The Messiah was given a very particular task to accomplish. When the Northern Kingdom of Israel left the covenant and stopped bringing offerings for sin, even the annual covering for sins on Yom Kippur, and did not even care, we nonetheless kept racking up a debt before YHWH, because we belonged to Him, having been given to Him by our ancestors. (Gen. 17:7; 28:22; Ex. 12:17; 31:17; 32:13, etc. ) By the time Yeshua came along, this obligation had already been in arrears for almost a thousand years! How in the world could we begin to repay what we had denied Him, even if we again wanted to with all of our hearts?
Yeshua was selected by YHWH to be our kinsman-redeemer (see Leviticus 25:25), making it possible for us to come back into YHWH’s good graces, and now He has again let us know just who we really are. The news that many if not most of those who have been following Yeshua are actual descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel is astounding when we first learn it, and this in itself is enough to overcome any identity crisis we may have suffered. That YHWH is restoring us is another great cause for celebration that can revive our spirits for years, as I can testify from experience.
But there are still more things from even before that breach that also needed to be repaired. Because of His special Servant’s faithfulness, YHWH tells him, “It was too insignificant that you should be My servant [only] to raise up the tribes of Yaaqov and the faithfully-guarded ones of Israel; I will also appoint you as a light to the Gentiles, to be My salvation [yeshuah] all the way to the extremities of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6) Why did they need a light?
Yeshua’s most frequent way of referring to himself was not “Ben Elohim”, but "Ben Adam", and he bases it on Daniel 7:9-14:
"One like the Son of Adam approached the Ancient of Days and they brought him near… and there was GIVEN to him dominion, honor, and a kingdom, that every people, nation, and language should serve him…an everlasting dominion."
Another Adam
He is called “Ben Adam” because he bore a special similarity to Adam (who is also called the son of Elohim in Luke 3:38). The scope of his potential extends not just to those of Israel who need to be restored, but to anyone affected by the first Adam’s choice, to bring us back not only to the Land that we lost, but also to the Garden that we lost.
Adam was made "in the image of Elohim". (Gen. 1:26) But after he and his wife ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, the children they begot were only in Adam’s image. (Gen. 5:3) That is a major change! Many aspects of what Adam had been before his disobedience were lost, and they recognized that something important was missing. (Gen. 3:7-11) It was as if he had come “unplugged” from his source, and was running on stored battery power, which would eventually run out. And this change was passed down to all his descendants. (Psalm 51:5) If you have children, you know it does not take long for evidence of this venom to show up.
Dr. Arthur Custance, who suggests that it was some kind of poison in the fruit which changed our constitution, wrote,
“After Adam had disobeyed and destroyed his original constitution both physically and spiritually,…God cried out, "Adam, where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9). I do not think that God was searching for fallen man (whose whereabouts He surely knew) but for unfallen Adam who had simply disappeared. It was Adam as created, physically immortal and spiritually alive, who had vanished. In order to recover his true manhood, he must recover his physical immortality and he must recover his spiritual purity.”
In addition to many physical and metaphysical abilities of which we now only occasionally catch glimpses, Adam had also lost the deed to the earth and the right to rule over the rest of creation. That passed to the serpent, which apparently embodied a very high-ranking angel who had rebelled against YHWH because YHWH had now actually made someone in His image. Feeling slighted and jealous for his once-highest position (Isa. 14; Ezek. 28), this malevolent spirit tricked us into forfeiting the position which depended on our remaining in right standing with YHWH, who had given it to us.
How could this be repaired? Just after He pronounced the sentence of exile and eventual death, YHWH revealed a little bit of the plan. The serpent would be crushed by the “seed” of the woman in particular. (Gen. 3:15) Chawwah (Eve) thought the first son she bore would already be this solution (Gen. 4:1), but YHWH had much more groundwork to lay first. The stage was set through the creation of Israel, then the Torah, which gave us principles by which we could live out the remnants of good in us and limit the evil in the world. But it also formed the perfect environment for another human being “coming forth from a woman… under the Torah” (Galatians 4:4) to grow up and be able to give the fullest human expression to the attributes Adam had lost. The Torah gave him all the ammunition he needed to overcome the temptation Adam had succumbed to. (Mat. 4:4-10)
Adam no longer bore the complete image of Elohim, nor did his offspring, who are said to have only borne Adam's image, not Elohim's. (Gen. 5:3) What a loss! But the original pattern was held in reserve in the heavenly realm, beyond the reach of earthly corruption, until the day when another man could redeem (buy back) all that Adam had lost.
