THE LAMB OF GOD
For any of us who were raised into the Christian Church, regardless the denomination (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, etc.) “The Lamb Of God” is a phrase we always hear every Sunday mass, so we should be quite familiar with it…
…but are we?
Do we know what it means?
Many of us might have thought of it as a metaphor, maybe to describe Yeshua (Jesus) as the pacific and benevolent man He was during His years of preaching in Israel, or perhaps it is a title someone gave Him at any time in history.
The truth is, many of us just don’t know what that means and, to be more realistic, many of us haven’t even thought about caring for its meaning. We pray it and sing it every Sunday at Church but we just let it pass as something we say in choir because it’s a part of the mass, and that’s it!...and then, the priest or pastor says: THIS IS THE LAMB OF GOD, WHO TAKES AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD, and we just hear him saying it, but don’t listen, because for many of us there is no meaning at all. I’d like to point out here that hearing is caused only by our capacity of hearing through our ears, but listening in contrast, is paying attention of what you hear.
Many of you, my dear readers would be surprise if I tell you that this phrase comprises the very essence of our Christian Faith and moreover, the key of our eternal life in God’s Reign.
Does this sound quite too much for you?
To tell you the truth, I didn’t know either the real and deep meaning of this phrase until recently, and I got really moved and excited when I understood it. But, in order to understand what it means we need to know and get acquainted of what God Himself commanded Abraham, Moses, and other Jewish leaders to instruct His people what to do in order to cleanse their sins periodically.
Lev 14:25 And he shall kill the lamb of the trespass-offering; and the priest shall take of the blood of the trespass-offering, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot.
This is a passage found in the Book of Leviticus from the Torah, one of the many Bible passages that make reference to the animal sacrifice offering ordained by God to cleanse our trespasses or sins. This was precisely what Jewish people used to do to seek God’s atonement or forgiveness for their sins, according to His own instructions. But there are more precise instructions to comply with in regard to the sacrificial offering. Among them, the two most important are that, first: the animal to be offered must be a male without blemish, and second, it must be a sacrifice of blood, as we can see in the next verses, also extracted from Leviticus:
Lev 1:3 If his oblation be a burnt-offering of the herd, he shall offer it a male without blemish: he shall offer it at the door of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before Yahveh.
Lev 1:4 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
Lev 1:5 And he shall kill the bullock before Yahveh: and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall present the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is at the door of the tent of meeting.
Lev 1:10 And if his oblation be of the flock, of the sheep, or of the goats, for a burnt-offering; he shall offer it a male without blemish.
Lev 1:11 And he shall kill it on the side of the altar northward before Yahveh: and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall sprinkle its blood upon the altar round about.
If you, my dear reader, are someone who has read the scriptures throughout both the Old and New Testaments but are still not quite clear in some of their meanings or the real messages, don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault. Man made misconceptions and errors are the ones to blame, since right after the destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple in A.D. 70 by the Romans, and then after the Nicaea’s Council and the translation of the Hebrew Torah and the following Gospels into Greek, and then English, the whole concept of this important phrase and many other passages of the Bible are impossible to understand, because they were pulled out of context and then, they were explained and accepted by the authorities of the new Church in a complete different way out of their original context.
As we read the above verses from Leviticus, we see that each family had to hand over one Lamb to the Temple authorities; next the Priests observed these lambs to make sure they were indeed males without blemish, and then, on the day of Passover, they used to slay the lambs as a sacrificial offer of blood for the forgiveness of sins.
It’s not by accident or coincidence that Yeshua would die the way he did. As a matter of fact, He was handed over by the Sanhedrin (Jewish Temple Authorities) to the Romans the same day the Jewish people handed over their lambs to the Temple; He was observed and judged by Pontius Pilate, which found in Him no blame at all (without blemish); and then, by Pharisees demand, He was crucified (sacrificed) the same day the lambs were being slain (sacrificed) at the Temple.
I repeat, it was not by accident or coincidence that Yeshua had exactly the same fate as the sacrificial lambs: He was handed over by the Jewish, He was found without any blemish, and then, He was killed, just as the lambs in the Temple.
It’s also curious, and as well, definitely not by chance the fact that, even thou He died on the cross for obvious reasons, the two roman soldiers that were responsible for this execution decided to stub a lance into his thorax to verify that He was dead for sure, accomplishing again the play of the blood.
