Written: 23rd September 2008
Modified: 16th October 2009
Patriarchal Marriages
The often accusation by the unlearned and uneducated is that this is done away or at worst as some scholars have already concluded for themselves that it never happened. They have closed their eyes to some hard fundamental Torah truths while picking and choosing what is acceptable and what is not in the twenty first century as if they sit as advisers for God, heaven forbid they would not be able to stand with their theological errors and white lies on the day of reckoning!
Isaiah 55:8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares YHWH.
To deny this truth you would have to reject Moses and his writings thus rejecting God’s holy law and then on the day of judgment you will have to answer why it could not be accepted. Is it acceptable to commit adultery but not acceptable if a man decides within his free capacity and capability to marry another.
Many people would not practice this as it is clearly not a commandment and not for all to practice. One can choose how to live their lives, The governments have their own laws but marriage is a man and woman’s choice and not for government to impose or not.
This is an option for some chosen men and women of Israel both at home and in the Diaspora. Did not Yahushua say that if you reject Moses you reject Me meaning rejecting Torah the first five books of Moses will have dire consequences for all of us! No this encompasses every law statute written in the Torah as little or large, no matter how hard and how difficult for us to understand. We are not to argue with God however if He tells us something and gives us a choice then we can decided and here there is certainly choice. No man or woman should be forced because it will be wrong to do so one way or another. If a man/woman has decided to be monogamous then let that stand and if they have decided plural then let that stand.
If we do not understand some matters of the Torah then we aught to go and get the understanding. There are plenty of learned Rabbis to teach on these precepts those who stand on Torah truths and not the dispensationalist variety as they should be avoided.
Since all the laws in the Torah may not apply to all of us so why would we be afraid to accept them all since we are never asked to practice them all.
For instance all the driving laws of our land do not apply to non-drivers so why worry? The marriage laws of a land do not apply to single people then why reject them? It makes no sense to behave like this yet this is how many Christians are taught to behave! This is why I say that in any area of Scripture if one finds it difficult to comprehend a law then instead of rejecting it understanding should be sought. The answer is prayer and contemplation not argument, quarrel and separation. If we only learn to live as human beings first and put our differences aside then a lot of matters will solve themselves.
Not everyone is called to be in poly-marriage and so therefore if your calling is to remain single or in a monogamous relationship then please remain faithful to your calling and the Biblical laws of poly-marriages do not affect you or are not applicable to your calling but do not make them a stumbling block for yourself or others as an area of contention. This is the response of a wise man/woman because fools will not try to understand and will cause stumbling blocks for themselves and others to fall.
Proverbs 10:8 The wise in heart will receive commandments: but a prattling fool shall fall.
Matthew 25:9 But the wise answered, saying, `No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.'
The virgins did not have the oil obviously had to go and buy some and no the Holy Spirit wasn’t on sale in Walmart or Tesco to be purchased but it was the understanding of our Hebraic faith that they had to go and purchase because only through Rabbis, Yeshiva’s in Israel and abroad can you can sit and learn the ancient paths for which you will have to spend money, travelling, even purchasing books to gain more insight and knowledge although nothing beats a good teacher I assure you. It can save your hours of time being wasted.
Jacob puts it beautifully.
James 2:10 For whoever shall guard all the Torah, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
This puts most Christians at odds with God and His law and in a very precarious position indeed. They tout that the Torah was for the Jews only. Let’s take that to the logical conclusion so then if the Torah was for the Jews only then surely the Messiah was and is for the Jews only right and nothing to do with Christianity! Now why should the Christians proclaim salvation since Torah is for the Jews only therefore salvation by Christian definition is only for the Jews as well since the Messiah came for them according to church theology of today? Therefore, all Christians in the world take note shut down your TV stations and stop your proselytizing. If on the other hand you continue to do what you continue to feel compelled to do then you have to accept the whole bible and not bits and pieces and amend it to make a new church which is devoid of its roots.
John 5:46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me.
Are you willing to believe Moses who God gave authority to bring the children of Israel a whole nation out of bondage and slavery? The same one can free you of your bondage and slavery as well that you are stuck into today. God wrote the Ten Commandments by His own finger yet many reject His holy Sabbath, they reject His feasts, which are part and parcel of the Ten Commandments. It is not referred to as the Ten suggestions or the election of the Ten as many errant scholars have been spoon feeding error and paganism for all these years to their followers! Remember the adage garbage in garbage out so error in and error out. I would suggest enough is enough and timeout and beak out time.
God’s law is end to end and also going to be taught out of Tsiyon when the 3rd Temple is built and the Christian ministers should pay particular attention to it and not build a whole pagan system around it because it would NEVER stand on the day before the Holy One of Israel!!!
Abrahamic-Faith Nazarene Hebraic Study Scriptures
Isaiah 2:3 And many people shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of YHWH, to the Temple of Elohim of Ya’acob (Jacob); and he will teach us of his ways,[1] and we will walk in his paths: for out of Tsiyon shall go forth the Torah and the word of YHWH[2] from
Tsiyon as we know is certainly not in the USA or Great Britain when I last checked from the UK we were about 3000 miles off even though some foolish people may want to believe that their Church is elected, I can categorically tell you its not. No Church is elected. The only nation that was elected was Israel and anyone that belongs within Israel by being GRAFTED IN (Rom 11:17). The LAW (Instructions) of God are End to End and NEVER disconnected and there is no TIME gaps or Dr Who episodes in between or the silly notion of dispensations. Does it make any difference to the sun if you hide in the dark does the sun stop giving its heat and light?
Only the uneducated/unlearned can accept and behave in such a way but not those who fear God and want to obey Him. Most of the Christian world ignorantly lives in rebellion and rebellion is the sin of witchcraft and idolatry and I can name you countless of these living in idolatry when they go and celebrate Easter and Christmas its actually a pagan feast of sorts and nout (old English for nothing) to do with the Bible.
1 Samuel 15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry…
Now can someone living lawlessly breaking the law of God ever receive the same rewards as one who lives by every written word of God? Is this not what Messiah taught? That word by the way included Patriarchal marriages too and cannot be ignored even if you do not want to do it that is fine but don’t condemn those who do.
Abrahamic-Faith Nazarene Hebraic Study Scriptures
Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by Lechem (bread) alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of YHWH. [3]
One Law (instructions) and one custom (ways of living) are set for both the Christians, Jews and the entire gentile (heathen) world. God is not partial to his own law.
The way I see it we have two idols in Christianity introduced by the pagan anti-Semitic church fathers one was Rabbi Paul, who is the idol for Anglican/evangelical Christians because his words are misinterpreted and the other is Mary who is the idol for Roman Catholics, which they make their people read her name in the rosary. Yes I have heard the Catholics are not Christian well if they are not they why is it that most of the Christian denominations gravitate around the Roman Catholic model by obeying the laws they set forth for Sunday worship, Christ-mass and all the other idolatries that I see Anglicans and Evangelicals practicing together? How can you be separate if you still practice what they practice? Actions speak louder than words, why do you think the Muslims see you all as Christians? This is the precise point. All the wonderful work done by Yahushua/Jesus in your lives evaporates when you witness to Muslims and Jewish people because they reject Christians for believing and doing pagan things.
