1998 Watchman's Teaching Letters

This is the eighth in a series of teaching letters. If you have not received any of my previous teaching letters, please send $2.00 for each back issue you would like to have. These teaching letters are not just the average run-of-the-mill type of letter. If you really want to learn the Scripture’s deepest hidden truths, you will not want to miss any of these back issues. Because of the nature of these teaching letters, they will not go out of date, so you will want to keep them in a safe place where they won’t get lost. Again, I want to thank all of you who are helping to keep this teaching ministry going financially. All of your donations and purchases are deeply appreciated! As I no longer have an income and now depend on Social Security, you can imagine how precious each donation is (however small it may be). 

Now Continuing the Topic:

JUST WHO IS THIS PATRIARCH JUDAH? (Part 8) 

In the last issue, we traced Judah’s third son, Shelah, through the Bible. We traced the descendants of Shelah as far as Nehemiah 11:5. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah concerns themselves (many consider it one book) with race-mixing on a grand scale and we can be sure that Shelah was right in there taking part in it and promoting the idea. Shelah didn’t have anything to lose by this as he was a bastard from his beginning. With this lesson, we are going to continue from where lesson number seven ended. We left off with a person by the name of Maaseiah, who was a descendant of Shelah who was counted among the ruling families in Jerusalem at the time of Ezra and Nehemieh. This name Maaseiah may be important because there was a Maaseiah (a high priest) who took a strange wife and rather than get rid of her, he went to Mount Gerizim to officiate there among the Samaritians. Whether this is the same Maaseiah, I am not sure. But I am getting ahead of the story, so I will go back to the beginning and start over.

This is the sixth in a series of monthly teaching letters. If you have not received any of my previous teaching letters, please send $2.00 for each back issue you would like to have. These teaching letters are not just the average run-of-the-mill type of letter. If you really want to learn the Scripture’s deepest hidden truths, you will not want to miss any of these back issues. On my last mailing, I ran into a problem with the post office. On Thursday, August 27th., I dropped 100 of my monthly letters in the outgoing mail in the evening after the post office had closed. The next day, when I was in the process of mailing out more material, the clerk at the window informed me that they had all of my 100 letters in a box and they were all overweight and I would have to add 23 cents of postage to each one of them. I had tested all of my mailing on my Pitney Bowes counterbalanced scales at home, and I was sure I was under one ounce. Even the post office’s special digital scales showed I was under an ounce in testing. I finally checked the weight of 100 unprinted pages against the weight of 100 printed pages and a difference of 5% showed up (enough to make my letters overweight). After much checking, I found that the toner on the paper adds about 5% to the weight of the paper. I tried to find a lighter weight paper, but was not able to find anything lighter than 20 lb. that I could use. My only other alternative was to reduce the size of page 5. After much figuring, I found by reducing my fifth page 21.6 square inches, I could get down to an ounce. I finally decided on cutting a legal size page (14x8.5 in.) in half, and that reduces the fifth page 34 square inches which should be enough to keep the letter under an ounce. You will notice a difference, as a result of this, with this letter.

Again, I want to thank all who are helping this ministry with donations and orders. I am not quite breaking even yet, but everything you are doing helps. Much of my material is going into prisons, and, of course, prisoners are unable to donate or purchase any of my materials. I am getting requests continually from prisoners for my Watchman’s Teaching Letter. The prisoners who are getting my letters are copying them and sharing them with other prisoners. They use them in their devotional meetings, what little they are allowed to meet. A few prisoners were sending me 32 cent stamps as a donation, but the prison officials stopped that (and very quickly). I can’t get cassette tapes or charts into the prisons, only written materials of a limited size.

This is the fourth in a series of monthly teaching letters. If you have not received any of my previous letters (#1, #2, and #3) please send $2.00 for each back issue you would like to have. If you really have a desire to learn the Scripture’s deepest hidden truths, you will not want to miss any of these back issues. I also want to take the time to thank all of the people who are helping to support this ministry! 

Now Continuing The Topic:

JUST WHO IS THIS PATRIARCH, JUDAH? (Part 4) 

In the first three issues, we learned much about Judah’s personal life. Judah had a very complex entangled and complicated life. There are few who have ever really mastered the subject of Judah and some of the statements by different commentators about his life and tribe (especially his relation with Tamar) are spurious and totally out of order. With this issue, we are going to turn from Judah’s personal life and direct our attention to his descendants, the Tribe of Judah. If you thought Judah’s personal life was complicated in the previous studies, you haven’t seen anything yet! From Judah we get the highest and most wonderful of blessings, and at the same time, a terrible and vexing curse. 

JUDAH BECOMES BOTH A BLESSING AND A CURSE 

Like the old saying, we have good news and we have bad news. Let’s take up the good news first. To do this we will have to go to the 49^th chapter of Genesis where Jacob, just before he dies, prophesies the destinies of each of the tribes of his family. For Judah, Jacob prophesied this, Genesis 49:8-12:

“8 Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. 9 Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. 11 Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.”

            This is the second in a series of monthly teaching letters. If you did not get my first letter #1; 5-98, please send me $2.00 and I will send you a copy. All back issues will be $2.00 each. I will continue to use the same format that I started with. As I told you in my first teaching letter, this is a new ministry for me. I will continue to get this Teaching Letter out each month, Yahweh willing. I will also be writing booklets from time to time which I will offer you as I complete them. I have one that is almost ready but I want to do a little touchup on it before I present it. I have another one in the works for which I believe you will be excited.

At this point in time, I am getting my blood pressure surges under control, and if all goes well, I will be writing for some time to come. I am thinking of purchasing a new or good used copier as the one I presently have was not made for the long runs like I have been doing. The copier I now have is a good one but was only designed for personal and limited office use. 

Now Continuing The Topic:

JUST WHO IS THIS PATRIARCH, JUDAH? (Part 2) 

First of all, I would like to apologize for some typos in my first Teaching Letter. On page 8, I spelled “vail” as “vial.” Actually I was trusting the spell check on my computer on this one and goofed up. The modern spelling would be “veil” meaning something to cover the face. Actually I had it correct when I first typed it, but let the computer misguide me. The word “vail” is in the modern dictionary and means: “to lower; let sink or fall down; also a sign of respect or submission.” I really am in need of a good proofreader. I proofread my writings the best I can but don’t get all the mistakes. If you find some of my typos, please bring them to my attention, as you the reader, can serve as a proofreader for me!

On page 7 of my Teaching Letter #1, I was telling how the ten brothers, after they had sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver, divided it between them making two pieces of silver for each one. I also mentioned and asked what they might have purchased with this money. Well in further research on this I found that the money wasn’t divided evenly among the ten brothers and I also found what the brothers spent the money for. In The Lost Books of The Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden, in “The Testament Of Zebulun”, chapter 1, verses 17 to 20, pages 244-5, we read this: