This channel is a hidden gem... Thank you Dr. Jeff Cavins and Fr. Mike... And to your whole team and guests... Been listening to BIY for over a year now... Hope Prof. N.T. Wright will be one of the guests in the future...❤🙏
“God's whole program of redemption includes more than merely acquitting us of our sin...This progressive rehabilitation process...[and] lifelong movement of continual conversion is called sanctification or divinization ('theosis').” ~Marcellino D'Ambrosio and Andrew Swafford, 'What We Believe: The Beauty of the Catholic Faith'
I love this show! The Bible is coming alive like never before and this show has helped shed additional light on some things. Thank you! One piece I deeply appreciate is hearing how others study and pray with Scripture! Also wondering if there’s a way to get our Bible questions answered besides call in shows or paying for education? A Bible support group? 😂 (one of many I have is, is it ok to interpret Genesis 3 through the lens of the father in the story of the prodigal son? The difference being that the prodigal repented while Adam offered excuses. …but if so, why does God not accept King Saul’s repentance in 1 Samuel 15:24-25?)
There's a LOT of good information in this video, but there's also a TON of missing context. This missing context makes a HUGE difference in not only how we should understand kingship in the Old Testament, but also how we should interpret Christ's claim to the throne of David. Firstly, I want to back up all the way to Genesis 1. In Genesis 1:26, God tells Adam and Eve to "take dominion" over the earth and all of the creatures in it. It's a metaphor for an ideal kingdom, with the seventh day when God "rested" picturing that ideal kingdom **at peace**. Compare 2 Sam. 7:1 where God gave King David "rest" from his enemies, meaning that the kingdom of Israel was now at peace. Why is this important? Because this ideal kingdom **FORESHADOWS THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH**. And naturally, sin immediately got in the way of that ideal vision, in Genesis 2 and 3. The entire Bible is filled with God foretelling what His will is for mankind, sin getting in the way, and God accomplishing His will anyway, despite those sins. It's important to recognize that Adam and Eve didn't have the manpower, as it were, to accomplish God's will of "taking dominion." Thus, implicit in that very first commandment was the necessity to pass on their faith in God to their descendants, so that eventually one of them could fulfill this command. Who fulfilled that command to "take dominion"? King David did, when he conquered the nations surrounding Israel and put them to tribute, becoming a "king of kings" as it were, over the surrounding nations. Which foreshadowed Christ's coming rule as King of kings, of course. We'll get back to this concept of King David *partly* fulfilling God's prophetic vision of an ideal kingdom on earth, later. Next, it's very important to understand exactly what kind of power transfer was happening in the time of Samuel the prophet. When the Ark of the Covenant was made, it was basically made as a physical representation of God's throne on earth. Exodus 25:17-22 calls the top of the Ark, the "mercy seat," where God would commune with His people from between the cherubim atop the Ark. When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, they first brought the Ark of the Covenant to Shechem and **built a temple there to house it** The ruins of that temple still exist to this day. Now, Shechem was in the tribal territory of Ephraim, which was the leading tribe under the rulership of Joshua. Joshua was the head judge over all of Israel, in charge of not only hearing the most difficult court cases that the people would bring to him (as opposed to bringing them to local city judges all over Israel), but also of fighting Israel's battles. The judges after Joshua were also charged with the same responsibility. Some of the judges were good, capable men, and some were either compromised and flawed (like Samson) or wicked. But something VERY important happened prior to the time of Samuel that deeply divided the nation of Israel - something that's not recorded in the Scriptures at all. Nevertheless, if we want to really understand kingship in the Old Testament, we need to understand what happened. If you look at Deut. 12:5-7, you'll see that God told Moses that He would select a special place - a place that He would put His name - where Israel would gather and offer their animal sacrifices (three times a year, at the pilgrimage festivals of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles). Deut. 27:1-7 says that this place where God would have Israel offer their sacrifices would be "Mount Ebal." Except it wasn't. Archaeologically speaking, it was at Shechem which was at the foot of Mount Gerizim, though still close to Mount Ebal. According to the Samaritans, the Ark of the Covenant was actually originally kept at Mount Gerizim, but was eventually stolen by a wicked priest who ended up causing a civil war amongst the Levitical priesthood. 