Let us see what Paul the one that Christians love to quote so much lists as the works of the flesh;
Galut’yah (Galatians) 5:20-21 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, quarreling, jealousy, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, (21) Envying, drunkenness, revelling, and such like: of which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of YHWH.
The servant of Yahushua Paul never lists Plural marriage as a sin or work of the flesh yet many Christians are bent on calling it a sin. The problem with Christianity and also for Torah fans and spectators is exactly this that they idolize the Greek mindset of homosexuals like Aristotle and Plato and no wonder the church today is at a cross road and about to break apart. Is it any wonder that we have in England and other EU nations what we should term potically correctly gays who can marry men and then they like to call this civil partnerships. Recently a singer died a mysterious death at the age of thirty-three, he was both a practicing homosexual and had a civil partnership with another man who he called his husband. Now that he died after a party they are going to conduct his funeral in a church! Stop, did I read that correctly. They are going to conduct his funeral in a church. But I thought he was gay?
Now do you see why Muslims don’t want anything to do with today’s Christianity? You mix and match, very few of your will stand up in your institutions and say to stop this idolatry but you are still happy to go to those same churches where a homosexual man can get his funeral and still not believe in God. I find this amazing! This kind of nonsense can only happen in the West. Although I know you call all Muslims radicals but they would burn a few mosques if this ever happened and to some of you that would be extreme but in their minds it sends the right message home. Don’t mix worlds ideas of living right with our religion.
Today’s Christianity looks nothing like the first century believers assembly which were through and through Torah observant.
Whose idea was Asceticism?
The cult of asceticism crept early on in the church with various people known as the early church fathers such as Origen, Jerome and John Chrysostom. These people were also thoroughly anti-Semitic and their doctrines show their hatred toward the Jewish people even to this day. Those that follow them and how the rest of the later church developed influenced by these people can easily be seen today. People such as Jerome had the idea that to marry was weakness and to remain ascetic was the best way forward for spirituality. Jerome was a Gnostic hermit, who hated marriage. He wrote vial material against Jovinian a 4th century monk who did not espouse virginity as the higher form for living unlike Jerome. Augustine had to smooth lip Jerome’s hatred by telling nuns that marriage had its benefits in his tract de bono coniugali.
It may come as a surprise that some of Jerome’s most avid followers were women and if I might add that it surprises me very little today that some women would object to plural marriages though they may probably look favourably to non-marriage because of the conditioning of years of churchianity that sexual contact is bad and the difficulty for people to see the patriarchs as good moral men while having many wives. Oh, you would love to sing King David’s psalms, you love Psalm 23 but King David had eighteen wives. We are we going to do about that? Shall we just pretend they did not exist and that King David was an ascetic?
Jerome translated the Bible from its Semitic language to Latin called Vulgate. This is the one that the Roman Catholic Church used to usurp authority and keep the people under darkness.
[4]The distance between marriage and virginity says Jerome 'is the distance between marriage and sin and is the distance between avoiding sin and doing good. Other references such as marriage fills the earth and virginity with heaven.
Peter Damian another 12th century Christian theologian hated all sexuality and barely allowed marriage as a legal cover for sin. For him it was on the last list of things to be done and on a very short leash while God put marriage first and foremost for procreation. The problem occurred with these people because they saw Rabbi Paul as ascetic not realising that he was married and his orthodox family had probably been violently taken away from him so later on he did not marry. In order for Paul to be a member of the Sanhedrin and cast a vote (Acts 26:10) he had to be married but many of these folks did not know this reality and the functions of the Jewish halacha in the first century. This is what happens when people work from a lack of instructions and knowledge.
This is what Augustine had to say:
[5]Meanwhile my sins were multiplying, and she with whom I had been living was ripped from my side as a hindrance to my marriage. She was still part of me and my heart was torn and wounded; her loss drew blood for me. She had returned to Africa, vowing to you, O God, not to know any other man, leaving me my natural son by her.
A view of Kierkegaard
[i]For it is not that the priest be unmarried but that the Christians should be unmarried… For Christianity this is a sinful world, a child is conceived in transgression and sin.
[ii]It seems Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity was strongly determined by Luke 14:26 “ if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
This is really straining at a gnat because Kierkegaard did not understand the essential lesson. The fact that the Messiah was not teaching to literally hate your parents because one of the Ten Commandments number five states “Honour Your Mother and Father”. How could the creator the giver of these words be repudiating them Himself? This is the lack of understanding of Western theology without the Eastern mindset. Had Kierkegaard checked the rewards in the Aramaic version of the text he would have found that in the Rewards for loosing your wife you are promised many maidservants meaning for marriage and the quantity is a hundredfold.
How he would reconcile this would be one to be seen considering he disliked the institution of marriage also. Yahushua was using the seven rules of Hillel and throwing a comparison between light and heavy (Kal’v’Chomer) and drawing the simile between the worship of the creator and responsibility to the parents and a worst case scenario but not teaching to hate your parents literally. Essentially teaching if you love your parents then the love for Elohim needs to be a priority and a lot more than parents because who is our real parent? The one who created us ALL! Sadly when people start making thesis out of single passages then we get antithesis, which leads to confusion and error. Not only Kierkegaard but the Western church in general is guilty of this type of error.
The fourth century church viewed concubines as OK as long as there was only one.
[6]Augustine believed in marriage and even had a concubine who he dismissed before his mother found him a Christian wife so to speak who was only ten years of age so Augustine had to wait to marry her as the legal age was twelve. Augustine was thirty one years of age and yet unconverted.
Then came the laws and decrees from ascetics and stoics which many Christians are following to this day.
[7]At the council of Toledo, in A.D. 400, it was ordered, by canon seventeenth, that every Christian that had both a wife and a concubine should be excommunicated; but he should not be excommunicated who had only a concubine without a wife. At the fourth council of Carthage, A.D. 401, it was ordered, by canon seventieth, that all bishops, priests, and deacons, who had wives, must repudiate them, and live in celibacy, under penalty of deposition from office. Pope Innocent I., about A.D. 412, in his official letter to the two bishops of Abruzzo, orders them to depose those priests who had been guilty of the crime of having children since their ordination. Thus the seeds of Gnostic error, that had been sown in the church during the former periods of its history, now sprang up anew, and bore a plentiful harvest.
Are we going to allow monastic, ascetic, anti-Semitic church fathers to define our Torah based faith that existed from four thousand millennia ago that was even practiced by our forefathers such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and King David amongst some heroes of our faith? These people are listed as the heroes of the faith all over Scripture. I would side with Torah and be “Free” any day then to live by the views espoused by ascetics, who had no clue that God’s first order was “BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY”. Personally I would tell them go take a hike. Now if someone wants to be fruitful with one wife and produce eight children or be fruitful with two wives and produce twelve children is fine either way as long as he is fruitful.
