Issued: 3/4/23

PLEASE NOTE:  All bracketed material may be authorial comments, attempts at proper syntax, or minimal rewordings of Scripture for the sake of clarity and continuity.  These emendations will not be italicized.  The “/” will be used to signify “and/or.”

   In differentiating between Yahweh of hosts [later Jesus] and Yahweh the Most High God, lower case letters have been used when discussing the former; upper case letters are reserved for the One and Only Highest God.  Since Jesus was at pains to differentiate himself from God the Father, we have followed his lead here.

   The term neo-Christians will be used to differentiate between false Christians and Jesus’ true followers.

   Last time we introduced the notion of the Bible being like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces need to be reassembled in order to get ‘the picture.’  However, that analogy was not quite correct, since jigsaw puzzles come in boxes with pictures telling us exactly what the end result should be.  Scripture does not work quite that way:  Linking verses and prophecies does yield an image through hard work and prayer for understanding; but that image is fragmentary, not entirely discernible to all (Mark 4:11-12; 1Corinthians 2:14) and was never intended to be perceived by Old Testament writers.

   This is made clear by Peter in 1Peter 1:10-12:  “This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you.  They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ¹ within them was talking about [2Peter 1:20-21] when He told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and his great glory afterward.  They were told that their messages were not for themselves [Jeremiah 30:24; Daniel 12:4,8-9], but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those [Christians] who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven.”  Old Testament Patriarchs and Prophets may have dealt with issues that came to pass within or after their lifetimes, like the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians [i.e., Isaiah vs. Jeremiah]; but the complete understanding of Jesus’ divinity and peeks into future events gleaned from the Israelite experience were reserved for Christian converts once Jesus booted out human intermediaries (Luke 16:16) and he became the ‘anointer’ of the teaching Holy Spirit (Matthew 23:8; 1John 2:27).

   Let us illustrate.  Zechariah 12:10 says, “They will look to me—the one whom they pierced”; which John 19:37 uses to signify Jesus.  Two pieces that fit, but that is not the whole picture.  Zechariah 12:10 continues:  “Then they will mourn for him, as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him, as for a firstborn son.”  While there has been a switch from speaking in the first person to the third, further pieces fall into place:   Jesus is both only Son (John 3:16) and firstborn of all creation (Psalms 2:7; Colossians 1:15; Revelation 3:14), so he is the subject of both prophecies.  If this is true, then the first speaker in Zechariah 12:10 is the pre-existent Jesus, Yahweh of hosts, speaking from Heaven; which then links us to Ezekiel 34:11:  “This is what the Lord Yahweh [of hosts] says: ‘Watch me!  I am going to search for my flock. I’ll watch over them myself” (John 10:14-16↔Ezekiel 34:23) and “I will judge between the sheep and the goat” (Ezekiel 34:17↔Matthew 25:32).  The third-person speaker in Zechariah has got to be the Holy Spirit. ²

   So now we have reassembled a portion of the picture:  Yahweh of hosts became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth to take over the religious instruction of his people which priests had failed to impart (Malachi 2:7-8).  However none of these things were obvious either to Zechariah or to Ezekiel, for it is in the New Testament that Jesus revealed himself at large as the interactive Old Testament Angel God, Yahweh of hosts (John 20:28; Acts 27:23↔Genesis 21:17, 22:11-12, 48:15-16; Exodus 3:2,4-6, 24:10-12; Judges 13:9-18³; Hebrews 1:5-14↔Revelation 22:9).

   The fact that some Patriarchs and Prophets spoke directly with Yahweh of hosts (Genesis 18:25↔John 5:22; Genesis 32:30, Judges 6:22↔John 5:37) tells us they were dialoguing not with the never heard Most High Yahweh, but with His Spokesperson/Mediator, Yahweh of hosts (John 1:18; 1Timothy 2:5↔Hebrews 13:8).  When Jesus said that Moses wrote about him (John 5:46), he was not singling out Deuteronomy 18:15; but was referring to all the times Moses had interacted with him since their encounter on the top of Mount Sinai (Exodus 3), throughout the Exodus, to their one-on-one conversations over the Ark of the Covenant inside the Tabernacle (Exodus 25:22, 33:11; Numbers 14:14; Deuteronomy 5:4).