He died like a sacrificial lamb, so if someone’s sins could have been forgiven temporarily by slaying a lamb in sacrifice offer to God, how much more would Yeshua’s sacrifice do for our sins to be forgiven?
OUR SINS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN SINCE THEN AND FOREVER THANKS TO HIS SACRIFICIAL DEATH. This is why He is THE LAMB OF GOD, WHO TAKES AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD!!!
Then, Yeshua died just like a sacrificial lamb, a sacrificed lamb that takes away our sins, but He was a man, and He was also the Son of God, so His sacrifice is The Ultimate Sacrifice for our sins, The Lamb Of God, His very Son, who was sacrificed by men to forgive their sins once and for all.
Can you realize now how powerful this is? God Himself sent His very own and beloved son to live among us, to instruct us, to leave us the ultimate message of love, and to finally grant us access to His Kingdom, a Kingdom that exists beyond this physical World and transcends human understanding.
So now, after I explained the real meaning of Yeshua’s death in the cross, you might start to understand the real and deep significance of His sacrifice. God loves us so much, but so much, that after he gave us His instructions (The Torah) in Moses’ hands, and guided us, and reprimanded us, and did everything possible to make us righteous, he knew that we were wicked by nature, so He decided to send His own Son among us, to die for us as the ultimate sacrificial lamb, THE LAMB OF GOD, so our sins would be forgiven forever…
…and all this just because He loves us so much!!!
As you might have realized while reading this chapter, I’ve been repeating some phrases and sentences over and over again. I did it intentionally, so you’d be able to understand all what I meant right to the bone. I also emphasized some complete meaningful sentences by writing them in CAPITAL LETTERS, so you’d pay special attention to them. I want you to understand that all this is NOT and idealistic, or metaphorical, or philosophical kind of explanation about what Yeshua’s death means!
But on the contrary, it is the MOST REALISTIC and ACCURATELY HISTORICAL account of what God and His Son Yeshua did for us!!
And, moreover, all this is now explained to you into its real context, by unfolding the Jewish roots of the facts, so you can see it now in all the spectrum of reality and feasibility, what happened, how it happened, why it happened the way it did, and the powerful meaning that it starts to weight in our brains, hearts, and souls as it never did before.
My dear readers, I don’t know what you think about what I just exposed to you in this chapter, but when I found it out, I got so moved I started crying, because I finally understood that Yeshua died for my forgiveness. It doesn’t matter how wicked I was or I am, because through the sacrifice He suffered, He granted me the access of His Kingdom, the Kingdom of our very God YAHVEH, the one that loves us that much. I am nothing compared to the rest of His creation, I am just a person who’s living a short life among hundredths of billion people that lived here throughout history and are living now in present time, but He loves me so much and He wanted so much to have me toward Him in His own Kingdom, that He sent His son to die for me, so I would be forgiven, and eventually could be granted to live the rest of my eternal life in His Holy presence. This means so much to me, that I just wanted to share this great feeling of joy with all of you, with the hope that you will start feeling it too.
Now, consider all this as an Ace in your sleeve, since you still have to play the game of living your life according to the rules. Yes, God gave us already the grace of being forgiven for our wickedness, but He demands from us to be Holy and thus, to live our life with holiness. This means that we must get acquainted with His instructions for living and follow them the best we can, in order to play that precious Ace.
Fortunately, God instructed us the way He wants us to live as righteously as possible, but because this information is so important and vital to us, I’ll dedicate later a whole article on this matter.
To Him all Praises and Honor forever and ever, Amen.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Finding God
FINDING GOD
Where is God anyway?
This is a common question most people use to ask to themselves and to those who are supposed to have an answer for it. Especially on these turmoiled times in which evil and vice have taken charge and have become the norm, instead of being the exception, to find and know God seems to be an unreachable challenge for many. Moreover, the mere idea of dedicating some time a day to God or to thank him for what we have, both spiritually (if any) and materially (Oh! Very important), is for a vast majority of the people a so unfashionable matter and a total waste of time in the modern era we live in. We claim to seek for peace and practice God’s Commandments and Jesus’ teachings, but instead we seem like taking these very matters for granted as if we’re indeed complying with these norms every time and, just from time to time (more for costume than for real conviction), we go to church, recite a few preset prayers from the back of our memories while wondering around, and then, we feel we did enough to comply with God’s matters.
