onward, to a national revival – hubert_luns

8/6/2019 Onward, To a National Revival Hubert_Luns

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For King and Country - onward, to a national revival -

Its enough to make you despair. The moral decline in the Netherlands seems unstoppable. Churchattendance has never been so low. Our Christian heritage has been squandered. Yet there is a wayback. Just imagine that Queen Beatrix should make a speech during the 8 oclock news bulletin inwhich she proclaims a Day of National Mourning. Thereby she would be following an ancient

patriotic tradition. Queen Wilhelmina believed firmly in a strong covenant between God, Father-land and the House of Orange. She regarded it as her duty par excellence to maintain the link and,in times of crisis, to strengthen it, radiant with God and history. Thereby she found inspiration inher forbears, who at decisive moments had stretched out a saving hand to the motherland.

Photo: Jackie Kever

Charlotte Pallandt has depicted Queen Wilhelmina as the indomitable woman. This monument in The Hague reminds the Dutch of the 'Mother of the Resistance' who through her radio messages from Londonto the Dutch people during World War II inspired them with courage.

I asked myself what the core of a National Day of Mourning would be, and ended up with Isaiah8:20: To the law and to the Testimony! If they do not speak according to this word it is becausethere is no light in them. To the law and to the testimony is not a call to personal conversion but

simply a collective appeal. This interpretation fits in very well with the subsequent verses (9:2 sqq.): Because the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light that shines out from the king upon whose shoulder the government rests. We may ask: what is a king without a people? But more


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importantly, what is a nation that turns away from God as a dog returns to its vomit? A Day of National Mourning, a collective confession, may sound fine, but is it scriptural? A fair question.Therefore we are now going to look for a theological foundation.

1 - The Psalms of Moses

The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, taught that in the entire Psalter there is nothing morecheery than Psalm 91: Its tone is elevated and sustained throughout, faith is at its best, and

speaks nobly. The rhyming version of the Psalms by Isaac Watts sets it out as follows:

Our God, our help in ages past,Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throneThy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is thine arm alone,

And our defence is sure.

Talmud writers ascribe to the pen of Moses not onlythe 91 st Psalm but also the nine ensuing ones. It isindeed remarkable that many expressions used there are consistent with the spirit of the fifth book of the Bible which, as you know, was written by Moses. Nonetheless, the usual explanation

places the theme of these ten Psalms in the personal sphere whereas he happened to be the prophet of bringing the entire people to an elevated state of consciousness.

2 O people of Israel listen

Although under the Old Covenant a personal sacrifice could be made for lesser wrongdoings and

the spiritual cleansing consisted of immersion in the Mikveh bath - as also the water of the Word(Eph. 5:26), this was unthinkable for serious crimes such as adultery, which was punishable bydeath as a matter of course. However this was rarely applied. Only after Christs substitutionarydeath is forgiveness possible for such serious matters. Therefore the action of Moses, especiallyas regards the rite of Azazel (the scapegoat) as outlined in Leviticus 16, focused on reconciliation

between God and the collectivity. Moses does not say: Do all that I commanded you that your soul shall live, but: Now, O (people of) Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgements which I teach you to observe, that you (as a people) may live. Therefore be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these

statutes, and say: Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. And further on:The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb face to face. I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth Generations of Those Who

Hate Me. (Deuteronomy 4:1,6; 5:2,4,9) This is the tone of the rite of Azazel although the per-sonal element is not entirely lacking. Because Moses had to make first, as High Priest, atonementfor himself, and only then could he bring reconciliation to the house of Levi and to the children of Israel for all their impurities and violations committed in that year. A not unimportant factor wasthat the people had to show repentance (teshuva) for their transgressions and that is undoubtedlyalso a contribution from the personal element. (see Lev. 4:31) And so, after the scapegoat had

been sent out, atonement was made for the temple or what preceded it for the priesthood andfor all the assembled people. (Lev. 16:33) I speak in the past tense since Yom Kippur (or the Dayof Atonement), as it is now within Judaism, is in the Covenant saga a very late development of


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the Azazel Kippur rite and deviates from it in essential points. Before I note how that has comeabout, let me first mention some details of Yom Kippur itself.

