Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the fourth part of our series on the Elijah prophets. As I announced last time I am probably going to have to shrink this series to a total of seven parts as the spring season of festivals is soon upon us, unless we simply pause at that time and resume it later on in the spring. We'll see where the Ruach (Spirit) leads.

Last week we made a stab at understanding the prophetic guilds of early Israel by examining the two episodes where Saul became involved with the ra'ah or seers and finally we saw how later, in the divided kingdom, the guild in the northern part had become so corrupt by syncretism with Baal worship that Yahweh had to send a deceiving spirit into their midst so that they would falsely prophesy to King Ahab and thus bring about his demise in the Battle of Ramoth-Gilead. So by that time, the guild, school, band (or whatever you want to call it) had become so thoroughly discredited that for the most part there were only single nevi'im or prophets operating like Micaiah who correctly prophesied the outcome of the attack on Ramoth-Gilead.

We also learned that there were, essentially, two main catgories of nevi'im (prophets):

• 1. The 'fathers' like Samuel, Micaih, Elijah, and Elisha who were the maturer, mentoring senior prophets; and
• 2. The 'sons of the prophets' who were inexperienced and under instruction from the senior prophets.

With all we have learned so far we are still very much in the dark as to what exactly the younger ra'ah (seers) or nevi'im (prophets) were doing when they 'prophesied'. I proposed, as a temporary explanation while we dig deeper, that much of what was said by these 'young' men was representational - in other words they each received revelation and reported back to a senior member (like Zedekiah son of Kenaanah) who then passed on the revelation or prophecy to his master, whoever that was, though often it was a monarch like Ahab or Jehoshaphat. I realise charismatics by and large would have us believe that they were all in an ecstatic trance together and that they all spoke one on top of the another, making a loud incoherent noise, rather like in a modern Church of God of Prophecy meeting where everyone speaks in 'tongues' all at once without interpreters.

This brings me today to a very complex aspect of this study so let's start by asking a difficult question: is what we are seeing here something similar to today - a mass of confusion and jumbled up inspiration with only the maturer nevi'im (prophets) like Samuel being on the mark? My answer to that is 'Yes'. Do we take the text literally where it says the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) fell on these men and assume they received pure revelation from Heaven or do we conclude, as the evidence might possibly suggest, that some redactor has re-interpreted the text to explain to his generation what was going on back then in the 'bad old dark days of the Wild West? My answer, 'possibly'. Could it be that the final redactor came from a period when prophecy had ceased in Israel, in the inter-testamental period, and simply assumed that this was genuine prophecy? My answer, 'possibly', but I think we need to be careful otherwise we will start casting doubt on the reliability of Scripture.

You may remember that in Part 2 we found concrete evidence that later commentators added their remarks to explain old terminology in the light of new, even though these parenthetical remarks were very few and decidedly uncontroversial. This is something that scares ultra-conservatives to death because such a suggestion undermines a number of beliefs of the Protestant Reformation concerning the transmission of Scripture over the ages and weakens or even knocks away a number of theological crutches we may at times use to maintain a sense of safety or security. Since liberals are only too keen to do this, because of their lack of faith in the miraculous or even in the existence Elohim (God) Himself, we have to look at these challenging claims. We'll return to this question before we finish today.

In case anyone should accuse me falsely, I have to state categorically that I absolutely and uncompromisingly believe in the miraculous, in prophecy, revelation, in healing, and the like because I have seen too much in my life to believe otherwise. It would take more faith on in my part to become a sceptic, agnostic or atheist than to continue in faith along the path I am currently on, and have been on these last 30+ years. But what I am not prepared to do is sanitise history in order to build-up an artificial faith or to coddle some traditional belief system. I recognise that there are things which are uncertain that we must sometimes speculate, come to provisional conclusions, and give tentative answers to our questions until we know more. Moreover, we should not feel bad about that because this is something that all theologians and seekers in general must do in every age, even unbelievers. This is how faith, factual knowledge and personal experience interact with one another in the lives of everyone and there are no short-cuts.

