Spiritual Ponderings

Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him ; he has put him to grief: when you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Yahweh shall prosper in his hand. (Isaiah 53:10) Examining this chapter from a larger perspective is like examining a building that has been dramatically remodeled from its original design, with new walls installed, doorways blocked up and new one put in other places to change its entire function and purpose. Yet by examining carefully the nature of all the changes to discover what the original layout was intended to be, one can begin to discern what the intent of the original builder was for the purpose of the building. When the original design begins to be recognized it can be seen that a great deal of effort has been exerted to obscure the original design by all the changes and alterations done to thwart the original purpose from ever being accomplished. This passage is oft...

But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation ; namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and having committed to us the word of reconciliation . We are therefore ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21) What is reconciliation? It is the exact same thing as true meaning of atonement actually. It is restoring two individuals to be in harmony and love at the heart level, resolving any differences that might separate them by exposing and eliminating every lie making them distrustful or afraid of each other. In our case with God, there has never been any lie that God believes about us to make Him love us any le...

Atonement birthday. Now what might that mean? It is quite feasible that Jesus was born on the Day of Atonement. If God's timing is tight, and it often tends to come out that way, then it would be very possible that this was the case, for the Day of Atonement was half a year before Passover, and clearly it was on Passover that Jesus died. Since prophecy predicted that Jesus would die in the middle of a prophetic week, meaning three and a half years after starting His ministry, and given that He was thirty years old when He began that ministry, that would place His date of birth at thirty three and a half years before the Passover on which He died, which would be very close to the Day of Atonement. When this idea came up in a discussion today, it suddenly struck me how highly significant this is and the implications it has to undermine rampant false notions surrounding many proposed reasons for Jesus' death. Most people tend to assume that it was the death of ...