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THE BELIEVERS FROM PERSIA
The unstoppable mission shook even the geology of earth
Marcus Sanford
MCS thesis on Luke-Acts and the ‘Great War.’
ask@interplans.net, Feb. 2018
When the OT wraps up, quite a few of the key events are in Persia. There is no coincidence to this. The OT had that anchor location when telling the creation, sin, flood, and dispersion accounts. Even the mysterious situation at the beginning of creation, the ‘formless and void’, is an expression that speaks to the deities and cultures of Persia, yet written down from its oral form by Moses in Egypt.
When the flood and judgement of confusion on Babel take place, we are told twice that the earth is somehow divided. The normal sense of this is what we now know as tectonics, but with the event of Babel it may also mean the ability to communicate. But either way, the earth to the Mesopotamian now had a new shape: there was a new coastal land in the west which connected in two other directions: Canaan as it was called by virtue of the inhabitants. It was a location which could be called European, African and Asian all at once.
After the catastrophe of Noah, we find that the ark settles on the Ararat area. This was roughly equidistant from the furthest point of each of the three directions of the land mass.
But the first visit to Canaan was to be only a ‘showing’ of the land. They were to be sent to Egypt for 400 years, and enslaved, at the end of which they were to return. What would happen to the mission?
This absence from that land was as mission-intended as the location of Canaan. Before going down to Egypt, God was seeking to appeal to the Canaanites and Amorites to desist from their wickedness. As part of the appeal, the Isaac event took place, which mocked the Canaanite ritual of son-sacrifice to ‘preserve’ nature. This was no private affair. In a museum in eastern Europe, there are pottery jars with inscriptions about the restoration of Isaac from death that dates back to the time, yet had been transported nearly 1000 miles away soon after. The ancient world had heard.
They then arrived back in Canaan and the Canaanites and Amorites were destroyed before them, with a few exceptions, like a harlot who knew. We should ask: how is it that a ‘sex-worker,’ 400 years into their absence, knew that a group of Persian transplants, preaching a foreign god, a group which got stuck in Egypt, were going to be living in the land with the three-continent connections? As is shown all through the OT, God was at work among the nations, including Rahab. That was true even when descendants of Abraham sent to preach to them, who knew better, were uncooperative, like Jonah.
The believers from Persia had believed the Gospel that God would one day provide a Person who would justify mankind from their sins:
‘Abraham believed, and it was credited as righteousness.’
‘In your Seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.’
They were not Jews, as we think of them today or in year 1 AD or even 1000 BC, because the only defining denominator was faith. So says Hebrews 11.
Nor did it matter where they were from. The “Persians” could have been from Costa Rica. But it is a double tragedy that in modern times we find a nation, Israel, doing what old covenant Judaism mistakenly tried, while an opponent, Iran, is hell-bent on destroying that nation, for unrelated reasons.
Babel, Pentecost and the Mission
The believers from Persia knew, says Hebrews 11, that they would be strangers and foreigners even in that coastal country with the three-continent post-catastrophe points of contact. It was never to be “theirs” in the same sense as the neighbors who owned theirs. They weren’t supposed to have a king like others. They weren’t that kind of people. That kind of thinking only mucked things up and neglected the mission.
The mission was to preach that same message about justification from sins to the divided peoples of the world. Then one day, the believer’s transcultural unity would ‘speak’ to all peoples and rulers and even celestial beings of Christ’s victory, Eph 3:10.
Moving slowly toward that goal, a prophecy in Isaiah says that when the double Person would come (the Person who was the Gospel and the mission-launching leader of it), God would speak TO Israel through tongues of strangers. Israel would know by that sign that the mission was underway in a widespread manner never before in history.
This is hugely significant in tying the Bible together. This hearing of tongues would mean the same divine force that confused everyone at Babel was now informing everyone of the Gospel of justification from sins.
We must not miss a huge detail back in Isaiah on another topic: Cyrus (Kurush in Chaldean). This person was not supposed to have lived. The birth of Cyrus, named as the ruler to take Persian Jews back to Israel (the land; sound familiar from Abraham?) was mentioned 180 years in advance. But the detail about how he nearly did not live was not.
His parents did not want him and put the suckling on the top of a hill for the carrion. A woman in the same city had given birth to a stillborn that same night, and apparently the same mid-wife was at work on both births, and the distraught mother learned the other child had survived, and sent for it. That child was Cyrus. The woman was the queen of Babylon, and he grew up in the royal family and became the commander who rebuilt Jerusalem, though diminished.
You can find this detailed nicely in PureFlix THE BOOK OF DANIEL, however, it stops before the vision of chapter 9. That is extremely unfortunate because it leaves the impression that the whole purpose of the OT was to get Israel back into its land, the ownership of which was a mistaken priority and purpose, as we have shown above. Instead the real purpose of the ‘children’ of Abraham was the mission.
The misfortune of PureFlix ending at ch 8 is that ch 9 is the announcement of another 490 years, now that the 70 of Daniels’ own life is over. Once again “Israel” is being sent out west to the coast. With the same mission goal as the first! The last scene of the 490 years is the destruction of the entire place, but the success of the Messiah as a sacrifice for mankind, that brings in everlasting righteousness, the same message as Abraham the Persian believer had believed. Absolute continuity.
While most people are familiar with Israel coming out of Egypt twice (Abraham and Moses), we should not forget that they were Persians who came from Ur twice. The magi came from Persia at Christ’s birth through a sign star.
The Mission Marches On
This is why the very definition of ‘the children of Abraham’ is a hot button from the very opening of the NT scenes: “God can make children of Abraham out of these stones!” screamed John. This was not in reference to strict adherence to law; the Pharisees had that covered. This was in reference to the mission which was known to be what Israel’s destiny was about all along. That anyone who had faith in Christ, no matter what background, was a seed of Abraham, through the Seed.
Because of this goal or mission or destiny, we are not surprised to find Jesus, the Person who was the Gospel and the Mission launcher, organize some 70 guys to train as missionaries, to get practice in Israel first. Not for some end-purpose in Israel itself, but to get workers ready for the ‘ends of the earth.’ The mission was still on, no matter how many layers were misunderstood by Pharisee Judaism, ever since Nehemiah, who did not allow any “Jews” to marry “non-Jews.”
Assuming these 70 trainees affected or infected at least 2 each, then by the Pentecost after the resurrection there were about 220 people ready for such mission work. So we find 120 gathered together, waiting, thinking that ‘something’ was about to happen.
We are also not puzzled to find that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is to happen in that generation. That Jesus mentioned it many times. Those sites and places have nothing to do with the mission, nor could they. Those who did not take up the mission, says Acts 3, would be extirpated—to be disinherited with hostility.
The launch of the mission takes place with the arrival of the tongues from all over so that some 15 various regional visitors can hear this same message in their language, that ‘sign’ that Isaiah said was for Israel to know that this time was it—this was the Messianic age of preaching the Gospel to all nations. This was known from the whole past of the believing Israel, and Amos 9 says it was known from ancient times. To Paul, the one Pharisee with every misconception that Judaism could possibly have at the time, and forcefully seized by God to go against all those ‘strongholds,’ there was never a question of this mission getting bogged down in the misconceptions of Judaism. Yet he had to fight those ‘arguments raised against the knowledge of God’ his whole life.
So it is that in the sample sermon of Paul in Acts 13, we find that the things promised to Israel (the believers from Persia) were fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ. That resurrection proved justification from sins was secured. That message had insurmountable power wherever it went, and caused inexplicable love for enemies. That’s how that mission spread from Spain to India in its first generation.
(prob best if you print it out...)
The unstoppable mission shook even the geology of earth
Marcus Sanford
MCS thesis on Luke-Acts and the ‘Great War.’
ask@interplans.net, Feb. 2018
When the OT wraps up, quite a few of the key events are in Persia. There is no coincidence to this. The OT had that anchor location when telling the creation, sin, flood, and dispersion accounts. Even the mysterious situation at the beginning of creation, the ‘formless and void’, is an expression that speaks to the deities and cultures of Persia, yet written down from its oral form by Moses in Egypt.
When the flood and judgement of confusion on Babel take place, we are told twice that the earth is somehow divided. The normal sense of this is what we now know as tectonics, but with the event of Babel it may also mean the ability to communicate. But either way, the earth to the Mesopotamian now had a new shape: there was a new coastal land in the west which connected in two other directions: Canaan as it was called by virtue of the inhabitants. It was a location which could be called European, African and Asian all at once.
After the catastrophe of Noah, we find that the ark settles on the Ararat area. This was roughly equidistant from the furthest point of each of the three directions of the land mass.
But the first visit to Canaan was to be only a ‘showing’ of the land. They were to be sent to Egypt for 400 years, and enslaved, at the end of which they were to return. What would happen to the mission?
This absence from that land was as mission-intended as the location of Canaan. Before going down to Egypt, God was seeking to appeal to the Canaanites and Amorites to desist from their wickedness. As part of the appeal, the Isaac event took place, which mocked the Canaanite ritual of son-sacrifice to ‘preserve’ nature. This was no private affair. In a museum in eastern Europe, there are pottery jars with inscriptions about the restoration of Isaac from death that dates back to the time, yet had been transported nearly 1000 miles away soon after. The ancient world had heard.
They then arrived back in Canaan and the Canaanites and Amorites were destroyed before them, with a few exceptions, like a harlot who knew. We should ask: how is it that a ‘sex-worker,’ 400 years into their absence, knew that a group of Persian transplants, preaching a foreign god, a group which got stuck in Egypt, were going to be living in the land with the three-continent connections? As is shown all through the OT, God was at work among the nations, including Rahab. That was true even when descendants of Abraham sent to preach to them, who knew better, were uncooperative, like Jonah.
The believers from Persia had believed the Gospel that God would one day provide a Person who would justify mankind from their sins:
‘Abraham believed, and it was credited as righteousness.’
‘In your Seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.’
They were not Jews, as we think of them today or in year 1 AD or even 1000 BC, because the only defining denominator was faith. So says Hebrews 11.
