The Scarlet Thread Throughout the Scriptures

Joshua 2:18 Behold, when we come into the land, you shall set this line of scarlet thread in the window from which you let us down. And you shall bring your father and your mother, and your brothers, and all your father's household, home to you.
 

Joshua 2:19 And it shall be, whoever shall go out of the doors of your house, his blood shall be on his head, and we will be blameless. And whoever shall be with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is on him.
 

    Rahab the harlot is an example of the grace of God at work. Her salvation was not based on her character or merits: she lived in a doomed city, practiced a condemned profession, engaged in subversive activities, and falsified [lied about] her actions. Nevertheless she…acted upon faith, and was spared the judgment of God which was executed at the hands of the Israelites. In addition to her deliverance, Rahab was rewarded beyond measure when she married into the household of Nahshon…By Salmon, Rahab became the mother of Boaz and ancestress of David in the Messianic line of the ancestors of Jesus. As one of four women listed in the genealogy of Matthew 1, Rahab is in the company of Tamar, who was also a harlot, and Ruth, who was a virtuous Gentile"

Hebrews 11:31 By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace.
 

 "The scarlet thread of Rahab is a symbol of her faith that God will provide deliverance in the time of judgment. Throughout the Bible 'scarlet' speaks of an expression of faith made on the behalf of the believer, and it is seen in the vestments of the tabernacle and in the priestly garments in Exodus" (Joshua 2:18-21).

Rahab was saved from destruction because she had enough faith in God to hang a red rope out of her window.

This blood-red rope is a type (or picture) of the blood-red scarlet thread that runs throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The Scofield note on Joshua 2:21 says, "The scarlet line of Rahab speaks, by its color, of safety through faith (Hebrews 9:19, 22)." That red rope pictures the scarlet thread that runs from one end of the Bible to the other.

I. The Blood pictured in the Old Testament.

The scarlet thread running through the Bible is a picture of the Blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the Cross to wash away our sin. The Old Testament Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, gives us the earliest picture of the Blood. God Himself killed an animal and clothed Adam and Eve with skin. Blood had to be spilled for our first parents to have the nakedness of their sins covered,

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21). Their sins were covered up and forgotten, but "not without bloodshed" (Hebrews 9:7).

Our first parents had two sons, Cain and Abel.

"And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect" (Genesis 4:2-5).

"Unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect" (Genesis 4:5). God did not respect Cain's offering.  No blood had been shed. This type is brought into prominence by contrast with Cain's bloodless offering of the fruit of his own works, and proclaims, in the very infancy of the race, the primal truth that 'without shedding of blood is no remission' (Hebrews 9:22)

The offering Cain brought denied that human nature is evil. God said, "Bring that little blood sacrifice which will point to the Redeemer who is coming into the world"… The difference between Cain and Abel was not a character difference at all, but the difference was in the offerings which they brought

Abel brought a blood offering. Cain did not bring a blood offering. "But unto Cain and to his offering he [God] had not respect" (Genesis 4:5). Cain's offering was rejected. Abel's offering was accepted, but "not without blood" (Hebrews 9:7).

After the Great Flood, the first thing Noah did was to offer a blood sacrifice.

"Noah built an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savior; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake…" (Genesis 8:20-21).

Just as Abel brought a blood sacrifice, so did Noah. The scarlet thread line of blood offering, pointing to the Blood of Jesus Christ, continued.

With the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3), God began forming the nation of Israel to serve Him. But Abraham had to understand the importance of the blood sacrifice for sin. When Abraham took his son Isaac and went up to Mount Moriah, the boy Isaac said, "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" (Genesis 22:7). The little boy knew they had to have a blood offering. He had learned it. God had told Abraham to offer Isaac (Genesis 22:2). But when Abraham raised his knife,

Gen 22:12 Do not lay your hand on the lad, nor do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from Me.
 

The scarlet thread of blood sacrifice continued - pointing to the Blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

After the time of Abraham, the Hebrew people went down into Egypt during a great famine, because there was food in Egypt. They grew into a great nation there, but the Pharaoh enslaved them. God called Moses to lead them out of Egyptian slavery, back into the promised land.

On the night before the Hebrews left Egypt, God said He would send death to the firstborn children of the Egyptians. This was a judgment from God, given because Pharaoh would not let the Hebrews go. That night, God told Moses to institute the Passover. God told Moses to have the Hebrews put the shed blood of a lamb on "the two side posts and on the upper door post" of their houses (Exodus 12:7). Then God said:

"And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:13).
 

Exodus 12:11 says, "The Passover, type of Jesus Christ our Redeemer." The scarlet thread line continued, pointing towards the Blood of Jesus Christ.

The Hebrew people left Egypt and went out into the wilderness. They came to Mount Sinai. Moses went up the mountain and God gave him the Ten Commandments, written "with the finger of God" on two tablets of stone (Exodus 31:18). The covenant of the Law was established with a blood sacrifice:

"And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words" (Exodus 24:8).

 "It was in that blood the covenant had its foundation and power. It is by the blood alone, that man can be brought into covenant fellowship with God. That which had been foreshadowed at the gate of Eden, on Mount Ararat [by Noah], on Moriah [by Abraham], and in Egypt, was now confirmed at the foot of Sinai in a most solemn manner. Without bloodshed there could be no access by sinful man to a Holy God. There is, however, a marked difference. On Moriah the life was redeemed by the shedding of blood. In Egypt it was sprinkled on the door posts of the houses; but at Sinai, it was sprinkled on the persons themselves. The contact was closer, the application more powerful" The scarlet thread continued through the Bible. "And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people" (Exodus 24:8). The old hymn says:

There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

("There Is a Fountain," by William Cowper, 1731-1800).

And another old song asks,

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
 

("Are You Washed in the Blood?" by Elisha A. Hoffman, 1839-1929).
 

We must come one more time to the scarlet thread of the Blood in the Old Testament. This last time, we are thinking of the Day of Atonement, called Yom Kippur. The Hebrew word "kaphar" is translated "atonement" in our English Bible. This word literally means "to cover." God covers our sins by the Blood of Jesus Christ. The Day of Atonement points to that. Our sins are covered when we trust Jesus - and God will never see them. In Leviticus 17 God said:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement covering for your souls: for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11).
 

This points to the Blood of Jesus Christ. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19).

With the clear understanding that the blood in Leviticus 17 points forward to the Blood of Jesus, we have a very clear statement:

"For it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul"  (Leviticus 17:11).
 

One of the key verses of Leviticus - The life of the flesh is in the blood. This is restated in verse 14. This is the basis of all sacrifice. This is a great, eternal truth. This explains why Abel's sacrifice was more excellent than Cain's. It is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul. The blood of Jesus Christ is the only element that can wash away sin.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh! precious is the flow That makes me white as snow,
No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
 

("Nothing But the Blood" by Robert Lowry, 1826-1899).

 "Thou shall bind this line of scarlet thread in the window (Joshua 2:18).

In the New Testament we see that salvation comes through the death of Jesus Christ, but "not without bloodshed" (Hebrews 9:7).

II. The Blood described by Jesus Christ.

What Jesus said in the "Bread of Life Discourse," and what He said when He instituted the Lord's Supper are two instances that trace the scarlet line in the Bible to Jesus Christ Himself.

At the end of Jesus' "Bread of Life sermon," He said:

John 6:53 Then Jesus says to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves.
John 6:56 He who partakes of My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in him.

   Jesus had said concerning His flesh that he would give it "for the life of the world" (John 6:51). Then He said, "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53). Jesus was saying that He fulfilled all of the types and illustrations of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Old Testament taught again and again that life and the forgiveness of sins could only come through the death of the blood sacrifice. Salvation was "not without bloodshed" (Hebrews 9:7).

Jesus said that He is going to give His life…He will shed His blood upon the cross and give His life.

Salvation is by mentally and spiritually accepting and receiving Jesus in this most intimate way.

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God…" (John 1:12).

These words "eat my flesh and drink my blood" are pictures of "receiving" Christ (John 1:12). The Bible tells us to believe upon Jesus to come to Him, to trust Him, to receive Him, to eat His flesh and drink His Blood.

These are human expressions which explain that you must personally contact Jesus Christ to be saved. You must have a living relationship with Jesus Christ. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved" (Acts 16:31).

But notice that Jesus said, "Whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life" (John 6:54). Jesus makes a clear distinction between His death and His Blood.

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

Now think about what Jesus said when He instituted the Lord's Supper:

Mat 26:27 And He took the cup and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink all of it.
Mat 26:28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

The scarlet line of blood takes us to the Lord's Supper, as we follow that blood-red cord throughout the Bible.

Paul gives us the two elements in the Lord's Supper in I Corinthians 11:23-26. He tells us that Jesus said, "Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me" (11:24). Then we are told, "After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me" (11:25).

These verses tell us two things. First, the Lord's Supper is done "in remembrance" of what Jesus did on the Cross. It does not impart grace to us.

It is done "in remembrance of me." Second, there are two elements in the Lord's Supper, to remind us of the death of Jesus Christ's Body, and, secondly, to remind us of His Blood. There are two elements in the Lord's Supper.

The bread reminds us of the death of Jesus Christ. The cup reminds us of the Blood of Jesus Christ. They are two separate elements in the Bible (cf. Matthew 26:27-28; I Corinthians 11:23-25).

The scarlet thread runs throughout the teachings of Jesus Christ Himself on the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper shows that salvation comes by the death of Jesus, but "not without blood" (Hebrews 9:7).

III. The Blood in the teachings of the Apostles.

We read of the importance of the Blood in Romans 3:24-25 and Romans 5:9. We read of the Blood in I Corinthians 10:16; in Galatians 6:14; in Ephesians 1:7; 2:13; in Colossians 1:20; in Hebrews 9:12; 9:14; 10:19; 12:24; 13:12-13; and 13:20. We read of Christ's Blood in I Peter 1:2, and in 1:18-19; and in I John 1:7.

