Shabbat Shalom

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long. Welcome to the second hour of Shabbat Shalom. Coming up next is part seven of Ask the Rabbi with Rabbi Michael Washer. I am thoroughly enjoying my discussions with him. But I need to tell you that no matter how much I prepare for each of our recording sessions and give our time to the Lord before I hit the record button, inevitably the Father takes us in directions I never could have imagined.

I had a specific agenda in today's episode because the last couple of segments, we got pretty heavy and deep and only covered one of the questions that I had brought to him. So today my goal was to bring him multiple questions that had been submitted by listeners so we could cover more ground. Well, let's just say so much for my good intentions. What I want you to hear in today's Ask the Rabbi segment is that the questions that I brought him came from listeners who see everything in the New Testament through the lens of Western Christianity, not through the lens of the Jewish world that the New Testament came out of.

I appreciate Rabbi's patience because one by one, you're going to hear how he had to take apart every question I brought him and untangle the knots embedded in the question itself before he could begin to answer. Now what struck me and what I hope that you will notice is how totally differently our Jewish forefathers see things and how far away most of us are, including myself, from the level of understanding that we need to have before entering a Jewish kingdom.

So all of that is coming up next. First though, I want to transport us back to the appointed time that we are celebrating today, when God kept this appointment of Passover, which was fulfilled perfectly through Yeshua. To the very month which was Nissan, to the very day which was the 14th of Nissan, to the very hour and even to the precise moment when our Savior's spirit left his body.

We first see the picture in Exodus 10 verses 21 and 22, which says, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.' So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days."

Rabbi Michael writes in his big book, Pictures, that this prophetic picture was fulfilled in Luke 23 verses 44 and 45, where we read, "It was the sixth hour," which was noon, "and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour," that's 3:00 PM. "The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two."

The three days of darkness that we read about in the book of Exodus relates perfectly to our Lord's crucifixion. During those three days in Egypt, God judged the sun since the people worshiped the sun, so God removed its light. Rabbi Washer writes that these three days were a picture of the three hours when God judged the sin of all mankind and plunged Calvary into a darkness that could be felt.

This is why the Pesach sacrifice is different from every other that God established and that we have been studying so far in the book of Leviticus. The Passover sacrifice was not eaten by the priesthood, but by common people, and every family had to take part. The Pesach sacrifice stands alone. It was established before the Torah was even given. A sacrifice all by itself, as if every other sacrifice stemmed from it. God set apart this day for us to celebrate as an ordinance forever.

As the woman of the house at Shabbat Shalom, allow me to recite the opening prayer kindling the festival lights at Pesach as families and congregations are gathering together around the world. Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Yom Tov.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, everlasting King, who has sanctified us by your mitzvot and established for us to kindle the festival lights. Holy Father, I ask you to awaken the spirit of understanding in our hearts of how much celebrating this season means to you. In the name of Yeshua Hamashiach, amen.

Welcome to Ask the Rabbi. I'm Candace Long, discussing your questions with Rabbi Michael Washer. And it's so nice to have you back, Rabbi, and I'm so thankful that you are willing to let us ask what may appear to be infantile questions, but that we have this opportunity. So thank you for your availability.

Rabbi Michael Washer: You're welcome and thank you very much for inviting me and opening this up for me. I really appreciate it.

Candace Long: Well, we have had a number of questions submitted that we haven't got to. And so what I'd like to do today is to deal with several ones with perhaps shorter answers than we haven't got to, rather than trying to cover one topic in depth. And if there are things that you would want to say but don't have time to, please refer to another resource about a topic if listeners want to know more about that question.

So here's the first question from a listener. Let me tell you a little bit what I know about this person. She has been reawakened in probably the last two or three years with Torah study. She's been a faithful listener of Lessons in the Latter Days. And so she's really coming alive, but she comes from a very strong Catholic background. And her question was, "I was baptized in the Catholic Church as a baby. Should I get baptized as an adult?"

Rabbi Michael Washer: So I am the wrong person to ask about anything Catholic because that is living on the moon to me. I just have zero understanding of any of it. What I do know is how God set things up in the beginning. So in Judaism, and this has been going on since Abraham almost 4,000 years ago, we get what is called Mikveh. We go in a Mikveh, which is a collection of water.