The view of Judaism
[iii]Rabbi Eleazer said any man who has no wife is no proper man, for it is said, Male and female He created them and called their name Adam (Genesis 1:27) only when the male and female are united were united were they called Adam
There was also the Kotzker who believed it was good to give up the world but they never condemned marriage but only worldly things. We can see from Kierkegaard another form of Gnosticism who thought marriage was not one for Christians. Early church fathers were of the mindset that one should remain ascetic and not go near marriage and we can see why the Western view is one towards monasticism and asceticism, while the Biblical worldview is towards “BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY”.
What a world of difference. Eastern lands were greatly affected by the Biblical worldview while they were very much polygynous cultures and the Western population adopted serial monogamy from the Roman Empire and has always been in conflict with the Biblical marriage model and will remain so until the end. The onslaught of Islam which lives a polygamous model is going to be a force to reckon with and many of you are going to struggle to protect your churches and worship places as they are fast overtaking them. Trying stopping that with your one child families!
While the children of Isaac live subdued lives the children of Ishmael are exceeding and overpowering many. It’s a wakeup clarion call to all the churches of the world, drop your ascetic and monastic unbiblical doctrines and start fulfilling the first ordinance set by God. That means to produce many children whether be monogamy or polygamy.
An Evangelical Christian EN Jecks had this to say:
[8]Enforced monogamy as a pagan custom inherited from the Roman Catholic Church - which incidentally, views concupiscence as Original Sin. The Roman Church inherited monogamy from pagan Rome. And Rome, in turn, inherited the custom from decadent Greece. Monogamy is an impossible custom in any culture. Pagans, which have no scruples about lust, openly practice prostitution while legally practicing monogamy. Christian nations, viewing sex as depravity or at least unhealthy unless greatly restricted, pretend to practice monogamy, but abound in secret prostitution, vicarious concubinage, and sins of uncleanness.
[9]Jecks declares that men, if denied the opportunity of polygamy, will turn to a perverted and decadent sex. He also predicted the specter of abortion and the destruction of family life in the United States if polygamy were not legalized. His warning was scorned, and a century later, we had the sexual revolution and the legalization of abortion.
Jecks said it all and it speaks of the church today where ministers have secret sexual encounters with their mistresses, while their wives do not even know about this and when the scandals come out whole church break apart. What a tragedy.
How many ministers today are being accused of adultery? While if they practiced polygyny they would NEVER be accused of adultery and there would be no breaking apart of Churches. But how many of these ministers have the guts to stick for what is right? Hardly many and those that do are then put down by their monastic congregations.
Genesis 16:3 Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.
The father of our faith Abraham had two wives and later several concubines yet to me at least this is evident that it was Sarah who gave him his second wife Hagar and Abraham certainly did not go advertising this on the internet asking Pastors for help on Biblical theology. If he had gone to any Pastor/Rabbi when he was asked to sacrifice his son they would have told him not to obey God because in their view he would be committing idolatry and they would have all been wrong!!!
How many Christian women are willing to call their husband master who believes and practices the Patriarchal lifestyle? Sadly not many and they rebel and then ask for divorce this is a common scenario. But divorcing your husband illegally under pagan laws does not make it an ipso facto divorce in heaven unless the husband accepts that the woman has rebelled and because of her spiritual idolatry can be let free according to Deut 24:1. Neither does it absolve the errant wife of her guilt!!! Rebellion remains to then the sin of witchcraft and many women are into this type of witchcraft abusing their husbands and then claiming to be abused by the man.
1 Peter 3:6 As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.
When Sarah died Abraham had Hagar, Keturah and other concubines whose names are not listed. We are told that our daughters should emulate Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. Out of these at least three households were Biblically polygamous.
Genesis 25:6 But Abraham gave gifts to the sons of the concubines which Abraham had; and while he was still living he sent them eastward, away from Isaac his son, to the country of the east.
These sons were many not just Ishmael so the words in Hebrew pilegesh הפילגשׁים or it says with the plurality with many concubines the Hebrew word Ha pilegeshim (literally reads The Concubines) because it has a plural ending in the Hebrew script.
I have written an article about Ishmael being a legitimate son of Abraham and the Muslims people also being the legitimate sons of Abraham, whom were sent to the East as many people have developed a hatred for the sons of Ishmael based on hearsay and ignorance. The article can be referenced at www.abrahamic-faith.com.
Admittedly Sarah had a legitimate case but this was nothing different from what was practiced in ancient Israelite customs. What people do not realise is that if you are not procreating, which is why God created man and woman in the first place. This is the highest calling for Israelites, if not put into practice then you are shying away from your calling. By introducing birth control you limit God and introduce all sorts of diseases into your family. How many women are suffering from women’s diseases as a result of the dreaded pill? I know many such cases.
Sarah gladly gave Hagar as a wife to Abraham, she did not have a problem with her husband not loving her enough or being insecure as today’s women are or she did not decide to rule her husband as many women in Christian denominations do under the guise of love. Let men be men and get the respect that you deserve. The women should wear their skirts and stop putting on men’s trousers and pretending to be men. Men are to run government and the government starts from home. If you won’t let your husbands rule and reign from the household then how much more will they from outside?
Abraham loved Sarah very much even after his marriage with Hagar but Abraham loved God even more because he was willing to sacrifice his promised son Isaac without telling Sarah who loved Isaac to bits and would have become a stumbling block to Abraham if told. Let us be honest would you be willing to sacrifice your son if asked by God? I bet most will never have the heart for such a thing today not that God desires to ask any of us but we would never be able to commit to such a promise as did Abraham. No wonder he is called the father of our faith and not vice versa.
We find no where Abraham showing less affection for Sarah or lack of love because of his other wives. It takes mature men in Israel to behave this way. I admit some men can abuse the liberal laws of God but this is not to be. What a big heart Sarah had who knowingly offered Abraham her maidservant as a wife. A lot of people foolishly attribute that since Ishmael was born it only caused trouble in the world, but they forget that the oil we use to drive our gas guzzling cars and the monies in the West used to drives its economies all generated through the Middle-East would never have happened if God had not blessed Ishmael. Yes without Ishmael there would be no oil for you. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Stop your foolishness.
If we look at the development taking place since the last ten years both in Dubai and Abu Dhabi alone who do you think is raking the big money building those towers of Babel (sky scrapers), amusement parks and shopping complexes? Guess the Europeans and the Americans got there as usual and the poor Indians, Pakistanis, Philipinos and Bengalis are still on daily rates of pittance, which will make many Europeans ashamed of themselves but where is the justice for these people? I guess when it comes to big dollars there is no justice for the poor whether they are Muslims, Hindus, Christians or even nothing. Where is the justice for these people who are on pittance of a salary, while the big money flaws into European and American banks.