In the Book of Revelation the Blood of Jesus Christ is spoken of many times, in Revelation 1:5; 5:8-9; 7:14; and 12:11.

Revelation 1:5 even from Jesus Christ the faithful Witness, the First-born from the dead and the Ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

 This is the scarlet thread of redemption that began with the blood of covering in the Garden of Eden and finds its ultimate and final consummation in the blood-washed throng before the throne of God in glory

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

("Are You Washed in the Blood?" by Elisha A. Hoffman, 1839-1929).

Before time was created, God the Spirit, God, the Almighty Jehovah God created his infinite heavenly hosts.  He created them in angelic orders.  Some of them are called angels; some of them are called seraphim; some of them are called cherubim; some of them are called archangels.

But in the celestial, spiritual, heavenly world, God created a great and heavenly host.  And in that host of God's created angelic beings, living in the heaven of heavens where God lives, there was the great covering cherub, the ruling archangel that God named Lucifer, or the "Son of the Morning."  That was the first great creation of Almighty God in the timeless ages before time was.

Ezekiel 28:13 You have been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, the ruby, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the turquoise, and the emerald, and gold. The workmanship of your tambourines and of your flutes was prepared in you in the day that you were created.
Ezekiel 28:14 You were the anointed cherub that covers, and I had put you in the holy height of God where you were; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Ezekiel 28:15 You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you.
Ezekiel 28:16 By the multitude of your goods they have filled your midst with violence, and you have sinned. So I cast you profaned from the height of God, and I destroy you, O covering cherub, from among the stones of fire.
Ezekiel 28:17 Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you have spoiled your wisdom because of your brightness. I will cast you to the ground; I will put you before kings, that they may behold you.
Ezekiel 28:18 By the host of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your trade, you have profaned your holy places; so I brought a fire from your midst; it shall devour you, and I will give you for ashes on the earth, before the eyes of all who see you.

And the second passage describing Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, is in Isaiah 14:12:  "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  How art thou cast down to the ground ... For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:  I will sit upon the mount of the congregation ... I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High God taking God's place.  "Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell."  

And when God recreated this universe, Satan said, "I will seize it," and when Satan saw the man and the woman in the Garden of Eden in the perfection and beauty of the Almighty, Satan said, "I will destroy them."  "For they are made to rule," says God, "over My universe under Christ."  "And I am going to seize the power for myself," says Satan, "and I am going to destroy the man.  I am going to reign and to rule over this creation."

And in the beginning sometime, all of this known to the sovereign God, in the beginning, the Lord Jesus came forward and volunteered to be the redemption and the forgiveness and the sin bearer and the Savior of Adam's fallen race.  And when Jesus met the tempter in the wilderness of Judea, that was just one tiny segment of the conflict between those two between Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord God that was just a small segment, a small link, in that awesome conflict between Jesus and Satan.

It started up there before the worlds were.  It started there before time was the hatred of Lucifer for Jesus, and the love and compassion of the Lord God Christ for His creation and for His people.  So in the garden, in the beginning, the serpent is used by Satan to speak to the woman whom God had made.  

And how does he do it?  He doesn't have anything new.  Every approach is old.  We know what he's going to say before he begins.  There's not any new attack on God by Lucifer.  We know exactly what he's going to say.  First, he's going to put a question mark after the Word of God.  "Yea, did God say that?  Did God tell you there's a hell?  Did God say to you there's a judgment?  Did God say to you if you sin you'll die?  Did God say that?"

Question mark, and then a lie.  And the first lie:  "You won't die.  You won't die.  You won't die."  And then he presented to Eve the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.  And the woman ate, enticed and deceived by the serpent.  And she took the fruit to Adam, and Adam was not deceived.  Adam knew in the moment that he ate he would die.  Satan deceived the woman, but he didn't deceive Adam.

And when Adam saw Eve partaking of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam made a choice.  He so loved her and he so found his soul bound with her that Adam chose to die by her side rather than live without her.  

And when God came in the cool of the day, He couldn't find them.  And He raised His voice, "Adam, Adam, Adam, where art thou?  Adam, Adam?"  And out of the covering of the trees in the garden, Adam raised his voice, "I heard you coming and I was afraid."  God said, "Afraid?  Who made thee afraid?  Who taught you that word 'fear'?  Afraid?"  Afraid.

"Yes," said Adam, "I was afraid, for I'm naked.  And my wife is naked."  And the Lord said, "Who taught you that you were naked?"  And then the story is recounted to the Lord Almighty, and when they sat in the presence of God, they had made themselves fig leaves to cover their shame and their nakedness.  And when the Lord looked upon them, He said, "But it won't do, not what human hands can weave, it won't do."  

And somewhere in the Garden of Eden, the Lord took an innocent animal, and before the eyes of Eve and of Adam, God slew that innocent animal, and the ground drank up its blood, "The Scarlet Thread through the Bible," and with the life sacrifice of an innocent animal, God took coats of skin and covered over the shame and the nakedness of the man and his wife; the first sacrifice offered by the hand of Almighty God.

When Adam saw the gasping, spent life of that innocent creature and saw the crimson stain the soil of the ground, that was his first experience to know what it meant to die.  Sin and death.  And so the story of atonement and sacrifice begins to unfold through the Word of God, until finally in glory you will see the great throngs of the saints who've washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

In the Garden of Eden, as the Lord covered over the nakedness of the man and the woman, He turned to the devil, he turned to Satan, he turned to Lucifer, and He said something to Lucifer.  He said, "In this woman, whom you have deceived and through whom you have destroyed the federal head of the human race, in this woman I will create out of her, I will create that one who will crush your head, out of the woman."  Now the old rabbis for centuries pored over that word of Jehovah God to Satan.  "The seed of the woman," and as all of us know, seed is masculine.  Seed belongs to the man.  A woman doesn't have seed.  It belongs to the man.

And the old rabbis pored over that word and that promise of God, "The seed of the woman shall crush your head."  Finally, as the Scriptures will unfold, we'll know what that means, what that refers to.  That is a part of that age-long conflict and struggle between the hatred of Lucifer and the love of God in Christ Jesus.

But now we begin in atonement, in blood, in sacrifice: "The seed of that woman whom you deceived shall crush your head."  So, driven out of the Garden of Eden, the Lord placed on each side of the gate cherubim and an altar.  Wherever in the Bible you find cherubim, they are always symbols of the grace and love and mercy and forgiveness of the Lord God.

And He placed the cherubim there and the altar there for the man to come to in repentance, in faith, to draw nigh to God.  And He guarded the Tree of Life, lest the man eat of it and die.  It was a merciful thing for God to do; for had our parents eaten of the Tree of Life and been confirmed in this body of death, it would have been the most tragic of all of the imaginable things that could have overwhelmed the human family.

So, the Lord drove out the man and his wife, and she bore two sons.  One was named Cain, and the other was named Abel.  Cain brought to that altar first fruit of the fields. 

Abel, by faith, feeling himself unworthy and undone Abel brought a lamb, the first slain of his flock, poured out its blood and offered it upon the altar.  And God respected Abel for the faith in his heart and received the sacrifice.  But God respected not Cain because of the pride in his heart like Lucifer, lifted up, thought well of himself.

And when Cain saw he was rejected, he lifted up his hand, and there was the first mound in the earth, and underneath it lay a boy.  And Adam and Eve knew what it meant to die in the loss of that boy, Abel. 

And in the goodness of God, the Lord gave her another son, Seth.  And Seth was a man of God; and Cain, driven out from the presence of the Lord, was a blasphemer.  And then you have the progeny of those two: the line of Cain and the line of Seth, the children of God.  And as long as the children of God were separate, God blessed the earth, and the world, and the families. 

Then, in the sixth chapter of Genesis a tragic thing came to pass.  The sons of God, the children of Seth, looked out into that world and they liked the glamour of the nightlife.  And they liked the drunken orgies of the world.  And they turned aside from their separateness and their dedication and their holiness, and they began to marry into the families of the sons of Cain.  And God looked upon them, and His children had forsaken His altars and forsaken their devotion and had forgotten their consecration, and the whole earth was filled with violence and evil and iniquity.

The children of God began to marry in the line of Cain, and the earth was filled with violence and blood and murder and blasphemy.  And God said, "It's enough, it's enough."  And He looked over the whole created family of the Lord God, the children of old man Adam, and there was only one righteous man in this earth, just one.   And that man's name was Noah. 

And God said to Noah, "It's enough, it's enough.  One hundred twenty years from now, I'm going to destroy this world by flood.  You make for yourself an ark and bring your family in."  And then out of His compassion for the world that He made, the Lord God told him to bring seven into the ark of the species that was clean and two of a kind into the ark of the species that was unclean.

So he built that great ark, made and fashioned after the finest nautical symmetry known today.  And then God shut him up.  When the rain began to fall and the floods began to rise, and those people beat on the door of that ark, why didn't Noah open the door to let them in?  Because God shut that door. 

There's a day of grace beyond which a man can't trifle with God.  Known to Him, there's a time, there's a line.  When a man goes beyond it, he'll never be saved, never.  No.  In the New Testament, we call that the unpardonable sin.  The rejection of God's free salvation. God shut the door.  And that race and that generation were destroyed. 

And then after God opened the door and Noah came out, you have the beginning of all the nations of the earth described in the tenth and the eleventh chapters of the Book of Genesis.  All the nations of the earth are divided into three parts; the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 

The sons of Japheth are the Indo- Europeans, that great family to the north and to the west.  God shall enlarge the tent of Japheth.  Japheth is the great, multiplied wing of Noah's family.

The second: Ham.  Ham is the father of the Canaanites, of the Egyptians, Africans, and Philistines. 

The third great wing of the Noaic family is Shem.  And Shem is the father of the Shemites, Elamites, Chaldeans, Assyrians, the Syrians, the Hebrew family of those people, in the Middle East  from Ur of Chaldea through the fertile crescent down to the River of Egypt.  That was the home of the Shemites, the Semites.

