Melchizedek was either a real person, king of Salem, later to be named Jerusalem, or he was a Christophany, that is a manifestation of Jesus Christ.
Psalm 110:4b Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
Psalm 110:4 The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
1. According to Roman Catholic doctrine no man can know if he is saved.
2. This is the Arminian position.
3. This is the Calvinist position.
4. This seems to be the position of the author.
The difference between Arminius’ and Calvin’s five tenets.
Numbers 20:8 “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”
9 So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. 10 He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
12 But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”
This is a clue to what the impossible verses really mean. Think of Jesus as the rock, which he is. God told Moses to speak to the rock , not strike it as he did the first time, but instead he struck the rock twice. Jesus was struck once at the cross for our sins, from now on we speak to Christ. The Hebrews came out of the sacrifice culture, and some looked wistfully at the time when they could atone for their sins yearly. The temple was still standing at the writing of this letter, and the pressure was high to go back to their old ways. After the cross there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, and this is why it says “To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”
Psalm 2:7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Psalm 110:4 The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
Psalm 95:11 “So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”
Genesis 2:2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
Psalm 95:7b Today, if only you would hear his voice,
8 “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,[quarreling]
as you did that day at Massah[testing] in the wilderness,
Psalm 95:7b-11 Today, if only you would hear his voice,
8 “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested me;
they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
10 For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”
Yes, it is from this mess we have the word mess-hall in the military.
Here let me interject a story from my childhood. In Sweden at that time we had Christianity as a subject first thing in the morning every day in the lower grades. My younger brother was in first grade, the teacher always started with Genesis, and had come to this passage in the Bible. I was in middle school in town, and his elementary school was local. Anyhow, upon hearing the story he exclaimed “It is the same with my big brother, he eats and eats and is never getting any fatter” The story spread from our village to town, and I got yet another nickname.
It was an early dream of Climate change.
Climate Change is “best” solved by taxation of the abundance, but unlike today that abundance was not to be spent immediately, but be put in storage for the lean, dry years.
The famine is recorded in hieroglyphs, like in the tablet below.
Joseph is in prison.
Dreams are prominent in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament the importance of dreams did go away. The reference in Acts is from Joel 2:38 “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”
The reference in Jude is a warning not to trust in dreams: Jude 8: In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings.
The importance of visions continues through the New testament.
Trances are mentioned three times, all in Acts.
Schechem = Sychar
| Now there stands a large shrine where Sarah’s grave is. |
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 