More of the monster and his...
Vayeira “and appeared”
Exodus 6:2-9:35
Ezekiel 28:25-29:21
Psalm 46
John 12:27-36
When it becomes difficult to find basic things of life where you normally find them, then consider Who might be making it difficult...

  • The fish that are in the Nile will die, and the Nile will become foul, and the Egyptians will find difficulty in drinking water from the Nile.”’ Then the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their streams, and over their pools, and over all their reservoirs [כָּל־מִקְוֵה] of water, that they may become blood; and there will be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’ (Ex 7:19)

Seven days of muddy, bloody, water. No drinking water. No living water. Only blood poured out, which is death, for the life (soul, nefesh) is the blood. There is no life in the soul of Egypt, nor for the souls in Egypt. It is life destroyed. It kills its “fish,” those stuck to Pharaoh’s scales. The Egyptian mikvaot were not living water at all. Immerse in an Egyptian mikveh, and you'll still be the same old person, not a new creation in Messiah.

The Egyptians were so thirsty.

The Egyptians became tired of searching for water in all their usual places.
Nothing but muddy, bloody puddles for seven days. None of the dragon's beast kingdoms can give life, but it doesn't stop the world from searching vainly among his political, military, economic, governmental, social justice, mass media, or even some religious systems. They drink and drink, and they become deader and deader, not wetter.

The kingdom of Egypt is not represented in King Nebuchadnezzar’s vision because his image is that of the “beast,” but not what gave it “power,” the dragon of Pharaoh/Egypt. Abaddon. Death. The power of the serpent is to make something that is dead appear to be alive. “You will not surely die...”

The Torah (Moses) escorted the Israelites from Egypt to Jordan; from death and bloody puddles to a river of life and resurrection. The dragon’s lie of life is exposed. Death is defeated with truth. Zechariah offers the equivalence of Egypt as the nations of the world:

  • Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths. And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them. If the family of Egypt does not go up or enter, then no rain will fall on them; it will be the plague with which the LORD smites the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths. This will be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths. (Zech 14:16-19)

Notice a parallelism in Zechariah. Egypt’s fate is equal to the fate of all the nations. Egypt is symbolic of all the nations who hid Rachel’s children, represented by Joseph (Yoseph), the son with the name linked with Sukkot (Feast of Asiph). Egypt was the site of the first Israelite Passover, and immediately upon leaving Egypt with the mixed multitude from other nations, the Hebrews camped at Sukkot. They entered the clouds of glory.

At a great Exodus to come, this past pattern is encouraging. No matter where Israelites are in the world, if they have the testimony of the Lamb's blood and Moses to guide them out, they will leave.

John's Revelation describes: :And the [sea] dragon stood on the sand of the seashore..." The “sand of the seashore” refers to the descendants of Abraham. The dragon is the tanin, or Pharaoh, a father-monster to the beast-kingdoms that succeed him. He is king of Egypt, avdah, which is like Abaddon, death. Nebuchadnezzar was driven mad and changed into a beast of the field as an example of how the dragon spawns his proud beast-kingdoms, each with a desire to rule the earth.

In Egypt, though, a picture of the world dominated by the beast with the dragon's authority and throne, Aaron’s staff swallowed up Egypt’s staffs. Life swallowed death.

And then, the fish in the river died. Pharaoh’s domain is death, and so those who stick to his scales will die. The life is in the blood. The blood is the souls in the River: “The Egyptians will grow weary of trying to drink water from the river.” (Ex 7:18) 

We see this today. People are weary of looking for life in death-systems. They comb every bloody puddle of the dragon’s domain. Yeshua is the source of the River of Life from the Garden. He will make a sukkah canopy of Leviathan for the righteous in the Garden of Eden. In the Gospel of John, Yeshua demonstrates the difference between those who look UP for healing instead of the dragon's bloody puddles:

  • Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Jesus answered and said, “This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes. Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die. The crowd then answered Him, “We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever; and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?” So Jesus said to them, “For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.” (Jn 12:27-36)

The following text illustrates Yeshua's concern about being lifted up. Historically, even Israel looked down instead of Heavenward for solutions to the muddy, bloody puddles left in their souls after their salvation from Egypt:

  • Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.” The LORD sent fiery serpents (seraphim) among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent (saraph), and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it [him], he will live.” And Moses made a bronze serpent (nachash nechoshet) and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked [navat, considered] to the bronze serpent, he lived. (Nu 21:4-10)

The Israelites misconstrued Heavenly food (manna, Yeshua, the Word of Torah) in the wilderness as death and the dragon of Egypt as life. Although nourished from above, they believed the Word in the Divinely-sourced bread and water was killing them.

  • Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness. (Ex 14:12)

The wilderness is a scary place. The Spirit begins to wean us from dependency upon the beast's systems of meeting our needs. We must learn to look UP, not BACK to the bloody puddles. We must be weaned from our word below to HIS WORD above.

This requires a point-by-point analysis to see the similarity between the healing serpent and the twisted serpent. Even those who stood by Yeshua when he made these statements couldn’t agree on what just happened. Some heard the thunder. Others just thought Yeshua was having a spiritual experience, that an angel had spoken to him.

  1. Yeshua said, “Now My soul has become troubled...”
  2. In the wilderness, ”the soul of the people grew short with, the road” (Ge 21:4) of which Rashi says, “with the affliction of the road...like a person upon whom something disturbing falls, and he does not have room within his heart where that pain might abide. It weighs down on the person who experiences it.” Yeshua explains that when we experience pain and anxiety too deep to hold in our hearts, then the point is to show us that the Father is asking us to glorify HIS Name. It's not to have tantrums with our words and splash in Pharaoh's bloody puddles.

  1. But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.
  2. The purpose of Moses’ nachash, or serpent in the wilderness, was “at the time that Israel would look upward and subject their heart to their Father in Heaven, they would be cured, but if not, they would waste away.” (ibid) If we merely thrash about in the blood, it's just a twisted serpent's way of avoiding the confrontation of faith. Up, not down. Not back. Israel will waste away in bloody puddles.

  1. Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
  2. It is by glorifying the Father that the ruler of this world is cast out. To survive the venomous bites of the seraphim, one had to glorify the Name; to avoid the bite altogether, don’t complain about the manna, which was like “dew of Heaven.” Yeshua is the Bread of Heaven, the Word. Above. Trust it.

  1. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die.
  2. The Israelites wanted to go back to Pharaoh, the “ruler of this world.” They preferred the dragon to their place of nourishment in the wilderness. Yeshua saw that if he were lifted up like Moshe lifted up the nachash nechoshet on a pole, then ”all men,” not just Israel, could consider their ways and be saved from the bite of the serpent. The nachash was made of copper, nechoshet, which is “expression falling upon expression” (ibid). Moses, the Torah, was a proto-prophecy of Mashiach-nachash, the Word of healing, an inoculation, vaccination, anti-venom, and antidote against snakebites of the twisted serpent and punishment of sin from the seraphim. Twice Israel is warned about the world, Egypt:

  • Behold, you rely on the staff of this crushed reed, even on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. (Is 36:6; 2 Ki 18:21)

Know why the systems you have depended upon are being knocked out from under you or are piercing your hand when you lean upon them too heavily. The Holy One wants to give you food and sustain you from ABOVE. He is nourishing you in the wilderness, drawing you out of the dragon's lair and the Babylonian beast's kingdom. You are IN the world, but you are not OF the world. You are not a dependent of Pharaoh unless you choose him as your father.

Depend only lightly on the systems of this world. Lean too heavily, and it may be a sign you're looking back, succumbing to the magnetism of the dragon's scales:

  • And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth. So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (Re 12:13-17)

If the children of the virtuous woman Israel are to win the battle against the dragon, they will not do it by attaching to his scales for a life raft in the flood of wickedness. They will defeat him with the testimony of Yeshua's resurrection and the commandments of God. The dragon's magnet-scales are impotent against these two things. A child of the Father above is like the three Hebrew children and like Queen Esther. Our God is able to save us from this present tribulation, but if He doesn't? He will yet save our souls from Pharaoh's and Nebuchadnezzar's death-water and furnaces of affliction. "If I perish, I perish." What world system or image of the beast has any power over one who utters such words?

What if all the world is waiting for a person of faith to utter just such words? Tradition says that when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego uttered those words, the image of the golden beast fell. When they were thrown into the furnace, Ezekiel's valley of dry bones came to life.

  1. The crowd then answered Him, “We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever; and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?”
  2. In 2 Kings 18:4-6, Hezekiah broke in pieces the bronze serpent, which the Jews came to worship as “Nechushtan.” They made it the object of worship instead of a reminder of their history in the wilderness and the necessity to “look up” to Heaven and consider their own ways, not focus on the earthly symbol. The crowd is saying, “If the nachash was destroyed and did not remain forever among us, then how will Mashiach remain among us forever [if you will be destroyed/die]. How can you both die and live forever?”

