Do Jewish texts and the book of Enoch explain Revelation? PART 2

Biblically Speaking

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I'll read the Revelation text. It's Revelation 1 verse 4. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne.

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God's got seven spirits? Whoa. Yeah. Why are we in Asia? I have so many questions. Yeah, Asia because that's where John's churches were at.

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Oh, okay. Yeah. How was I supposed to know that? It's a province of the Roman Empire. Today, when we say

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Asia, we're talking about a huge multi -continent region, right? But in the Roman Empire, the only thing that was

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Asia was the western third of Turkey. How was I supposed... Was this explained somewhere that I missed?

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Not in the New Testament. It was just an ubiquitous fact. Everybody knew that was Asia, so nobody explains it.

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Everyone as in the people that lived at that time or people that I went to church with that never told me? They might not have known.

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It's possible. But when I teach like intro to the New Testament world, I explain the

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Roman province system and where Asia is boundary in the first century, and it changes into the second century.

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And because the boundary of Asia keeps moving east, it isn't long until the western world starts referring to anything east as Asia.

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Okay. It's a slippery boundary. Anyway, in Paul's day, John's day,

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Asia is a region that has seven principal cities. Okay. So there in Asia, grace to you, peace from him who is and was and is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne.

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Like the divine council? Is that what we're talking about now? This kind of has a lot of people thinking the same as Michael Heiser on the divine council idea.

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Possibly it refers to that, but nowhere else are you going to find seven spirits of God numbered like this where there's seven.

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And so it's like Jesus is mentioned next in verse four. I didn't have that part down because I wasn't focused on it.

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But a lot of people say, well, that's the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, that's Trinity. But wait a minute, that's not the

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Holy Spirit. That's seven spirits. So people have tried to understand what that means.

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Some people go to a place in Isaiah where there's seven traits of the spirit of God mentioned.

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It doesn't work. There's a lot of linguistic reasons why that doesn't count as seven spirits.

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At best, it counts as three, if you're really paying attention to grammar there in Isaiah very strongly.

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I didn't put that verse in here, but it's a common misinterpretation. There are literatures in Jewish literature that names seven spirits of God, and they're not in the canons.

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Michael and Gabriel are two of them. They're angels, archangels, high angels that are in charge of a lot of things in the heavenly places.

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I'm looking at the other verses you provided, and I see there's Hebrews, there's more revelations, and then we talk about the book of Jubilees and Enoch.

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Would you say the seven spirits, it's an identified seven spirits that include

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Michael and Gabriel, or is seven the focus, that seven, that number of completion? I think John is purposefully using seven a lot in this book.

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I mean, we've got seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bolts of brass. All over the place. Everywhere there's seven, seven, seven.

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The reason he's doing this is when Joshua and the Israeli army comes to Jericho, what are they told to do?

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Blow on the horn seven times. Day one, day two, do it again. Day three, do it again. Day four, do it again.

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On the seventh day, blow them, they blow it one time a day for the first, they blow it seven times on the seventh day.

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So there's all kinds of sevens, and what happens, the wall falls in. And the key is that when you start repeating the sevens, that's when

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God acts, and humanity doesn't act. It's God that does the action. So in the book of Revelation, when you get to the end of the seven wraths, it is

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God that does the action, not humankind. And like in Jericho, they don't attack the city wall.

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They don't create a military assault. No, they march around the city blowing horns. And then on the seventh day, they do it seven times, walls fall in.

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So it's like an act of God that takes place, and it's destructive for those who have become enemies of God in some way or other.

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But it's not man's actions, and that's the thing that we sometimes don't catch. But there's a reason for the repeated sevens, and it's related to the seven nests on Israel.

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And I think this is more important than the fact that it's Jericho or that it's a battle. It's Israel's first foot into the promised land.

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So it's like here, it's the believer's first step towards heaven in Revelation. So it's like getting there, there's going to be some stuff that takes place.

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But then once it takes place, the Passover, and people go into heaven. So it's an interesting parallel to Joshua in that sense, with the sevens and then

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God acting, and then the pathways over. So how should we interpret these seven spirits then?

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Yeah, I tend to think these are the seven archangels. That's what

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I think they are. And that's why my next passage is here, Hebrews 1, 13 and 14.

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And so this one's in the canon. To which of his angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?

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Are they not all ministering spirits? So here's where we see a connection between angel in one verse being called a spirit in the next verse.

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Okay. So this is a linguistic connection that, okay, a spirit could be an angel. It doesn't have to be the

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Holy Spirit. Because that's where it trips up a lot of people. They read seven spirits and say, wait a minute, the

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Holy Spirit is one, not seven. It's not about the Holy Spirit here. It's about the seven archangels of heaven.

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Now, Revelation 15 also mentions the seven angels, just to say this isn't only once that John's going to talk about seven spirits, we've got seven angels coming later.

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So I saw another sign in heaven, great, marvelous, seven angels who had the seven plagues who are the last, because in them, the wrath of God is finished.

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So earlier he said he has seven spirits, later in the book, he has seven angels.

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I don't think we need to disconnect those two automatically. I think they can be the same entity.

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The book of Jubilees, on the first day he created the heavens, which were above and the earth and the waters, and all the spirits which served before him.

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Now we see that in another book, it's the spirits that are serving him, who serves God, it's the angels that serve

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God in the canonical text. And then it says the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification.

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So we get two categories of angels that are serving him. So that verifies that these spirits were angels that served

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God. Yes, and at least we don't have to wonder what John's referring to.

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Jewish literature leading up to John already calls them spirits or angels as the need arises.

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Because here's the thing that actually keeps tripping us up. We think of an angel as a specific class of being, as a concrete reality that's heavenly, and that's it.

