Hey there,

I had a question while reading through Numbers for our Old Testament class.*  In Numbers 10:29-32, it says:

29. And Moses said to Hobab ben-Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law, “We are setting out for the place of which Jehovah said, ‘I will give it to you.’  Come with us, and we will do good to you, for Jehovah has spoken good concerning Israel.”
30. But he said to him, “I will not go with you, but to my land and to my kindred will I go.”
31. And he said, “I pray you, do not leave us, because you have known our encampment in the wilderness, and you would be as eyes for us.
32. And it shall be that, if you go with us, then whatever good that Jehovah does for us, we will also do for you.”

Then in Numbers 31, Jehovah commanded that all the Midianites be killed.

1. And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,
2. “Take vengeance for the children of Israel on the Midianites; afterward, you shall be gathered to your people.”
3. Then Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the war, and they shall go against Midian to execute the vengeance of Jehovah on Midian.

My question is, would this have included Moses’ father-in-law, since he returned to the land of his kindred? 

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No, those Midianites were not in their own territory; they were in Moab.  So, they were not the ones Reuel went home to.  Those Midianites were evil.

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Also, I thought this was really good.  Listening to the Old Testament CDs for Numbers, you said,“Moses renamed Oshea to Joshua.  “Joshua” is the name “Jesus” in Hebrew.  It means “Jehovah is salvation”.  Moses was not able to bring the people into the Promised Land, which was a symbol of the law not being able to save us.  Moses had to turn it all over to Joshua, and then Joshua took God’s people in!  The Old Testament was a shadow of the New Testament.  Our Joshua (Jesus) has to take us in.  And he is doing it!  Moses was unable to do it.  Moses turned it over to Joshua twice: once in the OT when he anointed Joshua to take his place, and once in the New Testament when Moses and Elijah met and talked with Jesus on the mountain.”

God told Moses he could not enter into Canaan.  Is it possible that God did not intend for Moses to enter Canaan’s land all along, since this was a symbol of the law versus the Spirit getting us to the Promised Land? 

Amy F.

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Yes, Amy.  God knew what would happen, and He planned to have Moses die before crossing over into Canaan to represent the law’s inability to save us.  We must have Jesus!

Thank you for the good questions.

Pastor John  

*  Old Testament Course (Pt. 1) – Going to Jesus.com

 

Dear Pastor John,

You write in the Father and Son book** that the Son of God came to earth when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and after Jesus came out of the water, the holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove. Now, I have believed that we are made up of body, soul and spirit, and since we were made in the image of God, God is the same way, and He created the Son the same way, too.  If I’m drawing the right conclusions, apart from his heavenly body and the Spirit (God’s kind of life) that the Father gave him, the Son also had a soul, or in other words, a consciousness. Like you wrote in the Father and Son tract,* “You are you, and I am I. We will never become one person, and neither will Jesus ever become the Father, or the Father become Jesus.”

Assuming I’m in the right train of thought, when Jesus was born from Mary, he didn’t yet have God’s kind of life, he only had a human spirit, and he also had his own soul, his consciousness that made him Jesus, the son of Mary, separate from every other creature (just like each one of us are separate persons from each other). So the question that came up in my mind is this: What did Jesus receive when the Son of God entered his body, or as the gospels put it, when the holy Spirit descended on him? Did he “only” receive God’s kind of life, or did he also receive the consciousness of the Son, or, in other words, his soul? If it’s the latter, then did the two persons (the Son of God and Jesus, the son of Mary) become one person? When the Son emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7), what happened? Did the Son (meaning his soul, his consciousness) leave his heavenly body, and entered Jesus’ body, also bringing God’s kind of life with him? Assuming this is what happened, was the Son entering Jesus’ body a once in history event, when two persons (or two souls) became one?

Now, as I was writing this, I was thinking about my own life, and how receiving the holy Ghost did actually give me a new consciousness. It’s not that I don’t have my memories from before my new birth, but I, indeed, have become a new person. (Doesn’t it even say in Revelation that we will receive new names, or a stone with a new name on it?) So maybe the same thing happened to Jesus? He received “only” the spirit of the Son which created a new consciousness in him? In that case: What happened to the body and the soul (the consciousness) of God’s Son who existed in heaven from the beginning of creation?

Some of these questions might sound too technical or theological, but they did come up in my mind, so I thought I would ask you, whether there are definite answers to them.

Thank you, and God bless you, Pastor John.

Zoli

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Hi, Zoli.

You are seeing Jesus’ baptism rightly.  The Son of God divested himself of his heavenly glory and came to the body which God has prepared for him, as the scripture says: “When coming into the world, he said, “Sacrifice and offering have not pleased you, but a body you have prepared for me” (Heb. 10:5).

Your question concerning the blending of Mary’s son with God’s Son when the Spirit descended on Jesus is one I have pondered over many times.  I know that we, too, receive the Son (and the Father) when we receive the Spirit (Jn. 14:23), but it seems that something more than that was happening when the Spirit came down like a dove upon Jesus, for another person (the heavenly Son) was taking possession of a human body.

As I show in my online book, God Had a Son before Mary Did ** from that time on, God’s Son and Mary’s son had become one and, as one, shared two histories.  Here is an excerpt from that book:

The People’s Confusion: Two Sons

Everyone who was acquainted with Mary’s son knew where he came from:

Matthew 13

54. When he came to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue, and they were astonished and said, “Where’d he get this wisdom and miracles?
55. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?  Isn’t his mother called Mariam, and his brothers, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56. And his sisters, aren’t they all with us?  So, where’d he get all these things?”

The Jews of Jesus’ time had been taught that when the Messiah appeared, no one would know where he came from, and since they knew where Mary’s son came from, they were certain that Jesus could not be the Messiah: “We know where this man’s from, but when the Messiah comes, nobody will know where he’s from” (Jn. 7:27).  And in the very next verse, the Son of God admitted to the people that they knew where his temple came from: “You know me, and you also know where I’m from” (Jn. 7:28a).  However, every . . . time the Son spoke of coming from God in heaven instead of from Mary in Nazareth, his words provoked turmoil:

John 7

28b. “I haven’t come on my own, but the One who sent me is true; Him you do not know.

29. I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent me.”

30a. Then they tried to seize him.

It is little wonder that even Jesus’ relatives thought he had gone insane:

Mark 3

21. And his kinsmen came out to take him, for they were saying, “He’s lost his mind.”

Persecution notwithstanding, the Son of God never stopped testifying that he came from heaven instead of from Nazareth and from God instead of from Mary, which completely bewildered those who had heard him say previously, “You know me, and you know where I am from”:

John 8

14b. Jesus answered them and said, “You don’t know where I come from or where I’m going.

. . .

19. Then they began to say to him, “Where is your father?”  Jesus answered, “You don’t know me or my Father; if you had known me, you would have known my Father, too.”

So, according to Jesus’ own words, the people knew him and his father, and they did not know him and his Father; and they knew where he came from, and they did not know where he came from.  So, what can we say about this, except that the people were confused and that they were not confused?  They knew what they thought, but what they thought they knew was right only when speaking of Mary’s son.  Of God’s Son, they knew nothing.

Jesus understood their predicament.  And he loved them.

So, Zoli, these things indicate that what happened when God sent His Son to Earth to enter into the body of Jesus is beyond human comprehension.  The mystery of the holy Faith of Jesus Christ is not the Trinity, as Christians say; rather, the mystery is how two persons, Mary’s son and the Son of God, became one.  We know that it happened when Jesus was coming up out of the water after being baptized by John, but beyond that, what happened is just a mystery.

Yours were thoughtful questions, and they deserve thoughtful answers, which I have attempted to give, but there is only so much anyone can say by way of explanation.  That said, however, I will add the following relevant information from the apostle John, which has arrested my attention frequently over the years.

