The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi: The First and Second Temples

Speaking of the importance of pictures and analogies in Hebrew culture, here's another one from The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi that really stood out to me:

The Temple Mount is the most contested piece of land in all of the world. I'm not going to go into all of it here, as this blog might take up the whole internet. So I'm going to quickly summarize the legitimate claim of Israel and the Jewish faith to it. 

The First Temple, built on Mount Moriah, was built by Solomon on the very mountain where God led Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians, when the last of the Israelites were carried away into captivity. God allowed this to happen because Israel had turned away from their first love: YHWH.

In 538 BC, the Second Temple was built by Zerubbabel, who was allowed by Babylonian King Cyrus to do so (Ezra 2). However, it was much smaller, less ornate than the original temple. Then, God allowed King Herod to begin a large-scale renovation and expansion of it, which "was one of the largest construction projects of 1st century B.C. Because of the immense resources Herod invested, the Second Temple became one of the wonders of the ancient world [....] The Second Temple stood from 516 BC to 70 AD" when the Romans destroyed it (page 157). All that remains today is the most Western Wall, considered to be holy ground to the Jews, as it is all that remains from the Temple. Sobel says God allowed this temple to be destroyed because of the intense hatred Jews at the time felt towards their fellow man.

In fact, he says, "The choice of location for the temple was connected to—and symbolic of—its spiritual foundation, which was love. The First Temple was destroyed because of idolatry, and the second was destroyed due to a senseless hatred that the Jewish people had towards one another. 

Thus, the First Temple was destroyed when Israel broke the 1st and greatest commandment, which is, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength,' (Deut. 6:5). The Second Temple was destroyed when Israel broke the 2nd greatest commandment: 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Lev. 19:18)."

WOW! Talk about a powerful picture. 

To this day, the Jewish people wait to rebuild the temple. Plans are already made and materials gathered for its construction. And the Bible says there will be one, because the antichrist will declare himself to be God, which will lead to the ultimate abomination that causes desolation. But honestly, I think that will be the 4th Temple, because of what Kenneth E. Bailey said here. According to him—according to Paul—we as believers are the Third Temple, with Jesus as the cornerstone. 

What do you think? What I do know is that watching for the rebuilding of the physical Temple is a key sign of the last days. Currently, it doesn't exist. But I heard that it could literally be rebuilt in as quickly as 90 days, because of the plans in place! WOW!

The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi: The Dead Sea Coming back to Life!

This is the last post from the series on The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have!

This last post is going to talk about the Dead Sea, and something incredible discovered in 2011. Actually called the Salt Sea, it was nicknamed the Dead Sea because nothing can live in it. The water is about 10x more mineral than an ocean, which means that you can float in it. It's literally impossible to drown. If you walk far enough out, your feet will just fly out from under you (this happened to me) and you will float. It's so trippy! At 2000 feet below sea level, it's the lowest place on earth, and believed to be the site of Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. It's also evaporating at the rate of 1 meter a year. 

Many years ago, a tourist noticed freshwater pools along the shores of the Dead Sea with fish swimming in them! WOW! And then somehow they figured out how to explore the bottom in 2011 and discovered "huge craters on the seafloor, fifteen meters across and 20 meters deep, full of fresh fish and covered with mats full of microorganisms, with freshwater flowing from the craters" (page 165)!

WOW! This is especially incredible to me in light of Ezekiel's words about what will happen in the Millennial Kingdom: 

"He asked me, 'Son of man, do you see this?'

Then he led me back to the bank of the river. When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, 'This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing'” (Ezekiel 47: 6-12)

SO COOL! This is what's coming—but it's already happening!

I hope this series encourages you to get this book (click on the picture below to get it on Amazon, or click here). Have you guessed the meaning of the title yet? The Rock is the Jesus, the Road is the Holy Land, and the Rabbi is the Word of God.

What did you think of this series? Let me know in the comments below!

The Rock, The Road, and The Rabbi: Faith as a Mustard Seed

This is probably my favorite scene from The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi.