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The word angel is about as generic of a word in the Hebrew language as,

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I don't know, my English word for pencil. That's not a good example.

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Maybe servant. It's about that generic. Well, what kind of servant?

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You know, you don't know. Like a worker. Yeah. Does this person fix cars, build houses?

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What do they do? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't know just from the word. And this same word can refer to a human being on earth too.

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I didn't know that. Yeah, because it can mean a messenger. When the king sends an ambassador to another kingdom, that person's called the same noun.

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Or if a king sends a messenger out to the generals in the battlefield, it's called the same noun.

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So it's a courier of the king. So angels are couriers of God between heaven and earth.

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But that word is very generic. It doesn't describe them. So this idea that they're called a spirit is actually narrowing it down as non -human.

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Yeah, it's more more specified if we say it's a spirit from heaven. Because messenger, whose messenger, becomes the next question.

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It doesn't automatically tell us who sent them. You're saying the Hebrew word, when they reference angel, that could be,

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I sent my angel out to deliver a message to my neighbor, essentially. And then, like,

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I saw an angel from God. It's the same word being used. So when they add in that word spirit, it now says, oh, the non -human type of angel.

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Right. Domino's Pizza sends an angel with your pizza to your door. Nobody wants to think that one's equivalent, but it's close enough.

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The thing is, is you don't know what the word means. And there's actually debated texts where the word angel shows up in our

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English Bibles. And we've got questions all over the place. I don't think that's an angel there. I think that's a human messenger.

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What? Yeah, well, I think it's a human messenger. Well, it makes you think. I mean, like, when the angel showed up to Lot and his family, they were in a physical form.

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He recognized them. He postulated himself before them. So, I mean, is there a blurry line there of, like, these were spirit angels that came down to earth and embodied themselves?

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I think so there because of the prostration act. He knew they were from a very high person.

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Got it. Because that's the mistake that a lot of people in texts make, is they start prostrating before the angel.

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And the angel says, no, don't do that to me. I'm just the messenger. Got it. Okay. And so, you know, that kind of fear, they know where this angel came from.

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So it's like, oh, you're one of those guys. You're not one of our type. Is it also fair to say, you know, angel could be human, could be spirit.

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Is it fair to say that an angel in spirit could become human? Or are they two separate things? Don't know.

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Because we've got some weird texts in Genesis that I don't think are adequately explained. You know, that whole sons of God and daughters of men thing in Genesis 6.

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Enoch tends to take us there in Enoch's understanding. The book of Enoch takes us to a possibility that these beings from heaven interfered with humans and created offspring.

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I don't know. I don't know what I think about that piece just yet. There is an interesting passage in the

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New Testament where it says that you should be good to strangers and be hospitable to them, because you never know, you may be ministering to an angel.

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But couldn't that just be like a messenger? It could be. But that one there in that context is kind of iffy enough that it makes me wonder if that's a possibility.

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But I don't know. I really don't know. There's some debated texts with this word in it.

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And for me in the Hebrew Bible, at least, if I see messenger of the Lord, which came from heaven,

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I'm thinking, oh, it's one of those messengers. It's not one of these earthly ones.

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But if I see that same thing, say, messenger of David, David sent the messenger.

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That's not a divine courier. That's an earthly courier. That's a human. But it's tricky.

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And here in Jewish literature, we can see a dovetailing between calling these the angel word and calling them spirit beings.

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It meshes. So for John to use that phrase in one passage saying the seven spirits and the next place he says the seven angels,

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I think we can see that John's pattern is Jewish, not late church doctrine kind of language.

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And that also goes back to his name for God, the one who is and was and is coming.

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That thing there is God's reference to God in the book of Revelation.

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It's also pretty unique to the canon, but it's around very close language in Daniel, and it's also around in some of the other apocalyptic literature.

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And what it means is the present, the past, and the future. The language trips us up a little bit because the

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Greek word for coming is actually the name for the future tense. So we don't know that necessarily when we read coming in English, that it's talking about the future.

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We think it means arriving, the one coming soon. Arrival is what we often misread into there, but he's talking about present, past, and future.

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Wait, how are we supposed to interpret coming then? Future. Future tense. Just this being is always been, always will be, past, present, and future.

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Like is existing in the future, not will one day be in the present. Right. It's not this being will someday visit.

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That's not what it's saying there. What I've seen happen sometimes because it says the one who is coming, a lot of people say that's

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Jesus because he's coming again someday. But that we use as the word arrival.

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He's arriving someday. And we've already misunderstood what the word coming is from in this passage.

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So when we, so we, I mean, would it be fair to say like Jesus is coming because he's going to come again.

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Whereas like God is always in the future. He won't, he's not arriving. He's just like, it would always be that distinction between Jesus and God.

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It's a safe thing to say, but it causes people to misread this as being about Jesus instead of being about God.

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Oh, I see. I see. I see. Okay. It's because they misunderstood what coming meant here in John's description of this being.

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Grace to you and peace from him who is, and was, and is to come is talking about God, not Jesus. And the seven spirits who are before his throne, not

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Jesus, God. Got it. Right. Right. Exactly. But it's that coming phrase in our English Bibles that takes people's mind from here and turns it here and they're already confused.

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And they make it something that it's not. Yeah. I see. Exactly. All right. So in, in Enoch, we've got the ancient of days, that's

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Enoch's favorite phrase to talk about. God is either the origin of days or the, the ancient of days, or in sometimes the head of days.

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Okay. And we also see head of days in revelation and other places. So his head is like white wool and with another whose countenance resembled that of a man.

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Then I inquired of one of the angels who went with me and showed me every secret thing concerning this son of man.

