Proof That Is Not Proof — Matthew 22:44 - Commentary From the Margins

09 September 2006 ©Homer Kizer

Commentary — From the Margins

Proof That Is Not Proof—Matthew 22:44

For nearly two millennia Christians have used an unanswered question to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was God. Judaism counters by saying that the conversation in which this alleged proof passage occurs could not have taken place. And interested third parties are left with the question of whether anyone should believe self-serving writings from so long ago. No one seems to pause, back up, and reread the passages containing this proof text.

After entering Jerusalem on the 10^th of the Abib, entering as High Priest and as Passover Lamb, Jesus sought the confrontations with the Sadducees and Pharisees that would cause them to kill Him, a claim not made lightly. He had to die on a Roman cross, but die without being guilty of any offense other than telling the truth. He had to trample on the toes of officialdom so hard that He could not be allowed to live, not necessarily an easy task without committing a crime. But temple officials had killed some of the prophets, notably Zechariah, for what God had revealed through the prophet—and temple officials would have to kill Jesus for the same reason; for the man Jesus was Yah, the Logos or Word or spokesperson of and for YHWH. He was Theos who was with Theon from the beginning (John 1:1-2), these two functioning as one as if married, the Scriptural subtlety that was lost in the great Christological debates that occurred throughout the 4^th-Century CE. And it was through confronting both the Sadducees and Pharisees concerning the nature of the godhead (literally, attacking the idol of monotheism) that Jesus knew He could force Jewish officialdom to kill Him.

During the Tribulation, forty Jubilees later, genuine disciples will cause Christian officialdom, both Arian and Trinitarian, to martyr them through this same confrontation; so this is not merely an exercise of intellectual curiosity, but is typology functioning as prophecy. As Pilate would have released Jesus, civil officials will not want to send genuine disciples to their deaths, certainly not the numbers that will die, but 1^st-Century Sadducees and Pharisees serve as the lively shadows of endtime Arians and Trinitarians. And if a disciple does not today believe that Christians will martyr other Christians [whose Christianity the conquerors will deny], then explain the hanging of Joseph Smith, a long-remembered death that will be repaid millions of times over when the prophesied king of the North prevails against the king of the South.

The profundity of marriage—of two becoming and functioning as one—was never understood by physically circumcised Israel, a nation that virtually denied personhood to women (if a man was not to covet a neighbor’s house, wife, servant, ox, donkey, or anything else [Exod 20:17], then a man’s wife was logically a thing like a house or another possession; she certainly wasn’t like Yah). This virtual denial of personhood still existed in the 1^st-Century, as evidenced by the Sadducees’ question, which was who of the seven brothers would possess the wife of all seven in the afterlife. These Sadducees seemed incapable of comprehending the concept that the woman was not an object to be possessed. Likewise, today, the dominant Arian sect gives to the husband the power to call forth his wife from the grave, or to call forth another woman more to his liking, for the woman remains an actual or an implied possession.

Remember, Yah “married” the circumcised nation at Sinai, the marriage covenant ratified with blood as if Israel’s hymen were broken (Exod 24:5-8). Yah is not free to marry another bride until either He dies, or the entirety of the Bride dies and is no more (Rom 7:1-3). But Yah, as the Word of YHWH, has promised Abraham that his offspring would be as stars (Gen 15:5-6), so all of Israel could not die to end this marriage covenant made at Sinai. If all of Israel were to have died, Abraham’s faith would have been in vain. Thus, Yah had to die before another nation, a people who were not before a people (1 Pet 2:9-10), could become the holy nation of God.

But God cannot die.

The premise of monotheism is that there is one God and no other; that this one God is all powerful and as such is not subject to death. No frost giant will kill Him. No second God will spring from His forehead. There is one. There is none like Him. There is nothing to which He can be compared.

Thus, Israel assigned singleness to the linguistically plural name of God, Elohim. Further, Israel assigned singleness to the Tetragrammaton YHWH. And Israel denied that YHWH Elohim created humankind in His image, male and female He created them (Gen 1:27). This denial was facilitated by Israel’s adamant refusal to assign full personhood to women, consigning women to being objects, gullies into which men deposited their seed. Thus, physical circumcision became the prerequisite for appearing before God. Without a circumcised penis, a person could not come before God. Every woman lacked what was required. Every Gentile male lacked the holiness that came with mutilating the foreskin.