3 - Structures of sin

Through deep contrition, and no longer via offerings, Yom Kippur is directed towards atonement between God and individuals, individuals amongst themselves and finally between the commu-nity at large and God. A remarkable factor is the repentance (teshuva) for sins committed under duress or coercion. This is related to communal sin. There are always powerful, nearly invisibleagents at work that resemble the coercive conditions of duress. They could be called the self-

perpetuating structures of sin, all related to situations gone wrong, circumstances in which peopleact sinfully and in which each newcomer must show great courage and insight if he does not wantto adopt such behaviour. If perchance he does have the courage to pluck out his eye, as it were, or cut off hand and foot, for that is what it takes, the structure will spit him out immediately. This isthe fate that awaits the whistleblowers! This coercion is often very subtle and devolves from thecircumstances and necessities of Life, from general opinion and from our erroneous convictionsderived from ignorance and upbringing, but also from our unrestrained passions and the slaveryof heavy obsessions. These are an inherited and collective burden, in biblical parlance typified asa stronghold or fortress. (1) Something very typical happens if someone joins a group. Personaldesires move into the background, unnoticed and unconsciously, and the individual starts to directhis attention to the aspirations of the group. In addition to the stated group objective and jobdescription there always exists another silent convention. Beware if these are unethical! Here,in an ideal setting, we encounter the group mind. Therefore, the Yom Kippur confessions (the AlKhet) are made in the plural.

4 - Christian forgiveness

As regards reconciliation between individuals, even sincere teshuva can only win forgiveness if itconcerns offences committed against God. As far as offences against man are concerned, theconversion and repentance that follows are insufficient. The injured party has to be appeased inorder that forgiveness be obtained, and this is also the Christian notion if within the range of

possibilities. Of course, each offence against man is a grave sin against Gods infinite majesty because it violates the splendour and greatness of His laws and ordained natural order and be-cause all men are His offspring. (2) Nonetheless, appeasement of our fellow man always remainsnecessary. The requirement for appeasement poses a problem within the Jewish frame of mind if the injured party is deceased or if, in the case of defrauding or gossiping, the damage cannot beundone. Hence, within Jewry, the forgiving by Jesus of the robber on the cross, who doubtlesswas also a murderer, and who went straight to Paradise, is an impossibility. The Christian type of forgiveness is an oddity to the Jews. The New Testament teaches that the precious blood of theSon fully compensates for the injustices against our Father in heaven and appeases His anger. If true, and I believe it to be true, it also has the capacity to compensate for past collective faults

because morally an insult to God weighs heavier than insults between people. Strangely enoughthis aspect is not mentioned in the New Testament, with the exception of Revelations 6:10 where,in the terminology of mourning (3) , we read: How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judgeand avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? In mirror image, the Son not only atonesGods justified anger because God is merciful but also the justifiable rancour of the innume-rable victims throughout history.


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Kapparot, a ritual held on the day before Yom Kippur. By pronouncing a blessing on a livechicken held above someones head, God is asked to transfer to the chicken the sins of that person

5 - Now a re-evaluation is required

So within the Yom Kippur rite, in contrast to the Azazel Kippur, forgiveness is possible for acertain class of individual sins. In this context we can speak of a major innovation. This change

and others took place following the return of the Jewish people from Babylonian exile, led bytwo men, the scribe Ezra and Eliashib the high priest. Ezra probably played an important advisoryrole since the high priesthood was in the hands of Jesus (or Jeshua) and his descendants (Eliashibwas number three). The reforms were continued by the men of the Great Synagogue, which wasthe forerunner of the Sanhedrin. Yom Kippur and other major reforms in the organisation of thefestive cycle were established in barely two hundred years, extending until the beginning of Hel-lenism. Here I refer to the occupation of Judeah in 332 BC by Alexander the Great. The comingof the Messiah was imminent and it is therefore not surprising that God inspired the exile prophetEzekiel, especially in chapter 18 of his book, to prepare the people for this. His writings served asan important source of inspiration for religious thought during the intertestamentary period (be-tween Malachi and Jesus) and his influence on liturgical practice was so great that he is called thefather of Judaism. His plea for an individual response to Gods invitation to a righteous way of

life, offering the possibility of mending the broken relationship, marked a dramatic change inJewish thought, summarised in the slogan: You shall no longer use this proverb in Israel: the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge , in antithesis to: I am a jealous God who visits the crime of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth gene-ration . Until then it had been the community that counted, but now, for the first time, the focusis on the individual confronted with Gods supreme majesty and mercy. Now, a man may nolonger bear the sins of another, but only his own. Note well, however: it means a shift in empha-sis and not a waiver of the fact that from a very early stage in Christian exegesis people placedthe foregoing within the framework of the Old Testament God of vengeance as if we could


