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As is often the case, people unjustly persecuted in one place for taking a stand against error run to another where they errantly promote something just as bad. In this case, Rogol, with Ford’s consent, promotes the doctrine of forensic imputed righteousness.
With this as background, I would like to analyze a few telling statements from Rogol’s article (pg. 10, Feb. 2008, “Good News Unlimited”) since it exposes a common misunderstanding about the Wedding Garment Parable. Rogol writes:
“And, the wedding garment given to each guest by the king, to be worn over the guest’s clothing, signifies the life of Jesus which he lived out for us in a perfection ….”
Notice the phrase “to be worn over the guest’s clothing.” Rogol defines our clothing as the sinful nature. Imagine, a street bum, us, with tattered clothes trying to put a tuxedo on over the top of our rags! Is this what Yeshua meant by donning a wedding garment? What Rogol is promoting is Luther’s doctrine where we get to remain sinful while the sin is whitewashed with a coat of new paint to hide it. Is this what God is interested in?
Not at all. The Scriptures tell us that we must put off the old man – those old tattered clothes, and then don the real righteousness of Messiah Yeshua (Colossians 3:9-10). This is what God desires.
Rogol contends that accepting a wedding garment over sullied clothes, “signifies our act of faith, accepting the perfect life ... a confession of our sinfulness and unworthiness, in need of a better righteousness than we have.” But he means it only as a legal fiction; that is, in God’s sight, where the person does not really become righteous. It sounds really pious until we remember that accepting real righteousness from Yeshua into our lives, to be made part of us, is even more a confession of our need. For the person who will not take off the dirty garments first to put on the righteousness of Messiah has no consciousness of the impropriety of going to a wedding with the dirty clothes hidden under the garment provided by the King!
We must remember that Satan’s method of deceiving the elect of Israel is to mix truth with half truth and error. An error, just like the dirty garment, is syncretistically mixed up with biblical truths like the wedding garment until the sheep miss the point of the parable altogether, which is to put oil in our lamps, and seek to learn God’s ways and make them a part of our life.
Yeshua wants us to show up at the wedding feast with His righteousness, not cloaked over our sins, but accepted by us and incorporated into our lives. The nonsense taught by Martin Luther was no closer to the truth than the Catholic doctrine. In fact, it was yet one step further away from the biblical truth. Martin Luther was compelled to unchain the Bible from the pulpit in order to defend his version of truth against the Roman Curia. But what inspired the Reformation was not Luther and his version of truth, but the fact that the people by Divine providence could now read the Bible for themselves!
I will now bring up another statement by Rogol that is most revealing:
“While the blood of the cross provides forgiveness for us, the imputed righteousness of Christ provides perfection for us which we need for acceptance by a holy God.”
What we have here is a gospel with a form of godliness, but without the power of transforming lives. We are forgiven, but apparently the job of forgiving was not complete in the eyes of Luther and company. It seems that after forgiving us, God was still not going to accept the forgiven persons because they were sinful. Sounds like the forgiveness was really Indian giving here --- you are forgiven, but I cannot accept you because you are a sinner. Let us dice up what ‘non acceptance’ means. It is the opposite of forgiveness. What Yeshua gives, the theologians take away. The definition of forgiveness is the cancellation of the debt we owe.
But God does not want us to remain in our sins, so He covenanted with us to give us the righteousness of Messiah, not as whitewash over our sinful natures, but as a progressive, real, and deep transformation of our lives into the likeness of His righteousness, to be culminated and completed at His return in the Divine day of cleansing at the end of the age. If we are unable to become perfectly righteous, then God’s goal is not to see us as righteous as a whitewash over our sinful nature, but to remove the sinful nature and make us truly righteous with the righteousness of Messiah. Then He will be YHWH OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS (Jer. 23:6; 33:16).
The Passover is almost here (March 23-29). This year it coincides with the Catholic days, which is not surprising since the Catholic celebration is a corruption of the biblical Passover. So let us put off the leaven of sin, and put on the real righteousness of Messiah.
5 comments:
Hi Dan glad to see you back and writing again!
Hmmm, the concept or belief of putting His garment on over our dirty rags?
Can't be possible.
Marc
Great illustration, Dan. The word picture made me laugh. Yet the doctrinal issue is very serious. It is amazing how widespread this error is throughout nearly every denomination.
Thank you for bringing the issue to the forefront.
Can you briefly explain the rationale for the early Passover date? I agree with your analysis in your book but others may not be aware.
This year, the 14th of Aviv will be Sabbath,March 22nd, and the Passover would be slain between noonset and sunset on Sabbath March 22nd (if the temple were here) and the Seder eaten that night -- at the end of the Sabbath.
The reason that the Rabbinical calendar now in use by Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative Judaism, and many Messianic Congregations is a month late is that it is based on and equinox calculation that is 15 centuries out of date. Because of the precession of the equinoxes, an equinox calculation for the 3rd century A.D. that was not updated by the true equinox is now about 7 days late.
For this reason, every time the Passover would fall within the first seven days after the true equinox (March 20th), the Rabbinical Calendar postpones a month, because they are supposing that the equinox is around March 27th in the calculations they use.
Rabbinical scholars are quite aware of this problem. It is merely the weight of tradition that keeps them from reforming the calendar on this question.
The Roman Catholic Church also had a problem with the Julian Calendar falling behind the true equinox, but they fixed this in October 1582 with the Gregorian Calendar reform.