One God, taking single verbs and pronouns—except where this one God spoke to Himself (cf. Gen 1:26; 3:22; 11:7) … ancient Israel, with one notable exception, never knew any deity except Yah even though two [YH + WH] functioned as one as if they were married in the heavenly realm. Yah is simply the first radical forming the Tetragrammaton; it is not a contraction for YHWH as has been taught for too long. Again, Yah is Theos who was with Theon from the beginning. And Theos entered His creation (John 1:14) as His Son, His only (John 3:16) to reveal the Father [i.e., WH or Theon] to His disciples (John 17:4-8, 22-26).

The world cannot understand that ancient Israel’s monotheism is the idol that will send endtime Christians into the lake of fire. The concepts seem mutually exclusionary. They are not. And the denial of personhood to half of the human race is not of God, but of the Adversary, who will seem to accurately cite Scripture to send sons of God into the lake of fire (Matt 4:6).

Scripture sparring against Scripture; dueling texts, each seeking the heart—those who misuse Scripture will accuse those who do not of misusing Scripture, so who can be believed? It’s all too confusing for those who do not hear the soft Breath of Christ Jesus. It can even be confusing for those who do hear, for can they be sure of what they heard, or were they only hearing distant babble? But of what everyone can be certain is that genuine disciples will not kill those who are not genuine. True saints will not pickup the sword or the rifle to use against those who misuse Scripture. They do not need physical weapons to resolve the issue: they have the testimony of Christ Jesus on their side. They have time as their weapon, with time bringing the fulfillment of prophecy. Therefore, the disciple who remains in doubt as to who misuses Scripture actually has the luxury of waiting if this disciple will cover his or her lawlessness by taking the sacraments on the night Jesus was betrayed, the 14^th of Abib. On every other night, bread and wine are the fruits of the earth, Cain’s offering.

Thus, after silencing Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection by telling them that they neither knew the Scriptures nor the power of God (Matt 22:29), that Theos of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not the Theos of the dead but of the living (v. 32), Jesus astonished the crowd (v. 33). He also confused centuries of Christians that worshipped the same idol of singleness that ancient Israel worshipped—these confused Christians denied Jesus, denied the work that the Father had given Jesus to do, denied that they could become one with Jesus as Jesus was one with the Father in the glory He had before the world existed (John 17:5). And confused Christians remain in denial to this day as they await being denied by Christ when their judgments are revealed.

Jesus astonished the Sadducees for he did not say that Theon [neuter singular in nominative case] was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead, Jesus used the masculine singular /os/ case ending, an irregularity that Trinitarians explain away be saying that Theon and Theos are the same unexplainable deity, two points on a triune godhead. Arians are not perceptive enough to notice this little irregularity, just as they do not notice plural verbs and pronouns assigned to YHWH Elohim, usually attributing these instances of plurals to being scribal errors. But the Sadducees noticed, and were astonished—and were now capable of demanding Jesus’ death for blasphemy, for they knew what Jesus had previously said about being the son of God.

The singleness of the English linguistic icon /God/ conceals the pluralness of Elohim, the regular plural of Eloah, which deconstructs to /El/ + /ah/, with El being the name for God as in El Shaddai, God Almighty (Gen 17:1), and with ah being the linguistic radical regularly used for aspirated breath or voiced breath when a linguistic icon is pronounced. So Eloah is God plus Breath. Elohim, now, isn’t an emphasized pronunciation of Eloah as Rabbinical Judaism presently teaches, but the literal plural of Eloah: (God + Breath) + (God + Breath) an undefined number of times. In the Old Testament, this number is determined by the Tetragrammaton, with this number being two who function as one as if married. The New Testament is a different story, an uncompleted story, for the Son will marry a Bride consisting of an unknown [to physically living disciples] number of sons of God. With the Father being the Most High, the Son will marry or enter into a relationship with glorified disciples that is comparable to the relationship that had formerly existed between Theos and Theon as Their relationship existed in the Tetragrammaton. They shall all be one, Father and Son, Son and glorified disciples. And this is the mystery that He disclosed to His disciples and used to cause the Sadducees and Pharisees to demand His life. This is a mystery that is not at all understood by either Arian or Trinitarian Christianity, and again, the mystery that will cause Arians and Trinitarians to martyr genuine disciples that have to be sacrificed as Jesus was, for not just the Head but also the Body of the paschal Lamb of God will be sacrificed.

