The Return of the Branch

To be blessed in Greek thought is to receive from the gods. Favorable conditions in war, weather, and finances are to be blessed by the gods. When a military leader is promoted, he is blessed. When financial rewards are reaped, this is a blessing. To be cursed however is to lose the battle or fall in financial ruin. When something seen as negative occurs, this is a curse. Curses could turn into blessings by a change of attitude towards the gods. Simply put, blessings are when good things happen and curses are when bad things happen.

In Hebrew thought, blessings are synonymous with obedience, and curses to disobedience, and are not tied to good or bad circumstances. I believe with all my heart that when Paul said that gentiles are grafted in to a natural tree, that we are leaving western thinking and entering Hebrew thinking. The facts are, that our thinking is not scriptural. Many times in our culture we are divided up into other kinds of thinking. Those who call themselves conservative are many times moved to laughter when trying to understand the liberal mind-set. White people are sometimes in another world from black people. From a straight persons point of view, a gay man is from another solar system.

YHWH knew ahead of time that most people would reject His pattern for behavior. All that is wrong in this world can be traced back to the abandonment of YHWH’s words. The Greek mind and the Hebrew mind both gaze at the same evidence, both look at the same scriptures but come to different conclusions. This is because both minds have a pre-conceived bias. One brings with him a bias that there is no God. The other brings a bias that says there is.

When a gentile makes a decision to follow the Messiah, he brings with him all the things about life and the world around him to the equation. He sees every word in the scriptures from the world he was raised in. The majority of the words he will read in the “New Testament”, he already knows, and he will never research their true meaning. When the words are spoken from the pulpit he will rarely investigate them. This isn’t to say that you have to, you don’t have to do anything. I guess that’s the purpose of free will.

Stay tuned…stay strong…Shalom