First let's get something clear about erroneous notions of Paul and his founding a new religion, which he didn't. True, the halakhah of his Judaism switched from the Pharisaic oral law to the Ruach Hakodesh, but his religion was still one of the Judaisms of the time, not a new non-Judaism Gentile religion.

HOSHEA (HOSEA)

Read Hosea 14:9.

In Numbers 25:1-3 and Hosea 9:10 we see that the Israelites

turned in to the Baal prostitutes at Baal-Peor (Baal=L-rd; Peor=

the mountain on which he was worshipped) when they worshipped the

G-d of the Moabite women. Hosea 9:10 (RSV) says "they became

detestable like the thing they loved." We become good or bad

according to what we admire (see Phil. 4:8). Americans admire

violent, pornographic movies and are becoming increasingly

violent and pornography-tolerant.

Once a maggid (preacher) had to marry a prostitute in order to be

able to speak from the heart of G-d. Only a cuckold with a

covenant-breaking loose-living wife (who forgets him and thinks

only about her worthless boyfriends) can have any comprehension

of how G-d feels toward his people when they forget him and let

something else have first place in their hearts. Like a good and

faithful husband, G-d supplies all our needs and in Him we live

and move and have our being, yet we worship and serve our

prideful fancies and give ourselves over to other lords as if we

ourselves were religious prostitutes (worse than prostitutes

because we receive no real and lasting payment from our idols,

the "gigolos of the heart".)

A husband whose wife forgets him and is unfaithful has an

ambivalent reaction: on the one hand he has a tender broken heart

and an open hand seeking reconciliation (see 2:14-23); on the

other hand, he has a fist of hellish reprisal seeking justice and

punishment. He is like a sower with two kinds of seed in his

hands: seeds of mercy and seeds of vengence. Contrast the name of

Hosea's son (Jezreel meaning "G-d sows") in 1:5 and the urn of

the word in 3:23. G-d will sow vengence on the northern tribes

because they broke away from David, G-d's King. [Jehu threatened

the Lord's plan to raise up a Savior through the seed of David

not by killing the king of Israel, Joram (852-841 B.C.E.), but by

killing the king of Judah, Ahaziah, the grandson of Jehoshaphat

the descendent of David. Like Athaliah's sin of almost

liquidating the Davidic dynasty, this sin of Jehu was more than

bloodshed. It was an anti-Moshiach attack on the coming Davidic

Moshiach Himself. In this respect Athaliah was as evil as

Manasseh (697-642 B.C.E.), who has been called "the Ahab of

Judah." But Jehu's sin began at Jezreel, so the sin of Jezreel

was the rejection of David and David's coming Son the King

Moshiach. Whoever rejects him commits the sin of Jezreel.]

Furthermore, the treacherous and rebellious kings of the northern

kingdom wipe out each other's dynasties with violent abandon.

Therefore, in the same way that Hosea can't be sure that Jezreel

is his legitimate son, G-d also has a backsliding people who have

begotten "alien children (5:7). However, Hosea sees that G-d will

transform such tragic covenant-breaking and its results. What G-d

has sown will in the end come up as a marvelous multitude: first

Israel after the flesh, then spiritual Israel (Hosea 1:10-11;

Romans 9:25f; I Shliach Kefa 2:10) the reborn, regenerated

Israel of G-d--a Jewish-Gentile end-time miracle, the called out

people of G-d, then natural Israel at last herself grafted in

(see Rom. 11).

Hosea is a prophet to the nation, and his domestic upheavals help

him see what others cannot see. He sees that his nation has

broken its covenant with G-d, has turned from G-d-ordained

leaders and gone after worldly self-reliant ones who favor

military strength (1:7) and a foreign policy that plays off (see

8:10; 12:1) one enemy (Egypt) against another (Assyria), while

the common people applaud the g-ds of civic religion and

celebrate them by idolatrous sensual pursuits rather than seeking

the divine protection that a national revival might have brought.