The first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis concern the whole family of the human race.  Beginning at chapter 12, we see one family that God has chosen through whom He will keep that promise.  "I will give thee a seed that shall crush Satan's head."  

In the twelfth chapter of Genesis, God says to Abram, "Get thee out from thy father's house, thy father's people."  

He lived in an idolatrous city, and his father was an idolater.  His father's name was Terah.  They say he manufactured idols and sold them.  God said, "Get out, and I'll make of thee a great nation, and I'll bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee.  And in thy seed shall all the families and nations of the earth be blessed."

He came to Shechem and then to Bethel and then to Hebron, then down to Egypt for awhile because of famine, and then back to Hebron.  And there at Hebron, he and Lot divided, and Lot went down into the cities of the plains and pitched his tent toward Sodom and became the mayor of Sodom.  And the angel of the Lord came and said to Abraham, "If the sin and iniquity of that awful city is as it has come up unto me, we shall destroy it."

And as Abram looked on from Hebron, the fire fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah after Lot, his wife, and two daughters were snatched away.  Jesus says a picture of His coming is as it was in the days of Lot.  First God's people must be taken out before the fire and the brimstone can fall.  And at Hebron, Abraham looked and saw the destruction of the cities of the plain.

Then Abraham moved to Beersheba.  Then follows the story of Isaac, which is enmeshed with Abraham, and the story of Jacob; Isaac's life enmeshed first with Abraham and then with Jacob. 

Now, the story of Jacob.  In Beersheba, where Isaac is living, Rebecca loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. 

And then, with Rebecca, Jacob cheats Esau out of his birthright out of the blessing, having already purchased from him his birthright.  And Esau said, "I will kill you."  And Jacob fled away to Padan-aram, up there where Nahor lived in Haran at the north of the Mesopotamian Valley.  So, Jacob flees away, and he stops at Bethel, and there God confirms to him the promise of the seed and of the land of the Savior who was to come.

And down at Hebron, this boy, Joseph, is sent to Dothan, which is about ten miles north of Samaria, in order to find the flock and the brothers who are keeping them.  And when Joseph appeared they propose to slay him.  Finally, Reuben persuades them to just spare his life, and they sell him to the Ishmaelites, who take him down into Egypt.  And in Egypt, Joseph becomes the prime minister under Pharaoh. 

There is a famine in the land of Canaan, and the story of the brothers going down into Egypt.  And they come back for their father, and it is in Egypt in the time of famine, they are given Goshen.  As you look at Egypt, it had a triangular delta where the different rivers pour out into the Mediterranean Sea.  On the right side of the delta, between the right side of the delta and the desert is a little country that is named Goshen very fertile.  And there Pharaoh and Joseph settled Israel and his family.   

 Then we come to the death of Joseph that his bones be carried back into the Promised Land when God visits them.  There arises a Pharaoh who doesn't know Joseph, and he sees those Israelites prospering, and God is blessing them.  And they are afraid of them, so Pharaoh uses them to make bricks without straw, to build cities in slavery.

And as they groaned under that heavy oppression, God bowed down His ears to hear, and there arises a man who was Pharaoh's son, an heir apparent to the throne, whom she took out of the waters when the cruel Pharaoh decreed that all the male children should die, learned in all of the arts and sciences of the Egyptians, whose heart was with his people, taught by his mother Jehovah God and the choice of Israel.

Having fled away from Pharaoh on the back side of the desert at Sinai, he is tending sheep.  And while he's tending sheep on the back side of the desert at the foot of Mount Sinai at the bottom of the Sinaitic Peninsula, there God speaks to him out of a burning bush.  And God says, "I've heard the cry of my people." 

Moses goes down, and after the ten plagues they take a lamb and slay it.  Pour out its blood, sprinkle it with hyssop which is a common, ordinary mistletoe plant that grew on the walls and everywhere in that country, dip it in the blood and sprinkle it on the door posts and on the lintel in the sign of the cross, on the door posts on either side.  On the lintel here at the top, in the form of a cross, sprinkle the blood.

And when the death angel passes over that night, "When I see the blood, I'll spare your house and your home."  And in all the other homes and families, there's death, and the wailing and lamentation of all of Egypt, except to those who are under the blood, under the blood, "The Scarlet Thread through the Bible".

And that night, Israel goes out with a high hand.  And they cross over the Red Sea by the providence of God and turn down south until in the third month of the exodus they stand there at the base of Mount Sinai.  And on Mount Sinai, forty days and forty nights, Moses is with God, and the Lord gives to Moses first  the moral law, chapters 19 and 20.  Then God gives to Moses the civil law, chapters 21 to 24.  Then God gives to Moses the ceremonial law, chapters 25 to 40, with its tabernacle and its priesthood and its sacrifices. 

Then in the Book of Leviticus, we have, first, chapters 1 to 7, the sacrifices.  There are five of them: the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering or the thanksgiving offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering.  The difference between the sin and the trespass offering is the sin is done volitionally.  A trespass is an inadvertence, a thing a man didn't mean to do.  And those five sacrifices are given here in the first five chapters of the Book of Leviticus. 

Then, in chapters 8 to 10, we have the consecration of priests; in chapters 11 through 15, ceremonial holiness; in chapter 16, the Day of Atonement; chapter 17 to 23, all of the festivals; and chapters 24 to 27, the vows and the tithes and the laws of obedience.

Every convocation of Israel is a happy one.  It is a festival, it is a feast except one.  And that is the Day of Atonement.  They observe it now, calling it Yom Kippur.  A Jew may not be a Jew any other time of the year, but on that Day of Atonement, if he's a Jew, he's a Jew then.  That's the Day of Atonement in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Leviticus.

Then the Book of Numbers first, from chapters 1 through 10, the events at Sinai.  There's a census taken, there's a consecration of Levites.  There's the altar dedication and the observance of the Passover.  Then the second part of the Book of Numbers, they're on their wandering march through the wilderness.  chapters 11 to 21, they make it from Sinai to Kadesh-Barnea. 

At Kadesh-Barnea, they send spies into the land in order to see how to conquer it, but instead of coming back with faith and dedication, they come back saying, "There are giants over there, and there are walled cities over there, and we were just like grasshoppers in their sight.  We can't conquer that land."  Caleb and Joshua said, "But God, but God is with us.  Let us arise and inherit it, for God has promised it to us."

"No," said those other ten.  And all Israel wept.  And they turned back from Kadesh-Barnea, and for 38 years, they wandered aimlessly in the wilderness until all that generation had died. 

But God was raising a young boy in the camp and called him Joshua.

And at the end of the 38 years, they're back again at Kadesh-Barnea, and then they make their way to the plains of Moab.  There, you find the death of Aaron.  There, the story of the fiery serpents and the defeat on the east side of Sihon, the king of Gilead, and Og, the king of Bashan.

And there on that side, Moses gave all of that territory on the east side of the Jordan, he gave it to Reuben, to Gad, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.  And on the plains of Moab, you have the story of Balaam and the sin of Baal-peor. 

Balaam was hired in order to curse Israel, but God wouldn't let him curse Israel.  So, Balaam had to do something to win his hire from the king of Moab, so he whispered something in the King of Moab's ear, in Balak's ear, "You get all the pretty women in Moab together and take them over there and put them in that camp and let's see what happens." 

Then you have that final preparation for Canaan.  Now, the Book of Deuteronomy is made up of five great addresses of Moses.  The first address is on the history of the forty years, chapters 1 to 4.  The second address is on the law, 5 to 26.  The third address is on the blessings and the cursings, chapters 27, 28.  The fourth address is on the second covenant, chapters 29 and 30, and the fifth address is his song and his last words. 

Deuteronomy is a Latin word meaning the second giving of the law, made up of five addresses of Moses on the plains of Moab before the children of Israel went into the Promised Land.  So, after Moses had sung his song, the Song of Moses, and after he had delivered his soul of these five addresses, then God said to Moses, "Get thee up, get thee up from the plains of Moab, get thee up to the top of Pisgah."  And Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, called Nebo, and the Lord said to him, "Look, this is the land, this is the land." 

All through the Bible you'll find the land, and the people, and the seed of the Savior Jesus Christ and His kingdom.  "This is the land which I swear unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob say I will give it under thy seed forever and forever.  I have caused your eyes to see it, but you shall not go over it."

So, Moses, a servant of God, died there in the land of Moab on Mount Nebo, and God buried him in a valley.  No man knows of his sepulcher up to this day. 

And after the death of Moses, God said to his new man Joshua, "Arise, arise, arise.  My servant is dead.  Moses is dead.  Arise, thou and all this people, and inherit the land that I give unto Israel." 

So Joshua makes wars of the conquest.  He made three campaigns, first in the center of the country.  He took Jericho.  Then he took Ai, which was the military outpost and bastion of Bethel. 

Then the Gibeonites deceived them, and they made a truce with them.  So, they won all of the central part of the country.  Then Adonizedek who was the King of Jebus, later Jerusalem, with four other kings, those five warred against Joshua, and Joshua won the southern campaign.  But when he prayed to the moon over to the sun and the moon over Ajalon, "Don't you go down and destroy the light," and there was a long day.  That's against the five kings in the south. 

Then up in the north against Jabin, who was the king of Hazor, up there above Galilee, that was the third great campaign, and then the conquest ceased.  And the last part of Joshua is the story of his death and of his appeal to the people to be true to the Lord.

And now we come to the ministry of Samuel, the reign of Saul, and of David, and of the kings of Israel and of Judah.  Now, the last of the judges was Samuel.  Samuel marked the beginning of a great departure in Israel.  There is only one religion in the world that is characterized by the phenomenon of what you'd call a prophet.

No other religion in the world has ever had a prophet, nor has there ever been a religion in the world that foretold the future or that spoke of things that God was going to do in times to come.  And Samuel, the last of the judges, is also the first of the prophets.  And in his ministry and in his life, Samuel instituted what you call a seminary, a school of the prophets.  And from now on, you will find the prophetic ministry more and more coming to the fore in the life and the development of God's people.