It seems to be that, for many of us, God is quiet ethereal and unreal in our minds. We might say we believe in Him but inside us, we’re not totally convinced about it. We don’t dare to deny His existence, but we have never seen Him, or heard Him, or touched Him, so we just don’t know what to think or feel about Him. Moreover, many of us only pray to Him when facing any sudden danger, or confronting any big problem, and then, when disgrace arrives, we have the guts to blame Him.
Now, if we are not sure about His existence, then why do we always tend to ask, if not beg for His help and divine intervention?
Do you feel identified with some of the above statements?... No wonder!
As a matter of fact, I wrote all these statements based on my own experience, as one more amongst the great number of people who are striving to stay afloat on an ocean saturated with waves of big lies, misbeliefs, dangerous misconceptions, inviting distractions, and a tremendous amount of confusion and misinformation. This is the closest description of how I used to feel in my venture to look for the truth about God. I never had doubts about His existence and His full authorship in the creation of all things. I have even been taught intensively into the Eastern Catholic faith…but something always was missing. I’ve been instructed according to the organized church on righteous behaviors, codes of conduct, what to do and not to do and the works, but always expecting one of the two classical consequences: The almost unreachable eternal life in heaven, or the totally assured damnation in hell! Definitely not very promising!
If we examine our conscience at this very moment, many of us would realize that we always have many things in our minds, let’s say, problems to solve at home, the burdens at work, situations to handle with some relatives or friends, who do we have or want to meet to, the song we like, the car we want, the money we’d like to have, and many, many other thoughts and feeling we might have, but what about anything related to God? Where, in our set of priorities in life, it is an assigned order number to God, if any?
After having read all this and examine our own thoughts and feelings about it, we realize for sure that many things are missing in our relationship with God: Things we don’t know about, things we don’t understand at all, things that have been said and repeated for years at the service we attend but have no meaning at all to us, things we’ve asked to ourselves sometimes but we’ve never even looked for to find the answer, and many other things related to God that we are too busy to think about. But do we really need to know all these things about God and, Are these things really a concern to us?
Well, the answers to these questions are not in my mind and in my heart, but in yours, but if you want to know what my answers would be, I’ll say with joy that yes, we certainly do need to know and yes, these things are definitely a concern to us!
After all, aren’t we the ones that always think that going to church on Sundays is important, and say that praying may help us, and declare that God exists for sure, and say that God will help us, etc., etc., etc.?
In spite of the evidence, and even after centuries of religious teachings, costumes, traditions and everything else you’d like to add to the list, most of us are as far from understanding and following God as we are able to manage, and the confusion is such that we feel totally discouraged to look for answers.
Notwithstanding, in the middle of all this confusion, there are some clear facts that are still there and we can’t deny. The following is a short list of these facts, just to display a small sample:
1. We exist and live on a Planet that works in an organized way, which is a part of an organized Solar System, which turns around a Huge Galaxy in an organized way, which belongs to an infinite Universe. Just think about this: This much organization and perfection cannot be the result of an unorganized and random Big-Bang; it’s a total scientific non-sense!
2. Nature is quiet perfect, balanced with an astonishing precision, and designed with an unimaginable complexity. Big-Bang again?
3. The human body, is the most perfect biological machine, where millions of different functions work together every second, all of them interrelated and interdependent with each other, and with a complexity which is impossible to duplicate by ourselves. It’s so amazingly designed and structured that, even with our gigantic advancement in human developed technology, we still don’t know or understand many things about it.
4. Our thoughts and feelings govern our daily lives by shaping our actions and behaviors, but we know nothing about how they do their work in our bodies. They both are ethereal (just like God is?), they don’t exist physically but indisputably are the causes of what we are and what we do. We know for sure they exist.
5. Our very existence, which can be perhaps the most tangible fact for us, and this so complex and perfect World with its surrounding Solar system and Universe, cannot be just a product of random chance. As a matter of fact, scientifically speaking, there is no way that so many factors could be all together at the precise moment, at the right place, at an unimaginable exact order, under the very best conditions, to have created everything that we know in the way we know it.
Allow yourself a moment for reflection about the above facts and some others that could’ve come to your mind…
…Now, ask to yourself, do you really think that all the above facts could be possible without the intervention of God?
