3 PART II
PART II Have you ever been to the Bible lands to Baalbek, the old Roman summer capital? Many of you recall seeing the pictures of Baalbek in the temple with the Corinthian pillars which people still use. Sometimes you see the picture of it on bank calendars in the country. I think it has four of the pillars still standing with the main stone over the top. When you understand Romans, and especially chapters 1 and 2 in Romans, and you understand Paul’s ministry to the Corinthian church, the Book of Jeremiah just sort of all fits together. It’s a very, very wonderful, yet very down-to-earth and right-down-to-where-they-were-living truth. The 16th verse of the first chapter sets the great apostasy of Israel, which will keep coming up. It talks about burning incense unto gods and worshipping the works of their own hands. We covered the first two verses of chapter 2 already. The first part told Jeremiah to go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem. Jerusalem represented the spiritual seat. That’s where the temple was. You see, from the very beginning I can trace at least three different wills of God in the Genesis record. There’s what I call a primary will of God which is really what God wanted. Then there is a secondary will of God, and finally there’s the third will of God which is basically what we’ll see coming up in Jeremiah. You see, God never wanted the sacrifices that they have in the temple in Jerusalem. He didn’t want those sacrifices, but the people wanted them. They asked for it by their actions, so God went along with it and then He gave the law on how they were supposed to do the sacrifices. God is Spirit and God wanted His people to worship Him via spirit and truth all along, but people didn’t move that way. They wanted sacrifices. So God says, well, if you’re going to have a sacrifice, this is the way you’re going to do it. It’s really something. Even to this day, in the Church of the Body, the greatest thing God ever did, from the day of Pentecost on almost every denomination wanted some sense-knowledge thing they could hold on to, like water baptism or counting the rosary. Anything they can see, taste, handle or touch. It’s really very beautiful when you put the whole Word together. Well, it says, "Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth." This verse two is written from God’s point of view.
Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.
There’s a record, where it just literally says God closed His eyes. That means He knew what Israel was doing, but He refused to see it. He said, "They’re my kids; I refuse to see it; I’ll just close my eyes." God closed His eyes. It reminds me of a man in the New Knoxville area. He blew all the money Dad had made and Dad kept bailing him out all the time. One thing after another and he turned to my father and he said to him, "Well, if my son gets as much fun out of spending it as I did out of making it we’d both have a lot of fun." So, I thought that was sort of a wholesome attitude. Sort of fatherly. This is from God’s point of view. "Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth." That is referring to when they were a young nation coming out of Egypt. That’s the youth part. "The love of thine espousals," in other words, then you were real hot on me. You (Israel) liked me very much and when you went after me in the wilderness (as when they had to hang in there and eat quail or manna), in a land that was not sown (in other words, a land that did not produce its own). That was the wilderness. God says, "My mind goes back to when I babied you and you were my kids. You were espoused to me. You were my wife, my husband. You were real sweet on me, a real honey with me. I fed you when you could not feed yourself."
Israel was holiness unto the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil, shall come upon them, saith the Lord.
Israel was holiness unto the Lord, Jehovah, and they were the firstfruits of His increase and all that devour him shall offend. That goes for anybody that really touches God’s person who’s walking. Here it’s talking about Israel. The word "offend" literally is "are going to be held guilty." The word "evil" is "destruction." "Destruction shall come upon them, saith the Lord." This was the promise. It’s from God’s point of view, what God did. In the Old Testament you read records where the children of Israel went out and had a big battle. Not one Israelite died at the edge of a sword. Not one. Oodles of the enemy they chopped to smithereens. Then when Israel sinned and blew it, they died just like the enemy or worse. But as long as Israel walked, there was not a sword made to kill them. As long as they walked in the wilderness, even their clothes didn’t wear out; their shoes didn’t wear out. You see, God’s fantastic, but everybody lives so far below par generally. He is still the same God. The Psalmist said, "A thousand will fall on one side and ten thousand on the other but it’s not going to come nigh you." How many Christians even believe that? All that devour him, Israel, shall be held guilty. Destruction shall come upon those people who do it. Another place in the Old Testament it talks about the man of God being like the apple of God’s eye. It also says in the Old Testament that God has engravened us upon the palms of His hands. I suppose that if some of you men took your shirts off you might have engraving’ on your body. Tattoos, that’s what an engraving is. I haven’t seen any tattoos in the palms of the hands. People don’t tattoo there, because the hand is so delicate, so sensitive. You just couldn’t stand it when they would burn it in there and cut it with the needle. So you put the tattoo someplace where you have fewer nerve centers to cause pain. God says you’re like the apple of His eye. Well, poke yourself one. Hit your eyeball and find out how sensitive it is. In the Old Testament it says your walls are constantly before God because He has engraven us. He looks at us like this and we’re constantly before Him and we’re tattooed in the palms of His hands. Fantastic, beautiful illustration. If you and I are walking for God, we have God’s protection. We have God’s care and anybody that hurts us is going to be held guilty, and destruction shall come upon them. In the New Testament when somebody was really out of alignment and harmony, Paul just gave him up to Satan. We just don’t think that way anymore because we don’t see God that big. You can’t see God, you can’t hear Him, can’t smell Him, taste Him or touch Him. Therefore, even the greatest Christians you usually run into, what you’d think were real fantastic believing Christians, still don’t really come to the greatness of walking with the power of God that’s there. verse 4:
Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel.
"Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob." House of Jacob. I love that. His other name was Israel. Jacob means "sup-planter." One who cheats everybody he can, as quickly as he can. That’s what the word Jacob means. Jacob, if you’ll remember, had a wrestling bout one night and God gave him a new name. He called him Israel, which means "one favored with God." The man changed. Jacob changed and God gave him a new name. The first church I had in my denomination was St. Jacob’s. They sure lived it. I often think about that. I’ve always wanted to do a teaching on what’s in a name. I’ve never done it. The title of it would be "What’s in a Name," and I’d pick names from the Bible. I might use yours. I know I’d use Jacob, some of those names, just to show people what’s in a name. I don’t know how much time families spend today picking names for their children, but I’d like to say to you if you’re going to have any kids, pick a good name for them. Give them something to live up to, not live down at. They have an old cliche in the United States about giving a dog a good name and he’ll live up to it. Give him a bad name and he’ll go down to it. It’s just as easy to give someone a wonderful name that means something as it is to give him something like Jacob. I think many times names are given to children by daddy and mommy for poor reasons. They maybe had somebody they heard about, they liked the name, sounds good to them so they give it to him. But the words in the Word are not here by accident. These are words which the Holy Spirit speaketh and there’s great learning in them. Jacob’s brother was Esau. As twins Esau was born first with Jacob coming out grabbing his heel. Then, if you’ll remember, Jacob really worked a dandy with his father-in-law and his father-in-law worked a dandy on him. He made him work seven years for a woman and then he had to work another seven years. Then Jacob got back at him by believing that all the sheep would be the kind Laban said he could have so Jacob would get all the sheep. Those guys really lived it up. Here in Jeremiah the house of Jacob is the name of the nation, because they’re back to flipping out. They’re cheating. "Supplanter" is the meaning of the word Jacob. That’s what He calls them here. He could have called them Judah, Israel, or a lot of other things, but the Word calls them Jacob, because the people are crooked again. Not everyone, but the vast majority. This statement, "O house of Jacob," is used 20 times in the Book of Jeremiah. That is significant. verse 5:
Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?
What iniquity have your fathers found in me? It’s Jehovah’s asking the people via the prophet. What iniquity? What shortcoming? How have I, as God, mistreated you that you have gone far from me? You don’t have your love for me; you don’t have the kindness of thy youth when you went after me in the wilderness. You’ve gone far from me and walked after vanity. Vanity is the vainness of the human individual which here equals idols. They walked after idols and are become vain idolaters. verse 6:
Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?
They no longer say, "Where is Jehovah? Where’s our wonderful Jehovah who brought us up out of the land of Egypt? We love Him." They don’t say that anymore. "Who led us through the wilderness." People, I’ve lived long enough to know that you can do a thousand good things for somebody, but if you do one bad thing, they will remember the bad and forget the thousand. Israel was like that. God dug them out time and again. He took care of them. Then when they got a little money, so to speak, a little freedom, instead of staying faithful to the true God, they forgot His greatness. They started worshipping other gods and going down the drain. verse 7: And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination. An "abomination" literally means "stinky, rotten, putrefied." verse 8: The priests said not, Where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit. The priests said not, "Where is the Lord?" In other words, the priests did not even look for Jehovah. The nation had gotten so far off that the spiritual leaders were not looking for the true God, Jehovah. They that handled the law, the Word of God, "knew me not." The word "pastors" is "shepherds." It refers to the kings. They were shepherds, they were pastors of the people as were other older men called elders in the Old Testament. The word "elders" in the Old Testament is the same word as the word "bishop" is in the New Testament. Only one is Hebrew and the other is a Greek word. The pastors, shepherds, also transgressed. The word transgressed is "revolted." They revolted against God and the prophets prophesied by Baal. Baal is a devil spirit, a big one. I’ll hold on telling you more, because I’m going to tell you a lot about Baal after a bit. They prophesied by Baal and "walked after things that do not profit." Those words mean they walked after that which led them to ruin. That’s the text. What you follow is where you’re going to end up at, right? You follow Castle Road, you get someplace where Castle Road goes. They walked after Baal, so they ended up in ruin. verse 9:
Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord, and with your children’s children will I plead.