But if all of us were affected by Adam’s disobedience, how could any man ever be in a position to do that? Psalm 49 tells us that the price of a human soul is too high for another man to pay for, so that he can live forever and not see destruction. Yet the psalmist is confident that Elohim will find a way to redeem his soul.
And Elohim did. Yeshua was ultimately not the savior, but the means YHWH, the only One who can save (Isaiah 45:21), chose to use—and his blood in particular. He was a man, but not “just a man” in the same sense that you and I are. There is something different about him. Those are red-flag concepts indeed, but let us follow the logic step by step.
The explanation is his virgin birth. It is not, as some claim, a fanciful story made up to make Yeshua seem even more impressive or even just another random sign his followers (or even Muslims, who also believe it) could claim as proof that he was sent by YHWH. It was essential if full humanity was to be restored.
The term used in Isaiah 7:14 does not exclusively mean a virgin (but can mean any young woman of marriageable age up till the point of bearing her first child); in fact, in Isaiah’s immediate context, it was not referring to a virgin. I therefore tried to jettison that idea as one of those pagan accretions. But it would not go away that easily. While not every young woman is a virgin, the word can have that secondary meaning, and the Jewish men who translated Isaiah into Greek after the young woman he was speaking about was long gone but before Yeshua came along did choose to render it that way in this particular case. Eitan Bar cites Prof. Hananel Mak of the Talmud Department of the Israeli University of Bar Ilan, as also saying (in his work on Rashi’s Rabbi, Rav Moshe HaDarshan) that this mentor of one of the best-loved rabbinic scholars deduced from Scripture that the “the redeemer whom I will raise up for you will not have a father of flesh and blood.” (Genesis Rabbah) Many prophecies have both a short-range and long-range fulfillment, the latter being only hinted at by the former, so that the Plan would not be “given away” and compromised before it could be accomplished.
Only after seeing how things turned out was this text applied to Yeshua, giving it the proverbial “new meaning”, while never diminishing the original. But his birth narratives are very careful to point out that there was no doubt in his mother’s mind that she had never yet “known” a man. Why is that so important? Because the particular wording about the seed of the woman (cf. Genesis 3:15) is the clue to what made him unique. Dr. M.R. DeHaan explains: “Eve's sin does not affect us, although Eve sinned before Adam did. It was the SIN OF ADAM which brought death upon the whole race because it is ADAM'S SEED. Only [Yeshua] is called the Seed of the woman, because he was born [only] of a woman and thus his blood was without the sin of Adam…”
He thus became known as the “Second man” and the “last Adam”. (1 Corinthians 15:45-47) Dr. Custance, a physicist, showed scientifically that the female egg is "immortal" until fertilized by the male, and thus, though all women are born affected by that inclination toward evil, they do not carry it per se:
“The mortogenic poison which entered Adam's body and Eve's body had a similar effect on both of them in depriving them of their potential immortality. But it appears to have had a significantly different effect upon their seed…” Adam passed his acquired mortality down to all his descendants because “the corruption which finally overwhelms the bodies of men and women alike is introduced to the ovum via the male seed”, but does not affect the eggs, which are all in the mother at the time of her birth. It does affect the sperm, which are generated throughout life in the male. Once they unite to form a new life, the deadly effects are experienced by the child, whether male or female.
