teachmevp

Gentile Kingdom believers are putting the cart before the horse. You have to survive the ‘sunteleia’ before you get to the ‘telos’. The Day of Yahweh (Yahweh - The Israelite’s God) will be a prolonged period; it must not be confined to “seven years,” as is so often done. After the Body of Christ is lifted off the earth, the whole period of the Day of Yahweh is called the final meeting of the ages, or the Greek word “sunteleia”; but, the crisis in which it culminates is called the end of the age, or the Greek word “telos.” These two Greek words are rendered “end” in the New Testament, but the use of these two words must be carefully distinguished. Sunteleia denotes a finishing or ending together, or in conjunction with other things. It implies that several things meet together, and reach their end during the same period; whereas telos is the point of time at the end of that period. The sign of the telos is the setting up of “the abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel the prophet. Thus the telos, those who endure to this, the same shall be saved, and will be among the overcomers specially referred to in these seven letters during the Great Tribulation; to whom these promises are made, and to whom they peculiarly refer. The Great Tribulation, which is the central subject, but Daniel is not permitted to do much more than make known the fact of the Great Tribulation out of which Daniel’s people, the Israelites were to be delivered. The particulars and the circumstances of that day, were not to be made known at that time by Daniel. The Day of Yahweh will be a prolonged period; it must not be confined to “seven years,” as is so often done. These events may occupy a period of thirty-three years; and if to these we add the seven years of the last week of Daniel, we have a period of forty years. Matt. Chapter 24, “What shall be the sign of your coming, and of the sunteleia of the age?” Jesus describes four of those seals, and adds, “All these are a beginning of sorrows.” This fixes these first four seals as the “beginning” of the sunteleia of the Day of Yahweh. This “beginning” may be spread over some years before the Great Tribulation, proper, comes on. Not one of these seals has yet been opened, nor can any period of history be pointed out in which these first four seals have been in operation simultaneously. 
 The followers of the Nicene Creed added the conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection. Cheating people out of being caught to meet the Savior in the air, when the Age of Grace is over. Paul never alluded to the conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection, that is a notion totally foreign to Paul and to Scripture as a whole. Paul did not think the question of the status of the person between death and resurrection was a question that needed to be considered. The reason is that for Paul, those who die in Christ, their relationship with Christ is one of immediacy, because they have not awareness of the passing of time between their death and resurrection. As believers, we do not possess the life that Jesus got when God raised him from among the dead as an inherent quality any more than we possess God’s righteousness as a property in our own nature. Just as in the midst of our sinfulness, we are righteous, so in the midst of our self-evident mortality, we are going to get the life God gave to Jesus. Wholeness and meaning in life are not the products of what we have or do not have, what we have done or have not done, we are already a whole person and possess a life of infinite meaning and purpose because of who we are in Christ. 


Gehenna-hell fire that is in the Gospels, no where indicates that gehenna is a place of unending torment. What is eternal or unquenchable is not the punishment but the fire. In the Old Testament this fire is eternal or unquenchable in the sense that it totally consumes dead bodies. Matt. 10:28 - The implication is clear. Hell is the place of final punishment, which results in the total destruction of the whole being, soul and body. 
 The roots of the doctrines of the followers of the Nicene Creed. Basic structures are part of any kind of Greek city in the Ancient World. And what Alexander the Great and his successors did was they took that basic Greek structure, and they transplanted it all over the Eastern Mediterranean, whether they were in Egypt or Syria or Asia Minor or anyplace else. One can travel right now to Turkey or Syria or Israel or Jordan or Egypt, and one can see excavations of towns, and it’s remarkable how they all look so much alike, because they’re all inspired by this originally Greek model of the city. 
 Alexander and his successors Hellenized the entire eastern Mediterranean, and that meant, every major city would have a certain commonality to it. It would have a certain koine to it; that is, a Greek overlay, over what may be also be there, the original indigenous kind of cultures and languages. 

 The Romans, when they came on the scene, in the East, and they gradually became more and more powerful, they destroyed Corinth in a big battle in 144BC. Pompey was the Roman general who took over Jerusalem in 63BC. So the Romans were in charge of Judah from 63BC on. And this is very important, because the Romans, as their power grew in the East, they simply moved increasingly into the eastern Mediterranean and they adopted the whole Greek system, the Greek world, and they didn’t even try to make it non-Greek. 
 So Romans didn’t go around trying to get people in the East to speak Latin. They might put up an official inscription in an Eastern City in Latin, but they’d almost always, if it was an official inscription, it would also be listed in Greek, So Romans who ruled in the East were expected to speak Greek. And by this time all educated Roman men were expected to be able to speak Greek, well if possible. 

 So the Romans didn’t try to make the East Roman, in that sense, culturally, nor did they try to change the language. Greek language, culture, and religions, different religions and the syncretism, Greek education, the polis structure-all of these things remained in the East throughout the Roman rule of the East, all the way up until the time you had a Christian emperor with Constantine, and later. From this point on the creeds of man enter. Alexander the Great also used what is called ‘religious syncretism,’ Alexander took this tendency of syncretism, of mixing together different religious traditions from different places, and he used it as a self-conscious propaganda technique. Alexander even started claiming divine status for himself. Alexander went around passing out rumors that his mother had actually been impregnated by the god Apollo, when he appeared as a snake in her bed. So, Alexander is putting himself forward as divine. Why? This is not a Greek tradition, but it’s very much a tradition in the East for kings to be considered by their people to be gods. Alexander says, “Well, if they can be gods, I can be a god.” So Alexander starts spreading rumors that he is divine himself. Alexander probably even believed it; and so he had a god father, he had a human mother, and so then he would identify himself with whoever was a god in the different places. So Alexander would identify himself as a Greek god with a Persian god. Alexander would identify the goddess Isis with some Greek goddess; and so all the time these different gods from different places were basically all said to be simply different cultural representations, different names, for what were generally the same gods all over the place. Also, though, what they would do is sometimes they wouldn’t try to simply say these gods are the same. What they would just do is add on more gods. They’d get to Syria, “Look at all these god that the Syrians worship. Well, we’ll just add those into our pantheon of gods too.” And this is part of what ancient religion was like, is that people were not exclusive. You didn’t have to worry. Just because you worshiped one god, doesn’t mean you couldn’t worship another god or several gods or five gods or a hundred gods. Gods knew who everybody was-they weren’t particularly jealous, in that sense. So this is the way people did it. But what Alexander and his successors did, was they made sort of a conscious, propagandistic decision to use religious syncretism to bind together their kingdoms.

