Shabbat Shalom

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long, host and producer of Shabbat Shalom. Welcome to our final hour. Before Rabbi Michael Washer comes to teach, I feel the need to voice concern of the recent reports of 11 scientists with UFO research ties who have either been killed or have mysteriously disappeared.

One of the latest is retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland, who disappeared in New Mexico at the end of February, walking out with his boots and a handgun while leaving behind his phone, keys, and glasses. At the time this is happening, a documentary is released called The Age of Disclosure, featuring high-level officials discussing the 80-year cover-up of non-human intelligence.

Now, as many of you know, my research on the origin and activity of the so-called aliens and their present invasion into our everyday world has been a large part of my 35-year calling as a chronicler for the sixth generation, writing how the biblical end of days is unfolding. For example, as a seer since 2002, I have analyzed my warning dreams over the last two decades and noted that those from 2010 to 2020 increased over the first decade by 400 percent.

I then studied each of those dreams to see if there were one thing the Lord was warning me about, and I found it. All these dreams dealt with the invasion of the Nephilim. Now, my research has led me to study the origins of those who populated Earth before our biblical record was written, especially the artifacts and writings uncovered after the flood. I have written extensively about this in two monographs that are found in my online store at candacelong.com/store. They are called The Return of the Nephilim and The Nephilim UFO Connection.

I want you to consider four things. Number one, in the days of Noah, 200 angels refused to serve mankind, and they left the place that God assigned them as watchers. They began to intermarry with earthly women and produce a race known as the Nephilim, half-man, half-angelic. This took place during the reign of our sixth patriarch, Jared.

Number two, one significant artifact revealed the diagram they drew of their flight plan to and from Earth in their spaceships. It was unearthed in Iran, dating back to around 3200 BC. As they hovered over the Indian Ocean, they examined the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and they selected where they wanted to colonize, using the twin peaks of Mount Ararat as their primary landmark, the place where Noah's Ark would one day settle. For a spaceport, they chose the place where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers met, a place they called Sippar, located in Iraq near the border of Iran. It had one of the richest known sources of petroleum products that seeped up through natural wells and could be collected from the surface without any deep digging or drilling.

Number three, this civilization proved to be so perverse and violent that God brought on the flood, which obliterated all of the cities of the gods, their spaceport and mission control center buried under millions of tons of mud and silt. The gods themselves survived the flood by flying off in their spaceships.

And number four, after the flood, they returned and rebuilt over their ancestral ruins, which they considered sacred. The landing path was anchored again on Mount Ararat, but the new spaceport was rebuilt using twin beacon sites on the Sinai Peninsula and the pyramids in Egypt, and a new mission control center at a place called Jerusalem.

Jesus said in Luke 21, verses 10 and 11, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven." Our Vice President has said these beings are demons. What I want you to see is that this saga began during the sixth generation of Jared, and we who belong to the sixth generation before the day of the Lord are witnessing the gods about to resurface to reclaim a land they believe is theirs.

As we begin this hour of instruction, allow me to recite one of the prayers we say before studying the Torah. Baruch atah Adonai, hamelamed Torah l'amo Yisrael, v'natan-lanu Torato b'vasar, Yeshua HaMashiach, l'amo Yisrael. Blessed are You, Lord, teacher of Torah to His people Israel, and who gave the Torah in flesh, Yeshua the Messiah, to His people Israel. Join me in welcoming Rabbi Michael Washer.

Michael Washer: Shabbat Shalom, chaverim. This is Rabbi Michael Washer. The Torah portion this week is one that most believers don't feel much connection to. Just like the first Torah portion in this book, Vayikra, meaning "And He called," the Torah portion this week begins with addressing the Kohanim, the priests.

My family, the Washers, used to be the Warszawskis, which means "man of Warsaw," and was a family of Kohanim or priests. They were one family from Italy, which developed from the joining of two Kohenic families in 16th century Italy. Those two families were the Rappa family and the Porto family. They joined, and the family was then called the Rappa-Ports. One branch broke away and moved to Warsaw, Poland, in 1818.