“When the female ovum is treated suitably… it is capable… of replicating itself indefinitely, even in the absence of fusion with a spermatozoon. When this is observed in nature it is referred to as parthenogenesis… Both will, of course, die if not housed appropriately…, but whereas the mammalian ovum can … divide and multiply and grow into a whole animal…, the male spermatozoon cannot… If the seed of the woman could be activated without fertilization by the seed of man, … the result would be the emergence of an individual escaping the mortogenic factor which Adam bequeathed via his seed to all subsequent generations. Such an offspring would recover in his person the original physical immortality with which Adam was endowed at his creation…The seed of the woman is the only remnant that has retained the original immortality possessed by our first parents… Even the seed of the woman is fatally poisoned by fusion with the male seed. However, this poison affects only that portion of the woman's seed which will develop into body cells: the remainder of her seed continues to form the immortal stream of germ plasm.” I.e., the eggs she passes down to her daughters are not affected.
Thus the promised seed was conveyed down through the generations from one woman to another as the only remaining immortal part of the human race, until at the right time, someone could in fact be born of a virgin. (Ron Wyatt claims to have found the ark of the covenant immediately below the site where Yeshua was crucified, in the cave to which Jeremiah moved it (2 Maccabees 2:4-8), and the earthquake that occurred just as his side was pierced (Mat. 27:54) allowed his blood to run down through a fissure in the ground and onto the “mercy seat”. He took a sample of that blood and when it was reconstituted with water, it actually yielded a chromosome count of 24—23 from his mother and only one other (not 23 as usually from a father, but one from the One who is described in Deuteronomy 6 as “One”), which allowed him, though born through parthenogenesis, to be male. (Does the Greek term mono-genes [Yoch. 1:14] have something to do with this?)
A Man for a Man
Such a person would not have to die (as would also have been the case for Adam if he had chosen differently), because he would not carry the physical effects of that forbidden fruit, but he could be capable of choosing to lay down his life. Why would he want to? Because there was a debt to be paid that goes beyond the compensation we owe for individual sins. YHWH wanted the real human race, as He originally envisioned it, back.
He told Israel, “I have given [blood] to you on the altar as a covering for your souls, because it is blood that makes a covering for the soul.” (Lev. 17:11) Only unblemished animals can be brought to YHWH as offerings, but one-time substitutions, especially from another species, did not eradicate the root problem. (Hebrews 9:23-26) A man’s blood was needed, but except in the case of a murderer whose execution pays for the blood of the one he killed (Genesis 9:5-6), no man was in a position to offer blood that was really acceptable to YHWH, as he was really no better than the one whose sins he might try to substitute for. Moses commendably wanted to do this, but YHWH declined the offer. (Ex. 32:32) Even his blood was not the right type. Not just any man can pay for another, but only one who is untainted.
YHWH does not require one man to die for another person’s offense (Deut. 24:16; compare Ezekiel 18). Yet the debt of Adam remained and was only compounding with each new birth in this race of now-truncated men, and He tells us through Isaiah (53:10-12) that in one particular case, a man’s soul could be a voluntary offering for others’ crookedness, and that, if he so chose, this one’s soul could be “poured out [thus exposed] unto death” in order to not just pay for sin but actually make many others righteous.
Leviticus 17:14 says, "The life of the flesh is in the blood." (It constantly refreshes every part of the flesh, keeping it alive.) This is even more literally translated "the soul of the flesh is [contained] in the blood." So someone’s soul could only be "poured out" for others by the shedding of his blood. But only someone with pure blood, untainted by the poison carried by human parents since the forbidden fruit got into Adam’s bloodstream, could be in a position to buy back the deed to all that Adam lost.
YHWH designed the human reproductive process with even this detail in mind. Dr. DeHaan (who, incidentally, passed away the same day this writer was born) pointed out that “sin affected the blood of man, not his body, except indirectly, because it is supplied by the blood. For this very reason flesh can only be called sinful flesh because it is nourished and fed and sustained by sinful [i.e., imperfect] blood… For this very reason [Messiah] could partake of Adam's flesh, which is not inherently sinful, but He could not partake of Adam's blood, which was completely sinful. [YHWH] provided a way by which [Yeshua], born of a woman (not man), could be a perfect human being, but, because he had not a drop of Adam's blood in His veins, he did not share in Adam's sin… The blood which flows in an unborn babe's arteries and veins is not derived from the mother but is produced within the body of the fetus… The placenta…is so constructed that although all the soluble nutritive elements such as proteins, fats, carbohydrates, salts, minerals and even antibodies pass freely from mother to child and the waste products of the child's metabolism are passed back to the mother's circulation, no actual interchange of a single drop of blood ever occurs normally. All the blood which is in that child is produced within the child itself. The mother contributes no blood at all.”
