It's sobering how the mass murder of innocents throughout history has always come down to how many people were willing to obey wicked laws and orders. One of our greatest challenges is to not become blindly obedient to men.
"Perhaps if they had been the Three Anarchists, the Massacre of the Innocents wouldn’t have happened."
There is no need for "perhaps."
It would have happened!
Matthew 2:17-18 explains this. This very unfortunate event was said by prophet Jeremiah years before it happened. To imagine it as dependant on only the will of three Magi is to miss the bigger picture.
It wouldn't have mattered if the three Magi were who they were or who we want them to be, the dealdy decree was going to happen. To fulfill yet another prophesy regarding the miraculousness associated with the Plan of Salvation. In this case the birth of our Savior and his safety.
Who could or can tell the future, with verified events?!
Point here and everywhere else in the Bible is, allow me to capitalize this: GOD MADE, not man made. Forseen, forplanned. What? How you get saved. And if you actually read and connected a few dots in that book, you'd find a sad, compassionate story, filled with sacrifice for the rest of us who don't deserve it.
And as a side note, the three Magi obeyed the warning they were given in a dream and returned home by another route, keeping thus the location of the Holy baby secret, just this demands a respectful description about them. They were approached by the Almighty. They obeyed authority!
Yes, the Three Wise Men returning home by another route was a good move! They apparently "wised up" :-)
Regarding the Jeremiah text, that refers to an event that had already happened (the Israelites taken into exile during the 700s B.C.). The writer of Matthew sees a parallel with Herod's massacre of the infants and so includes it in 2:17-18. I find those connections intriguing when they occur, but I also know that there's plenty of Old Testament beliefs that either don't make their way into Gospel connections or get corrected/refuted by Jesus.
If I may ask, what got you interested in the connections between OT prophecies and Gospel events? Like I said, I find some of that really fascinating :-)
When I read " what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:" in Matthew 2:17 regarding the death of the 2 year olds, I acknowledge the verification of this particular event as just what the Scripture states "fulfilled."
What had to happen for this to be called fulfilled? Herod's decree.
Matthew does not mention it as just a point. It connects with Jeremiah because the scatering of the jews in Jeremiah's time is another event recorded in history. The jews are to be collected as the prophecy states and expanded by the grafting of the gentiles. Through? The one and only being born during Herod's time. Christ.
The connection between OT prophesies and the Gospel is only everything. They bring about this very Gospel. They are connected, inseparable. Fulfilled at the cross. God tells a story. My level of interest originates in undertanding this. It is pertinent only to immortality. Thus my attention is always verifying, from knowing the primary source - that is God made.
That's interesting. I understand ancient prophecies to mean that people predict terrible things will happen, and then other people recall the prediction as the terrible thing is happening. But the prophesy doesn't mean that God *wills* it to happen.
Sin is a turning away from God and God's will; serious sin is a rejection of God. A sinful act, by definition, can never be God's will. I therefore don't and can't believe that God's plan -- which is God's will -- requires these seriously sinful acts in order to succeed.
God can certainly save humanity without Herod and his enforcers murdering baby boys. God can certainly save humanity without Pilate and his enforcers murdering Him when He takes human form. The fact that history played out with each of those tragedies -- and plenty of other atrocities -- doesn't mean they're necessary.
From the Closing Prayer section of my book:
"God is all-powerful and all-knowing, but not all-controlling. The urge to control is a human desire based on human psychological weakness; it is not a Divine characteristic. . . . Could God have redeemed humanity without being tortured and killed as a hated criminal? Theoretically, yes. But order-worshiping, control-coveting, hierarchy-imposing, violence-justifying, good citizens wouldn’t let it be so!"
"But the prophesy doesn't mean that God *wills* it to happen."
I wholy agree. And please let's continue to erase fallacies of the human mind. To forsee doesn't mean to override free will.
Also those people who saw visions and prophesied in the Bible weren't just any people. Because they received these visions from God himself, they demand a different form of expression.
The beauty of prophesy lies in the hidden. 1 Peter 1:12 "things that angels longed to see" is a testament that the Plan of Salvation was hidden and revealed through prophesy,also hidden. God delivered this Plan through thousands of years and through a chosen people, their heads, who shared it by obeying God. And through one nation.
And to erase another human fallacy that is bound to pop up when you talk about vision and proohesy, no nobody can do that today.
Vision and prophesy were sealed. Their purpose was to bring about Christ. Also to establish the only bride of Christ. His church. Once the pleople who received these gifts from heaven died, these powers died with them.
> > > And please let's continue to erase fallacies of the human mind.
That's a big goal of this Substack and why I started it, and why I wrote the book that gave rise to the Substack :-)
Lazy thinking, lazy ethics, and outright fallacies of logic and ethics . . . they're all fair game.
I might be misunderstanding your point about vision and prophecy being "sealed," so apologies in advance if I did. The era of partial revelation (the Old Testament days) is over, now that we know the fullness of Revelation (Christ). So what should be finished is the guessing and the pagan-tinged beliefs about the present and future; that's why it's sad to me to see Christians regress into that, to cling to beliefs that essentially pretend Jesus' earthly life and ministry never happened.
I wouldn't rule out vision and prophecy, as long as they align with Christ. Some of the Old Testament vision/prophecy, frankly, aligns only partially -- if at all -- with Christ. Christ teaches the people of His time the difference. I think the lessons are still relevant today, and demonstrating this is another big goal of my Substack and my book :-)
It's sobering how the mass murder of innocents throughout history has always come down to how many people were willing to obey wicked laws and orders. One of our greatest challenges is to not become blindly obedient to men.