I knew nothing about this until I studied it in Jewish source material in about the year 1996. When I was growing up, I didn't know our family were Kohanim, and I didn't even know what role the Kohanim play in a modern-day synagogue or temple. I didn't know what it meant to be a Kohen, and I didn't know what was expected of a Kohen or the strictures and prohibitions. Things in scripture about the Kohanim, such as no tattoos, no long hair, no marrying a widow or walking in a graveyard, or being first to read Torah on the bima.

I was, for all intents and purposes, a Gentile because we rarely if ever went to temple, and our family being members of Reform Judaism and my father being a career officer in the military. In our Torah portion this week, God lays out the strictures and rules for the Kehunah, the priesthood. The first thing it deals with is the effects of death.

In addressing the children of Aaron, the priests, He says this: "None shall defile himself for a dead person among his people, except for his relatives who are nearest to him: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his brother; also for his virgin sister who is near to him because she has not had a husband. He shall not defile himself as a relative by marriage among his people."

The definitions of the lifestyle of the priest begins with this because they were the ones who did their jobs in the Tabernacle and later the Temple, and no one could approach the holy courts in an unclean state, especially having been touched by the opposite of God Himself: death. Anyone who had touched a bone or part of a corpse or passed over a grave or any other effect of death would be sprinkled with the ashes of the red heifer. That's why the red heifer is so important to us as Israel. They would get this instruction a bit later in the day, that day being Nissan 1, when the Tabernacle was erected and the priests finished their eight days of preparation for ministry, and the Shekhinah filled the Tabernacle, and God called to Moses to enter it for intimacy, and the sacrifices were explained, forming the intimacy with God for the priests and for all of Israel. It was the day that God finally had relationship with mankind and was therefore called the day that God created the world. It was the day that all the basics of Judaism were given, and on this day, the job descriptions and the rules and strictures and benefits of the priesthood were given as well.

From verse 17, it gives some other strictures for the priesthood, creating a group of people that are pictures of angels. Yes, that is God's whole purpose in creating the Kehunah and shaping the group the way He did. "Speak to Aaron, saying, 'None of your seed throughout their generations who has an impairment shall approach to offer the food of his God. No one who is blind or who limps, or who has a slit nose, or one with a conspicuous feature, too small or too big, or someone who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a contorted back, or one who is a dwarf, or has a spot in his eye, or a festering rash, or scabs, or crushed testicles. No man among the seed of Aaron the priest who has an impairment is to come forward to offer the Lord's offering by fire. Since he has an impairment, he shall not come forward to offer the food of his God.'"

This is problematic for Christians. Why? Replacement Theology has replaced Torah with Jesus Christ and replaced Israel with the church. Well, the Kehunah, the priesthood, is the third enormous part of God's kingdom that Hellenistic Christianity has replaced. And if they've done away with it and replaced it, they then have to redefine what God really meant in each and every detail of the things they threw away.

What does it mean spiritually to be a dwarf or to have an enlarged body part or a festering rash or crushed testicles? What is a tattoo a picture of spiritually? What is a cutting in the flesh for the dead a picture of in the new priesthood imagined by Hellenistic Christianity? How about an inclusion in the eye or marrying a widow? What do these things and many, many more correspond to for the new Christian priesthood made of mostly Gentiles with no connection to any of the details of the Jewish priesthood that God created and gave to Israel?

It's not incumbent on me as a Jew to try to make these strange correlations because they're not pictures presented in Judaism. It is the responsibility of Christian pastors, leaders, teachers, and writers to try to untie this absurd knot of theology. You cannot have it both ways. Either the words don't really mean what they say or they're specific details related in the words of the Sages, or it did mean what they said. But here's the first problem: it was all done away with anyway, so we just keep it in the book for a bit of historical context. Oh, and another problem: we then call it the inviolable and inerrant word of God and tell people they cannot change a single word in it. Oh, what a problem is the priesthood.

When God redeemed His people from Egypt and led them to Mount Sinai, before appearing to them He told Moses, "This is what you shall say to the sons of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: 'I brought you to Myself. If you will listen to My voice and keep My covenant, you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'"

Hellenistic Christianity replaced the sacrifices given by God for intimacy with Him, those nearness offerings that teach us innumerable pictures of spiritual things. So in that world of the Christian, there is no need for anyone to offer those nearness offerings or to teach Torah to the people. Thus, the need for the new, invented priesthood developed. This new Christian Kehunah was actually a continuation of the pagan priesthoods of Egypt and Babylon and Greece and Rome. And once implemented and enforced by propaganda and by religious-political edicts in the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, the beauty of the Kehunah and its link to the covenant with Israel was gutted and destroyed.