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So we get a son of man phrase. We'll say more about that a little bit later, who he was and whence he was and why he accompanied the ancient of days.

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Why is that one dude that looks like a human accompanying the ancient of days and goes everywhere he goes?

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Why are they together? It's like, that's, that's what he's concerned about. Has to be Jesus. Has to be

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Jesus. Well, that's, that's what John is going to conclude. Okay. Enoch doesn't name him.

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Does Enoch know about Jesus? That's the thing that keeps me interested in Enoch.

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Enoch's 300 years before there's a Jesus. Maybe he thinks it's Moses? I don't know who he thinks it is because the real

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Enoch lived before Moses. He doesn't know about Moses. So he just sees somebody that looks human -like.

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And then of course, if it's the people from the third century dreaming dreams, which I think is a possibility, they know about Moses.

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They know about Elijah. They know that Elijah went up on a chariot and didn't die.

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So he had an experience like Enoch. Maybe they think he's Elijah, but I don't know.

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They don't say who they think he is. But this son of man phrase is, is fascinating because it shows up used in a similar way in Daniel, Enoch, and Revelation, the same list of three words, son of man.

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Matthew uses it too in Matthew's gospel. And so it seems like the culture of the day knows what it is.

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And they're using this phrase as, oh, you're the son of man. Like it's, they recognize him because he's called that.

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Unless you're familiar with the text that used this label, because Isaiah doesn't use it.

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Others don't use it. So, you know, unless you're reading Jewish literature that uses the phrase, you don't know what it means.

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And it's insignificant to you. In Jewish literature, son of man just meant son of a

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King. So it's different if you're reading Ezekiel, because he gets called a son of man. God says, you are only a son of man.

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You are only mortal is all he's saying. Got it. So this idea, son of man is someone born from Adam's seed at any point in time, in any point in history.

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Okay. So Enoch is saying there's a human here. What's going on? There's a human here. Yeah. He's saying there's a human here.

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Daniel uses this phrase to refer to a special human in the heavenly place. Enoch does the same thing.

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John does the same thing, but not Ezekiel. Ezekiel only refers to himself with that label.

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So this phrase is often related to some kind of heavenly priest. Nice transition.

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Yeah. So it's related to that. But the last phrase in the Enoch passage that I want to touch on is that it's the

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Lord of spirits that chose him. And again, we got plural spirits.

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Right. Like the Lord, the one that rules over all of those spiritual angels. All of those seven spirits.

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I think it's full of talking about seven spirits. He never wants to mention the Holy Spirit, but he talks about seven spirits, seven spirits.

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And there's another passage where he names them. He gives them all names. And there's Michael, there's Gabriel and five others.

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That's insane. These are the ones that are understood in Jewish literature to be the archangels, the highest of the angels in heaven.

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So Enoch is describing what John is seeing as well. They're seeing the same thing.

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They're on the same Zoom call. Yeah. And this is the thing about dreams and visions.

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If 10 random people in 600 years time spread ate a bad spaghetti sauce and fell asleep and had a wild dream, their dreams would not be similar.

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Right. Especially when you've got somebody who grew up in a Judean culture who knows

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Hebrew, having dreamed someone else who grows up in an Aramaic culture, far, far away from Judah.

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They also have some strange dreams. Some other people growing up in an

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Aramaic Greek oriented Judea, they have different dreams. And then somebody who's in Ephesus in a

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Greek speaking world, who is Jewish, has some dreams and these dreams dovetail. So it would be,

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I think like a more modern version of what you just said is like Baroque Enoch and John.

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Let's say one lived in ancient Egypt, one lived in 2024, and one lived in like early ancient

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Near East time all had the same dream. Yeah. If you've got people with different languages, different cultures, different awarenesses having the same dream, and it isn't identical.

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I don't want to say their dreams are identical, but they are somewhat consecutive. They're talking about the same seven spirits.

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They're talking about the same heavenly reality. They see a human guy. Whoa. But there's things that are at different points in the progress as they each have their dreams.

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So when you get Daniel's dreams, things are early. When you get

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John's dreams, things are at the end, but Enoch gives you dreams in between.

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So it's like - What early and, I'm sorry, early and at the end of time. What are you saying? At the end of a process in heaven.

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So like what's going on in the throne room in Daniel, what's going on in that same throne room for Enoch, what's going on in that same throne room for John is a little bit different in terms of a progress.

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So let's say you were writing, I don't know, we talked about Harry Potter. Let's use that for an example.

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Daniel is more like Harry Potter book one in heaven, and Enoch is more like book three, and John is more like John's Revelation.

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It's more like book seven. So if you connect the dots between the dreams, you can see a linear progress of something in heaven.

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Great example. Wow. Thank you. So yeah, there's, and this is why you don't want to miss the stuff between Daniel and Revelation.

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Despite how it was sourced. Yeah. And here's another argument that I make for why we should look at it.

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John depends on it. If John depends on it, Jude quotes from it, Paul and Jesus both depend on arguments from Enoch to make a point.

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I think we need to reassess what the earliest Christ followers were doing with Enoch instead of what the second, third generation church was doing with Enoch.

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They didn't know what to do with Enoch. That's my assumption. Would you warn people from taking

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Enoch into today's culture and being like, well, this is how I think it's being, like you really specify there.

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How did the original readers use Enoch? Not how I can use it, not how we should use it today. How did they use it?

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As far as we know, nobody ever formed religious communities to preach sermons from Enoch. It wasn't a religious formation.

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Great distinction. Great distinction. But it was an informative text that was depended on.

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There's a difference. Have you ever heard like pastors will say, I don't know how to preach from that passage.

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You can't preach from it. It's like, it's this, and that's what it is. I can't make a sermon out of it.

