BenTsion said:
A close look at the book of Sh'mot (Exodus) suggests that the golden calf was an attempt to represent G-d. So I figure no matter how G-d manifested Himself, idolatry was imminent after Israel had spent so many years being poisoned by a sinful environment (Egypt).
In Messiah,
Ben Tsion
Greetings on this fine Sabbath,
This is an important point. The calf was meant to be a symbol of Adonai not a turning to another God. These folks had no idea how to access the one God, YHVH. So they did so in the form that they were most familiar with, the Egyptian Pagan tradition. Now if we fast forward a few thousand years we se the "Church" doing the exact same thing. Pagans who were coming to faith in Yeshua he Messiah and entering into fellowship in the synagogue enviornment were in a squeeze to be faithful to the Gospel of faith and to comply wih the still legalistic Jews who did not yet know Yeshua as Messiah and in the mix also were those both Jews and Gentiles who had come to a right balance. With the pressure of the Jewish wars in the late 60's, and persecution from the Roman auhority against Jews, some in the church began to look for ways to separate themselves from the Tzionist faction which was deeply entrenched in Judaism of that day. The hope was that this separation would remove the Roman pressure. As the mature leadership, from the apostles like Paul, Pete, James ect, were killed and with the routing from Jerusalem of all "Messianic types", the churh began to fall back into Pagan type traditions, and refitting them as a system of religion, to approach the one God. But YHVH had said, " You shall not worship me in the way that the Pagans worship their Gods, for I am one God." But that is exactly what they did, they began to worship the one true God in the way the Pagans worshipped their gods.
This is why most of what orthodox chistianity calls the "The traditions of the elders", or the teachings of the "church fathers" is really almost three centuries into this apostasy. They fail to go back to the true beliefs and actions of the first churchs, in Israel. So what happens,, is a church who disregards the commandments and live in complete contadiction to the basic teachings of Yeshua and the Talmidum. Christians today with fight to keep the "Ten Commandments" posted in public places, but they reject it's validity to their own lives, and reject its teachings. Do they "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy"? No, they keep the Sun-day, the verniable day of the sun god mithras. (Roman god of the sun) When was Messiah Born?; on the first day of Sukkot. What does the church recognize as the birth?; Dec 25th, the very same day that the Pagans recognized as the birth of Mithra. Does the church keep the passover? No, they keep the feast of Eshitar, the Roman fertility goddess, which was celebrated with eggs, rabbits, chicks and all sorts of fertility symbols.
So the bottom line is that the church has long practiced traditions of Golden calf substituion, where they have polished up old Pagan things and given them a fresh coating of Chrisitian paint. In the writings of the early church fathers this system of assimilation was seen as a great inovation or the inclusion of the Pagans. But it is all an abomination to YHVH, if we are to really learn the lesson from Sh'mot.
I wonder some times about the mark of the beast in revelation. It is on the hand and/or forehead, which indicate, what you think (head) and what you do (hand). Messianics believe and do what God has told us, and what Yeshua and his talmidum did. The Christian church does the traditons of the calf, established after Constantine. Do we not bear the mark already, by which Adonai will identify his own?
Charles in Florida