Nor did it matter where they were from. The “Persians” could have been from Costa Rica. But it is a double tragedy that in modern times we find a nation, Israel, doing what old covenant Judaism mistakenly tried, while an opponent, Iran, is hell-bent on destroying that nation, for unrelated reasons.
Babel, Pentecost and the Mission
The believers from Persia knew, says Hebrews 11, that they would be strangers and foreigners even in that coastal country with the three-continent post-catastrophe points of contact. It was never to be “theirs” in the same sense as the neighbors who owned theirs. They weren’t supposed to have a king like others. They weren’t that kind of people. That kind of thinking only mucked things up and neglected the mission.
The mission was to preach that same message about justification from sins to the divided peoples of the world. Then one day, the believer’s transcultural unity would ‘speak’ to all peoples and rulers and even celestial beings of Christ’s victory, Eph 3:10.
Moving slowly toward that goal, a prophecy in Isaiah says that when the double Person would come (the Person who was the Gospel and the mission-launching leader of it), God would speak TO Israel through tongues of strangers. Israel would know by that sign that the mission was underway in a widespread manner never before in history.
This is hugely significant in tying the Bible together. This hearing of tongues would mean the same divine force that confused everyone at Babel was now informing everyone of the Gospel of justification from sins.
We must not miss a huge detail back in Isaiah on another topic: Cyrus (Kurush in Chaldean). This person was not supposed to have lived. The birth of Cyrus, named as the ruler to take Persian Jews back to Israel (the land; sound familiar from Abraham?) was mentioned 180 years in advance. But the detail about how he nearly did not live was not.
His parents did not want him and put the suckling on the top of a hill for the carrion. A woman in the same city had given birth to a stillborn that same night, and apparently the same mid-wife was at work on both births, and the distraught mother learned the other child had survived, and sent for it. That child was Cyrus. The woman was the queen of Babylon, and he grew up in the royal family and became the commander who rebuilt Jerusalem, though diminished.
You can find this detailed nicely in PureFlix THE BOOK OF DANIEL, however, it stops before the vision of chapter 9. That is extremely unfortunate because it leaves the impression that the whole purpose of the OT was to get Israel back into its land, the ownership of which was a mistaken priority and purpose, as we have shown above. Instead the real purpose of the ‘children’ of Abraham was the mission.
The misfortune of PureFlix ending at ch 8 is that ch 9 is the announcement of another 490 years, now that the 70 of Daniels’ own life is over. Once again “Israel” is being sent out west to the coast. With the same mission goal as the first! The last scene of the 490 years is the destruction of the entire place, but the success of the Messiah as a sacrifice for mankind, that brings in everlasting righteousness, the same message as Abraham the Persian believer had believed. Absolute continuity.
While most people are familiar with Israel coming out of Egypt twice (Abraham and Moses), we should not forget that they were Persians who came from Ur twice. The magi came from Persia at Christ’s birth through a sign star.
The Mission Marches On
This is why the very definition of ‘the children of Abraham’ is a hot button from the very opening of the NT scenes: “God can make children of Abraham out of these stones!” screamed John. This was not in reference to strict adherence to law; the Pharisees had that covered. This was in reference to the mission which was known to be what Israel’s destiny was about all along. That anyone who had faith in Christ, no matter what background, was a seed of Abraham, through the Seed.
Because of this goal or mission or destiny, we are not surprised to find Jesus, the Person who was the Gospel and the Mission launcher, organize some 70 guys to train as missionaries, to get practice in Israel first. Not for some end-purpose in Israel itself, but to get workers ready for the ‘ends of the earth.’ The mission was still on, no matter how many layers were misunderstood by Pharisee Judaism, ever since Nehemiah, who did not allow any “Jews” to marry “non-Jews.”
Assuming these 70 trainees affected or infected at least 2 each, then by the Pentecost after the resurrection there were about 220 people ready for such mission work. So we find 120 gathered together, waiting, thinking that ‘something’ was about to happen.
We are also not puzzled to find that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is to happen in that generation. That Jesus mentioned it many times. Those sites and places have nothing to do with the mission, nor could they. Those who did not take up the mission, says Acts 3, would be extirpated—to be disinherited with hostility.
The launch of the mission takes place with the arrival of the tongues from all over so that some 15 various regional visitors can hear this same message in their language, that ‘sign’ that Isaiah said was for Israel to know that this time was it—this was the Messianic age of preaching the Gospel to all nations. This was known from the whole past of the believing Israel, and Amos 9 says it was known from ancient times. To Paul, the one Pharisee with every misconception that Judaism could possibly have at the time, and forcefully seized by God to go against all those ‘strongholds,’ there was never a question of this mission getting bogged down in the misconceptions of Judaism. Yet he had to fight those ‘arguments raised against the knowledge of God’ his whole life.
So it is that in the sample sermon of Paul in Acts 13, we find that the things promised to Israel (the believers from Persia) were fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ. That resurrection proved justification from sins was secured. That message had insurmountable power wherever it went, and caused inexplicable love for enemies. That’s how that mission spread from Spain to India in its first generation.
(prob best if you print it out...)
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