Luke 16:11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?
There is a price to be paid because the law of sowing and reaping is in affect what you sow you will one day reap {Gal 6:7}. If you did not turn your ear to the cry of the poor then you will also cry and no one will hear you. This is the state I see Europe and America in right now.
Maybe now we begin to understand the reasons for the financial meltdown and judgment that God will bring for rejection of the rights of the poor and needy and trying to sell His inheritance (Israel) to the Muslims for oil. All that mammon that was built and on how many dead bodies and countless lost souls that cry for justice in She’ol. Many years ago when I said that many Western economies will collapse, I saw the disbelief on the congregants faces that how could this happen and will it really happen. I was adamant according to the Bible it is coming but no one probably believed me accept myself and today that reality has come home but the next one will be worst than this as it is only the beginning of the end. Now we will see the rise of Islam and the beast will begin to devour in pieces just as scripture said!
Muslims numbering 1.6 billion already know that the white Caucasian population of the West numbering some six hundred million while they far outnumbers them. They know that your war in Afghanistan and Iraq is a lost war. Don’t fool yourselves. The coalition forces in Afghanistan will one day have to get out and save their faces. You kill one of their and they send ten more to die. They have enough while your sons and daughters are few. The odds are stacked against you wake up.
It has been computed that in next twelve year Europe will have a Muslim population of at least 12% ranging in several million and they will then try to implode Europe from within. A European family with one or two children or no children cannot take on a polygamous culture with ten to twelve children per family with the decadence in Europe is a sure recipe for disaster. Enforced serial monogamy will kill Europe albeit slowly. Europe has a satanic form of plural marriage, where a man sleeps with one woman and has couple of children with no marriage commitment then he moves on to the next effectively destroying families throughout the land with no father the remedy of which is a father figure in a patriarchal or monogamous home with marriage as the boundary.
Once Europe falls then the rest of the world will belong to Islam for the taking. However scripture tells us that the Europeans will fight and we will see another likeness of the World War II in the shape of world war III with the Islamic nations both within and without attacking Europe.
So let me be blunt, if we had no Ishmael then no Middle-East oil. It is Ishmael who has brought much prosperity to the world albeit one day it will all fail since people have forgotten their maker, God. Ah the West will one day cry and some will truly return to their first love Yahushua while others will disappear into non-existence. We are beginning to see signs of the financial meltdown already. The so called one world order comes home and is being broken right in the America’s backyard when bank after bank collapses and dragging the world to abyss.
Revelation 18:3 "For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.''
Yes all Western riches came from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf States and by enslaving other nations to debt. Without Arab oil our economies would be dead! Oh you say Russian oil. We could not all live on Russian oil considering how expensive it would be to transport that from Russia to the rest of the planet and it would never be sufficient. It could hardly meet the demands of Russia, India and China let alone the rest of the world.
Canadian oil is in swampy lands and very hard to drill and it leaves us at no better juncture. Our only choices for energy which drives our economies lead us back to the Middle-East and for our salvation we are also led to the Middle-East back to Israel to her Messiah.
Look at our institutions where they make their money today and look at how American debt is financed with Saudi oil. When these institutions implode as they are right now with Lehman brothers and other banks collapsing like a house of cards don’t forget to tell the last person leaving the office to switch the light off. Although I feel sorry for that worker in the New York office but I feel sorrier for the countless homeless and foodless and waterless people in the third world who should not be treated as dirt or just another way to make a quick buck!
Middle-Eastern people will still survive with their sheep, camels and goats but the ones who are used to the luxuries in the West will suffer the most and that is the sad fact that many need to wake up to before consumerism kills them all.
If patriarchal marriage was practiced today it would rid us of three evils. Prostitution, fornication and children becoming thieves, robbers and murderers. Crime in ancient Israel was miniscule to today’s levels in the world. How come Christianity has not been able to rid the world of crime? Because of their unscriptural stances and applying the wrong solutions altogether. They spiritualise everything but we need a concrete solution not spiritual mumbo jumbo taught in churches today. The Bible supplies our solutions but are you willing to listen and comply? Families should actively be practicing both strict monogamy and polygamy so many children can be reared and our society built up on the advances that can come from brilliant minds where there is a father figure in the home.
When every child in the home has a father figure unlike today there would be no need for them to run after drugs and crime or shoot kids in schools. When most of the ladies are married into the patriarchal culture, the ugly and the pretty then there won’t be any women left to prostitute or to commit suicide jumping off bridges and no competition for the pretty ones to be taken and the ugly ones to be left since all are God’s creation and He certainly did not label them ugly, pretty, fat and thin.
Very few women will be left as every woman will have a home and every child will have a father figure to look up to. We rid of three evils in one hit with countless other side benefits and this is how God worked it out in ancient Israel and not by our unwise solutions today. Any man who feels the need to go out and prostitute behind his wife’s back or fornicate for whatever reason if he would have two or three wives he would never have the need for such evil behaviour.
[10]An act of cruelty in the name of Yahushua/Jesus of Nazareth
THE INDIAN CHIEF AND HIS TWO WIVES This chief at the time of his conversion to Christianity was living with two wives. The one first married was now aged, blind, and childless. The other was young, attractive, healthful, and the mother of one fine boy. One of these wives the missionaries required him to put away, as an indispensable requisite to baptism and church-membership. The old chief, after careful deliberation, could not decide which one to repudiate. The first he was bound by every honorable motive "to love and to cherish," especially on account of her age and infirmity; while the other was devotedly attached to him, and was the mother of his only child and heir, which he could not give up, and from which he could not separate the mother. He, therefore, submitted the case to the missionaries to decide which one of them he should put away. They decided against the younger one.
And as he was old himself and his other wife was barren, that she must also give up her child. This mandate was obeyed with martyr-like fortitude, which nothing but the strongest religious motives could have inspired; opposed, as it was, to every natural sentiment of love and honor. And thus, in one hour, was that young wife and mother deprived of her husband, her child, her character, and her home; and sent away a bereaved and lonely outcast into the wide world. The report which the missionaries themselves gave of this affair closed by saying that the repudiated wife and bereaved mother soon died inconsolable and broken-hearted.
I was very sad to read this act of cruelty in the name of the Jesus of Nazareth, which is utterly despicable.
There are other genuine reasons such as child birth and wives not being able to conceive for whatever reason and the couple both desperate to have kids so what do they do now a days is hop off to India and get a surrogate mother. In the US surrogacy costs are around $80,000, while in India they are at $10,000 with various clinics making the connections for you. If I really wrote the whole story of what some Indian women have to go through to become surrogates for the sake of $4000 to $5000, which is all they get then this will really put all humanity to shame. A child is born and then taken away and never to be seen by the surrogate mother.