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I've never heard that now. Okay. Every once in a while, people often say this about the genealogies in Genesis and somebody begat somebody and they lived this many years and they died and they begat somebody.

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And you just read a list of this. How do you make a sermon out of it? It's, it's unpreachable.

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How do you find a point to preach on? Yeah. Now there's a couple of ways it can be done, but it takes a really skilled person to pull out nuances.

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Anytime the text tells you more than just he was born, he lived and he died part, there's a reason it's telling you that.

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And so you could probably do something with that. But other than that, those are tough to preach from. There's just some places in the

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Bible that's very hard to create sermonic material from that actually helps somebody in the view, but it's still important to read it.

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Well, some of these books like Enoch can be thought of as that. Maybe don't make your sermon on Sunday about it, but from it, but maybe prove your point in revelation from it.

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Use material from these Jewish apocalyptic literatures to say, this is what

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John meant and this is how I know he meant it. It's useful for that. And trying to think how to use some of these texts is challenging.

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There are a lot of Christians and other Jews as well. They have the sense that I need to read this text devotionally.

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If I read this passage, God's going to speak to me something personal from this passage.

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That's okay. There's some texts where that's definitely doable. Don't do it with Enoch. I would say that.

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I wish there was a warning label like that in the Bible of like, this is the text you really investigate.

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It's not going to be through your spirit and heart. The Psalms are great for this.

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Psalm 23, that's been a lot of people's favorite. Psalm 1 is very good in this regard as well.

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Psalm 148, Psalm 119, it's a long one, but take it section by section.

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These are meditative things. They're meant to be said and meditated on and grow from. Okay. That's how they were composed.

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Biblical stories are good to think through, but you need a frame. If you read the story of Tamar alone in isolation, it's not so beneficial, but if you read it next to the

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Torah, the Ten Commandments and what God is telling Moses to do, now go back and read the

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Tamar story and you can say what went wrong, what went right, and what were the results and why those results came out of what went wrong.

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Interesting. That's a really interesting take. Kind of like what you, in our episode about misinterpreted verses, you described

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Jeremiah 29 and 11, which was my confirmation verse. I would say that to myself anytime I felt like I didn't know what was going to happen next, but when you put it in the context of who it was spoken to and why

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God was making that promise to those people, we can't necessarily say, I feel like God is telling me he has a plan and everything will be all right.

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And I had a similar verse that I latched on to from youth, and it was, for I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

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And we talked about that one in that session too. Yep. What does that mean in its context?

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It's different. Once we realize what the context is, then we can better apply that verse.

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Right. It's not that it doesn't apply to you, it just applies to you differently. Yeah. And it's because Paul was the apostle who was sent by God to the

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Gentiles to go turn them into God followers first and Christ followers as well.

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He had a special path that was paved for him. The door was open and he followed that open door.

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And yes, he was accomplishing all things, not separated from Christ, but through Christ which strengthened him.

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And this is the thing that it's a true statement, but if someone else is given a mission by God, God says, go do this.

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He's going to help you do it. That's a better application. Rather than I can get through this really hard med school year, because I can do all things through Christ.

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It's a little different. You know? I can go without sleep six days out of seven and I can do all things because Christ strengthens me.

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If he's got you on a special mission where he needs this mission done and it requires staying up six days a week, he'll help you.

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But if not, no, you need to rest. Yeah. You need to sleep. You need food when appropriate and all that.

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Right. Because once you say, well, I thought Christ was going to strengthen me through my baby's sleep regression and he's not,

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God must not be real. It's like, well, different application. Yeah.

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It's the wrong application and we need a different application on that text. But yes.

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So on this, we mentioned this heavenly high priest, right? It's like, well, first question is, okay,

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I've not read anywhere else where there's a priest doing priestly duties up in heaven. Why does there need to be a priest?

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And you're saying from revelation, this is John out of nowhere pulls a heavenly priest.

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Yeah. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. And that phrase trips up a lot of people, especially

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Christians, because they want to think, oh, that was an average Sunday. The Lord's day is

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Sunday. So it's like that phrase was never used yet for Sunday at this period.

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That phrase is connected to the Hebrew prophets and it was called the special day of the

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Lord when the Lord reveals what he is, what he's about and brings all nations into subjection.

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And this day of the Lord is terrifying to the nations that have opposed him.

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And so all the biblical prophets talked about that great and terrible day of the Lord. So when

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John says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, he's not talking about Sunday. He's talking about a very special day towards or near the end of time when

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God begins to do something. And so that phrase usually messes people up because they don't realize that's a technical phrase.

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I'm sorry, on a timeline, are we saying that John saw the future? Somewhat. And I want to say yes in places, but the other thing

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I always tell students when I'm teaching prophecy, that one of the cultural things that we have kind of, we bring when we, when we think of the word prophet and prophecy is that these guys are supposed to tell us the future.

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Yes. Yes. That's exactly why I had a whole episode on it because that's what I thought. I thought prophecy was like an

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Oracle. Yeah. It's this is coming next year. This is coming 10 years from now.

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What I gleaned from my conversation on prophecy is like a very small percentage is saying this is the future.

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That thing that we like to do as Christians is go into revelation and say, oh my gosh, God's going to come and he'll come down on a cloud and we'll hear the trumpets.

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And then the rapture will take place and then we'll have seven years in antichrist. So that's the prophecy we're waiting to see fulfilled because that's what they said.

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So once that starts happening, we'll know it's the end of times that'll be a clicker in our head. And I think that just, that's not what's going to happen.

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The end of times I've also discussed with other scholars that we are in the end of times.

30:25

This isn't something that'll happen March 3rd, 2033. This is an ongoing state that we're in.