The followers of the Nicene Creed even added to the book of Hebrews. Here’s how it should look before the got their hands on it. 
 They forgot that from of old, Yahweh spoke to the Israelites fathers by the prophets in every manner, and in all ways; but in these later days, Yahweh has conversed with us, by his son; whom Yahweh has constituted heir of all things, and when Yeshua made a purgation of sins, then Yeshua sat down on the right hand of Yahweh. 
 Wherefore, my brethren, who are called with a calling that is from heaven, consider this high priest of our profession, Yeshua the Messiah; because Yahweh has said, “O, if you would but heed my charge this day; do not be stubborn as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah, in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test, tried me, though they had seen my deeds. 
 Forty years I was provoked by that generation; I thought, they are a senseless people; they would not know my ways. Concerning them, I swore in anger, they shall never come to my resting-place!”
 My thoughts about being disingenuous with arguments, testing doctrines against the word of God the way the Bereans did to Paul. Let’s begin with the assertion that there are “many” verses proving the Deity of Jesus Christ, showing that Jesus is God incarnate. The following references play havoc with that Doctrine. 
 James 1:13 - Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for GOD CANNOT be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. 
 Hebrews 4:14-15 - Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. There is already a conflict…but there is much more. 
 Matthew 4:1-11 - Tells how Jesus was led up of the spirit into wilderness to be tempted of the devil and it lists the temptations. If Jesus is God incarnate as the “many” verses prove, then Matthew’s account contradicts James…another conflict. 
 Mark 1:9-13 - Mark describes how the spirit drove him into the wilderness where he was in the wilderness 40 days, tempted of Satan. If Jesus is God incarnate as the “many” verses prove, then Mark’s account contradicts James…another conflict. 
 Luke 4:1-13 - Tells how Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. If Jesus is God incarnate as the “many” verses prove, then Luke’s account contradicts James…another conflict. Until these conflicts can be resolved, it is useless to further study the word of God. Something is bad wrong here and must be seriously considered.

The followers of the Nicene Creed even changed the meaning of the word ‘sheol’ in the Old Testament. 
 In the Old Testament, the word “sheol” is the underground depository of the dead. There are no immaterial, immortal souls in sheol, simply because the soul does not survive the death of the body. Nowhere in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of punishment or torment. 
 The concept of an infernal ‘hell’ developed in Israel only during the Hellenistic period. The condition of the dead in sheol, the realm of the dead, is one of unconsciousness, inactivity, a rest or sleep that will continue until they are resurrected. The prospect that one day a vast number of people will be consigned to the everlasting torment of hell is most disturbing. 
 Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results. 
 The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process. 
 It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23a). The fire to which Jude refers is obviously the same kind of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. It is important to note that the Greek word “aionios” literally means “lasting for an age.” 
 Roman emperors being described as “aionios”; what is meant is that they held their office for life. Unfortunately, the English words “eternal” or “everlasting” do not accurately render the meaning of “aionios”, which literally means “age-lasting.” 
 The notion of the eternal torment of the wicked can only be defended by accepting the Greek view of the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, a concept which is foreign to Scripture. Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view, because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies, whom he does not even allow to die. 
 Consider the moral implications of the traditional view of hell, which depicts God as a cruel torturer who torments the wicked throughout all eternity. The thought of such a torment being deliberately inflicted by divine decree, is totally incompatible with the idea of God as infinite love. 
 Many Christians will be sorely disappointed to discover that their beliefs in the afterlife are a delusion. When this happens, it will cause personal crisis to Christians accustom to believing that at death their souls break loose from their bodies and continue to exist either in Heaven or in the torment of Hell. 
 Redemption is the restoration of the whole person, and not the salvation of the soul apart from the body. If at death the soul of the believer goes up immediately to Heaven to be with Jesus, one hardly can have any real sense of expectation for Jesus to come down to raise the dead believers that were in Jesus, and transform the living believers that are in Christ. 
 Traditionally, evangelical and other religious persuasions teach, that at the resurrection, their material bodies are reunited with their souls, thus intensifying the pleasure of Heaven or the pain of Hell. Why are evangelicals so adamant in refusing to reconsider the Biblical teachings on the restoration of the whole person? 
 To abandon souls being reunited with their bodies, also entails abandoning a whole cluster of doctrines resulting from it. The total impact of dividing humans into body and soul has promoted all sorts of false dichotomies in Scripture. To be an “Evangelical” means to uphold certain fundamental traditional doctrines without questioning. 
 Any one who dares to question the Biblical validity of a traditional doctrine can become suspect as a “heretic.” It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching impact that the doctrine of unending hellfire has had throughout the centuries in justifying religious intolerance, torture, and the burning of “heretics.” The rationale is simple: If God is going to burn heretics in Hell for all eternity, why shouldn’t the church burn them to death now?