And it's a picture. Just like everything else in Judaism, it's a picture of being born again. It's like coming out of the womb. A baby's born in water. It says that in the scriptures, in the New Testament too, we're born in water and through water. And this is done like before a Shabbat, getting ready for Shabbat. It's done for a woman, mostly by women, right after their period. It's done like before a festival or a big change in life. It's done for converts. It's the last step for someone who's converting to Judaism, and it's about becoming somebody else.

It has to be done with intention, and it has to be done with the mind and the heart being focused on what is happening in the person's life. Is that possible for a baby? Of course not. All that does is make a baby wet. That's all it does, puts some water on the baby.

Candace Long: So what you're saying, it would not be right to go back to that church, for instance, and get rebaptized because they would be baptizing into a denominational or a theological way that maybe they're wanting to say something different to the Lord by that action.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Well, I suppose, but what is baptism? It doesn't exist. The whole concept of baptism is a misnomer. It does not exist. So when people think of the word baptism, they're taking it obviously from the New Testament. But that is a Mikveh. And in Judaism, people get Mikveh-ed, like I said, for a change. Well, it's usually for repentance. It involves repentance and I'm going to be a different person in this area or that area. I'm changing my life in this area or that area. This can only be done obviously by an adult, number one. And it can only be done with intention, like thinking about what is happening.

And it has to be done as God set it out in Judaism, because Judaism is where it was done. There's no other group of New Testament people. Those are Jews. What were they doing? They were doing what's called Mikveh. And by the way, a Mikveh is built before a synagogue. It is the foundation for family purity and for the congregational purity. And they literally would build the Mikveh and then attach the synagogue to it, build it around the Mikveh. There has to be a Mikveh in every synagogue, or at least there used to be.

Candace Long: Well, when Paul was in jail and the Philippian jailer, it says he baptized the jailer and his family. So they took them to a Mikveh?

Rabbi Michael Washer: Yes, he took them to a Mikveh. In other words, there were Gentiles that were doing Teshuvah, repentance, and so the Rabbi, Sha'ul, took these Gentiles to a Mikveh at a synagogue. They went into the Mikveh and they said, "I'm a new person. I'm different. I'm born again. I'm a different human being." And by the way, there were also Mikvaot around the temple, like outside the main walls of the temple. Not the outside walls, not the outside court, but the inner courts of the temple. That's the main temple area. It's called the Azara. And right outside the Azara were Mikvaot. So that before you even approach the temple, everybody had to go in the Mikveh because you cannot offer a nearness offering without being what's called ritually clean, but what it just means being proclaiming that you're repentant.

Candace Long: Okay. So for her, your advice to her would be what?

Rabbi Michael Washer: Study Judaism. Just like everybody else, I tell everybody the same thing. Study Judaism, start doing the things of Judaism that will teach you about God. And those kind of issues, if you don't learn them, they have nothing to do with you. But as you learn them, then you can do them.

Candace Long: That makes sense. This next question concerns I'm going to quote two passages for you and then I'll bring them together with a question. First passage is in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." And the second passage I want to refer to is Ephesians 4:8, which quotes Psalm 68:18 saying, "When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and gave gifts to men."

So the question I have is weren't the Old Testament saints like Abraham, Adam, all of them, taken when Jesus went to Sheol to bring them out and take them to the heavenly kingdom at the time of his resurrection? And if so, who are the ones who are referred to in 1 Thessalonians as the dead in Christ?

Rabbi Michael Washer: Okay, there's a whole lot of things tangled together in a knot here. So the first thing I'm going to do is untangle the knot. The first thing is this, that scripture in Ephesians has nothing to do with Yeshua after the resurrection. It has to do with giving gifts to all believers, which is a totally different issue and it's related to the counting of the Omer, the 50 days between First Fruits and Shavuot. So that's a different issue. That has nothing to do with this.

All right, the second thing is this. We cannot read anything in the New Testament without knowing what's being quoted in the Tanakh, in the Old Testament, or else you have zero context for it. So what is being quoted in 1 Thessalonians, and by the way, it's chapter 4 verse 16 through chapter 5 verse 5 it should be, because it's all one idea. If you go into chapter 5, he talks about the Day of the Lord. He says, "And the Day of the Lord will come." It doesn't say the Lord will come. It says the Day of the Lord will come. That's in 1 Thessalonians 5 into the next chapter, because this is all about the Day of the Lord.