I don't want to be flippant, but I have heard and read countless times believers and church folk saying that they are a kingdom of priests. If that's true and you want to put yourself in that group, wouldn't it be a good idea to find out how God defines a priest and what the job description is and the strictures and prohibitions that would apply to you since you now fill that role? After all, this is not a new idea. It's not a New Testament concept. God defined it and gave it to His people, the Jews. Or as the passage in Exodus 19 says, say to the sons of Jacob and tell the house of Israel. Is that you as a Christian? If so, how did that happen, unless your people group replaced my people group, the priests?

I know how the thinking goes in Christian theology, and I do not like quoting Christian sources on the internet, but to make it easy to see and understand what upturning, what violence has been done to God's plan, I'll quote a couple of passages from some highly respected Christian sources and comment on them. I'm only quoting them because they succinctly sum up what all of Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, believe and proclaim.

Here's the first: "The Mosaic Covenant, along with the Levitical priesthood, is now obsolete. It finished when the great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, made final intercession on our behalf. Because of His sacrifice on the cross, there remains no more sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10). His sacrificial act rendered the Old Covenant obsolete and established the basis of the New Covenant."

There is not a single statement in this quote that is even close to the concepts of Judaism presented in the New Testament, and I believe I've sufficiently dealt with all of them over the last months of the Shabbat Shalom broadcast. Remember, the New Testament is a Jewish book written by Jews to Jews about the Jewish culture, recalling, quoting, teaching from, and explaining concepts only from Judaism and only found in the Tanakh.

Here's another quote: "The Old Law established a priesthood full of human weaknesses offering repeated imperfect sacrifices and was established on an Old Covenant offering only temporal promises." Remember, I picked these quotes because they are typical of the countless others on the internet that all say the same thing.

The Old Law? There is no law. There is Torah, instruction. The law only appeared one time in Torah, in Deuteronomy 33:2, and is the word "dat," D-A-H-T, meaning law as law, and was given at Mount Sinai with terrifying sounds and visuals to scare Israel away from doing law, not toward doing law. This is called the curse of the law.

The quote says, "a priesthood full of human weaknesses offering repeated imperfect sacrifices." Well, in Torah it stated over and over again that every priest must have no blemish and every animal for zevach or sacrifice must be tamim, which means perfect. Also, the sacrifices were not given at Mount Sinai when the curse of the law or Old Covenant was given, but they were given for intimacy with God in the book of Leviticus, which was nine months after coming to Mount Sinai.

And finally this: "The New Covenant establishes a Divine Son who serves as a sinless New Covenant established on eternal promises." Well, besides the fact that this is circular logic, the phrase "a New Covenant" did not originate in the New Testament at all. It is from Jeremiah 31 (Michael says 33, but typically Jeremiah 31 is referenced), and in it, that covenant to Israel alone says that God would write the Torah on the heart and inscribe it on the inward parts. The Torah, not Christ.

So you should be able to see that the entire religious structure of Hellenistic Christianity must of necessity do away with the Kehunah, the priesthood, that God in His love established for Israel. But far from being done away with or, God forbid, replaced by Gentiles who know nothing of the ways of the priests, God made the promise of the Kehunah forever. It is a covenant forever.

Though Christians have attempted to do away with the Kehunah, there actually was a time that God almost destroyed it Himself. But one priest, acting on his own, snatched it from the pit of destruction. In Numbers 25, after almost everyone in the camp of Israel went after the gods of Midian and Moab, Phinehas ran a spear through a Jew and a Midianite princess as they were sinning in front of the whole camp. Because he did this, God said, "Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has averted My wrath from the sons of Israel in that he was jealous with My jealousy among them so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in My jealousy. So tell him I'm giving him My covenant of shalom for him and for his seed after him, a covenant of priesthood forever." Brit Kehunat Olam.

The priesthood of the children of Aaron of the family of Kohath was continued by God, and that promise was given that it would continue well after Israel entered the land and built the Temple, and was exiled by Babylon and rebuilt the second Temple, and was then exiled by Rome, and in fact all the way to the Messianic Kingdom. Jeremiah 33:17-22 says, "For this is what the Lord says: 'David shall not lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall not lack a man before Me to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to prepare sacrifices daily.'"

