Introduction The Traditional Aspect - Moriel Ministries

Small Groups Now, that was the background. That’s what happened then, and that’s what’s happening now. So we have the traditional and we have the historical, then we have the eschatological. In the Last Days it’ll be the same thing, a small group of people will arise like the Maccabees. Those that have insight will give understanding to the others and God begins to build an army that will withstand this landslide. Many will join in hypocrisy, there will be treason within the ranks, but in the end they win. In the end, the Maccabees won. It was prophesied by Daniel. Well, I can tell you this: A lot of bad things are going to happen. These two beasts are going to come, but I read the end of the book – in the end we win. What is going to happen is what did happen. The Maccabees, Jesus, King David – all had the same strategy. Things got really bad under King Saul, things got really bad under the Seleucids, things got really bad under the Sanhedrin and the Romans (Herodians). Whenever things get really bad, God begins raising up something new based on small groups. This becomes Hanukkah -­‐-­‐ the Hebrew feast of light and miracles, what we call in Hebrew, “Nesim v’ niflaot”. The Jewish Holiday Season In John 9, Jesus does a messianic miracle: He gives sight to a blind person, blind from birth. As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” (John 9:1-­‐2) “Who sinned, him or his parents?” There were three pilgrim feasts described in Leviticus 23 when the Jews had to come from all over to Jerusalem to celebrate. The Spring feasts were “Pesach” and “Ha Shavu’ot” (Weeks, Pentecost), and in the Autumn the Feast of Taberhacles, “Ha Sukkot”. However, by Jesus’ day, Hannukah became a fourth festival when a lot of Jews (although it was not mandatory by the Torah), would have come to Jerusalem for Hanukkah. Instead of walking all the way down from Galilee just to turn around and go back, and then having to come back again several weeks later for Hanukkah, it is possible that Jesus would have hung out in Jerusalem. It was a long journey then by foot. So this became the Jewish holiday season, that lasts from Autumn into early Winter. We have a lot of holidays together. The Issue of Blindness Unlike in the Pagan world where literacy was only for the aristocracy, every Jew had to be able to read the Torah to worship God. So to have been born blind would have been seen as a curse.