The Nicene Creed puts conditions on God’s reconciliation to the human race. Today people think they have to ask God to forgive them for the sins that God is no longer charging to their account in the first place. Ministers of righteousness would have people believe God is not totally reconciled in his mind. God’s reconciliation to the human race took place when the human race was actively his enemy, not after the human race repented. 
 The entire human race is guilty when it comes to human merit, performance, and production and all fall short continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself. All of the human race are in need of a justification that will come totally apart from anything that they do. Paul wants the human race to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true. It is not that people cannot see the truth, it is more the fact that they do not want to see the truth. To be open to that which moves a person from the mental comfort zone to which that person has become accustomed becomes not only an unsettling inconvenience, it becomes a mind-shaking threat to many people. It is easier for these people to remain firmly entrenched in a false system of belief than it is to expose the pride-nature to the possibility of having been wrong and especially for the possibility of having been wrong for many, many years. 
 Paul was never about starting a new religion. There’s no “Christianity” in Paul’s letters. There are no “Christians” in Paul’s letters. You can’t find the word. You can’t find the concept. So what was Paul teaching? The most fundamental message that Paul was telling people when he went around to these Greek cities was idols are not gods. 
 Stop worshipping Zeus and Apollo and Artemis and turn from idol worship and polytheism, that they need to stop worshipping these stones and rocks and things. They need to turn to the living and true God, and start worshipping the God of Israel. The God of Israel is the only true God; he’s the only living God, all the rest of these are dead gods. 
 There’s a wrath coming, you’re going to be destroyed in that wrath, you can be rescued from that wrath if you turn to this guy Jesus, that we tell you about, who’s the son of God and God raised him from among the dead and you will wait for him to come from heaven and he’ll rescue you. 
 He’s teaching them to accept the kingship of Jesus Christ as God’s son and the Jewish messiah, to await the salvation of Jesus to come from heaven in the near future. 
Eternal life will prove Jesus is neither a god, or God, or a God Man. 
 The followers of the Nicene Creed even added this concept of Yeshua as the suffering servant of Yahweh in Isaiah. That concept has no place in the context of Isaiah, particularly in chapter 53 (Israel was the suffering servant of Yahweh). There have been many attempts to equate this man of sorrows with all kinds of figures. Early on, Yeshua’s followers saw Yeshua as the suffering servant of Yahweh in Isaiah. New Testament writers specifically borrowed passages from Isaiah, particularly in chapter 53, when constructing their narratives of Yeshua, taking those verses and using them in describing his story. 
 So Yeshua is depicted as the innocent and righteous servant who suffered for the sins of others. In the teachings of Paul, however, you have a different use of these verses. Christians, generally, are identified as the servant who suffers with and for Yeshua. Isaiah chapter 53 wasn’t talking about a remote Nazarene teacher and charismatic healer who would live more than five centuries later. 
 The servant is Israel herself, the punishment that Israel suffered even if excessive-that punishment isn’t meaningless, it will lead to redemption. Israel will be healed by her wounds. Israel’s suffering is serving a purpose in the divine plan, it’s necessary. Israel needs purification and redemption and that will prepare her for a new role in world history. 
 The followers of the Nicene Creed even designed a symbol for themselves! The Greek word used for “the cross” on which Jesus was put to death is “stauros,” which denotes an upright pale or stake. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always of one piece alone. There is nothing in the Greek of the New Testament even to imply two pieces of timber.

The followers of the Creed Nicene even changed the meaning of a word, the ‘word’ should be ‘wisdom’. They changed the context of this story. Here is the story before they got their hands on it. 
 Just a reminder, this is the second Adam here. Yeshua was everything that the first Adam was, before Adam allowed Eve to eat of that tree. Satan was successful with the first Adam. Now Satan his chance to try and do it again with the second Adam. 
 And Yeshua was about thirty years old; and Yeshua, having the fullness of power, yea, the powerful power of Yahweh upon him, returned from the Jordan. Than was Yeshua led by Yahweh into the wilderness forty days, to be tempted by Satan; and during those days, he ate nothing; and he was with the wild beasts; and when he had completed them, he was at last hungry; and Satan said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, command this stone to become bread.” Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is written, that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that Yahweh decrees.” 
 And Satan conducted him to a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the land, in a little time; and Satan said to him, “To you will I give all this dominion, and the glory of it, which is committed to me, and to whom I please, I give it; if therefore, you will worship before me, the whole shall be yours.” But Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is written, revere only Yahweh, and worship him alone, to him shall you hold fast, and swear only by his name.” 
 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, cast yourself down from here, for it is written, he will give his angels charge over you, to keep you; and in their arms will they sustain you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” And Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is said, do not try Yahweh.” And when Satan had finished all his temptations, he departed from him for a time; and Satan came, and said to Yeshua, “If you are the son of Yahweh, command these stones to become bread.” But Yeshua replied, and said, “It is written, that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that Yahweh decrees.” 
 Then Satan took him to the Holy City, and set him on a pinnace of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, cast yourself down; for it is written, that he will give his angles charge of you, and in their hands will they sustain you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Yeshua said to him, “It is moreover written, do not try Yahweh.” Then Satan took him to a mountain that was very high, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; and said to him, “All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Yeshua said to him, “Begone, Satan; for it is written, revere only Yahweh, and worship him alone, to him shall you hold fast, and swear only by his name. 
 Then Satan left Yeshua; and lo, angels came, and ministered to him. Wisdom was in the beginning, and that very wisdom was with Yahweh, and Yahweh was that wisdom. Wisdom was in the beginning with Yahweh. Everything came to be by Yahweh’s hand; and without Yahweh, not even one thing that was created came to be. The life is in Yahweh, that life is the light of men.
 Wisdom was indeed in the beginning with Yahweh, Proverbs 8:22-26. Wisdom recounts her creation and her presence during the creation of the world. She was the very first of God’s creations. ‘Created me’ wisdom existed from eternity and was coeval with God. Some Christian groups identified wisdom with the Logos, which was in turn identified with The Christ. It is , however clear from v.23 that wisdom is a created being. Wisdom declares that she was present when God produced the inhabited world. 
 The followers of the Creed Nicene even added a new context to the Old Testament, John 3:16. Look at the context before they added it. 
 And while Jesus was in Jerusalem, at the feast of the Passover, many believed in him, because they saw the miracles which he did; and there was a man of the Pharisees there, whose name was Nicodemus, a ruler of the Israelites; and he came to Jesus by night, and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a teacher sent from God; for no man can do these miracles that you are doing, unless God is with him.” 
 Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born anew, he cannot behold the sovereignty of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can an old man be born? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born of water and new nature, he cannot enter the sovereignty of Yahweh. 
 That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of new nature, is new nature. Be not surprised that I said to you, you must be born of new nature.” Nicodemus answered, saying to him, “How can these things be?” Yesus answered, saying to him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” 
 What was this teacher suppose to understand? The Israelites are promised to eat of the Tree of Life! The drama of Adam and Eve’s life should revolve not around the search for eternal life, nor preoccupation with immortality; it was not in Yahweh’s design for this kind of drama. It was Yahweh’s design for the tree of life to have been eaten of, there was no danger to Adam and Eve going on eternally, being immortal. When Adam forfeited his inheritance; and the promise of a coming Deliverer and Redeemer was given. God has to modify his plan, by barring access to the tree of life; that was not something presumably God planned to do. Adam and Eve had access to this tree up to that point, as long as their will conformed to the will of God, there was no danger to their going on eternally, being immortal. Once they discovered their moral freedom, once they discovered that they could thwart God and work evil in the world, and abuse and corrupt all that God had created, then God could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life. 
 That would be tantamount to creating divine enemies, immortal enemies. So God must maintain the upper hand in his struggle with these humans who have learned to defy him. And God maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that humans eventually must die. God stations the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword to guard the way back to the tree of life, once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. The tree of life is now inaccessible; no humans have access to immortality, and the pursuit of immortality is futile. 
 Here is the Nicene Creed’s history, the early Christians who chose the human and divine route, though they had to spilt this up. Some believed Jesus was always divine; others believed Jesus became divine. 
 If Jesus became divine, then when did he become divine, at his birth, at his baptism, or at his resurrection? Other Christians say, no, he always was divine, but even they believed in different choices too, because some believed Jesus was divine but also fully human. 
 Other Christians believed Jesus was fully divine but not fully human. They believed Jesus was so divine he was God, so that when Jesus walked along on wet sand on the beach, his feet did not leave footprints, that is how divine he was, but this belief became declared as a heresy. 
 Out of all these choices, only one of them is considered Orthodox by the later church, so that what Christians end up with is the Nicene Creed, or the Creed of Chalcedon, which is what Christians came to believe? There were lots of complexities in early Christianity that finally got whittled down into a more united consensus view on Christology. 
 Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns. God has already set everyone in Christ apart as holy. Everyone who is in Christ stands perfectly righteous or perfectly holy, justified according to God’s gift declaration of righteousness. God did all the giving, we do only all the receiving. You who say you believe in Jesus Christ, is there any sin that can be put to your account now? If you really believe that, then you do not believe that Christ paid for all of them. We can take God at his word, why can’t we stand with God on what he accomplished through Christ, that is FAITH. Not according to the Nicene Creed, the free gift now has a condition?

The boldness of the followers of the Nicene Creed, they added the word Lord to Paul’s Epistles! 
 The Lord: The Hebrew states God’s name, YHVH, meaning according to v.14): ”He Will Be.” The Lord is actually a translation of “adonai” (lit. “my Lord”) because that is what the Israelites now pronounce whenever the consonants YHVH appear. YHVH was probably originally pronounced “Yahweh,” but in Second Temple times, as an expression of reverence, Israelites began to avoid uttering it, substituting “adonai” and other surrogates. (As a reminder to do so, in printed Hebrew Bibles the consonants are accompanied by the vowels of the surrogate words, leading to such hybrid English forms as Jehovah [i.e., “Yehovah” or the consonants Y-H-V-H with the vowels from “adonai”].)
 Paul (Philippians 3:4-6) would have never used Lord in Romans 10:9! Paul would insist that a person confess Jesus as Savior, not Jesus as Lord. 
 The followers of the Nicene Creed did indeed highjack that word Lord. They even changed the meaning of what God said about himself to Moses. Here is what Exodus 3:13-14 in the TANAKH should read before they got their hands on it.
 Exodus 3:13-14 - Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” He continued, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’ ”
 Not having been raised among his own people, Moses is ignorant of their God’s name and fears he will lack credibility with the Israelites. God’s proper name, disclosed in the verse 15, is YHVH (spelled “yod-heh-vav-heh” in Hebrew; in ancient times the “vav” was pronounced “w”). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: “I Will Be What I Will Be,” meaning “My nature will become evident from my actions.” 
 Then God answers Moses’ question about what to say to the people: “Tell them: ‘Ehyeh’ (“I Will Be,” a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.” This explanation derives God’s name from the verb “h-v-h,” a variant form of “h-y-h,” “to be.” Because God is the speaker, he uses the first person form of the verb. This is who Jesus Christ himself is. Let’s start with the one thing that will define who God really is? What is eternal life? John 5:26b…For as the Father HAS LIFE IN HIMSELF; so has he given to the son TO HAVE LIFE IN HIMSELF. The life Jesus referred to is eternal or everlasting life. 
 By his declaration and definition, he declared that he himself did not have eternal life at the time he was walking the earth or he was a complete liar! If you truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then you have to believe that Jesus Christ spoke the truth. If so, from his own mouth, he declared that only God had eternal life. Christ himself only had the promise of eternal life! 
 Jesus did not have life in himself, so he could not be the source of that life; however, that being said, he was given the authority to give the promise to whomever he wished. He was not the source, but he was the only way to obtain the life from God himself. This is not semantics, the scriptures make it quite plain to anyone who reads it.

The boldness of the followers of the Nicene Creed, they even added the word Lord to Paul’s Epistles! 
 The Lord: The Hebrew states God’s name, YHVH, meaning according to v.14): ”He Will Be.” The Lord is actually a translation of “adonai” (lit. “my Lord”) because that is what the Israelites now pronounce whenever the consonants YHVH appear. YHVH was probably originally pronounced “Yahweh,” but in Second Temple times, as an expression of reverence, Israelites began to avoid uttering it, substituting “adonai” and other surrogates. (As a reminder to do so, in printed Hebrew Bibles the consonants are accompanied by the vowels of the surrogate words, leading to such hybrid English forms as Jehovah [i.e., “Yehovah” or the consonants Y-H-V-H with the vowels from “adonai”].)
 Paul (Philippians 3:4-6) would have never used Lord in Romans 10:9! Paul would insist that a person confess Jesus as Savior, not Jesus as Lord.

The followers of the Creed of their new Apostle Nicene even changed the meaning of what God said about himself to Moses. Here’s is what Exodus 3:13-14 in the TANAKH should read before they got their hands on it.
 Exodus 3:13-14 - Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” He continued, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’ ”
 Not having been raised among his own people, Moses is ignorant of their God’s name and fears he will lack credibility with the Israelites. God’s proper name, disclosed in the verse 15, is YHVH (spelled “yod-heh-vav-heh” in Hebrew; in ancient times the “vav” was pronounced “w”). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: “I Will Be What I Will Be,” meaning “My nature will become evident from my actions.” 
 Then God answers Moses’ question about what to say to the people: “Tell them: ‘Ehyeh’ (“I Will Be,” a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.” This explanation derives God’s name from the verb “h-v-h,” a variant form of “h-y-h,” “to be.” Because God is the speaker, he uses the first person form of the verb.

The followers of the Creed of their new Apostle Nicene changed the meaning of a word, they changed the context of this story. Here is the story before they got their hands on it. 
 Just a reminder, this is the second Adam here. Yeshua was everything that the first Adam was, before Adam allowed Eve to eat of that tree. Satan was successful with the first Adam. Now Satan has his chance to try and do it again with the second Adam. 
 And Yeshua was about thirty years old; and Yeshua, having the fullness of power, yea, the powerful power of Yahweh upon him, returned from the Jordan. Than was Yeshua led by Yahweh into the wilderness forty days, to be tempted by Satan; and during those days, he ate nothing; and he was with the wild beasts; and when he had completed them, he was at last hungry; and Satan said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, command this stone to become bread.” Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is written, that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that Yahweh decrees.” 
 And Satan conducted him to a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the land, in a little time; and Satan said to him, “To you will I give all this dominion, and the glory of it, which is committed to me, and to whom I please, I give it; if therefore, you will worship before me, the whole shall be yours.” But Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is written, revere only Yahweh, and worship him alone, to him shall you hold fast, and swear only by his name.” 
 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, cast yourself down from here, for it is written, he will give his angels charge over you, to keep you; and in their arms will they sustain you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” And Yeshua replied, saying to him, “It is said, do not try Yahweh.” And when Satan had finished all his temptations, he departed from him for a time; and Satan came, and said to Yeshua, “If you are the son of Yahweh, command these stones to become bread.” But Yeshua replied, and said, “It is written, that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that Yahweh decrees.” 
 Then Satan took him to the Holy City, and set him on a pinnace of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the son of Yahweh, cast yourself down; for it is written, that he will give his angles charge of you, and in their hands will they sustain you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Yeshua said to him, “It is moreover written, do not try Yahweh.” Then Satan took him to a mountain that was very high, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; and said to him, “All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Yeshua said to him, “Begone, Satan; for it is written, revere only Yahweh, and worship him alone, to him shall you hold fast, and swear only by his name. 
 Then Satan left Yeshua; and lo, angels came, and ministered to him. Wisdom was in the beginning, and that very wisdom was with Yahweh, and Yahweh was that wisdom. Wisdom was in the beginning with Yahweh. Everything came to be by Yahweh’s hand; and without Yahweh, not even one thing that was created came to be. The life is in Yahweh, that life is the light of men.
 Wisdom was indeed in the beginning with Yahweh, Proverbs 8:22-26. Wisdom recounts her creation and her presence during the creation of the world. She was the very first of God’s creations. ‘Created me’ wisdom existed from eternity and was coeval with God. Some Christian groups identified wisdom with the Logo, which was in turn identified with The Christ. It is , however clear from v.23 that wisdom is a created being. Wisdom declares that she was present when God produced the inhabited world.

The people in this video will be a wake up call for you Ministers of Righteousness followers and you Gentile Kingdom followers. The people in this video are going to have a lot of fun because you Gentile Kingdom believers are putting the cart before the horse. You have to survive the ‘sunteleia’ before you get to the ‘telos’. The Day of Yahweh (Yahweh - The Israelite’s God) will be a prolonged period; it must not be confined to “seven years,” as is so often done. 
After the Body of Christ is lifted off the earth, the whole period of the Day of Yahweh is called the final meeting of the ages, or the Greek word “sunteleia”; but, the crisis in which it culminates is called the end of the age, or the Greek word “telos.” These two Greek words are rendered “end” in the New Testament, but the use of these two words must be carefully distinguished. 
 Sunteleia denotes a finishing or ending together, or in conjunction with other things. It implies that several things meet together, and reach their end during the same period; whereas telos is the point of time at the end of that period. The sign of the telos is the setting up of “the abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel the prophet. 
 Thus the telos, those who endure to this, the same shall be saved, and will be among the overcomers specially referred to in these seven letters during the Great Tribulation; to whom these promises are made, and to whom they peculiarly refer. 
 The Great Tribulation, which is the central subject, but Daniel is not permitted to do much more than make known the fact of the Great Tribulation out of which Daniel’s people, the Israelites were to be delivered. The particulars and the circumstances of that day, were not to be made known at that time by Daniel. 
 The Day of Yahweh will be a prolonged period; it must not be confined to “seven years,” as is so often done. These events may occupy a period of thirty-three years; and if to these we add the seven years of the last week of Daniel, we have a period of forty years. Matt. Chapter 24, “What shall be the sign of your coming, and of the sunteleia of the age?” 
 Jesus describes four of those seals, and adds, “All these are a beginning of sorrows.” This fixes these first four seals as the “beginning” of the sunteleia of the Day of Yahweh. This “beginning” may be spread over some years before the Great Tribulation, proper, comes on. Not one of these seals has yet been opened, nor can any period of history be pointed out in which these first four seals have been in operation simultaneously.

A free gift, but with a condition. BUT NOW, no longer does the human race have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who they are and what they can do. Our decree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Christ’s death for our sins, but through our union with Christ’s resurrection life. If a person believes Christ died for their sins, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied, when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sins. 
 God purchased the human race out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all the human race. Satan can lay claim to no person based on that persons sinfulness. 
 It was God’s plan before the creation of the world, that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind's salvation. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.
 Now I am being asked to believe in one more thing? A free gift was offered, but now this gift has a condition? Those who believe Jesus was purely human tended to understand the Israelites history and they even accept him as a messiah, but that does not mean they think he was God. 
 They know the monotheism of Israel does not and cannot evolve from polytheism, because the two are based on radically divergent world-views, radically divergent intuitions about reality. The monotheism of Israel was not, it could not be the natural outgrowth of the polytheism of an earlier age, it was a radical break with it. 
 Monotheism was a revolution, not an evolution. Therefore, they say, no, Jesus cannot be divine. The early Christians who chose the human and divine route, though they had to spilt this up. Some believed Jesus was always divine; others believed Jesus became divine. 
 If Jesus became divine, then when did he become divine, at his birth, at his baptism, or at his resurrection? Other Christians say, no, he always was divine, but even they believed in different choices too, because some believed Jesus was divine but also fully human. 
 Other Christians believed Jesus was fully divine but not fully human. They believed Jesus was so divine he was God, so that when Jesus walked along on wet sand on the beach, his feet did not leave footprints, that is how divine he was, but this belief became declared as a heresy. 
 Out of all these choices, only one of them is considered Orthodox by the later church, so that what Christians end up with is the Nicene Creed, or the Creed of Chalcedon, which is what Christians came to believe? There were lots of complexities in early Christianity that finally got whittled down into a more united consensus view on Christology.

