M for Moses, N for neanderthals

I was in my mid-30s living in Manhattan when I first learned from a friend (who split his time between New York City and a seaside home in Tel Aviv) that Israelis who believe in a coming Messiah are ridiculed and mocked by the populace.

“(The) few devout Jews who still believe in a future coming of a personal Messiah are labeled as ‘ultra-orthodox’ and are dismissed as being ignorant, pompous, superstitious and unenlightened, by, you guessed it, their own people, i.e., the Jewish Community!” confirms Bible teacher and missionary R. Dawson in his 2005 book, The Apostasy of the Christian Church.

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Joseph Perl, a leader of the Jewish Enlightenment in the early 1800s, once assured, “The truly educated Jews by no means picture the Messiah as a real personality. They see him only as a symbol of ideas of the redemption of Israel and of universal peace which await their realization when Israel, freed from all oppression, will be accepted into the family of nations.”

In the late 1800s, German Rationalism produced the Graf-Wellhausen theory that concluded Moses was a dumb caveman who didn’t even know how to write.

The doctrine claimed the Pentateuch was really written by four different men much later than Moses, and gave them the impersonal titles of J, E, P and D.

J stood for the Jehovah passages, P for the Levitical priesthood passages, E for where it talks about Christ as Elohim and D for the Deuteronomic passages.

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Psalm 91 starts with, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
[2] I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.”

“If you go back and read Deuteronomy 32 and 33, and then read this psalm, as well as the one before it, you’ll see phrase and concept after phrase and concept in Deuteronomy 32 and 33 that show up again in Psalm 90 and 91, indicating Moses wrote the two of them,” says Jordan.

“By the way, Deuteronomy 32 and 33 is, in the writings of Moses, sort of like what Romans 6 is in the writings of Paul. Romans 6 is a key passage in the Christian life and, well, Deuteronomy 32 and 33 could be called the national anthem of the nation Israel.

“So, just like the burning bush is the real symbol of the nation Israel (instead of the pagan Star of David, which is really the evil Star of Moloch in Amos 5), if the nation Israel wanted a Bible national anthem, it would be the song Moses sings in Deuteronomy 32 and 33 because that song rehearses the whole of their history.

"It gives their history prophetically all the way from the time of Moses right to the time of Christ—the first coming, the tribulation and the Second Coming.

“When you look at Psalm 90 and 91, much of the stuff drawn from those passages gives the reader the immediate understanding that, ‘Hey, these psalms have to do with Israel in the last days’; not just Israel in David’s day, or Moses’ day, as in this case, but Israel in the purpose and plan of God ultimately.”

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In Exodus 17:14, “the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.”

Jordan explains, “God’s saying, ‘Mo, I want you to write a book.’ That’s why we are ‘people of a book.’ If you take the book away, you take us away. Notice it’s God’s idea, not Moses’.

“The church I was raised in laughed and said Moses couldn’t write: ‘Dontchaknow, back in those days they were all demented.’ You know, carry around a club on their shoulders. Living in caves. You know, meet some gal on the way, bop her on the head and drag her home and make her cook for ya.

“You ever read Acts 7 when Stephen talked about Moses and said he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians? I mean, have you ever looked at the Egyptians? The culture he lived in? He could get up in the morning and look out at the Pyramids!

“Well, mercy, people today can’t even figure out how they built them! Come to Chicago and go to the Field Museum of natural history and my favorite exhibit there is down in the basement in the Egyptian room. It’s full of mummies and they’ve got this little woman in a little sarcophagus and they’ve got some of the remnants peeled back and this is 3,000 B.C. and she looks pretty good. A little leathery, but her features are there. She’s all there.

“I’ve been involved with the exhuming of bodies in the past and you know what, with all the modern techniques of embalming, you don’t look so good after 10 years. Honest, you don’t! Give yourself 30 years in that hermetically sealed environment in the coffin and you’ll look even worse. You know why? The bacteria that produces decomposition works in that hermetically sealed environment.

“God’s Word, as it was written down, was not written down to be a family history. It wasn’t a journal or a diary. It wasn’t national archives; it was God telling Moses and others to write His Word!

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“Exodus 24 says, ‘And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel . . .  And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.’

“By the way, they put it in a book. I know what experts say: ‘Well, books weren’t invented back then!’ What are you talking about?! Think about who invented books! They say, ‘Well, they had to roll a scroll,’ like dealing with toilet paper or something.

“Well, how would you study something rolled out like that? You couldn’t study it. How could you do what we’re doing right now and cross-reference that?  You know who invented books? People who studied because that’s why you have a book like that.

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“Exodus 34:27-28 says, ‘And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
[28] And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.’

“Notice he writes the words on a table. This is where Moses is REPRODUCING. Deuteronomy 31:24  says, ‘And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished.’

“Here Moses is finishing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy. He’s writing the words.

Notice it says ‘writing the words of this law in a book.’ A book. There’s a verse in Joshua that talks about THE book. One book! But it’s really got five parts in it. It’s one book because it’s got one author, but it’s got a bunch of sections.”

(new article tomorrow)