This man, Samuel: first, the book.  The ministry of Samuel is in chapters 1 to 7, and then the reign of Saul is in chapters 8 through 31.  Samuel was given in answer to prayer of a godly woman named Hannah, who was sterile.  And in her prayer, God placed in her arms this little boy, whom she called "Asked of God" - Samuel.

And when she weaned him after three years, she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh,  to the high priest named Eli.  And there before Eli, the little lad ministered unto the Lord, being a Levite, dressed in a linen ephod, the plain white garment of a priest.  And Samuel grew up unto the Lord, and even in childhood, the word of the Lord came to Samuel, and no message that he delivered did God let fall to the ground.

And after Samuel's ministry, in which he went around with a Bible in his hand and taught the people the Word of God, he made his circuit year after year teaching the people the law of Moses.  And after Samuel's age, the people said, "We want to be like the nations around us.  We want a king."  And God said to Samuel, "Give them a king. 

  2 Samuel is the reign of David, chapters 1 to 4, his reign in Hebron; chapters 5 to 11, his reign over all Israel until his sin.  The third part, chapters 12 to 20, the penalty for his sin, and chapter 4, the concluding of the life and ministry of David.

And David is crowned king over all of Israel.  And the first part of David's life over Israel is magnificent.  God gives him every victory on top of victory after victory.  He is never defeated.  On and on David rises in glory and in power as he extends the empire.

Until David's sins with Bathsheba.

And when David arises one morning, he sees the destroying angel with his sword raised over the city of the great king in Jerusalem to destroy, and David falls in the presence of the Lord God and says, "Oh, God, oh, God, against me and against my father's house, oh, God, oh, God, but not these sheep."  And the Lord says, "Get thee up."  Mount Moriah, I've heard of that before, where Abraham offered Isaac, "Get thee up." (to the site of the Future Temple)

Araunah's threshing floor on the top of Mount Moriah, go, build an altar, sacrifice, the scarlet thread through the Bible.  "When I see the blood of Passover, I'll spare the city."  David goes up, and Araunah sees him coming, "Oh, my king." "I've come, Araunah," says David, "to build an altar to God and to sacrifice lest the people be destroyed."

And Araunah says, "My, lord, oh, king, I give you the place, I give you the instrument, I give you oxen for sacrifice."  "Nay," says David, "I'll buy it.  I won't offer it to God that which costs me nothing."  He bought the threshing floor, and he built the altar. 

And God, when he saw the blood, forgave and saved; and there they built the Temple of Solomon, and there they erected the great altar.  And there the prayers and intercessions arise unto the Lord for these years and years, and someday when they rebuild that temple, the songs and praises of God will go up again from that same and sacred place.

The first 11 chapters of I Kings describe the reign of Solomon.  The second part, chapters 12 through 22, give the story of the divided kingdom to the days of Ahab, king of Israel, and Jehoshaphat, king of Judah.

Solomon began gloriously.  God loved Solomon and crowned him with every gift.  At Gibeon in the dream God said, "Anything, Solomon?"  And Solomon asked for wisdom in order to rule his people well. 

And God said, "Because you've asked that, I'll give you everything else.  I'll give you fame, and I'll give you fortune, and I'll give you victory, and I'll give you a kingdom.  And if you'll be faithful to me, I'll give you lengths of days."

Well, what did he do?  Solomon began gloriously and triumphantly, and the Lord extended his kingdom and blessed him on every hand.  And then Solomon fell into the most tragic decline of any king that you could read about.  God said, "You shall not multiply unto you gold and silver."  And Solomon did that until it was as common in Jerusalem as stones on the street.

And God said a second thing, "And you shall not multiply unto you wives."  God hates that thing.  Malachi says, "God hates that," and -- and Solomon multiplied 700 wives and 300 concubines.

And the closing ministry of Solomon is tragic.  There is rebellion on every side.  He didn't get length of days because of his disobedience to God.  And his empire fell into disunity and disorder, and Solomon died one of the most abject failures in all human stories.

On his death, Rehoboam is the king.  And because of his cruel attitude, you see, he was reared in Solomon's court.  And when you hear Rehoboam speak, you hear the speaking of a young man who grew up in Solomon's days.  Instead of being young men of great dedication and great commitment to God, all they love is pleasure and the things of the likeness and the gladness and the emptiness and frivolity and foolishness of this world.

That's Rehoboam, so that his kingdom divides then, Jeroboam to the north, king over the 10 tribes of the north, and the lion of David over Benjamin enmeshed in David in the south.  In the two kingdoms, there are 19 kings in the south and 19 kings in the north, though the south and the kingdom of Judea lasted 135 years longer than the kingdom in the north.

In the upper kingdom, there are nine different dynastic changes.  In the southern kingdom, of course, there's no change at all.  The scarlet line of David goes all the way through.  And the Kings closes with the idolatry of Ahab and Jezebel and the rising of Elijah, the prophet of God.

Now, to 2 Kings.  2 Kings is divided like this:  From 1 to 17 is the history of the two kingdoms to the fall of Samaria.  And the last part of it, 18 to 25, is the history of Judah to the fall of Jerusalem.  Now, we come to one of the great principles of the words of God.

Isaiah 10:5 says, "Oh, Assyria, the rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation."  And in the Book of Habakkuk, the same thing God says about  Chaldea, the kingdom of the Babylonians.  So, these prophets now are beginning to prophesy.

 "There is coming the destruction of Israel."  And they are describing that bitter and ruthless and merciless nation, Nineveh and Assyria, but they are coming.  "The rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation," says the Lord God, and Tiglath-pileser and Nabopolassar and Shalmonezer and Sargon and Assyria, Samaria, Ashurbanipal and Esarhaddon.  They come down from the Lord, and they carry away Israel into captivity and destroy the kingdom forever and plow under Samaria.

"The rod of mine anger and the staff of my correction."  That doesn't mean that Assyria was any better than Samaria, it just means that God raises up these empires that chasten God's people. 

That's what the prophets were preaching to Israel:  "If you don't get right, if you don't get right, if you don't get right," then the great Assyrian hoards came down and carried away the northern ten tribes in 722 B.C., and then that left Judah alone.  And down there in Judah, there was Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah.

And the great Assyrian invasion came in the days of Hezekiah.  And Sargon finally took Samaria.  And then his son, Sennacherib, came down to take Judah.  How do you have a fight, a war?  Well, you do it with armies and a battle array.  That's how you fight a war.

Sennacherib absolutely surrounded Jerusalem and took all of Judea.  Hezekiah, the king, who was a godly man, made it a matter of prayer, and while he was down on his knees talking to God, the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, the son of Amos, saying, "You go tell Hezekiah, you go tell him that I'm going to put a ring in Sennacherib's nose.  Send him back by the way that he came; for  this is my battle.  This is my war," says the Lord God.

The next morning, there were 185,000 corpses when the angel of the Lord got through with the armies of Sennacherib, all in answer to good king Hezekiah's prayer.

Then after King Hezekiah, Josiah was one of the Lord's anointed, the good king Josiah.  And he did one of the most foolish things in this world.

In the days of Josiah, there was a great revival, one of the great revivals of all times.  Josiah repaired the house of the Lord, and on the inside of the house of the Lord he found God's scriptures.  And wherever the people read God's scriptures, you'll have a revival.  And when the people read God's Word, they had a great time of the devoted love of their souls to God.

And the people began to live right and to do right and to love God and to serve God, and it was a marvelous thing.  And the prophets prophesied, and everything was blessed of heaven. 

And right in the middle of that, Pharaoh Necho who was the king of Egypt, Pharaoh Necho, made an agreement up there with the remnant of the Assyrian hosts from Nineveh.

We're going to find out if we have time, Nahum prophesied the destruction of Nineveh exactly like it was going to be.  The remnant of AssyriaPharaoh Necho, was going up there to join hands with the Assyrians in order to stop forever the rise of those Babylonians under Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar. 

And when Pharaoh Necho took up his army at Megiddo, there we get that same place again, Armageddon, where the battles of the world are fought.  When Pharaoh Necho brought up his army there on the plain of Israel and at Meggido, to go up there and to join the armies of Assyria to fight against Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar, Josiahthe good king, Josiah, who had sworn allegiance to BabylonJosiah took his little army and there on the plains of Megiddo, he tried to stop Pharaoh Necho in his onward march up there to the north.  And what Pharaoh-Necho did was what you'd think he'd do; he ran over the little army at Judah, and he slew Josiah, the good king, and never was there a lamentation in the world as Judah and the prophets of God lamented over King Josiah.

Pharaoh Necho joined the Assyrians up there at the head of the Mesopotamian Valley in a little place called Carchemish, and at Carchemish was fought one of the great battles of all time.  Nebuchadnezzar who was one of the ablest generals and one of the greatest kings who ever lived. Nebuchadnezzar was in charge of the armies of his father, Nabopolassar; and there, in 605 B. C., the armies of Nebuchadnezzar overwhelmed the armies of Assyria and of Egypt.  And they were never great powers anymore, not Egypt, not Assyria again.

And there, riding across the civilized world, stood that great colossus of a man, Nebuchadnezzar.  And in those days, Jeremiah lifted up his voice and he preached to Judah, saying, "Repent and get right with God."  But Judah never repented, and Nebuchadnezzar came in 605 from the battle of Carchemish, and he seized Jerusalem, and he took Daniel and the fairest of the land to his kingdom in Babylon in captivity.

And Jeremiah lifted up his voice, and he said, "Repent, repent, get right with God."  They never repented and they never got right with God, and Nebuchadnezzar came back the second time in 598 B.C., and he took Ezekiel and 10,000 of the fairest to that captivity in Babylon.  And Jeremiah lifted up his voice once again and cried, saying, "Repent, oh, repent, get right with God, turn ye, turn ye."

And they didn't repent, and they never got right with God.  And Nebuchadnezzar came the third time in 587 B.C., and he didn't have to come back anymore, for he destroyed Solomon's temple, and he beat down the walls of the city.  And he plowed under the holy city of God and plowed it down with salt.