   The upshot here is to prove the error of Trinitarian dogma:  God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus may be three distinct beings with one objective in mind (1John 5:7), it being carrying out the Most High’s will, but they are not One Person and God is not a Trinity.  Having discussed these things before, let us instead focus on how placing the right pieces next to one another reveals the overall message; so that now we are ready to attack our Biblical puzzlers.

Exodus 4:24-26

“On the way at a lodging place, Yahweh met Moses and wanted to kill him.  Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet; and she said, ‘Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.’  So he let him alone. Then she said, ‘You are a bridegroom of blood,’ because of the circumcision.’”

  The first thing to notice is the lack of clarity, so that the first thing we need ponder is this:  Is it done on purpose and to what end?  For example, at whose feet does Zipporah cast her son’s prepuce:  Yahweh’s or Moses’?  One would think Moses’, but the next line makes us question that:  “So he [who must be Yahweh] let him [obviously the endangered Moses] alone.”  It seems, then, that Zipporah cast the prepuce at Yahweh’s feet to appease him and to let Moses off the hook.

   If Zipporah is addressing Yahweh, then she is seeing him, so the Yahweh in question is the Son, Yahweh of hosts.  Since Zipporah was Moses’ wife, the reference to a ‘bridegroom’ brings to mind the very word Jesus used to identify himself with respect to the Apostles (Mark 2:19; Luke 5:34), themselves part of Jesus’ Bride, the Church/Heavenly Jerusalem (Ephesians 5:23,30-32; Revelation 21:9).  That fact, coupled with Moses’ admission that he was Jesus’ precursor (Deuteronomy 18:15), establishes a link between shadow, what is happening, and substance, what it is intended to mean.

   What is at play here?  Why would Yahweh of hosts want to kill the very man he has chosen to deliver his people?  And given what we know about Satan’s role as mankind’s slayer (Isaiah 14:16-17,20; Ezekiel 21:3,9-15; Revelation 6:8), would Yahweh of hosts personally have ever attempted to kill Moses?

   For that we need to jump forward to Exodus 12:23:  “For Yahweh [of hosts] will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two door posts, Yahweh will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.”  Who is doing the killing?  The destroyer, not Yahweh of hosts, who is inspecting lintels and door posts to make sure that complying Israelites will not be stricken down.

    We find the same correspondence in 2Samuel 24 and 1Chronicles 21.  2Samuel 24:1 reads, “Again Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel, and he moved David against them [i.e., to undertake a course of action harmful to the nation], saying, ‘Go, count Israel and Judah.’”  The first thing to consider is that neither God nor any heavenly being compels people to sin:  Sin is a willful, human act (James 1:13-14).  Satan may tempt people to transgress, but only after the desire to transgress has hatched in their hearts—Judas being a prime example.  Judas loved money (John 12:6).  Satan seized on this and put the idea in Judas’ head to betray Jesus for lucre (John 13:2).  Having reached the point of no return, Satan entered Judas’ body, made him strike a deal with the Temple priests (Matthew 26:14-15; Luke 22:2-6); and made him lead the arresting soldiers to Jesus (John 18:2-3).  The rest is Christian history.

   From Cain onwards the stipulation was that although sin was always at one’s door, it was possible to resist it and overcome it (Genesis 4:7; James 4:7)—the example Jesus gave us (Luke 4:1-13).  In Jesus’ own case the Holy Spirit provided the opportunity for Satan to tempt Jesus (Luke 4:1-2) in order to test Jesus’ mettle; but Satan could not prevail against Jesus because Jesus’ followed divine rules of satanic engagement:  Obey God and tune out temptations.  The same idea is implicit in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13), which Francis, the Bishop of Rome, would like to rephrase because the statement, “Lead us not into temptation,” suggests God is abetting men’s temptations.  Not the case:  Jesus was telling people to ask God to spare them difficult challenges, something Jesus himself prayed for (Matthew 26:39).

   The issue at hand is the same as in Luke 22:31-32:  Some higher up—never the Father (James 4:7)—must allow Satan to beset men.  That only leaves Jesus, who is the Father’s Steward/proxy God over Creation (Matthew 28:18; Revelation 1:18).  In Luke Jesus confirms to have appealed to the Father to strengthen Peter’s faith; so that when he taught the Lord’s Prayer to his followers, he was directing them to do as he had done:  The Father made the final determination (John 17:15,20).  The best illustration of this is in Job 1 and 2, wherein Satan could attempt nothing against Job unless given permission by Yahweh of hosts—and then within certain parameters (Job 1:12, 2:6↔1Corinthians 10:13).

   So viewed like this, 2Samuel 24:1 suggests that David neglected his duties to the nation and Israel backslid somehow, thus enraging Yahweh and holding David responsible for that.  It was not the best of times for David to be singing his praises; thus Yahweh allowed Satan to tempt David into undertaking a course of action that would have repercussions for all.

   Now, counting people was not intrinsically wrong (Genesis 46:8-27; 1Samuel 11:8; 1Chronicles 23:3; Ezra 2:64-65); but what seems to have been David’s faux pas was overweening pride:  By counting his people, he sought confirmation of the power he believed he himself had amassed.  It is very telling that in Daniel 4:30↔Deuteronomy 8:17-18 that was the reason for which Nebuchadnezzar was robbed of his sanity until acknowledging the Most High’s role in human accomplishments (Daniel 4:17,34-35).  It is also germane that Satan, the true power behind Babylon (Isaiah 14:4-6) and Egypt (Ezekiel 29:3) is faulted for the same hubris.

   It is in 1Chronicles 21:1 that Satan is revealed as exacerbating David’s ego and inciting him to take the ill-fated census.  In both 2Samuel 24 and 1Chronicles 21, Joab, who seems to understand David’s actions are bound to displease Yahweh, warns David against going on with the census; but David overrides him and Satan is unleashed to bring plague over the nation.  To his shame and discredit, David evades responsibility for his actions (1Chronicles 21:11-13), gambling on Yahweh’s mercy to be spared punishment at the hands of men.  The resulting plague killed 70,000 men (1Chronicles 21:14), a horror that seems to have cut David to the deep.  Then comes the clincher:  “God [Yahweh of hosts] sent an angel [Satan] to Jerusalem to destroy it.  As [Satan] was about to destroy, Yahweh [of hosts] saw, and he relented of the disaster, and said to the destroying angel, ‘It is enough. Now withdraw your hand’” (1Chronicles 21:15).

   This chapter is pithy with information.  We know that the Yahweh who orders Satan to stay his hand is none other than the Yahweh of hosts who on occasion goes back on his word (see Jonas 2:10), something the Most High would never do (Numbers 23:19; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 6:17-18).  The sword-wielding, plague-deploying angel is Satan (1Chronicles 21:16↔Revelation 6:8); and the area upon which he was hovering became the site for the Jerusalem Temple later built by Solomon (1Chronicles 21:16, 22:1).  Which brings us to another example of one Yahweh exalting a higher Yahweh, a replay of Exodus 34:5-7:  “Then Yahweh’s angel [of hosts] commanded [the prophet] Gad to tell David that David should go up and raise an altar to Yahweh [the Most High] on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite” (1Chronicles 21:18).

   In summary, Israel had strayed from God; David, their appointed shepherd, had abdicated duty in favor of self-glorification; both he and Israel had collectively defaulted on God’s covenant; and since the buck stopped with David, everyone was subject to penalties.  Satan was allowed to act; and since he is king over all the sons of pride (Job 41:34), he zeroed in on David’s pride like maggots on rotten flesh.  As with Nebuchadnezzar, David was shown who was Boss; and after eating humble pie, he offered holocausts to Yahweh and all was kosher with Him again.