Just as Assyria lay to the north of Israel and Egypt lay to the south, disciples are Arians [i.e., of Assyria, of Death] or Trinitarians [of Egypt, of Sin] or Binitarians [of Judea, of Christ], with the kings of the North and of the South warring for control of Judea, of disciples who have been delivered by God into the hand of the lawless one, the little horn who speaks great words against the Ancient of Days (Dan 7:25). But as those scholars who have examined the texts of Binitarian Christians will confirm, Binitarians are not true monotheists, but reject this idol for one form or another of disciples being literal sons of God. And for Binitarians’ rejection of ancient Judaism’s idol, they will be martyred wherever they are found throughout the first half of the seven endtime years of tribulation. But this is as it was intended from the beginning, not something anyone really wants to hear, including those who deliver the prophecy.

The astonished Sadducees weren’t amazed that Jesus said the Most High was the God of the living, but that Jesus didn’t use either Adonai or Theon, the respective Hebrew oral icon or Greek icon for the Most High, as the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If Jesus had used Adonai, Matthew would have transcribed the orally uttered Hebrew icon into the Greek form of Lord, Kurios or Kurion. If Jesus had used the Greek icon Theon, Matthew would have faithfully transcribed the icon as used. And Jesus probably didn’t use Aramaic in the Temple. He used, instead, the icon Theos, which becomes a mistranslation of, or misrepresentation if used for the unpronounced Tetragrammaton.

After Jesus had astonished the Sadducees, the Pharisees had a go at Jesus: they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked a question to test Jesus, who answered that all of the Law and the Prophets hung on loving God and loving neighbor (Matt 22:34-40). Then while the Pharisees were still gathered around Him, Jesus asked them a question that they could not answer, a question that caused no one to dare ask any more questions of Jesus:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand,

until I put your enemies under your feet’?

If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt 22:41-45)

____________

Again, remember, Jesus needs to anger Jewish officialdom to the point they have to kill Him as soon as possible—Jesus has to be killed on the 14^th, between the evenings, as the Passover Lamb of God, a Lamb appropriate to the size of the household of God (Exod 12:3). It is already the 12^th or the 13^th[He went to Bethany where He spent the night of the 11^th, then cursed the fig tree on the day portion of the 11^th, then saw the fig withered on the 12^th]. So He doesn’t have much time left to cause Jewish officialdom to bring about His death. He has to cut them deeply enough that they will move quickly. And He does in the question He asks the Pharisees.

The Pharisees couldn’t answer because of what had been concealed.

Christians have used verse 44 of this 22^nd chapter of Matthew’s gospel as the proof text that Jesus was God before He was born of Mary, that Jesus the Christ was part of a triune deity from the beginning although better passages are available to prove that the Logos was God, but these many triune Christians are dishonest at best and are most likely deliberate liars. Arian Christians and Observant Jews in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries deride Trinitarians for using Jesus quoting Psalm 110:1 to show any equality between YHWH and Adoni. In fact, Jews say that the recorded confrontation could not have happened, but has to be a fiction because Pharisees would have known the difference between Adonai and Adoni. A Pharisee in the 1^st-Century would have prayed or sung the Psalm by substituting pronouncing the long-vowel icon Adonai for the Tetragrammaton; thus, Observant Jews today remain with a covering over their heads that blinds them, preventing understanding, reserving this nation for slaughter once the Tribulation begins.

Before proceeding, the citation Jesus quotes should be read as received:

(Matt 22:44) ειπεν κυριος τω κυριω μου καθου εκ δεξιων μου εως αν θω τους εχθρους σου υποκατω των ποδων σου

(Psalm 110:1— Hebrew)

לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור נְאֻם יְהוָה ׀ לַֽאדֹנִי שֵׁב לִֽימִינִי עַד־אָשִׁית אֹיְבֶיךָ הֲדֹם לְרַגְלֶֽיךָ׃

לדוד מזמור נאם יהוה ׀ לאדני שב לימיני עד־אשית איביך הדם לרגליך

(Psalm 100:1 — Septuagint)
allhlouia exomologhsomai soi kurie en olh kardia mou en boulh euqeiwn kai sunagwgh

Even a cursory examination reveals the difference: the first highlighted Lord of the two Greek passages is the Tetragrammaton YHWH in Hebrew. But what is translated as Lord the second time cannot be the Tetragrammaton, but is the Hebrew icon best rendered into English as Adoni, an icon whose usage is reserved for human lords as opposed to God, or to a deity.

