Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The Afikomen
Jewish tradition, from what I’ve been told, includes a little game played by the children at the Passover celebration. There are three flatbreads in a layered pillow (compartments) and the middle one, the afikomen, is removed and hidden for the young ones to find. When it is found, it is taken, broken, and eaten by every person at the Seder, Passover meal. Messianic Jews teach this broken wafer without yeast to be symbolic of the Christ—the One of the Holy Trinity which was parted from the One and only triune God. The separation is not like three people going their separate ways. I feel certain it was more akin to a Siamese twins surgical separation, atleast experience-wise. But okay, think divorce or death. The suffering was excruciating for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for they are not three individuals in any sense we can understand. They are ONE. “I and the Father are One,” Jesus stated. (John 10:30) If you can grasp that, it is no big deal to add a third person: “…but if I go, I will send [the Counselor] to you.” ~Jesus (John 16:7)
This was no ordinary death, even apart from the torturous cross. Someone recently asked me if Jesus had free will or if He was on auto-pilot in His own will to obey. Was there true struggle or was He so sold out, going to the Cross was second nature? I believe as Mrs. Schaeffer does, that there was real pain in the decision and the choice was truly crushing because of 1) the humanity intertwined with Jesus’ Being, and at the same time, 2) the interconnectedness of God’s three manifestations. A question remains in my mind. How is it that God the Father and Holy Spirit did not die along with Jesus in a sort of symbiotic way? Yet if God died, what was sustaining Life on earth? In fact, I don’t believe God the Father stopped existing, nor Jesus, the Son. They were separated due to Christ’s spiritual death alone and Christ died because of the separation. Who can understand it? But I digress.
This was no ordinary death, even apart from the torturous cross. Someone recently asked me if Jesus had free will or if He was on auto-pilot in His own will to obey. Was there true struggle or was He so sold out, going to the Cross was second nature? I believe as Mrs. Schaeffer does, that there was real pain in the decision and the choice was truly crushing because of 1) the humanity intertwined with Jesus’ Being, and at the same time, 2) the interconnectedness of God’s three manifestations. A question remains in my mind. How is it that God the Father and Holy Spirit did not die along with Jesus in a sort of symbiotic way? Yet if God died, what was sustaining Life on earth? In fact, I don’t believe God the Father stopped existing, nor Jesus, the Son. They were separated due to Christ’s spiritual death alone and Christ died because of the separation. Who can understand it? But I digress.
I have a scene etched in my mind from The Passion where Satan tells Jesus He can’t take on ALL the transgressions from all people in all of time. Satan is sure it can’t be done. Though trying to trip up the Son of God, it brings clarity to the feat of Christ—from a spiritual perspective, it is tantamount. We only see the blood and gore. What was REALLY going on when Jesus suffered and died? Furthermore, to take the question to a whole new level, did Jesus KNOW what to expect in terms of spiritual consequences to His obedience? I believe He did. He could see the unspeakable ugliness, the blackest of horrors, the darkest of places, all cruelty, betrayal, selfishness and oppression pouring down painfully onto His own soul, body and mind, drowning His own spirit unto death. Words fail here but think on your own deep hurts, betrayals, times of loneliness, and magnify them by all of human experience, include whatever significant time we have left and there you have it.
And so Jesus is asking His Father “Isn’t there any other way?” I have asked the question myself. My son has asked it of me. Surely the all-powerful God of the universe COULD HAVE done it SOME OTHER WAY! To prove to a doubting world that THERE WAS NOT ANY OTHER WAY, God brought His beloved Son into the equation saying, “Look! If there were, don’t you think I would have done it?!” He gave us His Son because this act was something we could grasp. WE have sons, or at the very least a soft spot for children. It is a love like no other. Our hearts bleed when our sons and daughters go off to war. We pray, we cry, we ache for their mothers and fathers. God knew that even in our hideously feeble condition, most anyone feels the irreplaceable value of the young.
Do you see our personal God? He created a personal universe for personal relationship! It is awesome! As it is, we are broken because of sin, selfish desire: Our relationship with the Creator God, our interpersonal relationships, our separation from nature, and the ever increasing evidence for our harsh, isolated estrangement from ourselves. Who isn’t in counseling these days? Um, the rest of us who need it! Ultimately our longing for relationship with God, and no less with each other, is only satisfied at the Cross.
“The world has been prepared [to understand] as the years of ‘unfolding’ took place, with a continuity which showed that IT HAD to be the death of a lamb, and that there was NO OTHER LAMB sufficient to care for that need, except the Lamb of God.” (CIJ; p 149)
If that sounds ludicrous, you need to start back at Genesis. Edith Schaeffer explains the ‘unfolding’ in her 224 page book. You can’t start reading at page 149 and expect to get it! God’s history lesson is layered according to what the collective knowledge could understand. He has gradually revealed Himself, His plans for us, His desire to love us and be love by us. He is truly a good God, ever-faithful and true.
The Messiah: Betrayed: Silent: Alone. This is what we can see…the visible history. What we cannot see is the Son’s separation from the Father as a result of self-driven humanity’s refusal to turn again to God, to life surrendered to His good, perfect and pleasing will. We must accept the mystery of why God simply cannot bear the presence of sin.