   Now let us go back to Exodus 4:24-26.  What had Moses done to alienate God?  Better ask what did Zipporah do to make things right?  She cut her son’s prepuce, a binding requisite under the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 17:10-14) that became enshrined in Mosaic Law (Leviticus 12:2-3).  So here was Moses, chosen leader of God’s people, a Hebrew by birth and probably circumcised according to tradition,⁴ who had failed to confirm God’s covenant by not circumcising his own son.  In summary a religious leader who had failed to obey rules; and by transgressing, had become an open target for Yahweh’s slayer, Satan.⁵  For here again we find evidence of Yahweh assuming responsibility for Satan’s actions:  As in the cases of the first-born-kill-off plague and David’s census, Yahweh of hosts was present and controlling Satan’s actions.  So it was Satan, allowed by Yahweh of hosts, who tried to slay defaulting Moses en route to Egypt, while Zipporah’s actions appeased Yahweh by doing what Moses had failed to do.

   Who specifically did Zipporah accuse of being a “bridegroom of blood” is equally applicable to bridegroom Moses as to bridegroom Jesus.  Zipporah was not too happy about having circumcised her child, a shocking and painful rite from which women were spared.  On the shadow side, she was letting Moses have it for having put her through that predicament; on the substance side, Zipporah embodied the Church dependent on spilt blood for the remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22), and very possibly those members whose courses of action may result in harm to loved ones (Hebrews 11:35-37).  When Paul talks about struggling against sin, the shedding of one’s blood is the limit (Hebrews 12:4); though Jesus had pushed the envelope further:  He had taught that betraying faith to stay alive damned a person’s chance of securing immortal life (Matthew 16:25).  For both Jesus and Paul, dying for God was a no-brainer; but like Zipporah, when push came to shove, they also wished—as we all probably will—for different alternatives to the onus God placed on them (Matthew 26:39; 2Corinthians 12:8-9; Hebrews 12:5-7,11; 1Peter 3:17).

   This is the message implicit in the Abraham-Isaac narrative.  When Yahweh of hosts, the proxy Angel God, asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a test of faith [he was speaking directly to Abraham], Abraham did not dance the conga until he got to Mount Moriah; instead he dreaded doing away with his beloved son, all the while believing that God would step in somehow to take care of things (Genesis 22:1-2,8).  While the Genesis narrative does not make us privy to Abraham’s thoughts, the Holy Spirit through Paul does:  “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered Isaac…for he reckoned that God is even able to raise a man up from among the dead, [from among which, figuratively speaking] he received Isaac again” (Hebrews 11:17,19).

   However shockingly super-parents react to such a request, it was never God’s plan to condone human sacrifice in any shape or form—a practice that Satan nevertheless seems to have encouraged through pagan gods (Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-3; Jeremiah 32:35).⁶  The point was that for the God for Whom all things are possible, death is a non-issue; and that by forfeiting what they held most dear, men gave God  the greatest proof of their faith and trust in Him.  In Abraham’s case, if Yahweh the Most High personally had made Isaac heir to His promises (Hebrews 6:13), Abraham was convinced He would manage to bring them about.  And what Paul refers to in the ‘figurative’ sense harks both to a rebirth in Christ while alive (2Corinthians 5:17) and the resurrection of the righteous after death.  Death is a transition, a momentary inconvenience, the limit of Satan’s power over men—not the end (1Corinthians 15:54-55; Hebrews 2:15).

