Isaiah 46:8-10 (HRV) – “’Remember this, and stand fast;
bring it to mind, O you transgressors.
Remember the former things of old:
that I am El, and there is none else; I am Elohim, and there is none like
Me; Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that
are not yet done; saying: ‘My counsel
shall stand, and all My pleasure will I do’;’”
(Translation note:
El = God. Elohim = Gods. When YHWH refers to Himself as Elohim in the
plural, it’s referring to the trinity.)
“Declaring the end from the beginning,…” That word, “beginning” in Hebrew is exactly
the same word which we used to translate “In the beginning…” from Genesis
1:1. YHWH has already told us how
everything will end because He’s already showed us how it all began.
Confused yet? Let’s
rewind a bit and start from another direction.
There are two things we MUST keep in mind when
translating scripture. 1) God is perfect and 2) God exists outside of time.
1) God is
perfect. Most Christians would say that
they agree with this statement, but few live like it. For the sake of time, I’m going to leave this
statement at face value for now.
Although many don’t truly live in agreement with this statement, we do
know what it means and I’ll move on.
2) God exists
outside of time. In fact, time itself is
His creation. God doesn’t merely have a
plan for the end that He’s pretty sure He can accomplish, He IS the end. He IS the alpha and omega. He IS the beginning and the end. Right now God is creating the world. Right now Yeshua is dying on a cross for your
sins. Right now God is wrapping up this
age and putting an end to sin and death.
RIGHT NOW!! God explained Himself
as “I AM THAT I AM” not “I WAS” or “I WILL BE”.
When God showed John the dragon and the beast and all that he revealed
that he saw in the Book of Revelation, He didn’t just show John a movie that
revealed His intent. No, He actually
took John to that time to witness it
Combine these two things, the perfection and the
timelessness of God, and we are forced to come to the conclusion that NOTHING
God has ever said or done exists in a limited scope. EVERYTHING God has ever said or done was
meant for everybody in every age, in every time, in every nation, in every walk
of life. It is perfect, and when He
spoke it or did it, He spoke it or did it simultaneously for every moment in
this planet’s history, even the moments that we haven’t experienced yet.
Our error, or part of it anyway, is in treating the Old
Testament as if it’s done and gone away.
Whether we say it or not, many of us treat it like the Old Testament was
a goof. God was on a trial run. It failed and he did His best to hold it
together with spit and duct tape until Jesus could come and start over. Many of us call ourselves New Testament
Christians as if the Old Testament doesn’t exist anymore. Our history began with the cross. So we've created rules and ideology by translating the New Testament, not according to how YHWH wanted it interpreted, but according to how our particular culture and ideology wanted to interpret it, thus creating conflict with the verses that should have been used to understand it.
Of course not every individual thinks this way, but I
generalize because every major Christian denomination has, as an organization,
fallen into this trap fully or partially.
We treat the New Testament as a uniquely separate entity, when in fact, “New
Testament” is an incomplete translation in and of itself. A more correct translation of “Old Testament”
and “New Testament” would be “Original Covenant” and “Renewed Covenant”. The New Testament didn’t start us over. It made the original covenant whole again as
if it had never been broken in the first place.
In a nutshell, God knew the Holy Spirit, whom the bible
says guides us in truth, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, was not
indwelling us pre-Pentecost. Therefore
it was impossible for us to understand spiritual matters. So, in His grace, he gave us physical
examples of His truths. He gave us
practice runs. They were never intended to
save us or make us perfect. In and of themselves,
they only have physical value and cannot affect our spirit other than as an
example. They were intended to reveal
God to us in the only way we could understand at the time. We are to follow God’s spiritual laws, but
they must line up with the physical laws God gave us. If they don’t, then we made them up.
There’s so much more I want to say about this, and I know
there are many questions I’ve left open, but I’ve already gone much longer than
I wanted to. In fact, I’ve deleted much
of what I originally wrote to keep this from getting way too long. Let me end now by saying this. The simple fact of the matter is that we
CANNOT understand the New Testament without understanding the Old. If you try to translate the New Testament
according to what you desire, or according to what your denomination believes,
or according to what any man has called true, you will get a partial truth at
best. We must let God define God. If you count yourself as one who trusts God
but wonders why there seems to be so much conflicting information in
Christianity, this is one reason. If you
count yourself as one who doesn’t trust God because of the apparent conflict in
what He claims to have given us, this is one of the reasons why.
My hope and prayer for you today is that you’ll let Him
reveal Himself to you. His yoke is easy
and His burden is light. If the burden
seems overwhelming, it’s a good indicator that it’s probably not really His.
Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com
Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com
