Why does Jesus have two lines of ancestors?
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Coniah ended Solomon's kingly line. Mary's ancestor-line was curse-free. Joseph adopted Jesus into the kingly line.
- Melchisedec was God in the flesh Who met Abraham
- David was the most famous King of Israel
- The descendants of Coniah cannot be kings
- Luke follows the bloodline back to the man Adam
- 13 names cut out to symbolize the price of rebellion
- 14 is the number of the name of David the first king
- 4 main ministries of Jesus are the heart of the Gospel
- The repentant heart is the throne of God
Melchisedec was God in the flesh Who met Abraham
The Book of Matthew traces the descent of Jesus from Abraham to David to Solomon to Jechonias to Joseph.
"Begat" means the man was the biological father of the son.
This is not said about Jesus, as Joseph was not His biological father.
MATTHEW 1:1
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
:2
Abraham begat Isaac;….
:6
And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;….
:11
And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:
:16
And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
David is mentioned before Abraham as he was the most famous king of Israel.
Then Abraham is mentioned because he conquered the kings of his day (proving that he was greater than them) but then subjected himself to Melchisedec who was also a king.
Who is this Melchisedec?
HEBREWS 7:1
For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him;
:2 To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace;
3: Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.
“Without father, without mother”. In other words, He was not born of human parents.
“Having neither beginning of days, nor end of life”; This means that He was never born. He never died.
So Melchisedec had to be God. God picked up a handful of dust and created a human body for himself, in which He lived for a while when He dealt with Abraham. Afterwards, God just let that Body return to being a handful of dust. There was no corpse to indicate death.
So this is where Matthew starts as he declares Christ to be the King. Melchisedec was the real King and He dealt only with Abraham, not with the kings of that day.
David was the most famous King of Israel
Matthew Chapter 1 continues the blood line up to David, the most famous of the Jewish kings.
Then he moves on to Solomon who followed David as king. So no-one can be king of the Jews unless he is a descendant of Solomon.
The kingly line continues to Jeconias. Jeconias is the Greek name. Jeconiah is the same name in Hebrew.
The "ah" comes from "Yah" which is an abbreviation of Yahweh, a modified Hebrew name for God.
The real Name for God in the Old Testament was the unpronounceable YHWH.
The "a" and "e" were added in by people to make the Name unpronounceable. But Yahweh is thus not a Bible name. It is a made-up name.
Compare this with Elijah, which is a Hebrew name, that is called Elias in Greek.
But Coniah (meaning “established”) who was also called Jeconiah (established by Jehovah) was cursed by God so that no descendent of his would be allowed to be a king.
Jehovah is a man-made translation of Yahweh. Jehovah should really be JHVH. The letter "J" only began to enter the English language around 1500. So before that, there was no Jehovah.
In the Old Testament God revealed Himself as a Spirit. We cannot really describe an invisible Spirit. So God took on Names that would indicate His various powers and the fact that He was Lord.
These Names fell away in the New Testament when God the Father (the invisible Spirit) clothed Himself in a human Body (the Son of God) and gave Himself a human Name, Jesus Christ.
We can reasonably understand the Humanity of God (the Son of God ) although we cannot understand the invisible Father who dwelt within Christ. But we now have a human Name for God. Hence the Old Testament Names of the Spirit of God (Adonai, Yahweh, Jehovah, YHWH, etc) were replaced by His Human Name, Jesus Christ.
The Name Jehovah appears often in the Old Testament but never in the New Testament.
The descendants of Coniah cannot be kings
JEREMIAH 22:28
Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not?.
:30 Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.
Thus Joseph, a descendent of Coniah (or Jeconiah or Jeconias) cannot be king. But only this line that descends from Solomon can be king. There is no other royal line. Yet this line has been cut off when it gets to Coniah aka Jeconiah. (aka means "also known as".)
To solve this problem, Luke takes up the descendants of David through his eldest son Nathan. This line cannot be king but they are free from Coniah’s curse. This line produces Mary. Christ is her Son, not Joseph’s. Joseph adopts Jesus. An adopted son can claim the full inheritance of a natural-born son.
Thus through Joseph, Jesus can claim to be King of the Jews. But not being Joseph’s natural son, He is free from Coniah’s curse.
This gives Jesus the unique position of being the only Person who can claim to be King of the Jews.
The bloodlines of Matthew and Luke are the same between Abraham and David. Notice how Luke describes the line of descent. He does not say “ begat” as this means a natural-born son. He says “the son of” which has a double meaning. It can mean son or son-in-law. All the names mentioned are natural sons except for Joseph. He was the son-in-law of Mary’s father. Which makes him the son of Mary’s father. Every son-in-law has to get used to calling his father-in-law “Dad”. For some, this takes a lot of getting used to. But Luke, writing in Greek, had the problem that there is no Greek word for a son-in-law.