1 Samuel 2:27-30 records the high priest Eli's conversation with a "man of God" who reminded him that God had chosen his ancestor to serve as high priest, so Eli had better live up to that calling. Except that's a total fabrication, because we KNOW the entire lineage of high priests from Aaron down to Jehozadak, who was taken into captivity in Babylon, from 1 Chronicles 6:1-15. Eli's name isn't there. For anyone who says that maybe they skipped a generation because Eli was evil, genealogy was CRITICALLY important to the Israelites. Without a person's genealogy, ESPECIALLY for the priests, one could not prove one's right to the priesthood and would be cast out of that office (cf. Ezra 2:61-63). Why is this important? BECAUSE ELI WAS THE WICKED PRIEST WHO STOLE THE ARK, according to the Samaritans, and brought it to Shiloh! Now, all of a sudden there's a Temple of God right in Shiloh and not in Shechem any more! (1 Sam. 1:9 and 3:3) This incident deeply divided the nation. To this day, the Samaritans reject everything after the five books of Moses, including Joshua and Judges, as being canonical. To them, only the five books of Moses hold any authority from God. By the way, that should tell you something about the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well, in John 4:1-29. Have you ever wondered why Jesus said to her in verse 22 that "salvation is of the Jews"? Why would that mean anything to the Samaritan woman? Jesus was referring to a prophecy found in Genesis 49:10, a prophecy that has been badly translated and misunderstood. It should say, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, UNTIL HE COMES TO SHILOH, and the obedience of the people is his." Eli the wicked priest stole the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to Shiloh, but what Jesus was saying was that the promised Messiah would come to SHILOH - the same place of authority that the Samaritans rejected! - and the obedience of the people would be to Him. Even though the place where God chose to place His name was moved from Shechem to Shiloh through trickery and wickedness on Eli's part, GOD STILL RECOGNIZED IT AS VALID. Now that we've established just how the Ark came to be at Shiloh, and what kind of authority Samuel the high priest and judge of Israel was inheriting, let's ask the question, why did God allow the Israelites to have a human king, if He was their King? Because God had already told Adam and Eve to "take dominion" over the earth - and it could only be a HUMAN KING who would fulfill that command! Now, I should also point out that Deut. 17:14-20, about kingship in Israel, wasn't originally part of the book of Deuteronomy. Samuel ADDED THAT PART, once God told him to anoint a king (1 Sam. 10:24-25). There have been several times throughout the history of Israel when various books of the Bible have been edited and updated by those with the authority to do so, and this was one of those times. Here's the next important question. Did King David understand that he was partly fulfilling God's command to "take dominion" over the earth, to establish the ideal kingdom on earth? How can we tell? Because of what he wrote in the Psalms, which I'll cover shortly. What King David did was to take elements of his life and make them, not only into songs, but into DRAMA PLAYS as it were, that were performed at the Temple! These drama plays were intended to foreshadow future events in a hidden fashion, as it were. Much like Jesus' parables that He explained in private to His disciples. Other, pagan nations had their own "drama plays" which were performed at their temples, sometimes involving the king. One good example of such a drama play was the "Akitu" festival of Babylon, performed in the early Spring as a New Year's celebration, with specific symbolic meaning. Much of what King David wrote, was intended to serve such purposes in the (then-future, since it hadn't been built yet) Temple in Jerusalem, at specific times of year. I strongly suspect that Psalm 22 - the Psalm which Christians recognize as being about Jesus' death on the cross - was performed at Passover, for instance.
Now, Psalm 24 begins like so: "The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers." This is a reference to Creation, when God brought dry land out of the deep sea, and planted a garden in Eden at the head of four rivers. It goes on to ask the question, "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?" In other words, who has the right to re-enter the Garden of Eden and stand in the presence of God? Note that this is NOT talking about the Temple Mount, because the Temple hadn't even been built yet, while David was king! Why is this important? Because King David understood that the ULTIMATE fulfillment of the King who had the right to re-enter Eden and "take dominion" over the earth wasn't him. It was "the Lord of Hosts" - God Himself! "Who is this king of glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory." If a descendant of Adam was supposed to fulfill God's command to "take dominion," then somehow God would have to become a human, mortal descendant of Adam, according to this Psalm! And King David understood that. Now, I want to cover God's eternal covenant with King David - something that the video unfortunately didn't go into much detail on. But before I do, I want to remind everyone that God will declare what His will is, and even if sin gets in the way, God will find a way to fulfill His will **anyway**, despite that sin. So many Christians think that God simply nullified His covenant with David, because David's descendants weren't ruling on a throne over Israel any more, after King Zedekiah was taken captive to Babylon and his sons were all killed. But God doesn't break His word. People just might not understand how He keeps His word. I want you to consider the context in which King David prayed to God, asking to build Him a permanent House for His name. In 2 Samuel 7:1, God had just given King David "rest" from his enemies, leading to the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel on earth - the historical model of God's ideal kingdom. Was that to be the pinnacle of God's plan? Would God then finally dwell with His people on earth, forever? That's really what King David was asking! 