“But your iniquities have separated you from you God; your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear.” ~Isaiah 59:2
It is unimaginable what this was like for the Father and His Son. The spiritual realm, unseen history, is intriguing but not to be grasped by human minds.
Oh, BTW, afikomen is actually a Greek word, meaning I came. (Howard/Rosenthal; The Feasts of the Lord; p 61)
And so Jesus is asking His Father “Isn’t there any other way?” I have asked the question myself. My son has asked it of me. Surely the all-powerful God of the universe COULD HAVE done it SOME OTHER WAY! To prove to a doubting world that THERE WAS NOT ANY OTHER WAY, God brought His beloved Son into the equation saying, “Look! If there were, don’t you think I would have done it?!” He gave us His Son because this act was something we could grasp. WE have sons, or at the very least a soft spot for children. It is a love like no other. Our hearts bleed when our sons and daughters go off to war. We pray, we cry, we ache for their mothers and fathers. God knew that even in our hideously feeble condition, most anyone feels the irreplaceable value of the young.
Do you see our personal God? He created a personal universe for personal relationship! It is awesome! As it is, we are broken because of sin, selfish desire: Our relationship with the Creator God, our interpersonal relationships, our separation from nature, and the ever increasing evidence for our harsh, isolated estrangement from ourselves. Who isn’t in counseling these days? Um, the rest of us who need it! Ultimately our longing for relationship with God, and no less with each other, is only satisfied at the Cross.
“The world has been prepared [to understand] as the years of ‘unfolding’ took place, with a continuity which showed that IT HAD to be the death of a lamb, and that there was NO OTHER LAMB sufficient to care for that need, except the Lamb of God.” (CIJ; p 149)
If that sounds ludicrous, you need to start back at Genesis. Edith Schaeffer explains the ‘unfolding’ in her 224 page book. You can’t start reading at page 149 and expect to get it! God’s history lesson is layered according to what the collective knowledge could understand. He has gradually revealed Himself, His plans for us, His desire to love us and be love by us. He is truly a good God, ever-faithful and true.
The Messiah: Betrayed: Silent: Alone. This is what we can see…the visible history. What we cannot see is the Son’s separation from the Father as a result of self-driven humanity’s refusal to turn again to God, to life surrendered to His good, perfect and pleasing will. We must accept the mystery of why God simply cannot bear the presence of sin.
“But your iniquities have separated you from you God; your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear.” ~Isaiah 59:2
It is unimaginable what this was like for the Father and His Son. The spiritual realm, unseen history, is intriguing but not to be grasped by human minds.
Oh, BTW, afikomen is actually a Greek word, meaning I came. (Howard/Rosenthal; The Feasts of the Lord; p 61)
Comments:
<< Home
"Messianic Jews teach this broken wafer without yeast to be symbolic of the Christ—the One of the Holy Trinity which was parted from the One and only triune God."
I have to deviate on this one. The other two didn't represented 2/3 of the trinity. They were actually the 2/3 of the three main version of Judaism that took up presence by the time of Yeshua's ascent. They were Perushim/Pharisaic and the Tzaddukim/Sadduces. The AFIKOMEN stood for MESSIANIC JUDAISM/NAZARENE FAITH.
Think, the Jewish components and leadership of the early congregations suddenly vanished in less than a hundred years. for the next 2,000 years or so it was the gentiles that took up their own version of the faith. question is, is this faith the real one? If it is, then why does the Afikomen have to "re-appear" again?
They started to do so around the late 1800's. This is the main reason for the NAZI Holocaust: the attempted decapitation of the Messianic Jewish Faith. The 2nd WW was just a cover for this satanic operation.
note the pattern:
Messianic Jewish faith reborn and re-germination of the Faith of the Remnant > the ingathering/mobilization of the 144,000 and the appearance of the two WITNESSESS, one for the pre-flood age and one for the House of Israel and her Covenant > Final confrontation > Israel's calling up their own King/Rescuer (the actual RAPTURE)
I have to deviate on this one. The other two didn't represented 2/3 of the trinity. They were actually the 2/3 of the three main version of Judaism that took up presence by the time of Yeshua's ascent. They were Perushim/Pharisaic and the Tzaddukim/Sadduces. The AFIKOMEN stood for MESSIANIC JUDAISM/NAZARENE FAITH.
Think, the Jewish components and leadership of the early congregations suddenly vanished in less than a hundred years. for the next 2,000 years or so it was the gentiles that took up their own version of the faith. question is, is this faith the real one? If it is, then why does the Afikomen have to "re-appear" again?
They started to do so around the late 1800's. This is the main reason for the NAZI Holocaust: the attempted decapitation of the Messianic Jewish Faith. The 2nd WW was just a cover for this satanic operation.
note the pattern:
Messianic Jewish faith reborn and re-germination of the Faith of the Remnant > the ingathering/mobilization of the 144,000 and the appearance of the two WITNESSESS, one for the pre-flood age and one for the House of Israel and her Covenant > Final confrontation > Israel's calling up their own King/Rescuer (the actual RAPTURE)
# posted by 
: 3:15 PM
: 3:15 PM
the temple design represents the triune God, the three are one. The Tanahk says that God's own arm will bring salvation. constantine formed the gentile church, and adopted other formations into the church that were not scriptural.
Post a Comment
# posted by : 1:39 PM
: 1:39 PM << Home
