Understanding True Jewry – Ascending Offering

First Alter and Offering by Fire
Noah After Leaving the Ark

A major problem of Christians evangelizing Jews is understanding the Hebrew Bible. For example, the term “burnt offering”, so common in the English translations, actually means “Ascending Offering”. The Hebrew word holem, translated as burnt offering, means to ascend; in other words, Noah offered up an Ascending Offering to the Lord (Ge 8:20-22).

What’s the problem? Well, credibility is a problem when evangelizing Jews if you do not even know what the Bible says! Also, it does not make any sense to call it a “burnt offering” and then have God “smell” a sweet or pleasant aroma. Have you smelled “burnt” food? Was it pleasing to you? Would you accept it? I never understood how God could call burnt flesh, sweet? Well, He did not! He called the Ascending Sacrifice “soothing” to Him which is quite different. This sacrifice, according to C.H. Mackintosh (The Pentateuch, Leviticus) pointed to the completeness of the sacrifice of Christ in satisfying God’s penalty for sin and thus, soothing His anger against Sinners. The offerer, sinner, stands by silently watching this interaction between the Father and Son as the payment for his sin is accomplished (Le 1).

In addition, there is another new element added here that is usually not appreciated and that is the altar. In Hebrew the word is the noun form of the verb, to sacrifice. Thus, the altar is the place where the sacrifice occurs and its function is to raise the sacrifice from the ground. This may have been the practice prior to the Cataclysm {Flood}, it is never stated what sacrificial act Abel and Cain performed that caused God to accept Abel’s sacrifice and reject Cain’s. This is much conjecture and one opinion is as the next opinion – an opinion. What is significant is where in Moses’ narrative these two references to ascending the sacrifice occur, just prior to the Tower of Babel. Have you wondered how the idea for a “tower” occurred and why God moved so dramatically against the “tower”? I believe the Hebrew contains the germ of truth overlooked by the Gentile churches which ignore the Hebrew words in favor of traditional translation motifs.

Tower (Ziggurat) of Babel
Sacrificial Ascending Altar

There is a saying, “Whatever is worth doing, is worth overdoing!” Battleships are good, build bigger battleships until they are too unwieldy. Bombers are good, build bigger bombers; sky scrapers are good, build tallest sky scraper possible, and so forth. This is how sinful man thinks. Noah’s use of an altar to raise a sacrifice off the ground and calling it an Ascending Sacrifice probably gave rise to the idea that if the small elevation is good, tallest elevation is better! Make the altar large and place it on top of a building so that the priesthood could ascend the steps to offer the Ascending Offering up toward the heavens to better please God! This sounds just like a government plan. There is no indication that these people were ignorant enough to believe they could build a “stairway to heaven”. But, the altar would be their highway to their god(s) who resides in the heavens.

In fact, this was Nimrod’s plan. He built Babel in the middle of the plain of several “cities” as the focal point for bringing everyone together to follow his reign which he legitimized through the use of a man-made religious system that incorporated God’s Ascending Sacrifice. Nimrod would be the Ruler-Priest Intercessor between the people and God which would require him to be a god also. Thus, religious apostasy was born. Now we begin to understand why God intervened as He did to separate the peoples and prevent this apostasy from growing any stronger less there be no people through which the Messiah could come through and pay the penalty for sin.

Now, I do not say that none of this also occurred before the Cataclysm. I am sure that Nimrod just revised what had already occurred and was passed down through Ham and his line if not also through Japheth. I also am persuaded that not everyone was corrupted or there would have been no knowledge of God left in the world. This may have been the mechanism that nearly totally corrupted man before the Cataclysm and was just being repeated because it was effective. Thus, God intervened to scatter man in order to prevent a similar fate before its appointed time. But we will see this occurring again near the end of end times as Satan again seeks to bring together mankind through the unifying principle of common religious beliefs. This is the purview of the False Prophet through what is today called Gnosticism, though what label it will finally use is not yet clear.

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Now, we reached this point through the clear exposition of Scripture starting with the definition of words as used by the authors. We did not arrive at this conclusion based on wild speculation, vast sinister conspiracy theories or by looking for Satan under every corner or behind every news item. We arrived here by having Scripture define Scripture. A more thorough analysis can be obtained by listening to my series on Eschatology, Hermeneutics and even Genesis. I hope to make you aware that knowledge of the original languages to the next step to mature growth in understanding God’s word. Just so you know, the word Holocaust comes from the Hebrew holem (Ascending) and refers to those Jews who died in the Nazi regime as an Ascending Sacrifice by which the Zionists gained their homeland at the end of World War II. Now you know why it is called, Holocaust. This is why knowledge of original languages is important to growing in the word; especially, when one seeks to evangelize those who know the original language.