Thomas O’Buck’s Reasonings: 
 My thoughts on prayer…communication with God himself. If Christians are filled with the spirit of God, and if it is the spirit of truth and it dwells in us, then we have an amazing thing that we don’t recognized the potential of. The very same spirit that dwelled in Christ and revealed to him the thoughts and intentions of men’s hearts also dwells in us. 
 Since the spirit groans with thoughts we cannot utter, it reveals the thoughts and intentions of our hearts directly to God whether we are able to express them or not. It also reveals the thoughts and intentions of God’s heart directly to us, if we will just listen to him instead of constantly telling him what we want. That means we don’t “go pray”, instead, we are in a constant state of prayer to and from God through the spirit God has given us. 
 Everything we, as spirit filled Christians, think, say, and do is offered directly to God through his spirit ALL THE TIME. Religious people “go pray” and argue over how, what, when, where, and why to pray. People who walk in the spirit of God are in a constant state of prayer.

The drama of Adam and Eve’s life should revolve not around the search for eternal life, nor preoccupation with immortality; it was not in Yahweh’s design for this kind of drama. It was Yahweh’s design for the tree of life to have been eaten of, there was no danger to Adam and Eve going on eternally, being immortal. When Adam forfeited his inheritance; and the promise of a coming Deliverer and Redeemer was given. 
 Who has the right to redeem the forfeited inheritance, the lost Paradise? Satan is in possession of this world now, and as such Satan was able in a peculiar way to tempt him who had come to redeem it, in the only lawful way in which it could be redeemed. Who is worthy, who will act the Goel’s (or Redeemer’s) part for man and for Israel, and recover his lost estate. 
 And while Jesus was in Jerusalem, at the feast of the Passover, many believed in him, because they saw the miracles which he did; and there was a man of the Pharisees there, whose name was Nicodemus, a ruler of the Israelites; and he came to Jesus by night, and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a teacher sent from God; for no man can do these miracles that you are doing, unless God is with him.” 
 Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born anew, he cannot behold the sovereignty of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can an old man be born? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born of water and new nature, he cannot enter the sovereignty of Yahweh. 
 That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of new nature, is new nature. Be not surprised that I said to you, you must be born of new nature.” Nicodemus answered, saying to him, “How can these things be?” Yesus answered, saying to him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” 
 God has to modify his plan, by barring access to the tree of life; that was not something presumably God planned to do. Adam and Eve had access to this tree up to that point, as long as their will conformed to the will of God, there was no danger to their going on eternally, being immortal. Once they discovered their moral freedom, once they discovered that they could thwart God and work evil in the world, and abuse and corrupt all that God had created, then God could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life. 
 That would be tantamount to creating divine enemies, immortal enemies. So God must maintain the upper hand in his struggle with these humans who have learned to defy him. And God maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that humans eventually must die. God stations the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword to guard the way back to the tree of life, once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. The tree of life is now inaccessible; no humans have access to immortality, and the pursuit of immortality is futile.

After God gave up on the nations, God experiments with a single individual of believing; Abraham’s believing withstands many a trial. God is the owner of the land, Abraham was called to. God is empowered to set conditions or residency requirements for those who would reside in it, like a landlord. God is seeking replacement tenants who are going to follow the moral rules of residence that God has established for his land. God’s promise to Abraham is formalized in a ritual ceremony called a suzerainty covenant. 
 The patriarchical covenant, which is a covenant in which a superior party, a suzerain dictates the terms of a political treaty usually, and an inferior party obeys them. The arrangement primarily serves the interest of the suzerain, and not the vassal or the subject. So God is making a land grant to a favored subject, and there’s an ancient ritual that ratifies the oath. In this kind of covenant, the parties to the oath would pass between the split carcass of a sacrificial animal, as if to say, that they agree they will suffer the same fate as this animal, if they violate the covenant. 
 Abraham cuts sacrificial animals in two, and God, but only God, passes between the two halves. Only God seems to be obligated by the covenant, obligated to fulfill the promise that he’s made. Abraham doesn’t appear to have any obligation in return. In this case, it is the subject, Abraham, and not the suzerain, God, who is benefited by this covenant, and that’s a complete reversal of this ritual ceremony. Their is a moral justification for the grant of land to Abraham, the current inhabitants of the land are polluting it, filling it with bloodshed and idolatry. And when the land becomes so polluted, completely polluted, it will spew out its inhabitants. 
 That process, God says, isn't complete; so Abraham's offspring through Isaac, they are going to have to wait, the lease isn’t up yet. Abraham is obedient to God in a way that no one has been up to this point, but ultimately, the model of blind obedience is rejected, too. When Abraham prepares to slaughter his own son, God sees that blind believing can be as destructive and evil as disobedience, so God relinquishes his demand for blind obedience. 
 The only relationship that will work with humans is one in which there is a balance between unchecked independence and blind obedience, and God seems to finally have found the working relationship with humans that he has been seeking since their creation, with a man named Jacob. When Jacob undergoes a change in name, Israel, meaning one who wrestles, who struggles with God; God and humans lock in an eternal struggle, neither prevailing, yet both forever changed by their encounter with one another.

1 John 1:9 - “sins” is a Double Metonymy, a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated. A Figure of speech relates to the form in which the words are used. It consists in the fact that a word or words are used out of their ordinary sense, or place, or manner, for the purpose of attracting our attention to what is thus said. A Figure of speech is a designed and legitimate departure from the laws of language, in order to emphasize what is said. 
 John was writing to the Israelites, but to the necessity of that confession for the Israelites. Ezekiel 36:26-28, when will this national sanctification come to fruition? When Israel is willing to accept Jesus Christ as their messiah and admit they swore falsely when they entered into a covenant with God vowing they could merit a righteous standing before him through their performance. 
 The confession was indeed called for. It was not about confessing the three lies on Monday and the bad attitude on Wednesday, and the idolatrous thinking on Friday, it was not about any of that. It was not an option testimony in the days of Jesus Christ, it was a requirement for the remission of sins. It was the way people could be identified with the faith associated with the confession of Leviticus 26:40. 
 Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking. John called upon the nation to repent, the 12 called upon Israel to repent, and Jesus called upon the nation to repent, God wanted them to change their thinking about the source of their righteousness and the identity of their Messiah.