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speak of an unbridgeable gap. Wrongly, of course, for God is the same yesterday, today and to-morrow. (Malachi 3:6) As indicated, the collective element in the social organisation is inevi-table. The family is the smallest unit within which the continuing structures of sin reproduce,often without reference to any kind of conscious evil. The opportunity of life, indeed, claims itsexigencies. Just be realistic! Well Under the renewed covenant (Hebr. 8:13) in this processChristian thought is gradually detached from the Jewish thinking and people went too far, whichmeant that too little attention was given to the collective in the relationship between the lovingGod and his people. A re-evaluation is now required in order to bring into balance both the col-lective and the individual element.

6 - The Ten Commandments

A reading of Ezekiel 18 will cause many people to think of Easter instead of Yom Kippur. I haveno problem with that, but in the Jewish world Easter is a feast of salvation and not one of recon-ciliation though not without bloodletting. (4) Seen from a biblical point of view Easter is inten-ded for the people outside the covenant in order that they become allies, for those who hadnever been inside or who, according to Hosea 1:9 and Jeremiah 3:8, were once inside butthrough serious circumstances had received from God a letter of separation (amni became amni-lo: my people became my non-people). In contrast to Easter, Yom Kippur should be seen as anatonement for the people of God (amni), which is already in the covenant. This explains whythe renewed formula of Exodus 34: 6-10 is central to the Yom Kippur liturgy, which is the pas-sage describing the creation of the two tablets of the law. Both sets of tablets with the Ten Com-mandments, those broken and the new ones, were kept in the Ark as a sure sign that the MosaicCovenant can be broken and mended again. The morning after the painting of the blood upon thedoorposts something that required a personal initiative, a dedication to the mass of people leftEgypt. After a journey of nearly ten days they were baptised in the depths of the Red Sea. Thenon day fifty, which is Pentecost, Moses seals the Covenant in what can be called a baptism of fire;this act is known as the Old Covenant or Testament. From that day on all were going to live inthe Covenant. The conversion (the return home, to the fathers house) and baptism happenedwhen still outside the Covenant. After the solemn sealing of the Covenant, Moses goes up thefiery mountain and he returns forty days later with the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.He angrily breaks them asunder when he sees the people busying themselves with worship of theGolden Calf. Surely, they said to themselves, Moses must have died on the roaring mountain.After this awful scene, he turns back the way he has come and for forty days on end he begs Godfor mercy for that unfaithful people. Thereafter, for a further forty days, he receives the new stonetablets that happen to be exact replicas of the first. Added up, the whole episode comes to onehundred and seventy days after Easter, which according to the Talmud coincides with the

period between Easter and Yom Kippur. The previous section shows the intrinsic connection between Yom Kippur and Easter and the central role therein of the Ten Commandments, whichstate the minimum requirements for a viable society. (See also the Appendix: The intrinsic bond

between Eastern and Yom Kippur.)

7 - We have behaved wickedly

The main theological argument to show that the collective forgiveness of sins still has its place inGods economy of salvation is the observation that in addition to Ezekiel thus in precisely thesame period the three other major exile prophets have left us wonderful prayers as a way of having the nation forgiven before God. In heart-moving terms Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah prayfor their people in each chapter 9 of their respective books prayers, therefore, known as the 999


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prayers, a nice allusion to the beast whose number is 666. An anthology of these chapters is asfollows:

The children of Israel were assembled, fasting, in sackcloth and with dust on their heads.They stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. O Lord, spoke their leader, we have sinned and behaved wickedly and rebelled. Righteousness belongs to You

but to us shamefacedness. We are too humiliated to look up at you even for a little while, because our iniquities have risen higher than our heads and our guilt has grown up to theheavens. To You belong mercy and forgiveness. Bless the Lord, Who gave us justordinances and true laws. But our fathers hardened their necks, acted proudly and cast Your law behind them. They were not mindful of Your wonders. O Lord, let Your anger be turnedaway from us. Incline your ear and forgive us. You are always ready to pardon; You aregracious and full of compassion; You are slow to anger and abundant in kindness. Nowtherefore, our God, the mighty and awesome God, Who keeps mercy: do not let all our troubles seem small before You. You have dealt faithfully, but we have behaved wickedlyand we have trampled your commandments. Here we are before Your countenance, in our guilt, though no one can stand before You because of this!