30:32

People use the phrase end of times and end of days, even in the New Testament referring to their own day.

30:39

So if we've been in the end of times and the end of days, we've been in it for 2000 years.

30:45

If we take that statement at full value. But something else I think about with prophecy, sometimes the point like, okay, even if it is future referring, because it can be, especially

30:57

Daniel's long dream of 490 years that are coming before the Messiah and these 490 years are going to unfold this way.

31:05

That was a future vision of the coming Messiah. So he has some highlights of the things along the way leading up to the arrival.

31:14

And if you do 490 years from that degree that Daniel mentions, you'll land on 30

31:19

AD or CE. And that's when Jesus begins ministry.

31:25

And it's like a wow thing when you realize these 490 years actually can add up to something on a timeline and land on it.

31:32

But that's Daniel's dream of 70 sevens of years. So it's 70 times seven years, 490 years from this special edict that is made by this one ruler.

31:45

And we only get this particular edict recorded in Nehemiah as, okay, this edict happened.

31:52

And it's like, if you don't match it to the right edict, you land somewhere where it's impossible to tell what timeframe you're looking at.

32:00

But if you land on that edict properly that's in Nehemiah, then you measure 490 years from that, you'll land right in 30, which is the right decade, if you will, for Jesus's ministry.

32:14

And that's one of the reasons I think different people were looking for a Messiah very vehemently in his day, because they were counting down Daniel's 490 years and they assume it's our lifetime.

32:28

It's right here somewhere. Let's not miss the moment. And so that kind of thinking at least is driving some of the questions that get raised to Jesus.

32:37

And he's not very fast to make these claims. He's trying to start up his ministry in secret, trying to keep on the down and low until he reaches a certain point.

32:48

Then he openly says things. But there were people coming to him, you must be him.

32:54

You must be the one, because we've been waiting. This is the right time and you're saying the right words and doing things that ring a bell here.

33:01

You must be the one. And people were putting it together before Jesus makes any kind of announcement.

33:08

But how do you explain that unless people are counting that thing down and they realize,

33:13

I'm living in the 490th year from that edict. So somebody, maybe not all groups, that's the thing.

33:23

We don't realize there was a plurality of Jewish groups and sects of religious thinkers in the first century, but there were quite a few.

33:32

Some were counting the days down to their day. They're looking for one. Not everybody was. Some people interpreted

33:39

Daniel as completely metaphorical. And then others didn't include it in their canon, like the

33:45

Sadducees. That's not an important book. Torah is important. And so that was the different groups just viewed

33:53

Daniel differently. Daniel was another book that was tough to place because out of all the books that have prophecies in them,

34:01

Daniel is not in the book of the prophets in the Hebrew canon. It was one of the prophets that don't get put in the book of the prophets.

34:08

And it's not clear totally why. Scholars have debated whether Daniel being written in two languages instead of one might be one of the reasons the fact that it has this long 490 year vision that didn't come true in the people's lifetime that were doing the canon.

34:26

Like Ezra lived and died long before that dream was finished. So maybe that's why it ended up in the book of the writings instead of the book of the prophets.

34:36

But it's in the canon, nonetheless, it's just not in the book of the prophets. Interesting.

34:42

And just like Enoch's, not in our Bibles. Right. Generally. It's been hard to make those decisions and be firm about it.

34:49

So that's the Lord's Day thing. It's a word, it means something, it's connected to the prophet's way of saying about this terrible day that's coming.

35:00

Got it. So John's phraseology doesn't resemble Christian formulated theology that comes later.

35:07

His phraseology resembles Hebrew prophecy, the Hebrew prophets of old, and the

35:13

Second Temple Jewish literature that we don't have in our canon. So that's where this phrase is limited.

35:20

All right. So then he says, write what the angel is saying, write what you see, or no, a voice is saying, write what you see into a book, send it to the seven churches, and he lists them.

35:32

And I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw not a person, but seven golden lampstands, a menorah.

35:42

So he hears a voice saying, do this, he turns to look at the voice, he doesn't see a person, he sees a menorah.

35:49

As soon as he sees a menorah, the Jewish mind has to think temple.

35:55

You don't go anywhere else with a menorah. That's where the menorah is. That's the whole thing with the

36:01

Temple and the restoration of the Temple, and even the festivities of Hanukkah is going to have a menorah in it because it was about the lighting of the menorah in the

36:12

Temple. Festival of Lights is one of the phrases that is called, it's mentioned in the Gospel of John.

36:18

Jesus went to the Festival of Lights, and so, but Hanukkah, the name for Hanukkah is called

36:24

Festival of Lights in the Gospel of John. Got it. Anyway, in the middle of the lampstands, or in the middle of the menorah, there's one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and a golden sash around his chest.

36:40

The hair on his head was white like wool, like snow, his eyes were like a flame of fire. John starts to describe this man using the same language that Enoch used to describe the ancient of days on the throne,

36:53

God's depiction. Mm -hmm. I remember the white like wool.

36:58

Yeah, same thing, except this is not the ancient of days on the throne, this is a son of man who's standing by the menorah.

37:06

So he has this depiction that's supposed to resemble God. Okay. And at the same time, he's wearing priestly vestigers, the long robe with the golden sash, and immediately the

37:21

Jewish mind has to think this, that is temple attire, but it's the wrong colors.

37:27

This is not what the priests wear at the temple. They wear similar garments, but they wear a different color to commemorate the 12 tribes.

37:35

This isn't a golden sash. And so the mind has to go, well, what priestly order could this be?

