L’ Chaim—To Life!
L’ Chaim—To Life!
Life is the indisputable evidence of the existence of a Creator God. The grantor of life gives dignity and meaning to all living things. Without God, there is no context or meaning to life or the universe. All would be meaningless and the vexation of our human experience! Life is that which no science or theory can create from nothing or fully explain as to the source of its origin or the basis of its complexities and inexplicable wonder!
Coming to know God gives relationship to life, to the divine Person, to all animate creatures of the living world, and to our human other relationships. Belief in the absolute immutability and fidelity of Elohim the Creator, brings faith, trust, hope, and purpose to all of life “under the sun,” in King Solomon's Ecclesiastes language. Reverence and submission to God and His Word brings wisdom, which is applicable and revelatory to all the situations of life.
It is not a coincidence that the biblical revelation begins and ends with a “Tree of Life” as found in the beginning in Genesis and at the end of Scripture in the Book of Revelation. When mankind’s sin resulted in severance from daily fellowship with Elohim, it also resulted in forbiddance to “… the Way of the Tree of Life …” by the Cherubim’s of the LORD. Through the promised Soteriology--Plan of Salvation—and the coming “Manchild’ redeemer, Elohim’s reconciliation with mankind would once again receive the divine “… right to the Tree of Life …” effected through the efficacious atonement and redemption of Yeshua the Messiah through the regeneration of the “New Birth,” and to the promise, in the age to come, to eat of the Tree of Life continuously, in the eternal day of the Lord--the new heaven and new earth, ages without end.
The rebellion of Lucifer and the angels in heaven, who were cast down to the earth, followed by the deception and fallenness of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, are a juxtaposition and contradiction to life itself. Contrary to numerous Christian concepts, Elohim is not the author of or Creator of sin and death; the free moral agency of both angels and the Adamic Race produced such, because “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” the Holy Writ declares. This connotes that all of sin and death are an inherently spiritual matter (Gen. 3; Rev. 12; Isa. 14; Ezek. 28; Luke 10:18).
The Apostle John, in his Gospel to declared the record of the coming of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the sinless God/Man—who was fully human and fully divine concurrently, and who possessed both a human will and a divine will, opens his gospel with an almost identical quote from the Godhead/Elohim in Genesis 1:1-3. In the first four verses of John’s Gospel, he declared it was Yeshua—by whom the Father created all things in heaven and on earth, his manifest Son, the Person of the Word— “the light of Life” and the life who is “holds all things together by the authority of his Word.” (See: Psalm 2:7)
One of my favorite books was written by Rabbi Harold Kushner, entitled—To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking. His book, printed in 1993, is timeless in its contribution to Christendom and the world regarding the Jewish worldview of life in our existent earth and the universe. Juxtaposed to the great empires of recorded history—the Sumerians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottoman Turks, the biblical worldview—revealed four thousand years ago to the Hebrews/Jewish people—beginning with the LORD’s choosing of Fathers Abaraham, Issac and Jacob, through the revelation of monotheism, also gave the Jewish people a more accurate view of life itself, and awe of the value, glory and dignity for the earth and the universe, and for all created things.
In his opening salvo, Kushner states, “To life—these two words represent so much of what Judaism is about. They suggest first that Judaism is about how to live, not just what to believe. They convey an optimistic attitude toward life, investing our energy in living rather than in worrying about dying, asking us to enjoy the pleasures of this life rather than noticing all the things that are wrong with it…” When we the Hebraic view against the backdrop of the bifurcated views, philosophies, religions and mysticisms of the above stated empires, who often believed that the created universe is evil and only the ethereal or spirit world is good, casts Judaism’s view of the creation and the Spirit of the Creator as an inseparable unity and wholistic view of both.
The LORD our Creator created a belief system as well as a map and purpose for life itself under the heavens! Genesis, the Gospel of Beginnings, contains in foundational and rudimentary form every principle and doctrine from the Lord that was fleshed out and defined, and put into the context of reality and fulfillment in the other books of the Bible. The Gospel of Genesis is the doctrines of—Creationism, Theology, Anthropology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology and Infinitude. It is a liturgical calendar, beginning with the Sabbath, the Feasts of the LORD, the days of the week, months, years, times and seasons, as how to embrace life, keep its purposes and meanings in orderly fashion. Life was far more than make-up as you go plan!
