Author	Thread: The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4
Admin	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 22 Feb, 2012 08:25 AM The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Genesis 25: 29-34 says "And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: 30. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. 31. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 32. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? 33. And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 34. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright." Esau was the first born son of Isaac and had the birthright given to the line from Abraham by the Lord. But "Easu despised his birthright." Malachi describes God's wrath against Edom, which was the result of Esau's despising of his birthright. When Esau gave up his birthright, he became Edom and his descendants are called Edom. "And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. And they shall call them....the people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever" (Malachi 1:3,4). God does not hate very many people. But God hated Esau because he despised the honor the LORD had given him. Esau and his descendants, known as the Edomites, perpetually tried to get back the birthright which was permanently lost. And this deliberate giving away of the birthright and the attempt to get it back runs again for the peoples claiming to be those of God. I Corinthians 10: 11 says "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Many events of the Old Testament, Paul teaches, are examples of what is to occur at the end of the age, including the deliberate giving away of the birthright and the attempt to get it back. Esau-Edom came to hate Jacob because Esau had lost his birthright to Jacob. Genesis 27: 41 says "And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob." So there was enmity between the descendants of Esau-Edom and the descendants of Jacob. About a century before Christ, the Jews allowed the Edomites to rejoin Israel. The Idumaean military leader Antipater came to power, and his son began the dynasty of Herod and the kingship of Judah was seized by the descendants of Edom. Remember that Herod, the Edumean or Edomite, was king of Judea and Palestine at the time of Christ. When the Jews, or all the Israelites at the time in Judea, were offered to be brought into Christ's spiritual kingdom and to be restored to heir former glory and better, the majority of Jews, led by the Pharisees, rejected Christ. Physical Israel rejected Christ and their status of their birthright of the spiritual kingdom under Christ. As a result, Christ says in Matthew 27: 13, 33-38: "But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.....Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? 34. Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35. That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. 36. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Like Esau, the Pharisees and the majority of physical Israelites despised the spiritual birthright offered them in Christ ("I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matthew 15: 24), and they lost it. Israel was seen as the sons of God as in "Israel mine elect" (Isaiah 45:4), "Israel...my servant" (Isaiah 41:8), "Israel my called" (Isaiah 48:12), and Israel as "a light to the Gentiles" (Isaiah 49:6, 10:17). As Esau was once given the birthright,physical Israel was chosen by God. "But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now." Galatians 4: 29 Just as Esau-Edom hated Jacob, so physical Israel, which lost the spiritual birthright in Christ by rejecting Christ, persecute the spiritual seed of Abraham, those in Christ Jesus. "But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming" (Acts 13:45). "But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar...." (Acts 17:5) Since physical Israel, or the Jews, have claimed to remain God's chosen people, still having that physical birthright of Jacob, but not attaining the spiritual birthright in Christ, which was offered to them, they have been for centuries operating under the leaven of Esau-Edom, and re-enacting his envy and hate for those who got his birthright. "Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: thou are greatly despised. The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee...." (Obadiah 1:2) But there is still more to the story of the leaven of Esau-Edom. There have been, since the late 19th and early 20th centuries those who claim to be Christians and and who honor physical Israel as still having that physical birthright, though the Jews under the Pharisees and as a whole people did not attain to the spiritual birthright in Christ. We can call these people who claim to be Christians proxies for physical Israel. These proxies for physical Israel, which has claimed to retain the status of the chosen people based on the former physical birthright are not only the evangelical dispensationalists, but there are others. Messianic Jews, the Christian Identity people, the Sacred Name guys, the Hebrew Roots Movement and several Two House doctrines have been leavened by the Esau-Edom effect. All teach that the Jews remain the chosen people of God. Those of the spiritual house (I Peter 2: 5), who should be reborn in Jesus Christ and should be the holders of the spiritual birthright, and as I Peter 2: 9 says should be a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people" have followed the Edomites and the Jews in becoming leavened by the spirit of Esau-Edom. This leavening by the Esau-Edom effect is a major part of the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4. And the proxies for physical Israel claim that when the man of sin is revealed, he will be their one man political anti-Christ, who is to sit in a literal re-built temple in Jerusalem, that Jerusalem which Paul in Galatians 4: 25 says "......which now is, and is in bondage with her children." But Paul in I Corinthians 3: 16-17 and I Corinthians 6: 19 teaches that the temple of God is now the Christians and our bodies. So false doctrines given by false prophets and those in the spirit of anti-Christ sit, or take over, the minds and hearts of those who should be the people of faith, the Christian believers. Post Reply