Mashiach was believed to come in the clouds, which would make “lifting up” puzzling to Yeshua's audience. (Da 7:13) The belief, however, is that only if Israel is prepared and worthy will Messiah descend quickly with the clouds first. If they are not appreciative of the healing word and his testimony of the need for his death before resurrection, then he will first come riding on a lowly ass, bringing redemption slowly. When the First Century Jews heard Yeshua's message, even those closest to him thought he'd come simply to defeat the iron beast, Rome. "No," Yeshua said in so many words. "Think bigger. Look up. Quit immersing yourself in the hatred of the Red One and immerse yourself in my words and resurrection."

For 2,000 years, "all men" have heard and had the opportunity to look up in the wilderness of faith. When Messiah returns, he will come quickly on the clouds for those looking UP, not BACK. He will come for those who feed on the Heavenly Word, not their own words about slavery in Egypt. It would be a shame to be delivered from Egypt, yet still be obsessed with its muddy, bloody puddles. The living waters are already flowing through us with the testimony of resurrection and the Word. Don't be afraid of the dragon. Don't be obsessed with the beast. Jordan is just AHEAD...and UP.

Pharaoh's servants said to him, “How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not realize that Egypt is destroyed?” (Ex 10:7)

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES


ARE YOU IN AFRICA OR A SIMILAR TIME ZONE? 
See the following from Colleen Martin, a most skilled Creation Gospel teacher:

Online Creation Gospel classes for Workbook 1 being offered for all South Africans, as well as those on the African continent, and in our time zone!

If you would like to delve into a weekly study with a group, to work through Dr. Hollisa Alewine’s Creation Gospel Workbook 1, please contact Colleen Martin. If you are in South Africa, you can also purchase your workbook directly from her. If you are in Europe, Workbook One should be available on Amazon.

The course will be starting at the end of January 2021.
E-mail address is magnum@iafrica.com
Cellphone number is +27836567828
Kindly note that she is not on Whatsapp, but is on Telegram. (https://telegram.org/ - it’s one of only 2 safe messaging platforms in the world, currently. It is a free app and can be used like Whatsapp for data calls and messaging.)
LIVE STREAM ON SHABBAT

We will do the Shabbat afternoon live stream at approximately 4:00 pm Eastern on Saturday b'azrat HaShem. This will augment the teaching in the newsletter. Click to go to our YouTube channel.
ORPHANAGE NEWS: NEW SHOES!
It's back-to-school time for the children at LaMalah! After nine months' school closure due to COVID, I'm sure the staff are eager to see the kids put on those new shoes and get back to the books.

Thanks to all who have donated to LaMalah Children's Centre. Your generosity at the Chanukkah conferences and in mail-in donations hurried us the goal faster than we anticipated. Your year-end giving was beyond all expectation in such economically troubled times. Please keep the children, their care-givers, and the Kenyan Torah community in your prayers.

MINISTRY EVENTS



We will be joining The Rooted Kafe for an online conference on January 26th 6-7 pm and 7:15-8:15 pm. Click Rooted for more information or to register. There is an online Purim conference based in South Africa on February 27th. We will notify you with the specifics as they become available.

We're praying the newest BEKY Book: Esther's Mysteries Behind the Mask is ready for publication before then.


The weekly Shabbat table live streams will be available either on demand at our new Creation Gospel podcast page or at Hebrew Nation Radio. Please note the following air times (PST) on Hebrew Nation Radio:

Thursdays: 9-10 am & 10-11 p.m.

Mondays: 4-5 am & 2-3 p.m.
ISRAEL TOUR
Why are we planning Passover in Israel when all indications are that COVID restrictions will not allow it by then? It's our JEREMIAH step of faith. Jeremiah knew that Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians, yet he bought property, made a copy of the deed, and sealed it. It was his way of saying, "I have faith that the Holy One will bring us back to fulfill His purposes in this place." It was irrational belief, which we may call faith! His "deposit" into the future redemption of Jerusalem made an impact on those who witnessed it. That's not irrational at all.

The registration page and itinerary are up for the Song of Songs Passover in Israel tour! We are spending the winter doing an in-depth study of the Song of Songs as a parable of resurrection and the Garden. With God's help, we will crown the study with a tour of Israel that highlights the geographic locations of many significant Scriptural events, such as Beit Hoglah. Armed with an understanding of the deeper meaning of the Song, we experience those locations blooming with promise of the returning Messiah Yeshua. If we are unable to travel at Passover 2021, deposits can be refunded or shifted to the Sukkot 2021 study tour...in remembrance of when He brought us out of Egypt!

"Arise, My Love, for lo, the winter is past, and the springtime has come. The voice of the turtledove is heard in the Land..."

Click "Next Year in Jerusalem!" to view the itinerary and details of the Passover tour.