So Yeshua’s blood was not affected by even his mother’s tainted blood. This is one reason his blood is called “precious”:
“You were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold…but with the precious blood of Messiah, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Kefa/Peter 1:18-19).
Thus Yeshua is not an ordinary man, but he is a normal man—the first one seen since Adam before he fell. He is what we all should have been, but could not be because we were truncated by the mutation that fruit in the Garden caused. Now, for the first time since Adam, there was a real man on earth again.
For the first time since Adam, a man had both feet on solid ground, and could therefore rescue all of us who were unable to get back to the path Adam left. This gives a new depth of meaning to what YHWH said at that first Passover in Egypt:
“When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the blow [of death] shall not strike you to destroy you…” (Ex. 12:13)
So although the cross was a pagan symbol long before another Passover when the “lamb of Elohim” (Gen. 22:8) died, it was only mistakenly identified with what the Bible speaks of as “the cross” (the crucifixion stake of Yeshua in particular); that one-time event has nothing to do with that connection, or with the Crusades or pogroms carried out under its banner. It has everything to do with our redemption (both as rebellious Israel and as human beings who inherit Adam’s mutation by no choice of our own), and it is something for which we must be eternally grateful. The only reason to be ashamed of it is because it was our predicament that motivated YHWH to take such an extreme measure to fix.
Per Dr. DeHaan, “Because he was sinless they could not put him to death [legally execute him] but instead he laid down his life voluntarily… Death had no claim on him except the claim of others' sin”; when that was paid and those beneficiaries were reconciled to YHWH (Colossians 1:22), he could come back to life. He had done his job properly, sacrificing himself so our sin could be not just covered up but “put away” (Hebrews 9:26), and YHWH honored him with a promotion.
Raised to the Highest Place
After succeeding where Adam had failed, he was raised even higher than he had been before. Interestingly, it was accomplished by “not considering equality with Elohim a thing to grasp for” (Philippians 2:6)—the very test Adam did not pass! (Compare Isa. 53:10-12.) So Yeshua was promoted to a higher level than other men because he earned it. Yet this honor is "bestowed on him”.
Yeshua retained the connection to YHWH that Adam cut off, and thus was able to bring what he saw in the heavenly realms to bear on the earthly scene, and also carry the spiritual significance of his physical actions back up into the heavenly realms to accomplish something truly permanent, because he never came “unplugged” from his Source as the first Adam did.
Dr. Custance summarizes, “The Redeemer must enjoy a physical immortality which he can then voluntarily sacrifice on behalf of others for the redemption of their bodies (Romans 8:23). And the Saviour must achieve a flawless perfection of character…, which will permit him to stand as a substitute for sinners whose character is totally unacceptable in the sight of God... He who need never die must voluntarily embrace death (John 10:18), and He whose character has never in any way been corrupted by sin must be ‘made sin’ [a sin offering] (2 Corinthians 5:21). Only so can the tragedy of Eden be undone. A new history must begin with a new Head of a new race.”
The Restored Image of Elohim
Though he did not begin a new religion, as many teach, Yeshua did nonetheless bring something truly new—and because he got past the point Adam did, he can indeed bring about an outcome for the world that Adam never got to see the first time around. What he did made it possible for other human beings to get off the trajectory Adam launched, and onto a completely different path.