And he took the people into captivity into the land of Babylon, and the whole face of God's earth turned dark in fear, bathed in tears and in sorrow.  "If I forget thee, oh, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.  If I prefer not thee, oh, Jerusalem, to my chief joys, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.  By the waters of Babylon, there we sit down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion, for they that took us away captive, required of us a song, and they that wasted us asked of us, how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land."

And Israel wept and they cried, and they got right with God.  And out of that Babylonian captivity came the three great institutions by which God has blessed our world.  

Out of the captivity came the canon of the Old Testament Scriptures.  The old rabbis began to pour over the books and began to read the prophets and began to teach their people the word of God.

And in those days, came Jesus with the scroll of the prophets in His hands, the same today.  Today is this prophecy fulfilled .  The wonders of the blessings of God as He guides through human history to that ultimate and final consummation.

Now, in 587 B.C., the southern kingdom was destroyed, and Nebuchadnezzar, one of the ablest, one of the mightiest, one of the most capable, one of the most unusually endowed of all the kings of all time and all -- of all the empire builders of the world, Nebuchadnezzar, who's mentioned more times in the Bible than any other heathen king, Nebuchadnezzar took into Babylon all of those who lived in the country of Judea and in the city of Jerusalem.

And Jeremiah was forced by the remnant to go into Egypt, and there Jeremiah died.  The prophet Jeremiah had predicted that after 70 years the people of the captivity would have opportunity to return.  Now, Nebuchadnezzar was a tremendously able king.  He made Babylon one of the most beautiful cities of the world.

But the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar disintegrated quickly and easily, and in 538 B.C., Cyrus, the Mede, took Babylon without a battle.  It just fell into his hands, and Daniel, as you know, describes that fall in his book.  Belteshazzar -- Belshazzar was the regent who was on the throne under Nabonidus, his father. 

And in that night, Cyrus took the city of Babylon without a war, without a battle, without a fight.  Now, when we come to King Cyrus, the Mede, who founded the Persian empire, we have named one of God's anointed men.  In Isaiah 44:28 and in Isaiah 45:1, hundreds of years before he was born, Isaiah called Cyrus by name.  And God called Cyrus his anointed.

And Cyrus was one of those magnificent, understanding, sympathetic empire builders who changed the policy of Nineveh and Assyria altogether and who changed the policy of Nebuchadnezzar.  And Cyrus gave opportunity to all of the captives to return home wherever they lived.  And it was then that the decree went out from Cyrus, who founded the Medo-Persian empire, that the Jew had opportunity to go back to his homeland in Palestine to rebuild his city in Jerusalem and to rebuild his temple.

That gave rise to the beautiful Psalm number 126:  "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.  Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing:  then said they among the heathen, 'The Lord hath done great things for them whereof we are glad.' Turn again our captivity, O, Lord, as the streams in the south.  They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.  He that goes forth and weeps, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bring his sheaves with him."

That was a song that the captives sang when they went back to their holy city and their holy land of Judea and Jerusalem.  Now, in the Book of Ezra, the first six chapters of Ezra describe the return of Zerubbabel with about 40 some-odd thousand Jews.  And then chapters 7 and 10 in Ezra describe the return of the priest, Ezra himself. 

It covers a period of about 80 years, from 536 to 457.  Then Nehemiah comes back to Palestine and to Jerusalem a little while after Ezra, and then awhile after Nehemiah comes Malachi, who is the last of the prophets.  Now, for a brief word concerning the prophets:  The first and the oldest prophet is Joel.  He flourished about 825 B.C.  Then from about 800 to 750 B.C. were three prophets and the only three in the northern kingdom.  They are Jonah and Amos and Hosea.

And then about 700 B.C., there were under Uzziah and Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah, there were Isaiah and Micah.  And then from about 650 to 600 B.C., there is Zephaniah and Nahum and Obadiah and Habakkuk.  And then in the last time of Jeremiah, some of those I've just named.  And then in Babylon, contemporary with Jeremiah is Daniel and Ezekiel.

While Jeremiah is preaching in Jerusalem, Daniel and Ezekiel are prophesying in Babylon.  Then you have three prophets of the restoration.  Haggai apparently was an old, old man who had seen the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, who had been taken into exile and who had returned back to Palestine with Zerubbabel and Ezra.

And he was encouraging the people to build the temple.  The optimism of Haggai, the old, old man, is wonderful to behold.  When Haggai looked at the rubble and the debris and the impossible assignment of those few ragged Judeans to rebuild the temple and rebuild the city and to rebuild the kingdom, it's one of the most hopeless prospects in the world, but Haggai, that old, old man who had seen Solomon's temple destroyed, who had lived through the entire captivity and who had gone back with Zerubbabel, Haggai said, "God says that this second temple you build will be more glorious than the temple of Solomon."

How could it be?  Because the Lord Jesus walked into that second temple built under Zerubbabel.  Then a young man, Zechariah, came with Zerubbabel and Ezra.  And as the old man Haggai preached his last messages, the young man, Zechariah, stood up to deliver the word of God, and of the three restoration prophets, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, Zechariah is far and away the greatest.

 Malachi preached about 450 to 425 B.C., and Malachi closed his prophecy with the coming of the Lord:  "Behold, He comes to His temple, and He will sit as a refiner's fire who may abide the day of His coming."

And then in the last chapter, Malachi prophecies:  "Behold, behold, I send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."  So, the Book closes with the people expecting Elijah, the prophet, to come and to announce the great king Messiah, the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham and the king promised to David who would sit upon his throne forever and forever.

	ADAM (1) "The Son of God" and The First Adam
	SETH (2)
	ENOS (3)
	CAINAN (4)
	MAHALEEL (5)
	JARED (6)
	ENOCH (7)
	METHUSALEH (8)
	LAMECH (9)
	NOAH (10)
	SHEM (11)
	ARPHAXAD (12)
	CAINAN (13)
	SALA (14)
	EBER (15)
	PELEG (16)
	RAGAU (17)
	SARUCH (18)
	NAHOR (19)
	TERAH (20)
	(1) ABRAHAM (21)
	(2) ISAAC (22)
	(3) JACOB (23)
	(4) JUDA (24) m. Tamar			---> Zera (Matthew 1:3)
	(5) PHAREZ (25)
	(6) ESROM (26)
	(7) ARAM (27)
	(8) AMMINADAB (28)
	(9) NAASON (29)
	(10) SALMON (30) m. Rachab			(Sala: Luke 3:32)
	(11) BOAZ (31) m. Ruth
	(12) OBED (32)
	(13) JESSE (33)
	(14) DAVID (34) m. Bathsheba (Luke 3:31)
(1) SOLOMON Matthew 1:6			NATHAN (35) (2 Sam.5.14)
(2) REHOBOAM
(3) ABIA			MATTATHA (36)
(4) ASA				MENAN (37)
(5) JOSOPHAT	OMRI			MELEA (38)
	|			ELIAKIM (39)
	AHAB m. Jezebel |			JONAN (40)
(6) JORAM	m. Athaliah			JOSEPH (41)
	(Ahaziah)  (Joash)  (Amaziah)			JUDAH (42)
				SIMEON (43)
				LEVI (44)
(7) OZIAS				MATTHAT (45)
(8) JOATHAM				JORIM (46)
(9) ACHAZ				ELIEZER (47)
(10) EZEKIAS				JOSE (48)
(11) MANASSES				ER (49)
(12) AMON				ELMODAM (50)
(13) JOSIAS				COSAM (51)
(14) JEHOIKIM (who had brothers, Matthew 1:11)				ADDI (52)
				MELCHI (53)
(1) JECHONIAS (55) m. --->	(2) SALATHIEL (56)		Widowed daughter  husband deceased	NERI (54) <------
(Evidently Salathiel died childless and Pedaiah, his brother, married his widow according to Deut. 25,5,6)			wife m. PEDAIAH (Ouite legally according to the Mosaic law, Pedaiah's name does not appear as the father of Zerubbabel in either Matthew or Luke.)
	(3) ZERUBBABEL (57) (1 Chr. 3:19)
	daughter SHELOMITH --> m RHESA (58)
(4) ABIUD			JOANNA (59)
(5) ELIAKIM			JUDA (60)
			JOSEPH (61)
(6) AZOR				SEMEI (62)
				MATTATHIAS (63)
(7) SADOC				MAATH (64)
(8) ACHIM				NAGGE (65)
				ESLI (66)
				NAHUM (67)
(9) ELIUD				AMOS (68)
				MATTATHIAS (69)
(10) ELEAZER				JOSEPH (70)
				JANNA (71)
(11) MATTHAN				MELCHI (72)
				LEVI (73)
				MATTHAT (74)
(12) JACOB				HELI (75)
	(13) JOSEPH	m.	MARY (76)
	(14) JESUS (77) The Son of God and the Last Adam

        The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.

        And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa, and Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

        So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:1-17)

        Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. (Luke 3:23:38)

        The two genealogies of our Lord which together establish his absolute right to the throne of David, both by blood relationship through Mary and by title through Mary's husband, bear close examination. For they show how the two lines were preserved at one particularly critical period when almost all family relationships in Israel were being disrupted. This was at the time of the Captivity in Babylon. It is shown in a standard genealogy chart as a kind of "wasp-waist" joining the head and the body of the genealogy above and below Zerubbabel.

        The details of this gate are the subject of this Appendix. It seemed important to say something about the circumstances here because it is at this point in the line that the blood relationship between the Lord and David comes nearest to being destroyed.

        The numbers which appear against the names in the Tabulation represent the two different systems of accounting adopted by Matthew, on the left side, and Luke, on the right. In Matthew, David appears as the 14th name from Abraham: in Luke David is the 34th name from Adam. The red line represents the blood line connection: the yellow line represents the carrying of title to the throne of David.

