“I haven’t eaten any of this food when mourning, I haven’t put any of it aside when unclean, nor have I given any of it for the dead. I have listened to what Adonai my God has said, and I have done everything you ordered me to do.”-Deuteronomy 26:14
We next come to quite an odd declaration concerning the holy poor-tithe.
The worshipper declares that he has NOT given any of the holy portions to the dead.
What in the heck does that mean?
This is probably going to make some of you uncomfortable…
…but do you recall in previous lessons what I taught concerning many of the superstitions about death and the afterlife that were very common among the peoples and cultures of the ancient Middle East?
Well, here’s the thing.
The ancient Israelites, even after Sinai, still maintained many of these superstitions and the evidence of this is sprinkled all throughout the Scriptures in both the TANACH and the New Testament!
They make their appearance in the form of archaic sayings such as “He died and went to sleep with his ancestors” and in other rituals and practices that just fly right over our heads when we’re reading our Bibles.
Now this makes some folks just downright uncomfortable because it means that to some extent the Lord condoned and even permitted some of these universal customs of ancestor worship and life-after-death beliefs to exist among His very own chosen people.
And not only that, but this also means the Lord permitted Israel to maintain these pagan beliefs at the very same time He was giving to Israel very specific laws and practices against such practices.
How to explain this seeming contradiction?
I have no idea and for the time being may just have to accept that this is just one of those mysteries the Lord has decided to keep to Himself more of which He may or may not reveal in His own good timing and to His own glory.
For now, He has only revealed what He feels we need to know which is very little.
And apparently in the days of the Patriarchs, what the Lord felt His people needed to know was pretty much NOTHING and He only revealed just a tiny bit more in the days of the Kings and the Prophets.
Although a few more scattered pieces of information were provided with the advent of the Messiah in the New Testament era, for the most part we are kept in the dark when it comes to what really happens to us after we die.
Again, we just have to accept that we’ve only been given very little information on this topic.
The truth is…
…all we have in Scripture are super vague references to SHEOL, the dead going to be with their ancestors and scattered references to Abraham’s bosom and concepts such as Paradise and Hades etcetera.
This is precisely the reason why the gentile church has so many ridiculous doctrines that are too numerous to count concerning hell, heaven, purgatory, the resurrection and so on.
This happens because we’re simply not given enough information in the Scriptures to come to a clear-cut conclusion and I think the Lord wants it that way for the time being at least.
The next time we meet, I’m going to share some archaeological evidence that will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the ancient Hebrews did indeed hold to ancestor worship beliefs and practices EVEN AFTER the revelation at Sinai.
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