37:43

And it's the Melchizedek order that Abraham gave sacrifices to before there was

37:49

Moses or the Torah or the priests of Aaron and so forth. Because Abraham goes and gives a sacrifice to Melchizedek and the priest in the holy land at that time, this was long before Moses, the

38:05

Torah, or the priestly order that we recognize as the Levitical priests. So John just described this son of man in a temple around the menorah wearing priestly garments, but they don't match

38:18

Israel's priestly garments. There's something different about it. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice was like a roar of many waters.

38:28

In his right hand, he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two -edged sword.

38:34

And there's a lot of Jewish literature that depicts God's mouth as having this sharp two -edged sword.

38:40

So he's putting an image of God on this son of man, which that's weird.

38:48

It's like, why are you using this imagery that says something about God, and you're putting it on this son of man?

38:55

Okay. Now, John has a point to make with all this, but it's subtle, and it's never explicitly stated.

39:03

But he said he thinks it's Jesus. This person is both God and man. So it's never explicitly stated, but the codes just keep coming at you.

39:11

This is a human code. This is a God code. This is a human code. This is a God code. And in his hand, holding the seven stars, that one escapes us too, until we realize that star and angel is another word that can be one word for the other.

39:27

So for example, going all the way back to Genesis 1, when God created the sun, moon, and all their hosts, the word there, we expect it to be star.

39:39

It's not star. It's host, which is a military word. The sun and the moon and all their army.

39:45

They got an army? In Jewish literature, every star out there has an angel that guides it.

39:51

And so when you say a star, you also are referring to the angel that's with it. And so here, the seven stars are like the seven angels.

39:59

But it's hard to catch that code because the idea that a star and an angel would refer to the same thing isn't immediate.

40:08

It isn't something that we would grab right away. But even in the creation account, that odd thing where the word armies is used there, it's a code word that can refer to armies of soldiers, angels in heaven, or stars in the universe.

40:23

And so if you've got that slippery word in there that can mean all three, then this prepares people to kind of be slippery about their choice of the word angel and star.

40:33

That shows up in other places in Revelation 2 when the dragon sweeps his tail through the heavens and knocks one third of the stars out of the heavens.

40:41

And in the very next passage, Michael the angel has to go fight the dragon and his angels, who were his angels?

40:48

It's the stars he swept out of the heaven. So it's the third of the angels is what it's referring to.

40:54

He swept out of heaven. Yeah. So that's tricky, but the word star and angel, sometimes one is the code for the other.

41:04

It's not a word that semantically means both, but it can be a code word for the other. So here he has in his hand seven stars.

41:13

Every depiction of Greek or Roman emperors always had a picture of them on the back of the coin, sitting like this, holding their big stick.

41:24

And then in this hand was Mercury or Hermes, the messenger god, messenger angel.

41:36

But in Jesus's hand, there's seven angels, not one, but seven. And that's supposed to link us back to the seven ministering spirits that are around the throne of God.

41:46

So John again is trying to connect more things to this son of man that are actually

41:51

God's things to keep us kind of thinking, oh wait, he's the son of man, but oh wait, he's got

41:58

God stuck with him. His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him,

42:04

I fell at his feet as though dead, but he laid his right hand on me saying, fear not,

42:10

I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I died and behold, I'm alive evermore.

42:16

So he lived, he died, and now he's alive again. And that's those three steps that's supposed to help finally glue in the reader.

42:23

Oh, he's talking about the one that was alive, crucified, dead, buried, resurrected.

42:29

So there you get those code pieces that are there. And I have the keys of death in Hades.

42:35

That's an old Jewish expression for the being that is supposed to show up at the end of time and release everybody from where they're trapped so that they can go to judgment day.

42:47

So he's got the keys. And so that's, that's not a phrase that you usually find in the canonized literature, but you find it a lot in, like there's some references in the prophets, but in, when in 2nd

43:01

Temple apocalyptic literature, this is often described in story form. So John wants his readers to connect this

43:09

Son of Man figure to that figure at the end of time that releases everybody from wherever they're stuck or trapped to come up for judgment.

43:19

Wow. How the heck were we supposed to get any of that just reading that text? Yeah. Just reading

43:25

John without knowing the stream of literature that it's connected to. And I mean, John's Revelation.

43:32

You can read Gospel of John much easier than you can read Revelation. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

43:38

But yeah, you're right. I mean, there's so many other influences that people were reading while they read Revelation that they could have made these connections.

43:45

We aren't reading those things, so we can't make those connections. We just get further, further confused. Yeah. And Jewish literature prior to John writing

43:55

Revelation and even some afterward, had a concept of a human who was somehow the high priest in heaven, and they called him

44:05

Metatron. I'm sorry, there was Jewish literature that had writing of,

44:11

I'm sorry, can you say that again? They had this idea that somewhere in heaven, there was a human who was a high priest, just like the temple on earth.

44:21

There was a temple in heaven and it had a high priest and that person was a human. And their name for this human was

44:28

Metatron. Okay. And so the texts that I have from Sefer Hechalot and the

44:35

Cairo Geniza fragment that we found, and the Sefer HaKoma, all of these -

44:41

Which are all Jewish texts. Okay. They all refer to the Metatron sitting next to a throne, prince of princes, exalted above gods.

44:53

So that's a weird one. He goes beneath the throne of glory where the great heavenly tabernacle of light brings out the deafening fire and puts it in the ears of the holy creatures so that they don't hear the sound of the utterance that comes from the mouth of the

45:09

Almighty. It's a protection for them. So they got this fire in their ears, they don't get deafened by the

45:16

Almighty's voice. So this is an active figure who goes around doing things that need done in the heavenly temple prior to other things being done.

45:27

He's going around taking care of things. There's also - I want to go back and catch the piece in Testament of Levi.

45:33

Thereupon the angel opened to me the gates of heaven and I saw the holy temple. So there's a temple up in heaven.