        David had two sons who figure as heads of the two branches of the family as indicated in Matthew and Luke, namely, Solomon and Nathan. In Matthew's genealogy Solomon becomes No. 1 in the second group of 14 names: and in Luke's genealogy Nathan becomes No. 35 on the other branch line.

        From Solomon we move down to Joram, No. 6. Joram married Athaliah, the wicked daughter of a wicked father and mother (Ahab and Jezebel). As a consequence of this evil man and his wife, his seed was cursed for four generations in accordance with the reference made in Exodus 20:5. Thus Matthew, who probably follows the Temple records faithfully in his list, omits the next three names (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah) from his genealogy. There is little doubt that these Temple records had, by divine providence, removed these three generations from the register, so that Ozias (No. 7) appears as though he were the son of Joram, No. 6, in the accounting of Matthew 1:8. We know from 1 Chronicles 3:11 and 12 that in the original court records, these three missing names were written down. In this court record, Ozias (No. 7) is given an alternative name Azariah (1 Chron. 3:12), and elsewhere he is also called Uzziah (Isa. 6:1). These are merely variants of the same name.

        We pass on to No. 14, Jehoiakim. It is important to note that his name ends with an M, not an N, and he is not to be confused with his son whose name was Jehoiakin (or alternatively Jeconiah, Jechonias, Coniah, and Conias). This multivariant form of a name applied to a single individual is common in many of the older cultures. It seems to be particularly prevalent in Russia, even today.

        Now, with Jehoiakim (No. 14) we begin to see the hand of God at work in a very special way separating the thread of continuity of blood relationship and titular right to the throne in David's family. Jehoiakim was the last king of Israel to come to the throne as a free man. Unfortunately he was both an evil man and a foolish one. He began his reign just when the Fertile Crescent was in a state of political turmoil, Nebuchadnezzar in particular having very ambitious designs for empire building which were challenged by Egypt. In this see-saw contest for power that habitually characterized the relationship between Egypt and Babylon, Palestine stood at the pivot point. But Jerusalem itself need not really have become involved, for the city actually stood off the main route between the two warring parties. Any king of Judah who kept out of the fray and conciliated the antagonists as they marched their armies back and forth to attack each other, could expect to be left more or less alone except for paying token tribute.

        Jehoiakim was not humble enough or wise enough to realize this, and provoked Nebuchadnezzar to attack Jerusalem. This was the Lord's way of punishing a wicked man who had unwisely aligned himself with the king of Egypt. His immediate punishment was to have his city besieged and overrun, and to be carried captive to Babylon (2 Chron. 36:5,6). But for some reason Nebuchadnezzar decided to return him to Jerusalem as a puppet king while he completed his unfinished business in Egypt. His long range punishment was foretold by Jeremiah (36:30) that none of his seed should ever sit upon the throne of David. This was a severe blow to him because he was in the direct line, as Matthew's genealogy shows, and probably had every expectation of seeing this greatest of all honors accorded to his seed in due time.

        Meanwhile Nebuchadnezzar, having completed his Egyptian campaign, soon discovered that Jehoiakim was a treacherous man who could not be trusted by friend or foe. Indeed, so treacherous was he that even the people of his own city, Jerusalem, turned against him, murdered him, threw his body over the walls and left him unburied outside the city - exactly as predicted by Jeremiah (22:18,19). Nebuchadnezzar must surely have known what had happened, but he did not interfere when Jehoiakin (i.e., Jechonias, No. 55) succeeded his father.

        But this young prince who was only eighteen years old when thus honored (2 Kings 24:8) proved to have no more good sense than his evil father. He provoked Nebuchadnezzar (after only three months and ten days on the throne) to invest the city once more and depose him (2 Chron. 36:9). Jechonias and all his court were taken captive to Babylon while his uncle, Zedekiah, was left as regent. Unfortunately, Zedekiah behaved as the rest of his family had done and eleven years later, Nebuchadnezzar seized Zedekiah, put all his sons to death before his eyes, and then deliberately blinded him. Zedekiah was taken to Babylon and died there. Jerusalem meanwhile was utterly destroyed (2 Kings 24:17-25:16).

Now Jechonias, after being taken to Babylon, was put in prison where he remained for some thirty-seven years. It appears that either before he was taken captive or possibly during his captivity he was married to a woman of appropriate status who appears to have been a daughter of Neri (No. 54 in Nathan's branch of the family) and therefore of David's line. In order to account for the subsequent relationships shown in the two converging genealogies, we have to assume that this woman was a widow whose husband had probably been killed in one of the many sieges which Jerusalem had suffered. It seems as though the prophet Zechariah had this circumstance in mind (12:12). This widow already had a son by her deceased husband when Jechonias took her as a wife. This son's name was Pedaiah. His name is not numbered in the genealogy shown in the chart. It appears only in 1 Chronicles 3:18 where he is shown as a son of Jehoiakin (i.e., Jechonias). If his widowed mother was married to Jechonias, he would by Jewish custom become the son of Jechonias automatically.

But Jechonias appears to have had a son of his own by this widow of the royal line. This son's name was Salathiel (No. 2 and No. 56 in the two pedigree lines). By this marriage of a widow to Jechonias, these two boys - sons of the same mother - would become brothers by Jewish custom.

However, Salathiel appears to have died childless, though not until he had reached manhood and married a wife. Jehoiakim's blood line thus came to an end in his grandson Salathiel - indicated by termination of the red line. But as it happens the actual title to the throne remained active. The curse of Jeremiah 36:30 was to be fulfilled not by the removal of the title itself from Jehoiakim's line but by the denial of that title to anyone who happened to be a blood relative in the line. With the death of Salathiel this blood line terminated.

        But now, according to Jewish custom as set forth in the principle of the Levirate (Deut. 25:5,6), it became incumbent upon Pedaiah, the deceased Salathiel's (step) brother, to take his widow and raise up seed through her who would not therefore be of Salathiel's blood line but would be constituted legally as Salathiel's son through whom the title would pass to his descendants. The son of this Levirate union was Zerubbabel. In Matthew 1:12 and Luke 3:27 Zerubbabel is listed legally as Salathiel's son: but in 1 Chronicles 3:19 he is listed as the son of Pedaiah by actual blood relationship.

        In the terms of biblical reckoning these two statements are in no sense contradictory. We might wish to be more precise by substituting such extended terms of relationship as son-in-law, stepson, and so forth. But Scripture is not required to adopt our particular terminology. It is required only to be consistent with itself, and the facts of the case as recorded of those who were the actors in the drama are precisely as stated.

        We thus have a remarkable chain of events. Jehoiakim has a son, Jechonias, who has a son, Salathiel, who by Levirate custom has a son named Zerubbabel. This son, Zerubbabel, has no blood line connection whatever with Jechonias, for he has no blood relationship with Salathiel. The blood relationship of Zerubbabel is with Pedaiah, and through Pedaiah with Pedaiah's mother, and through this mother with Neri. Thus Neri begat a grandson, Salathiel, through his daughter; and Salathiel "begets" a son, Zerubbabel, through Pedaiah.

        The blood line thus passes through Zerubbabel: but so does the title also. The former passes via Pedaiah's mother, the latter passes through Salathiel's father. And though this mother and this father were also man and wife, the blood line stopped with Salathiel who literally died childless. It is necessary to emphasize this word literally, for it appears that it was literally true. Jeremiah 22:30 had predicted that Jechonias would also die "childless"-but we are reasonably sure that this was not literally the case, for he had a son Salathiel whom we cannot otherwise account for. But Jechonias' subsequent history tells us the sense in which childlessness was to be applied to him.

        Jechonias seems to have matured and softened during his thirty-seven years of imprisonment in Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar's son, Evil-Merodach, evidently took a liking to him and set him free, giving him a pension for the rest of his life (2 Kings 25:27-30: Jer. 52:31-34). He would by now be nearing sixty and probably be counted a harmless old man.

        Reading these two records of Scripture concerning this surprising act of clemency accorded to the last genuine king of Israel (until Messiah shall be crowned), one has a strange sense of the mercy of God and the potential for gracious action that even pagan kings could display in those days. It is a touching swan-song to the old kingdom of David's line which will yet be renewed in glory. At any rate, when Jechonias died, he seems to have died alone without male descendants, "childless" in his old age, as Jeremiah had predicted he would.

        As to Zerubbabel, he became a very prominent and worthy man in the rebuilding of Israel's fortunes after the Captivity, under the benevolent authority of Cyrus. He stands as No. 3 and No. 57 in the dual pedigree. He appears to have had several sons and one daughter (1 Chron. 3:19). We do not know why his sons were disqualified: we only know that their sister, Shelomith, inherited the title and carried the blood line. Both of these she passed on to her eldest son, Abiud, and so to Joseph. But with Joseph, as with Salathiel, the blood line terminated once again in so far as the Lord Jesus received nothing from him by natural procreation. However, Mary drew her line, the blood line, through Heli from Joanna (No. 59), the second son of Shelomith.

        And thus the Lord Jesus received the two guarantees of right to the throne of David: the blood line through his mother directly, and the title through his adopting father, Joseph. With his death and resurrection these two rights became locked for ever in his Person and cannot be passed on to, or henceforth claimed by, any other man.

        God announced very early that His plan for redemption involved the Messiah being brought forth from the tribe of Judah (1),  and specifically from the line of David 2.  The succession of subsequent kings proved to be, with only a few exceptions, a dismal chain. As the succeeding kings of Judah went from bad to worse, we eventually encounter Jeconiah (also known as Jehoiachin), upon whom God pronounces a " blood curse" : "Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah. (Jeremiah 22:30)

        This curse created a rather grim and perplexing paradox: the Messiah had to come from the royal line, yet now there was a "blood curse" on that very line of descent! (I always visualize a celebration in the councils of Satan on that day. But then I imagine God turning to His angels, saying, "Watch this one!")

        The answer emerges in the differing genealogies of Jesus Christ recorded in the gospels. Matthew, as a Levi, focuses his gospel on the Messiahship of Jesus and presents Him as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Thus, Matthew traces the  legal line from Abraham (as any Jew would) through David, then through Solomon (the . royal. line) to Joseph, the  legal  father of Jesus (3).