My answer is NO!...What’s yours?
Given for sure many of us have been victims of a terrible uncertainty about God and everything that is related to Him – His very existence, His creation, His direct and indirect intervention in man’s life, His will toward man’s destiny – it is imperative to put things in order, to start understanding God and His implications in our lives, past, present, and future.
The main purpose of this set of articles is to unveil God to its readers in a more realistic way, by exposing and explaining many issues about this matter that have been distorted, changed, erased, banned, misinformed, and misconceived throughout the last two millennia, and then, exposing and explaining the facts of truth that have been stolen, obscured, ridiculed, and hidden by men themselves about God’s matters.
During the development of this work, the readers might find some facts and explanations disturbing to some degree in accordance with their own beliefs and costumes. As sure as I am that this is going to happen, I invite the readers to stay with me and set yourselves in an open mind mode, so on every point developed in this work, there will be a well supported explanations and references to be used at your discretion. Moreover, the tendency of it is to stay faithful and accurate to the Scriptures - The Bible throughout its Old and New Testaments- since nothing that we must know about our true and right relationship with God has been left out from it. Let’s also understand that when talking about this very serious topic like God and whatever it’s involved with Him, it is very important to support our words with also serious and enough documentation about these matters. In order to fulfill this purpose, the reader could be able to find an extensive list of accurate references, and especially a great deal and emphasis on internet sites and e-documents, since these references are available right at your fingertips from any computer at home, work, college, or wherever you are.
I invite you then to join me in this fascinating journey through the truth that will set us free from all lies, discomfort, confusion and doubts about who is our God Almighty, why and how to totally trust Him and how can we establish a good relationship with Him and thus, receive all the blessings from our Father during our lives and afterwards.
To Him all Praises and Honor forever and ever, Amen.
Where is God anyway?
This is a common question most people use to ask to themselves and to those who are supposed to have an answer for it. Especially on these turmoiled times in which evil and vice have taken charge and have become the norm, instead of being the exception, to find and know God seems to be an unreachable challenge for many. Moreover, the mere idea of dedicating some time a day to God or to thank him for what we have, both spiritually (if any) and materially (Oh! Very important), is for a vast majority of the people a so unfashionable matter and a total waste of time in the modern era we live in. We claim to seek for peace and practice God’s Commandments and Jesus’ teachings, but instead we seem like taking these very matters for granted as if we’re indeed complying with these norms every time and, just from time to time (more for costume than for real conviction), we go to church, recite a few preset prayers from the back of our memories while wondering around, and then, we feel we did enough to comply with God’s matters.
It seems to be that, for many of us, God is quiet ethereal and unreal in our minds. We might say we believe in Him but inside us, we’re not totally convinced about it. We don’t dare to deny His existence, but we have never seen Him, or heard Him, or touched Him, so we just don’t know what to think or feel about Him. Moreover, many of us only pray to Him when facing any sudden danger, or confronting any big problem, and then, when disgrace arrives, we have the guts to blame Him.
Now, if we are not sure about His existence, then why do we always tend to ask, if not beg for His help and divine intervention?
Do you feel identified with some of the above statements?... No wonder!
As a matter of fact, I wrote all these statements based on my own experience, as one more amongst the great number of people who are striving to stay afloat on an ocean saturated with waves of big lies, misbeliefs, dangerous misconceptions, inviting distractions, and a tremendous amount of confusion and misinformation. This is the closest description of how I used to feel in my venture to look for the truth about God. I never had doubts about His existence and His full authorship in the creation of all things. I have even been taught intensively into the Eastern Catholic faith…but something always was missing. I’ve been instructed according to the organized church on righteous behaviors, codes of conduct, what to do and not to do and the works, but always expecting one of the two classical consequences: The almost unreachable eternal life in heaven, or the totally assured damnation in hell! Definitely not very promising!
If we examine our conscience at this very moment, many of us would realize that we always have many things in our minds, let’s say, problems to solve at home, the burdens at work, situations to handle with some relatives or friends, who do we have or want to meet to, the song we like, the car we want, the money we’d like to have, and many, many other thoughts and feeling we might have, but what about anything related to God? Where, in our set of priorities in life, it is an assigned order number to God, if any?
