INSIDE FLAPS

This quest for the meaning and significance of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures is not about Kierkegaard, Nietzche, and Bonhoeffer. However, this quest does contribute to the continuing critique of Christianity initiated by the critical analysis of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Bonhoeffer. This literary journey through the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures takes the critiques of these three critics of Christianity to their proper Biblical conclusion. In accord with the requirement of truth (to follow truth wherever it may lead), this quest for the meaning and significance of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures has revealed the following unavoidable conclusions:

  1. The Hebrew Scriptures are the foundational chapters recording the purpose and destiny of Israel.
  2. The Greek Scriptures are the crowning chapters recording the historical fulfillment of the purpose and destiny of Israel.
  3. The central theme of the Hebrew Scriptures, in spite of a history of corporate failure, concerns the historical progression of the promises of Yahweh to Israel recorded in the Law and the Prophets.
  4. The central theme of the Greek Scriptures concerns the historical fulfillment (through the ministries of John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostles) of the promises of Yahweh given to Israel.
  5. Consequently, the Greek Scriptures are concerned with Israel.
  6. The Ecclesia (Church) of Christ is the Born-From-Above-Israel of prophetic promise.
  7. All the promises given to Israel are fulfilled in relation to the Ecclesia (Church) of Christ as the Born-From-Above Israel, the Israel of the New Covenant, the Israel of Yahweh.
  8. All the promises of Jesus given to His Apostles and members of His Ecclesia, the New Covenant Israel of Yahweh, are fulfilled by 70 A.D. as testified by all the writers of the Greek Scriptures.
  9. All the writings of the Greek Scriptures had to be written before the year 70 A.D.
  10. Consequently, the Ecclesia of Christ, the Born-From-Above Israel, is not to be identified or equated with Christianity which came into existence after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in September of 70 A.D., and after the removal of the Born-From-Above Israel from the terrestrial to the Celestial realm.
  11. The history of Christianity is the history of a new religion following the fulfillment of the purpose and destiny of Israel (the New Covenant Born-From-Above Israel).
  12. The critiques of Christianity proposed by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Bonhoeffer are the critiques of a religion in its twilight years already undergoing the process of obsoleteness as a result of the historical accumulation of contaminating compromises and irrelevancies of old age.

Recognizing these facts, the reader of this quest can, hopefully, appreciate the literary journey about to be undertaken along the path of truth pioneered by the ancient nation of Israel and recorded in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. This biblical path will lead the wayfarer-seeking-truth through the prerecorded dense jungle of man’s origination and antediluvian endeavors passed on orally through Adam and Noah into the time of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, the time of recorded civilization.

This path, little worn and less followed, takes the courageous wayfarer to the foot of Mount Sinai. Here, he is exposed to the awesome presence of God and the creation of a nation out of a nation. Continuing along the path, the wayfarer will experience holy warfare in the nation’s quest to conquer and settle the land promised by Yahweh, their King Who goes before them into battle. The land is conquered and settled, even as Yahweh has promised. In spite of Yahweh’s faithfulness, failure followed by success, followed by more failure, will be exposed to the wayfarer as he journeys through the period of Israel’s judges, kings, and prophets, culminating in the division of King David’s kingdom and the exile out of the Land of Promise by both the people of the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom.

The wayfarer will finally come to the first century A.D. where he will continue his journey by returning with Judah/Israel to the Land of Promise. There he will conclude his journey with the events surrounding the appearance to Israel of John the Baptist, Jesus, the Twelve Apostles, the national resurrection of the new covenantal Born-From-Above Israel promised by the prophets, the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ concerning her salvation (the fulfillment of all the promises incorporated in the Law and the Prophets), and the commissioning of Saul/Paul to proclaim the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ to the nations (Yahweh’s call to Ephraim/Israel reuniting the divided Kingdom of David thereby completing the salvation of all Israel, thus fulfilling the purpose and destiny of Israel).

The world had been changed. The world continues to be changed. The peoples of the world are becoming citizens of a Global Village woven around them by the technological achievements of mankind. This technological process of coming of age is no accident. However, the higher consciousness of moral thought and behavior has not kept pace with the technological process of coming of age. Much intellectual and ethical failure has occurred and continues to occur, retarding progress in moral thought and behavior equivalent to the already achieved technological progress.

An essential factor contributing to this failure is the various religious traditions still holding sway over contemporary men and women. These religious traditions continue to imprison the mind and heart of contemporary men and women within the mental and emotional walls of corporate childhood superstitions, myths, rituals, ceremonies, and teachings which have constructed enormous barriers between peoples. Such religious commitment to obsolete religious orthodoxy has hampered the expansion of consciousness necessary to the actualization of the God-given potential of all men and women. Religious fear and hatred of outsiders in the cause of orthodoxy only increases exclusion, division, injustice, and mental and emotional stagnation, deterioration, and, eventually, mental and emotional infantile paralysis.

If the foregoing scenario is true, a proper and practical knowledge of the message concerning the achievements of Yahweh recorded in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures on behalf of humanity will prove invaluable in the contemporary pursuit of the actualization of the God-given potential of the men and women now living in the Global Village. To this end, this volume is dedicated.