Well, if you don't know what the Day of the Lord is, then this again, there's no context and it makes no sense. The Day of the Lord is a thousand years long. It's what the church calls the millennium. But in Judaism, it's always been called Yom Adonai, Day of the Lord, and Malkhut, the Kingdom, or Malkhutekha, Your Kingdom. And there's hundreds of passages about it. But this, the one that's being quoted in particular here, is in Isaiah 26. And it's a long passage and it includes almost all the themes of Rosh Hashanah, which teach about the Day of the Lord.

So already we're into four layers of stuff already. This is complicated. So the first thing is knowing what the Day of the Lord is. The second thing is knowing that Rosh Hashanah teaches about that Day of the Lord and what the themes of Rosh Hashanah are. Then the third thing is what is being quoted here, which is Isaiah 26. And the fourth thing is which of the themes to apply to what Sha'ul is saying in Isaiah 26. And this is what he's saying. It's in Isaiah 26 starting from verse 16. It says, "Lord, they sought you in distress or Tsar, which is the birth pains."

Now the birth pains is what the church calls the tribulation, which they shouldn't call the tribulation. That's an adjective. It is not a noun. But in Hebrew, in Judaism, and in the scriptures, it's called two words, Tsar, which is trouble or tribulation, which is a noun, and it's also called the birth pains, which is also a noun. So he says, "They sought you in this distress, in this Tsar, this birth pains. They could only whisper a prayer, your discipline was on them." And then it describes the birth pains. "As the pregnant woman approaches the time to give birth, she writhes and cries aloud in her labor pains. That's how we were before you, Lord."

And it's future, it's not past, even though it's written in past tense, it's looking forward to the future, it's prophetic. "That's how we were before you, Lord. We were pregnant. We writhed in labor. We gave birth it seems to wind." In other words, to nothing. "We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth, nor were inhabitants of the world born." Now that is what the church has called the rapture. But again, rapture is not a noun, it's an adjective. It means to be drawn away, to be pulled away. This is called in the scripture resurrection, not rapture.

Now every single thing I've said so far is defined by the festival of Rosh Hashanah and it all is on the same day at the same moment. So it continues, "We couldn't give birth to these people up out of the earth." And then it says, "Your dead will live. Their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, wake up and shout for joy." This is the resurrection. "For your dew is as the dew of the dawn and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits." And then it says this, "Come my people, enter into your room." Now this is a in Hebrew, cheder, which is a marriage room. It's the room in which the married couple goes right after their marriage, it's basically what we call honeymoon, and they're there for seven days and they're totally alone. That's a cheder.

"Come my people, enter your room and close your doors behind you. Hide for a little while until that Tsar, the indignation or the birth pains runs its course." So the believers who are taken in what you call the dead in Christ, which I guess it'd be better to call them dead in Messiah, the dead in Messiah are taken up, hidden in the marriage room in heaven while the birth pains take place on earth for seven years. There's stuff taking place in heaven and there's stuff taking place on earth at the same time. Now this is what Judaism has always taught and it's all taught in the festival of Rosh Hashanah.

By the way, I have a resource for this. It's my big, I call it the big book, because it's over a thousand pages. It's called When All the Pictures are Restored and the Rosh Hashanah chapter, the chapter on Rosh Hashanah lays all this out in order. So it's very easy to follow. But that's what Sha'ul is talking about and that's what he's quoting, which is why when he gets into chapter 5, after he talks about the resurrection, not the rapture, the resurrection, he says, "You yourselves know full well," and he's talking to people who know scripture, "you know full well that the Day of the Lord is coming just like a thief in the night." Not the Lord, the Day of the Lord. "While they are saying peace and safety, then sudden destruction will come upon them." And what does he say? "Like labor pains upon a pregnant woman." And he talks about the birth pains. So all of this cannot be understood. There's no format or context in which to place it unless you know the Jewish festival of Rosh Hashanah and you know the scriptures that feed into that festival.

Candace Long: Thank you, that was very helpful. I think that so many of us, like for instance, the part in Ephesians 4 where he said when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and we don't know what those host of captives were.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Well, it's not really captives. That's a bad translation. It's a totally different subject. It's about giving gifts to Israel. And that each member of Israel receives a gift. That's what that's about.