From a surface examination of the texts, it is difficult to explain why the Pharisees didn’t answer Jesus, or how this passage could have possibly angered the Pharisees enough to kill Jesus. From this surface examination, a disciple does not see the type of claim made by Jesus when He said that Theos was the deity Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob called Lord … again, if Jesus when addressing the Sadducees would have identified the Tetragrammaton as the God of Abraham, He would have uttered the oral icon Adonai, which Matthew would have transcribed in his gospel as κυριος, as both he and the Septuagint transcribe the Tetragrammaton from Psalm 110:1. Thus, Theos was not the name these Sadducees expected to hear. They would have expected to hear Theon in Greek.

So the textual evidence suggests that Jesus was addressing the Sadducees in Greek rather than in Hebrew. But this might not have been the case when addressing the Pharisees, for a Pharisee should have been quick to point out to Jesus that the Psalmist made a distinction between the Most High and His Christ, the Messiah.

Why was not this distinction pointed out to Jesus?

To place Matthew’s passage in its context the question that must be asked is, did 1^st-Century Pharisees teach that the Messiah would be David’s son? And from all evidence that survives, this question must be answered in the affirmative. Thus, it was not Jesus who introduced the concept of the Messiah being David’s son. Rather, Jesus brought an easily understood passage to bear on this common teaching, a passage that would have the Christ being a man, a human lord. But the idea that the Christ could be a human being disrobed the Pharisees’ idolatry in a way that idolatrous Christians have never understood … Jesus did to the Pharisees what He had just done to the Sadducees but in a way not previously understandable.

Knowledge is concealed from disciples or revealed to disciples at the Father’s discretion. Jesus asked His disciples who did the crowds say that He was (Matt 16:15), and Simon Peter answered, ‘“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’” (v. 16). Jesus told Peter that ‘“flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven’” (v. 17). Then Jesus strictly charged His disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Why? Why forbid disciples to tell others that He was the Christ? Would they have been believed? Possibly, but if they were believed, a political rebellion against Roman would have immediately begun; plus, Jewish officialdom would not have killed Him but would have hailed Him for at least long enough to get themselves killed by Romans.

So knowledge that Jesus was the Christ had to be withheld from both Sadducees and Pharisees, and what is seen has Jesus’ disciples being the lively shadows of genuine endtime disciples just as the scribes and Pharisees were the lively shadows of the divided endtime Body [again, divided as in Arian and Trinitarian, with the Sadducees who denied the resurrection being the shadow of Arians who deny that Theos came as the man Jesus]. And as Jesus, the last Adam, could find no helpmate among the Sadducees and Pharisees (Matt chap 23) in the same way that the first Adam could find no helpmate among the beasts of the fields (Gen 2:19-20), the glorified Christ Jesus will not be able to find any Helpmate among Arians and Trinitarians, both sacrificial beasts that will be offered [i.e., go into the lake of fire] as bleating goats and bellowing bulls were offered on ancient Israel’s altar.

Jesus charged His disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Christ. Today, nearly two millennia later, the few disciples dwelling in heavenly Jerusalem can tell whomever they want, but their voices will not be heard for holy Israel has always been the people described by the prophet Isaiah (6:8-13). But the stump, that is the holy offspring remains. And these are the few of the many called (Matt 22:14) who hear the voice of Christ.

Since it is not possible for those who have not yet been born of Spirit to discern spiritual matters (Rom 8:7), the arguments of Rabbinical Judaism, of Muslim apologists can only be heard as the barks of dogs or the meows of cats. And no person allows his or her dog to teach the person how to read Scripture.

Even the voices of Arian and Trinitarian disciples are as the bleating of livestock awaiting their time to be sacrificed, a reality that cannot be overemphasized. A disciple might reason with one of them, but until the Father chooses to disclose what He has concealed from the person, time spent reasoning with the person will not produce near-term fruit. All the genuine disciple can do is assert what the Father has revealed to the disciple, then if possible, without causing offense go on the disciple’s way, proclaiming the good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved, the gospel that must be proclaimed to the world as a witness to every nation before the end will come (Matt 24:13-14).