"Wherefore I will yet plead with you; I beg you: I implore you. I cry my eyes out for you," saith the Lord. And I’ll do this with your "son’s sons" is the correct translation. verse 10: For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing.
Chittim literally is the island Cypress. Chittim is the name for Cypress, but He’s talking about passing over the "isles," plural, which Cypress represented. The maritime countries are what He’s talking about. Shem was the second son of Noah. He was not the oldest. It says so in the Word. Japheth is the oldest, then comes Shem, and then comes Ham. Shem is spelled "She" and later on they dropped the "h," spelled it "se" and that’s where the Semites are from. Semitic people are shemites. Chittim was out of Japheth; he was Japheth’s grandson. Genesis 10:4 says so.
Genesis 10:2-4: The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.
Here Chittim is spelled with a "K" instead of a "Ch."
It refers to Cypress which stands for those maritime countries. So God is saying, "You pass over the maritime countries to the north and send unto Kedar, which is in Arabia, to the south and consider diligently and see if there is such a thing. See if there’s anybody left that really believes. What He’s saying is, "Look, go all the way up north, come all the way down south, look at all the people; anybody around believing? NO."
Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.
"Hath a nation changed their gods? Which are yet not gods, but they worship them as gods. But my people have changed their glory." There are some thirty places that Ginsberg listed in the Massorah where they deliberately changed a word in scripture. The Massorah gives it to you. They deliberately changed the word in scripture marking the change in the fence around the outside of the text. Instead of "their glory" it should read "my glory." It was God’s glory they had turned away from. They didn’t want God to be disgraced. That’s why here they changed "my" to "their." They didn’t want God to be associated with this degradation so they put "their" there. In other words, the glory that belonged to God and God’s glory that they had, they changed for that which doth not profit. verse 12: Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. Be astonished, exclamation point, O ye heavens at this and be horribly afraid. Shook up. Be ye very desolate. The root word means "dried up." In my mind, I get the picture of 3 years and 6 months with no rain. That’s dry. Not even dew. That’s desolate. The picture in my mind is the wind blowing and the dust just flying all over the place. Nothing growing, not even cactus. Then the great 13th verse you use in the Foundational Class, I believe. verse 13: For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. For my people, God’s people, have committed two evils, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. Then secondly, as I teach in the Foundational Class, whenever man moves away from the true God, he always hews himself out his own religious systems, and they’re cisterns. They’ll always be broken cisterns, no matter how beautiful they look to the senses man on the outside. They have cracks in them, and they will not hold the truth of God or the truth of His Word. verse 14: Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled?
"Is Israel a servant? A slave born in other people’s homes? Why is he become a spoil?" That’s the text.
Israel was never to be a servant to other nations. The Assyrians and the Babylonians were never to come in and capture Israel and make the men their slaves, the women their women. That wasn’t God’s plan at all. He never meant for an Israelite to be born in an unbeliever’s home to be the slave in that home. Israel was meant to be a servant to God, a slave to God. In our day and time we’re to be slaves for the Lord Jesus Christ. The epistles tell us this. We have the mark of Christ upon us. We are douloses for him, slaves for Jesus Christ and the true God. We are not to be slaves to other fellowmen. Why then is he become a spoil? You know what a spoil is. It’s what the enemy that captures you takes from the army. The army comes in and captures the land and they get the spoils, which means they take everything that’s there. Isaiah had said they’ll take your women to be confectioneries, cooks and that kind of thing. verse 15: The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant.