Candace Long: We get so convoluted because we don't have proper interpretations of things. Thank you. Well, I'm sure we'll probably get a lot more questions on that and please, if you are listening to this, this kind of throws you for a loop, you never looked at it this way, please feel free. Go to our main webpage at ShabbatShalomRadio.com. There's a button there that says email the show. Please ask your questions. We'll be happy to try to break it out for you further.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Hold on a moment. Can I add one more thing to that? 90 to 95% of the questions that people have are about this subject. There's so many questions that believers have, but they always come back to this. They always come back to the five themes of Rosh Hashanah, more than 90%. I've been doing this a long time, more than 40 years, and it has never changed. It's always this subject that everybody wants to know about.

Candace Long: Well, thank you, because it's very much on top of mind awareness for me as well. All right, here's a third question. When Jesus comes at the redemption or resurrection, will he take the children who are not yet at the age of accountability? I can see in your mind you're ready to take it all apart. But I'm thinking about young couples who are listening, and many want more time with their family on earth and are not really interested in preparing themselves to be taken. They don't want to come when Jesus comes at the clouds. They want to stay with their family. But if their children are young, would the Lord not take them to protect them from the birth pains and leave the parents behind?

Rabbi Michael Washer: So again, I have to untangle. There's a lot of stuff. Some of it applies and some of it has nothing to do with the question. But the main thing is this phrase, age of accountability. Where is that in the Bible? Age of accountability? I've never read it. I've never come across it.

Candace Long: I've read it in some of the sages.

Rabbi Michael Washer: But you've never read it in the scriptures. Well, I know that the age of accountability for a young boy is the Bar Mitzvah. But the question isn't coming from a sage. The question's coming from a Christian. And I want to know in the Christian world, and I'm asking you because I assume you know because that's your background, it's not mine. So where is this phrase age of accountability come from in the Christian world? Where's that coming from?

Candace Long: I've read the sages' comment on certain passages and I can't quote it right this minute. But where they would say this particular law or mitzvah refers to somebody who is not yet of an age.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Yeah, but I'm asking you in Christianity.

Candace Long: I don't know.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Okay, that's what I thought. Nobody that I've ever talked to knows. I've never talked to a Christian who can show me or tell me.

Candace Long: I do know that God is merciful. He is just. If the parents are foolish enough to say, "I'm going to stay here during the birth pains, I don't want to go," then they are making a choice that the child has no input in. That's not just. So I know that about God.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Sure, and we'll get to that. But what I want to do first is try to provide some context. The context to the question is coming from a Christian, from a Christian background, and they're using words that they've been told or taught, age of accountability. What I'm saying is again, that is a foreign language to scripture and to Judaism. There's no such thing. I'll explain what I mean, but I want to make clear that the question itself is problematic because it's asking a question that there is no answer to because there's no such thing as age of accountability. That's not in the Bible.

So here's what the real thing is. That's the false thing, but the real thing is this. In Judaism, you will see children from the age of four to twelve and thirteen running up to the Torah and reading in Hebrew. You'll see children running to do the mitzvot, the Jewish things, festivals and kosher laws and New Moon and Shabbat. You'll see them running to do that. Because in Judaism, we are taught from the time we're three and four, we're taught the world of Judaism, how to do scripture. And it's all acts to do.

In the Christian world, it's thoughts and beliefs. It's not stuff to do, it's thoughts and beliefs. Well, so there's no cutoff point. There's no like, okay, you're at the age of accountability, you have reached some age where I can say you're now responsible. That's only in the Jewish world. In the Jewish world, after you've been trained from like the age of four up to the age of twelve and thirteen, you're already doing it. You're already learning the Torah for all those years and doing the Torah for all those years. And then when you come to the age of twelve for a girl and thirteen for a boy, you have a Bar Mitzvah or a Bat Mitzvah. Bat Mitzvah's for a girl and Bar Mitzvah's for a boy. And all you're doing is saying, "Okay, I am a man, I am a woman now, and I am now responsible for doing Torah. I am responsible for not doing Torah. I'm going to take the hit for not doing what I should do and I'm going to be blessed for doing what I should do." It's that simple. So there's no cutoff point or division time. There's just an acknowledgment of what you're already doing.