I suggest a better option would be for the man whose wife is not able to have a child to go and get another wife just as God has allowed and get your children through that wife but don’t discard her like a piece of meat loaned to you for $4000 for carrying your baby but keep her and let her bring up the child with you the husband and the first wife be treated with equal respect so the child can be nurtured and brought up in happiness so he does not lose his mother and she her child.
Sexual desires whether little or too much are from above and are not called evil anywhere in the good book.
Jas 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of turning.
Alpha courses are not the answer and neither is a sixty percent divorce rate with countless broken homes. The answer is a solid marriage structure!
Objection: Ancient Israel never practiced Polygamy.
Answer: This is surprising given the fact that even in slavery in Egypt the Israelite people were very much Patriarchal. Let’s prove this fact.
We have an interesting case in the Torah which states this.
Numbers 3:40-43 Then the Lord said to Moses: "Number all the firstborn males of the children of Israel from a month old and above, and take the number of their names. (41) "And you shall take the Levites for Me I am the Lord instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel, and the livestock of the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the livestock of the children of Israel.'' (42) So Moses numbered all the firstborn among the children of Israel, as the Lord commanded him. (43) And all the firstborn males, according to the number of names from a month old and above, of those who were numbered of them, were twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-three.
So we have 22,273 first born sons in Israel. This allows us to compute quite easily that in order to have this many sons we must have the same number of families, which is 22,273.
So according to this we see this.
Numbers 1:46 All who were numbered were six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty.
So if we take 633,550 men and divide by the 22, 273 individual families we arrive at a figure of 28 rounded down. This means that each Israelite family would have 28 sons on average. Now we are not taking any daughters into the equation because if we do then we need to take an equal amount of daughters so 28 plus 28 would be 56 children per family. Can anyone really believe that a single woman can produce this many children? This could never happen. The average children per woman is 5 (I know as I calculated it but not relevant here) in ancient Israel therefore it would make each man to have at least 11 wives or lets say one principle wife and rest maids who would be classed as lesser legal wives. If we were conservative and allowed 8 children per wife even then we are looking at seven wives per husband. Polygamy in ancient Israel even when during the captivity was a way of life. We can only go by the figures that the Bible provides and we can get a pretty good idea of this.
Where is God taking us? He is taking us back not forward!
Isaiah 4:1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, "We will eat our own food and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach.
So by my calculations we should be arriving safely at a figure of seven but it could be more. However to be honest with you most men should stick to monogamy while the ten to twenty percent of the believing population should practice polygamy which will balance things out nicely as long as both monogamous and polygamous couples produce children and rear them as good families. This means those women who do not want to be part of a polygamous household can stay in a monogamous relationship without the threat of polygamy while equally other men and women can have a choice of polygamy. This to me is a win, win situation.
Paul invokes the Levirate Law
1 Timothy 5:14 Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
Rabbi Paul is very clear that the widows should be married to the men in the church and he is not talking to single men but to those men who were already married and perhaps had children. He invoked the Levirate law (Deut 25:5-10) where a next of kin of someone other could step in to marry a widow and produce children for the dead husband of the widow. This was seen as personal charity and is one of the most commendable things to do. He is not talking about giving your $10 monthly contribution to the widows, unfortunately most Western Pastors are still running around doing this and think they are helping feed the world. The women need a husband and a protective believer’s home not the measly $10. Since women think they are so independent in the West they fail to understand how Middle-Eastern cultures worked and women who were especially vulnerable like the divorced and widows had to have secure shelter and that could only be under a family roof and certainly not a woman by herself. Such things are still not found in Muslim cultures, which are patriarchal but practice the true biblical monogamy and polygamy both as needed.
The levirate law is mentioned in Deuteronomy 25:5.
"If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family; her husband's brother shall go in to her, take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.
This was commanded polygamy both in the Tanach (Old Testament) and Renewed Covenant (NT) Matt 22:24-30.
We can see that a man other than a brother could also marry the widow as is shown in Ruth’s story in the Bible with Boaz.
From Eros made sacred by J. Wesley Stivers
Jesus answered and said, Truly I say to you, There is no man who leaves houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of my gospel, Who shall not receive now, in this time a hundredfold, houses and brothers and sisters and maidservants and children and fields and other worldly things, and in the world to come life everlasting.
- From the Aramaic text
Here, the Greek texts imply polygamy, and that implication led to controversy in the early church of the West. But the Aramaic rendering leaves no doubt: Christ promised "maidservants" to replace the forsaking of wives for the Gospel's sake -a hundredfold "in this time". You will recall that maidservants are concubines. [Bold mine]
The implication is very clear to me at least since I do not possess a Western mindset I cannot do away with this as simply an allegory or just TYPES in the Bible because Scripture must interpret scripture and I can show you that in the millennium there are people with more than one wife. Let’s see and it begins at or just at the beginning of the millennium.
Isaiah 4:1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, "We will eat our own food and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach.''
So what are we going to do now, allegorise and ignore scripture?
These seven women yes that is right seven women came to marry this man and not just to give him their bread and clothes. Of course a man who is capable of marrying seven women does not need the women’s clothes or bread and has his own and plentiful for such an offer.
Many Christians wrestle with Scripture by calling plural marriage the permissible will of God but not the perfect will. God does not have two “wills”, the hybrid man mode, one perfect and one maybe not so perfect that He will tolerate some things in humanity for the sake of humanity. As I said only the unlearned can believe in such things, God’s will is always PERFECT. There is no dualism here.
Ishmael was the son that was born through Hagar and God blessed him with tremendous mineral and oil wealth with twelve sons to follow and the twelve sons came from more than one wife unless you believe that one wife was pregnant for twelve years.
Here is what some leading evangelical Christians like Billy Graham had to say on this issue.
[11]Billy Graham, the eminent Christian evangelist has recognized this fact: "Christianity cannot compromise on the question of polygamy. If present-day Christianity cannot do so, it is to its own detriment. Islam has permitted polygamy as a solution to social ills and has allowed a certain degree of latitude to human nature but only within the strictly defined framework of the law. Christian countries make a great show of monogamy, but actually they practice polygamy. No one is unaware of the part mistresses play in Western society. In this respect Islam is a fundamentally honest religion, and permits a Muslim to marry a second wife if he must, but strictly forbids all clandestine amatory associations in order to safeguard the moral probity of the community."
No church council in the earliest Christian centuries opposed polygamy. St. Augustine clearly)' declared that he did not condemn it. Luther tolerated it and approved of the bigamous status of Philip of Hesse. In 1531 the Anabaptists preached polygamy and the Mormons of today believe in it (see Abd al Ati, The Family Structure in Islam, American Trust Publications, 1977, p 114 : Until this very day, the church in some African countries conducts the marriage of men to more than one wife. In Europe, the attempt According to data collected in 1967, there were nearly 7,100,00 more women than men. This means that even if every single man in America got married 7,100,00 women would be left without husbands.