        On the other hand, Luke, as a physician, focuses on the humanity of Jesus and presents Him as the Son of Man. Luke traces the blood line from Adam (the first Man) through to David -- and his genealogy from Abraham through David is identical to Matthew's.  But then after David, Luke departs from the path taken by Matthew and traces the family tree through  another son of David (the second surviving son of Bathsheba), Nathan, down through Heli, the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus (4).

        One should also note the exception to the law which permitted inheritance through the daughter if no sons were available and she married within her tribe (5).

        The daughters of Zelophehad had petitioned Moses for a special exception, which was granted when they entered the land under Joshua.

         Mary's father, apparently had no sons, and Mary married within the tribe of Judah. Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, of the house and lineage of David and carrying legal title to the line, but without the blood curse of Jeconiah. [I believe that every detail in the Torah -- and the entire Bible -- has a direct link to Jesus Christ.  "The volume of the book is written of me." (Psalm 40:7) 

        This was no afterthought or post facto remedy, of course. It was first announced in the Garden of Eden when God declared war on Satan:  " I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel." (Genesis 3:15)

        The "Seed of the Woman" thus becomes one of the prophetic titles of the Messiah. This biological contradiction is the first hint -- in the early chapters of Genesis -- of the virgin birth.

        John also presents a genealogy, of sorts, of the Pre-Existent One in the first three verses of his gospel (6). The Prophet Micah also highlights this: " But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. (Micah 5:2)

THE SCARLET THREAD of Jesus
PROPHETIC SCRIPTURE	SUBJECT	FULFILLED
"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel," Genesis 3:15.	Born of the seed of man.	"But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law," Galations 4:4.
"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed," Genesis 12:3.	A descendant of Abraham.	"The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," Matthew 1:1.
"And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him," Genesis 17:19.	A descendant of Isaac.	Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor," Luke 3:34.
"I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth," Numbers 24:17.	A descendant of Jacob.	"Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; Matthew 1:2.
"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be," Genesis 49:10	A descendant of Judah	"Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda," Luke 3:33.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this," Isaiah 9:7.	Heir to the throne of David.	"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end," Luke 1:32 & 33.
"Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows," Psalms 45:6-7.   "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end," Psalms 102:25-27	Anointed and eternal.	"But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail," Hebrews 1:8-12.

"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting, Micah 5:2.	Born in Bethlehem.	"And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn," Luke 2:4-7
"Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times," Daniel 9:25	Time for HIS birth.	"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)," Luke 2:1,2.
"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel," Isaiah 7:14	To be born of a virgin.	"And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS, Luke 1:26-27 & 30-31
"Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not," Jeremiah 31:15	A slaughter of children.	"Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not," Matthew 2:16-18
"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt," Hosea 11:1	Their flight to Egypt.	"When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Matthew 2:14-15

"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it." Isaiah 40:3-5.	The way prepared.	"And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God," Luke 3:3-6.
Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts," Malachi 3:1.	Preceded by a forerunner.	"And when the messengers of John were departed, he began to speak unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee," Luke 7:24 & 27.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse," Malachi 4:5-6.	Preceded by Elijah.	"For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come," Matthew 11:13-14.
"I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee," Psalms 2:7.	Declared as the SON OF GOD.	"And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," Matthew 3:17.
"Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined," Isaiah 9:1-2.	Galilean ministry.	"And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up," Matthew 4:13-16.
"I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old: Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done," Psalms 78:2-4.	Speaks in parables.	"All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world," Matthew 13:34-35.

"The LORD thy GOD will raise up unto thee a PROPHET from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken," Deuteronomy 18:15	A prophet.	"And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you," Acts 3:20 & 22.
"The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn," Isaiah 61:1-2.	To heal the brokenhearted.	"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord," Luke 4:18-19.
"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not," Isaiah 53:3.	Rejected by HIS own people the Jews.	"He came unto his own, and his own received him not," John 1:11. "And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas," Luke 23:18.
"The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek," Psalms 110:4	A priest after the order of Melchizedek.	"So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec," Hebrews 5:5-6.
"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass," Zechariah 9:9.	HIS triumphal entry.	"And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve," Mark 11:7, 9, & 11.
"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger," Psalms 8:2.	Adored by infants.	"And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased, And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" Matthew 21:15-16.

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?" Isaiah 53:1.	Not believed.	"But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" John 12:37-38.
"Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me," Psalms 41:9.	Betrayed by a close friend.	"And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" Luke 22:47-48.
"And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver," Zechariah 11:12.	Betrayed for thirty pieces of silver.	"Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver," Matthew 26:14-15.
"False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not," Psalms 35:11	Accused by false witnesses.	"And there arose certain, and bare false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. Mark 14:57-58.
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth, Isaiah 53:7.	Silent to accusations.	"And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? behold how many things they witness against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marveled. Mark 15:4-5.
"I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting," Isaiah 50:6.	Spat on and struck.	"Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands," Matthew 26:67
"Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me: neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause," Psalms 35:19.	Hated without reason.	"If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause," John 15:24-25.
"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed," Isaiah 53:5	Stripped and Whipped	"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5:6 & 8.

"Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors," Isaiah 53:12	Crucified with criminals.	"And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors," Mark 15:27-28.
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn," Zechariah 12:10	Pierced through hands and feet.	"Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing," John 20:27
"All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him," Psalms 22:7-8.	Scorned and mocked.	"And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God, Luke 23:35.
"For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me," Psalms 69:9	Was reproached.	"For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me," Romans 15:3.
"For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer," Psalms 109:4.	Prayer for HIS enemies.	"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots," Luke 23:34
"I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture," Psalms 22:17-18.	Soldiers gambled for HIS clothing.	"And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots. And sitting down they watched him there; Matthew 27:35-36.
"To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?" Psalms 22:1	Forsaken by GOD.	"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

"He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken," Psalms 34:20	None of HIS bones are broken.	"Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. John 19:32-33, 36.
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn," Zechariah 12:10	HIS side is pierced.	"But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water," John 19:34
"And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth," Isaiah 53:9.	Buried with the rich.	"When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed," Matthew 27:57-60.
"For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption," Psalms 16:10.   "But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me," Psalms 49:15.	HE is ressurrected.	"And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you," Mark 16:6-7.
"Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD GOD might dwell among them," Psalms 68:18	HE ascends to the right hand of GOD.	"So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God," Mark 16:19.   "And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures," 1 Corinthians 15:4.   "Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men," Ephesians 4:8

When Paul wrote the letter to Rome, which was the capital of the Latin empire, he wrote that letter in Greek.  Wherever a man lived in the days of the Roman Empire, if he could read, he read Greek.  If he was educated, he knew Greek and Greek language and Greek customs and Greek culture and Greek philosophy and art and science and literature, everything Greek.  Alexandria covered the whole world with his Hellenizing missionary work.

When Alexander the Great died, the kingdom broke into four parts -- Cassander took Helen, took Greece.  Lysimachus took Asia Minor, Seleucus, whose father was Antiochus.  Antiochus took Syria and Ptolemy took Egypt.  For the first part of the Interbiblical Period, Palestine was under the Ptolemies, and it was very quiet and the high priests ruled.

But in 198 B.C., Antiochus the third, overwhelmed the Ptolemists and Palestine passed into the hands of the Seleucidae, the Seleucids.  And they were cruel.  One of them, Antiochus Epiphanes, took his army and he offered a sow on the great altar there in the temple court before the sanctuary, and he took the juice of that sow and he poured it all over the sanctuary to defile it.

And he dedicated it to Jupiter Olympus, to Zeus, the Greek name of the God, and he interdicted circumcision, and he interdicted the observance of the Sabbath.  And he interdicted the Jews' religion. 

Upon a day, there was a cowardly Jew in the little town of Modin, about 17 miles northwest of Jerusalem.  And that cowardly Jew was about to bow down and to worship at the shrine of Jupiter Olympus, and when he did, there was an aged priest by the name of Mattathias.

He lifted up his arm and he slew that cowardly Jew, and he lifted up his arms and he slew the emissary from Antiochus Epiphanes who was demanding the worship of the Hellenistic heathen god.  Then this man, Mattathias, took his boys, and they lived in the mountains and they carried on guerrilla warfare.

The first boy of that aged priest, Mattathias, was named Judas Maccabaeus, Judas the Hammerer, and Judas Maccabaeus, leading that guerrilla band, to the amazement of the world and to the astonishment of any student of history, he won Jewish independence from Antiochus Epiphanes.  And Judas lost his life.  Jonathan, the son of Mattathias, the younger son, carried on.

And when Jonathan was killed, Simon carried on.  And Simon, the Maccabaean, founded the Hasmonean, the Maccabaean dynasty.  His son was John Hyrcanus, and his son was Alexander Jannaeus, and his wife was Alexandra Salome, and her two boys were John Hyrcanus the second and Aristobulus the second.  And they were fussing and fighting in a civil war over who would raid and rule over Judea and Pompey in 63 A.D., came with his Roman legionnaires into Judea and before Jerusalem.

And he listened to the quarrel between John Hyrcanus the second and Aristobulus the second, and then he just took the thing into himself and made it a part of the Roman Empire.  The Hellenistic Jews were called Sadducees, and those who were very much opposed to Hellenism were called Pharisees.

So, when Jesus comes upon the scene, there is Herod the Great, an appointee of Rome, who is the king of the Jews.  And there are the Pharisees, who are very strenuously devoted to the law and against any kind of foreign oppression, and there are the Sadducees, who love to do business with Rome or with anybody who will provide them the emoluments of their office and keep them as rulers and leaders among the people.

And in those days, when Herod the Great was the king of the Jews, and when Augustus Caesar is the Roman emperor and when Rome has the entire world in her hands, the great prophecy of Isaiah and the great prophecy of Micah and the great prophecy of Jacob, to his son, Judah, and the great promise of God Almighty to Eve the woman, that great prophecy comes to pass.