So perhaps it would be a good idea to use a little time today to pause and take stock. As conservative Baptist scholar Michael Heiser, for whom I have a high regard (though I don't obviously accept everything he believes) - as he admits, "the Bible has some pretty strange things in it" [1], supernatural things that tend to be outside the range of experience of most modern Christians and Messianics raised in so-called 'enlightenment' and 'modernist' eras. Last week we looked at one such 'strange' occurrence, the account in 1 Kings 22:19-23 where we are told how some false prophets, unknowingly to them, got their 'inspiration', namely through a demon authorised by Yahweh to deceive Ahab's 400 false prophets. Or as Heiser puts it, "God meets with a group of spirit beings to decide what happens on earth" [2] in what is called the Heavenly Council. None of this is strange to us as Messianic Evangelicals because we have known and talked about such things for years now, even before I became aware of Mike Heiser who has made it his life work to talk about such things, and in doing so has caused quite a stir within the evangelical community. I am so glad he has because this confrontation with tradition is long overdue.

These passages, though strange to Protestant, Messianic, Catholic and Orthodox ears, are nonetheless very important because they enlighten us as to the reality of the other world which writers like Dante, and their wildly vivid imaginations, have distorted beyond all recognition. Traditional Christian concepts of 'heaven' and 'hell' are hopelessly distorted, doctrines that have caused both unhealthy fear and guilting as well as naïvité about what the Christian/Messianic life of faith and faithfulness is supposed to consist of, a reason we still have problems teaching about these subjects both to orthodox Christians, messianics and others. All of this is compounded by the thousands of false visions, out-of-body & near-death experiences and prophecies that are competing to be heard in the market place of religious ideas our day, principally on the Internet, which are causing such confusion, particularly when believers go practically exclusively to the Internet for their mentoring and education.

Nor do those experiencing these dramatic things want to ever admit they were deceived by lying spirits and quite likely sent by Yahweh Himself because of their disobedience! And yet the Scriptures teach that such has happened on at least two occasions, that the Heavenöy Council is real and is the principle means Yahweh interacts with His Creation. Now I can imagine some messianics and adventists smirking while nodding their heads in agreement about heacen and hell but they too have been deceived into believing another false doctrine, namely that there is no consciousness after death...but that, as I say so often, is another story and not for today. We none of us have room to be smug or conceited. False tradition abounds in every denomination, more in some than others but still plenty of it.

What I really wanted to underline here is the astonishing (for some) idea that Yahweh permits and sometimes assigns demons to deceive believers walking in disobedience, yet it's a New Testament teaching too as you would expect because the Old Testament is not replaced by the New Testament but rather frames it, giving it context and meaning. This is not some Calvinistic idea, mind you - it's not like Yahweh has decided to deceive someone and they have no choice in the matter; these 400 prophets had the free choice to walk in holiness or otherwise long before this Council made their decision to send a deceiving spirit; these 'younglings' chose of their own free will to compromise with Yahwism by assimilating Baal worship, and reaped the consequences. Added to that, they also had a gifting and calling on their life as prophets, so Yahweh was simply reassigning them a new talk as the sons of disobedience. Let that sink in a moment.

How about immaturity and ignorance as factors in the prophetic experience? How do they factor into a the life of a navi (prophet) like Jeremiah who was called even before he was conceived or born? (This introduces the idea, incidentally, of a spiritual pre-mortal life or pre-existence of humans, not just of Christ, which is virtually unheard of in orthodox Christianity, an truth that has unfortunately become 'dirtied' and therefore wrongly discredited by association because of a well-known cult, Mormonism, that also believes in it, and twists it). Jeremiah, who clearly had a pre-existence, was born into a Torah-conscious nation and was raised in the truth even though those around him were in apostacy. His was a Torah-based world and culture, as mine was Christian when I was young but which has since apostacised itno all the evil we see around us today. But what of those born in the 'Wild West' days of the period of the Judges or indeed in any time of chaos and apostacy? What should we expect to see when Yahweh starts operating on their lives? A mixture, of course, as we see today. We live in a parallel time.

