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[Note: This is one of a series listed under the heading: Wordie Post." It was originally posted on the Word Press blog entitled "Our Daily Bread," found at rtippett97@wordpress.com. The changes at Word Press are similar to those on Twitter and Facebook, where I was posting to an empty space. That was because I began and maintained that blog as one of their free offerings. When their force to change to a paid blog website did not move me, they cancelled their "Reader," so posting on Word Press has become like a caged animal at the zoo, where only workers occasionally toss the animals a bite to eat. Word Press [et al] is like what I imagine life was like in the satellite countries of the Soviet Union: meager, bleak, spiritless. So, I am transferring those forty articles here.]
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In Mark 7 we read about some Pharisees and scribes telling Jesus his disciples were not following the laws, because they ate grains without washing their hands. In verses six and seven, Jesus “said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
That quote comes from Isaiah 29:13, which says: “The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.” [NRSV]
In the two, it is clear there are some differences of translation. One can expect Jesus spoke Aramaic (if not Hebrew) to the Pharisees and scribes, which was heard by the disciple Peter in that native language. Peter, in turn, told his divine remembrances to the Apostle Mark, who was led by Yahweh to write the Greek text from which Mark 7 comes. Since Mark, Peter, and Jesus were all led by Yahweh’s Mind [I call it the ‘Christ Mind’], one can see how Isaiah was likewise divinely led. Therefore he wrote, “way·yō·mer ’ă·ḏō·nāy,” which translates as “and said adonay,” where “adonay” must be understood to mean a soul animating a body of flesh that has become married to Yahweh, thus the voice of Yahweh as one of His “adonay” [Hebrew meaning “lords,” in the plural].
The key words in Hebrew that I want to address now are written: “יִרְאָתָם אֹתִי, מִצְוַת אֲנָשִׁים מְלֻמָּדָה,” which transliterates as, “yir·’ā·ṯām ’ō·ṯî , miṣ·waṯ ’ă·nā·šîm mə·lum·mā·ḏāh.” The NRSV translation of this says, “and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.” An alternate translation of the same Hebrew words can be: “their fear towards me , by the commandment of men taught.” Thus, Yahweh spoke through His Son Jesus, quoting Himself speaking through Isaiah, saying, “Vainly now they worship me , Teaching instructions of religious precepts ill-advised of men.” [From the Greek written: “Matēn de sebontai me , Didaskontes didaskalias entalmata anthrōpōn.”]
All of this must be seen as the voice of Yahweh speaking through a human being whose soul has married Yahweh, so that soul has been filled with Yahweh’s Spirit and is then the hand of God extended into the worldly plane. If one does not believe that, fully, then one is a human being much like the Pharisees and scribes to whom Jesus spoke, or a human being much like the rulers of a collapsing Jerusalem [the remnant left of Judah’s kingdom] to whom Isaiah spoke. Certainly, deductions in intellectual acumen can be made for theologians and rulers in these modern times, when most human beings are spiritually dumb as stumps.
The Judaic system of religion was the remnant of the system of religion that cried a trail of tears all the way from Jerusalem to Babylon, and back, because their concepts of what Scripture means were so far off base that Yahweh allowed them to ruin themselves. In an effort to try and save their sorry asses from crying their eyeballs out, He sent Isaiah [and others also filled with the Spirit of Yahweh, like Isaiah] to tell them, “You have it all wrong. The only way to save your face is to lower it in submission to the One God, the one you claim to worship, but then do nothing more than give Him lip service.”
Jesus tried to keep the Jews from losing the scent on the land they claimed to be their property, even though they broke every vow they had taken. Still, they would gladly sell what was left of their future souls to anyone willing to loan them a few tanks and make it easy for them to win a false war against poor Bedouins. Of course, they would pay dearly if the deal included a false deed for the land, so they could call it home again. Of course, the Romans got that ball rolling again when they tired of the Jews and destroyed the temple they put so much money into. Then, all the Jews got kicked off the land and made slaves to the world. [Until WWII ended and the British fulfilled their wish; and, the United Nations then rubber stamped it as okie dokie.]
Christianity was built on the souls of human beings who had married Yahweh. It was initially built from Jews who all became Jesus reborn, after the soul of Jesus was resurrected within their souls [call that Eudaimonia]. To be Jesus [the name means “Yah[weh] Saves”] reborn, one’s soul has to be married to Yahweh. Marriage means making babies, so the Husband penetrates the wifey [all souls in flesh are feminine essence, as souls have no gender alone, as being eternal brings no need or capability to reproduce] and makes baby Jesus become alive in the flesh [again, over and over]. Christianity spread like wildfire when Saints walked the face of the earth in great numbers. But then, the Roman emperor clamped down on Saints, squeezing the eternal life out of Yahweh’s Spirit in human forms; so, now they have rainbow flags hanging outside churches, just to let everyone know: “Welcome to where we are gladly teachers of human precepts as doctrines.”
… and the moral of the story still leads to that trail of tears. How many prophets does it take to get a religion to come to Jesus?