2 Sam. 7:4-6 says this: "That same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle." But that's not true. We just saw in 1 Sam. 1:9 and 3:3 that there WAS a permanent Temple at Shiloh, and archaeology confirms that there was an even earlier permanent Temple at Shechem! So what did God mean by this? Simply that those permanent buildings weren't the final and ultimate dwelling place of God on earth. What King David was asking was to build THE final and ultimate dwelling place for God on earth, and God basically told him, no. Let's see why, continuing with verses 10-11: "And I **will** appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I **will** give you rest from all your enemies." If the people of Israel hadn't YET been established in THEIR final resting place, to never again be afflicted by their enemies, despite God already having given King David rest from his enemies, then neither could the Temple be established as God's final and ultimate dwelling place on earth. Nevertheless, there would come a time when they WOULD be ultimately established in their final resting place - which would be the land of Canaan as God promised the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - forever at peace with their surrounding neighbors. Now are you beginning to understand just what Christ's claim to the throne of David actually means? It means that He'll eventually rule over THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, as God originally intended it to be! (See Acts 1:6, for instance.) That simply hasn't happened yet, despite us being citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven now. So many Christians simply read the New Testament and have this distorted picture of God's promises, because they don't understand all of the covenants that came before then. They're not understanding what Kingdom Christ promised, or why it's important that that's an earthly Kingdom and not merely a heavenly one. Even the Lord's Prayer makes this clear: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done ON EARTH as it (already) is in heaven"! Now, I want to establish exactly what God promised David, regarding his throne, in 2 Sam. 7:11-16: "The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you (King David) a house (e.g. a family household or dynasty). When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. **Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.**" In other words, there should never be a time when there's not a king, of the line of David, sitting on the throne over Israel. EVEN NOW. I know how impossible that sounds, but consider what Jeremiah the prophet explained in Jer. 33:14-22: "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”" "For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to make grain offerings, and to make sacrifices for all time." "The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: Thus says the Lord: If any of you could break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night would not come at their appointed time, only then could my covenant with my servant David be broken, so that he would not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with my ministers the Levites. Just as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will increase the offspring of my servant David, and the Levites who minister to me." What Jeremiah is reiterating here was the promise to David of a time when Israel and Judah WOULD be permanently established in the land of Israel, and forever at peace with their neighbors. At that time, a "righteous Branch" would spring up for David - that is, a Davidic heir, ruling over Israel and Judah. I know that's not your usual concept of what Christ would do, but this is what Jeremiah is telling us. Christ did NOT sit on the throne of David during His mortal lifetime! Neither is He sitting on it in heaven right now. Jeremiah 33 is telling us that this will ONLY happen ONCE HE RETURNS. In the meantime, King David's throne MUST BE PERMANENTLY OCCUPIED BY AN HEIR OF DAVID. Otherwise, God's kingship and dominion over the earth has been broken! There's simply no way around this promise, so let me remind you once again of what I said before. God will find a way to fulfill His will, EVEN IF SIN GETS IN THE WAY. And sin definitely did get in the way, and led to King Zedekiah - the last Davidic monarch that we know of from the Bible - being taken to Babylon and all of his sons killed. But that can't be the end of the story...so does the Bible tell us what happened, anywhere? Yes it does...but not completely. In Ezekiel 17, it gives an allegorical description of the King of Babylon coming to Jerusalem to take its king and officials to Babylon. Using the very same symbolism, verses 22-24 explain what will happen to the Davidic dynasty: "Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken."
@robertstephenson6806Yes, you're absolutely right that the New Covenant will be made with Israel (northern Israel and Judah). What Jesus brought in the New Testament was a *type* of the New Covenant, but not the final fulfillment of it. Regarding the Trinity, that's a completely separate issue. I agree that it's a man-made doctrine, because of a misunderstanding ORIGINALLY BY THE JEWS of the nature of God. But before I get into that, I want to point out something else. Jesus said that His body was broken for us. That's just as true of His SPIRITUAL body - e.g. all who believe in Him, including Catholics! - as it is of His physical body. Just as there was a split between northern Israel and Judah that God Himself caused (1 Ki. 12:19-24, especially verse 24), with BOTH sides being problematic and error-ridden, imho there was a split between Catholics (Apostolates, since there are more groups than the Catholic Church that trace their authority to the Apostles) and Protestants that God Himself caused - again, with BOTH sides being problematic and error-ridden. But God desires to RESTORE, not condemn. Imho, in the same way that God anointed a Davidic king who was given authority over God's people on His behalf, there can be a God-appointed, human authority over Jesus' Spiritual body, ruling