Such a prayer makes sense only if it is clear what is at stake. The people, newly arrived back fromthe Babylonian galut (exile), knew it well. They had undergone a cultural mix. A dangerous trait,even worse than dangerous: Woe to the whore-hoppers, those who mix drinks. (paraphrase of Prov. 23:27-30; see also Is. 5:22)

It is clear that a national rite of mourning is only useful if it is preceded by a broad public debateon how we as a nation have failed and what to do about it. The great 12 th century Rabbi Mai-monides writes in his Laws of Repentance that a mourning requires five elements which alsoagree with the Roman Catholic teachings: recognition of ones deeds as sins (hakart ha-cht),remorse (charat), the strong desire to desist from sin (azivt ha-cht), restitution where possible(peiran) (5) , confession (vidi) and finally only then! forgiveness (michila), though thedisadvantaged party can give foregiveness earlier and

by this act make it easier for the wrongdoer for pe-nance and remorse and the foregiveness by God. No,it is not an easy remedy. It is also, of course, the ge-neral moral decay in all its forms that needs repen-tance and a turning back. The low point so far (2008)was reached during the annual gay parade in Amster-dam, now even attended by government ministers.What an embarrassment!

8 - A year veiled in black

The sin of Israel was that they danced around the

Golden Calf. Was that their only sin? Of course not!But that was the breaking point, the crucial momentwhen the broken covenant became fact. What was the

breaking point in the relationship between the Ne-therlands and God, in which in Wilhelminas words

the strong covenant between God, Fatherland andHouse of Orange was broken, the point where the "C"of the CDA (the Christian democratic party known asChristian Democratic Appeal) became a vermiform

Relief on the facade of the Supreme Court in the U.S.


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appendix, a vestigial organ? I had long thought that the breaking point was on May first 1981when the abortion law was passed please note: under the Roman Catholic Prime Minister vanAgt. But now I know it was merely a stage and not the beginning. I was made aware of this after reading Oriana Fallacis latest book, The Force of Reason, in which she documents clearlyhow, after the 1973 oil crisis, the MEPs handed over our Europe to the stranglehold of Islam,under the guise of healthy pluralism. (6) Former French Prime Minister Giscard dEstaing defines

pluralism in his book Two Frenchmen of Three (pp. 115-116) as the coexistence of differentideologies, but he says: It goes much further than tolerance, for pluralism is the competitivebattle between the ideologies. And this was, and still is pursued by the MEPs and the Dutch

politicians, although not with strictly binding decisions. We are the best-behaved kid in the class, because the number of Muslims in our country (one eighth of the population) is the greatest inEurope. The fact that the Netherlands is thereby squandering its Christian heritage is, for themajority of politicians, with former Minister of Justice Donner in the lead, a subject of noconcern. Woe to the mixers of drinks! Squandering, says my dictionary, means to spendwastefully, to lose a chance for something, to waste on useless things, to sell at an unfavourable

price. Thats exactly it. The breaking point was thus in 1973, a year shrouded in black in our national history, a year in which the Netherlands was weighed on Gods scales and was foundwanting.

Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of the Barnabas Fund (7) , published in the LondonEvening Standard of 4 th September 2006 an article on terrorism and Islamic schools, and as ahistorian voiced the opinion that Islam requires differential treatment from other faiths becauseIslam is different from other faiths He wrote:

It is the only faith which teaches its followers to gain political power and then impose alaw which governs every aspect of life, discriminating against women and non-believersalike. And this is ultimately why a naive multiculturalism leads not to a mosaic of culturesliving in harmony, but to one threatened by Islamic extremism. (He explains that the Islamicconditions in England are a mirror of the conditions elsewhere) because once colonialismremoved power, jihad and territorial control from Islam, it was left a benign force focusing

on prayer and good deeds. But contemporary Islam has reverted back to early Islam, with allits theological rage against the non-Muslim world. (8) () The Islamic creed is non-negotiable. Those who do not share this creed are despised as kafir (infidels). Hatred of non-Muslims is preached in many British mosques.


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Dutch government policy in the Dutch East Indies during the twentieth century matched up wellwith this. For the Muslims living there the government granted the constitutional right of freedomof religion. However, it was emphasised in official statements, Islam is more than a religion inour Western sense. It is a system that not only sets the relationship of man to the Supreme Be-ing, but also fosters a social, economic and political programme. From a Western perspectivethis is not a religion and therefore the principle of unrestricted religious freedom cannot be ap-

plied to this part of their system. To protect public order and the acquisitions of the rule of law,action had to be taken against the programme militarily if necessary if the Muslims attemptedto implement it. This policy followed an old tradition. By way of example, the following. WhenPeter Stuyvesant wished to curtail religious diversity by refusing to give shelter to Dutch Jews among others who had fled from Brazil to what is now called New York, he was reprimanded

by the board of the West Indies Company in a letter dated 16 th April 1663: Do not close your eyes, or at least restrict not the conscience of people, but let each have his or her own faith, to theextent that it is peaceful and follows the standards of the law and is not objectionable to itsneighbours and does not resist the government. The latter was written with the Quakers in mind,who often disturbed public order. With this paragraph I would wish to emphasise that we as hostcountry must respect the Muslims and their values as long as they respect us and our values andour Christian culture and acquisitions. So let there be no one-way traffic, and certainly not a

competitive battle, sanctioned by government, between the ideologies.

9 - To the law and to the testimony!

This is not the place to go into the reconstruction of the Dutch state in detail. As I have alreadysaid, that belongs in a broad social debate. The main points are not hard to find. As a guide, theTen Commandments can be used, for they contain the minimum conditions for a viable society.Yom Kippur, I have shown, cannot be separated from a return to the law, especially that law.What I have in mind is a constitution with the Ten Commandments serving as a frame of refe-rence for interpreting the Constitution which, after all, is interpretable. There is a precedent. Inearly April 1990 the Belgian Chamber and Senate approved a bill liberalising abortion. On 30 th March King Baudouin informed the Prime Minister in writing that he, the third branch of theLegislature, could not in conscience confirm this law. The King was declared temporarily inca-

pable because Belgian law does not provide for such a situation. However this should be providedfor. So it should be possible for the Crown to test both a law and a Supreme Council decision byway of the Constitution and the Ten Commandments, with the option of a right of veto. This rightcan only be implemented on his own initiative and does not imply that the monarch shows howthe law or act could have been otherwise formulated, for then it would not be a pure right of vetoand would not raise the monarch above the legislative process and political squabbling. Thanks tothe deterrent effect of such an arrangement, this right of veto will in practice never or scarcelyever have to be used. In the initial stage it is different. Let God be with us once more become areality!

Hubert Luns

[Published in Prophetisch Perspectief, Winter 2006 - No. 53]


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Notes:

The castle verses(1) The stronghold or castle verses in the Psalms, as also those that speak of a high retreat orfortress (e.g. Ps. 144:2), provide the remedy against the fortress, difficult to take, of our evilinclinations (jetzer hara), also known as the chain burden of our past unto the third and fourthgeneration. The Hebrew word for castle is metsudah, but the word can also mean a net, as inPsalm 66:11. In Jeremiah 10:17 stronghold is used in the pejorative sense, but with the use of theterm matsuri, with the meaning of a besieged fortress, thus something that can bring about des-pair.

(2) See Psalm 51:6 and Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae (IIIa, q1, a2).

(3) See also Apocalypse Now: a calendar of joy or a calendar of mourning? to get a better understanding of the term the terminology of mourning.

