What Is The Ultimate Treasure For Every Seeker?

Yesterday, I blogged about the Hebrew language being the only digital language. This allowed the scribes to copy the original texts that were written by Moses, Joshua, David, etc with great accuracy and precision, and without any error or omission because they could verify this via "row subtotals" and "column subtotals". 

the interlinear Bible leaves the Word untranslated

With this background, let us look at Genesis 1:1. 

Hebrew reads from right to left. Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew is "ba'reshiyth bara elohiym eth ha'shamayim neth ha'erets".

Take note that the scribes had to copy the passage in its entirety, even though there was a word in there that did not seem to make any sense, and may even have appeared superfluous to them.

If we look at a Hebrew-English interlinear bible, note that the word eth appears in this verse, but is not translated! This word is made up of the letters "aleph" and "tav", which are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

It was a mystery to the scribes when they copied it down through the ages, but the mystery was finally uncovered by the apostle John a couple of thousand years later.

In Rev1:8, Rev 21:6 and Rev 22:13, we read that Jesus declared that He was the Alpha and Omega. 

The book of Revelations was written in Greek because that was the language of commerce during the apostolic age, hence Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

But what language did Jesus speak to his fellow Jews, such as the disciple John and the apostle Paul?  

For that, let us look at what Luke records for us in Acts 26:14 

14 And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads (NKJV)

In this verse, Paul (then known as Saul) is recollecting his Damascus Road experience in which Jesus had appeared to Him in a vision. Note that the Holy Spirit saw fit for Luke to record specifically that Jesus spoke HEBREW to Paul.

Aleph-Tav, Jesus' signature

When we put all these together, we realise that Jesus would have spoken to John in Hebrew too, and in those 3 verses in Revelations, He had declared to John that He was the Aleph and the Tav, ie. the first and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

When we link this back to Gen 1:1, what Jesus was in fact telling John was that He was that untranslated Word that the scribes had to diligently copy down through the ages, without understanding what it meant.

If we now link this to John 1, we can conclude that the Word being referred to in that chapter = Aleph-Tav = Jesus.

1 In the beginning was the Word (ie. Aleph-Tav), and the Word (ie. Aleph-Tav) was with God, and the Word (ie. Aleph-Tav) was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 14 And the Word (ie. Aleph-Tav) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

In other words, Jesus had deliberately put His own "signature", right there in the beginning, in the first verse of the first chapter of the first book.

The above revelation was obtained from a sermon by Dr. Larry Ollison entitled "The Hebrew Language".   The following is an extract from that sermon where he talks about the signature of Jesus appearing in Gen 1:1

Several years ago, Michael Drosnin wrote a book called The Bible Code, in which he claimed that the Bible contained hidden codes about various people and incidents in history. 

Well, the true Bible Code is that the person of Jesus is hidden in the Old Testament Scriptures, and as Christians, it is in our interest to uncover and unveil Him, because the more we know about Him, the more we know our own position, since we are co-heirs with Him. It is in our interest to know more and more about Christ, because as He is, so are we in this world.

Right there in Gen 1:1, His signature is found.

In Gen 3:15, God the Father prophesied that Jesus would be the seed of Eve that would crush Satan's head.

In Num 21, the snake in the desert that cured the Israelites was a picture of Jesus being lifted up so that all who believed in Him may have eternal life (Jn 3:14-15).

And there are many, many more nuggets of truth in the Old Testament Scriptures (Noah's Ark being a type of Christ, Jesus in the genealogy of Noah, Joseph being a type of Christ, Boaz being a shadow of Christ, etc, etc)

When we as seekers start to realise that the Old Testament contains numerous hidden treasures of our Lord Jesus, the Bible becomes like that mystery novel that we just cannot put down! Our hunger and thirst for the Word of God intensifies, as the Holy Spirit progressively unveils and uncovers Jesus, yea even in seemingly "dry" books like Leviticus, Numbers and Lamentations!

Paul says that ALL Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for equipping us -- and ALL means ALL -- including genealogies, numbers, names, etc. There are no insignificant details in the Bible.

So what is the ultimate treasure for every seeker of the truth? It is to uncover the person of Jesus and His finished work on the cross.

* P.S. There are many other passages in the Old Testament whereby Jesus had deliberately put His "signature" for the scribes to copy. 

To set you on your journey of discovery, I would highly-recommend this DVD entitled "Aleph-Tav: Jesus' Signature in the Bible".

https://www.sksbooks.com/products/aleph-tav-jesus--signature-in-the-bible-dvd/

Q8. Wasn't God Cruel to Test Abraham by Asking Him to Sacrifice Isaac?

Abraham attempting to sacrifice Isaac.

One of the Bible passages I struggled a lot with was the story in Genesis 22, whereby God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a way to prove to God that he loved God.

I recall reading an article that appeared in the Sunday Times more than a decade ago whereby the writer made reference to the abovementioned portion of Scripture and said that she would never believe in a God who would be so cruel enough as to test a person's faith by asking him to give up a child that he had waited so many years for.

If one were to put himself in Abraham's shoes, one must have agonised over the situation.  Here was the promised son that took 100 years to come to pass.   In a modern day Singapore context, it was as though that dream bungalow or dream sports car one had to slog 20 years to get, was suddenly going to be taken away overnight.

To understand why God asked Abraham to do the above (and also the significance of many other seemingly confusing events that are recorded in the Old Testament), one has to again use that "scarlet thread" to "connect the dots".  (See the blog entry entitled "Connecting the Dots Via the Scarlet Thread")

There is this saying that "The Old Testament is in the New revealed.  The New Testament is in the Old concealed."  In other words, the Old Testament contains hidden truths that get uncovered and unveiled when one reads the New Testament passages that make reference to those Old Testament passages.

Another way of putting this is that the Old Testament contains types and shadows that point towards the antitype and substance, which is the person of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross.

A good example of this was used by Jesus Christ Himself.  We are all familiar with the verse John 3:16.  But let's look at the context of that verse:

"14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but[b] have eternal life." (John 3:14-15)

Jesus was having a conversation of Nicodemus, a Pharisee who was very familiar with the Old Testament.  He made reference to the event that took place in Numbers 21, whereby the Israelites were bitten by snakes in the wilderness.  The cure was for them to look at a bronze serpent on a pole that God had asked Moses to make.  Jesus was in essence telling Nicodemus that He was just like that bronze serpent!

That bronze serpent being the solution to the Israelites' snake bites in the wilderness was the "type and shadow" which pointed to the antitype and substance, which is Jesus on the cross being the solution to mankind's sins.

Now back to Abraham and Isaac.  Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son would be a picture of God the Father being willing to sacrifice God the Son. God had told Abraham in Gen 22:2 to "take his son, his only son, the son that he loved" was an indication that He would in time to come take His son, His only son, the Son that He loved.

While Abraham was willing to give up his son, he eventually did not have to do so because Jehovah Jireh provided a ram. While Abraham and Isaac had made their way up one side of the mountain, God's provision had made its way up the other side.

So, Abraham giving up Isaac was something that pointed to Daddy God giving up Jesus Christ. Note that no one else in the Scriptures, be it Jacob or David or Solomon or Peter was asked to make such a sacrifice.

So was God cruel to ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?  Not if we understand that Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac was but a type and shadow of the ultimate sacrifice that took place on the cross 2,000 years ago.  While Isaac was ultimately spared, Jesus was not.