45:40

The Most High is on a throne of glory and he said to me, and I'm assuming this is the angel not the

45:46

Most High, Levi, I have given you the blessing of the priesthood until I come and sojourn in the midst of Israel.

45:54

So in other words, here in the Testament of Levi, there's a hint that the

46:00

Levitical priesthood is temporary. And this was 200 years before the

46:05

New Testament. That's a very odd piece of literature to be around when there's no reason to think that there was ever going to be an end.

46:14

Right. You're living in the period of Levi, this Old Testament type of God, religion, hierarchy.

46:23

And someone says, until I come and overthrow it, it's like, well, I thought this was it. What do you mean it's going to change?

46:30

Well, in my understanding of this Testament of Levi, chapter five, verse one to three, is that it's this angel that's showing

46:39

Levi this thing in heaven who says to him, until I come to earth, you guys are going to run the priesthood.

46:45

And so there's this idea of somebody who was involved in the temple in heaven, who was going to somehow replace the

46:56

Levite priesthood. And it's like, to me, that is so bizarre, especially coming from 200 years before there's anything

47:05

New Testament. That's really bizarre to me. And the temple is fully functional when this is written.

47:12

Yeah. Unless it was written right at the time when Antiochus Epiphanes killed all those priests in 164.

47:21

Maybe this was a reaction piece. Well, maybe the priesthood will be killed off and an angel's going to come and do things instead of the priesthood.

47:28

But maybe that's the right time period for it. Maybe. I'm just guessing. But at least the thought that there could become an end to the

47:37

Levitical priesthood is bizarre to me. That it was showed this early.

47:44

That it's that early. It's well before the New Testament. And the other piece that's interesting to me in light of Enoch and John's revelation is that someone from the heavenly temple is going to come down to earth and become that figure in the earthly temple.

48:02

So here in the Testament of Levi, this entity is an angel. Metatron in the

48:08

Sefer HaKalot is not necessarily an angel, but it's very hard to figure out who

48:13

Metatron is. Now, in the Cairo Geniza fragment, I adjure you, Metatron, more beloved and dear than all heavenly beings, faithful servant of the

48:24

God of Israel, the high priest, this is key, the high priest, the chief of the priests, you who possess 70 names, and there's a big infatuation, and maybe that's not the best word, but there's a big tendency in Jewish literature to use sevens and multiples of seven for names and entities and everything else, and whose name is like your master's.

48:48

The idea that Metatron somehow had God's name into his name was a big thing.

48:53

Nearly all the literature on Metatron in Jewish literature says that Metatron's name, somewhere in it bears

49:00

God's name, and that sounds a little bizarre to us, but nearly every angel name we have does.

49:06

So let's say, for example, Gabriel. Gavri is a Hebrew word for great or strong or powerful, and El is one of those suffixes that means

49:18

God. So his name means something like a strong one of God, or my strength is

49:24

God. Something like that is the meaning of Gabriel's name. Mikael is different.

49:30

Salvation is God. So Michael. And so the El names, like even

49:37

Daniel or Nathaniel, those names of our human beings is the same. Nathaniel, my gift is

49:44

God. God is my gift, another way you could think about it. El is

49:49

God and Nathan is the verb to give. So Nathaniel, my gift is

49:55

God. And so this Metatron figure, then the word Metatron doesn't have it, but supposedly he has more than one name and all of his names have

50:04

God in them somewhere. The great prince phrase on Metatron is how we connect this back to the great prince up there on the angel text.

50:13

Well, we didn't know who this angel was. And so this is how you can connect that this angel is somehow

50:20

Metatron. So in the Testament of Levi passage. The Testament of Levi passage that said, oops, thereupon the angel opened to me the gates of heaven, and I saw the holy temple.

50:32

I see, I see, I see. And then in the great prince. Maybe I lost it.

50:38

Oh, you, the blessings of the priesthood until I come and sojourn in the midst of Israel. No, that's not it.

50:44

Or was it the sephir where it says is the prince over all princes? That's it. So, sorry,

50:50

I went one too far up, but yeah, it's the sephir hechelot. References a prince over all princes.

50:57

And then the Cairo Genizah says great prince. Yes. They both say great princes.

51:03

Yeah. They both reference Metatron as a great prince. Right. Then in the sephir hakoma, the angels who are with him come and encircle the throne of glory.

51:12

Metatron says in a great voice, then a thin voice of silence. So I don't know why it goes from one to the other.

51:20

The throne of glory is glistening. Metatron utters at that time in seven voices.

51:25

So Metatron has the ability to speak in multiple voices in 70 voices in his living, pure, honored, holy, awesome, worthy, brave, strong, holy name, giving seven attributes of his name.

51:38

So this, this idea of just throwing sevens around when you're in God's throne room is pretty common.

51:44

But John mentions this voice sounding like the voice of roaring waters. Maybe that's two different ways to describe this voice of seven voices in 70 voices.

51:54

Right. Like a, like a ton of people talking at a crowd roaring. And then we have this

51:59

Dead Sea Scroll document in Q Melchizedek 13. In column two lines nine to 14, it says

52:07

Melchizedek is named high priest and present tense performs salvation and judgment roles in the heavenly temple at the end of days, much like Metatron or like Jesus.

52:20

So within Jewish literature, there was this idea that Melchizedek was that one who was in the heavenly temple doing all these priestly things.

52:30

And it's very interesting because in John's vision, this figure is not wearing the colors of the

52:36

Levitical priesthood, but the colors of a Melchizedek priesthood. And Melchizedek is the God that Abraham almost sacrificed

52:42

Isaac to? Melchizedek is the priest that Abraham does animal sacrifices to and offers tithes after battling the other

52:52

Kings in the big battle, when there was four Kings and five Kings fighting each other. It's not relevant to Isaac's sacrifice.