Luke follows the bloodline back to the man Adam
LUKE 3:23
And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
(Heli was the father of Mary. Joseph was technically his son by marriage to Mary).
:24 Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph,
:31 Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David,
:38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
There are four bodyguards around the throne of God in Heaven.
REVELATION 4:2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
REVELATION 4:6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
:7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
So the four Gospels describe Jesus as if they are the four chambers that form the human heart where Jesus wants to dwell.
The four Gospels are the heart of the Bible where God became a Man (Emmanuel, God with us) and died for our sins.
There is no greater display of love than to lay down your life for someone.
Matthew described Jesus as the King of the Jews. The Lion of Judah. A King must be from the kingly line of king David.
Mark describes Jesus as the Ox, the suffering Servant who bears our burdens. No bloodline is needed to be a servant.
Luke describes Jesus as the Ideal Man. Thus he starts with Adam, the first perfect man, who messed up in the Garden of Eden. Then Jesus, as the last Adam, the last perfect Man, had to repair Adam’s fall in the Garden of Gethsemane and on Calvary with His Blood.
John describes Jesus as the Eagle, as God Himself.
Blood flows into two chambers of the heart.
The first chamber represents Matthew Chapter 1 where the bloodline represents the Lion or King.
The blood goes to chamber 2 and then out to the lungs to get oxygen which is our breath of life.
Then blood flows into chamber 3 which represents Luke Chapter 3 where God breathed into Adam the breath of life.
Adam the first perfect man had messed up and his bloodline flowed down to the last Adam. The last perfect Man because nobody else but Jesus could be perfect.
God cursed the ground for Adam’s sake.
GENESIS 3: 17
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Jesus sweated Blood in Gethsemane and they pushed a crown of thorns into His head as they prepared Him for the cross. Thus both the thorns and sweat touched the Blood of Jesus. Thus the curse of thorns and sweat will one day be removed.
13 names cut out to symbolize the price of rebellion
But Luke's line of descendants has 13 more names than Matthew. Why did Matthew leave these out?
Coniah was cut out of the kingly line by God, because of his rebellion against God. To emphasize this cutting out, Matthew cut out 13 kings from his list because 13 is the number of rebellion.
This is a grim warning to us. If we rebel against God's Bible, He will cut us out of the Book of Life.
GENESIS 14:4
Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.
These were the kings who had fought against each other and then Abraham defeated the victors.
Matthew is warning us not to rebel against God.
Revelation Chapter 13 is the place where two great beasts (powers) rise up in rebellion against God to cause the world to take on the mark of the beast. In the forehead is the brain which enables us to think. The church system controls our thinking.
REVELATION 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
These two beasts will brainwash the world until they no longer strictly follow the Bible.
What you think then controls the deeds of your hands, your actions.
The first beast is the rise of Roman Catholicism to establish an unscriptural denominational system that obeys the commandments of man. Denominationalism is partly based on Scripture and partly based on human opinion and tradition. But it has successfully convinced more than a billion people.
Then a second beast, America, arises as the strongest nation that uses its financial muscle and scientific progress to take the lead in establishing Protestants and non-Catholics into another denominational system that is an image of the powerful and worldwide Catholic religious system of "Churchianity" that is partly Scriptural and partly unscriptural.
Matthew eliminated 13 from the kingly line and then had three sets of 14 generations.
14 is the number of the name of David the first king
Saul was the first king but the people chose him so that they could reject God's leadership.
David was the first king that God chose.
In Hebrew, there are no vowels.
So David is spelled DVD.
In Hebrew, certain letters can represent a number. D represents the number 4 and V represents the number 6.
So DVD adds up to 4 + 6 + 4 = 14.
So Matthew uses three groups of 14 generations to emphasize the number 14.
This is the number associated with David’s name.
So David is the king who gives importance to this line.
The kings are not important people themselves, they gain their importance by being the sons of David.
"Son" can mean a literal son or a later descendant.
But the line started with Abraham who submitted himself to King Melchizedek (God in a human Body that He created from a handful of dust and briefly used before breaking the body back into atoms when He had no further use for it).
So Abraham gained his importance by his faith in God.
The line then ends when Jesus is adopted by Joseph.
Joseph is part of the royal line but cannot be king because of the curse on king Coniah.
JEREMIAH 22:28 Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure?
wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed,
and are cast into a land which they know not?
JEREMIAH 22:30 Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days:
for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.
Jesus, as Mary's Son, is free from that curse.
As the adopted Son of Joseph Jesus becomes part of the royal line.
An adopted son has all the rights of a natural-born son.
So, Jesus is in the royal line and, as Mary's Son, He is free from the curse on the royal line.
Jesus is also called the Son of David.