In post Romans 1:16, I change the second Adam to "the last Adam" on my blog. Thanks Twinky

Romans 1:11 - Dealing with Satan and his forces is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter. You can not expect God to protect you from Satan and his forces influences if you do not take an active part in his prepared strategy. The armor that we must take up to protect ourselves from Satan and his forces attack, the first three are established because of our identity in Christ, the last three help us continue to win the battle. It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth. If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. 
 It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria. If we fail to speak the truth in love and manage our emotions, anger which turns to bitterness and unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan and his forces. 
 The important process of renewing our mind includes managing our emotions by managing our thoughts and perceptions. Satan and his forces are always hurling their fiery darts of fear, doubt and worry in our direction, but the only time they can hit us is when we let our shield of faith down. The fact that the helmet is related to salvation indicates that their blows are directed at the believer’s security and assurance of being placed into Christ. This helmet covers our mind, intellect or reasoning. The two dangerous edges of Satan and his forces broadsword are discouragement and doubt. 
 In addition to believing it and thinking it, the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor. If you are going to resist Satan and his forces, you must do so outwardly so they can understand you and be put to flight. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Satan and his forces have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies. I had to rewrite this post, forgot two pieces of Armor.

Sorry about that Twinky, thanks for showing me that last Adam, cool stuff.

Romans 3:19-20 - That every mouth may be stopped; and here it is, the jury foreman is rendering the jury’s verdict and the judge brings down his gavel and pronounces the human race guilty. The law was never given as a standard by which people could live their life and achieve righteousness. It was given to be a mirror, so that those who were placed under the law might gain a better glimpse of themselves. It allowed the human race to stand back when looking at that law and see themselves in a proper light. It was given in order to reflect a perfectly clear picture of how sinful the human race really is. 
 What God wanted Israel to see was her shortcoming, her sin. The law was given to manifest or to bring to light the indisputable reality of sin; the undeniable truth of the existence of sin, even in a person who thought they were performing sufficiently righteously to merit a justified standing before God. Now if a religious Israelite was sinful, what does that say about the rest of the world? The law was given to Israel and that condemned the entire world. 
 Everyone has done exactly like Israel, it condemned the entire human race according to Paul, for all have sinned. God alone decided to make peace with the human race, while the human race is an active enemy to God. Certainly the bible shows that God does not like the actions of the human race, but God reconciled himself to his enemies while they are still in hostility. 
 These are important words; God’s reconciliation to the human race took place when the human race was actively his enemy, not after the human race repented. The entire human race is guilty when it comes to human merit, performance, and production and all fall short continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself. All of the human race are in need of a justification that will come totally apart from anything that they do. Paul wants the human race to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true. 
 Romans 3: BUT NOW, no longer does the human race have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who they are and what they can do. Our decree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Christ’s death for our sins, but through our union with Christ’s resurrection life. If a person believes Christ died for their sins, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied, when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sins. God purchased the human race out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. 
 By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all the human race. Satan can lay claim to no person based on that persons sinfulness. If we misunderstand justification, we are going to have a difficult time understanding the cornerstone that comes prior to sanctification. Since people link a justified standing before God with performance of their own, they also link a sanctified standing before God with their own performance. And as a result, they believe the degree to which they stand sanctified in God’s eyes depends entirely upon the degree to which they remain holy in behavior. 
 If they do not see themselves as being holy in conduct, they do not believe that God sees them as being holy, either. We need to understand that forgiveness was all upfront and all-inclusive, but when we accept this idea of conditional forgiveness/forgiveness on the installment plan; a little forgiveness here, a little forgiveness there, the need for new forgiveness for new sin, that is the atonement program of Israel. The truth is, our deeds do not determine our destiny, our faith in Christ’s faithfulness determines our destiny. 
 Today people think they have to ask God to forgive them for the sins that God is no longer charging to their account in the first place. Ministers of righteousness would have people believe God is not totally reconciled in his mind. Satan and his forces want to keep sin on the table of God’s justice today, as much in the Age of Grace as he has in the other ages. If Satan had known what Jesus Christ would actually accomplish where the sins of the world are concerned, Satan would not have had Christ crucified.

Romans 2:29-3:9 - A Israelite had to be a Israelite both inwardly and outwardly for God to consider that person a true Israelite. Do you think those with a Israelite heritage who were readily willing to accept Paul’s indictment of the Gentiles as being wrath worthy, were now equally as ready to admit their own wrath worthiness, to accept that indictment against themselves? 
 First came that plea of ignorance, “We Gentiles just did not know there was a God, why didn’t God tell us about himself?” Paul quickly dispensed with that notion, they knew all about God according to Paul. God had shown them all about himself and told them about himself. It would be easier for them to dispense with the God they knew about, than to have to be accountable to that God. 
 The second plea of ignorance came, the self defense motion of relative righteousness; the plea that went along these lines, “I do some pretty good things from time to time, surely my righteousness is worthy of God’s consideration.” When it comes to our failures at rightness, our pride nature will not let us see what is in the room. 
 The third self defense plea of natural righteousness, the Israelites were entertaining in their minds a rightness that they supposed came along with their physical heritage; their lineage. The Israelites identified themselves as being the offspring of Abraham and God certainly honored Abraham. He was a great man in God’s eye, so they felt that that linkage to Abraham made them great in God’s eyes. Their is a very real difference in taking pride in a privileged position God has provided and thinking you are worthy of holding the position God has given. 
 Romans 3:10-17 - No one has a self defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. The natural person is the person who can only perceive things that fit in with their own human reasoning. The natural person has their mind tuned in only to the channel of their own human perspective; satisfying the lust of their flesh; the lust of their eyes; and the pride of life. If something is not logical to the natural person’s way of thinking, they refuses to believe it, whether God said it or not, they want to remain in their comfort zone. 
 The human race has become quite adept at mixing poison with their speech. They lace their poison with perfume, but it is poison, nonetheless. The words come out designed to appear innocuous, but lo and behold, there is something hidden under the lips of sinful people. While their words may appear harmless and unoffending, oftentimes these words are not benign words at all. They are insidiously designed by the speaker to be laced with character venom so as to contaminate the object of the speech. 
 Swearing is not the meaning of the word, this word cursing has more to do with wishing harm on another; wishing ill will toward another person; bringing another under the condemnation of ill will due to the bitterness or animosity in our hearts. Every where a person goes, you can see the results of their having been there. Destruction and misery line the pathway of the human race. We could say that the footprint of sin is easily traced to the sinner. Sin renders lasting peace impossible. 
 Romans 3:18 - People have a lack of proper alarm when it comes to the judgment of God. The pride of the Israelite people, there are many parallels between the pride of these Israelites and the pride that take place in Christianity today. The programs have simply been intertwined in the minds of the religious world. Christianity, they have mixed God’s program with Israel and his program with the Body of Christ and mixed dispensations together; dispensations that do not mix together and as a result, they think they have taken on Israel’s role from the point where Israel left off. 
 We look at the Old Testament scripture, and we see God’s judgment being rained on those who walked contrary to his law, and it is hard for us to understand God’s love in light of those passages. We tend to think that a God who is love is totally incapable of being a God who will judge. One of Satan and his forces goals accomplished through the heart of sinful people is to humanize God. That is precisely what the human race has done, God is our great big buddy in the sky, Jesus has simply become our best friend. Many think that salvation comes to those who can maintain a sufficient camaraderie with Jesus, their friend. 
 Where do people go to see how far they have removed themselves through their behavior from God’s favor? More often then not, they go right back to the Law of Moses taught in the halls of religianity by ministers of righteousness. That can only lead in one direction, instability. The religiously minded begin to believe they are indeed measuring up as righteousness becomes relative to those people. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people walking away from a God they perceive as being unfair in having created them to fail in the first place. 
 Some take it to the extent of a total denunciation of God altogether. If God does exist, how can he demand perfection? If God does exist, the fact of his fairness or unfairness does not really matter, does it? You see, no matter where on the performance spectrum one happens to sit, whether it be the perceived safe haven of religion or avowed atheism on the other end.