"The young lions roared upon him, and yelled." What are the young lions? Countries like Babylon, Egypt and others. These were the younger countries. Maybe not younger historically as far as time, but younger in development. They attacked like young lions. They roared and yelled. Do you know why the lion roars? It is to freeze the prey. The lion never jumps its prey until it freezes it. And he does it by "HEH!" Only worse. That’s why it says in here, "the young lions roared." They scared the living daylights out of the children of Israel by their roar. Froze them. Then they could jump them and eat them as their prey. Then they made his land waste. The cities are burned that there are no inhabitants left. They did one of two things. They either killed them all, or they transported them, took them out of one location and moved them to another. If women were pregnant with babies, they ripped them up. Because if they’re going to let them have babies, then they’re going to get pregnant by their captors. So they wouldn’t have any. And the older men, who couldn’t work, they chopped their heads off, too. That was the lenient side. Sometimes they would come in and kill the whole city, men, women, children, the whole bunch. Cities burned, you understand, without inhabitants. Nobody would be left. verse 16:
Also the children of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head.
"Also the children of Noph." Noph is Memphis, the southern capital of Egypt. I have never been there. I’ve seen the pictures, I’ve read about it, but every time I’ve been in Egypt I’ve been stupid and never took the time to go south. I someday ought to. But Memphis is the southern capital. The northern one is Tahapanes. The children of Egypt in the capital in the south and the capital in the north have broken the crown of thy head. In other words, Egypt just socked it to them. Egypt took you captive, Egypt outwitted you. Tahapanes has been discovered archaeologically, and it really shut the mouths of the higher critics and the unbelievers, because of what it says in other places in Deuteronomy and the Old Testament about this particular place. The critics always said it couldn’t have been there. Well, they have found it, archaeologically, and it is exactly what the Old Testament said. It was a very, very exclusive place. Pharaoh’s daughter found Moses. Right? She brought him into the palace. Then she got a Hebrew woman to nurse it, and the Hebrew woman was Moses’ mother. This is in secular history I read this, not in the Word. But one of the Pharoahs got real sweet on a Hebrew gal. The name of this palace at Tahapanes is "the palace of a Hebrew daughter." That’s the name. It was one of the British archaeologists who uncovered this in northern Egypt. "The crown of thy head" means they beat him. verse 17:
Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee by the way? The reason they got it laid on them by Egypt is because they had forsaken the Lord, who had led them out of captivity into that green territory, that land flowing with milk and honey. verse 18: And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?
"What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt?" Drink the waters of Sihor, and Sihor is the Nile. "What hast thou to do in the way of Assyria?" You drink the waters of the river, and that specifically refers to the Euphrates. In the Mesopotamia area, there are two great rivers. One is the Euphrates, one is the Tigris. In between these two great rivers, the Euphrates over to the west and the Tigris to the east, lived God’s people long before Jacob. They spoke the language of the area which was Aramaic. The characters in which the Aramaic was written were Estrangelo. When they crossed over the Euphrates to the west, they brought with them their language. Suppose we who speak English today go to Russia tomorrow. Do we bring our language along? Sure. They did too. When they crossed over the Euphrates to go to Palestine, they were called Hebrews. The word Hebrew does not come from the word Heber, one of the sons mentioned in the Old Testament. Heber comes from the fact that he was born at the time or shortly after they crossed over. The word Hebrew means "cross-over." They crossed over the Euphrates. The Aramaic word for crossing over is habor. That’s where they got the name Hebrews. And for many, many years, of course, they carried Estrangelo Aramaic. Aramaic is the language. Estrangelo is the type of script in which it was written. Then as they got mixed up with the Assyrians and others, there were other words introduced into their language, and they began writing a different type of script. The script changed and the old square characters came into existence, which is called old Hebrew. Then of course, many, many years later, the Estrangelo characters of script were slightly changed in Aramaic. As a result we have extant what we know as the Jacobite script of Aramaic, the Nestorian script of Aramaic, and Estrangelo. The great scholars of the world can read Jacobite and Nestorian. Most cannot handle Estrangelo. There is a great library in England, one of the greats. It is John Rylands at Manchester. I was in the archives there one year looking at some manuscripts in Estrangelo Aramaic. They still had not yet cataloged it. Nobody could read it. So we went down to look at it. I could read it. They had never had a man that could read it. They had these books stacked in a real sloppy manner. You don’t stack good books like that. You should stack them carefully, catalog them, and then put a bloodhound on them and a shotgun next to them so nobody steals them. They had them stacked like