on His behalf. That doesn't mean that that human authority will be without error (contrary to Catholic belief on the matter). The Trinity is one good example of such an error. But imho, that authority is still valid, DESPITE those errors. There were many Davidic kings who were righteous, but didn't eliminate false religious practices from the land. Imho in the same way, God has yet to show the Catholic Church the truth about certain things. There IS actually a Hebrew Catholic Facebook group, consisting of people who are ethnically Jewish but practicing Catholics, who are in the process of putting together a Jewish rite for the Catholic Church (just like there's a Coptic rite, etc.). that acknowledges differences in practice among Jewish Catholics such as observing the high holy days. Now, as far as the Trinity goes, we have the Shema which says this: Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is "one." And from this, the Jews think that it's talking about being NUMERICALLY one. But that doesn't make sense in the context of the passage at all. It means something completely different. In fact, the Shema is part of a chiastic structure here in Deuteronomy 6:1-9. Btw, a chiasmus is simply a repeated textual structure, like the one in Gen. 6:22: A - Thus did Noah B - According to all that God commanded him A' - So he did. Deuteronomy 6:1-9 is structured like this. I'm summarizing for clarity's sake: A - These are the LAWS you must do to live in the LAND. B - KEEP the LAWS, you and your CHILDREN. C - HEAR and OBEY the LAWS. D - Hear O Israel: the Lord our God; the Lord is "one." D' - LOVE the Lord with all of your HEART! C' - OBEY from the HEART! B' - TEACH the LAWS to your CHILDREN. A' - (Various things you must do to live in the land.) Notice that A through D are all external. These are things we're commanded to keep, hear, obey, etc. But D' through A' represent HEARTFELT RESPONSES TO THOSE COMMANDS. And all of them center around this curious phrase that "the Lord is 'one.'" So what does that mean? Far from being a statement about the number of Persons in one God, it's referring to God being "one"...with Israel, His chosen people. THIS IS THE MARITAL COVENANT BETWEEN GOD AND ISRAEL. Any time in the Old Testament that we see a reference to God being "one," it's referring to marital and familial unity - and the same is true in the New Testament as well, in passages such as John 17:11. In any case, be very careful about making being "right" more important than loving your fellow Christian. Even if that Christian is wrong about certain things. After the Second Temple was rebuilt, the understanding of many ancient Biblical concepts was lost - including the proper understanding of the Shema, among others. During the Second Temple period, the Jews began to adopt Greek philosophy as a tool to interpret Scripture - which drastically changed the original meaning of especially the nature of God. This change continued even into New Testament times, and eventually led to the concept of the Trinity among Christians. Regarding Unitarianism, I happen to believe that both the Father and the Son were revealed in the OT, and explicit reference was made to each one, long before the NT. I would suggest reading Michael Heiser's book, "The Unseen Realm," which shows the different references in the OT. You can get it for cheap as an ebook. To summarize, Heiser explains that there was originally a "divine council" in heaven, similar to the Ugaritic pantheon of El and 70 gods under him. We find this "divine council" referred to in Gen. 1:26, but Heiser's theory is based on a reading of Deut. 32:8-9 which takes into account the different textual variants on this passage. Some read "sons of Israel," others read "sons of God," and still others read "angels of God." That's because this passage is referring to dividing the nations among the 70 descendants of Noah (human "sons of God"), but ALSO dividing the RULERSHIP of the nations among 70 angelic beings.(divine "sons of God"). In Daniel 10:13, the angel speaking with Daniel had to contend with a "prince of Persia" who is obviously not a human being. Also, Ezekiel 28 references a human "prince of Tyrus" as well as a "king of Tyrus" who was originally a cherubim in Eden. Basically, some of these angelic rulers are good, but others are wicked. That's why Psalm 82 refers to "gods" (e.g. the angelic "sons of God" who are part of God's divine council) who are judging unjustly. As far as different actual appearances of God the Father and the Son in Scripture, read Gen. 12:7 where YHVH appears to Abram, and compare that with Gen. 15:1 which has "the Word of YHVH" appearing to Abram in a vision. Now compare that with John 1:1 which explains that the Word is also God. The one who appeared to Abram in Gen. 12:7 was the Father, and the one who appeared in vision to Abram in Gen. 15:1 was the Son. There are many other places where YHVH and the Word of YHVH or Angel/Messenger of YHVH are differentiated, but those are two good examples.
@robertstephenson6806I respectfully differ. I happen to believe that God the Father and the pre-incarnate Word both had, and continue to have, separate spiritual bodies. In any case, I hope you can focus on the things which we can agree on - such as the New Covenant being made with Israel - rather than on the things where we differ.
Be sure to get your free chart to follow along (just pay shipping) at: ascensionpress.com/pages/bible-show-chart/
This channel is a hidden gem... Thank you Dr. Jeff Cavins and Fr. Mike... And to your whole team and guests... Been listening to BIY for over a year now... Hope Prof. N.T. Wright will be one of the guests in the future...❤🙏
My favorite is: Isaiah 46:4 "I have made you and I will carry you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you."
Excellent program/discussion.