How the seed of the woman came to fruition is hard to wrap our minds around, but rest assured, it was not by YHWH committing adultery with someone else’s wife! That is the way of the Roman gods. The explanation in Scripture tells us also how additional members of this “restored species” can also be “procreated”—so that the Servant “cut off” without an heir can nonetheless “see his seed and be satisfied.” (Isaiah 53:10) We are told that it was the “spirit of holiness” that enabled Miryam to conceive. (Luke 1:35)
After his resurrection, Yeshua “breathed on” his followers and said, “Receive the spirit of holiness.” (John/Yochanan 20:22) This parallels YHWH’s breathing into Adam the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). He had become a “life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45), able to share his soul with the first Adam’s spiritually-dead descendants, animating them in a new way—a firstfruit of the promise through Ezekiel (11:19-20) that YHWH would put a new spirit within us, enabling us to walk in all His ways, if we will make use of it. “It is the spirit that makes alive.” (John 6:63) We can be “born of the spirit” (John 3:6-8), and by “walking in the spirit” (Galatians 5:16, 25) we, too, can overcome the “old man” (Adam) with the “new”. This is truly a revolutionary concept!
“If anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creation; old things have passed away. Indeed, all things have become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17; compare Galatians 6:15) I.e., if we choose to abdicate the “self” which we inherited from Adam, and opt to be reconnected with YHWH’s original plan, we are counted as having everything that is true of him credited to our account.
The Firstborn
He also intends to be “the firstborn among MANY brothers.” (Heb. 12:23) In other words, though he was unique as the only fully-human being since Adam, he did not intend to remain the only one of his kind, but the first among many who would later be resurrected like him (Hebrews 12:23; Rom. 8:29) and made it possible for them to have the same relationship to Elohim that he has. (John 20:17) The image he again exemplifies is meant to be a pattern for the rest of us, long before our physical re-creation is complete.
Because he overcame sin, YHWH let him overcome death, and if we choose to participate in his reality instead of Adam’s, we can, in our turn, also share in his resurrection. Thus he is not just the firstborn of creation and of many brothers, but also the “firstborn from among the dead”. (Colossians 1:18) His victory over death anchors our own, and that spirit of being set-apart is given as the “down payment” of the full restoration of what Adam lost. (2 Cor. 1:22) This prospect was enough to “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6—or really right-side up!) before the Adversary found ways to sidetrack us. But who wouldn’t want to get back on this kind of track? Why would we want to go back to the slavery of “Egypt”?
Our “old self” is counted as having died along with him when he paid our debt (Romans 6:5-8), so that we no longer have any obligation to follow the corrupted version of our desires and emotions (Romans 8:12), but receiving a new power to ascend higher and higher into what humanity was always meant to be. “We all… behold the magnificence of YHWH as in a mirror, and we are being changed into that likeness from one degree of glory to another, as by the Spirit of YHWH.” (2 Cor. 3:18) The likeness we reflect now has more to do with characteristics, attributes, or traits that emulate His than a physical appearance. James said that when we look into the Torah, it is that mirror that shows us who we really are, because it is the description of what the image of YHWH looks like when fleshed out, as Yeshua did, but we are also meant to line up with the reality that has already been established, because with the pressures of life it is easy to fall back into the more familiar, but deadly, patterns.
This is what is now available to us! We now have the option at each crossroads to “put off the old man, with its ways of doing things, and put on the new [man], which is renewed by knowledge, according to the image of his Creator.” (Colossians 3:9, 10) What we lost through Adam is again available to us!
“Just as we have worn the likeness of the one who is from the dust, we will wear the likeness of the one from heaven.” (1 Cor. 15:49) The redemption of our bodies comes later (Romans 8:23), but even now, “the one born of Elohim has His seed in him, which cannot sin.” (1 Yochanan 3:9) Just as when Yaaqov (Jacob) was given a new name and a new identity, with each choice, we can allow the new reality to be expressed instead of the old. If that does not give you hope, what ever could? I have never seen anything that even comes close to comparing.
One of the names by which Messiah is called is “Father of continuity”. (Isaiah 9:6) Because the Second Adam again bore the complete image of YHWH (Colossians 1:15), true humanity can continue rather than being forever lost while YHWH goes on calling, “Adam, where are you?”