this. Some they had tilted over in the corner. They had a great collection of Estrangelo Aramaic. The following year, I was at Duke University in North Carolina, and I met with a man by the name of Charlesworth, who is head of the Old Testament theological work at Duke. I had heard that he was a fine Hebrew scholar, and that was one reason I wanted to meet him. We talked about Aramaic. I told him about our research and our interest in Estrangelo Aramaic. It was new to him. He knew Jacobite. He knew Nestorian. But he did not know Estrangelo. Shortly after I left he got very, very interested in Estrangelo, and the last three or four years, in the summer, he has been at John Rylands and has cataloged all the Aramaic work that is at John Rylands. They have changed curators since the time he and I were there. Not long ago somebody took me to the library there again. I went over and asked the curator if I could go down and see the Aramaic stuff, and he said no. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with him, so I never went down to see what Dr. Charlesworth did and how it was cataloged. You know, he’d go down and get me a book, but that’s an insult to me. I just got mad and didn’t pursue it. I just didn’t go down. He didn’t know that I’m the man that got it cataloged for him. I didn’t tell him who I was or what I did, so he doesn’t know that I’m the fellow that influenced Charlesworth, so that he came over and cataloged it all for him. But that’s life. I suppose I could have spent a half hour pulling out all my credentials and telling him how I influenced Charlesworth to catalog it. But there wasn’t much sense in it. By the way, we do have at The Way International perhaps the best in the world today in Aramaic. We are working on an analytical concordance in Aramaic, which will be the first one that’s ever been done in Estrangelo. We are putting all of this on computer. We have developed and produced an Aramaic typing ball for the IBM selectric typewriters. We had it made. We produced it, we laid out the letters, we drew them, we had them drawn, and we had them put on the ball. So at least one place we got on the ball. Dr. Charlesworth found out that we had one. He called long distance, I think to Bo Reahard, and asked Bo if we had it. Bo said yes; he said, "Well, what do you want for one?" Bo said $500. The next day there was a check in the mail for that ball of $500. I think we’ve got something like $4,000 invested in the ball. But if we sell 20 of those for $500, we’ll have $10,000 back. And I expect to get that back. They have to buy it, because we hold the copyrights on it. We own the thing. So if they want to buy one, they have to get it through The Way Ministry.
Greek was not the language in which the New Testament was originally written. Every academic institution and most scholars (including Manchester’s F. F. Bruce, Metzger in Princeton, Aland in Germany) teach that it was. That’s what they were taught. That’s why they believed it. They are all Protestant teachers too. They were taught that the original texts were in Greek. All three of them should know better today, because we made them sit up and pay attention. If the New Testament was in Greek and they translated the New Testament into English, then the words they did not translate in the King James should be in Greek. They’re not; they’re in Aramaic. The words talitha cumi are not translated. They’re Aramaic words. Eli, Eli, lamana sabachthani are not Greek words. They’re Aramaic words, left untranslated to this day! Boy, God sure did us a favor. Greek was a translation from Estrangelo Aramaic. Greek was very beautifully done, fantastically done. Some of those men who translated into Greek were absolutely men filled with the holy spirit, and men who called upon God for revelation when they needed it. Some very, very great fine work in Greek. That’s why I believe if you’re going to do research in depth, you must not only know Estrangelo Aramaic, you have to be able to handle Jacobite script and Nestorian script, as well as Hebrew and Greek. Latin, forget it. You know, as far as research in the Word is concerned, Latin came out of Rome. The Roman Catholic boys had little accuracy. But the other languages I’ve given you are excellent for research. Arabic would not be bad to know, because there’s such a close resemblance between many words in Arabic with words in Estrangelo, Nestorian and Jacobite. Do you know why they came up with Nestorian script? Because, for example, you are Christians in Manchester, you are Christians in Bristol. You are both Christians, but in order to show that you are Manchester Christians you put a little different type of curve on a word, for instance, than they do. That’s how they told where they came from, language-wise. You still do the same in the United States. English in Boston is different than English in Minnesota. In Minnesota it is English much like I talk, but in Boston it’s Boston English. I have as much trouble understanding the Bostonians as I do the English English. I said the other day that I wouldn’t mind riding on that boat that keeps running around the river over here. It must be a tourist boat. I said I’d do it just so long as you give me an Englishman that I can understand. It took us three weeks to figure out why Mr. Hooley in the army was in the pie office. And one day I figured out that meant pay office. When I finally figured out the pie office was the pay office, I finally figured out where he worked. It’s good to understand. Well, that’s a little background on Estrangelo Aramaic and other Biblical languages. In our next section we will continue with Jeremiah 2.