“The
Great Day of Judgment” plays an important role in the teachings of
Jesus. Everything that happens to people on that day will be based on whether
God sees them as being innocent or guilty.
God will punish the
guilty and deliver the innocent.
In
the Story of the Great Flood, God saw that Noah was innocent
(a TZADIQ) and God saw that others were guilty.
The guilty were wiped from the face of the earth by a flood. God gave Noah
instructions about how to build the thing that would deliver animals
and birds, as well as Noah and his family. Noah built the ark and it saved
their lives.
As
I said in my last email (click
here to read), in the teachings of Jesus, the ark is “the
Kingdom of God.” It will deliver the innocent from
being destroyed like the guilty. The people listening to
Jesus wanted to know the answer to one question.
What does one have to
do to be in the Kingdom of God?
Jesus
said one word and they knew exactly what it meant.
Return!
English
translations say, “Repent!” The Hebrew word Jesus spoke
was “TESHUVAH!” Neither of the English words above communicate
an accurate translation of the meaning of the Hebrew word Jesus spoke. As a
matter of fact, the English language is incapable of accurately communicating
any ancient Hebrew message in a word-for-word translation. We equip Explorers
of Biblical Heritages with guidelines and models
that remove linguistic and cultural barriers that are between them and the meanings
of the ancient Hebrew words.
Thinking in Ancient
Hebrew Model #1
●
An
action is regarded as
being either completed or incompleted.
●
Hebrew knows of no past, present, or future
tense.
●
Hebrew has a perfect tense
(a completed action) and an imperfect tense
(an action that has not been completed).[i]
●
Speakers of the English language view the world, and communicate what they
see, through past, present, and future tenses. We see the world through time-based
models.
●
Jesus viewed his world, and communicated what he saw, through actions-based
models.
So,
the first thing we need to know about the Hebrew word Jesus spoke (TESHUVAH) is
this -- What actions must be completed for people to be innocent? The answer
to that question is found in the Story of TESHUVAH in Ezekiel
18. Below are verse 26 and 27):
If an innocent person
turns from his acts of TZEDAQAH
and commits sin, he
will die for it;
because of the sin he
has committed he will die.
If a guilty person
turns from the acts of RAH (evil) he has committed
and does acts of
MISHPAT (justice) and TZEDAQAH,
he will save his life.
TESHUVAH occupied a central
place in the Judaisms of the time of Jesus (and still does today). Broadly
defined, TESHUVAH is more than “just repentance from sin.”
TESHUVAH is a spiritual
reawakening:
a desire to strengthen
the connection between oneself and God,
and a desire to
strengthen one’s connections to people.
All
forms of TESHUVAH, however diverse and complex, have a common
core:
The belief that human
beings have it in their power
to effect inward change.[ii]
Now
let’s apply the information above to the words of Jesus:
Return to God now.
Walk with God every day.
Then when the Great Day
of Judgment comes,
you will be in the
Kingdom of God and be saved.
TESHUVAH
is not a religious ritual. It involves specific steps that must be done
in a specific order to become “a completed action.” I will
tell you about those steps in my next email.
Shalom,
Jim
Myers
● Donate and to Help Fund
These Emails -- Click Here.
● Subscribe and Receive
these Email (FREE) -- Click Here.
● “Like” and Share our
Facebook Page -- Click Here.
● Visit the BHC Bookstore
& Shop
[i] A Practical Grammar for Classical
Hebrew (Second Edition) by J. Weingreen; ©
1959 by Oxford University Press; New York, NY; p. 56.
[ii] TESHUVAH: A Guide for the Newly Observant Jew by Adin Steinsaltz © 1982 by The Domino Press, Jerusalem Israel. Translation © 1987 by The Free Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc., New York, NY; p. 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment