FINDING THE ANCIENT PATHS
Part I
We live in a broken world filled with pain, sorrow, and death. In the midst of this suffering is wholesale confusion as millions wake up every day without a clear compass to guide them in the journey of life. People in the 21st Century are in desperate need of a clear vision to guide them. In so many ways the voice of God has been shut out from this generation. In the midst of this darkness, we must know that God our Father has provided a North Star, a light that shines out of the darkness in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ancient pathways marked in Scripture. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is our North Star. The Word of God is our compass for successfully making the journey through this world. In the midst of all the confusion, noise, and conflict of this world, please consider revisiting the ancient pathways of our Christian forebears.
Pastor Dan Gayman
Six hundred years before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Prophet Jeremiah was commissioned to warn the Israelites of his generation to return to the “ancient paths” of their forebears. Prior to the invasion and plunder of the nation of Judah by the armies of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, Jehovah sought to turn the hearts of the people and thereby avoid the calamity and judgment that soon would befall them. Jeremiah made an appeal for the Israelites to ask for the old proven paths, find the good way, and walk therein: “Thus saith the LORD, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein” (Jer. 6:16).
The people that heard this word spoken by Jeremiah from Jehovah refused to turn back to the ancient paths and rejected the proven pathway that would lead to blessings, prosperity, and protection. Instead, they chose to mark their own pathways. Repeatedly, this anointed prophet called the people to return to the ancient pathways of God. As the nation moved closer to the impending judgment from God, Jeremiah gave this inspired word: “Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up” (Jer. 18:15). Refusing to turn back to Jehovah and the ancient pathways and find deliverance, the nation of Judah bowed their necks in defiance of Jehovah. In the end, they lost everything.
Just a few short years after this word from Jeremiah, the Southern Kingdom of Judah witnessed the complete demise of their country, the destruction of their temple and city, and the invasion and plunder of their country. Many of the people were killed and thousands were carried into captivity in the foreign country of the Chaldeans, with many of them being sent into the city of Babylon.
Today, modern Israel stands very much in the position of ancient Israel. We are in dire jeopardy of losing our country and heritage to a tidal wave of non-Israelite immigrants pouring into this country from every corner of the third world. The most massive invasion of any country in the annals of history has been underway since 1965 within the borders of the United States. The entire racial composition of America has undergone profound change since that time. People who are old enough to remember the 1950s barely recognize the country now. So much has changed in these last sixty-plus years. We opened the floodgates to new immigration laws passed by the U. S. Congress in 1965 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Since that infamous date, America has received as many as fifty million Mexican nationals, most of them crossing our porous, unprotected borders and arriving on United States soil as illegal aliens. Tens of millions of third world people from Central and South America, India, China, and elsewhere have arrived onto United States soil. Travel to any American city, and you may feel you think yourself in a foreign land.
If you travel to Seattle or San Francisco, you may believe that you just arrived in China. Visit Los Angeles, and you will think yourself in Mexico City. Walk down the streets in some parts of Detroit, and you may wonder if you are not from some Muslim country in Central Asia. Travel through Miami, and you can easily imagine yourself in Havana, Cuba. The Celtic, Anglo, Saxon, Germanic, and Scandinavians that once peopled America are becoming the minority in the very land their dear fathers and mothers sacrificed, bled, and often died to give them.
As the bells of judgment toll across America, there is an urgent need for Israel to return to the ancient paths, to find the good way, to return to their covenant God in humble repentance and confession that we have lost our spiritual and moral compass and urgently need to find the ancient paths. Millions of Americans are spiritually and morally lost. The millennial generation is on the brink of losing the very country that generations before them labored so hard to build. There has never been a time in our Celtic, Anglo, Saxon, Germanic, and Scandinavian history that we so desperately needed to return to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the Savior and Redeemer Who alone can guide our footsteps into the world crisis confronting Israelites throughout the entire Western world.
