The question has to be asked: Did Moses respond to God encountered seeing the burning bush....or something else?
At the burning bush Moses is told to "put off your shoes". As Christians we are told we wear "the shoes of the Gospel of Peace", so Jesus Lord and King of the Jews wears the shoes of the Gospel of Peace, why "put off your shoes?". The history of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob had been a history of Peace. Shepherds, and when entering Egypt led by Joseph honored and giving high station. As sons of Noah surviving The Flood they lived under The Promise of God, destruction would not come again to the world by flood. But from Moses forward the Hebrews become a people who are trained for military authority and violent taking of land to claim as their own.
Could the voice from the burning bush not have been God, but another?
One that only shows it's "back side" and not it's face?
One that leads it's subservient stranded in the wasteland people into committing genocide?
One that speaks from behind "a burning bush" many today visualize as the sun setting and seen thru a literal bush...but in this age of nuclear bombs the image of burning bushes and everything else they hold speaks to a call or warning transcending time from ours to his.
Update: 08/09/26 I believe God was the speaker to Moses, and that Moses took off his shoes because the ground he stood on was Holy. I am still troubled by the how the once honored people of Israel fell into slavery and the very little written text of the 600 years from Joseph to Moses. Was it all just different Pharaoh's that changed their minds about the Israelites? Or did the Israelites do something to fall from grace? Also in the desert even over 40 years how does a minimally surviving people change from slavery to a military capable force? And why was it necessary to genocidally take Palestine? Putting the blood on the Israelites hands.....previously God had done the slaying: The Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah. In my mind this violence sets up the coming of Jesus in stark contrast...Jesus is the Lamb, slain on the Cross, for the atonement of the Blood on the hands of His People. But He is rejected by most of them...to this day. At the Transfiguration Jesus spoke to Moses and Elijah. Moses who did not come into the land of Israel himself and Elijah who prepared the way for Jesus in the land of Israel. All this to make atonement for sins of man. Jesus said he does not change what Moses and Elijah had done, but fulfills it and adds His Keystone and Cornerstone. Love your neighbor as you would Love yourself. And Peter the apostle who ran away from Jesus but returned and testified Truth to Power in Rome. Jesus foretold the casting down of the stones of The Temple, and rebuilding it in three days. The Temple to be the life of Jesus going forward conquering death with faith in the Father, love, and forgiveness.
All this begs the question why continue to advance adherence to Moses over adherence to Jesus once a person accepts Jesus as Lord? And why not actively promote the doctrine of Jesus in the land of Israel and Palestine as Jesus directed the Apostles and Disciples? Is a three legged stool not The most stable platform on which a man can make to stand?
History Occupation After rule by the Ottoman Empire ended there in World War I (1914–18), the Gaza area became part of the League of Nations mandate of Palestine under British rule. Before this mandate ended, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in November 1947 accepted a plan for the Arab-Jewish partition of Palestine under which the town of Gaza and an area of surrounding territory were to be allotted to the Arabs. The British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, and on that same day the first Arab-Israeli war began. Egyptian forces soon entered the town of Gaza, which became the headquarters of the Egyptian expeditionary force in Palestine. As a result of heavy fighting in autumn 1948, the area around the town under Arab occupation was reduced to a strip of territory 25 miles (40 km) long and 4–5 miles (6–8 km) wide. This area became known as the Gaza Strip. Its boundaries were demarcated in the Egyptian-Israeli armistice agreement of February 24, 1949. Are you a student?...
Comments