So if that's the world in which you live, that Jewish world where you've been doing it since you're a baby, when the Messiah comes and the resurrection happens and you go in the resurrection because you've been doing the Bible your whole life and you have total belief in God, and your whole life is absorbed in doing daily the prayers, the festivals, the New Moon, the Shabbat, the kosher laws, every day of your life and everything is about God for you, you go in the resurrection, who cares about anything else? Because you're teaching your children, if you have children. But if you're not in that world and you're totally cut off from the Jewish world in which God is everything and doing the ways of God is everything, it's a crapshoot. And I don't know how to answer with a clear answer to people who don't live in that world.

So my strong, strong advice would be for believers to start studying what God said and gave to the Jewish people and start doing whatever they can of what God said and gave to the Jewish people so they can get to know God. Because in Acts chapter 15 and Ephesians 2, the Gentiles were told to come into the synagogue to learn about God and that the blood of Messiah brings the Gentile into the commonwealth of Israel, into Messiah, into the God of Israel, into hope, right? And these are this is the Jewish world and when the Gentile is invited into that. Now if the Gentile is cut off from that, it's kind of a crapshoot. It's really they're not in the game, so to speak.

Candace Long: And that's part of my mission then is to try to communicate to them in a way to motivate them.

Rabbi Michael Washer: To motivate them to want to be in that, right. But if you're not teaching your children, like the Shema says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your me'od, your strength, and teach these words to your children repeatedly. If you're not in that world and doing that, I don't know how to answer you. That means you're not even looking for the resurrection like Jewish people are. Resurrected to heaven, we're going to be resurrected to go into the Kingdom after the birth pains.

Candace Long: And that may be what the communication gap is that I'm facing. Well, Shabbat Shalom serves a very important purpose of not only solid teaching, but being able to ask questions like this. But I want to thank you so much for your time today and we'll get into some deeper questions in the next segment. But if you have a question that you'd like us to discuss, please reach out to us, go to our main page at ShabbatShalomRadio.com. There's a button there that says email the show. Please ask your questions. We'll be happy to try to break it out for you further.

I'm Candace Long, and you've been listening to Ask the Rabbi with Rabbi Michael Washer. Join us next Saturday morning from 7:00 to 7:30. Shabbat Shalom. If you'd like to share this episode or listen to it again, it is available in our archives, which you'll find at the bottom of our main page at ShabbatShalomRadio.com. You can also access our archives 24/7 by going to 1Place.com. Just be sure and put Shabbat Shalom in the search bar and you'll find all of our programs listed by date and hour.

I'm Candace Long, your host for Shabbat Shalom. Coming up next is one of the earlier episodes I wrote in Lessons in the Latter Days. It's called "Take Heed to Yourselves." I wrote this in 2021 when I had just completed the series on the Nephilim-UFO connection and we were all struggling with the vaccine mandates. It was a difficult time we all lived through, but this episode was inspired by an insightful phrase that Jesus used three times in the Gospels, which seemed to go against the grain of most everything that we've been taught, such as "love your neighbor as yourself" and "there is no greater gift than to lay down your life for another."

During the last seven days Jesus was on the earth, he seemed to do an about-face by exhorting us to look out for number one when he said, "Take heed to yourselves." I believe this is a picture as to what we will go through right before our exodus from this life into the Kingdom. Now based on the insights that I learned while studying this topic, I share some personal decisions I was prompted to make not only in my personal life, but my business life. Be instructed.

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 this episode I want to zero in on one of the last things that Jesus taught his disciples to do before the Day of the Lord. An insightful phrase he used three times in the Gospels: "Take heed to yourselves."

Now you might think, why talk about that? That seems rather bland. On the contrary, this admonition from the Lord goes against the grain of everything we've been taught in our walk as believers. What has been ingrained in us is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. There's no greater love than laying down your life for another. And now here Jesus does an apparent about-face and says look out for number one: yourself.

Now to get us in the right frame of mind for this topic, I want to tell you about something that happened just the other day. I have a large bird feeder on my back deck and when I'm spending time with the Lord, I'm able to enjoy all the birds coming to my home to be fed. So the other morning I opened the drapes expecting to see all kinds of birds waiting for me to come out with the food. But not one bird was on the deck.

I opened the door and listened. Silence. No bird songs, no chirping, nada. I thought, wait a minute, something's wrong. Where are the birds? I ran to the front door and went outside to see if I could hear those birds talking to each other like usual. Nothing. Silence.

