jewish sacrifice

If the wailing wall is the western wall of the solomonic temple, (which seems to be the case) then part of the temple is still standing and the prophecy unfulfilled although Jerusalem has certainly been trodden down by the gentiles since 70AD.

I'm not exactly a rapturist. I have a preference but not a conviction from Scripture. Personally I see the "rapture" as the "last day" of the Coming of the Lord

John 6:39 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

during which the events of Matthew 24 come to pass. To be saved "out of" the Great Tribulation doesn't necessarily mean we are removed to heaven but might mean that we have divine protection from the Wrath of God while here on the earth (IMO).

HankD

[ December 28, 2001: Message edited by: HankD ]

 

I am glad someone asked this question. I am a new Christian and I usually just lurk here on these boards. I will become more vocal as I become more learned.

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by kim532:
I am glad someone asked this question. I am a new Christian and I usually just lurk here on these boards. I will become more vocal as I become more learned.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What question are you talking about?


Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. Revelation 4:8b
Revelation

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian:
I wonder if they plan to pull down the remaining section before they build the new temple?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It has to come down for prophesy to be fulfilled and it is falling apart anyway, so I guess that will help them. But it is that Mosque that I am concerned of. How on earth are they going to destroy that? I have read somewhere that they would fake an earthquake and blow it up with dynamite. But then you hear so many different stories ya just don't know which one to believe anyway.

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. Revelation 4:8b
Revelation

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Revelation ]

 

I have a question. It is my understanding that even with the red heifer that there is nobody who can perform the ceremony as everyone is ritually unpure from contact with the ground [might have had a dead body where they step] I had heard that a group had formed a few years back to raise some children on platformed housing to keep them ritually pure so that they [the children ] could someday perform the red heifer ceremony if need be. Does anybody know anything about this?

 

&lt;&lt;I had heard that a group had formed a few years back to raise some children on platformed housing to keep them ritually pure so that they [the children ] could someday perform the red heifer ceremony if need be. Does anybody know anything about this? &gt;&gt;

I heard that also, but there is so much sanctified baloney about this it's hard to sift religious urban legend from real facts.

HankD

 

Some notes here, guys

1. The retaining walls of the Second Temple are in place and undestroyed for the circumference of the Temple Mount. The remains of the ritual baths and the steps leading to the Temple have also been uncovered: stone lies on stone.

2. The sacrificial rites have indeed been suspended, except the Samaritans, who continue to ritually slaughter lambs in Jerusalem (not on the Temple mount, but on an adjacent hill) on Passover. The Samaritans are a sect of Jews with their own liturgy and ritual, having established a temple of their own in the days of the Northern Exile (which was later destroyed by Constantine the Great, may he rot) and having rejected the second Temple and the writings of the prophets.

3. The scarificial laws and rituals have been retained and studied in the absence of the Temple. They are part of Torah, and their study is commanded, even in the absence of the Temple.

4. The Cohainim (Cohens) are Jews with the last name of Cohen, Kohn, Cohn, etc. They are descended from the Cohens (Not the Levites) of the days of the Bible, and do share Y chromome characteristics at frequencies that distinguish them (as a group) from other jews. However, these Y chromosome haplotypes are also found in Ethnic Jews originating from Palestine, and amoung Arabs originatng in Palestine as well. They cannot be taken as "genetic markers" for priestly status, unless you want to throw in Yassar Arafat as a candidate (that is a joke, for the humor impaired).

5. Ritual impurity in a priest can usually be fixed by ritual purification. There is nothing spooky about it: isolation, prayer, fasting, repentance, study and immersion in a Mikveh will purify most things appropriately. No big deal. The ashes of the red heifer will do for other things.

Hi Ho.
poikilotherm

 

"It has to come down for prophesy to be fulfilled and it is falling apart anyway, so I guess that will help them. But it is that Mosque that I am concerned of. How on earth are they going to destroy that? I have read somewhere that they would fake an earthquake and blow it up with dynamite. But then you hear so many different stories ya just don't know which one to believe anyway."

Why don't you believe what Jesus said?

Mt 24:2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And now Jesus gives the discourse of Matthew 24, also known as the Great Tribulation Discourse, in which He answers the questions of verse 3.

And finally, He puts a "time indicator" on this which is pretty clear if you don't try to make something out of it that doesn't exist:

Mt 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

He said the same thing in Matthew 16:28. The generation living at that time would not all die until everything He had just said CAME TO PASS!! Now unless you can find me a 2,000 year old Jew who sat at the feet of the Lord and listened to this discourse, fellas, it's a done deal. It already happened!

I find it most humorous to read this stuff from the very folk who accuse Catholics of "twisting the Scriptures!!" To say that there is a wall remaining (which was, from what I have read, a subteranean basement wall, therefore not one of the walls which Christ pointed to and prophesied over) in order to make the Scriptures somehow fit "rapturism", while at the same time ignoring the "time indicators" Christ left us in Matthew 24 is not real high quality exegesis.

