Monday, June 14, 2010

Did Christ Identify the Antichrist?

Someone forwarded me a youtube presentation. His concern was to find the truth of the matter presented in that youtube clip. Here is the truth:

1. God used Greek (and some Aramaic) for the text of the New Testament. This should be sufficient for Christians. We do not need to "reverse engineer" the Greek back into the Hebrew to find hidden meanings.

2. Of course, the Old Testament is important for understanding the New Testament. And there are obvious texts in the NT that take a Hebrew word (such as YHWH--God's covenant name in Hebrew) and use the closest Greek equivalent (Kurios, Lord).

3.  The pronunciation system used for ancient Hebrew today is not monolithic. There are differences. These differences arise form different theories of where Hebrew originated and what other languages influenced it.

4. Thus, we do not actually know how ancient Hebrew was pronounced. If someone would dig up a dead Jew from that time period and get him to talk, then scholarly differences would disappear.

5. 'baraq' (lightning, either physical or metaphorical; sometimes 'glittering'). Naturally, the assumption is that if two words have the same sound in two different languages, their meaning must be the same! (In Russian the imperative, "go" can sound similar to "idiot" in English...need I say more?)

6. Bama: In 80 of 100 uses in the OT, the word refers to places of worship (Theological Wordbook of the OT).

7. What this means is that there are other more common words used for 'height' other than bama.

8. The conjunctive 'waw' (or 'vav') is not a preposition. There is a preposition "from" and it is not 'waw'. So why use the conjunctive?

9. Isaiah 14:12-19 is not the "Christian understanding" of Satan (Lucifer). It is the dispensational understanding. It is not the classical understanding of this set of verses.

10. "I saw Satan as Barack Obama" is not what a Jew would say in Hebrew. One little word is missing: "falling". That is a verb. And it is not a conjunctive.

11. Thus, to use this fanciful approach, the NKJV would read, "I saw Satan fall like Barack Obama".  This is a comparison not an identification. The word 'like' is used (in Greek) and no mention of antichrist exists.

12. Christ, according to this outrageous approach to holy Scriptures, is telling his Jewish audience to compare the fall of Satan with a then-unknown person. Certainly, Christ is not helping their understanding.

12. Assuming that the author's understanding of Ezekiel 14 is correct, would not Christ see Barack fall like Satan instead of Satan falling like Barack? 

13. So, to continue with this reductio ad absurdum, the Hebrew equivalent to "fall" is 'napal.' The Greek word order puts "fall" at the end of the sentence. So, "I saw Satan like (as) Barack Obama (in) Napal."  (Napal (or nopol) is a city in the Philippines). Or maybe there is another "Obama" with a last name of "Napal"?

14. Or maybe this guy just missed the boat because "Barack" could come from the Hebrew word "to bless". In which case, Satan is like the "blessed" Obama.  Maybe there is a limit to the creative author's mind after all!

15. But I think the author did his audience a favor in the concluding small text explaining that no one really knows what Hebrew or Aramaic words Jesus used.

Instead, he thinks, "No harm, no foul"--a none-to-terribly Christian approach to the Ninth Commandment.  Innuendos and insinuations are just as prohibited to Christians as to the average politician.

He ought to retract such nonsense before he further drags the good name of Christians into the mire. Unless, of course, he wishes to debate someone with actual biblical credentials?

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