It is difficult to resist becoming involved in disputes such as whether Adoni can ever reference a deity whereas Adonai will always reference the Most High. Nothing is to be gained through entering into this dispute. Nevertheless, so that disciples will not be misled by the bleating and bellowing livestock, Psalm 110 should be placed in a New Testament context … through both Joseph and Mary, Jesus was born as a descendant of King David (cf. Matt 1:6; Luke 3:31), so He was lawfully the Son of David, the man who either wrote Psalm 110 or the man for whom the Psalm was written. Psalm 110 begins, as some rabbis read it, "LeDavid Mizmor"; i.e., a song to David as opposed to by David. However, those who would have David composing the psalm will contend that David composed it for the Levites to sing years after his death. Either way, Judaism will make King David the subject represented by the linguistic icon Adoni, the second Lord in English translations, a disputed representation. But where there really is no disagreement—the point Jesus was making—is that the first Lord is YHWH.

Israel has been an idolatrous nation from its beginning, with Rachael hiding her father’s idols under her skirts. The nation brought its idols out from Egypt (Ezek chap 20), and the holy nation of Israel will still be worshiping demons and idols halfway through the seven endtime years (Rev 9:20-21). The ancient nation of Israel didn’t suddenly stop worshiping idols when that nation quit pronouncing the sacred Tetragrammaton; rather, it made the Tetragrammaton into an idol. And because Israel long ago made an idol of their monotheism, neither Pharisees in the 1^st-Century nor Observant Jews in the 21^st-Century can answer the question that Jesus asked; thus, these latter day Pharisees deny that Jesus ever asked the question.

Every Observant Jew today will tell a person that 1^st-Century Pharisees well understood Scripture—and on a physical level, they did. They understood the law, but none of them kept the law (John 7:19), which required an act of faith (Deu 30:1-2) equivalent to Abraham’s faith while still uncircumcised (Rom 4:11-12). Without this act of faith (belief), no circumcised Israelite cleansed his or her heart; none were spiritually circumcised (Deu 30:6). All remained in a taxonomical spiritual hierarchy as beasts, the livestock daily offered in sacrifice to God. And it is here where secular arguments are made—at the level of bleating goats and bellowing bulls.

Any spiritual taxonomical ranking conveys a sense of spiritual arrogance that needs to be immediately tempered with humility coming from understanding that to whom much has been given, much is expected: the person to whom the Father has given understanding is responsible for that understanding … the person who understands that Jesus was fully a human being when born of Mary, a man composed of flesh [soma] and shallow breath [psuche], without life in the heavenly realm until born from above through receipt of the divine Breath [Pneuma] of the Most High, knows God and is of God, for only God can reveal this to the person. A person cannot on his or her own grasp what occurred when the Logos as Theos entered into the creation as His Son, His only, a one time event that could not be repeated. He literally divested Himself of His divinity and made Himself into flesh and shallow breath, taking on the form of a servant of God—from a spiritual perspective, Theos died when He entered His creation, for He no longer had any life in the heavenly realm. And this has not been well appreciated in Christological debates that began with the premise that God cannot die.

The premise that a deity cannot die negates the significance of Christ Jesus’ sacrifice. Likewise, belief that human beings are born with immortal souls negates this significance. And everyone who teaches either that Theos did not die or that human beings have immortal souls has not been sent forth by God as a teacher of holy Israel, but has come on his or her own as an imposter, a false prophet or false teacher whom the world eagerly hears, for this person is from the world and speaks as part of this world (1 John 4:5). No exceptions. Whoever teaches that Theos did not die when He left heaven and entered this world is an antichrist (v. 2), and many are these antichrists who believe that they are of God and teach as if they have been sent when they have only come on their own, seeking a reward in heaven for their good works here in earth. They will be denied when their judgments are revealed, for they have denied Christ when they teach that the man Jesus was fully God. The man Jesus had no life in the heavenly realm until the Most High breathed on Him, the Most High’s Breath descending as a dove to light and remain of Jesus (Matt 3:16-17). And again, all who say otherwise are antichrists.