Prophets, like everyone else, grow up or mature in a family-type environment, a reason the young 'uns are called 'sons'. Everything Yahweh has created is built on the family principle. Elohim (God) Himself is a Family, the Divine Council is 'Extended Family', and the saved are an even more extended part of that Family. You cannot understand the individual parts without understanding the whole so you can't understand what a navi (prophet) is like without understanding the family environment in which he is supposed to develop. Yes, Yahweh chooses some nevi'im (prophet) out of nowhere, without any sort mentoring, training or experience, and trains them Himself, but there are not so many of those. One of the best examples is Elijah 'fathering' Elisha in in his prophetic gifting with Yahweh supplied the supernatural empowerment or anointing.

In our narcissistic, egocentric day and age everyone wants to do 'his own thing' just as they did by the end of the period of the Judges. Believers today are no different, thinking and doing what is right in their own eyes (Judg.21:25), taking advantage of the Internet (for example) to promote themselves, a guaranteed recipe for chaos. I often remind people that there are about 33,000 denominations but that doesn't take into account the tens of thousands - if not hundreds-of-thousands - of self-appointed 'ministries' on-line which in so many cases are 'private churches'. Now everyone can be a 'teacher', 'prophet' or 'apostle' iof they want without any sort of accountability, without any real spiritual 'family'. How can Christians today expect order to return to their national situations when they themselves operate in spiritual chaos without proper headship and accountability structures in place?

And now the bigger question in the midst of all this seathing mess: how did Yahweh sort the chaos and anarchy out in the days of the Judges? He sent a Judge, Samuel the ro'eh (seer) and then started training up 'sons' in guilds or schools, if you want to call them that. The return to order begins with the rigorous discipline (discipleship) acquired through individual and corporate schooling, with right spiritual education, so that proper vessels are prepared for infillings by the Ruach (Spirit) when they come. Fill a balloon up with air, one made of inferior rubber, and it'll pop, just as modern 'prophets' are 'popping' because of their immaturity and false prophesying. And until they're held to account and immediately stop what they're doing instead of making excuses and instigating damage control, the chaos in the Body of Christ will just accelerate.

The Family motif is very important in the structure and hierarchies of the Kingdom of our Elohim (God). The Messianic Community ('Church') is a family ruled by a Council of Patriarchs better known to us as Apostles with corresponding Matriarchs (their wives). That is the true order which many have tried to imitate and have failed because they were either immature or unrepaired spiritually 'damaged goods'. And 'damaged goods' have to be 'returned' to the Manufacturer for repair and refurbishing (i.e. deliverance). Each family member, beginning with the fathers and mothers, has a rôle to play, a sphere of activity and a designated authority within that sphere. This includes the sons and daughters as none of them are unimportant or insignifiant provided they operate in their proper place of authority as submitted children, what English translations of Jude 6 call, variously, an "estate" (KJV, HRV), "principality" (ASV), "domain" (NASB), "dominion" (NEB), "proper sphere" (JNT, JBP), "proper place" (Barclay), "proper dwelling" (ESV), "position" (RSV, NRSV), "place where they belonged" (NLT), or "home" (NIV).

The earthly Kingdom is supposed to precisely mirror the heavenly one. But if everyone insists on doing their 'own thing' independently of everyone else, with each man and woman being their own boss, neither the Kingdom nor true end-time nevi'im (prophets) can arise. Most people who claim a calling or an anointing have called and anointed themselves, confusing either their own inner voices or the voices of demons with the Ruach's (Spirit's), and in consequence of which Yahweh has permitted or authorised deceiving spirits to be sent to them to humiliate them and bring them to repentance once they've become desperate enough, seeing that they are being buffeted and discomfited. Those who refuse to repent will receive more of the same until they are literally 'returned to the [divine] manufacturer' for a complete overhaul or, if the worst comes to the worst, for discarding, meaning forfeiting their gifting and calling or - the very extreme - returning 'home' before they can do more damage, like Balaam.

Every calling and anointing when it is operating has certain infallible signs accompanying it, signs which astonish those witnessing them: "they were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the Torah-teachers (scribes)" (Mark 1:22, NKJV); Mark writes; "they were astonished beyond measure, saying, 'He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak'" (Mark 7:37, NKJV); "they (the religious leaders) feared Him, because all the people were astonished at His teaching" (Mark 11:18, NKJV); "And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers" (Luke 2:47, NKJV), related Luke.