You heard it from the horses mouth himself. When a taxi driver tells a stock broker what stock to buy or sell then its time for that stock broker to resign because this is the same situation here accepting and making laws that are manmade and not by God the creator of this earth.
Billy Graham is more honest then most of the evangelical Christians out there that the West practices polygamy but albeit the mistress culture. One wife at home and a mistress outside. As long as no one knows it tolerated until the mistress is found out then all guns are on fire and things go ballistic and its one or the other.
God called Abraham His friend (Isa 41:8). Many Christians incorrectly see a person having more than one wife as adulterous and do not know the difference between a divorce described in Matthew 19:9 and a marriage in Genesis 2:24 without understanding that this is plainly a lack of Torah education on their part. The verses they misquote are speaking about divorcing one’s wife unlawfully without a cause and then causing the divorced woman to go into adultery by her remarrying another man because the divorce is unlawful.
I present the analogy of a field, it can have one seed and only one type of seed but if you put two seeds into it then it becomes mixed and God hates a mix.
We as Rabbis well understand what that means.
Leviticus 19:19 `You shall keep My statutes. You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow your field with mixed seed. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you.
The conclusion is end to end and the same applies to any man’s wife, she cannot lay or be defiled with another man, hence mix, which is adultery. But a man can have more than one field and plough his seeds into those fields separately. It cannot be any clearer than that.
Yahushua also speaks about a mix or an evil mix which is unholy.
Matthew 13:24-26 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; (25) "but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. (26) "But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.
The illusion is to having more than one seed, one which is good and the other which is evil so two seeds do not produce good in the same field but the results are adultery. Remember God is the same end to end, with foods, with Animals and with humans, and He does not change for you neither for me. (Mal 3:6)
The only time a person commits adultery is either when he sleeps with another man’s wife (analogy of two seeds in one field) or he marries a woman who has not been properly divorced for instance who took divorce from her husband for such things as quarrelling or some silly thing like not cooking right. If there is lack of humility and forgiveness in a marriage and a mistake or deliberate sin has been committed then reason for the ending of marriage must be Adultery on either party or something like spiritual idolatry when the wife is into something that defiles. Or a woman can seek a divorce for an unjust husband who beats her black and blue too.
The classical passage that is quoted is the one below.
Matthew 19:9 "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.''
If you divorced your wife for any other reason and that really means any other reason which is what Yahushua/Jesus iterated. An argument or a husband slapping his wife is not a reason for divorce sorry to disappoint the ladies out there, the abusive husband has to repent or ask forgiveness to his wife but that does not give women grounds for divorce even though admittedly British or American law may grant you divorce. Seventy percent divorce rate testifies to the failure of the system to address serial imposed monogamous marriages, which are adopted from a pagan Roman custom with mistresses on the side. The divorce rate in Islamic nations alone is far less in polygamous cultures because the problems are addressed in marriages rather than running to the state for a divorce. Even if you compare monogamy marriage has more value in Islamic cultures than in the Western culture today. That is a closer model of the Torah than what the west has adopted.
This divorce of the land if you are a believer is unlawful in God’s sight unless there are serious grounds for it and if then you subsequently married you commit adultery against your husband (mixing seed unless it was a legal Biblical divorce for adultery or some other good reason). The ground in scripture for divorce is Adultery and to spell it out it would mean a man sleeping with a married woman not a single woman. If that happens and there was a legal divorce then and only then is the woman free to marry and therefore she does not commit adultery. One’s wife could receive divorce for spiritual idolatry also or for special reasons such as an unjust husband etc. These are reasons that were expanded by the Rabbis in various situations to allow more latitude for the couples.
Deuteronomy 22:22-23 "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." Leviticus 20:10.
Note now some of you may have just realized that you divorce is illegal in God’s sight so now what? Well Yahushua’s blood cleans and removes all sins those that were committed in ignorance such as unwanted divorce or those committed in defiance deliberately knowing everything at the outset. I would suggest you Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand so that you sins may be cleansed. You must repent before Yahushua first and then to your ex-spouse meaning you must go and ask forgiveness to your ex- husband or ex-wife for your ignorance and or defiant sin at the time against that person whatever caused you to take the divorce and only then will you be ridden of the guilt that you carry. Also that ex has to forgive you. He or she cannot withhold forgiveness no matter how serious your break up so now is time to repent and if possible some of you may be able to reconcile that marriage still. A brother or sister must forgive 70 times 7 but this is not just about 490 events of forgiveness but this was a prophetic statement and since this article deals with Biblical marriages we do not address prophecy for now.
Matthew 18:22 Yahushua said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
So what is Yahushua saying in Matthew 19:9? It’s very easy. He is not talking about you taking on additional wife while still married He is saying that if you divorced your wife for any reason other than adultery as in Deut 22:22 then by putting your wife away you have committed adultery against her by taking on another woman. Remember the analogy of the two fields both with one seed in each so there is no mix. At Yahushua’s time some people were divorcing for things such as bad cooking.
The same thing is repeated for a woman who is bent on divorcing her husband because a husband has told her to “bugger off” over something or told her to “shut up”. Yes I admit husbands probably do that at times. A husband entering Patriarchy is not grounds for divorce!!! Sorry ladies at least in God’s eyes this has never been a question of sin otherwise Abraham would not be called the father of our faith and Sarah would not have offered him Hagar as a wife.
Mark 10:12 "And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.''
Yes the husband might be rude and certainly needs to have council over how to treat his wife with love but this does not give the irate wife a reason for divorce yet many divorces in the British and American courts are conducted for silly reasons such as this. Can the British Law grant her divorce? Yes indeed it can but that still puts her in an adulterous relationship by subsequently remarrying as the injunction comes in force of Mark 10:12. Now ask yourself how many people considering the divorce rate is around sixty to seventy percent are in an adulterous relationship in subsequent marriages considering most of them are illegal in God’s eyes?
This does not apply to any man who takes on another wife such as wife number two as the Torah allows because they were very common in the East and not even and still are. While you are married and you take wife number two there is no adultery committed as each marriage is holy before God. Each couple have to decide for themselves how best to work their relationship. As long as a man is able and willing to support two wives that then is up to the three of them to work out their arrangements. Torah gives a broad outline about these things only and does not go into the specifics.
Exodus 21:10 "If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights.
As can be seen as long as you provide for your wife number one and the other wife that you take on no sin is committed. However the author advises caution to keep both wives in separate homes and on separate allowances so each can run her own household without coming into conflict with each other. The husband has to manage these affairs and with children concerned and the inheritance first goes to the first wife and with the first son as Torah states. Torah polygamy should not be considered lightly and it should only be done if the parties concern feels this is the way they want to live.
Mistranslation in the Greek
Matthew 5:32 "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.
Is Yahushua saying that if you marry a divorcee that you are committing an act of adultery and if so under what condition?
