ULDAH MINISTRY

No,61　　Nov. 2000

　【 CAPTIVES OF GOD 】

As a prisoner for the Lord, Then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. … There is one body and one Spirit-just as you were called to one hope when you were called- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." … It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, so that the body of Christ may be built and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
Eph. 4:1~13

The chariots of God are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands; the Lord has come from Sinai into his sanctuary. When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train; you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious that you, O LORD God, might dwell there.
NIV, Ps. 68:17~18

God's entourage is twice ten thousand, thousands of angels; the Lord is among them, at Sinai in holiness. You ascended on high, you have taken captives, you took gifts of man and even of revels, to dwell with YAH, God.
The Stone Edition Hebrew Bible, Ps. 68:18~19

"And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory. " I will set a sign among them and I will send some of those who survive to the nations- … to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your brothers, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the LORD- …," says the LORD. …And I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites," says the LORD.
Isaiah 66:17~21 .

In Eph. 4:8, Paul uses the verse from Psalm 68:17 to support his statement that each individual Christian has been given an apportioned grace from Christ to serve the Lord and co-operatively build up the body of Christ. He likened God's triumphant ascension to His throne in the Psalm to that of Jesus and interpreted: When Jesus Christ was resurrected and ascended into heaven after all his experiences as a human-being from birth to death, He first sent the promised gift from the Father, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enabled the followers of Jesus to work for Him by appointing gifts to each individual. These were the gifts to His church.
When reading the verse, there are two problems. The first one is that there is no definite interpretation concerning the meaning of 'captives'. The majority understand them to be the spiritual powers of this dark world that Christ defeated at the cross, as Paul teaches in Col. 2:15, 'Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he (Christ) made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.' On the other hand, some take them to be the redeemed people whose souls were caught by Christ, in other words, the resurrected people. Some argue the possibility of the connection of these 'captives' with the first resurrected people, possibly the Old Testament saints who were resurrected shortly after Jesus' resurrection as recorded in Matthew 17. On the whole, I support this second view and my reasons will become clear when the second problem is resolved.
The second problem revolves around the discrepancy in the propositions ('to' or 'from') used in the Psalm and Ephesians. The Psalm states that God received gifts from men, whereas Paul quotes that God gave gifts to men. This could have arisen due to the linguistically ambiguous nature of the Hebrew language. Paul evidently draws his citation out of rabbinic interpretations current in his day such as the Syriac Pashitta and the Aramaic Targum, by reading the Hebrew proposition as "to" and the verb as "give". However, as shown at the beginning, the Hebrew Bible reads differently. There, it is not men but God that received gifts. Hence, the meaning becomes completely different to Paul's interpretation. The emphasis will be laid on God Himself and His majestic reign in Zion. This reading serves well in the context of Psalm 68, where the magnificent Kingship of God is envisaged. In other words, it conveys a double vision. One is the actual historical journey of the ark of covenant (the dwelling place of God) from the wilderness, via Canaan to the final abode in Jerusalem. Another is the future consummation of this historical journey by theophany on Mt. Zion, where the God of Israel will be glorified and worshiped by the whole nations. This future vision is supported by many references in the Scriptures. One of them is the last chapter of Isaiah quoted above. There seems to be a good clue in verse 20. In its context, the verse can be interpreted in this way: After God's judgment (written in the preceding verses 15~17), the survivors, probably the saved remnant out of the Gentile nations will be sent all over the world to evangelise. The whole world will acknowledge the God of Israel and those saved Gentiles will bring the dispersed fellow Israelites 'as an offering to the LORD' to Jerusalem. It is as if the restored Israel is a homage-offering by the Gentiles. According to this passage of Isaiah, gifts that God received from men are apparently the saved people. If this reading is applied to Ps. 68:18, would not 'captives' in God's train of thought be understood as saved people? The Jewish translation of the Stone Edition Hebrew Bible over the verses 18~19 in Ps. is very helpful. As quoted above, it can even be understood that the captives are both people and rebels, i.e., all those who are caught by Christ and saved, regardless of their past history. Further, it might be intriguing to pay attention to the phrase, 'to dwell with YAH, God ' in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is understood to have literally been translated very faithfully to the original Scripture. Though the Jews do not accept Messiah Jesus as divine, their Bible apparently suggests that somebody who ascended on high as a king, who triumphantly took captives as a living-offering will dwell with God in Zion, the coming kingdom. It sounds as if someone of divine character other than God reigns there with God. Christians know who this one is. It is none other than Jesus Christ, our Lord, Saviour.
Returning to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, it can be concluded that captives in v.8 should mean 'saved people' and not evil power such as demons. However, concerning the literal discrepancy between Paul's quotation and the Hebrew Bible, even if the latter appears more conformed to the context, Paul's interpretation is not necessarily rejected as reading-into of the Scripture. Again, Isaiah's passage will help us to understand this. Interestingly enough, in Is. 66:21, Isaiah clearly makes a connection between an offering to the Lord (redeemed people) and God's calling to be priest (apportioned ministries). As Isaiah prophesies that God will select any one among the redeemed people, whether Jew or Gentile, as God's co-workers, i.e., priests and Levites in the coming World, so Christ will appropriately give his followers a gift of different ministries, for example, as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, 'until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ.'
God's purpose is to make all human-beings His captives, a living-offering through Jesus Christ so that all of them will live with God for ever.

NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS

This month a money gift has been sent to the International Bible Society for the distribution of English, Arabic and Swahili Bibles to the Mtabila Refugee Camp in Tanzania. FREDERIC's desire to feed them with the Word of God has been answered in co-operation with IBS (Tanzania and U.K.). Pray for Rev. NAABATEZE AUGUSTIN and Rev. BAZIRUWIHA GERSON, who are ministering to more than 10,000 attendants in the camp. There are said to be more than 500,000 Burundian refugees in Tanzania. Pray for salvation of many souls through their devoted works for the Lord. We are planning to continually send as many Bibles as possible to those who are thirsty and hungry spiritually in the refugee camps in Kenya, Tanzania and other countries. Pray that the Lord will open more doors of opportunities so that this work may expand and also that He will prepare more faithful workers.
Pray for MARY JANE's mother's ministry to the impoverished children in the Philippines, so that they will be protected under the guidance of the Lord and be led to accept Him as their Saviour.

NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS

Thought of the Month……….
　Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind." Mark 3:20~21
Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. But when The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus' brothers said to him, "You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No-one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world." For even his own brothers did not believe in him." Therefore Jesus told them, "The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil…." 　　　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 John 7:1~7
It seems that Jesus was not brought up in a comfortable environment, surrounded by understanding and discerning brothers and sisters. On the contrary, they were distrustful and skeptical about Jesus' ministry and hence, possibly, His messianic claim. However, His mother Mary seems to have been an exceptionally faithful, obedient and spirit-filled believer, which probably enabled her to perceive even the unfathomable things very positively and thoughtfully. She is understood to have raised up all her children well, in accordance with traditional Jewish ways of up-bringing and education despite her hard circumstances, such as the death of husband Joseph relatively early on in their marriage. Jesus, therefore, as her eldest son, had to work as a builder to support the rest of his family until he reached the age of thirty when a Levite was regarded matured enough to undertake his service.
As illustrated in the underestimated expression of the people, 'Isn't this Joseph's son?'(Lk.4:22) and in Jesus' reply, 'No prophet is accepted in his home town.'(4:24), so without doubt Jesus' brothers were among those who turned a deaf ear to His teachings while He was alive. However, it is apparent that they completely changed after Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection because two of Jesus' half-brothers, James and Jude left their teachings in the New Testament. Jude's encouraging word, 'Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt: snatch others from the fire and save them;' (Jude 21~23) might have come out of his own experiences. James, who is said to have been most respected as righteous among the earliest Christians in Jerusalem, was one of those who was personally encountered by the resurrected glorious Christ. It might have been a life-changing experience for a doubtful brother of Jesus. It is therefore not surprising that his teachings were, though seemingly contradicting Paul's teach-ings, very consistent with Jesus', at the point of emphasis on the justification of faith by works.
The fact that Jesus' half-brothers eventually turned out to be very devoted and faithful followers of Jesus, is very significant, because it seems to teach us the importance of spiritual inheritance, which would be assuredly passed on from generation to generation through a God-, Christ-and others-centred, disciplined bringing-up and education primarily at home. As long as man lives in this world, as Jesus suggested to His then unbelieving brothers in the context quoted at the beginning, it can be said that any time is right for him/her to be awakened to God's will. If we say that those who are under spiritual coverings, due to even one person's intercessory prayer in a family, have a greater chance of experiencing such spiritual awakening, it follows that offering perpetual prayer for one lost soul's salvation, or more precisely, for one out of a family retrieving to the Lord, is very important.