There's a problem, though, if it's just an 'astonished' reaction you're looking for. You see, those with counterfeit gifts also typically provoke astonishment: "Simon (the Areopagite)...previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, 'This man is the great power of Elohim (God)'" (Acts 8:9-10, NKJV), Luke said in Acts. That's where the Elijah Prophets must step to restore order in the compary of prophets with pure teaching and heavenly spiritual power, first amidst their own kind (as Yah'shua/Jesus did with His intimate band of talmidim/disciples) and then amongst the unbelievers, to demonstrate the power and authority of He (Messiah) who should fill us with legitimate astonishment and wonderment.

We spoke about Samuel last week but the 'prophetic tradition', if we can really call it that, began in Numbers 11 which means the Israelites knew and experienced authentic prophecy even before they entered the Promised Land with its corrupting Canaanite influences. The claim by some liberals that Israel 'learned' prophecy from the Canaanites is therefore nonsense. Moses is obviously the central character and was regarded as Israel's greatest navi (prophet) or ro'eh (seer) before John the Baptist took the #1 position before being replaced by Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself (Lk.7:28). Of course the liberals believe the Pentateuch (Books of Moses) were written long after the events they purport to cover.

Notice how the 'spirit of prophecy' could be transferred to others, albeit it for a short period of time, and then usually only for a specific purpose:

"...Yahweh said to Moses: 'Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you. Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Ruach (Spirit) that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone" (Num.11:16-17, NKJV).

"Now He said to Moses, "'Come up to Yahweh, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. And Moses alone shall come near Yahweh, but they shall not come near; nor shall the people go up with him" (Ex.24:1-2, NKJV)

It is from the navi (prophet) that the Eldership in Israel is instituted [3], not by the democratic vote of the local deacons or congregation. Why were they called to be 'Elders'? Because they shared in the inspiration of Moses himself because the Ruach Yahweh - the Spirit of Yahweh - which was with the Navi (Prophet) Moses who led the nation in the First Exodus, and was then shared with them (the Elders) from the Ruach (Spirit) of the navi (prophet). The language is rather interesting, isn't it? The Ruach (Spirit) almost sounds as though it's like a 'liquid' which has been siphoned off the leading Navi (Prophet) which had to first 'fill' the leading Navi (Prophet), with a big 'N' or 'P', some of which is transferred to the Elders making them into nevi'im (prophets) themselves, with a little 'n' or 'p', too. Don't miss this detail. Admittedly, this could be poetical or figurative speech but the sense would not have been missed by the ancients reading the account at the time it was written. Again we have the picture of a spiritual father with his spiritual sons, and we see a similar transfer taking place just before Elijah is taken up live into heaven when he transfers his prophetic Ruach (Spirit) and authority to his spiritual son or successor, Elisha, only in double measure, his robe being used symbolically to indicate that transfer. This is commonly, though not exclusively, how nevi'm (prophets) were 'born' or 'created'. And it's the same way families work with something of the fathers and mothers being transferred to the sons and daughters.

But most importantly for our day the question has to be asked: who gets to appoint Elders in the churches? We know from the New Testament that the Apostles were responsible for setting-apart Pastors and Elders in the new congregations they set up, and as I discuss elsewhere, the true Apostles were ra'ah (seers) and nevi'im (prophets) too, or at the very least the presiding Apostles were - Peter, James and John - since we don't know too much about all the others. We shall return to this important subject later as this is one of the reasons I was led to prepare this Series. The important thing to note is that the 12 Apostles were a group, band, or guild of sorts and (the original ones, at least), hand-picked by Yah'shua (Jesus). After the first generation of apostles died the Messianic Community (Church) essentially became 'episcopalian', being led by bishops, for good and evil, something we'll discuss at another time, and why it is authentic apostles are needed for the Final Gathering.