A friend from Connecticut had told me just days before that an article in her paper mentioned the strange disappearance of a particular species of birds. So my mind immediately went apocalyptic. The birds have disappeared. I even did an internet search to corroborate whether this was true. And a friend came by that evening and I mentioned the strange scenario, and she knew the problem immediately.

She said, "Oh, the reason they were quiet is that there were hawks around. They know when there's danger and they stay still and don't make a peep because that would give themselves away." Such wisdom poured forth from this mountain woman, but also what insight I learned that day from the Lord. When there is danger in the air, the wisdom is to lay low. Take heed to yourself.

Let's look at the passage at hand in Mark 13. Jesus said, and I'll paraphrase it a little, "Take heed to yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils. You will be beaten in synagogues, stand accused before governors and kings for my sake, and family members will turn on you." Again, he's speaking of the time period right before the Day of the Lord.

So let's look at what the phrase "take heed" means. There are two Greek words used for this expression. The first one means to beware or perceive. The second word means to hold the mind toward something and be cautious about it. Be cautious about what? Yourselves.

Jesus was telling his disciples they needed to turn inward, to build up their own reserves, to find their own safe place and take very few into their counsel. The only one that you can fully trust at the very end of days is yourself and your God. He was saying this because all of a sudden things were going to shift rapidly because there was betrayal going on behind the scenes then that the disciples were clueless about.

Now this is important for us because that's where we are now. A lot of us have pulled away from the media because we can't trust it. We're spending more time with the Lord just as the disciples did. So in some ways we don't know what's going on. We have no idea the depth of betrayal we are about to face.

Jesus told them that very soon trouble and oppressions would spring up suddenly, almost overnight in five places. Number one, in councils. This means sitting bodies of governing officials. Look at what's happening now with all the hoopla and disruption over the vaccine mandates. Number two, synagogues. The oppression will even come from those you thought you could trust, that you knew on a spiritual level.

Number three, rulers. Those in governmental authority. And true believers will have absolutely no favor with them at all. Number four, kings. This is the foundation of power at the time, whose values will be diametrically opposed to God's. And number five, even family members will turn against you.

I want us to look at the context of when Jesus said this to his disciples, because in scripture timetable is everything. This conversation took place right after our Lord's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, when the crowds shouted "Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." This glorious day was a high mark and it marked the beginning of his last seven days on this earth.

Now this is significant for two reasons, but first I have to deal with two Hebraic concepts. The first concept comes from Ecclesiastes chapter 1, where we read "what has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done." Our Jewish forefathers, the sages, teach that we are to learn from what happened in the past, for that very thing will repeat.

You see, Jesus was at the end of existing in his earthly body. He was preparing to go to the Father in the Kingdom. Now that tells us that we need to examine everything Jesus teaches in his final days because those very things are what we are going to go through at the end of our earthly existence.

The second concept I need to bring in here is understanding how God speaks using *tavniot*. We've talked about that word before, it means pictures. The Bible is filled with *tavniot*. This is God's language. So we're going to look at the layers of meaning in Jesus' words, for he is the picture of the very stages leading up to his departure from this life and going to the Kingdom. And I believe this is a *tavnit* showing us what we will go through on our way to the Kingdom.

In Mark 4 we read it was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread. There's the timetable. Now I've done considerable analysis of Jesus' final week from Sunday to Sunday. On that first Sunday was his entry into Jerusalem. Just seven days later, the following Sunday, was the festival of First Fruits, and that was when he rose from the dead. But during the days in between, he was betrayed, beaten, crucified, and buried. That's a lot in just seven days.

So let's touch on some highlights of what Jesus did that final week to see the parallel to our lives today and maybe some lessons of what we need to do. Monday was day two. He cursed the fig tree. He threw out the money changers in the temple and confronted all the religious leaders. He stood God's ground against the deceit and corruption of the day, which caused shockwaves throughout the entire society, since all the Jews were together in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover.

So in application, his light that we carry inside of us will cause us to confront the worldview of an evil culture. It will rise up inside of us. We stand against vaccine mandates and they threaten lawsuits. We refuse to conduct a wedding of a gay couple and the crowd goes crazy, again threatening to destroy our lives with lawsuits. We want our bathrooms and lockers labeled men and women, boys and girls, and town hall meetings turn into brawls.