53:00

Okay. Um, I, I wanted to make sure we had final thoughts on this last point, but I also had a couple people from online wanted to sneak in a couple of questions, but did we wrap up this point?

53:12

I don't want to cut off anything. I'm at the end of that point. My next point was son of man, and we can do that another time.

53:18

Good. Cause I have an idea for bringing you back on. One of the, some of the questions, which you've already answered as far as like numbers go is in revelation two, this is from Dan in revelation two, it mentions that God gives a stone to those who overcome.

53:33

What does this mean? Yes. This is the pass to the marriage supper. And he's writing to people who are having to starve because they can't buy the food that's sacrificed to idols.

53:44

So the reward for avoiding the food that has been offered to idols.

53:49

Okay. You have to starve now because you don't want to mix your diet with things offered to idols.

53:55

I'll reward you with a special fix. It's a, it's a, you had to go through this hard thing in life.

54:01

Now I'll make it up to you later. Okay. Okay. Um, this is from,

54:07

I think a user in Norway or in Scandinavia. What is the definition of end times versus rapture?

54:12

Okay. Thinking about the both conceptually, a rapture is simply usually described as the moment that the dead come back to life and move up.

54:24

It's just a moment, but end of times or the end of days can refer to a series of events that are connected that bring on the last day.

54:34

So it's more involved than just a rapture. Some folks kind of imagine that the rapture takes place during the last days, at the end of the last days, or just before the last days, these are all debates.

54:47

And, uh, in, in, in establishing chronology, this brings, this brings me back to what

54:54

I was saying earlier about prophecy in general. What is the purpose of prophetic literature? Is it so that I can construct a proper model of what will happen?

55:05

Or is it so I can create inside me the right space to prepare for God? Well, those two are completely different.

55:13

Yeah. The purpose of prophecy is to strengthen the struggling, especially the persecuted so that they don't give in and do the thing that they shouldn't do.

55:23

And they hang on to the end in spite of bad stuff, because they're going to get rewarded.

55:28

Wow. Wow. That's to prepare a place within you for when it happens versus foretell an event.

55:34

I think that's a beautiful way to describe prophecy. Okay. Moving on from Denny underscore Exodus.

55:40

What is the significance of the seven letters to the church and which part of these letters are current churches? Which part of these letters are current churches still falling under?

55:48

How can we avoid these pitfalls? It's a good question. The seven letters were written to seven historical congregations that had real situations that were unique from each other.

55:59

And the phrases in these seven letters reflect the individual realities of each congregation.

56:06

So as a set, they teach us primarily, don't mix what's holy with the things that God says no to.

56:16

That's the message that comes over and over through each of the letters, because the Nicolaitans get mentioned.

56:22

That one that's translated Synagogue of Satan, it's probably a bad translation there, but it's a gathering of people who are influencing

56:35

Jews to eat meat that's been offered to idols. That's what's happening there.

56:41

So the congregations that he's writing to are encouraged to hold fast to what they've been taught.

56:48

Don't let the peer pressure that's around them change their view on these things. If this meat's offered to idols, do not eat it, no matter what these other teachers are telling you.

56:58

Interesting event. Because the Jerusalem group in 50 or 51 said these two things, don't have these two things be common to all churches.

57:11

Don't eat meat offered to idols and no sexual immorality. So these two things were to be true for all of them, even

57:18

Gentile or Jewish, it didn't matter. Because Torah observances would be there at the

57:23

Jewish gatherings and the Gentile gatherings. The Torah restrictions weren't for them exactly.

57:32

They could follow them, in some cases they did, if they became Jewish. In other cases, they had their own code, but it was still including these two stipulations.

57:43

And in Roman meat markets, it would be very hard to buy meat for sale that hadn't already been offered to the idol at the end of the meat market.

57:53

So there were whole communities that were non -meat eating, because they couldn't get their hands on meat except at that meat market.

58:01

Now if they knew a hunter who went off in the hills and got something that was kosher, then they could get some meat that way.

58:09

But that would be rare. It wouldn't be very often. Don't mix the true with the untrue with beliefs as well as practices.

58:17

And then secondly, prepare for persecution. It's coming. Just be righteous.

58:23

Don't give in when the persecution comes. Gosh. Well, it's going to take me a while to process all of this.

58:29

So thank you so much for offering such in -depth insights just at a level that is so hard to find.

58:35

So thank you so much. Once we hang up, I'm going to talk to you about some other ways we can continue this conversation. But just for those that want to get connected with you beyond this, how can they find you, talk to you, take one of your courses?

58:46

Okay. So if you want to take any of my courses that I'm doing with Israel Institute of Biblical Studies, you would contact them directly.

58:56

They have a very wide social media presence. They've got Facebook ads. You can find them if you just look up Israel Institute of Biblical Studies.

59:06

Contact somebody. They'll get you situated into a course. If you want to take the Revelation course that we offer, that's a good one to take, or the

59:16

Jewish Understanding of the New Testament. That's another great course. Hebrew Insights to the

59:22

Bible is a good taster course. I call it a taster course. It's a fairly new class. But those are kind of intro classes to Bible sort of thing.

59:31

Then you can take like the Torah class, the Nevi 'im class, or the Ketuvim class, and learn what the

59:37

Torah is about, Moses's books from a Jewish perspective, what is the prophets about from a

59:43

Jewish perspective, and then what are the writings about like Psalms and such from a

59:48

Jewish perspective. Wow. Wow. And I know that you're going to come back on in the next month and we're going to discuss

59:55

Torah living. So I'm so excited for those insights. But it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for this wisdom and guidance.