be created anew, with new fathers and mothers, and the day will be revealed as the eternal Shabbat of G-d.

Anyone, therefore, who correctly sees that the world is managed according to the purpose of obedience, but fails to understand its purpose and seeks to sustain the day forever through the perfection of the governance of the world does not serve the day that they live in.  Such utopian misunderstanding is a hindrance to the purpose of Humanity's repentance toward G-d and therefore is a service to sin.  For the perfection of the governance of the world is to measure the need for correction of the day of this world, its complete and eternal correction from sin.  The purpose of the governance that is sought in the world is not just to produce an obedience in a prison that has a time that will come to an end. 

There is no breath in this world that is without sin except the breath of repentance. This is the breath of school children studying Torah, which is a breath without sin because it brings the measure of need for correction that is in the whole world.

Jerusalem was destroyed when the school children's study of Torah was suspended.  This will prove true for every city in which the Torah study of children is absent. (Shabbat, loc. cit.)

"The first blossoms have appeared in the land, the time of singing is come and the song of the turtledove is heard in our land," Song of Songs 2:12.  The Zohar teaches: "The first blossoms have appeared in the land"—these are the Fathers of Israel, the Fathers of the world.  "The time of singing is come"—when the time comes for cutting off the guilty from the world.  "The song of the turtledove is heard"—this is the sound of a child studying Torah, as it is written, "Torei (wreaths) of gold," (for departing Egypt), and as it is written, "Make two cherubs of gold." By means of the school child's voice the Fathers are revealed in the world to protect it. (Rebbe Nachman, Likutey Moharan 1 #37:4)

Mashiach and the Temple

Had Yehoshua failed because he was not received by his own, and therefore the Temple would have to be destroyed?  No!  It was unto this end that he was sent into the world.  The Temple would be destroyed because it was made to be one in the word of prophecy with his body.  As his body would be raised again, so the Temple would be raised again.

It was necessary that G-d's dwelling place with Adam be destroyed and that the heart of G-d's presence with Adam be broken. For the purchase of sin is death, and in this way, through the destruction of his Temple in Jerusalem, G-d made himself peesonally to suffer with the children of Adam the consequences of sin. 

LOVE IS VERY INTELLIGENT (poetic writing)

by Max Carl Kirk
a poetic writing on love and atonement
 
Love knows the deepest secrets of the universe,
and when it does not know,
love knows how to learn
and works hard to learn.
Love is able to find the way
to bring justice all around,
when justice is one thing on one side
and another thing on the other side.
Love is able to bring peace to the ear
when its honour has been offended.
Love is always able to follow you,
and if you become lost in your heart,
love is always able to guide you to safety.
Love is the sweet smelling spice in the heart
that, with wisdom, seeks out
the scent of the bitter herb of the heart's insecure pride,
blends it in, heals it, and harmonizes it
in a wondrous fragrance.
Love is the teacher of confidence,
and the best friend of every skill.
Love is a genius in planning things that are good,
and in creating practical visions that come true.
Truth and love do not have different minds,
but listen joyfully to one another
and compose their songs together
and practice how to sing harmony for one another.
Love has the intelligence to know how
to endure the worst violence
and still think tenderly about life.
When all else fails, love is still there,
just being with you,
so gently and quietly
that sometimes you don't even know it,
until love opens its hand to you
with gifts of art and hope
that allow your eyes to again see beauty.
Love is the mother of forgiveness,
and knows how to teach forgiveness
how to gather up the fragments of
all that is broken in the world
and build them into a house
of grace and order, laughter and joy.
Love is understanding.
Love is the humble student of the Divine;
therefore there are multitudes of wrongs
that love knows how to hide
with such wisdom that they cannot be found again.

Love takes nothing by violence
and keeps nothing by means of violence.
If love has to choose,
love chooses to lose the whole world
to save its soul.