But it is through this period where the factions, the wheat and the tares, are bound together in their respective ideologies and they confront each other explosively. Now those who are followers of Jesus are not popular on this day, which will come right after we are celebrated and praised for the light that we carry. Even those of our own believing community can turn against us. Jeremiah stood alone against all the other prophets who said things were going to get better. Like today, the message is often the church will be victorious. But if you're hearing another message that the gavel of judgment has fallen on America, God help you. The intercessors want nothing to do with you because you represent someone in their mind who has no faith. Take heed to yourself. This shift will be sudden and you will be left standing alone.

On Tuesday, day three, Jesus pulled away from the masses in order to pour his life into his disciples. There were no more public discourses. If other people tried to get to him, like when several Greeks went to his disciples asking to see Jesus, they never got through. Only his faithful followers heard the last teachings from their master. You see, Jesus' number one priority shifted from the crowds to concentrate on his disciples and prepare them for the Kingdom.

On Wednesday, day four, this was our Lord's final Sabbath rest before his agony. One last intimate time with his followers because the Passover was at hand. This day was when he purged his disciples of the decoy in their midst, which was Judas. And once that evil one was expelled, the Lord was able to pour into them more freely during the Last Supper. Later that evening was his hour of darkness in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus came face to face with the realization that there was nothing he could do to remove this cup from himself. He had to drink it. He was forced to take heed to himself because no one else had it in them to stay awake and wait with him.

Now learning from the *tavnit* tells us that there will come a time for some of us when we realize we cannot escape an unbelievably difficult agony. The lesson is to willingly submit to whatever cup God has given each of us to drink. Now most Americans have not reached this point yet because we have this "America always wins" mentality. But make no mistake, before the Day of the Lord comes, if we are not quite there yet, we will get to this place of terminal agony.

During my 9/11 experience of losing everything, it took a long time for me to relinquish my hope and willingly submit to whatever God had for me. I share about it in depth in the episode "When Life Falls Apart." But let me just say here that I had no idea how long I would have to endure the brokenness, the closed doors, and total inability to move forward. I didn't know then that this was something I had to endure for seven more years.

Thursday, day five, was an interrogation by the religious leaders that began before dawn and then he was nailed to the cross at 9:00 AM. Now during this tribunal, everybody turned against him, just like he said would happen to us: the councils, the rulers, the synagogue, the kingdom in power, and his own followers, his spiritual family. Everyone turned away. Even the heavens were silent. There was no rescue. No praise gathering telling how God saved him from this hour. No, not this day. This was an appointed time that could not be deterred and it was a time when Jesus took heed to himself.

We're called the body of Christ. This is a *tavnit*, a word picture, telling us that whatever happened to the literal body of Jesus in the order that it happened is what we will be called to experience in the future. When you think about it, the death of Messiah did not just happen in one day. Rather, God's light that he carried inside of him was diminished through oppression more and more as the people's rejection of him grew. Fewer and fewer received him until one day there was a shift in the heavens and his time of departure was at hand.

So how does this relate to us today? I relate very much to this insight because about two years ago I began to sense a shift away from trying to reach a lot of people. I began to focus only on those who either opened my emails, considered my teachings, read my work, or listened to my podcasts. There was an internal shift that whatever I do, I'm now doing for the Kingdom. My work may well go unnoticed and rejected by the bulk of humanity, but my priorities are now different.

There was a key dream I had in 2015 that showed me that my work at the very end of my life would involve the media, audio production in particular. And the day would come where all of a sudden there would be a shift and I would one day see where I fit. I would find my place. Now in the dream I was in a major newsroom. I was standing around the water cooler with all of these copy editors and everybody was discussing something big that was getting ready to happen. But in the dream, I didn't really have a job, but my being there was okay. I wasn't thrown out, I was accepted.

But the very next scene I saw something that was missing. Nobody was writing copy targeting everyday people in language they could understand. So inside this dream, I had an aha moment. Now while breaking out the dream, I came away knowing that in time I would see my place. Now remember this was 2015. And once I saw it, I would know that I've been prepared for it my whole life. I am living this dream now with these episodes, trying to make sense of these times in language hopefully people can understand, and encouraging you how to find your place in it.

I expanded my company, Audaeo Media Group, in order to publish and distribute resources worldwide to help people survive and thrive in these latter days. In other words, I'm busier now and more purposeful in what I do than I've ever been. So just because the world seems to be falling apart all around you, God has a place for you and your influence that only you can fill. You see, there is a shift that has taken place.

