Publications
Partners
At sunset today (Fri 13/9) Yom Kippur 5774 will start and end tomorrow again at sunset. If we go on Israel time then 18:49 tonight. Israel is one hour ahead of us, in other words the sun will set in Israel at 17:49 our time.
Yom Kippur is the most holiest day on the calendar. The period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is a time of inward looking and drawing closer to our Creator. It’s a time of making teshuvah or repentance. The Jewish people are the custodians of the festival but instituted by YHVH/Hashem or (Our Father- as Yeshua taught)
One of my favourite passages of Scripture is when Yeshua was called to the Torah in his local synagogue of Nazareth. We read in Isaiah 61 and Luke 4:18: ‘ The Spirit of Adonai is upon Me; because He has anointed me: to announce the Good News to the poor; He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the imprisoned and renewed sight for the blind, to release those who has been crushed to proclaim a year of favour of Adonai.’
As mentioned before, this was the time when Yeshua announced that He was indeed the Mashiach. Some scholars believed that He read this passage at the Yom Kippur service. When He told them that this prophecy by Isaiah had just been fulfilled in their ears, they freaked out completely and nearly threw Him off a cliff. At times it is difficult to understand why the Jews they reacted in this way. As stated before, the expectation of Messiah was (and is) highly emotionally charged. If you and I were in that synagogue and Jewish at the time, what would we have done? Probably the same as those who were there…
The other day I listened to a Jewish Rabbi talking about Mashiach. I knew that this man talking about Mashiach does not believe in Yeshua. But when He talked about the Mashiach you could sense a deep and almost raw reverence and awe for Mashiach. This is something Gentiles, even many Christians do not quite get. See we have been fed on a watered down version of Mashiach for hundreds of years. Mashiach’s task was to make atonement for all mankind.
Prophetically Yom Kippur speaks of the appearance of Mashiach. When will Messiah appear? Well, Rabbi Yitzhak Keduri was a highly esteemed Rabbi who died in 2006 (29 Tevet 5766) and was more than 100 years old. More than 300,000 appeared in the streets of Jerusalem to honour him at his funeral. Keep in mind that Jews are buried within 24 hours. So the news of his death spread like wild fire. It is worth reading up on the life of Rabbi Keduri to get a grasp of the type of man he was.
Nevertheless what makes him relevant at this time is that Keduri in a month before his death, according to his son, constantly dreamt of Mashiach. In fact he claimed Mashiach appeared to him in his dreams. More importantly Mashiach revealed His name to the Rabbi. This is what the Rabbi did: he wrote the name of Mashiach on a piece of paper and asked his followers to open it a year after his death. Essentially the Rabbi wrote a sentence with each of the words starting with a letter of the name of Mashiach. The letter combined spelled the name ‘Yehoshua’ or ‘Yeshua’ known in the western world as ‘Jesus.’ You can imagine what uproar this caused!
Rabbi Keduri said one more thing which is almost unreal. He said that Messiah would appear after Ariel Sharon’s death. Here’s where it gets really unbelievable. Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke on 4 Jan 2006. He has been in a comatose state since then. Read it again. Ariel Sharon has been in a coma since 4 Jan 2006!
According to the Times of Israel Ariel Sharon has undergone a surgical procedure last week some time – the date of the report is 4 Sep 2013 so it must have been before then. So he is still alive after all this time – 7 years 8 months 9 days. Apparently tests done on him recently showed that he even recognised his son’s voice.
Some rabbis believe that Messiah will return on a very special Yom Kippur in the year of Jubilee. When is the next year of Jubilee? According to Stefen Lopez it will be in the year 2015 to 2016. Something is brewing! One can tell with the astronomical increase in evil.
It’s time to make teshuvah (no exclamation mark)…
