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Did Our Lord Emulate and Foretell the Coming Bible As He Died?

 

  

 

  The Bible is the Earthly paper form of the WORD (the words of God) through which we stay true to the Christian faith, and so it has tremendous importance to humanity and to the Kingdom of Heaven one would feel compelled to conjecture.  I believe it is so.  And the Protestant branch of the Christian faith has 'purified' the Bible down to 66 books.  The framers of that form of the Bible felt they had narrowed it down to the most authentic and unquestionable of the books which they could possibly include.  They acknowledged that there was value in the 7 books from the earlier Catholic form of the Bible which they had decided to not include...yet they felt that those seven books were best not included in the official Biblical canon after careful review.  Were they right or wrong to do that?  God knows...we cannot presently be certain, can we?

  Yet, in the Protestant version of the Bible, there are 66 books.  There are 39 Old Testament books, and 27 New Testament books.  39...and 27.  And this is the Bible, the Word of God...yet Jesus was also called 'the Word'.  That is one of our Lord's names.  It is a little bit of a mystery.

  But here is a thought to consider...jut a thought:  did Jesus, when dying (being killed is perhaps more accurate!), let his brutalized Earthly body act out the structure of the Bible, or vice-versa?

  Here is what I'm suggesting might be possible:  He was whipped by Romans on the day of His crucifixion.  The Gospels do not say how many blows of the whip He received.  But a Jewish tradition was to give those punished with a whip 40 lashes of the whip.  It was from this regulation given to the Israelites in the Book of Deuteronomy, chap 25:

25 If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.

And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number.

Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.

End quote

 

  So, to avoid accidentally exceeding forty strokes to the wicked man who deserved a beating they would reduce it to 39.  Then if you lost count and gave it one too many strokes you would still not exceed 40 strokes.

 

  Yes, in order not to accidentally exceed the allowed/prescribed 40 lashes, and perhaps as a gesture of mercy, they would habitually stop one lash short of 40.  It was referred to as the '40 minus 1'.  So, 39 lashes may quite possibly be the number of lashes which Jesus received.  That's not from the Bible, but it would be a quite reasonable guess due to that being a customary number in that region of the Roman dominated Jewish world.  After all, Jesus was whipped by Romans in a region where it made sense to consider the feeling and customs of the local Jewish populace.  

  And the Apostle Paul was whipped at least 5 times at various places in the Roman Empire during his ministry he said, and he called the whippings 'the 40 minus 1', in 2 Corinthians chapter 11: 

  Whatever anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about.22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.

End Quote

 

  'Forty minus one' cruel strokes might definitely have been the number of hard lashes of the whip that Jesus was given by Romans punishing Him in the heart of Jewish Israel.

 

  And then, Jesus was crucified, died, but then miraculously rose.  He was the Son of the Creator, He was of the same 'nature' as the Father, and from at least the time that John the Baptist baptized him He was imbued with the Holy Spirit of God, which proceeds forth from the Father.  It had descended upon Him like a dove.  So Jesus, on Earth, was a vassal...a being...containing all three of those expressions of the personage of God the Father:  he held within Himself - within His body - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  All three!  And He had told His Apostles that the father had given Him the power to give up His life and then take it back up again.  So, He could 'resurrect' Himself through the Father's authority and power.  And so, in a way, Jesus was a being composed of three entities, which by the power of those entities could raise His own self up after being killed.  'Three' raised by the power of 'three'.  In mathematics we all know that 3 raised by the power of 3 (3 exponent 3) is 27.  Because 3 x 3 x 3 is 27.  

  And so, it is possible that He took upon Himself 39 blows of punishment (lashes of the whip upon His back) paying the price demanded by the 39 books of the Old Testament for the sins of mankind.  And then He (a most high and exalted heavenly personage imbued with three expressions of the nature of God) died, but then He (a most high and exalted heavenly Heavenly personage imbued with three expressions of the nature of God) raised Himself back up again, instituting a completely new and more merciful covenant, i.e.:  the New Covenant of the New Testament, the only means, it says in the Bible, and I for one believe it, by which any human can be saved and go to Heaven instead of Hell.

  And so, if these things are true, if Jesus received the reportedly somewhat customary 39 lashes on His back given as a very serious but usually non-lethal punishment to Jewish offenders of the law.  And if He willingly set down His life, but then raised it back up by the power granted Him through the Father, then Jesus our Lord acted out the structure of the coming Protestant Bible in that regard, at least from a certain perspective.  He took on the painful stripes demanded by the Mosaic Law for the punishment of sin, which demands its justice from sinful mankind, and then after His crucifixion He raised up His own '3 being' body by the power of His own '3 being' body.  

  But, even if He did receive 39 lashes it is only speculation to wonder if there was meaning in that number 39, and if so, what that meaning may have been.  Yet I think it makes amazing metaphorical imagery if one supposes that it might have occurred that way.  Do you suppose it could have?  

      

 

  

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