   So like Zipporah, we the Church are not entirely wrong in viewing Jesus as a bridegroom of blood:  Through his blood we are cleansed of sin (Revelation 7:14); and in the race for salvation, we may have to sacrifice self-interests/loved ones for his sake “to the point of shedding blood.”  But let us not be hypocrites and boast of embracing suffering as fun and games:  It might be a case of do and die if we aspire to partake of Jesus’ inheritance (Romans 8:17), but that is a far cry from raring to undergo the experience.  The difference here is one of semantics:  The “prepuce” we must cut off is a figurative one ‘covering our hearts’ (Jeremiah 4:4; Romans 2:28-29); only that in Christianity, circumcision applies to both men and women—who lack prepuces in the conventional sense.

   To wrap things up, what Zipporah basically did was to make amends for Moses’ transgression.  When David repented and offered holocausts to God, “Yahweh [of hosts] commanded the angel [Satan] (to) put his sword back into its sheath” (1Chronicles 21:27); when Zipporah performed the required circumcision, the Abrahamic covenant was again in force and Moses was covered.  The attack on Moses signaled that Yahweh had withheld His protection from Moses and that some sort of correction had to made to set things right.

The Mysterious Affair at Endor (1Samuel 28)

   The sealing of Saul’s fate at Endor came in incremental missteps.

   Saul had relied on Samuel like Linus on his security blanket.  While Samuel was at hand to advice him, Saul performed relatively okay; but when Samuel was absent, Saul had the propensity to jump the gun with disastrous consequences (1Samuel 13:8-13, 14:17-32, 15:1-11,18-28,35).  This reads like a case of ‘three-strikes-you’re-out’; but in point of fact it is a cautionary tale of the consequences of disobeying God while trying to second-guess Him.  Whereas Abel knew the score, Cain was the first to fall into the trap of rethinking holocaust protocols (Genesis 4:3-4).  Most Judeo-Christians have chosen to follow his lead—which is the reason why we are all in hot water.

    Following Saul’s election, the Holy Spirit had indwelled him (1Samuel 10:10, 11:6); but after his rejection, only tenants of the opposition went in and out of him (1Samuel 16:14,23, 18:10, 19:9).  Thus Saul was ‘possessed’ by uncontrollable urges to kill Jonathan, his son (1Samuel 20:30-33, 23:14), and David (1Samuel 18:11, 19:10)—a precedent which should be taken to heart by our end-times generation given the prophesied human condition (Matthew 10:21; 1Timothy 4:1-2; 2Timothy 3:1-5; Revelation 9:20-21).  In these times of congratulatory self-reinventions given dwindling moral resources, it behooves us to remember that “pride goes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18); and that when “the wicked spring up as the grass, and all the evildoers flourish, they will be destroyed forever” (Psalms 92:7)—the stuff of every day news.

   Saul’s trip to Endor was another example of his inability to follow rules.  It is an article of faith that Yahweh will ensure the victory of his warriors no matter how overwhelming the might deployed against them (Numbers 14:9; Joshua 1:1-9; 1Samuel 17:32-37,46; 2Chronicles 20:17; Psalms 129:2; Jeremiah 1:8; Matthew 16:18; Acts 26:17; Revelation 20:7-10); but by this time Samuel was dead (1Samuel 28:1); and no matter how far Saul pushed the envelope to contact Yahweh—in his recidivist way (1Samuel 13:8,13, 28:6), no reply was forthcoming.  So like Cain Saul improvised; did what he was told not to do; and by that token, if not already in Satan’s bag, he put the final nail in his coffin (Romans 6:16).  He decided to contact Samuel through a medium.

   Such transgression was strictly forbidden (Deuteronomy 18:11↔Isaiah 8:19), but Saul had never been an exemplar of obedience.  He was in a bind, outnumbered by surrounding Philistine armies (1Samuel 28:4-5), and he needed a plan of attack from the supernatural realm.  Thus he tricked the Endor medium into forecasting for him—apparently she was lying under the radar following Saul’s purges (1Samuel 28:3,8-10).  And now begins the puzzling aspect of the narrative:  The medium did as she was told and professed to have conjured up Samuel’s spirit (1Samuel 28:11-14).