Amen. This seems to be a frequent theme in your recent posts over at https://hydeinplainsight.substack.com/
As the old joke goes, great minds think alike and so do ours ;-)
It’s best to go home by another way.
https://youtu.be/nX6aPdx9btY?si=lLZOoJm2HtDKmVdN
Never heard that song before. Thanks for sharing! :-)
"Perhaps if they had been the Three Anarchists, the Massacre of the Innocents wouldn’t have happened."
There is no need for "perhaps."
It would have happened!
Matthew 2:17-18 explains this. This very unfortunate event was said by prophet Jeremiah years before it happened. To imagine it as dependant on only the will of three Magi is to miss the bigger picture.
It wouldn't have mattered if the three Magi were who they were or who we want them to be, the dealdy decree was going to happen. To fulfill yet another prophesy regarding the miraculousness associated with the Plan of Salvation. In this case the birth of our Savior and his safety.
Who could or can tell the future, with verified events?!
Point here and everywhere else in the Bible is, allow me to capitalize this: GOD MADE, not man made. Forseen, forplanned. What? How you get saved. And if you actually read and connected a few dots in that book, you'd find a sad, compassionate story, filled with sacrifice for the rest of us who don't deserve it.
And as a side note, the three Magi obeyed the warning they were given in a dream and returned home by another route, keeping thus the location of the Holy baby secret, just this demands a respectful description about them. They were approached by the Almighty. They obeyed authority!
Yes, the Three Wise Men returning home by another route was a good move! They apparently "wised up" :-)
Regarding the Jeremiah text, that refers to an event that had already happened (the Israelites taken into exile during the 700s B.C.). The writer of Matthew sees a parallel with Herod's massacre of the infants and so includes it in 2:17-18. I find those connections intriguing when they occur, but I also know that there's plenty of Old Testament beliefs that either don't make their way into Gospel connections or get corrected/refuted by Jesus.
If I may ask, what got you interested in the connections between OT prophecies and Gospel events? Like I said, I find some of that really fascinating :-)
When I read " what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:" in Matthew 2:17 regarding the death of the 2 year olds, I acknowledge the verification of this particular event as just what the Scripture states "fulfilled."
What had to happen for this to be called fulfilled? Herod's decree.
Matthew does not mention it as just a point. It connects with Jeremiah because the scatering of the jews in Jeremiah's time is another event recorded in history. The jews are to be collected as the prophecy states and expanded by the grafting of the gentiles. Through? The one and only being born during Herod's time. Christ.
The connection between OT prophesies and the Gospel is only everything. They bring about this very Gospel. They are connected, inseparable. Fulfilled at the cross. God tells a story. My level of interest originates in undertanding this. It is pertinent only to immortality. Thus my attention is always verifying, from knowing the primary source - that is God made.
2 Tim 3:16-17
That's interesting. I understand ancient prophecies to mean that people predict terrible things will happen, and then other people recall the prediction as the terrible thing is happening. But the prophesy doesn't mean that God *wills* it to happen.
Sin is a turning away from God and God's will; serious sin is a rejection of God. A sinful act, by definition, can never be God's will. I therefore don't and can't believe that God's plan -- which is God's will -- requires these seriously sinful acts in order to succeed.
God can certainly save humanity without Herod and his enforcers murdering baby boys. God can certainly save humanity without Pilate and his enforcers murdering Him when He takes human form. The fact that history played out with each of those tragedies -- and plenty of other atrocities -- doesn't mean they're necessary.
From the Closing Prayer section of my book:
"God is all-powerful and all-knowing, but not all-controlling. The urge to control is a human desire based on human psychological weakness; it is not a Divine characteristic. . . . Could God have redeemed humanity without being tortured and killed as a hated criminal? Theoretically, yes. But order-worshiping, control-coveting, hierarchy-imposing, violence-justifying, good citizens wouldn’t let it be so!"
"But the prophesy doesn't mean that God *wills* it to happen."
I wholy agree. And please let's continue to erase fallacies of the human mind. To forsee doesn't mean to override free will.
Also those people who saw visions and prophesied in the Bible weren't just any people. Because they received these visions from God himself, they demand a different form of expression.
The beauty of prophesy lies in the hidden. 1 Peter 1:12 "things that angels longed to see" is a testament that the Plan of Salvation was hidden and revealed through prophesy,also hidden. God delivered this Plan through thousands of years and through a chosen people, their heads, who shared it by obeying God. And through one nation.
And to erase another human fallacy that is bound to pop up when you talk about vision and proohesy, no nobody can do that today.
Vision and prophesy were sealed. Their purpose was to bring about Christ. Also to establish the only bride of Christ. His church. Once the pleople who received these gifts from heaven died, these powers died with them.
Now we have Christ.
> > > And please let's continue to erase fallacies of the human mind.
That's a big goal of this Substack and why I started it, and why I wrote the book that gave rise to the Substack :-)
Lazy thinking, lazy ethics, and outright fallacies of logic and ethics . . . they're all fair game.
I might be misunderstanding your point about vision and prophecy being "sealed," so apologies in advance if I did. The era of partial revelation (the Old Testament days) is over, now that we know the fullness of Revelation (Christ). So what should be finished is the guessing and the pagan-tinged beliefs about the present and future; that's why it's sad to me to see Christians regress into that, to cling to beliefs that essentially pretend Jesus' earthly life and ministry never happened.
I wouldn't rule out vision and prophecy, as long as they align with Christ. Some of the Old Testament vision/prophecy, frankly, aligns only partially -- if at all -- with Christ. Christ teaches the people of His time the difference. I think the lessons are still relevant today, and demonstrating this is another big goal of my Substack and my book :-)