In the seed as of one, in the seed of Abraham, shall all the families of the earth be blessed, and our savior is born into the world.  Why does he come? 

Our Lord came into this world to die for us sinners.  That's why He came, according to the word of God. 

The death of Christ was planned from before the foundation of the world when He gave Himself at the beginning to be the redemptive means of God for the purchase to Himself of Adam's lost and sinful race.  He came into the world to die.  "Thou shall call his name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins."

And as He began His ministry, He began His ministry under the shadow of the cross.  John raised his hand and introduced Him:  "Behold, behold, the Lamb of God."  Think what that meant to any Jew.  "Behold, the Lamb of God, every morning, every evening, thou was a sacrifice where the blood poured out and the Lamb offered unto God for the sins of the nation, for the expiation of all of the iniquity of the people.  Behold, said God, "This holds the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world."

And in His ministry, early He began to teach his disciples that He should suffer and die.  And when He was transfigured, there appeared Moses and Elijah talking to Him about His death in Jerusalem.  And when he was anointed by Mary of Bethany, it was to His burial, He said. 

And when the Greeks came to see Him from afar, "If I be lifted up," He said, "will draw all men unto me."  And in the Last Supper, He said, "This is my body.  Eat in remembrance of me, and this is my blood.  Drink in remembrance of me."  And when He went to the cross, He gave Himself at Gethsemane, the travail of His soul.  And when He bowed His head and died, He said, "It is finished."

When we preach the cross and when we preach the blood and when we preach the sacrificial death of Christ, we are preaching the meaning of His coming into the world and the great redemptive plan and purpose of God.  And on the third day, He was raised from the dead, and He appeared to Mary Magdalene first.  Then He appeared to the rest of the women.  Then He appeared to the two on the way to Emmaus.

Then he appeared to Peter alone.  Then that night, that Sunday night, He appeared to the ten disciples, Thomas being absent.  Then the next Sunday night, He appeared to the disciples, all 11 of them. 

He met with his disciples at night.  Then he met with the seven at the Sea of Galilee.  Then at 500, at one time, on the appointed mountain in Galilee, then with His disciples down in Jerusalem and then, as He ascended up to heaven on the top of Mount Olivet.  And it was then at that ascension that the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Lord, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"

And the Lord said, "It isn't for you to know the time or the season."  God has a kingdom, and it's coming.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, thy kingdom come.  It is coming.  There is a kingdom coming.  "Lord," said the thief who died by His side, "Lord, when you go into Thy kingdom, remember me, remember me."

There's a kingdom coming, but in the meantime, the Lord has placed a great intermission, a great interlude, a great parenthesis.  That is a mystery that Paul says the prophets didn't see.  And the Old Testament never refers to it or mentions it.

Just as the Rapture wasn't seen until today, the church was never seen from the Old testament.

There is to be a parenthesis between the rejection of the king and the kingdom and the time when king and kingdom shall come from God out of heaven.  And in this period of time, we call it the Age of Grace.  We call it the Age of the Holy Spirit.  We call it the Age of the Church. 

And in this dispensed time of grace, Jew, Gentile, males, females, bond, free, all of us are invited to belong to the household of faith in the church, the church of Jesus Christ.  And the Lord said to His disciples, "You're to be witnesses of these saints," not to bring in the kingdom.  He will bring in the kingdom.  There'll be sin here and violence here.

Daniel said, "Wars are determined unto the end, until the Great Armageddon."  Men will be dividing up.  They'll be preparing for war.  They'll be in conflict.  We'll never bring in the kingdom, but we are to be witnesses of the great announcement.  Come, come.  We all are invited in the love and grace of Jesus to belong to the same household of faith. 

We are to be witnesses of the grace of God until that great and final denouement, and so, they began.  First, the gospel is preached by Peter to the Jews, only to the Jews at Pentecost.  Then second, the gospel is preached by Phillip, a Hellenist, to the half-Jew, to the half-breeds up there at Samaria.  Then third, the gospel is preached to a temple proselyte, a full Jewish proselyte in Jesus, to the Ethiopian eunuch.

And the gospel is preached to a proselyte of the gate, a centurion at Caesarea.  And then in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Acts, the gospel is preached to idolaters, to heathen worshippers, the Greeks, who come out of their idolatry into the glorious faith of the Son of God.

And finally, the Lord says, "Separate me, Paul and Barnabus, for the work whereunto I've called them."  And Paul goes out and proclaims the gospel message to the whole wide civilized world.  So, the gospel begins to expand over the then- known earth, first by Peter, who is an apostle to the circumcision, who delivers the message to the Jews.

He doesn't have to keep the ceremony of law, he doesn't have to be circumcised, he doesn't have to keep the Mosaic commandments.  All a man has to do to be saved is to turn, to repent, to give his heart and love to Jesus, and God will save him forever.  "If thou shall confess with thy mouth to Lord Jesus and shall believe in thy heart that He lives, thou shall be saved, for with the heart one believeth unto a God kind of righteousness and with a mouth confession is made.  Unto salvation, come.  For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:9-10, 13). That's the gospel of Paul.

But they had trouble on their hands because they were preaching that a man could be a Christian just by trusting Jesus.  Then came the Jerusalem conference in Acts 15 when the Jews said, "You've got to be circumcised before you can be saved, you've got to keep the law of Moses before you can be saved.  A man can't be saved just by trusting Jesus.  You got to be baptized, you got to keep this, you got to do that."

"No," said Paul.  "A man's saved by faith and not by works, just by trusting Jesus."  And they had that big conference in Jerusalem, and that's what the Holy Spirit said, just like Paul was a preaching.  So, he went back up there, and on the second missionary journey, Paul and Silas, they go by a land and retrace their steps to all those other churches they'd already organized in Galatia.

And the whole world is turned upside down or right side up in his great, marvelous ministry at Ephesus.  And all Asia hears the word of God.  And now the gospel has spread throughout the world as we wait for Jesus' return.

           There are three fourteen generations of Jesus Christ depicted in Matthew's Gospel. Here Jesus is shown to be of the lineage of Abraham and David, thus fulfilling the Word that Messiah would be the seed of Abraham and the seed of David according to the flesh. The Bible number three is for resurrection and fourteen is for salvation and deliverance. "Fourteen" is found "three" times in Matthew when referring to Jesus as Messiah. "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations." (Matthew 1:17). Jesus Christ is our salvation being the resurrection and the life. Salvation will be consummated or completed in the redemption of our bodies being glorified like his glorious body.

         Women are not to be stated in Jewish lineage or pedigree since the line is determined by the seed of the man. However, we see four women mentioned in the genealogy according to Matthew; that is, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.  This teaches us that there is neither male or female "in the Lord", for we are all one in Christ Jesus by faith. By Jesus Christ being the seed of Abraham and the seed of David according to the flesh speaks of the natural fleshly lineage of David and Abraham.

        The genealogy of Luke traces back all the way to Adam showing Jesus of the lineage of Adam. Jesus Christ is the second or last Adam according to Paul in his letter to the church at Corinth. "The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven." (1 Corinthians 15:47). Jesus being the first begotten from the dead by resurrection made him the federal head of a new Godly race as the head of the body of Christ or church.  For the life of all flesh is in the blood. (Leviticus 17:11). Therefore, Jesus will shed his holy undefiled blood and give his life a ransom for the world's sin. Because life is in the blood, blood therefore is the life giving agent that is shed for the atonement upon the altar. The requisites of the early church was to abstain from things strangled and from blood. Jesus' blood had life and not death in it.

       His blood was natural blood as far as earthly chemical makeup is concerned. But the life which is in the blood was present in Jesus' blood which was not present in the blood of all mankind since Jesus never sinned; therefore, He had only a divine nature rather than a sinful nature. When God searched for a man to bring salvation and there was none, God's own arm brought salvation unto himself. God would shed his life's blood on the altar of Calvary for the sin of the world.

       Therefore, women are mentioned in the pedigree as well as Jeconiah (Coniah) who was cursed by God to never have seed upon the throne of David. The blood that flowed through Jesus' veins was the blood of Emmanuel. There is a stream at this present time that flows from Emmanuel's veins that washes all our guilty sins away. This is the Son of God's blood that was offered through the eternal Spirit in order to be a propitiation for our sins. 

         Jesus never sinned, therefore his blood was never corrupted. Therefore, his blood still atones today just as it did two thousand years ago. All sin (past, present, and future) focused at Calvary's cross upon Jesus who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Since sin is darkness and no light, there was no light of the sun or earthly natural light that shined from noon until three in the evening, by the space of three hours. When the last drop of Jesus' precious blood dropped from his broken body and hit congregated sin of all time, there was a great explosion causing a great earthquake. Rocks rent, earth shook, graves of the dead saints were opened as sin was destroyed by the power of the blood of Jesus.

          This was not the ordinary blood of fallen man, but the spotless, sinless, holy life's blood of God that flowed from the body of the Lamb of God from the cross of Calvary. Calvary's streams flowed blood of atonement to all those that are in Christ. The blood still flows today to take away sinners' guilt and condemnation and purge their conscience from dead works to serve the living God. This is blood called in spiritual hematology as blood that was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners in order to wash away sins, for the life of all flesh is in the blood. Some will say that this was the blood of an ordinary Adam just like yours and mine. Jesus' blood was different from ours in that he never sinned, never obtaining a sinful nature as Adam.

         Jesus was in the likeness of sinful flesh, but he never became sinful flesh and blood since He never sinned. Therefore, the blood of Jesus lives forever in that Jesus' life's blood never carried the weight of sin which brings forth death. Jesus was the only begotten Son of God in that he was born of a virgin. No other man has ever been born of a virgin with the Spirit of God resident in him as the Son of God. This is none other than God manifest in the flesh declaring the invisible God in fullness of revelation. Jesus is the offspring of David and the second Adam as declared by the genealogy in Matthew and Luke.