And in fact, God then makes this covenant as unbreakable as the laws of nature. In verses 20-21: "If you can break My covenant for the day and My covenant for the night, so that day and night don't occur at their proper time, then My covenant with David will also be broken, so he will not have a son on his throne, and with the Levitical priests My ministers."

What a problem the priesthood is. Are you beginning to see how foolish and short-sighted it is to say that the coming of Jesus did away with the Kehunah, the priesthood of the sons of Kohath? But there's much more. The last eight chapters of Ezekiel, chapters 40-48, describe in great detail the Temple, the sacrifices, the divisions of the land, and of course the jobs of the priests. In Ezekiel they are named for Zadok, the High Priest during the time of David. The descriptions and dimensions of this Temple are different from the details of the Temple Mount and the house itself found throughout history. Why? This is the Kingdom Temple. The last eight chapters of Ezekiel describe the holy land and the holy Temple Mount and the holy city of Jerusalem in the Kingdom, the Day of the Lord, God's Shabbat, what you may know as the Millennium.

And during the Kingdom, God makes clear that the priesthood is the integral part of that Kingdom as He sets the rules for how it will function in that day. Ezekiel 44, from verse 9: "No son of a foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the sons of Israel shall enter My sanctuary. But the Levites who went far from Me when Israel went astray shall receive the chastisement for their sin and they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the house and ministering in the house. They shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people and they shall stand before them to minister. I will appoint them to take responsibility for the house, all its service and everything done in it."

And in case that wasn't clear that God's covenant with Levi never ended, and the Kehunah never ended or will end, He says from verse 15: "The sons of Zadok, who took responsibility for My sanctuary when the sons of Israel went astray from Me, shall come near to Me to serve Me. They shall stand before Me to offer the fat and the blood. They shall enter My sanctuary, come near My table, to serve Me and assume the responsibility I give them."

God is very specific, and it is the details He gives that prevent those other than Israel from taking possession of anything He gave to Israel. It is so complex and convoluted and confusing, the arguments and theological word games that are taught by Hellenistic Christianity. There are countless details that God gives us about the Temple in the Kingdom and the priesthood in the Kingdom. And if Christ somehow magically took Gentiles and made them into a new Kehunah, a new priesthood, it is incumbent on the teachers of Christianity to define every one of those details and show from scripture how each one of them was no longer physical but what it is spiritually.

But then we're back to the same problem of how to define and interpret scripture, all of scripture. It is a Jewish book written by Jews to Jews to define and describe the Jewish world. It seems to me that the Kehunah, the priesthood, is actually the most important of the three parts of God's Jewish world that Hellenism has replaced and destroyed, those three parts being Torah, Israel, and the priests. It is the priesthood of Israel who were the teachers of Israel. Their job was to teach Torah to the people, number one. And number two, their job was to assist the Jews and Gentiles who joined themselves to the Jewish world how to find intimacy with God. And without a priesthood of Jews who do and who know Torah, this is absolutely not possible.

What a problem the priesthood is. I know that most of you have been told you are a member of a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. You have been told that you are a member of some new priesthood, a Melchizedek priesthood, with Christ as the High Priest. This is not quite true. So what does Peter say in his quoting the passage in Exodus 19 as Israel came to Mount Sinai?

1 Peter 2:4-12: "And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by man but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Yeshua the Messiah." Well, the Temple of God was always seen as made of stones that are people, just as I taught last week. Remember, ve'asu li mikdash ve-shakhanti b'tokham. "Make for Me a sanctuary that I may dwell in them." And who are the "them"? The Jews, Israel, and a few Gentiles that join the Jewish covenant.

From verse 9, it says, "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood" (that's in Exodus 19), "a holy nation" (that's in Exodus 19), "a people for God's own possession" (that's in Deuteronomy 4:20), "so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (that's in Isaiah 9:2). "For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God" (that's in Hosea chapter 1). "You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy" (and that's in Hosea chapter 2).