With pedagogical redundancy, the Logos was with Theon, the Most High, from the beginning. This Logos was Theos, and the two of them [Theos & Theon] as if man and wife [there is no gender in heaven] functioned as one. These two, as one, formed YHWH and are the reality of the plural Elohim, which isn’t plural in form for emphasis as is taught by Observant Jews but because the unit is plural. The profundity of marriage is in the concept of two becoming one, a profundity lost in this age of easy divorces and shack-ups. Thus, Theos functioned as the helpmate of Theon as the two of them decided to create humankind in their image, male and female (Gen 1:27) — and for the Helpmate to finish the creation of humankind in the image of Elohim, He entered the creation He had just made, divesting Himself of all life in the heavenly realm. The relationship between Theos and Theon (again, this relationship being of these two being one as in marriage) ended with the death of the Helpmate; i.e., with the death of Theos not on the cross at Calvary, but when He entered His creation for Theos came as His Son, His only (John 3:16). Theos died through divesting Himself of His divinity and becoming a servant. Yes, Yah of the Old Testament died! And the person who today claims to serve Yah is either exceedingly ignorant or a false teacher. No exceptions. And the even greater error is to identify Yah as the Father, or YHWH as the Father. The would-be teacher of Israel who makes this errant identification reveals that the person has not been sent by God to be a teacher of His holy nation, but is a false prophet.

What about, now, what Jesus told the Sadducees, that Theos was the God of the living? Certainly it can be seen how Theos as Yah was the only God that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew. But Abraham was then dead—hence, Theos, also then dead, was not Abraham’s God. However, when Abraham would live again, the man Jesus will have been glorified [i.e., given the glory He had before] for two millennia. He will sit beside the glorified Christ, the two being one, as the glorified Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. Thus, Theon whom Abraham never knew but who knew Abraham will be the glorified Abraham’s God and Father just as He is the God and Father of the glorified Christ, with the glorified Christ being Abraham’s head as he, Abraham, was Sarah’s head.

The above paragraph can pass by without being easily understood: Abraham, when glorified, will call Jesus, “Lord,” as Sarah when alive physically called Abraham, “Lord.” Likewise, Sarah, when glorified, will call Jesus, “Lord,” whereas the glorified Sarah will call Abraham her brother. And Jesus will bear to His Father the relationship of grown Son to Father, both God, both ever-living, both all powerful, both unified in mind and purpose, but nevertheless two in number.

Binitarianism is not monotheism, and is opposed to the idol of monotheism in the same way that heavenly Jerusalem in the supra-dimensional spiritual realm is not present day Jerusalem, which still exists. Monotheism belongs to earthly Jerusalem; its does not belong in heaven, where Father and Son are two, not one. And when the Pharisees said that the Messiah would be David’s son, Jesus trapped them in their idolatrous monotheism.

Again, it takes a high degree of cultural sophistication to turn an intangible deity into an idol like Molech or Marduk, but Israel accomplished this feat by assigning singleness to both the linguistic icon YHWH and to the linguistic icon Elohim the regular plural of Eloah, singleness that was not inherent in either. To assist in this assignment of singleness to plural icons that usually took a singular verb and pronoun [for the two functioned as one] both the scribes and the Pharisees practiced substitution, pronouncing the oral icon Adonai in place of giving voice to YHWH, however they would have chosen to pronounce the Tetragrammaton. Thus, Adonai conceals what the Psalmist revealed.

The writer of Hebrews tells disciples that Jesus is a high priest in the likeness of Melchizedek (7:15-17), citing Psalm 110:4 to make his point. Also, the writer of Hebrews says that Christ Jesus, after offering a single sacrifice for sin, sat down at the right hand of the Father to wait until his enemies should be made a footstool under His feet (10:12-13). Thus, armed with this epistle to the Hebrews, disciples will read Psalm 110 differently than will bleating goats and bellowing bulls. Theos and Theon together, speaking with one voice, that of Yah, say to David’s Lord, who is Yah but who will be born of Mary as a man descended from David, “Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” As a man after God’s heart, David disclosed that he knew how Yah differed from YHWH by how he addressed both in his late Psalms (cf. Ps 146:1; 148:1; 149:1), using poetic structure to show that Yah was to the physical creation what YHWH was to the spiritual creation. By using Adoni to refer to his Lord, David reveals that he knows the plan of God, knowledge that is even today extremely privileged; David reveals that he knows that Yah will be born as a man, for Adoni is not [as every Observant Jew will tell you] used for deities.

Just as Jesus tells Peter that the Father had revealed to Peter Jesus’ identity, Yah revealed to David His identity; for this is not knowledge that human beings can derive on their own. To those human beings who are greatly loved, the Father or the Son reveals knowledge that is not otherwise available to human beings.