To return to Egypt to appeal for help there (7:11) implied a

cancellation of G-d's electing choice, for G-d called his people

out of Egypt (11:1). Four of the kings of Israel were

assassinated in palace intrigues during this period because each

king trusted traitors (7:5).

Will America trust the P.L.O. or Iran (which are committed to the

destruction of Israel)? America plays off Red China against

Russia, relies on billions for the arms race, and yearns

nostalgically for the good ole days when liberal womanizing

sell-out-the-world-to-Stalin types like Franklin D. Roosevelt ran

the country. America's political covenants say that we are "one

nation under G-d" (which G-d, the G-d of deists like Thomas

Jefferson and Ben Franklin or the G-d of the Bible?) but we

covenant-breaking Americans give G-d little room to operate when

our laws give rights to sex perverts as though they were not sex

perverts but a victimized minority with their own gay crusaders,

"Brit Chadasha kehillot" end now even a Greenwich Village Gay

High School. (One of the school's aims is to help 15 and 16 year

olds to be comfortable with their homosexuality.) Do you see how

we need modern Hosea's to preach to America?

Remember the droughts that have come upon New York City? Look at

4:2-3 and 6:3 in Hosea. Hos. 4:2-3 shows that drought is a

penalty for rejecting G-d's Word, which the perverted

government of New York City has done: "Swearing, dishonesty, and

murder, and theft and adultery are rife; Crime follows upon

crime! For that, the earth is dried up: Everything that dwells on

it languishes-- beasts of the field and birds of the sky--even

the fish of the sea perish." Furthermore, just as drought is one

of the ways G-d withdraws from us, so rain is one of the ways he

comes to us: "Let us pursue obedience to the L-rd, and we shall

become obedient. His appearance is as sure as daybreak, and He

will come to us like rain, like latter rain that refreshes the

earth." (6:3)

Why are New York City's leaders (not all of them but many of

them) so corrupt? Their prosperity has corrupted them. Look at

13:6. "When they grazed, they were sated; when they were sated,

they grew haughty; and so they forgot Me." The very prosperity

G-d gave Israel in the land caused them to forget Him; yet they

grumbled at the lean wilderness experience, and as soon as their

husband provided more than enough, they forgot him like an

unfaithful wife. Thus Samaria (the capital of the northern

tribes) "must bear her guilt, for she has defied her G-d" (Hosea

13:16). This was tragically fulfilled (II Kings 17:6) in 722 B.C.

when the Assyrians took the northern tribes into exile. Samaria

is the unfaithful wife of G-d that must be driven out of his

house (9:15) in order for G-d's prodigal wife Israel (the true

remnant) to fear and return to her true provider and covenant

L-rd (see 2:23).

Therefore, we see that those who teach that prosperity is G-d's

will for every person are teaching error. Money can absolutely

ruin the person who cannot handle its temptations; therefore, G-d

often gives money to those he is angry with as a punishment they

deserve. Such fools are sealed in their sin by their assumption

that riches are the final proof of divine approval. See 12:8.

"And Ephraim (the northern Kingdom) thinks, 'Ah, I have become

rich; I have gotten power! All my gains do not amount to an

offense which is real guilt (in other words) none of my crimes

are going to catch up with me!)'" Like Israel, believers tend to

whitewash their own sins and overestimate their own spiritual

fortitude and ability to handle perfect financial and physical

security. Those "health and wealth" teachers have forgotten that

acquiring wealth can be the ruin of many. They have

simplistically reduced divine financial miracles performed at

G-d's wise discretion to a cause-and-effect "faith" formula which

ignores the wayward heart of man and the chastening, testing hand

of G-d.