Instead, a human being is now again the heir to the earth, and he has won back the rule of earth for humankind (to be implemented when all is ready). In the Kingdom, Messiah—and other humans with him, even children--will be the masters over the animal realm just as Adam was supposed to. (Isaiah 11:6) What seemed miraculous to those who watched him draw on these more pristine natural laws at his first appearance (Mark 4:41)—the “powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:5)--will prove to be the normal way things work again, as Eden is restored.
In the age to come, this one will be called by YHWH’s name. How do we know? Jeremiah says, “He shall be called ‘YHWH is our righteousness’.” (23:6)
But YHWH also refers to His people (the dwelling-place He is really after) as “called by My Name” (2 Chron. 7:14), because that is the intended result of Yeshua’s being called by His Name. Yeshua’s goal is to “bring many sons to glorification.” (Hebrews 2:10) He wants to multiply himself. After his resurrection, he announced, “I am going to My Father and your Father, to My Elohim and your Elohim.” (John 20:17) He was a forerunner. When a child is born, normally the first part of him that comes into the world is his head. "body" (Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 1:23; 5:30) with him as its “Head” (the leader and trailblazer for the rest—Hebrews 12:1-2). We are assigned and empowered to finish the work that he started. (Col. 1:24) Yeshua said he was the light of the world, but then said the very same thing about those who follow him. (Mat. 5:14; John 8:12).
“Ben Elohim” is a title conferred upon Yeshua because he had pleased the Father. (Mat. 3:17) But it is also a title that will be conferred on others who overcome in a similar way. (Mat. 5:9; Rev. 21:7) “Sons of Elohim” is also a special title for the descendants of the Northern Kingdom who had their nationhood removed for a time (Hosea 1:10) For the kingdom which had ceased to exist, it is indeed no less than a new creation! (Luke 19:9-10)
Yeshua maximized what one body could hold, because his capacity was not diminished by sinfulness as ours was. But we, too, can be “partakers of the divine nature”. (2 Peter 1:4) In other words, when the job is complete, we are meant to become just what he is! As the restored prototype of humanity—the first “Real Man” in YHWH’s image seen since Adam ruined the first specimen—we most certainly can, because “when he appears we will be like him, because we will see him as he is”! (1 Yochanan 3:2) YHWH can live in us and through us as He did through Yeshua as the Holy Spirit enables us to live out YHWH's characteristics. (Galatians 5:22-23) The Word is meant to be fleshed out in us as well. The Torah tells us how.
As Custance puts it, the re-creating of a human being results “from a transforming and creative act of [YHWH] whereby a new man is created in embryo within the shell of the old man, there to grow at its expense. This is the implantation of [Messiah], who thus finds a living expression of himself anew, in the world, within the individual. (Rev. 3:20) This new creation is that which, now and then, suddenly displays itself with a beauty and purity which surprises even the [indwelt person] himself. It is in fact part of the divine nature, but so implanted in the individual as to represent him recognizably and yet in a completely new way. When it is expressed, we become aware of an entirely new man, and yet he is not a stranger to us. It is the redemption rather than the destruction or denial of the individual…When a soul is born again, manhood is restored.”
Men who have not grasped the fact that we will be restored are now trying to replace humanity with the “next step in evolution”, a mixture of man and machine, real intelligence and artificial. They may come up with something that achieves certain goals better, but not the goals that the Father had in mind. Just as the Nephilim had to be stopped and the Torah told us not to mix the seed of man and beast, the changing of human DNA to what is only half-human may very well be what the book of Revelation refers to as “the Beast”. In any case, it is a subversion of the plan of YHWH to re-create the real human, whose intelligence probably was far beyond that of any machine and full of the kind of emotion that YHWH Himself has. So have no part in it; it may be one way of “losing your soul” because you would no longer be human.
Focus instead on the restoration of Israel--the the first step to the salvaging of the whole human race. And what is that but a return to Eden itself, and the granting of the Father’s oldest wish—to again enjoy the Adam that He created?