And from this, Christian teachers came to believe there is a new priesthood made of primarily Gentiles. But every verse quoted here was spoken to Israel and only to Israel, God's chosen people. God did not change His mind or replace His chosen. And remember, God always brought a few Gentiles into the Jewish covenant. The same was spoken to them, and the same is true here. If you are a Gentile, you are a Gentile. If you are a Jew, you are a Jew. Rejoice in who you are. If you are born again, your spirit is alive and the blood of Messiah has brought you into a Jewish world in which you are to learn God's ways and get to know God through God-created Judaism. And if you've never had Yeshua make your spirit alive, your spirit is dead and you are cut off from His Jewish world in which are all of the ways of God and all of His teachings and all of the ways He gave us to grow and change and become more like God.

If you are a priest from the family of Kohath, you are a priest, and you need to learn your job so that you too can be a teacher of Israel. If you're not a Jew from the tribe of Levi from the family of Kohath, you are not a priest. That's not your role, and it's not your job. Your job is to admit your ignorance and learn from the Jews the knowledge of God. Get to know Him and learn intimacy with God through doing Judaism, then listening to the acts, the mitzvot, speak to you personally.

What a problem the priesthood is, unless we're happy in who we are, either a Jew or a Gentile or a Levite or a priest, all of us doing the Torah and listening to it teach us God's ways. It says this very thing in 1 Corinthians 7:17-19: "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is the keeping of the mitzvot of God." The Gentile is going to end up living, looking, talking, acting, and eating like a Jew, but knowing and embracing the fact that they are Gentiles brought into the magnificent Jewish world. And that is how it works. So join me again next week as we continue our journey through Leviticus to see more pictures of Messiah. Next, Shabbat Shalom.

Candace Long: You can hear Rabbi teach from our Torah portion every Saturday morning from 8 to 8:30. I'm Candace Long, your host for Shabbat Shalom. I'm ending today's program with The Days of Noah Part 5, which answers why so few were saved. Now you may wonder why I have gone from Part 3 that I aired last hour to Part 5 in this one. It is because I aired Part 4 when we were studying the Torah portion Noah back in October. Today's episode tackles the question: if the coming day of the Lord parallels the days of Noah, then who will escape the coming judgment and who will have to go through the seven years of birth pangs? You will learn about the three groups of people that Noah tells us will be on earth at the time of the Day of the Lord and how you can know which group you are in, and more importantly, what can you do to make sure you're in the group that is saved from the birth pangs?

I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in. In thinking about the parallel between the days of Noah and the coming Day of the Lord, the big question is: who escapes the coming judgment and who will have to go through the seven years of tribulation? Today's episode is called "Why So Few Were Saved."

Now the word "saved" is a little misleading because its definition is so broad within mainstream Christianity. I dare say the majority of believers would define the word saved as anyone who asked Jesus into their lives regardless of how they conducted their lives on a day-to-day basis. Now I'm not trying to make people doubt their salvation, but maybe it's wise to question it from time to time, especially in light of where we are in God's timetable.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 2: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." This infers that it's not a done deal. There are three things we're going to touch on today. Number one, if the flood is a picture of the seven-year tribulation in the Day of the Lord, then who will be rescued from having to go through it? Number two, what was it about Noah that pleased God so much? And number three, what qualities do we need to emulate to escape the tribulation?

At the time of the flood, there were basically three groups of people. Number one is referred to as "the righteous," represented by Noah, a group of one. He stood apart from everyone else in this story. No one came close to his character and purity of spirit. Moses writes that Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Something about Noah caused the Lord to notice him out of all of the people on the planet and deliver him without a scratch from the devastation that was coming.

Group number two was referred to by God as "the wicked." This group was huge. Let's look at who was in it and who was not. As I mentioned in the episode called The Nephilim UFO Connection Part 2: The Alien Story, I recounted that all of the Nephilim who lived on earth during Noah's time were able to escape the flood in their rocket ships from spaceports that they had built throughout the Near East in places such as Babylon, Egypt, and Jerusalem. Now if you're not familiar with that part of the story, I encourage you to listen to that episode because it's very enlightening. And you'll find it on my podcast page at candacelong.com.