   Before going into the nitty-gritty of the Endor enigma, a short summary of what happens when any human being dies:  His soul goes back to God into a state of unconsciousness, by-passing purported tunnels of light and welcoming spirits, and never again capable of involvement in human affairs (Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, 12:7).  This is more than amply demonstrated by Scriptures like Genesis 25:7,17, 35:18,29, 47:30, 49:33; Luke 8:52-55; John 19:30, 20:17; 1Thessalonians 4:15-17).  So it all boils down to believing Scripture’s version [the Holy Spirit knows what He is talking about] or the tsunami of human, ‘back-to-life’ testimonials [obviously implanted by the opposition].  If the latter resonate more with readers, fine and dandy:  Now you have been told the score.

   Back to Endor…The medium described an old man wrapped with a robe, who Saul took to be Samuel (1Samuel 28:14).  It has been posited that Satan appeared to Saul in Samuel’s likeness; and although it is true that Satan “himself masquerades as an angel of light” on occasion (2Corinthians 11:14),” this interpretation is by no means definitive.  1Samuel 28:15 identifies the spirit as Samuel; and we cannot believe that the Holy Spirit, inspirer of Scripture, would have tried to pull a fast one on us.  When Satan acts through people, he is always identified as the de facto perpetrator (1Kings 22:20-22; Luke 22:3; John 13:27; Acts 5:3).  In the Endor narrative, the actual Samuel seems to have been awakened and sent to throw the book at Saul.

  Two verses support this interpretation: 1Samuel 28:13,15.  In verse 13 two bits of information:  The apparition somehow reveals his true identity to the medium, whereupon she blasts Saul for the deception.  More significantly, she claims to have seen “gods” rising from the ground.⁷  What does this remind us of?   The resurrection of the righteous; and of the fact that once their bodies are made immortal, they will be like Father and Son both in their true image and sharing their nature (Job 19:26-27; Psalms 17:15; 1Corinthians 15:51-54; 1John 3:2).  We have also Psalms 82:6, which Jesus reiterated in John 10:34-35:  “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, “You are gods?…[they] to whom the word of God came…’”.  Which leads us to conclude what?  That by embracing God’s word, we are figuratively god-like by virtue of His Spirit indwelling our bodies (1Corinthians 3:16) and if ultimately victorious, truly god-like by sharing His divine attributes.

  So the Holy Spirit, through the Endor medium, was confirming Samuel’s identity, which is further established by Samuel’s claim that he had been asleep and Saul had disturbed his rest.  And what does this in turn remind us of?  Revelation 6:9-11:  The souls of departed faithful who had flown back to God and rested asleep under the heavenly altar—as Samuel seems to have been.  It is not that Samuel had actually resurrected, for every dead righteous since Abel will not precede the living faithful at end-times (1Thessalonians 4:15); but that by linking the resurrection and the notion of death as a sleep, the Holy Spirit was establishing the apparition’s bona fides.

   Some readers will question whether the Most High God would abet a forbidden practice by allowing Saul to contact Samuel through a medium.  Apart from the fact that He will do as He pleases while running His show (Isaiah 46:10; Daniel 4:35), it is not without precedent that in the absence of ‘kosher’ channels, God made do with whatever was at hand:  In Balaam’s case, a talking ass (Numbers 22:21-38); in Sisera’s case, a upstart prophetess (Judges 4:4,9, 5:7); in Belshazzar’s case, writing on the wall (Daniel 5:1-6); and in Caiaphas’ case, prophecy wrapped up in plans of betrayal (John 11:49-52).

  Yahweh did not force Saul to consult the Endor medium:  Saul made that decision on his own; so that if Satan was leading Saul by the nose to do what was forbidden, we guess Yahweh felt Saul was entitled to a comprehensive explanation of why and how he was barking up the wrong tree; hence Samuel’s cameo appearance—after which we surmise Samuel went back to sleep until Jesus’ second coming.