The Sacrifice of the Cross simultaneously a Yom Kippur and Easter Sacrifice(4) In the late 1980s Ron Wyat carried out excavations in Jerusalem in the place where he be-lieved Christ was crucified. At the time he unearthed the Ark of the Covenant, a find he wished toannounce to the world at a later date in close cooperation with the Israeli authorities. He died in

1999, so the future work, including verification of the find, were reserved for the Wyatt Archae-ological Research in Tennessee, USA (See Exploring the Ark of the Covenant ). In connection with our subject it is of paramount importance that Ron Wyatt was able to show that Jesus blooddescended on the Mercy Seat (cover) of the Ark, thereby leaving a visible sign that Christ's Cross

was simultaneously a Yom Kippur sacrifice and an Easter sacrifice.

(5) Every broken or shattered relationship requires that the offender (sometines a governmentoffice) heal the shame of the victim. So, paying back what is stolen, does not suffice. To reconcileoneself with God and fellow humans, one must take steps to also heal the pain and anguish that

were caused by the actions.

(6) See also the article Green is the new colour of black (in memoriam Oriana Fallaci) .

Practical aid for the persecuted Church(7) The main ministry of the Barnabas Fund is to send financial support to projects that helpChristians wherever they suffer discrimination, oppression and persecution as a consequence of their faith. The projects aim to strengthen Christian individuals, churches and communities by providing material and spiritual support in response to needs identified by local Christian leaders.

The interpretative gate permanently closed(8) The Hadith, reflecting the oral tradition and its interpretation, was given its final shapeshortly after the year 1000. The gate of ijtihad, as it was known, was thereby closed (ijtihad meansfreedom of doctrinal interpretation) and any attempt on the part of the Arab world to change it isnipped in the bud. There are many examples of this, including some from the recent past. It istherefore incorrect to speak of Muslim extremism as this suggests that this is something extraor-dinary and does not fit in with the core ideology (Islam is less a faith, more a vehicle for empower-ment).

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The same root for beginning (rosh or reish) appears in many Biblical passages in the meaningof sum or total. Especially interesting in this respect is Proverbs 8:26, a notoriously difficult text,which according to my rendering goes: (23) I (the Wisdom) have been established from ever-lasting, (25) before the mountains were settled (26) while the sum of the earth or outer space (thecosmos), or its primeval dust, had not yet been made. The classical rendition goes as follows:while as yet He had not made the earth or the open spaces, or the primal dust of the world. Here the term as yet renders the Hebrew for total, which actually is no translation, but anadaptation.

For redemption and remission exist several words in Hebrew and Greek, but not so for atonementand reconciliation that point at the reestablishment of the sundered relationship between God andMan. There is one word for it in Hebrew and there are two in Greek: hilasmos and kattalage. TheHebrew kippur for atonement is related to a thorough covering (literally with bitumen) andthis - in the Jewish mind - refers exclusively to Yom Kippur; I am talking about the present stateof affairs where there is no Temple Service any more. (9) The Greek hilasmos for atonement isderived from a root that indicates an attitude provoking cheerfulness and mercy. It is the correcttranslation for kippur, because hilasterion, used in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5, means mercy-seat, which denotes the lid of the Ark in the Temple (in Hebr. kapporet) that covered the broken

tablets of the Ten Commandments (and also the not broken ones that replaced it). The other Greek expression, kattalage (reconciliation), is derived from words that indicate a radical trans-formation, which seems to refer more directly to the Pascal Sacrifice. Kattalage is not mentionedeven once in Pauls Greek letter to the Hebrews, which is very clearly written in the jargon of theYom Kippur sacrificial practice at the time, of course, when the Temple was not yet put out of function. Instead, the main kattalage texts are to be found in Romans 5:10-11 and 2 Corinthians5:18-20. In spite of this distinction it remains true, and this is the drift of the argument in Hebrews9, that Christs sacrifice is a replacement for all sacrifices, not only in the meaning of kattalage

but also of hilasmos. This does not mean, however, that Yom Kippur has become useless. Toapprehend this question we should consider the general picture to be discussed now.