So all of the fallen angels who were on earth and who spread their wickedness and corrupted the entire civilization, these escaped death. Now the ones who were destroyed in the flood, however, were their descendants, everyone who carried their DNA inside of them. Jasher, the ancient historian, wrote there were 700,000 of them. Now the Bible doesn't record an exact number, but what we know for certain is that group number two, known as "the wicked," included everyone that was left on earth at the time the waters began to rise except for eight people. Now what were these people like? Jesus said in Matthew 24 that in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. Now for these people, it was life as usual, even during the five years when Noah separated himself to build the ark. That meant that everyone but eight people lived however they wanted to live, did whatever they felt like doing. There were no sexual boundaries. They had affairs, wife-swapping parties, incest, and homosexual encounters. They were abusive, violent, and oppressive toward others. They sacrificed their children by putting them to death. They gave allegiance to whichever god promised them power and position in society, and they took whatever they wanted through deception or force. And most important, their blood was contaminated and compromised by Nephilim DNA.

Group number three, I call "the average." It contained the seven people who hung on to Noah. Now I don't put these people in group one because Noah was the one that stood out as perfect and blameless. But these seven were saved nonetheless because they followed the one person who walked with God. They separated themselves too, but we don't have evidence to show they would have made that choice if Noah had not been leading them. Now most of them were his children and would one day have to prove themselves before God as either righteous or wicked.

During the time I was researching this episode, one of the Sabbath teachings dealt with Noah and was very insightful. The Rabbis teach that Noah's three children are pictures or tavneeth of these three groups of people mentioned earlier. Now remember, with a tavneeth we have to look at the natural and then let it speak to us on a spiritual level. So let's look in the natural at the names of Noah's three children to see what God may be saying to us.

The original birth order of Noah's three sons was Japheth, the firstborn, then came Shem and Ham was the youngest. But I'm going to list them as the Sages do because this is the order that Moses lists them in Genesis 9:18: "The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And from these the whole earth was peopled." Let's look at the name Shem. In Hebrew, the word means "a mark of individuality or honor." Shem is listed first because Shem represented the lineage from which Messiah would come. And so the bloodline to the Jewish people passed from Noah to Shem and then to certain descendants who carried the promised seed. Not every descendant of Shem, you recall. Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, but Isaac was the descendant who carried the seed of promise, not Ishmael. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau, and Jacob was the one who carried the seed of promise. The word Shem also means "name," and Jews all over the world refer to the Lord as HaShem, the Name, out of regard for the holiness of His name, which is unutterable.

The next name listed was Ham, Noah's youngest son. His name is really Cham, spelled C-H-A-M, and it literally means "hot," referring to the tropical warm climate where his descendants settled. The word also has a secondary meaning of being easily inflamed, hot under the collar, and violent. The word Hamas, which has the same root as the name Ham, means "to be violent and oppressive." Now I need to say here we are looking only at the names of Noah's sons. This is where we find the picture and the insight. This is not meant to be looked at racially. Just as it would be wrong to say that all descendants of Shem were righteous and worthy of being saved, it would be wrong to say that all descendants of Ham were violent and oppressive.

The third name mentioned is Japheth or Yafet, who was Noah's firstborn. The name Yafet means "expansion or widespread." It comes from the word patah, which means "to make room in a moral sense," meaning to be inclusive or politically correct. This word refers to certain character traits of beauty, unity, perfection, androgyny, one world, homosexuality, all of the qualities that we see in Hellenism, which will play a key role in compromising and broadening the moral standards in the final days because Hellenism is what is at war with the narrow ways of Shem, whose name is a picture for God and His righteousness. The Talmud says that Hellenism is beautiful on the outside, but inside is evil, full of deceit. That is Yafet in the world.

So the Sages teach that the names of Noah's children, who were charged with repopulating the earth after the flood, represent the three groups of people that will be on earth during the final days before the Kingdom: the righteous, the wicked, and the average. Now these same three groups are also found in the end-times doctrine of our Jewish forefathers. We have discussed earlier that the Day of the Lord will fall on Rosh Hashanah, which is Tishrei 1 in the Hebrew calendar, when the world has been in existence exactly 6,000 years. At that time, we will see God's dealings with three groups of people.

Group one is "the righteous," those who are regarded as the Lord regarded Noah. These are taken right then on that very day to be with Messiah in heaven for seven years.

Group two is "the wicked," for whom the full wrath of God has been prepared since the foundation of the world. These will have to undergo seven years of the worst time in the history of the world, and those who survive will be sentenced to eternal damnation when Messiah comes.