The opening verse of John’s gospel is familiar to many: “In the beginning, the Word was there, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  But the opening verses of John’s first epistle say the same thing in different words: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld, and our hands touched: the Word of life.  And the life was revealed, and we saw it, and we are bearing witness and showing you the eternal life which was with the Father and was revealed to us.”

It is remarkable that in his epistle, John speaks of the Word of God as if he were a thing: “That which was from the beginning…. the life was revealed.”  These comments by John are relevant to the questions you asked, but the mystery remains, at least for me.

One last observation.  The terms “Father” and “Son” are used only as tools to help us mortals understand that a loving relationship existed between God and His Son, not to reveal that God and His Son are big versions of human fathers and sons.  The ancient Greeks imagined that the gods were big versions of humans, but the truth is that God and His Son are a different life form from humans.  And so, they can do things which humans cannot imagine.

Thank you for your questions.  They are the same ones I have had for a long time.

Pastor John

*  Going to Jesus.com Tracts – The Father And The Son

**   Going to Jesus.com – God Had A Son Before Mary Did

John,

Did the crusades last 2 centuries?

Wendell

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Hi Wendell,

The first Christian Crusade to recover territory for the Pope was in 1095.  Crusades to recover Palestine continued, sporadically, for two centuries or so.  However, the very last Crusade was made in 1588, when Spain sent its vast, famed Armada against England to bring that nation back into the Catholic fold.  So, in reality, Christians waged Crusades for almost 600 years.

Pastor John

Pastor John,

Is an anti-Christ spirit a tartarized spirit?

Billy M.

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Yes, Billy, the spirit of anti-Christ is a spirit that is damned before the Final Judgment, but cursed to live in sin.  However, we must be careful here because many of God’s dear children are influenced by that wicked spirit but have not provoked God to tartarize them.  That is why the Father is calling His children to come out of Christianity, the religion invented by the anti-Christ spirit.  We do not want to cling stubbornly to that abomination so long that the plagues which God will send upon it fall on us:  “Then I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues!” (Rev. 18:4).

Pray for the children of God who have not yet come out of that false relighion to walk with Christ and with one another in the Spirit of truth.

Pastor John

I am sending three questions from the Old Testament

Steve

Question #1. In Exodus 24, we are told that Moses and Aaron and sons, along with 70 elders saw and had a meal with God?  But when Moses saw God he had to cover his face from then on.  Why did these people not get the same outcome after seeing and eating with God?

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Answer #1.  Several times in the Bible we are told of men seeing God, when what really took place is that they were in God’s presence, and were so overcome with the experience that they felt that they had seen Him.  Two examples come to mind:

In Genesis 32, after wrestling with an angel all night, Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face” – but he had not seen God at all.

Then we have Isaiah (6:1), who said, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up,” and Amos, too, said, “I saw the Lord” (Amos 9:1), but neither of them looked upon the face of God, for God told Moses when he asked to see God, “You cannot see my face.  For no man can see me and live” (Ex. 33:20).

So, while those men in Exodus 24 certainly had an amazing experience, they did not see God, as we think of seeing someone today.  They were just in the presence of God, and were no doubt amazed at it.

Question #2. If only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place, how were they to take it down and put it up?  Someone would of had to go and disassemble it.

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Answer #2:  The Kohathites were chosen by God and anointed to carry the furniture of the tabernacle when the camp moved.  But before the Kohathites could enter the tabernacle to pick the furniture up, the high priest had to go in and cover the furniture with a large blue cloth (Num. 4:59).

Question #3. How did they put Aaron’s budded rod in the ark, or lift the lid of it if they couldn’t touch the ark?

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Answer #3: God commanded Moses to put Aaron’s rod inside the ark of the covenant, and he had the authority to do that.  Moses was allowed to enter the holy place, and it appears that he could go into the most holy place, too (Num. 7:89).  The rule concerning who could and could not go into the tabernacle did not apply to Moses.

I hope that helps.

Pastor John