Kathie Lee Gifford depicted a scene on top the Mount of Olives, which I can see clearly in my mind's eye. I remember being there. But her guide, Ray Vander Laan, took her to a specific place I didn't go. She describes her group being told to sit very specifically in front of some overgrown bushes, looking out over a beautiful view. Then Ray told the group that those were mustard plants, "the most feared plant in all of Israel [....] It's feared because once it takes root, it can't be destroyed. You can try to burn it, stomp it out, tear it out, but eventually, it takes everything in its way" (page 110).

All of this from the tiniest of seeds—and Jesus compares the mustard seed to the Kingdom of God! In fact, Jesus said, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

That's when Gifford says Ray pointed at the Herodium in the distance, quoting the verse above. The Herodium is one of Herod's 11 palaces, and the place he was buried. It symbolizes the evil and opulence found in this world, and the hardship the Jewish people found at Herod's hands. Then, Ray pointed in the other direction, in which the Dead Sea was clearly visible! This is the only place on the Mount of Olives on the where you can see mustard plants, the Herodium, and the Dead Sea—which means Jesus was standing in that very spot when He said those verses!

Ray said, "The kingdom of God is us! It is all of us as believers. If we just believe, we can say to that mountain—the world's way, Herod's way, Satan's way—be gone, into that sea, the Dead Sea, which is already dead!"

WOW!!!

Definitely another #micdrop moment!

The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi: Jesus Writes in the Dirt

In Hebrew culture, pictures and references are very important, like what was depicted in the last blog post by the significance of the number 153. 

The same is true for actions and even quotations. For example, in the Bible when Jesus said something and the people became so angry they wanted to attack Him, to the modern Western reader, it might not be obvious as to why. His words might even seem innocuous. But that's because the practice of this oral culture was for a rabbi to reference a passage from the Torah and let the audience finish it. So when Jesus made a reference, he often only said the beginning part and the part left unsaid was for the audience to know and understand—and that's what made them angry.

Here is another example of this, which I thought was so cool. On pages 79-81, Rabbi Jason Sobel talks of the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery in John 8, which I've talked about here and here. What caught my eye was Sobel's unpacking of Jesus writing in the dirt, of which none of us knows what He wrote (I hope to one day!). 

Sobel points out that:

• Jesus wrote in the dirt twice
• He wrote with His finger twice
• Jesus wrote specifically in the dirt, and 
• Jesus knelt to write (page 79).

Then, he ties that to:

• God wrote the 10 Commandments twice on tablets of stone with His finger.
• The second set of tablets was a sign that God had forgiven Israel, and Moses descended Mount Sinai with those tablets on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year.
• When the Pharisees brought this woman before Jesus, they had literally just finished observing the Day of Atonement. "Jesus' action of writing in the dirt reminded these leaders that they, too, were guilty of breaking the 10 Commandments and needed atonement, for which they had just fasted and prayed for a week earlier" (page 80).
• Jesus writing in the dirt reminded them that they were formed from dust.
• Jesus kneeling to write puts Him on the same level as the woman—He meets us where we are.

WOW! These are things I never would have known without studying Jewish history and culture. What do you think about these connections?

The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi: The Hebrew Alphabet

Here's another moment that stood out to me from Kathie Lee Gifford's The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi:

Rabbi Jason Sobel explains how the Hebrew alphabet (which I am learning!) is alphanumeric, meaning each letter also signifies a number. There's great significance in numbers as well as letters, meaning you can even add up the value of the letters in a word or phrase and it will likely mean something. Cool! The letter hei, which makes the "h" sound, is the fifth letter of the alphabet, and is often connected with the divine breath of God that releases His creative power and potential (page 15). So when we see "5" in the Bible, like David picking up 5 stones when he only needed 1 to kill Goliath, it means something. 

Sobel says that in Genesis 2:4: "These are the genealogical records of the heavens and the earth when they were created, at the time with Adonai Elohim made land and sky", the word for created is bara, which means "created out of nothing". But it's written in a grammatically incorrect way, because it has the letter hei inserted in it. 

Why? Because of Who did the creating. 

This is also true for Abram and Sarai's story, who had their names changed by God, to: AbraHam and SaraH. There's only a 1 letter difference between their old and new names, and "the Lord added this letter to their names because it represented His creative power to accomplish the impossible!" (page 16).