And then there's group three, referred to in Jewish doctrine as "the average." These are those who are not taken on Rosh Hashanah but who have to live through the seven years of tribulation and are given that period of time to repent. If they repent and give their lives fully to the Lord, then God promises those people divine protection even during the judgment, and they will come into the Kingdom when Messiah destroys His enemies at the battle of Armageddon. That happens at Yom Kippur in the year 6008. That date is the official second coming of Messiah, when He steps foot on the Mount of Olives, as Zechariah describes so beautifully in chapter 14. At that time, the gates to the Kingdom will be closed and the Book of Life sealed. There will be no more time after that for God's mercy. So if repentance has not come to "the average" by that time, they will be grouped with "the wicked" and prevented from ever entering the Kingdom.

Now understanding these three groups is important because God wants you to know where you stand in this evil day. You are important to Him. If you are not where you should be and worry you might be classified as "average" and have to go through the tribulation, then let's look at the three things that set Noah apart from everyone else so that we can become more like Noah.

Number one, Genesis 6 says that Noah was a "righteous" man. He was what's called a Tzadik, T-S-A-D-I-K, Tzadik. The Hebrew word means "just and lawful," someone who is and does morally right things intrinsically. Righteousness was his nature. Remember Noah came from righteous ancestry. Methuselah was his grandfather; Enoch was his great-grandfather. His natural bent was doing the right thing. Now I'm sure you've seen children who simply had a bent to do the wrong thing. You can lay out for them all day long what you want their behavior to be, but these children consistently look for ways around the right way and they are driven, almost like a compulsion, to do what's wrong and are even energized when they have succeeded in doing wrong and getting away with it. That kind of behavior is the total opposite of a Tzadik. In Judaism, a Tzadik is considered a miracle worker in that everything out of his or her mouth is perfect. They are a direct pipeline to God and their actions 100 percent of the time are a reflection of His ways. Now that doesn't mean they never make mistakes, because we all have a sin nature. But Tzadikim have a strong sense of conscience; if they do something wrong, they know it instinctively and repent for it right then.

Number two, the passage says that Noah was "blameless" in his generation. Now the word for blameless is Tamim, which means without blemish, entire, complete, sound as far as integrity is concerned. No gray areas, no hidden agendas, no moral lapses that would shed a poor light on the person as a whole. Noah's behavioral report card was 100 percent true and right.

And number three, it says that Noah "walked with God." Now the Hebrew word for walk is Halak. It means to continually be conversant with God, to follow Him, to seek His direction in everything. A person who walks with God knows Him so well you can sense His moods, His thoughts, His heart and everything about His nature, and His ways are imprinted inside of you. Maintaining intimacy with the Father is your priority above everything else.

Let me share an interesting passage from Isaiah 54. In quoting the Lord, Isaiah wrote: "In a little wrath I hid My face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you. For this is like the days of Noah to Me; as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth." God is teaching us in this passage about His behavior. During Noah's time, the Lord felt wrath. He said, "In a little wrath I hid My face from you." Now the term "little wrath" is a sarcastic Hebrew expression that's only used one time in scripture. The expression is shestef getsef, which means anything but little. This wrath was a gushing forth of rage, an explosion of anger. God had a fit because the very next verse says, "for this is like the days of Noah to Me." You see, God exploded and brought on the flood to cleanse the filth that covered the earth. And when He exploded, He hid His face from the people.

Now there's a key lesson here because this explosive rage will be seen again at the Day of the Lord. And we're not far from that day. I believe what the Lord is saying is that His rage is building and He is hiding His face from us. I've heard a number of my ministry colleagues say that the Lord is quiet right now. He is hiding. But others are misinterpreting His silence, assuming He doesn't see or care what they're doing because they're getting away with everything. But this is the test: to see what we do when no one appears to be looking. God may be hiding, but He is watching to see whether we act badly or whether we choose to walk with Him.

Before we close, let's look at four practical ways we walk with God.

