The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying Mission in the SSnet.org series Lesson 11, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart.

The Topic today is: “Mission is seeking for Jesus and finding Him like the Wise Men from the East for Morning Manna of the Sabbath School Lesson Mission”.

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God."

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on pages 143.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

Why do you not click on this now?

https://www.adultbiblestudyguide.org/pdf.php?file=2023:4Q:SE:PDFs:EAQ423_011.pdf

--- “Among those whom the Jews styled heathen were men who had a better understanding of the Scripture prophecies concerning the Messiah than had the teachers in Israel. There were some who hoped for His coming as a deliverer from sin. Philosophers endeavored to study into the mystery of the Hebrew economy. But the bigotry of the Jews hindered the spread of the light.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 33

---Better understanding? Than the Jewish teachers, rabbis, Pharisees and Sadducees?

---Someone among the heathen? Is Ellen White correct?

---Yes. She is.

---The three Wise men from the East that arrived at Herod’s palace came to ask where is the king that should be born.

---God is a God of time. He has a schedule. He had a schedule for Jesus.

---A schedule for Jesus? Yes. Daniel 9:24-27 is the 490 years’ prophecy.

---Given to Daniel already before 538 BC.

---But Christ was born in 4 BC and that is the time the Wise Men from the East came to look for Christ.

---How did they know it should be 4 BC?

---Simple. They know that a typical public office for someone in the Roman Times would be 30 years of age.

---They saw that around 27 AD he would be baptized and start His mission.

---At 483 years says the prophecy. Correct?

---If their starting date was to be 457 BC as in Ezra 7, then their 483 BC starting date of this public office of the King to be born was to be when He is 30 years old.

---So reverse back 30 years from 27 AD and one arrives at 4 BC. Bulls eye!

---So they got their Mercedes Benz Camels ready and load all the richest gifts they could find and set off to Herod to look for this “king” that was to be born.

---Anyone familiar with F. F. Bruce should know that in 1957 he wrote an article dealing with the Teacher of Righteousness and ended concluding that he operated in the template of Elijah.

---He did not use the word template, but that is this researcher's word to indicate a structure of beliefs, data concerning the reappearance of Elijah in future.

---What we know of this reappearance is shrouded by many legends, traditions and other stories created in post-biblical times in Christian and Jewish circles.

---Some thought that he would really be resurrected again before the Advent of the Lord.

---The Elijah template is in essence that the spirit of the Elijah message will encourage a person or persons to  proclaim the nearness of the Messiah, or His Advent, the last days, the last generation and signs of the last days. The call was to repentance and return to the Word of God.

---Bruce (1957: 27) indicated in his article that there are various suggestions by scholars in his day as to who the Teacher of Righteousness is but that they are just tentative identifications:

---Ezra (T. Gaster 1956: 273ff and especially 100);

---Nehemiah (I. Rabinowitz JBL 73 [1954] see F. F. Bruce 1957: 17);

---Onias III (H. H. Rowley 1952: 62);

---"pious" Onias (A. Dupont-Sommer 1954: 38);

---John the Baptist (Robert Eisler 1931: 254 and 1949: 284);

---Jesus (J. L. Teicher JJS 2 [1950]: 121).

---The datings of the people will also be different:

---Ezra in 457 BCEff;

---Nehemiah in 444 BCEff;

---Onias III in 170 BCEff;

---"pious" Onias in 63 BCE;

---John the Baptist in 26-30 CE;

---Jesus in 27-31 CE.

---I will not enter into the detail as to what led a scholar to allocate his/her date and identification but rather proceed to explain our own identification and dating of the Teacher of Righteousness.

---Qumran does not give the Teacher’s name.

---It is wise to realize that there is no clear information at Qumran as to who he was.

---Some have suggested that his name was Zadok but that is unlikely since the name would have read (Zadok ben X) not only Zadok.

---I identify him as an individual who operated between 47-7 BCE during the time of King Herod the Great of Jerusalem.

---His sect gathered themselves at the Dead Sea and he was a prominent leader for them preparing the remnant for the arrival of the Messiah or Messiahs (one of Aaron [thus a priest] and one of Israel [presumably a king of David descendant] see Bruce 1957).

---The 390 years as related to the 490 years of Daniel 9:24-27.

---F. F. Bruce has interesting comments to make in his 1957 article that the 390 years are related to the 70x7 weeks of Daniel 9:24-27.

---In fact, he indicated that they may have used Ezechiel 4:4 in order to apply the year=day principle, similar to what Seventh Day Adventists have been doing ever since their inception in 1844 (see F. F. Bruce 1957: 17).

---The terminus a quo of Bruce and other scholars is a problem. They start it in 586 BCE since the Zadokite Work in Admonitions do mention Nebuchadnezzar. ---But, think about it, it was the destruction in 586 BCE and not the time of the remembrance by the Lord.

---The Lord visited them in 457 BCE in Ezra's day [in our opinion] when they could return to build the temple.

---This researcher thinks that the Teacher of Righteousness used the same calculation as set forth here, that the 490 years was to start from 457 BCE, and that they year-day principle was to be used (as Bruce also said) and further that the birth of the Messiah was to be sometime after 8 BCE.

---I assume The Teacher of Righteousness knew the calculations of the year-day principle since the Three Men from the east that visited Christ at His birth could have derived their calculation in the following way from Daniel 9:24-27.

---When the angels who comprise the star that led them to Bethlehem announced His birth, they knew already of this calculations in Daniel 9:24-27.

---John the Baptist seemed also to have expected Christ exactly in the year 27 CE which would fit exactly into the year-day principle applied to Daniel 9:24-27 as we suggest here.

---It was at the end of the 69 weeks of 483 years that the Messiah was to come to him to be baptized. And He did. 

---Herod the Great was king until 4 BCE and he killed many babies in that year due to the news that a king was to be born.

---I assume, that he also killed the Teacher of Righteousness in 7 BCE and that his sect from Qumran fled to Damascus and migrated there.

---The coins and pottery at Qumran seems to support this view that the group left during that time.

---Source:

http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/qumran_bruce.pdf which is the article by F. F. Bruce, "The Teacher of Righteousness in the Qumran Texts" (1957).

---Is it not remarkable that not only SDA’s knew about the 490 years prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27, the Calvinist Lawyer Hugo de Groot, the Refomer George Joy, the Catholic Thomas Aquinas, and now for certain the author of Jubilees and people at Qumran knew abou this calculation. And the Wise men who were heathens.

---Question: Was Ellen White right in her "heathen knew more than some Jewish learned men in Jesus’ days"? Answer: Yes.

---Mission is thus working with the sources that treats the Bible as precious. Keep to the simple literal reading of the text. That will make you too a Wise Man or Wise Woman that will find Jesus. Nice correct?

---Start immediately.