Thanks Dr. Italy & Jeff Cavins for this session on the kings. It has added to my BIY study. ❤🙏
I am loving this show, I know that the Lord send us these knowledgeable people to help us understand his words, thank you
This show is a blessing! We must share it with others! Thank you!
BECAUSE IT'S THE ONE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Awesome video. You guys are fabulous.
So interesting! Thank you! ❤
Great episode!
“God's whole program of redemption includes more than merely acquitting us of our sin...This progressive rehabilitation process...[and] lifelong movement of continual conversion is called sanctification or divinization ('theosis').” ~Marcellino D'Ambrosio and Andrew Swafford, 'What We Believe: The Beauty of the Catholic Faith'
I love this show! The Bible is coming alive like never before and this show has helped shed additional light on some things. Thank you! One piece I deeply appreciate is hearing how others study and pray with Scripture!
Also wondering if there’s a way to get our Bible questions answered besides call in shows or paying for education? A Bible support group? 😂 (one of many I have is, is it ok to interpret Genesis 3 through the lens of the father in the story of the prodigal son? The difference being that the prodigal repented while Adam offered excuses. …but if so, why does God not accept King Saul’s repentance in 1 Samuel 15:24-25?)
Could you make these episodes available on Spotify or other podcast services?
I am literally reading the Amharic bible (to finish reading it once) in a year.
What happened to the thirteen tribe?
There's a LOT of good information in this video, but there's also a TON of missing context. This missing context makes a HUGE difference in not only how we should understand kingship in the Old Testament, but also how we should interpret Christ's claim to the throne of David.
Firstly, I want to back up all the way to Genesis 1. In Genesis 1:26, God tells Adam and Eve to "take dominion" over the earth and all of the creatures in it. It's a metaphor for an ideal kingdom, with the seventh day when God "rested" picturing that ideal kingdom **at peace**. Compare 2 Sam. 7:1 where God gave King David "rest" from his enemies, meaning that the kingdom of Israel was now at peace.
Why is this important? Because this ideal kingdom **FORESHADOWS THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH**. And naturally, sin immediately got in the way of that ideal vision, in Genesis 2 and 3. The entire Bible is filled with God foretelling what His will is for mankind, sin getting in the way, and God accomplishing His will anyway, despite those sins.
It's important to recognize that Adam and Eve didn't have the manpower, as it were, to accomplish God's will of "taking dominion." Thus, implicit in that very first commandment was the necessity to pass on their faith in God to their descendants, so that eventually one of them could fulfill this command.
Who fulfilled that command to "take dominion"? King David did, when he conquered the nations surrounding Israel and put them to tribute, becoming a "king of kings" as it were, over the surrounding nations. Which foreshadowed Christ's coming rule as King of kings, of course.
We'll get back to this concept of King David *partly* fulfilling God's prophetic vision of an ideal kingdom on earth, later.
Next, it's very important to understand exactly what kind of power transfer was happening in the time of Samuel the prophet. When the Ark of the Covenant was made, it was basically made as a physical representation of God's throne on earth. Exodus 25:17-22 calls the top of the Ark, the "mercy seat," where God would commune with His people from between the cherubim atop the Ark. When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, they first brought the Ark of the Covenant to Shechem and **built a temple there to house it** The ruins of that temple still exist to this day.
Now, Shechem was in the tribal territory of Ephraim, which was the leading tribe under the rulership of Joshua. Joshua was the head judge over all of Israel, in charge of not only hearing the most difficult court cases that the people would bring to him (as opposed to bringing them to local city judges all over Israel), but also of fighting Israel's battles. The judges after Joshua were also charged with the same responsibility. Some of the judges were good, capable men, and some were either compromised and flawed (like Samson) or wicked. But something VERY important happened prior to the time of Samuel that deeply divided the nation of Israel - something that's not recorded in the Scriptures at all. Nevertheless, if we want to really understand kingship in the Old Testament, we need to understand what happened.
If you look at Deut. 12:5-7, you'll see that God told Moses that He would select a special place - a place that He would put His name - where Israel would gather and offer their animal sacrifices (three times a year, at the pilgrimage festivals of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles). Deut. 27:1-7 says that this place where God would have Israel offer their sacrifices would be "Mount Ebal."
Except it wasn't. Archaeologically speaking, it was at Shechem which was at the foot of Mount Gerizim, though still close to Mount Ebal. According to the Samaritans, the Ark of the Covenant was actually originally kept at Mount Gerizim, but was eventually stolen by a wicked priest who ended up causing a civil war amongst the Levitical priesthood.