One book that explains this matter fully is "Rabbinical Mathematics and Astronomy" by W. M. Feldman (Sepher-Hermon Press, 1978). If the Rabbis would simply make a fresh observation of when the equinox really is, then we would not have this problem of Passover falling a month late.
Another related problem is that the modern Rabbinical calendar does not go by the sighted new moon in Jerusalem, even though this method is the only one given in the historical tradition of the Talmud and agrees with the biblical chronology.
This does not mean that the Karaites are correct however in trying to regulate the calendar with barley. The appearance of barley only because a factor when the Rabbis of the 2nd temple could not figure out when the equinox was by using astronomical methods. Actually they did use astronomical methods then, but I think that barley is mentioned in the Talmud because they wanted to keep the astronomy secret and leave a little bit of room for a capricious calendar so that the people would always be dependent on them to determine the calendar. However, in practice the calendar council always defaulted to the astronomy.
Biblically, the sun determines the cycle of the year and the moon the cycle of the month (Gen. 1:14) for the set-times.
Gen. 1:14 actually uses the Hebrew word "moedim" which refers to the set times of Passover later in Torah.
In the Hebrew, there are a number of passages that speak of the "return of the year" or the "cirucit of the year"; This has long been recognized as the return of the sun in the heavens to a fixed point determined by tradition to be the spring equinox. That is the point in the heavens for the sun where the day and night will be of equal length. This was inherited from ancient times as the first day of spring.
The Passover feast must fall in the new year -- hence after the equinox, however since eating new grain was forbidden until the day after Passover, it has to be as soon in the new year as possible, and not a month late.
In certain rare cases of drought or bad weather, of course, the new grain may not be ripe on the day after Passover in many places. However, it will be ripe enough to roast and eat in some places (like the Negev farms), so it would be pointless to postpone the Passover a month and extend the ban on eating the new grain 29 or 30 days.
An anomolous appearance of the grain should no more change the legal time of Passover than the anomolous drought would prevent the brining of firstfruits, and I would make this suggestion that tandi reminded me of. If the barley is not ripe enough for waving or eating by an anomoulous quirk of weather on the day after Passover, then the farmers can bring it in the second month on the day after the second Seder.
However, if I had a farm in Israel, I'd just set up a Greenhouse and plant a bit of barley in it, remove the water two weeks before Passover, and then there would always be barley.
Next you know when the farmers start showing up at the Temple with hydroponic barley, the Karaites will add yet another commandment that the barley must grow wild without human intervention.
Hi Dan,
How will you be keeping the upcoming Feast? Can you give us an account of how your family keeps Passover? Activities, Bible readings, etc. What about the all night vigil you mentioned? Can you elaborate about that? Do you keep a traditional Jewish Seder? At what time? What do you eat? How literally do you take the command to search for leaven and remove it from your home? I take it as a good time to do Spring Cleaning and clean out the toaster, etc., but I am not fanatical about it. I remove all leavened food products from the home so that I do not inadvertantly eat it....as I think that is the main objective of the command...to abstain from leaven and think about the spiritual application of the concept. It is interesting in reading labels to notice the leaven hidden in unexpected places, like a can of soup. Similarly, we need to search our hearts for hidden sin.
Can you recommend specific readings in your Bible Chronology book for this Passover season? Where in your book do you talk about the Vigil?
Hi Tandi, I'm starting to revamp the website. I was just over here testing, and saw your post.
We clean all the leaven out of the house a few days before passover. Anything in the dwelling part of the house is removed or destroyed. Anything we want to save goes out of the house where it will not be seen for a week.
The Seder follows the Jewish format after (after sunset at the end of the day part of the 14th). However, we have made moifications. We have the four cups. We tell or read the Exodus story at the start of the meal, and the cup of redemption comes at the end of the meal. We often have lamb if we can get it at for reasonable cost.
This year Dale and Lin will be joining us. We won't be serving wine for various reasons, one being I actually like grape juice better.
We make our own unleavened bread straight from freshly ground grains. A little oil, salt, and into the oven for 15-20 minutes on a flat cookie sheet. Believe me, you can survive on this. Official Matzah from the store is hard to eat, and hard on the stomach, principly because it is too dry. Yes, we've been known to stick it with a fork so it looks pierced.
We have a Seder plate; it gets all the traditional items, including the shank bone.
We mix morter out of nuts and dates and apples.
I am thinking of having a turkey this year.
The toaster is one of those items that gets locked up in the trailer outside of the house, after a basic dumping out.
You are right that the command is aimed at preventing inadvertant consumption of leaven. We have to be especially vigilant to get all the bread kids have dropped. Some of our younger children have been known to eat dry crumbs! The bigger the house, the bigger the family, the worse it gets.
The particularly relevant section in the book is pages 23-25. I do believe the basic Exodus story should be told, but that it can be varied, or related topics can be delved into at the Seder, depending on the audience. We might also look at pages 46-47 or include a reading from the Gospels at the Seder.
If it is not too late, we pass out the song books and sing along with one of the CD's.
We turn into bed about 12. The next day we study, relax, go someplace to walk, and then the next night between the 15th and 16th is the vigil night. I think the command applies to at least the adult males in the family, however, I think this is one of the things I will study further then. It was on this night last year that I discovered a lot of stuff in Hosea 6 (pages 50-51).
Dan
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