Number one, keep the communication lines with God open always. The biggest thing that we battle in our culture today is distraction. Spending time with the Lord every day is critical because His presence and His word is our spiritual food. To walk with God is to talk over everything with Him. I've walked with God for over 50 years, and this is one spiritual discipline I've found critically important. I show up before Him each day regardless of whether I feel like it or not. A recent example is that I was having problems with where to go next in this "Days of Noah" series. I got stuck. I looked at the pile of notes that I had for different episode ideas, but I didn't have a peace about any of them. Now I could have tried to make something up; I mean really, who would know, right? But I have learned that when I'm not hearing God, I go about life and do something else, after telling Him specifically what I need and then keeping my ears open to hear answers when they come. To do that, another one of my personal disciplines is to live in quiet. I don't clutter my mind or my home with noise because my ears are always waiting for His voice. The other morning, the answer came. I woke up with this phrase impressed in my spirit: "What it means to walk with God." That was it, simply an impression. And when I began writing it down, suddenly the writer's block was gone. He wanted me to share with you this one small incident to illustrate what it means to walk with God. Wait for Him to speak, stay connected, and trust the answer will come.

Number two example, defend His ways even if it makes you unpopular. Noah confronted his culture, pleading with others to return to God. He knew what was coming; God had told him. And he wanted them to repent. I attended a board meeting last month where we were to vote on long-range plans for the organization. And reading the proposal, my heart sank because I knew with everything in me that we don't have a long range. The times have changed. The Day of the Lord is almost here. Now this was a secular organization, so I had to be careful in how I responded. I wanted to reflect God's sense of urgency and be a witness to that, but I had to be mindful that many of them do not see what I see. I was stuck. To do what the organization proposed would, in my opinion, steer our members in a wrong direction. I felt they need to have time to reflect on their life's work and focus their energies on creating a lasting legacy in the arts. The meeting did not permit any discussion; they merely wanted a rubber stamp. And I wrestled for days over the meeting because I knew that once I spoke up and challenged the direction of the organization, I would be ostracized. And yet I had to take a stand. I sought the Lord for wisdom and ultimately wrote a letter to the president, expressing my views of these latter days and said I could no longer support the direction the organization is going. I submitted my resignation and wished them well.

Number three example, remove unnecessary distractions from your life. I have been a consultant for a secular international client for a number of years. And the work they wanted me to do had no definitive end point. As I considered my role with them, I became conflicted because it was dishonest of me to pretend everything was life as usual. I knew it was not. I therefore proposed a short-term project that I could commit to and explained that was the only way I felt comfortable continuing to work with them. If they wanted something longer-term and loose-ended, I encouraged them to find another consultant.

And number four, do what you see the Father doing. This is what Jesus said in John 5: "The Son does only what He sees the Father doing." So what did the Father do at the end of Day 6, which is where we are? We find the answer in Genesis 2, which tells us that right before God rested on Day 7, the Sabbath, He did something very unique. It says that He ended or desisted from His work. That means He ramped things down and brought closure to everything He had been intimately involved with creating and managing. In like manner, what the Lord has been showing me over the past year or so is to bring some semblance of closure to my life's work. What is it I really want to leave behind as my legacy? My priority now is to spend my time wisely, always conscious of His coming day.

In closing, I want to leave you with something that the prophet Micah wrote in chapter 6: "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

I want to thank you for listening. As always, you'll find this episode and all the others on my podcast page at candacelong.com. Remember, no good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly. I hope you join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days. I want to close our time together the way our Jewish forefathers close every service, with the Aaronic Benediction that has been chanted the same way for thousands of years. To get the most out of this blessing, if you're listening with family or friends, pull them close to you and spread a shawl or a scarf over your heads, all together. Rabbi Michael will close our time today, first in Hebrew followed by the English translation.

Michael Washer: Y'varechecha Adonai v'yishmerecha. Ya'er Adonai panav eleicha v'yechuneka. Yissa Adonai panav eleicha v'yasem l'cha shalom. The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His face to you and give you peace.

Candace Long: As always, I want to thank you for spending time with us. Just a reminder of the three things on our main page at shabbatshalomradio.com. Number one, if you have a question for any of our teachers, click the button that says "email the show." Number two, to study the Torah with us every week, download our Torah schedule at the top of the page. And number three, if you missed an episode or you want to listen to something again, our archives are at the bottom of our main page or on oneplace.com, listed by date, teacher, hour, and topic. I hope you join us next Saturday morning from 6 to 9 on WEZE Radio 590, our media partner for shabbatshalomradio.com.