In Hosea 11:9 we see the perseverance of G-d's mercy (unmerited

by us). In 11:8-11 we see the tension between his justice (his

righteous wrath against his covenant-breaking spouse) and his

love (his determination to justify or forgive his spouse). See

Romans 3:26. Hos. 11:1 and Matthew 2:15 show the solidarity of

Moshiach and people, just as the rejected son on the aitz and the

accepted son at the resurrection show the same two ideas of

justice for man and justification of man embodied in the man

Yehoshua. Deuteronomy 21:13-21 requires a father to deliver up a

rebellious son to the death penalty, but the Divine Father has

love that won't allow him to do it. A father might give his son

up to the death penalty, a husband might divorce his wife, but

G-d will never give up his chosen people (Isaiah 49:15; Hosea

11:9). Hosea ch. 3 shows G-d's love redeeming his people from her

sinful bondage just as Hosea in long-suffering love buys back his

wife from the slavery into which her adultery has sold her. But

Israel will not return to G-d just as Gomer will not return to

Hosea until the End (see 5:4; 7:10: 2:7; Rom. 11).

Traditional Islamic and heretical Christian misunderstandings of

the fatherhood of the G-d of the Bible stem from an ignorance of

Hosea. In 11:1-4 divine fatherhood is moral and spiritual, in

contrast to the physical ideas of the Baal cults and the Qur'anic

"Trinity".

One reason the body of Moshiach needs Shlichut Acts 13:13

modalities (a sodality is a brotherhood or association based on a

common purpose) is because of the nature of modalities (a

modality is a local Brit Chadasha kehillah the modal quality of

which is that it is a minimal decision group of people who may

agree to do no more than observe a day--usually Sunday--and honor

various liturgical forms and may grow in no more dramatic way

than biologically). Modalities might sometimes tend to settle

down to mediocre religious "business as usual" (note Hosea 6:6!),

with spineless leaders who put up with wicked board members and

big tithers because they love their salaries (note Hosea 4:8!)

just as the kohanim of Hosea's time preferred to prosper from

their share of sin offerings for willful sin rather than act to

dissuade the people from evil. Therefore, the sodality ministry

of the prophet and the outreach worker and the Shliach and the

teacher are needed by the local spiritual leader and his flock,

because "my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (4:6).

The modalities must not be able to too completely control the

sodalities, any more than a patient should be able to control his

physician or dictate his own prescription for recovery. Just

as Israel attributed to a fertility sex-g-d the praise due to G-d

for the G-d-given fruits of the earth (thus making G-d jealous),

and just as Gomer forgot her maggid (preacher)-husband Hosea, and

just as America has forgotten the G-d on her coinage and goes

after her g-ds of youth, money, sex, exotic religions, corporate

and status power, etc so the Brit Chadasha kehillah as both

sodality and modality has a tendency to forget G-d and to abandon

the love she had at first--Rev. 2:4. What G-d wants is "hesed",

loyalty to one's covenant obligations and devotion to one's

covenant partner; that is, steadfast love. If we skip around New

York as spiritual prostitutes without commitment or staying power

or systematic study stick-to-it-ness, G-d vows to take all the

pleasure out of our unfaithful pursuits (2:7, 11). If we want to

be saved we must come out from among this harlot's brood in

Manhattan, this foul-mouthed and violence-loving brood of a

former generation of backslidden Americans. We muat became

faithful to the modality or sodality where G-d has placed us.

Otherwise, G-d threatens reprisal as he did with Israel--military

carnage, drought, spiritual exile and estrangement. Hoses

prophecied from 750 to 715 as a native of the northern part of

Israel in the period after Amos and contemporary with Isaiah and

Micah. Undoubtedly Shliach Sha'ul was heavily dependent on Hosea

for Ephesians 5:32 and Romans 11:25-26, just as Yochanan was for

Rev. 21:9f for his simile of marriage as a picture of G-d's

relationship to His covenant spouse, the people He will restore

to Himself in the end-times.

Looking at New York City's 42nd street we see prostitution, soft

and hard porn movies, video stores, pornographic literature,

massage parlors, transvestites, lesbians, homosexuals. Hosea

taught that there's a link between promiscuity and

forgetting/forsaking G-d. The spirit that led Gomer to forsake

her husband also led her to forsake her G-d (4:12).

