Come Follow Me Insights This Week: December 11

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This Week's Reading: Nahum; Habakkuk; Zephaniah

Come Follow Me Insight #1

Malachi is the last prophet before the 400-some year silence between the Old and New Testaments. That means there were 400 years without a prophet (that we know of) on the earth. 400 years for the gospel to be changed from its original purity. Just imagine how well the Church would run if our last prophet had been alive in 1623 and we were simply relying on written sources that only our local church leaders had access to. (Source) With the outside influences of other cultures (Judea was ruled by the Persians, Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians, and then the Romans), there was rampant sin and misunderstanding of God’s law by the time we get to the New Testament.

Come Follow Me Insight #2

Without new revelation from living prophets the people began to honor and follow three different groups of people that the Savior would frequently condemn: scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees.

1. SCRIBES: During the Old Testament scribes were men who had been educated to work as record keepers and who would make copies of the scriptures. Because of their work they were very familiar with the scriptures. However, with the loss of prophets and new revelation, the scribes began to expound on scripture and gain individual popularity. One of the reasons for this is that after having lived in Babylon for 70 years, most of the people no longer spoke Hebrew– the language the scriptures were written in– so they had to rely on the scribes to read and translate the scriptures for them.

2. PHARISEES: About 200 years before Christ was born, the Pharisees began to come into religious power. The Pharisees were a group of common people that wanted to (in response to the Hellenization of their culture) bring the Israelites back to the purity of the law of Moses. Their name originates from the Hebrew “Perushim” which means “separated ones.” They focused intensely on following the Torah (the five books of Moses) and created a new “oral law” based on Moses’ writings in an effort to apply ancient laws to current circumstances. The Pharisees’ focus was on exact obedience to the letter of the written and oral law.

3. SADDUCEES: Around the same time there was a group made up of the higher class called Sadducees. The Sadducees were mostly wealthy individuals who were not nearly as popular as the Pharisees but did have more religious and legal power. (Source) The Sadducees controlled two of the most important parts of Jewish life and culture: the temple and the Sanhedrin. Though Israel was under Roman rule at the time of Christ, the Sanhedrin was the Israelites’ governing body that ruled in matters both legal and religious. The leader of the Sanhedrin was the high priest who had power comparable to a king. And that high priest was almost always a member of the Sadducees. (Source)