Deuteronomy 24:1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house,
Torah permits divorce which is repeated verbatim in Matthew 5:32 for the case of uncleanness which in this case is adultery. Another case can be made for the laws of znot uncleanness unto submission which can be termed spiritual adultery or idolatry but this subject requires lengthy discussion. Please see the author’s divorce article for more on this.
Now if any woman is legally divorced as per Torah then how could she commit double adultery, once by being divorced and then by remarrying? The truth is she doesn’t. There is an error in the Greek of Matthew 5:32 and you thought the Greek was perfect. Sorry another error. The original Renewed Covenant writings were given in Hebrew Script then Aramaic followed by Greek. The Greek is a much later translation from the Semitic languages.
The only way a woman could commit adultery as per Mark 10:12 and Matthew 19:9 is if she took a divorce for reasons other than adultery unless there was a special reason where for instance she was with an unjust man who beat her up which would mean she could receive a Get (certificate of divorce) and legally be allowed to remarry but if her divorce was not adultery on either her part or her husband being unfaithful to her then that divorce for such things as bad cooking would not be a divorce and still a marriage in God’s eyes and her remarriage would be adultery as per Matthew 5:32..
Now let us see the argument that Christians make for the Renewed Covenant apostolic writings that plural marriages were not practiced in the early church.
First of all an argument from silence is not a defense in the court of law but still I am going to show you how wrong the church has been on this issue alone. Our ground always for any doctrine is not New Testament but the Hebrew Tanach what you term the Old Testament but be careful never call God’s covenants old as they are still live and active since you affirm you are Abraham’s seed. How are you Abraham’s seed if the Torah is old and done away? No one would be able to prove the Messiahship of Yahushua apart from the Tanach then how is it that people forget the same principle applies to any other precept such as plural marriages, divorce or what is clean and unclean. The New Testament does not give you procedures on how to conduct marriages, divorces, births and deaths. All these were taken from the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) and then interpreted by the rabbinic schools. We have to side with the school of Hillel because after the destruction of the Temple a heavenly voice confirmed that the rulings of bayth Hillel will stand. (Tosefta Sotah 13:3)
Let us see Paul what he has to say on this since for most Christians he is setting new laws when he does not according to halacha have the authority to do so. The only people who could come into agreement for any new laws or minhagim were the three pillars of the faith Jacob the brother of Yahushua, John (Yochanna) and Peter (Kefa). Paul as a Rabbi had all the authority to teach Torah and Messiah and that is all he could do and indeed did and nothing more. He had to submit to the beit din (House of Judgment), which were the persons mentioned above.
1 Corinthians 5:1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.
Paul talks about fornication within the Corinthian churches where a son slept with his father’s wife, in other words his step mum. This father’s wife is not his mother as the text does not call her his mum. This precept shows that there were people in the early church still practicing the Patriarchal life style without being condemned about it as today. This is the similar story to Jacob and one of his wives with whom Reuben the first born slept and lost his inheritance.
Genesis 49:4 Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.
Reuben did not sleep with his mother but with his step mum and hence the admonition.
Let us look at another from of plural marriage known as the levirate marriage and validated by Yahushua in the Renewed Covenant. This is where a brother dies leaving a widow then his brother whether married or single has to marry this widow and give birth through her to more children, which will take on the dead brother’s name and inheritance.
Matthew 22:24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
We do not see Yahushua groveling for forgiveness or explaining that this law is only for the Jews or is no longer valid but still stands today in 2008 as I write this article. I know people in India who still practice this form of marriage and are very much Torah obedient and love the Messiah Yahushua too.
But there is the argument that how can a man be Echad (one flesh) with two wives?
Yahushua said this:
Matthew 19:5 "and said, `For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?
Let us use Paul to explain this since most Christians out there follow what is termed by Muslims rightly as Pauline Christianity. Well done Muslims for at least getting this right. The term was a little confusing to me when I got regenerated by the Messiah about ten years ago but later I realized why the Muslims asked me do you follow Pauline Christianity and I said no I don’t but I follow all the Bible. The Muslims already are aware that most of Christians cut and chop abrogating the Bible as they please but cannot defend their errant stance of New Testament only Christianity. None of the scholars can and believe me I have spoken to many in my time with a heap of excuses of Dispensationalist error and thereof. Our faith is Messianic/Nazarene Judaism whether you believe it or not.
1 Corinthians 6:16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For "The two,'' He says, "shall become one flesh.''
Now Paul explains that even if you sleep with a harlot, a prostitute you become one flesh with her. He did not say the man was single or married the situation applies to any man and woman. How much more so can a man be one flesh with wife number two?
One flesh in Genesis was not teaching a doctrine about how many females in a marriage but showing us that there had to be a start of man and woman and the woman came out of the man. It shows us in order to produce you need a male and a female that is the model. You can produce with one female or several females as in the Patriarchal model. If this was not the ideal then why is it that in the Millennium we have seven wives to one man? Why does Yahushua tell us those that lost their wives will get hundredfold maid-servants?
Yahushua answered and said, Truly I say to you, There is no man who leaves houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of my gospel, Who shall not receive now, in this time a hundredfold, houses and brothers and sisters and maidservants and children and fields and other worldly things, and in the world to come life everlasting.
What are the maids for? They are sister wives in the Kingdom according to Torah so we hear it by the mouth of the Master Himself. They can be taken as wives but the choice is the man’s to make who lost his wife and family in this world.
If Christianity wants to use Adam and Eve as the ideal then taking the argument to its logical conclusion God also said the first couple were naked or in a special light covering, are you? Surely then the wearing clothes today is foolish and the same argument can be applied against why wear clothing but how come no Christian or alleged Torah followers are not willing to make the clothing argument? Therefore, there arguments only to be applicable to marriage in the garden is also discriminate and an illusion because no one is in the garden today and even the garden is not here today. By the way Adam’s first wife ran away and God created Eve out of his side.
Then the argument from the so called experts in Christianity cites passages out of context as usual with a Bishop only allowed to have one wife certainly does not hold true.
-- New King James
1 Timothy 3:2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach;
Suddenly one passage from the New Testament from the letter of Timothy ignoring the law of God and corpus of scripture that speaks in favour of plural marriages is totally ignored. Paul was known as Rabbi Sha’ul a Pharisee of the highest degree, expert in Pharisaical law. Most of today’s Christians don’t even know what that statement means what I just stated. You only get to that level after spending years training in Scriptures under several Pharisees and then would you qualify at the level Rabbi Sha’ul was. He told us himself he studied at the feet of Gamaliel one of the foremost experts in Biblical theology of his day. The school of Hillel has never banned polygamy therefore there was no injunction against believers who lived Torah lifestyle to follow this practice.
Acts 22:3 "I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers' law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today.