The need to find the ancient pathways traveled by generations of Anglo-Saxon and kindred forebears is now an imperative. Amid the deafening noise of the 21st Century, with all of its technological diversions and a never ending sensual menu served on television, covenant people of God must recapture the love of truth and righteousness that characterized the hearts and minds of former generations.
In this biblical excursion, we shall examine and retrace some of the ancient paths traveled by the Caucasians who traversed mountains, crossed oceans, deserts, plains, and carved their way through forests to explore and settle the great nations of the Western world. These ancient pathways are the biblical and moral highways traveled by former generations. These are the landmarks set by our fathers. We would be absolute fools to ignore or forget them, or even worse to defy God in our failure to humble ourselves and with penitent and contrite hearts seek His forgiveness as we purpose to find these pathways and guide the footsteps of our sons and daughters along them in the search for truth and godliness.
Serving the Biblical Jesus!
This is a reminder to all of us that if we desire true fulfillment, the only way can find it is in Jesus Christ and the lifestyle He followed. If you are looking to find ultimate satisfaction and inner peace with God that so many millions long for today, know this: you will find it only when you return to the ancient paths marked by our Covenant God, paths clearly marked in the Old and New Covenants. A careful study of the life of Jesus Christ as provided in the Gospels and of His apostles and the disciples who followed shows that they followed these same ancient paths. We Christians today should expect to do the same.
The Jesus of modern Christianity cannot be equated with the Jesus found in Bible. The Jesus of the modern “emerging church” is a bland, vanilla, sissified Jesus unknown in Scripture and history. Christianity demands a relationship with Jesus Christ as the Eternal Son of God. That relationship cannot be genuine if we seek to claim Jesus minus His lifestyle. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you must also become compatible with the biblical principles by which He lived. No one can ever hope to attain the moral or spiritual stature of Jesus Christ. But, we are surely living in spiritual fraud if we believe that we can be a follower of Jesus Christ and reject the moral principles that He believed, taught, and followed during His earthly pilgrimage. With that in mind, please turn to Genesis as we retrace the ancient paths clearly marked in Scripture. We, the remnant, must try to reclaim these pathways in Scripture that Jesus Christ believed, practiced, and confirmed.
A word of caution is in order before we remind you of these ancient paths ordained by our covenant God. The world opposes these ancient paths and offers to replace them with a multitude of distractions. Sometimes the appeal and lure of these worldly distractions will completely blind you to the reality of God and the path that He would have you walk. Will you choose the paths that our sovereign God ordained, or will you be lured into the ways of the world? The choices you make have far-reaching consequences.
As we briefly mark each of the ancient landmarks, notice how each of these
fundamental laws preceded the giving of the Law and Mt. Sinai. Centuries before Moses was born or the Israelites had been formed into a nation, long before the first Passover at the time of the Exodus, these paths were well established in Israel.
The Law of Kind after His Kind
This law first appears in Genesis 1:11-12: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” This is the first law of God and of nature, a fundamental law re-stated ten times Genesis chapter one. God gave every living being and thing in the animal and plant kingdom, the fishes of the sea and all flying creatures, instinctive, innate capacities to reproduce in kind. The word kind as used in Genesis could equally be defined as our word species. With an imagination that surpasses human understanding, our Creator God ordained tremendous variety within His created world. If He gave such attention to detail in the plant and animal world, surely one can see He meant no less for human kind to follow this law as well. God ordained that each species of the separately and distinctly created races would reproduce in kind. Therefore, any attempt on man’s part to deviate from God’s original design for each of the separate and unique races is a tragic violation of the Creator’s law of kind after his kind, a violation that has horrific consequences.
There are more than eighty-five species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). Consider that these creatures have been sharing the same oceans for millennia, yet have retained their original design. Genesis 1:21 declares, “God created great whales…” It is a wonderful tribute to the Living God and His original design in creation that even with so many different species of whales, each of these unique kinds has reproduced within its own species since the dawn of creation. Only the vain foolishness of mortal man would violate this first basic law of nature.