1 Samuel 2:27-30 records the high priest Eli's conversation with a "man of God" who reminded him that God had chosen his ancestor to serve as high priest, so Eli had better live up to that calling. Except that's a total fabrication, because we KNOW the entire lineage of high priests from Aaron down to Jehozadak, who was taken into captivity in Babylon, from 1 Chronicles 6:1-15. Eli's name isn't there. For anyone who says that maybe they skipped a generation because Eli was evil, genealogy was CRITICALLY important to the Israelites. Without a person's genealogy, ESPECIALLY for the priests, one could not prove one's right to the priesthood and would be cast out of that office (cf. Ezra 2:61-63).
Why is this important? BECAUSE ELI WAS THE WICKED PRIEST WHO STOLE THE ARK, according to the Samaritans, and brought it to Shiloh! Now, all of a sudden there's a Temple of God right in Shiloh and not in Shechem any more! (1 Sam. 1:9 and 3:3)
This incident deeply divided the nation. To this day, the Samaritans reject everything after the five books of Moses, including Joshua and Judges, as being canonical. To them, only the five books of Moses hold any authority from God.
By the way, that should tell you something about the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well, in John 4:1-29. Have you ever wondered why Jesus said to her in verse 22 that "salvation is of the Jews"? Why would that mean anything to the Samaritan woman?
Jesus was referring to a prophecy found in Genesis 49:10, a prophecy that has been badly translated and misunderstood. It should say, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, UNTIL HE COMES TO SHILOH, and the obedience of the people is his."
Eli the wicked priest stole the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to Shiloh, but what Jesus was saying was that the promised Messiah would come to SHILOH - the same place of authority that the Samaritans rejected! - and the obedience of the people would be to Him. Even though the place where God chose to place His name was moved from Shechem to Shiloh through trickery and wickedness on Eli's part, GOD STILL RECOGNIZED IT AS VALID.
Now that we've established just how the Ark came to be at Shiloh, and what kind of authority Samuel the high priest and judge of Israel was inheriting, let's ask the question, why did God allow the Israelites to have a human king, if He was their King?
Because God had already told Adam and Eve to "take dominion" over the earth - and it could only be a HUMAN KING who would fulfill that command!
Now, I should also point out that Deut. 17:14-20, about kingship in Israel, wasn't originally part of the book of Deuteronomy. Samuel ADDED THAT PART, once God told him to anoint a king (1 Sam. 10:24-25). There have been several times throughout the history of Israel when various books of the Bible have been edited and updated by those with the authority to do so, and this was one of those times.
Here's the next important question. Did King David understand that he was partly fulfilling God's command to "take dominion" over the earth, to establish the ideal kingdom on earth? How can we tell?
Because of what he wrote in the Psalms, which I'll cover shortly. What King David did was to take elements of his life and make them, not only into songs, but into DRAMA PLAYS as it were, that were performed at the Temple! These drama plays were intended to foreshadow future events in a hidden fashion, as it were. Much like Jesus' parables that He explained in private to His disciples.
Other, pagan nations had their own "drama plays" which were performed at their temples, sometimes involving the king. One good example of such a drama play was the "Akitu" festival of Babylon, performed in the early Spring as a New Year's celebration, with specific symbolic meaning. Much of what King David wrote, was intended to serve such purposes in the (then-future, since it hadn't been built yet) Temple in Jerusalem, at specific times of year.
I strongly suspect that Psalm 22 - the Psalm which Christians recognize as being about Jesus' death on the cross - was performed at Passover, for instance.
Now, Psalm 24 begins like so:
"The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers."
This is a reference to Creation, when God brought dry land out of the deep sea, and planted a garden in Eden at the head of four rivers. It goes on to ask the question, "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?" In other words, who has the right to re-enter the Garden of Eden and stand in the presence of God? Note that this is NOT talking about the Temple Mount, because the Temple hadn't even been built yet, while David was king!
Why is this important? Because King David understood that the ULTIMATE fulfillment of the King who had the right to re-enter Eden and "take dominion" over the earth wasn't him. It was "the Lord of Hosts" - God Himself! "Who is this king of glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory."
If a descendant of Adam was supposed to fulfill God's command to "take dominion," then somehow God would have to become a human, mortal descendant of Adam, according to this Psalm! And King David understood that.
Now, I want to cover God's eternal covenant with King David - something that the video unfortunately didn't go into much detail on. But before I do, I want to remind everyone that God will declare what His will is, and even if sin gets in the way, God will find a way to fulfill His will **anyway**, despite that sin. So many Christians think that God simply nullified His covenant with David, because David's descendants weren't ruling on a throne over Israel any more, after King Zedekiah was taken captive to Babylon and his sons were all killed. But God doesn't break His word. People just might not understand how He keeps His word.
I want you to consider the context in which King David prayed to God, asking to build Him a permanent House for His name. In 2 Samuel 7:1, God had just given King David "rest" from his enemies, leading to the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel on earth - the historical model of God's ideal kingdom. Was that to be the pinnacle of God's plan? Would God then finally dwell with His people on earth, forever? That's really what King David was asking!