After having read all this and examine our own thoughts and feelings about it, we realize for sure that many things are missing in our relationship with God: Things we don’t know about, things we don’t understand at all, things that have been said and repeated for years at the service we attend but have no meaning at all to us, things we’ve asked to ourselves sometimes but we’ve never even looked for to find the answer, and many other things related to God that we are too busy to think about. But do we really need to know all these things about God and, Are these things really a concern to us?
Well, the answers to these questions are not in my mind and in my heart, but in yours, but if you want to know what my answers would be, I’ll say with joy that yes, we certainly do need to know and yes, these things are definitely a concern to us!
After all, aren’t we the ones that always think that going to church on Sundays is important, and say that praying may help us, and declare that God exists for sure, and say that God will help us, etc., etc., etc.?
In spite of the evidence, and even after centuries of religious teachings, costumes, traditions and everything else you’d like to add to the list, most of us are as far from understanding and following God as we are able to manage, and the confusion is such that we feel totally discouraged to look for answers.
Notwithstanding, in the middle of all this confusion, there are some clear facts that are still there and we can’t deny. The following is a short list of these facts, just to display a small sample:
1. We exist and live on a Planet that works in an organized way, which is a part of an organized Solar System, which turns around a Huge Galaxy in an organized way, which belongs to an infinite Universe. Just think about this: This much organization and perfection cannot be the result of an unorganized and random Big-Bang; it’s a total scientific non-sense!
2. Nature is quiet perfect, balanced with an astonishing precision, and designed with an unimaginable complexity. Big-Bang again?
3. The human body, is the most perfect biological machine, where millions of different functions work together every second, all of them interrelated and interdependent with each other, and with a complexity which is impossible to duplicate by ourselves. It’s so amazingly designed and structured that, even with our gigantic advancement in human developed technology, we still don’t know or understand many things about it.
4. Our thoughts and feelings govern our daily lives by shaping our actions and behaviors, but we know nothing about how they do their work in our bodies. They both are ethereal (just like God is?), they don’t exist physically but indisputably are the causes of what we are and what we do. We know for sure they exist.
5. Our very existence, which can be perhaps the most tangible fact for us, and this so complex and perfect World with its surrounding Solar system and Universe, cannot be just a product of random chance. As a matter of fact, scientifically speaking, there is no way that so many factors could be all together at the precise moment, at the right place, at an unimaginable exact order, under the very best conditions, to have created everything that we know in the way we know it.
Allow yourself a moment for reflection about the above facts and some others that could’ve come to your mind…
…Now, ask to yourself, do you really think that all the above facts could be possible without the intervention of God?
My answer is NO!...What’s yours?
Given for sure many of us have been victims of a terrible uncertainty about God and everything that is related to Him – His very existence, His creation, His direct and indirect intervention in man’s life, His will toward man’s destiny – it is imperative to put things in order, to start understanding God and His implications in our lives, past, present, and future.
The main purpose of this set of articles is to unveil God to its readers in a more realistic way, by exposing and explaining many issues about this matter that have been distorted, changed, erased, banned, misinformed, and misconceived throughout the last two millennia, and then, exposing and explaining the facts of truth that have been stolen, obscured, ridiculed, and hidden by men themselves about God’s matters.
During the development of this work, the readers might find some facts and explanations disturbing to some degree in accordance with their own beliefs and costumes. As sure as I am that this is going to happen, I invite the readers to stay with me and set yourselves in an open mind mode, so on every point developed in this work, there will be a well supported explanations and references to be used at your discretion. Moreover, the tendency of it is to stay faithful and accurate to the Scriptures - The Bible throughout its Old and New Testaments- since nothing that we must know about our true and right relationship with God has been left out from it. Let’s also understand that when talking about this very serious topic like God and whatever it’s involved with Him, it is very important to support our words with also serious and enough documentation about these matters. In order to fulfill this purpose, the reader could be able to find an extensive list of accurate references, and especially a great deal and emphasis on internet sites and e-documents, since these references are available right at your fingertips from any computer at home, work, college, or wherever you are.
I invite you then to join me in this fascinating journey through the truth that will set us free from all lies, discomfort, confusion and doubts about who is our God Almighty, why and how to totally trust Him and how can we establish a good relationship with Him and thus, receive all the blessings from our Father during our lives and afterwards.
To Him all Praises and Honor forever and ever, Amen.
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