Christians have a moral duty to not only believe, but also to practice the law of kind after his kind. We have a duty to uphold and defend this law at every opportunity. The current wholesale miscegenation of the races is one of the most serious moral crimes any nation can tolerate. That this sin is now being practiced as a “state-sponsored crime” is an affront to God and will be remedied in the self-inflicted judgment on the heels of this crime in 21st Century America.
What About Jesus?
Yes, Jesus did know and observe the law of kind after his kind. In Mathew 15:24, Jesus declared, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” In John 10:27, Jesus declared: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” And, in Mathew 25:32, Jesus further declared that at His appearing in glory, He would separate the sheep from the goats, and “He shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left” (Matthew 25:33). In Matthew 7:6, Jesus warned His disciples to refrain from casting their pearls before the dogs and swine. Finally, the bride of Christ (Revelation 21:9) is identified with biblical Israel rather than the entire world. Surely we can agree that Jesus knew, believed, and practiced this basic law of nature.
The Law of Festivals
The Law of Festivals is established in Genesis 1:14-16: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: …And God made two great lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.” In the dawn of creation, Jehovah ordained the sun, the greater light, to rule the day, and the moon, the lesser light, to rule the night and be His Big Ben in the sky. The sun, moon, and stars were ordained for signs, seasons, days, and years. Of significance in this study is the word seasons, an English word derived from the Hebrew root #4150 in Strong’s Concordance, coming from a series of Hebrew root words meaning “an appointment, i.e., a fixed time or season; specially a festival, by implication, an assembly (as convened for a definite purpose; by extension a place of meeting, appointed season).”
Jehovah ordained from the foundation of the world specified times when His covenant people would gather for the celebration of significant events. God ordained that all the prophetic events in salvation history be in context with the seven annual holy days (festivals) known as Passover, Wave Sheaf celebration, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, the Day of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These biblical holy days stand in contrast to the pagan religious holidays celebrated in much of the world today and include the pagan celebrations of Easter and Christmas.
The Sabbaths, new moons (beginning of months), and annual festivals are established upon a solar/lunar calendar ratified in the Authorized King James Bible. The means by which the weekly Sabbath, new moons, and annual festivals are established follows:
1) The Bible tells us that Jehovah observes a day from evening to evening. The biblical Sabbath day begins at sunset of the sixth day, called the day of preparation (Genesis 2:2-3; Leviticus 23:32; Exodus 30:8-11, 23:12, Deuteronomy 5:12-15).
2) The Bible year begins on the new moon of the month of Abib, about two weeks before the barley harvest (Exodus 13:4). The new moons begin with the local astronomical new moon or dark of the moon closest to the vernal equinox; every new moon should be marked with blowing of trumpets. (Genesis 1:14; Exodus 12:2; Numbers 10:10; Psalms 81:1-4). An equinox occurs twice a year and is the day when daytime and nighttime are equal. The vernal equinox occurs around March 20, and the autumnal equinox approximately September 22. An equinox occurs when the plane of Earth’s equator passes the center of the sun. At that instant, the tilt of Earth’s axis neither inclines away from nor towards the sun.
3) As descendants of Biblical Israel, the chosen seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we are commanded to keep these various festivals. Jesus Christ, His apostles, and the disciples after them observed these festivals and continued to do so until the festivals became lost amid the pagan influences that came into Christianity (Exodus 23:14-17; Leviticus 23:1-44; Deuteronomy 16:1-17). Jehovah commanded that we keep His feasts “as a statute forever, throughout your generations in all your dwellings” (Leviticius 23:14, 21, 31, 41).
4) The Day of the Passover is on the 14th day of the first month (Exodus 12:1-8). Abib one occurs in late March or April and precedes the Feast of Unleavened Bread by fourteen days; it is a week-long festival beginning on the 15th of Abib, on or near the full moon, and ends on the 21st day of Abib (Leviticus 23:4-14). Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us (I Cor. 5:7).
5) The Feast of Pentecost is always on a Sunday, the 50th day counting seven Sabbaths from the Sabbath that occurs during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:15-16).