I learned an important lesson from Jeremiah because he witnessed firsthand an unrepentant country, Judah, just like ours is today. He knew God's judgment was happening all around him and he was in your face about it to the people. All of the other prophets said what the people wanted to hear, namely that everything was going to be fine and Judah would triumph because God would save the day. But that was not the reality that Jeremiah saw. So his message was diametrically opposed to the religious community of the day. He was thrown into a pit.

But in chapter 32, God told Jeremiah to do something radical. Now picture this. Jeremiah was confined in a prison because he had been telling the people that God was turning Judah over to the Babylonians. And then Jeremiah wrote, "The word of the Lord came to me. He said, 'Behold, Hanamel your uncle will come to you and say, 'Buy my field which is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.''" In other words, God wanted the prophet to buy a piece of property in his hometown, invest in a land that was soon going to be taken over. There is a lot of wisdom here. That verse hit me between the eyes. God does not want us to sit back passively while our country implodes. Investing in a piece of land was a prophetic act on the part of Jeremiah to say that God still had plans for Israel.

The Lord began speaking to me specifically about this and asked me to make several decisions about investing in the place of my birth, even though things look so bleak as to our country's future. I invested in a weekly radio show called Lessons in the Latter Days, which airs in my hometown in North Georgia. My investment is a spiritual seed that I'm planting in the land of my forefathers. I'm also working in an international consulting role using my longtime business connections in Georgia to help bring new industry into the area.

So the admonition for you perhaps is that God may be calling you to invest in something wherever you live. To deposit a spiritual seed there that would benefit others while it is still day. I have a theory regarding the Kingdom that I'm still searching out in the Bible, but it bears mentioning here. We know for instance that the Kingdom lasts 1,000 years on earth, and believers will be in leadership positions serving the Lord's purposes for the land and the people. Now my theory is based on two things. Number one, God's word to our forefathers whenever they died, he would say in the scriptures, "be gathered unto your people." And number two, there's a passage in Leviticus 25 where God describes the Jubilee year that happens every 50 years. He says, "Hallow the 50th year. Each of you shall return to his property."

Now I believe these are *tavniot* of what is to come. I can't swear to this, but my gut tells me that during the Kingdom, we will return to the land of our forefathers to complete our ancestral destiny of caring for the people, the land, and its resources. So I believe that my place in the Kingdom will be North Georgia. It would make sense therefore for the Lord to prompt me to invest in its growth for the good of the people and to be busy doing so until he comes.

You see, when that day comes, we will each stand before God alone. No one can share this time. Everything we have done will pass through the fire and only what contains his light will remain. Now one of the greatest blessings the Lord has given me is to know what I will be doing in the Kingdom. It's all the things that I'm doing now, which is why I'm so committed to helping others find their destined place. Your place.

If you do not know your calling, please log on to my website at CandaceLong.com and look at my resources. I have podcasts, monographs, books, webinars, and courses all designed to help you identify what the Lord put inside of you to accomplish with your life. To do your part to fulfill your ancestral destiny. It is never too late and you're never too old to seek that out. To sum up what Jesus was saying: the hawks are out, and it's time to take heed to yourselves.

If you'd like to share this episode with others, you'll find it on my podcast page at CandaceLong.com. As always with any episode, you can look at my description notes and find links to other resources if you want to go deeper. I'm Candace Long, I want to thank you for listening. I hope you'll join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days.

Thank you so much for listening. If you have questions to submit for any of our teachers, please go to our main page at ShabbatShalomRadio.com and look for the button at the top that says email the show. We would love to hear your feedback and help address the questions that you may be wrestling with. Coming up in our final hour Rabbi Michael Washer will bring us rabbinical insights to put this important festival into proper perspective. Following him in the final half hour, I will teach on the appointed seven-week season which follows Passover week. It's called "Torah 101: Counting the Omer." And what I love about this episode is that it gives you new understanding to see the unique gift that Messiah gave each one of us when he ascended into heaven. Remember, you'll find all of our programs archived at the bottom of our Shabbat Shalom page. They are arranged by date, teacher, and topic. Stay tuned for our final hour coming up next on WZ-AM 590, our media partner for ShabbatShalomRadio.com.