Let's have a 'mid-way' summary on what we know about the Early Israelite Nevi'im (Prophets) because it's important to make summaries that incorporate all the new data we learn from the Bible texts, history and linguistics, as we go along:

• 1. Prophets were inspired by the Ruach Elohim or Spirit of God (1 Sam.10:6; 18:12; 19:1ff.);
• 2. They are therefore described as being empowered by the "hand of Elohim (God)" (1 Ki.18:46), i.e. 'first hand' or directly and not by an institution;
• 3. They enter into an altered state of consciousness (1 Sam.10:5; 19:22-24; 1 Ki.22:10; 18:46), called by some 'ecstacy' (but be careful with this word) during which they often lose consciousness of their surroundings (1 Ki.8:7ff.), called by some going into a 'trance' (but be careful of this word too);
• 4. In this state they see visions (1 Ki.22; 2 Ki.6), sometimes with their eyes wide open (the chazah seers - 2 Sam.24:11) during which they can see into the future (1 Sam.10; 1 Ki.13:1ff.,14; 17:1; 2 Ki.1:2ff.; 6:9ff.), called by some being 'clairvoyant' (but be careful of this word which is also used in the occult);
• 5. Some of these prophets perform miracles (2 Ki.1-9, the stories of Elisha especially) like calling down fire from heaven, healing, raising the dead, defying gravity, outrunning a horse, changing the weather, etc.; and
• 6. They speak the Davar Elohim (Word of God) (1 Ki.14:1-18; 22:14) using parables (2 Sam.12) or symbolic actions (1 Ki.22:11; 2 Ki.13:14ff.), which is to say they had firsthand revelation from Yahweh.

There is much more to add to this list so please don't use it as a kind of 'identikit' picture of a true navi (prophet) just yet. As we find new information and this list expands, you will be able to know for sure who is an authentic 'prophet' or 'prophetess' and who is not in our very confused Christian/Messianic world. Let's devote the last part of today's teaching to the way the nevi'im (prophets) were called.

As we saw at the beginning of this Series, one of the criteria by which to recognise a navi (prophet) was the special call to proclaim the Davar Elohim (Word of God) unconditionally. When a genuine navi (prophet) is called he neither bargains with Yahweh nor does he set up shop the way he wants to or tries to run away as Jonah attempted and failed. A called navi (prophet) can't decide to quit. He's bound by his pre-mortal contract or covenant as Jeremiah was so Yahweh holding him to account whilst in mortality is not unreasonable coersion. Like a soldier on a war-footing, he is at the instant behest of his Commander. His calling is round-the-clock, seven days a week, until released...if he's released at all. Death was normally his release and not uncommonly he was martyred.

I have also tried to stress since I began this assignment that there is a kind of social and cultural evolution in Israel that affects the nevi'im (prophets) themselves. In the period we have covered so far, there is a noticable 'crudeness', if I can put it that way, in the way things were handled and done. Some of the stories appall and dismay us and yet the coarseness, crudity and brutality that has characterised the ages really didn't start subsiding, at least in parts of the world, until relatively recently. You will notice as we work our way through the Tanakh (Old Testament) that the nevi'im (prophets) come obviously more sophisticated, better educated and wiser (especially those who served in the comparative luxury of the royal courts), and yet they are still 'crude' by our standards with sometimes the reverse being true. Later on we must look at a third broad catergory of ministry which very broadly we can classify as the propagation of 'Wisdom'. But I am getting ahead of myself as this understanding has to be developped in early Israel to be appreciated fully.

How does a man discover he is a navi (prophet)? Unfortunately only four 'call narratives' are to be found in the writings of the nevi'im (prophets) themselves, namely those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea. No such calls are recorded by Joel, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah or Malachi although the case of Habakkuk depends how you interpret the first 5 verses of chapter 2 of his book. All we're given in these latter books are short, crisp statements like "the davar (word) came to me" or "I saw the davar (word)" or "I saw a vision". How did these men view themselves and come to be regarded as nevi'im (prophets) by those they ministered to? Did some of them even know they were nevi'im (prophets)? And did it even matter whether they knew or not? These are questions we will answer, hopefully, over the next three parts before we end the Series.