WOW!

Here's another example of the alphanumeric quality of the Hebrew alphabet, from pages 54-55:

• The number 153 is the numerical value of the phrase, "I am the Lord your God" from Isaiah 43:3
• In Matthew 16, Peter says, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God" is a reference to Isaiah 43:3
• In John 21, when Jesus tells Peter and the other disciples to cast his nets on the other side of the boat, they catch 153 fish.
• 153 is also the value of the world HaPesach, which is the Passover Lamb described in Ex. 12:21. Jesus was the Passover Lamb.
• So, the number 153 would have reminded Peter of ALL of the above things. 
• Jesus called Peter 2x in the Bible, "The son of Jonah", which has the same value. Peter acted like Jonah by denying the Lord and running away.
• "According to Jerome, an early church father, there were 153 species of fish at the time in the sea of Galilee, which ties back to the disciples being fishers of men" (page 55).

WOW!

Is this new information to you? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi: Mic drop!

I loved reading Kathie Lee Gifford's The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi, probably because it reminded me of my trip to Israel in 2017. 

She went to a lot of places I went to, so I could see them in my mind's eye—but her tour guide was Ray Vander Laan, whose videos with Focus on the Family are incredible. I've heard there's a 3-year wait to get on one of his tours (probably longer now thanks to covid-19), but it's always good to dream. 

This book is an easy read, as each short chapter focuses on a different location, and then Rabbi Jason Sobel (pictured on the cover) often adds to the commentary. So I'm going to make this a series, because there were so many good things I picked up on in this book.

Here's some good stuff just from the opening chapters:

"All of Scripture is meant to point to the Messiah in some way. For example, as Rabbi Jason explained to me, the first letter of Genesis is the Hebrew letter bet, and the last word of the book of Revelation is the Hebrew word amen, which ends in the letter nun. The first and last letters of the Bible spell the Hebrew word Ben, which means 'Son'. From the very first to the very last letter, everything in the Bible points to the Son!" (page 5). This really struck me, because I am currently learning Hebrew, and of course, I started with the alphabet. How amazing! I love how things are hidden in Scripture like this!

Later, on page 8, Gifford describes her first few hours in the Holy Land, following guide Ray Vander Laan up a mountain to reach Gezer, an ancient Biblical city overlooking the Via Maris (the ancient trading road that ran alongside the Mediterranean Sea). Ray explained, "The problem with the Bible [...] is that the Bible was written by Middle Easterners for Middle Easterners. But we try to understand it with a Western mindset. We try to apply our own principles and our Western understanding to a culture that is completely foreign to us". As they gazed down on this road from above and saw how it connected the ancient world as nothing else could, the lesson hit home (described on page 10). 

Then, the commentary changes and Rabbi Jason Sobel adds his thoughts, and it is like the biggest mic drop of all:

"Israel's geographic position is key, since it functions as a land bridge between Asia and Africa. But from a spiritual perspective, there is even more. I believe the land God promised Abraham has the same geographic boundaries as the garden of Eden" (page 10). 

WHAT???

I've heard that it could be in Bahrain, or even Saudi Arabia. But Israel itself being the Garden? WHOA! That's especially interesting to me because as Ezekiel 36-37 predicted, the Land has come back to life in recent decades. The very desert is blooming—which is spoken of in Scripture. And later in Ezekiel, it talks about the Millennial Kingdom and how a river will flow out from the Temple Mount, in one direction to the Mediterranean and in the other, to the Dead Sea. It says that the Dead Sea will fill with life. Could Israel really be the setting for the Garden of Eden?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Mysteries of the Messiah: The Firstborn

While we could spend weeks talking about Rabbi Jason Sobel's Mysteries of the Messiah, I'm only going to focus on one more important thing he shared in his latest book: the importance of the firstborn in ancient Middle Eastern culture.

The 10th plague that God sent over Egypt in Exodus was the death of the firstborn son. As horrific as the thought of losing a child is, the significance of this cannot be ignored. Sobel explains that:

• The firstborn son was meant to lead the family after his father's passing, which is one reason he was given a double portion of the inheritance.
• Because of this, the destiny of the family depended on the firstborn son. "Destiny and identity go hand in hand. In fact, identity is destiny. The death of the first born, on a psychological level, represented the death of identity and hence a family's destiny" (pp. 107-108).