Matter, life and time were synced together, as it were. The biblical revelation of its Liturgical Calendar teaches us how to sanctify all of life. In Messiah Yeshua we are those who are sanctified and who through our consecration and obedience sanctify all things—our relationships in marriage and home, creating “sanctuaries in time” through meditation and worship, “sanctifying all things through prayer and thanksgiving,” arising each day with the declaration, “this is the day the LORD has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
One of my greatest sorrows is to see the wondrous life, happiness, purpose and blessings that Christians and the Christian Church have been robbed of due to the over Hellenization and Latinization of the Church, which was produced from the Fourth Century to our contemporary times. Our English Versions of the Bible, may have been preserved by devoted scholarly monks, who were isolated in monasteries through the centuries, and who preserved meticulous copies of the ancient manuscripts form Greek Latin, Syriac and the Masoretic Hebrew texts form the Ninth Century, we have inadvertently inherited too much of a tendency to separate Christianity form its mother—Biblical Judaism, as well as to adopt a bifurcated worldview. Although our translations are from all the above sources, dressed in Greek and Latin dresses, the character inside the dresses is of a Hebraic and wholistic worldview.
I also have the greatest admiration for the Late Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the Founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and the continued work that his devoted daughter continues. There are countless Jews brought form all over the world back to Israel because of this partnership, especially the elderly Jews for the former Soviet Union and East Bloc nations. During the current war with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, IFCJ has prepared millions of meals for Israelis and provided countless food boxes, ambulances and bomb shelters. Rabbi Eckstein wrote and declared often that (and I surmise) Jews and Christians have more in common than differences, and in the fight against the darkness and death in this world, being the opposite of the purpose of life that the LORD created, “we are in this fight together!”
Now that I am 77 years old, I have had the distinct honor to have been called of the LORD at age 15 to a continuous ministry of over 62 years now and counting—I have come to love and celebrate “To Life / L’ Chaim” as in no other period of my life and career. Although the human spirit and soul do not age, only our bodies do, I look at every new sunrise that the LORD awakens me to as a precious gift. I tell my wife, family, and friends more often just how much I love them and cherish the time we spend together. I also extremely enjoy times in the Word of God, books, prayer and meditation, and just sitting back on my back deck thinking about the LORD and the wonder of life and creation.
Have you ever thought of the astronomical mathematical equations involved as to how many uncontrollable things had to happen for you to have been born into the life of this post-Diluvian world? It involves who died and who lived in wars and from diseases, who moved where, or who traversed oceans. The intricacies blow the mind. However, the simple faith answer is that the LORD in His omniscience and foreknowledge, knew you while you were still in the loins of Adam of Eve or Noah and his family. You are simple here because the LORD wanted you here in life, and for a divine reason and purpose. If the Lord spoke to Isaiah the prophet about Cyrus the Great, 145 years before his birth, and that he would lead the Persians to liberate Judah from Babylon, or that he knew Jeremiah the prophet before his parents conceived him, and ordained him as prophet to the nations, then he knew you in advance.
When Adam and Eve sinned, the LORD was not caught off guard and had to employ Plan B. When the whole congregation of Israel sinned against the LORD in the wilderness, the Almighty once again had two choices, kill them all and start over, or forgive and redeem them. The overriding reason was, mankind, created in his image and likeness, called “elohim” with a lower-case e, was of greatest value to him, the only life on earth in his image and likeness and which was created for his fellowship. (Psalm 82:6)
My friends, if you are overwhelmed with the struggles of life, or if you feel oppressed or depressed, if you feel a sense of hopelessness, step back and realize that the spirit of darkness and death that covers much of our world is in total opposition to the LORD our Creator. Death came by sin and Satan gave rise to the deception of “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die.” The Father “so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” Messiah Yeshua declared, “I have come to give you life and that more abundantly.” His gift is not only in this life, but forevermore in the age to come. Celebrate! L’ Chaim!
Dr. John A. Looper