A much more difficult question to answer is this: who wrote down the prophecies of the nevi'im (prophets)? The prophets themselves? Their talmidim (disciples)? Their scribes (if, like Jeremiah, they had one)? Others? In the same way that there was an exchange of information between the apostles and various writers of the four Gospels and Acts, it is highly unlikely that the prophetic books were penned in the way we have them. Indeed, the structure of some of the prophetic books suggests strongly that these were collections of prophecies that were later stitched together by redactors, as with the 13 Scrolls of Ezekiel (all of which are partially or fully dated) which are joined together out of chronological order. The failure to understand this has led to so many exegetical errors particularly in regard to the 'Third Temple' prophecy that has led to an entire erroneous theological system called Zionism in our own day. The fact that the Book of Ezekiel appears as a single, continuous book does not mean that it was arranged that way in the beginning. Indeed originally it was, beyond any question, 13 separate scrolls ('books') that were probably lying around in Ezekiel's home. Thank goodness Ezekiel was methodical and dated each one as that makes our task that much easier. But unfortunately other big prophetic books like Isaiah (which may be discerned to be 3 books possibly put together by different editors and different times) and Jeremiah don't have these date stamps so we are left to guess about the chronology.

As you dig deep into the way the collections of prophecies made by these nevi'im (prophets) and how they were arranged it soon becomes obvious that a certain amount of theological reflection has taken place after the time the prophecies were given with many of them linked by commentaries. I do this all the time with revelations and prophecies I myself have received. I sit on them and then intermittantly write about what I have learned, or am still learning, from them, which forms a useful historical and theological backdrop. Sometimes I'll go back over them 10 or 20 years later as I started doing last year to write commentaries of my own. Our own collection of revelations and prophecies, the Olive Branch, has gone through such editing with the book as a whole having been rearranged at least twice. The present edition, which is arranged chronologically, might have been arranged thematically if I had so chosen. There is some redaction in them with larger ones addressing different themes being split up and sometimes one having a similar theme stitched together (like the New Olive Leaf revelations). I have also cosmetically altered terminology and some of the terms we used back in the 1980's and 1990's would not mean much today. It's not an easy matter knowing how best to arrange or present these things.

Here's the dilemma: do you simply arrange all your prophecies in the order in which they were received, do you link them according to theme, or do you incorporate them into a larger set of works that include narrative and theological exposition? All of these are to be found in the Tanakh (Old Testament) prophetic books. We see a similar predicament in the four Gospels, three of which are more or less chronological (the Synoptics, of which Luke is the mostly orderly) and the Johannine Gospel which is mostly thematic.

I know most Protestants in particular want to believe that a particular book, like Isaiah for example, was simply penned from chapter 1 to the end of chapter 66 all in one go, or the 150 or 151 Psalms, or the 31 chapters of Proverbs, but that isn't at all how it happened - the Book of Proverbs, for example, wasn't assembled until the reign of King Hezekiah and contains material written by David and Solomon as well as Egyptian and Mesopotamian wise men! This realisation, by the way, make a total mess of claims that there is some secret Bible code in the Tanakh (Old Testament) that I was initially very enthusiastic about but became progressively more and more sceptical. You see, for the codes to 'work, all the books have to be arranged the way they are and every single word and letter being divinely inspired in the order that we have these books today the way they were originally, never mind the tampering done by those like the Masoretes whose 'version' is what the Bible Code hunters use).

'But,' you may cry, 'what about Yah'shua's (Jesis') claim that not one letter or punctuation mark ('one jot or tittle' - KJV) would pass away from the Torah (Law, Teaching) until all be fulfilled?' (Mt.5:18) What does that even mean? In Hebrew the 'jot' is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet - the yod - and the 'tittle' or nekudah was a little stroke or hook. Why those two specifically? Because they were the smallest markings in first century written Hebrew. All the Saviour is saying is that the mitzvot (commandments) and teachings will remain in force until the time of their completion or fulfilment, not that the written lettering won't change so that someone in the 20th or 21st century can discover a secret code that tells the future or records the past. The Hebrew script has changed a great deal since Genesis. The square or block script which is used by Judaism and which you see in Hebrew Bibles today hadn't been invented in Moses' time and wasn't for some centuries afterwards. Back then the yod wasn't the smallest letter or pictogram in the Paleo-Hebraic script but taw or ayin! Yah'shua (Jesus) is using a figure of speech.

Modern translators understand that very well which is why the New and Living Translation renders this passage:

"I assure you, until heaven and earth disappear, even the smallest detail of God's (Elohim's) law (Torah, Teaching) will remain until its purpose is acheived. So if you break the smallest commandment (mitzvah) and teach others to do the same, you will be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt.5:18-19a, NLT).

The Bible isn't a magical text that you can scry with or use like a magical ball to get secret information. It is a multi-faceted collection truth sayings, like a complex crystal, that can be viewed at different angles, each face represented by the perspective of the different writers, with facets representing the different parts (like individual prophecies) that are a springboard into the mind and heart of Elohim (God) that must be activated or animated by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) for them to make meaningful sense as you approach them with a pure heart and a humble spirit.

The goal, as Moses declared so long ago, is that everyone becomes prophetic in the end! "Oh, that all Yahweh's people were nevi'im(prophets)," he cried, "and that Yahweh would put His Ruach (Spirit) upon them!" (Num.11:29, NKJV). Do you see then why studying this subject is one of the most important things we can do?

I know there are Christians who believe this has already happened, whether at the First Messianic Shavu'ot (Weeks, 'Pentecost') or the Azuza Street revivals in California at the beginning of the 20th century but the truth is that first Pentecost was only Stage #4 in the sevenfold unfolding of the Besorah (Gospel) as revealed by the 7 Annual Festivals of Israel. The Azuza Street phenomenon opened a Pandora's Box of mischief that has exponentially increased the chaos and madness in Christendom's ever expanding denominationlism and was very different from the Welsh revival at around the same time where there was genuine repentance and no 'tongues' or other crazy stuff. I repeat, the Kingdom of Elohim (God) is one of order, not of chaos, and simply labelling chaos as the 'incomprehensible domain of the Spirit' as an excuse for outrageous behaviour will not do and will never ussher in the Kingdom and the Millennium.

However the books of the prophetic writings were put together, and before any ultra-conservative starts bending down to pick up a stone to throw at me, I have to state that none of these writings shows any evidence of having been exaggerated by over-enthusiastic editors (like some of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works of both Old and New Testaments) in order to make them more spectacular and sensational. In fact, quite the opposite as a rule. Apart from the Messiah-rejecting Talmudic Masoretes trying to deify fallible Israel in various places (like Deuteronomy 32:8 by changing "sons of Elohim (God)" (ESV) [4] into the "sons of Israel" - nearly all English translations from the KJV onwards - the texts have been transmitted accurately and faithfully over the millennia. However, that does not mean that editors have not put them together at various points in the past, or added the occasional clarification for their time (like the parenthetical insertions we have already talked about, and like the three different endings for the Gospel of Mark), as indeed we still do today only now we tend to add separate footnotes rather than incorprate our thoughts into the text unless we're writing a Paraphrase [5]. There is little to no evidence that the personal views of the editors have found their way into the redacted books. So you can relax - your Bibles are reliable. You can trust in them even if some of the dogmas you may have been force-fed by the denominations about the way you got your Bible may have to be let go of, dogmas which greatly hamper our understanding of the Davar (Word) at times and keep us woefully in ignorance.

Next week we'll look more into the callings of the nevi'im (prophets) and then start addressing the even more controversial notion that these prophecies, however they were assembled, were the "hand", "Ruach (Spirit)" and "Davar (Word)" of Yahweh to the original recipients, and how and why they remain most important for us to learn from, giving us insights into how Yahweh is working today for the equipping of the end-time Elijah Prophets and the Final Gathering and Last Exodus of the Remnant. So until then, may Yahweh bless you and show you much grace over the week ahead! Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Michael S.Heiser, Supernatural (Lexham Press, Bellingham, WA: 2015), p.11
[2] Ibid., p.12
[3] Also see Ezekiel 8:1; Ezra 10:8
[4] The English Standard Version (ESV) is a breath of fresh air in that respect, rightly giving precedence to the wording of the much older Dead Sea Scrolls, and whilst this is a good version in so many ways, it is not perfect and makes some quite serious translation mistakes in several places
[5] See Bible Versions

Acknowledgments