Now let me present a simple example regards to the Bishop who can only have one wife according to Christian theology and not the bible. Let us assume that this Bishop controls a number of Churches let us say he controls 100 churches and each church has a congregation of 100. This gives us a figure of 10,000 people. Now let us bring in the man Moses (Moshe Rebenu) the greatest teacher who lived in his time to teach and write the Torah the one who walked close to God and talked to Him face to face. How many Bishop’s do you know who talk to God face to face today? I don’t know any. If Moses decides to apply for the illustrious position of Bishop today for the 10,000 men and women he will get refused! What refused? Yes because he had two wives, actually three total but only two marriages at the same time. So now you would have to believe that a man who walks close to God speaks to Him FACE to FACE and led a whole nation of two to four million people in the Exodus from Egypt would fail the position to lead 10,000 people.
Only uneducated in the West could accept such a thing because the fact is by mistranslating a passage you do not fit a square into a circle because a square can never fit into a circle. Let us now look at 1 Tim 3:2 again with the correct hermeneutics at our disposal!
1 Tim. 3:2 The Aramaic reads: b'khada antatah (by one wife) In other words he must have at least one wife, or else as a single man he would be open to the most vile of temptations.
All this passage confirms that leaders had to be married to at least one wife and could not be unmarried Bishops.
12 Let the shamashim be the husbands of one wife, b'khada antatah overseeing their children and their own houses well.
In other words if they are called, let them enter the calling BY or via at least one HETEROSEXUAL wife!
Titus1:6 If anyone is blameless, the husband of one wife d'khada antatah (of one wife), having believing children not accused of loose living, or of being unruly.
Same rule applies. A single man CANNOT be a Rabbi or Pastor.
Messianic Rabbi Joe Vial a Hebrew scholar adds:
“I've attached a scan of a page from Ben-Yehudah's dictionary which shows that "echad-khad" is not just used, as a NUMBER, but also as an INDEFINITE ARTICLE in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and the Swedish also do this, as do many other languages. In Spanish, the indefinite article is only one syllable different than the number "one". So many societies/cultures have seen a connection there.
As stated above scripture is simply saying do not allow a person into leadership who is not married to at least one wife. He may be married to two wives that is fine there is nothing wrong with this since Moses was also married to two wives at one time.
A believer can have either a monogamous or polygamous heterosexual marriage as seen in Deuteronomy 21:15-17:
15 If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love,
Objection: Proverbs 31 woman is an example of a perfect monogamous marriage so why go for polygamy?
Answer: Error begets error since we did not pay attention to the text of the proverbs 31 woman. She had a polygynous household. Here is proof.
Proverbs 31:15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
What do you think the maids are for? The same situation as in Yahushua’s statement in the hundredfold example above. Some of these maids are possible sister wives to the husband no wonder he is known at the gates, important places of the city since he is a patriarch like Abraham who also sat at the gate.
[12]Only in polygamy is a man trained in the kind of rule required by a family-based society. In Proverbs 31, we find the virtuous woman enabling her husband to become a leader where "Her husband is known in cities, when he sits among the elders of the land" (v.23). Yet even this diligent and virtuous woman could not do it alone. She relies upon her maidservants (v. 15). Clearly, a tiny, monogamous family is not what is in mind here, but a family estate inhabited by a polygamous household. This woman excels all the other wives in her managerial and nurturing ministry (v. 29).
Even Martin Luther espoused it as a solution for fornication and never called it a sin.
His own solution on occasion was bigamy. This he had suggested in the affair of Henry VIII on the ground that it had been practiced by the Old Testament patriarchs with divine approval and never expressly repudiated in the New Testament.
- The Reformation of the 16th Century (p.259)
Other people like St Patrick and puritan leader John Milton also agreed with Biblical polygyny.
The laws of the land what do we do with them?
Please click here for this article:
In the end I want to put a little warning to those who may want to espouse this lifestyle. The case for polygyny (more than one wife) should be made with careful prayer and only if God is calling you to this lifestyle and all considerations taken into affect for the wife of your youth. Those of you who are happy in your monogamous marriages please remain faithful to your one and only wife because if there is no call in your life to go into Patriarchy as I suggested it is only for those a select few perhaps less than ten percent of the believing community who may be willing to live in this area of life and are mature enough to handle the calling. Its one difficult and fraught with problems with the godless societal laws that we live in. There are other issues to consider because if we apply strict Torah laws to it then each wife should be in a separate home with your time being divided between them in agreement between yourselves. However I know some Rabbis think that you can live in the same house but in different rooms. Please understand that this arrangement may work with some people but does not work with everyone and can sometimes cause more problems.
Act 3:21 whom heaven needs to receive until the times of restoration of all matters, of which Elohim spoke through the mouth of all His set-apart prophets since of old.
This will be widely practiced in the millennium to the chagrin of many but that time is yet to come because our Master said He is going to restore ALL things and that by the way will include Patriarchal Marriages.
Rabbi Simon Altaf
Be blessed in Yahushua.
http://www.abrahamic-faith.com
For groundbreaking articles… www.abrahamic-faith.com
Simon Altaf was chosen by God for the special End-Times prophetic calling. A lone voice in the wilderness, one taught by God (Ps 119:120-121), a Messianic Rabbi and a writer. He is an ex-Muslim, called out of Islam to rejoin His people after his long exile.
We hope this article has been a blessing to you. Please write to us and let us know if this has been a help and if you have any other questions or wish to receive our ground shattering quarterly Newsletter. Send the mail to shimoun63@yahoo.com. For prophecy books and DVDs that will wake up many who are asleep.
http://www.abrahamic-faith.com/Books/books.html
Get the best Hebrew Roots Torah and NT; this will become your Torah of choice opening up many areas of the Renewed Covenant (NT) writings which will give you a whole new understanding. The Torah and NT are now available to order on site. The AF Renewed Covenant being released in Nov 2009.
To order click here…. http://www.abrahamic-faith.com/Books/af-Bible.html
[1] Torah being taught to the nations.
[2] The word of YHWH is Torah.
[3] Yahushua quoted from the Torah Deut 8:3, the word was not ‘God’ or ‘elohim’ but in Hebrew the term YHWH was used.
[4] The medieval idea of marriage by Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke p62
[5] Confessions Augustine, The medieval idea of marriage by Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke P66
[6] The medieval idea of marriage by Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke
[7] The History and Philosophy of Marriage, Or, Polygamy and Monogamy Compared 1869 page 132 by James Campbell
[8] The History and Philosophy of Marriage: or Polygamy and Monogamy Compared, E. N. Jecks. Boston: James Campbell, 1869
[9] http://familyabbeys.org/eros.htm
[10] The History and Philosophy of Marriage, Or, Polygamy and Monogamy Compared". It was originally published in 1869 by a (non-Mormon) "Christian Philanthropist", named James Campbell
[11] http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/w_islam/poly.htm
[12] Eros Made Sacred by John Wesley Stivers
[i] A passion for Truth by Abraham Joshua Heschel p219
[ii] A passion for truth p 246
[iii] Yebamoth63a