The L-rd is saying in the book of Hosea that New York City is

like Samaria. Samaria was the apostate capital of the Northern

Kingdom of Israel. She was marked for judgment. She had helped

turn the holy faith of Israel into Baal worship, a fertility cult

which promised rains and harvests by means of a wicked religion

where devotees indulged in an orgy of drunkenness and religious

prostitution. Baal was a nature g-d or weather g-d associated

with thunderstorms as in I Kings 17:1-18:46 (notice I Kings 18:45

where the thunderstorm comes from the G-d of Israel, not Baal,

whose proponents have been defeated by Elijah). Baal was a

fertility g-d or sex cult g-d whose worship involved erotic acts

and public immorality. Baal worship was apparently based on

imitative magic: that is, magic that attempts to control the

universe by mimicking the desired event. If one wants Baal, the

prodigious lover and fertile bringer of rain and harvests, to

"ride the clouds" to his reigning wife-g-ddess Asherah (Jdg. 3:7)

so that one's barley harvest will be abundant, then one worships

Baal by visiting a cult prostitute, getting drunk, and engaging

in ritual fornication. This is the rationale of

imitative magic behind the demonic worship of Baal, and this is

also the background of the book of Hosea where a maggid

(preacher) is commanded to marry a cult prostitute of Baal named

Gomer.

G-d says, "Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have

children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by

forsaking the Lord" (Hos. 1:3). The land of America has certainly

"played the whore" (2:5), forsaking the L-rd. She has forgotten

her true Provider (2:13) and only G-d Himself can heal her

disloyalty to Him (14:4). She has lost the honeymoon love she had

for Him in the days of her youth, in her early wilderness period

(2:14). America has turned to other g-ds, and the L-rd has an

indictment against her. Her children are shameless. They have

rejected the knowledge of G-d and brazenly devote themselves to

immorality. Drugs have taken away the understanding, a stubborn

spirit of whoredom has taken away contrition, and the vile deeds

that even children are engaged in do not permit them to return to

their G-d. The glory of our youth is to know the true G-d and the

free destiny to which He has called us, but "when their drinking

is ended, they indulge in sexual orgies: they love lewdness more

than their glory" (4:18).

So drunkards leer and refuse to work and welfare mothers

proliferate illegitimate children and those who don't know G-d

dearly love their wanton ways. And "they do not consider that I

remember all their wickedness. Now their deeds surround them,

they are before my face" (7:2). When G-d glances He sees a

kaleidoscopic horror show of sexual depravity and decadence. Like

an aging overweight prostitute or a filthy homeless transvestite,

America staggers in her sin. Her wealth she puts into pockets

with holes in them and she does not know it. She turns "to that

which does not profit" (7:16). Americans elect politicians "but

not through Me" (8:4), and these unjust sycophants court the

muscle beach "gay lobby." With great wickedness and guilt comes

great hostility to the Word.

The L-rd has shown that He is soon going to send fire upon all

the world's sleasy cities (8:14), for they have played the whore,

departing from their G-d, deeply corrupting themselves. He will

remember their iniquity, He will punish their sins, as He did in

the time of Hosea. The homeless will grow like a vast herd, like

wanderers in a distant country. In them the heart of a wayward

people will be exposed, and a prodigal nation shall sift its

trash, eating the fruit of its lies. Because, merely talking

about G-d, this people is bent on turning away from Him. And, led

by cords of idolatry, this peaple trusts only in its power and in

the multitude of its police. Therefore, violence rages in their

cities, and G-d's hot anger hangs overhead like a vulture. Until

repentance is preached on the sidewalks, these who sleep there

will not know G-d, nor will He return them to their homes.

If you study the Book of Hosea, you will see that the true

Messianic religion of Moses had been bartered off at that time.

Jeroboam had split the kingdom and had led the people away from

the true expectation of the Moshiach through David (8:4; 3:4-5;

1:11; Amos 9:11; Mic. 5:2; Is. 11:1-5; Jer. 23:5-6; Ez. 37:24-38;

Zch. 12:7-8; II Sm. 7:12-13). The people build pagan sanctuaries

under "sacred" trees and the wicked kohanim lead them to get

drunk and to go into cult prostitutes under the alluring shade of

"oak and poplar" (4:13) and other kinds of trees. But G-d is a

jealous G-d. and He says, I am like an evergreen cypress" (14:8).

