Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome to back to our first Sabbath assembly in what seems a while. We have had an intense week of Jericho Marches of which this was the first sabbath rest, and a key piece of evidence for the Creation Calendar. It is wrongly assumed by those using the current Gregorian or Rabbinical calendars that the last or 7th day of the March was the Sabbath which would have meant Yahweh commanded Israel to break His own Day of Rest. As it is the Sabbath took place, as it does still, on the day after the conquest of Jericho, or 8th day. It has not been possible for me to devote the necessary quality time in preparing for the continuation of our Book of Revelation course so hopefully that will resume next week, health-permitting.

The Omer Count of Shavu'ot (Weeks, Ekatost, 'Pentecost') has already begun of which this is the third of seven sabbaths which will then be followed by a further 50 days of counting (which is where we get the 'penta' part of the Pentecost tradition). For those of you new to this work who may not be familiar with the Omer and what is meant by 'counting the omer' from Yom haBikkurim (Day of Firstfruits), a very quick word of explanation. Seven sabbaths + 50 days after Yom haBikkurim began [1], in the Old Covenant, with the presentation of two loaves made of the new wheat, and was leavened in the ordinary way, signifying that the harvest was complete. That is why Shavu'ot is also sometimes called the Feast of Harvest and lasted only a single day (Ex.23:6). The word omer is a unit of volume corresponding to a dry measure amounting to one-tenth of an ephah (Ex.16:16,18,22,32-33,36) that corresponds to about 2.2 liters or two dry quarts.

Today I was to share a very brief message with you about spirituality and the unseen world. I would never have believed it until I saw it with my own two eyes, but there is within man a spiritual universe so vast and so magnificent that appears so improbable and even laughable when you think just how physically small man is. You average human being weighs about 62 kilos and has a volume of about 62,000 cubit centimeters. By contrast our vast physical universe has an estimated volume of about 4 x 10⁸⁰ cubic meters...that's 10 followed by 80 zeros...and a weight of about 10⁵³ kilos...that's 10 followed by 53 zeros! The difference between the size of a human being to the universe physically is about the same as the difference betweem the size of a physical human being and the size of the spiritual world in each person.

Now I don't just know this from a vision I had many years ago when I was with my physiotherapist lying on the floor doing exercises. For I was astonished by what I saw...the womb of a woman and inside a whole universe of unbelievable size. The 'church father', Origen (AD 185-253) of Alexandria in Egypt, said something similar though we are not told how he arrived at this piece of knowledge. He said:

"Understand that you have within yourself, upon a small scale, a second universe: within you there is a sun, there is a moon, and there are also stars."

I myself saw whole galaxies in that woman's womb. Now before you dismiss this as idle fantasy, or accuse me of being 'non-biblical', let me share with you the experience of an actress called Lillah McCarthy (1875-1960) who described how once she went in great misery to see the playwrite, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), just after she had been deserted after her husband. She said:

"I was shivvering. Shaw sat very still. The fire brought me warmth...How long we sat theren I do not know, but presently I found myself walking with dragging steps with Shaw beside me...up and down Adelphi Terrace. The weight upon me grew a little lighter and released the tears which would never come before...He let me cry. Presently I heard a voice in which all the gentleness and tenderness of the world was speaking, It said: 'Look up, dear, look up to the heavens. There is much more in life than this. There is much more'."

It doesn't matter whether there is a literal universe inside us that exists in us or not as there is in the outer world, or whether this is just a poetic figure of speech for something greater than ourselves, but there is a shared experience that all people have had, or can have, that we can be made aware of, especially when we go through tragic loss as Lillah McCarthy did. Not that you have to experience tragedy to know this, for this awareness is available any time. Putting a label on it is a little more difficult, with different explanations being given by secular psychologists and those with religion of some sort. But real it is. There is something non-material, non-physical that is far, far bigger than we are, even bigger than life itself. Lillah McCarthy has a romantic description because scientific words are hopelessly inadequate. For her, the bigger reality was a poetic notion of all the gentleness and tenderness in the world gathered into one.

Whatever our faith in Elohim (God) or lack of it, Shaw - though himself an unbeliever - points to something that is fundamental to spirituality. He did not offer smooth words of consolation to the distraut actress, or pretend that her pain would be easy to bear. What he did was more perceptive. He told her to look out for a moment from herself, from her personal tragedy, and to see the world in its objectivity, to sense its wonder and variety, it's 'thussness'. And his advice applies to all of us. However oppressed by my own or others' anguish, I am not to forget that that there is more in the world than this - much, much more.