Pharaoh's son actually held the title of 'hereditary crown prince', as the firstborn son of a firstborn son, and "was meant to be the priest, protector, and primary leader of the family. The future of the family lay with the firstborn. The 10th plague struck at the heart of the Egyptians emotionally, economically, culturally, and spiritually" (page 112). 

So the enormity of the loss went beyond the depth of grief over each family losing a child (which is beyond what I can imagine). It also meant a loss of identity—and destiny—culturally and nationally.

I also find that interesting because the firstborn isn't always who God chose to lead. "The Lord hose Isaac over Abraham's firstborn, Ishmael; Jacob over his firstborn brother, Esau' Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, to be head of the 12 tribes, and David, the youngest of all his brothers, to be king over Israel" (page 112). So this doesn't matter as much to God as it does to man in this culture. 

But... Jesus, the Messiah, is the firstborn Son (the only begotten Son). Paul calls Him the first fruit of the the dead. 

For the firstborn to symbolize both identity and destiny... that is a powerful picture for those who follow the Messiah.

Mysteries of the Messiah: Aleph, Tav, and 14

Mysteries of the Messiah did not disappoint!

Honestly, there was so much in this book that it was like drinking from a firehose—which I think was the point! Rabbi Sobel was able to clearly explain so many deeper meanings than what non-Hebrew speaking readers will understand from first glance. And this is the stuff I LOVE!

The biggest thing I picked up is the importance of the alphanumeric nature of both Hebrew and Greek. Without knowing these things, there's so much that can be missed!

Here are some of my favorite examples:

• The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, is the letter that represents God's name. And in Hebrew, there is only 1 letter's difference between "exile" and "redemption": the letter aleph (from page 6).
• The letter tav, which in ancient Hebrew was written in the form of a cross, was the sign of the doorposts. "This means that the cross, the symbol of Christianity, was originally a Jewish symbol.....The tav was used as both a sign and seal of ownership" (page 116). But then... it switched to a sign of freedom and redemption. In Ezekiel 4:9, God says, "'Go throughout the city, through the midst of Jerusalem. Make a mark on the foreheads of the people who sign and moan over all the abominations that are committed in it'. The Hebrew word here for 'mark' is tav. The tav was the sign placed upon the foreheads of the faithful—it was the mark of those who were sealed for life. The letter tav is the last letter of the aleph-bet and symbolizes the end. It points to everything in Israel's history culminating in the cross. Also, the Messiah is the Alpha and the Omega—in Hebrew, the Aleph and the Tav—the First and the Last" (page 117).
• The number 14 has so much significance that it is ridiculous. It is the number associated with royalty, because the Hebrew word for 'gold', zahav, adds up to it. There are 14 generations between Abraham and David, from David to the Babylonian exile, and from the Babylonian exile to until the Messiah. Sobel points out that when you say something 3x in Hebrew, it means the maximum amount, "By using 3 sets of 14, Matthew was communicating that the Messiah was the ultimate King of kings and Son of David." Also, one of the 3 wise men brought gold to Jesus. But there's more! (All of this is from pages 180-182):
• 14 is also the number of redemption and salvation. God redeemed Israel from Egypt on the 14th day of the 1st month, which is why it Passover is celebrated on this day.
• In the book of Esther, God saved the Jewish people on the 14th day of the last month.... The Jewish year begins and ends with God redeeming His people on the 14th!
• 14 is written in Hebrew with the letters yud and dalet, which also spell 'hand'. There are 14 bones in the human hand. God delivered His people from bondage by His mighty hand!
• The modern State of Israel was born on May 14, 1948.
• John 1:14 says, "And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us."
• Isaiah 7:14 says, "Behold, the virgin will conceive. When she is giving birth to a son, she will call His name Immanuel [God with us]." Sobel notes that while there were no chapters and verses in the original texts, this is still too incredible to be a coincidence.

That's all for this post on Mysteries of the Messiah... check back next week for 1 more!