shalom716 View Profile History	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 22 Feb, 2012 10:41 AM Blessings Brother, If I'm understanding this correctly, does this mean that Israel gave up their birthright, so that physical Israel is no longer inherit the promises of G-d? So the pharisees are the Jews who have rejected Jesus to this day? Post Reply
View Profile History	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 22 Feb, 2012 11:52 AM "shalom716 Blessings Brother, If I'm understanding this correctly, does this mean that Israel gave up their birthright, so that physical Israel is no longer inherit the promises of G-d? So the pharisees are the Jews who have rejected Jesus to this day?" The dispensationalists teach that God has two peoples, the Jews and the "church," that the Jews remain God's chosen people, and that sometime in the future, perhaps in the tribulation, God will turn again to the Jews and save all of them who ever lived, all alive then, or some of the Jews alive at that time. This is postponement theology, or rotating theology, that God dealt with the dispensationalist idea of what Israel is, or "all Israel," for several centuries, and then after the Cross he dealt with the "church," but toward the end of the age he will rapture the "church" to heaven, and then he will deal with the Jews once more. If all this is so, then lets look at what Jeremiah 18: 1-6 would say in the parable of the potter as God: "The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 2. Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 3. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: and so he set that pot on the shelf to be brought out again at a later time. Then he made another pot different from the first pot, out of a different lump of clay. 5. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 6. O house of Israel, and house of the church, cannot I do with you as this potter? Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel, and house of the church." I changed verses 4 and 6 to conform to dispensationalist theology. Now lets see what God actually said in Jeremiah 18: 1-6: "Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?" Isaiah 29: 16 Isaiah 29: 16 points to Jeremiah 18: 1- 6: The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 2. Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 3. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. 5. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 6. O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.: God turned things, or the world, upside down for physical Israel. This is what the Jews in Acts 17: 1-6 complained about. "Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 2. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3. Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. 4. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. 5. But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. 6. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;" In the parable of the potter,pointed to in Isaiah 29: 16, God the potter made physical Israel which he found to be marred. So he made the same lump of clay into another pot, or vessel, which seemed good to him. Finally he said as God he can do whatever he wants with Israel as clay in his hands. Israel in this parable was not put on the shelf as one people of God for a while, and God did not make a second, entirely new people of God to be dealt with differently, called the 'church." Instead, he transformed physical Israel into Israel reborn in Jesus Christ. The promises to physical Israel are to Israel reborn in Christ; its still Israel as God's one people, but it has been transformed and made spiritual and not mired in the flesh and the physical. Post Reply
Agapeton View Profile History	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 22 Feb, 2012 03:28 PM Nice thread, halfback. Welcome to the forum and I hope that the Lord inspires you to keep coming back with more new thoughts to share so that we can reflect, learn, and peaceably discuss in Him, brother. After reading the thread, it occurs to me that you obviously don't seem to believe in dispensational theology. So what is your belief then? Is the church the new Israel then? Mind if you share further Scripture to show why you believe this is so, if possible? Thanks for your responses in advance. Post Reply
shalom716 View Profile History	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 22 Feb, 2012 05:24 PM For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you should be wise within yourselves; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the nations has come in. And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, 'There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is My covenant with them, when I have taken away their sins.' Indeed as regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes. But as regards the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the free gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Romans 11:25-29). Post Reply
View Profile History	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 23 Feb, 2012 07:40 AM I wrote a reply to shalom716 and to the question of Agapeton. But I haven't posted here regularly in a while and I forgot that the system on CDFF will sometimes ask for a password before posting a comment on a thread, and then your comment will disappear. This just happened to me. I am sorry but I don;t want to re-write my comment now. Post Reply
shalom716 View Profile History	The Leaven of Esau-Edom and the Falling Away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 Posted : 23 Feb, 2012 10:41 AM Blessings brother Halfback, I've never had my comments disappear, even if some people may want them too. I look forward to your reply. Post Reply