So where did this great universe we can now see in such great detail with the latest James Webb telecope come from? Are we to believe, as the secularists tell us, that it made itself out of nothing? Or is their a Power beyond the universe that brought it all into being? Now I do not know how the Creator made this great cosmos because the process in Scripture is couched, inevitably, in poetic language. Were a dog able to speak, he would not have a clue how to describe the world around him, assuming he even had the ability to analyse it, which he does not. As created beings, the dog's experience is a bit like our own. Did Yahweh create everything ex nihilo - out of nothing - or did He do so out of pre-existing materials as the Mormons claim? The Mormon claim is unsatisfactory for the simple reason that it creates more questions than it answers - who created the pre-existent matter? And if nobody, how come it is there? How come anything exists? All we can possibly know for sure is that the Creator, Yahweh-Elohim, created all that we see and cannot see by an act of will, just as we create things by an act of will. We don't just start building things. We first make a decision to build them.

Nothing compelled Yahweh to make what we see. He chose to do so. The world was not created unintentionally or out of necessity - Yahweh didn't act out of a suden awareness that He was lonely and in need of companionship as well as objects for His love, but for an even higher reason that we may never grasp. All we can say is that all there is was a consequence of divine choice. Even Calvinists, who hate the concept of free will so much, cannot deny that. For if Elohim (God) was foreordained to do certain things as man allegedly was, who created Him to be that way?

If nothing compelled Elohim (God) to create, why then did He choose to do so? Now, in so far as such a question admits of an answer, our reply can only be: Yahweh's motive in creation is His love, because only love can create things that do not fall apart. Rather than say, as the Western Church does, that Yahweh created everything out of nothing, we should say, along with the Eastern Church, that Yahweh created the universe out of His own Self, which is love. We should think, not of Elohim (God) as 'Manufacturer' or 'Craftsman' (though He is for sure these too) but of Elohim (God) as the Lover - He who loves. Creation is not so much of His free will (though it is that too) but far more that it is of his free love. Because to love is to share, as Elohim (God) is doing internally, consisting of more than one Person as He does, because He is a communion of Persons - Himself, His Son, the Seven Ruachot or Spirits, to name the most obvious and familiar - He is a communion of Persons who share in love with one another. The circle of Divine Love, however, has never remained closed. Elohim's (God's) love is, in the literal sense of the word, 'ecstatic'- a love that causes Him to go out of Himself and to create things other than Himself. By voluntary choice, Yahweh-Elohim created the world in 'ecstatic' love, so that there might be besides Himself, other beings to participate in the life and the love that are His. That is why everything is. That is why we are.

Yahweh was under no compulsion to create; but that does not signify that there was anything incidental or inconsequential about His act of creation. Yahweh is all that He does, as we are all that we do. His act of creating is not something from Himself. In Yahweh's heart and in His love, each one of us has always existed. We had a pre-existence, a pre-mortal life. From all eternity Yahweh saw each one of us as an idea or thought in His divine mind that gradually or suddenly (for we don't know how for sure) 'crystalised' out into persons. For each of us He has a special and distinctive Plan. We have always existed for Him. Creation, whether all at once or in two stages as we here believe, signifies that at a certain point in time, which he also created, we began to exist also for ourselves.

As the fruit of Yahweh's free will and free love, the world is not necessary, not self-sufficient, and never can be, but is rather contingent (true only under existing or specified conditions)) and dependent. As created beings, we cannot ever be just ourselves alone. Elohim (God) is the core of our being, or we cease to exist. At every moment we depend for our existence upon Yahweh's loving will. Existence is always a gift from Elohim (God) - a free gift of His love, a gift that is never taken back, but a gift none the less, not something we possess by our own power. Yahweh alone is the cause and source of His Being in Himself. He created all things to have their cause and source, not in themselves, but in Him. Yahweh-Elohim alone is self-sourced. All created things are Yahweh-sourced, Yahweh-rooted, finding their origin ans fulfilment in Him. Yahweh alone is a noun! All created things are adjectives! That is a huge and vitally important truth that will set you free.

That is my message to you today, especially if, like that distressed actress, you are wondering what your purpose down here is. You have a created purpose - you are not the product of chance and you were not made out of nothing! You were made out of love - Yahweh's love. Meditate on that, pray about that, ask Yahweh about that, and you will see that it must be so. Be blessed wonderfully in Him is my prayer in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Judaism and most of modern Messianic Judaism follows the old Pharisee tradition that also uses the false Rabbinical Calendar and only counts a total of 50 days from Yom haBikkurim to Shavu'ot. They also count starting at the wrong sabbath which they say is a special 'high sabbath' which the Sadducees rejected and were correct in this regard. This error, which leads to Shavu'ot being celebrated nearly two months early, is fully exposed in the articles below where the correct interpretation is given:

• 1. Paul's Shavu'ot Journey: Proof That the Biblical Omer Count is More Than 50 Days
• 2. Shavu'ot: The Double Pentecost Truth
• 3. The Sacred Number 50: Make Sure You Observe the Right Shavu'ot!
• 4. The Wrong Shavu'ot: The Winter Wheat Error Exposed
• 5. The True Shavu'ot Count
• 6. Wrong Pentecost! Shavu'ot is Not in May or June
• 7. Shavu'ot Preparations: The Right Place & A Right Heart