2 Sam. 7:4-6 says this:
"That same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle."
But that's not true. We just saw in 1 Sam. 1:9 and 3:3 that there WAS a permanent Temple at Shiloh, and archaeology confirms that there was an even earlier permanent Temple at Shechem! So what did God mean by this?
Simply that those permanent buildings weren't the final and ultimate dwelling place of God on earth. What King David was asking was to build THE final and ultimate dwelling place for God on earth, and God basically told him, no. Let's see why, continuing with verses 10-11:
"And I **will** appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I **will** give you rest from all your enemies."
If the people of Israel hadn't YET been established in THEIR final resting place, to never again be afflicted by their enemies, despite God already having given King David rest from his enemies, then neither could the Temple be established as God's final and ultimate dwelling place on earth. Nevertheless, there would come a time when they WOULD be ultimately established in their final resting place - which would be the land of Canaan as God promised the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - forever at peace with their surrounding neighbors.
Now are you beginning to understand just what Christ's claim to the throne of David actually means? It means that He'll eventually rule over THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, as God originally intended it to be! (See Acts 1:6, for instance.) That simply hasn't happened yet, despite us being citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven now.
So many Christians simply read the New Testament and have this distorted picture of God's promises, because they don't understand all of the covenants that came before then. They're not understanding what Kingdom Christ promised, or why it's important that that's an earthly Kingdom and not merely a heavenly one. Even the Lord's Prayer makes this clear: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done ON EARTH as it (already) is in heaven"!
Now, I want to establish exactly what God promised David, regarding his throne, in 2 Sam. 7:11-16:
"The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you (King David) a house (e.g. a family household or dynasty). When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. **Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.**"
In other words, there should never be a time when there's not a king, of the line of David, sitting on the throne over Israel. EVEN NOW.
I know how impossible that sounds, but consider what Jeremiah the prophet explained in Jer. 33:14-22:
"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”"
"For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to make grain offerings, and to make sacrifices for all time."
"The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: Thus says the Lord: If any of you could break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night would not come at their appointed time, only then could my covenant with my servant David be broken, so that he would not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with my ministers the Levites. Just as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will increase the offspring of my servant David, and the Levites who minister to me."
What Jeremiah is reiterating here was the promise to David of a time when Israel and Judah WOULD be permanently established in the land of Israel, and forever at peace with their neighbors. At that time, a "righteous Branch" would spring up for David - that is, a Davidic heir, ruling over Israel and Judah. I know that's not your usual concept of what Christ would do, but this is what Jeremiah is telling us. Christ did NOT sit on the throne of David during His mortal lifetime! Neither is He sitting on it in heaven right now. Jeremiah 33 is telling us that this will ONLY happen ONCE HE RETURNS.
In the meantime, King David's throne MUST BE PERMANENTLY OCCUPIED BY AN HEIR OF DAVID. Otherwise, God's kingship and dominion over the earth has been broken!
There's simply no way around this promise, so let me remind you once again of what I said before. God will find a way to fulfill His will, EVEN IF SIN GETS IN THE WAY. And sin definitely did get in the way, and led to King Zedekiah - the last Davidic monarch that we know of from the Bible - being taken to Babylon and all of his sons killed.
But that can't be the end of the story...so does the Bible tell us what happened, anywhere?
Yes it does...but not completely. In Ezekiel 17, it gives an allegorical description of the King of Babylon coming to Jerusalem to take its king and officials to Babylon. Using the very same symbolism, verses 22-24 explain what will happen to the Davidic dynasty:
"Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken."
@robertstephenson6806Yes, you're absolutely right that the New Covenant will be made with Israel (northern Israel and Judah). What Jesus brought in the New Testament was a *type* of the New Covenant, but not the final fulfillment of it.
Regarding the Trinity, that's a completely separate issue. I agree that it's a man-made doctrine, because of a misunderstanding ORIGINALLY BY THE JEWS of the nature of God. But before I get into that, I want to point out something else. Jesus said that His body was broken for us. That's just as true of His SPIRITUAL body - e.g. all who believe in Him, including Catholics! - as it is of His physical body.
Just as there was a split between northern Israel and Judah that God Himself caused (1 Ki. 12:19-24, especially verse 24), with BOTH sides being problematic and error-ridden, imho there was a split between Catholics (Apostolates, since there are more groups than the Catholic Church that trace their authority to the Apostles) and Protestants that God Himself caused - again, with BOTH sides being problematic and error-ridden. But God desires to RESTORE, not condemn.