It's over.

He came. He destroyed Jerusalem. The kingdom is now and it continues to grow like the mustard seed.

Cordially in disagreement,

Brother Ed

 

&lt;&lt;The generation living at that time would not all die until everything He had just said CAME TO PASS!! &gt;&gt;

Bro Ed,

You a few things out of the Matthew 24 passage…

29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:
33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.
34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

When has anyone seen the sun and the moon darkened the powers of heaven shaken the sign of the Son of man in heaven and all the tribes of the earth mourning?

Perhaps it is the generation that sees THESE THINGS come to past that Jesus speaks of.

HankD

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian:
Do any Jewish sects still preform the sacrifices and such that the Law required for thier sins? It would seem that if they kept themselves under the law they would still do these things but I haven't heared of it. So can anyone tell me do Jews still try to fulfil the Law with the shedding of blood or not?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

To my knowledge they don't. Instead they depend alot more on the Talmud as a guide according to one of my Jewish classmates in college.

I could be totally wrong. Can some one straighten me out/cofirm me?

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jamal5000:


To my knowledge they don't. Instead they depend alot more on the Talmud as a guide according to one of my Jewish classmates in college.

I could be totally wrong. Can some one straighten me out/cofirm me?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

1. You are right and you are wrong. Were the Temple rebuilt, the sacrifices would certainly resume. The sacrifices were halted in the first exile, and they are halted now. It is no different.

2. The Talmud is an interesting and complex work. It does not replace the written Bible. It consists of several parts, but the most important division is between what might very loosely be called the Oral Law and the Commentaries. In traditional Judaism, the Oral Law was recieved by Moshe (Moses) at Sinai, and was passed down through the generations. It is at the core of the Talmud: the books of the Mishnah. It is very important to realise that this is an article of faith with any practicing traditional Jew: The Oral Law is RECIEVED, it is as canonical as the rest of the Bible and is on an equal footing with the 5 books of Moses (the written law, or Torah), so much so that the Pentateuch and Oral Law can be referred to as the Written and Oral Torah, and traditional Judaism as the Judaism of the Dual Torah. The Talmud has 3 major goals:

A: to demonstrate the textual unity of the Oral Law with the Jewish Bible (Tanakh)
B: to elaborate and put into practical terms the precepts of the Laws of the Torah
C: To comment on and derive ethical principles from the Laws and Tanakh.

Please note that this is different from the Midrash, with which it is often confused. There is a lot of stuff written about the Talmud on the internet. Most of it is unfortunately (and I hesitate to use the word) lies. If you want to read more about this subject, for it is crucial to understanding exactly what a Pharisee was, and why Jews reject Christianity and the literal historicity of the Gospels, then I would ask you to examine your sources very carefully and critically. "Everyman's Talmud" is a good place to start, as the Talmud itself is a huge work. Rabbi Telushkin's "Jewish Literacy" is probably the best single, concise and eminently readable work on Judaism, though it has its peoblems (as any such work will).

I hope that helps.
poikilotherm

 

Dear Brother Hank --

Happy New Year. Hope this finds you well and enjoying much of God's blessings in your life.

As we both agree, there simply cannot be contradiction in the Word of God, therefore, when we run into a seeming contradiction, such as you have shown in your post, it is necessary to do some investigative work.

Jesus said that He would come before all in that generation listening to Him die. The wording is pretty straightforward. There is no hint of symbolism in any of these things which He said. You could, perhaps, make a case that the word "generation" does not stand for the ones standing there listening to Him, but that is just not so. Based on other verses in Scripture in which Christ mentions "there be some standing here who shall not pass (die) till the Son of Man be come", we can rule that out. There is also the issue of the immanency of the language. The wordings regarding the return of the Lord have a great urgency to them in the Greek. The apostles expected this in their lifetime -- that is how they understood it.

So from numerous passages of Scripture, it seems that Christ's promise to return indeed is to "this generation." Therefore, we must look for resolution to this problem by dissecting the second set of verses in Matthew 24.

Sun......moon......stars.

Are we to understand these as the literal shining globes in the sky? Or.....could there be a symbolic meaning for them? Do we have an exegetical precedent in Scripture for attaching another meaning to these items and perhaps resolving this quandry?

Ge 37:9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

Ah HA!! There's a possibility. The sun, moon and stars could indeed stand for something that the Jewish mind would be familiar with in that century (but something we would not understand at all in this century).

It is a reference to the Jewish theocractic rule over Israel. When Christ came, these "powers" over the Jewish people were "put out" as it were, but the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ. They will never shine again. The age of Judaic rule over mankind in the name of God is finished, once and for all.