That word spirit in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is a resurretion body, a living resurrection body? Are you still in that guilty boat, or do you have your identity in this last Adam?

Romans 2:17-23 - You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If Christ has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever. People have such a hard time when their motivation is based on the false assumption that God gave to Israel a law contract in order to provide for them the motivation necessary for them to live righteously. God designed the law to make sin show its hand, to make sin abound, so that they could look at that picture of the law and look at themselves and say, “These pictures do not match up,” so that they could see that their sin was exceedingly sinful. 
 People must rid themselves of the tendency to think that God is dealing with people as he has dealt in time past, when the law program was the order of the day. Paul wants us to understand and understand fully that motivation to do righteousness is the exact opposite of what our natural minds suppose it to be. God did not design the law to enable Israel to live righteously unto him or to give them the motivation to do it. Take away the law Paul and you have taken away the motivation people need to do good and to avoid evil, that is the way the natural mind works. 
 Listen to the attitude of law orientation; an attitude that comes from a person, who is walking after the flesh: “I’m not going to do that, because that is bad,” or “I’m not going to do that, because I cannot do that and remain righteous,” or “I’m going to do this, because God demands I do it,” or I’m going to follow the rules, because God will accept me if I follow the rules faithfully.” If we are trying to satisfy God’s justice on a daily basis or however by conforming to a standard of rules and regulations, we are going to find that just the opposite becomes true in our flesh. We are going to find ourselves constantly focusing on the flesh. The milk of self-righteousness will sour under the divine heat of God’s justice. 
 Romans 2:24 - God did not design the law to enable Israel to live righteously unto him or to give them the motivation to do it. Take away the law Paul and you have taken away the motivation people need to do good and to avoid evil, that is the way the natural mind works. The nation Israel was given every visual opportunity to change their thinking about the identity of their messiah and their ability to perform up to the standard of God’s righteousness, when it came to the law contract. God proved how obstinate the hearts of Israel’s political/religious leadership were, in spite of all the visual evidences God placed before them. 
 A visual evidence given and a visual evidence rejected! Well, this is the case with Israel’s religious leadership, people were getting healed, people were coming to belief and many people were added to that earthly kingdom in that day, but God was looking for the leadership, the representatives of that nation to make their confession. It was a national promise and it is a national rejection as far as God is concerned. 
 Jesus Christ was no military giant in their eyes, much less a military genius, and that is what they were looking for. Israel’s leadership did not want a suffering servant as a messiah, they wanted a conquering hero as their messiah. 
The issue with God in his plan and program with Israel and their promised land was an issue concerning their need of, and acknowledgment of the source of their righteousness. Israel would need a righteousness that God could recognize. They had a righteousness that they could recognize as far as they were seeing things, but they did not have a righteousness that God could recognize. 
 A God recognized righteousness would be an absolute necessity for that nation, if they were to acquire and remain in the land promised to their fathers. Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. When Israel’s leadership rejected the King, that kingdom was placed on the shelf to be reserved for a future fulfillment. 
 Romans 2:25-28 - Circumcision, or the setting aside of the flesh was simply the sign, according to the apostle Paul, that God gave to Abraham to point out that Abraham had placed his faith in God and in God alone, and not in himself. Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh. 
 It is law principle that actually stirs up the sinful emotions. The law principle itself incites the sinful nature that is within the human race. Most people suppose that if you want to eliminate sin, simply put forth a little more law. Well, it is the other way around according to the apostle Paul, it is the law that stirs up the passions of the sin nature. The law actually ignites the passions of the sin nature. The law is a good thing, the problem lies not with a holy and just law, the problem lies in the fact that while the law is good, the flesh is weak.
 
Is it not interesting that the Gentiles had been considered dogs? Now you come to Paul speaking to the saints in Philippi, and it is the unbelieving Israelites who are considered dogs. Beware of Dogs; Beware of Evil Workers; Beware of the Concision. Just the fact that they were of the physical linage of Abraham did not cut the mustard as far as their righteous standing with God was concerned. Paul’s point here is circumcision apart from faith is nothing more than concision. It is nothing more than mutilation. You see, the concision, although it sounds like the word circumcision, the concision is a reference to those false teachers who thought that ritual, who thought they could do something, perform something and the ritual was circumcision. 
 People placing confidence in their performance, not realizing that the law was designed to teach them not to place confidence in their performance when it came to earning their righteousness before God through their performance. Otherwise, God would not have provided for a sacrificial system within the law program in the first place, he would not of needed it. Paul wants us to be sitting in our thinking, in the place where Job was sitting, when Job asked a question, “But how should man be just with God” because Paul understood that the heart of people will go to great lengths to establish its own righteousness.

Jesus was the second Adam, yes he was human. First Adam was human, the second Adam was human. Jesus was everything the first Adam was before the first Adam ate of that tree. The human race after the fall, those finger prints will not be found on humankind's salvation.