The Passover, described in Exodus 12, announces the beginning of the flight from Egypt,

onwards to the Mosaic Covenant. The blood of a lamb redeemed the people of Israel from theEgyptian yoke. God would pass over the punishment of killing the first-born where a family hadstricken the blood of the lamb on the jambs of the front door. The foolishness of the striking of the blood was each time based on a personal decision by the Israelite, a step in faith. Apparentlya number of foreigners followed suit, which we identify with the mixed multitude from Exodus12:38. (10) This will have included many ethnic groups who were equally suffering under theEgyptian yoke and stayed together with the Israelites in their settlements in the land of Goshen,that is the most Northern part of Egypt that borders on the desert of Paran (now called the SinaiPeninsula). This signifies that the redemptive power of the blood is indiscriminately applied to allmembers of human society just like with the blood of Jesus; it was no exclusive Israelite affair.The morning upon the striking, the whole pack left Egypt. After nearly a ten days journey, whiletraversing the whole area of Paran, they were baptised in the deep of the Red Sea (1 Cor. 10:2),

called in Hebrew Sof or Frontier Sea. Then on day fifty, which is Pentecost, Moses seals theCovenant in a baptism of fire; this we know as the Old Testament. (Ex. 24:8, 17) From that dayon all were going to live in the Covenant. The conversion (the return home; to the fathershouse) and baptism happened when still out of the Covenant. After the solemn sealing of theCovenant, Moses goes up the fiery mountain and he returns forty days later with the stone tabletsof the Ten Commandments. (Ex. 24:18 and Ex. 32) He angrily throws them asunder when hediscovers that the people was busying itself with the golden calf worship. Surely, they said tothemselves, Moses must have died on the roaring mountain. After this awful scene he turns back on his steps and for forty days on end he begs God for mercy for that unfaithful people. (Deut.


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9:25) Thereafter, during another forty days, he receives the new stone tablets that happened to beexact replicas of the first. (Ex. 34:28) Added up, the whole episode amounts to hundred seventydays after Eastern which, according to the Talmud, coincides with the distance between Easternand Yom Kippur. (Seder Olam 5-6) (11) Both sets of tablets with the Ten Commandments, the

broken and the new ones, were kept in the Ark as a sure sign that the Mosaic Covenant can be broken and mended again. The foregoing demonstrates the intrinsic link between Yom Kippur and Eastern and the central place in it of the Ten Commandments, which stipulate the minimalrequirements for a decent society. (12)

From the foregoing it is evident dat Eastern was meant for the people who stood out of theCovenant to become confederates, for those people who had never been inside or for those whoaccording to Hosea 1:9 and Jeremiah 3:8 were once inside but due to grave circumstancesreceived from God a certificate of divorce (amni becoming lo-amni: my people versus not my

people). Lo-amni occurred when the Jewish people rejected Christ. But their lo-amni was notfinal, has actually finished, for nonetheless they remained the beloved of the Father whose callingis irrevocable. (Romans 11:28-29)

In contrast to Eastern, Yom Kippur is to be understood as an atonement for Gods people (amni)

in the Covenant. This explains why the renewal formula of Exodus 34:6-10 makes up a centralelement in the service of Yom Kippur, which is the passage that describes the making of thesecond set of tablets. There is another distinction between the two festivals, briefly touched upon.Yom Kippur concentrates on the communal part of sin while Eastern on the individual part. Inthis we ascertain Yom Kippurs function as a pendant to the Feast of Tabernacles yet to be adop-ted by the Christian Church in the glorious time ahead, commonly known as the Time of Nations.(Zach. 14:16) How eagerly I await this time!

Notes:

(9) In the old days great numbers of lambs were slaughtered in The Temple during Passover, with a continuous flowing of blood and the insistent bleating of many animals. Then it was easierto grasp why this was also a service of reconciliation and not just a commemorative ritual.

(10) Philo of Alexandria describes the mixed multitude that went forth with the Israelites. Amongthese were those who had been born from mixed marriages. (De Vita Mosis I:147)

(11) The distance between the ever changing equinoxes should be investigated to know whetherthe conclusion tallies that during Mosaic Covenant the distance between Eastern and the rite of

Azazel, which later evolved into Yom Kippur, was exactly 170 days.

(12) The Ten Commandments are sometimes said to be a copy of the Laws of Hammurabi. This isuntrue. The laws of Hammurabi are not a constitution, but the first inception in human history of an ordinary legal code. The Ten Commandments, on the contrary, are the beginnings of a consti-tution. The book of Leviticus represents the elaboration of the Ten Commandments and at thatlevel is comparable to the laws of Hammurabi. ( www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM ).

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onward, to a national revival – hubert_luns

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