Because of almost two millennia of false teaching; because of holy Israel being exiled in spiritual Babylon for its errant ways, the false teachers who are of this world are far better heard than is the voice of Christ Jesus, but this is as it should be. The spiritual livestock about to be sacrificed would not willingly go to the altar otherwise. They would not come to Christ if they knew they were not going to heaven but into the lake of fire for their lawlessness. They would remain part of a skeptical world that will be born from above when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh. Therefore, within the Body of Christ error must persist until the question of whether Jesus will find faith/belief on the earth when He returns ceases being rhetorical and is shown to be a real concern … the small, soft voice of Jesus seems hardly a match to the megaphones used by 24/7 televangelists. In this world, the soft voice of Jesus rides piggyback on the satellites used as megaphones, but Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world and those who hear His voice don’t hear it in this world.

Most of what the Father has revealed to a few has been lost to Christianity because in the Greek inscription of what Jesus said, with both YHWH and Adoni being rendered as kurios. Therefore, a person working from Matthew’s Greek gospel and with the Septuagint to check Psalm 110:1 will miss how much David understood, and why the Pharisees could not, or better, would not answer the question once they said that the Messiah would be David’s son. Likewise, the Observant Jew who doesn’t grasp the trap into which the Pharisees had placed themselves when they said that the Messiah would be David’s son will never comprehend how masterfully Jesus sprung that trap using the one certain place where the Messiah doesn’t appear as a deity, but as a man. It isn’t that this conversation or confrontation didn’t or couldn’t take place—it’s that it did take place, with Jesus using the Psalmist to show that the Messiah will come as a man.

One last time, knowledge of who Christ is remains a privilege accorded to only a few, and remains knowledge directly revealed by the Father to the disciple. This knowledge is publicly available, but is so obscure that in actuality it might as well not publicly exist. It is, however, available to those whom the Father chooses to give it, by whatever means He chooses to use.

The two [Theos & Theon], from the beginning, functioned as one until Theos entered the creation to finish creating the Way to everlasting life. Theos surrendered His divinity when he was born to Mary—and the man Jesus, with no life other than that which came from physical breath, again received life in the heavenly realm when the Breath of the Father descended on Him as a dove. It is through receiving the Father’s Breath that Jesus fulfilled all righteousness to become the last Adam, just as through receiving the breath of Yah the first Adam became a breathing creature, a nephesh, and the ancestor of every human being. The glorified Jesus is the ancestor of every son of God.

What Psalm 110:1 proves is that Jesus would come as a man, not as God. If He had come as Theos rather than as the only Son of Theos, Jesus would have come as God. He would then have been fully man and fully God, but He would not have died in the heavenly realm; thus, He would not have been free to marry in the realm. There would never be any wedding supper. But because He came as His Son, His only, He retained no life in heaven. He came as a man and only as a man, as the Psalmist discloses by using Adoni. Jesus knew this. The Pharisees probably also knew this, which meant that Jesus was claiming that He was this man—and the Pharisees did not want Him to be that man. They had to do something, and it was better to sacrifice one than the whole nation to die. They didn’t realize that in sacrificing the one, they also sacrificed the whole nation.

Matthew 22:44 serves to conceal from prying Christian eyes what the Father did not want disclosed prior to the end of the age, for neither Arian nor Trinitarians would exist if the lawless teachers of holy Israel in the 4^th-Century CE had understood what 1^st-Century Pharisees apparently understood. But because genuine endtime disciples are neither Arians nor Trinitarians, they will be persecuted; they will be maligned as being of the devil; they will be martyred; and some will be prophets (Matt chap 10). These genuine Christians won’t be slain by heathens, but by other Christians—

Will you be one of those other Christians? You may not have a choice about what you do if you don’t, today, repent of your lawlessness, your lack of love for God and neighbor. You cannot worship the idol of monotheism and worship the Father and the Son. You can do one or the other, for the Son will give life to those whom the Father has already made alive (John 5:19, 21). The Son will give life to those disciples who honor Him as those disciples honor the Father (vv. 22-23). Are you one of those disciples? Both the Father and the Son have to give you life before you will enter heaven, for the Son is not the Lord of the dead but of those whom the Father has made alive through spiritual birth. Being born of Spirit just gets you to the altar where you will die as a bleating goat or bellowing bulls if the Son does not also give you life—and He will not give life to those who have denied Him, or who have lived and taught as antichrists.

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