Imho, in the same way that God anointed a Davidic king who was given authority over God's people on His behalf, there can be a God-appointed, human authority over Jesus' Spiritual body, ruling on His behalf. That doesn't mean that that human authority will be without error (contrary to Catholic belief on the matter). The Trinity is one good example of such an error. But imho, that authority is still valid, DESPITE those errors.
There were many Davidic kings who were righteous, but didn't eliminate false religious practices from the land. Imho in the same way, God has yet to show the Catholic Church the truth about certain things. There IS actually a Hebrew Catholic Facebook group, consisting of people who are ethnically Jewish but practicing Catholics, who are in the process of putting together a Jewish rite for the Catholic Church (just like there's a Coptic rite, etc.). that acknowledges differences in practice among Jewish Catholics such as observing the high holy days.
Now, as far as the Trinity goes, we have the Shema which says this: Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is "one." And from this, the Jews think that it's talking about being NUMERICALLY one. But that doesn't make sense in the context of the passage at all. It means something completely different.
In fact, the Shema is part of a chiastic structure here in Deuteronomy 6:1-9. Btw, a chiasmus is simply a repeated textual structure, like the one in Gen. 6:22:
A - Thus did Noah
B - According to all that God commanded him
A' - So he did.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 is structured like this. I'm summarizing for clarity's sake:
A - These are the LAWS you must do to live in the LAND.
B - KEEP the LAWS, you and your CHILDREN.
C - HEAR and OBEY the LAWS.
D - Hear O Israel: the Lord our God; the Lord is "one."
D' - LOVE the Lord with all of your HEART!
C' - OBEY from the HEART!
B' - TEACH the LAWS to your CHILDREN.
A' - (Various things you must do to live in the land.)
Notice that A through D are all external. These are things we're commanded to keep, hear, obey, etc. But D' through A' represent HEARTFELT RESPONSES TO THOSE COMMANDS. And all of them center around this curious phrase that "the Lord is 'one.'" So what does that mean?
Far from being a statement about the number of Persons in one God, it's referring to God being "one"...with Israel, His chosen people. THIS IS THE MARITAL COVENANT BETWEEN GOD AND ISRAEL. Any time in the Old Testament that we see a reference to God being "one," it's referring to marital and familial unity - and the same is true in the New Testament as well, in passages such as John 17:11.
In any case, be very careful about making being "right" more important than loving your fellow Christian. Even if that Christian is wrong about certain things.
After the Second Temple was rebuilt, the understanding of many ancient Biblical concepts was lost - including the proper understanding of the Shema, among others. During the Second Temple period, the Jews began to adopt Greek philosophy as a tool to interpret Scripture - which drastically changed the original meaning of especially the nature of God. This change continued even into New Testament times, and eventually led to the concept of the Trinity among Christians.
Regarding Unitarianism, I happen to believe that both the Father and the Son were revealed in the OT, and explicit reference was made to each one, long before the NT. I would suggest reading Michael Heiser's book, "The Unseen Realm," which shows the different references in the OT. You can get it for cheap as an ebook.
To summarize, Heiser explains that there was originally a "divine council" in heaven, similar to the Ugaritic pantheon of El and 70 gods under him. We find this "divine council" referred to in Gen. 1:26, but Heiser's theory is based on a reading of Deut. 32:8-9 which takes into account the different textual variants on this passage. Some read "sons of Israel," others read "sons of God," and still others read "angels of God." That's because this passage is referring to dividing the nations among the 70 descendants of Noah (human "sons of God"), but ALSO dividing the RULERSHIP of the nations among 70 angelic beings.(divine "sons of God").
In Daniel 10:13, the angel speaking with Daniel had to contend with a "prince of Persia" who is obviously not a human being. Also, Ezekiel 28 references a human "prince of Tyrus" as well as a "king of Tyrus" who was originally a cherubim in Eden. Basically, some of these angelic rulers are good, but others are wicked. That's why Psalm 82 refers to "gods" (e.g. the angelic "sons of God" who are part of God's divine council) who are judging unjustly.
As far as different actual appearances of God the Father and the Son in Scripture, read Gen. 12:7 where YHVH appears to Abram, and compare that with Gen. 15:1 which has "the Word of YHVH" appearing to Abram in a vision. Now compare that with John 1:1 which explains that the Word is also God. The one who appeared to Abram in Gen. 12:7 was the Father, and the one who appeared in vision to Abram in Gen. 15:1 was the Son. There are many other places where YHVH and the Word of YHVH or Angel/Messenger of YHVH are differentiated, but those are two good examples.
@robertstephenson6806I respectfully differ. I happen to believe that God the Father and the pre-incarnate Word both had, and continue to have, separate spiritual bodies. In any case, I hope you can focus on the things which we can agree on - such as the New Covenant being made with Israel - rather than on the things where we differ.
BECAUSE IT'S THE ONE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.