Yet the people refuse to live beneath His protecting shadow.

Therefore G-d threatens to make Israel a treeless desert (2:3),

sending the Assyrian exile (prophecy fulfilled 722 B.C.E.) whose

armies set fires that together with droughts turned Israel into a

"parched land." And today the L-rd again is going to take His

shadow away. The shade from the blazing sun over our country will

be removed. Every time an American prostitute brings a "client"

into her hotel room and turns on the air-conditioner, little does

she know that the chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals in it used

to transfer the heat, are destroying the atmosphere's ozone

layer. When she sprays on deodorant, little does she know that

these same chemicals are removing the ozone shield and letting in

ultraviolet light causing skin cancer on her exposed body, eye

cataracts on her painted eyes, and a defective immune system in

her ulcerated body. G-d is removing His ozone shade from the

sun's harmful ultraviolet rays at a rising level of depletion

that atmospheric scientists called "disastrous" and irreversible.

Rev. l6:8 says, "The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun,

and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire."

The world's daughters have turned to prostitution (4:13), selling

their virginity for a little wine, worshipping idols at

rock-concerts. But G-d is removing the pleasant shade.

Soon everyone on the streets will wear hats and umbrellas,

looking like orthodox Jews on a rainy day. Soon the light outside

will be starkly white, like the flashpoint light of a nuclear

explosion. Soon to venture outside will be a project for fools,

like going unshielded into an x-ray room or strolling around

naked inside a nuclear reactor. The Day of the L-rd is coming

(called also the parousia in the Brit Chadasha Scriptures), that

time when G-d will decisively break into history, save His

people, and settle the score once and for all with His enemies,

both militarily and politically. The Day of the L-rd is a Gadol

"great" day (Yoel 2:11), a day that is karov ("threateningly

near" or "imminent"--Yoel 1:15; 2:1), a HaGorah "dreadful,

terrifying" day. The Sun shall be turned to darkness, and the

moon to the color of blood (Yoel 2:31), and the stars shall

withdraw their shining (Yoel 3:15). See Hosea 5:9-10 which

speaks of the Day that G-d's wrath will be poured out "like

water" which Ephraim (the Northern Kingdom of Israel) saw in 722

B.C.E. which is the time when the ultimate Day of the L-rd (still

future) drew near, overtaking evil Samaria, and Hosea's prophecy

was fulfilled. See 8:13; 3:4; 9:3,15-17; 11:5 for references to

the coming Exile.

If you are wondering whether the fig tree of Luke 21:29 is

Israel, see Hos. 9:10.

Since the word "sow" is a key word in Hosea, note also 8:7 and

10:12.

On the meaning of Hos. 4:l5, see Amos 5:5.

HOSEA 6:2

After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise

us up, and we shall live in his sight.

[Just as the Moshiach was raised from the dead through the glory

of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:4). The Word

of G-d took on flesh and died for all; therefore, all have died

(II Corinthians 5:14). The old humanity has already been put to

death, and he who does not believe is condemned already (Yochanan

3:18). This is why everyone has not yet been raised bodily from

the death: because, those who hear and believe must first be

raised spiritually from death to life. If we reject the Brit

Chadasha Scriptures interpretation of Hosea 6:2 in favor of our

own interpretation, there is a way that seems right to a man, but

that way leads to death (Prov. 14:12). The period when

decomposition of the body sets in is three days (see Yochanan

11:39) but G-d raised the Messiah on the third Day so that he

would not see corruption--Psalm 16:10; I Cor. 15:4. Hos. 6:2 says

that, even though the Exile will come, the netion will be brought

back to life and forgiven, and the Lord's "appearing" is as sure

as the dawn--Hos. 6:3.]