6) The Day of Trumpets begins on the first day of the seventh month from the month Abib or the 1st of Ethanim. This is the “astronomical” new moon of the seventh month usually around our September, meaning seventh. The Day of Atonement comes on the tenth day, with the Feast of Tabernacles beginning on the 15th day of Ethanim and ending on the 22nd, the Great and Last Day (Leviticus 23:22-44). Christ is our perfect Tabernacles (Heb. 9:11).
Each of these festivals marks eternal points on the time-line of salvation history. As long as these divine appointments are celebrated, God’s covenant people will never lose Jesus Christ or forget their heritage and spiritual, moral, and racial roots.
Passover marks the death of Jesus Christ, the Paschal Lamb, slain for the redemption of His people. The Wave Sheaf occurring during the week of Unleavened Bread marks Christ’s triumphant Resurrection and confirms His deity as the Eternal Son of God and Savior of Israel. Pentecost marks the advent of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter of Israel, the One Who sanctifies the redeemed people of God, giving honor to God’s eternal law. The Day of Trumpets signals the return of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead in Christ, and the re-gathering of Israel from the four ends of heaven and earth in preparation for Christ’s restored Theocratic Kingdom. The Day of Atonement marks the final judgment of God and tabernacles the full restoration of the Kingdom of God. The Last Great Day marks the beginning of the Eternal Age, when the Son will have delivered up the Kingdom to the Father. The Law of Festivals is the foundation for the great prophetic events of salvation history and is indispensable to the children of God.
Again, the Law of Festivals rests on the original design of the sun, moon, and stars, created specifically to mark the days, years, signs, and holy days. These divine appointments were ordained for our lawful worship and an orderly approach to worshipping Jehovah. Jesus Christ observed these holy days during His earthly ministry, as did the Apostles and disciples after them. We shall likewise celebrate them in the restored Theocratic Kingdom at the return of Jesus Christ. If you want to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, follow His example and observe His holy days.
The Law of Multiplicity
The Eternal God ordained the multiplication of children. God the Word declares this in Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” The multiplication of children, not by addition, but by multiplication, is the means by which Christian dominion of the earth occurs. Jehovah commanded His people, Adam kind creation, and Israel in particular, to multiply and extend their dominion over the earth: “He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).
One husband and wife with seven children provides a great example of dominion. If each of the seven children of the first marriage become parents of seven children, and this pattern is carried out for five full generations, more than 12,000 offspring will take root in God’s earth. The future belongs to those who will yield to the command of Jehovah God, forget the propaganda of the world, and allow God to determine when and how many children should be born. The command to seize dominion of the earth is only possible through the law of multiplication. When we allow birth control, abortion, childhood vaccines, and other impediments to prevail, the dominion of the earth will be lost.
The 21st Century is witness to state-sponsored birth control, abortion, and every other practice that will threatens the well being of children. State-sponsored Planned Parenthood is an outrageous example of state-funded abortion and murder. God-fearing families with love for Jesus Christ and compliance to His Word will quietly and prayerfully multiply children and refrain from childhood vaccines, public education, and all government-sponsored programs. They will trust God to guide and bless them in their dominion of His earth. The future belongs to those who have children!
Jesus Christ loved little children. His endorsement of the family and the multiplication of children is found in all of the Gospels. Jesus repeatedly gathered the little children around Him, blessed them, and demonstrated His love for them: “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are the children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate” (Psalm 127:3-5).
When God’s people refrain from multiplying children, foreigners come in and devour our God-given heritage. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s witnessed a complete transformation of the sexual behavior of Americans and adversely impacted the family. The introduction of the pill in the 1960s opened the floodgate for birth control, and the legalization of the murder of unborn children followed in 1973. Since the introduction of birth control and abortion, America has welcomed approximately seventy-five million non-White aliens into this once-great land. The price tag for disconnecting from the law of multiplicity has been absolutely horrendous. Let us pray that remnant Christians will return to the ancient pathways clearly marked in Scripture.
To be continued in the summer Watchman 2015.
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