   And one final observation:  The dead Yahweh does not wish men to consult are not the spirits of departed human beings, for as we have explained, following death every mortal soul goes back to God in a state of unconsciousness.  The ‘dead’ that some people consult—and we are here speaking from personal experience that such communications are possible and do take place—can only be fallen angels [by definition, already toast↔ Jude 1:6-7] alive and tricking throughout the centuries until they are incinerated at Armageddon (Revelation 20:14).

    If an exception was made in Saul’s case, who labored under the impression shared by billions that chats with departed mortals could be had, it was because Saul needed an answer; and we needed not only a foundation to correlate with other teachings, but to know what was and still is at play in what Paul called “the mystery of iniquity” (2Thessalonians 2:7).

¹ Meaning the Holy Spirit, the Second Person of our Dyadic God, Himself one independent Mind revealing what He is told (John 16:13) and interceding on our behalf before the Most High God (Romans 8:26-27).  Peter calls Him “the Spirit of Christ” in the sense that Jesus sends Him (John 15:26), but this should not be understood to mean that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are consubstantial–easily disproven by the fact that while the Holy Spirit is privy to the depths of God (1Corinthians 2:10), there are things that the Most High withholds even from Jesus himself (Mark 13:32; Acts 1:7).

   Also the Holy Spirit must be held in a reverence not necessarily accorded to Jesus (Matthew 12:31-32).

² As required by Biblical methodology (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:1; 2Corinthians 13:1), Jesus gives testimony and the Holy Spirit corroborates it.

³ Leading to further links:  Judges 3:10↔Exodus 3:14; John 18:5-6; and Judges 13:18↔Isaiah 9:6.

⁴ After birth, Moses stayed with his family for 3 months (Exodus 2:2).  His circumcision must have taken place when he was 8 days old (Genesis 17:11-12).

⁵ The notion implicit in Luke 12:48:  “Everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

⁶ The Bible does not answer every question about the human experience:  It limits itself to issues of sin and salvation.  It does not tell us, for example, why there are different races in the world, given that the nations were populated by Noah’s descendants (Genesis 10:32).  Respective world mythologies have their fanciful versions; science relies on evolution, though evolutionary timetables do not jibe with the chronologies of Scripture stretching back a few thousand years (See Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38).

  Non-essential human concerns are answered by implication rather than directly; for example the non-existence of dinosaurs as per Genesis 1:20-22 [birds being descended from dinosaurs] and the Flood narrative [not 65 million years ago when dinosaurs allegedly became extinct; and if living then (Genesis 7:8-9,21-22), not among the animals in the Ark].  Another example is the non-existence of extraterrestrial life, not only suggested by the disappearance of our cosmos to be replaced by a new one, but in prophesied heavenly signs (Isaiah 65:17; Matthew 24:35; Luke 21:11; Revelation 6:13-14).

   While these matters are of no importance in God’s redemptive plan, maybe they were implied knowing that they would resonate with end-times generations; so they are hinted at as warnings to an apostate humanity not to be taken in by them.  There is no denying the global appeal of dinosaurs, UFOs, and aliens right before world’s end.

  While these things stand outside doctrinal norms, is it not possible that human sacrifice, specifically parents offering their children to deities, was a corruption of teachings implicit in the Abraham-Isaac affair?  Or that maybe the mindset leading to cannibalism was a perversion of the Lord’s Supper?  If Enoch was preaching Christian doctrine in the early stages of civilization (Jude 1:14-15) and then came the Flood leaving a handful of people to pass on half-remembered lore, who is to say that orthodox doctrine, however incomplete back then, did not devolve into abominable practices?

⁷ Go to biblehub.com and note how different translations render the passage.  Because only Samuel appears, some translators are uncomfortable with the term “gods” and render it as “godlike” or “divine” being.  ‘Gods’ implies plurality of divinities, and we know that excepting Yahweh the Most High, there are no other gods other than Him (Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 45:5); so these translators are trying to toe the standard line by fudging meaningful markers.