In fact, much of the language used in revelation has to do with the same event and the same set of powers. That is why we find phrases such as the "Whore which sits upon many waters". Now I'm sure you really don't think that this is a literal woman. Most IFBer's are all too happy to take the symbolism there and make application to the Catholic Church there. So there is indeed warrant to use such symbolisms in Matthew 24.

And, if we apply these meanings to the Jewish theocractic rule, understanding that the Parousia of AD70 destroyed and finished entirely the rule of Judaism, and replaced the Hebrews with the Church, then it fits quite nicely.

Sadly, most rapturists have been taught so loudly and so longly a literalist only position on these verses that they simply cannot entertain another idea.

A good place for research into the Preterist view of Eschatology is Ed Steven's Kingdom Now Web site. You could type the word "preterist" into your search engine also and find a lot of good sites to discuss this.

Only the Preterist view makes sense with the words of our Lord, His mission to establish the kingdom, and the urgency of the Greek regarding His return.

Cordially in Christ,

Brother Ed

 

poikilotherm,
Thank you for your post. Are there any good sites on the Internet where a person can get reliable information on the Jewish religion?

I'm very interested in their Oral Tradition.
A few years ago I read a book which mentioned this subject. I think the title was To Be a Jew. It doesn't seem logical that God would give His people (Israelites) both an Oral and a Written Tradition through the OT times and then give His people (Christians) only the Written Scriptures later on. That is a powerful argument against the Written Scriptures being the only or even the final authority. Just like it doesn't make sense that God would give His people a liturgy and liturgical year all through the OT and then become anti-liturgy later on.

Anyway, if you can provide any links on these and related subjects, I'd be interested.
Thanks,
Pauline

 

Thanks poikilotherm. You taught me A LOT of stuff I did not know.

God Be With You Through Christ.

 

Dear Bro Ed,

thanks for the well wishes...
I had a quite and somewhat uneventful New Year.

I hope this year will be Bro Ed's best.

I am aware of the preterist view I prefer something else, although I am not a rapturist in the dispensational definition of such.

You mentioned or alluded to Mark 9:1.

KJV Mark 9:1 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

Personally, I would prefer to try to solve the seeming enigma of this verse rather than spiritualize the darkening of the sun, moon etc, of Matthew 24.

Some believe that Mark 9:1 is fulfilled by the "Transfiguration" of Jesus in the next few verses with Moses and Elijah.
Others with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. I would choose the later but I have no certain conviction about this.

There seems no way of out Matthew 24 and other Second Advent passages without both global and catastropic events ocurring before the Coming of the Lord.

Isaiah 13:
9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.
14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.

On the other hand your point of the "urgency" of the message is well taken.

I've heard of the bizzare interpretation (I believe a Mormon told me of this) that believe some of the original disciples are still alive and waiting for His return.
I don't believe this but it is a curious view.


HankD

 

Pauline,

One thing to consider about the Talmud is this. Think of it as a commentary, much like Matthew Henry. It's a fascinating look at how some of the greatest Rabbinic sages interpreted the Torah.

This is most likely where the phrase "Two Jews, Three opinions", came from. Just joking.

I find it logical that G-d would give some form of Oral Tradition. Remember that in the written Torah, the sacrifices were commanded, but there was nothing about how the animals should be sacrificed.

The written Torah commands that Tzit-Tzit be worn by the Children of Israel. But there is nothing written on how to tie them. These are some of the things that are part of the Oral Tradition.

There is nothing wrong with Oral Tradition, as long as it does not transgress the Written Torah, which take first place. When something in Oral Tradition violates Written Torah, it's best to not even consider it as valid and applicable.

After a certain period of time, the Talmud like everything else, became more important than the Written Torah, and people would focus on that. There is much in the Talmud that is Rabbinic opinion.

You could most likely just do a search and enter Talmud as the keyword and see what pops up.

Shalom B Messiah Yeshua

Donbam

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Donbam:



There is nothing wrong with Oral Tradition, as long as it does not transgress the Written Torah, which take first place. When something in Oral Tradition violates Written Torah, it's best to not even consider it as valid and applicable.


<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

And you know this how?
Just curious.

 

Pauline:

To Be a Jew is a very good book. Donin has also written a book called "To Pray as a Jew", which will tell you more about the liturgy of my people.

Whoops! I forgot to answert your question!

If you go Here: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/Oral_Law.html

You will see a brief discussion of the Oral law. The entire website (go Home and root around) is actually a reasonable presentation of Jewish cultural history, and is worth perusing.

This website here:
http://www.jewfaq.org/index.htm

is a rather curious site put up by a Conservative Jew, and is well indexed and cross referenced. It is not authoritative, but contains much information that is useful.

This:
http://www.ohr.org.il/judaism/concern/concer00.htm

is another view of the subject.

poikilotherm

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: poikilotherm ]