But Jesus is greater than David as Jesus is not just King of the Jews, but He is soon to appear as King of all the earth. So, David gains his importance from being in the line that produced Jesus.
The four Gospels are the heart of the Bible. They join the New and the Old Testaments together.
We see the same pattern in the DNA which is the "language of life" that makes up our body cells.
Two long strands are joined by 4 links. Adenine. Thymine. Guanine. Cytosine.
The two strands represent the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The 4 links represent the four Gospels as they describe the ministry of Christ which is the aim of the Old Testament and the foundation of the New Testament.
The four links represent the four ministries of Christ that hold the Old and New Testaments together.
4 main ministries of Jesus are the heart of the Gospel
The King Who is a Servant. The Man Who is God.
The heart has four chambers that receive old blood that needs oxygen and then pumps the life-giving blood through the Body.
The four Gospels describe how Eternal Life was achieved by the shedding of the Blood of Jesus at Calvary.
Each chamber represents a different part of the process for pumping the blood.
Each Gospel represents a different ministry that Jesus performed to achieve our salvation.
Then the first four Seals of Revelation 6 describe how the Blood is pumped through 2000 years of the 7 Gentile church ages to combat the ride of many antichrist spirits.
Matthew shows Him as the King. Mark shows Him as the Servant, the One who came to serve. His service was to die for our sins.
This is very unusual. Kings like to rule, they do not want to serve.
Luke shows Him as the Perfect Man. John shows that He was also God in the flesh, Emmanuel.
This is impossible for most people to understand. A human Being within Whom the fulness of God's Spirit dwells.
JOHN 4:24
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
COLOSSIANS 2:9
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Three of these ministries can be represented by special animals.
The King of the beasts is the lion. Jesus is the Lion of Judah.
The ox is the very tough and strong beast of burden who serves us by carrying our heavy loads.
The ideal man is the Person, Jesus, that we all should strive to imitate.
The eagle has incredible eyesight and flying high, it can see far, much further than we can.
Jesus, as the great Eagle, can even see into the future.
This looks like the vision that John saw of God in Heaven.
REVELATION 4:2
And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
:7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
Ezekiel saw something similar.
EZEKIEL 1:10
As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.
The calf was obviously a young ox. The Dark Ages when truth was killed at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 and Trinity entered the church lasted almost 1200 years until the Reformation of Martin Luther started. More than half the time of all seven church ages. So, there was plenty of time for a calf to grow up into a strong ox that knew it would be slaughtered as tens of millions of Christians were killed by the Roman Catholic church.
This represented the 2000 years of church history.
The Lion represented the apostolic truth of the early church.
The calf grew up in the long centuries of darkness called the Dark Ages of Bible ignorance. Christians had to be strong like an ox to endure the slaughter. The killing only stopped about 1648 when the Thiry Years War ended with Germany totally devastated.
The Man represented the Reformers Martin Luther in Germany who restored salvation by faith. Then John Wesley in England restored holiness and outreach. This led to the great missionary age. God also blessed human scholarship which saw the King James Version of the Bible being produced, as it formed the foundation of the missionary age.
The Eagle represented the 1906 Pentecostal revival in Azusa Street, Los Angeles. Then between 1947 - 1965, William Branham in America revealed the mysteries of the Bible so that we can understand Bible verses when we read them.
The repentant heart is the throne of God
If this is what God's throne looks like in Heaven, surrounded by four living creatures, then where is His throne on earth?
He once dwelt in a Temple in Jerusalem, which was called the Holy Place because God dwelt there.
God ripped the veil to the Holy of Holies and left the Temple when Jesus died at Calvary. The Temple was destroyed by the Roman general Titus, who was the son of the Roman emperor Vespasian, in AD 70.
So there is no more Holy Place on earth for God to dwell.
So where does God dwell now?
There are 4 Gospels. They all tell us about the Cross at Calvary.
The number 4 can be built around a cross.
Then the four ends of the cross can be connected by a heart-shape.
If the four chambers of the heart represent the four guards around the throne, then Jesus wants to dwell in the midst of our human hearts.
God no longer dwells on earth in a Holy Place.
God now dwells in the hearts of holy people.
Each holy person is a living stone that is part of God's spiritual Temple that He is building up.
REVELATION 4:4
And round about the throne were four and twenty seats:
and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
To protect our hearts we have 24 ribs which represent the twenty-four elders sitting around the throne.
Who are the 24 elders?
The 12 Patriarchs from the Old Testament gave their names to the twelve tribes of Israel.
The twelve Apostles from the New Testament laid down the foundation for the church.
The Greek language has 24 letters of the alphabet.
All Greek words are made up of these 24 letters.
Jesus is the Word.
The elders represent the letters of the alphabet through which He expresses Himself, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
So Jesus dwells in our hearts by faith, surrounded by 4 chambers and 24 ribs.
God left the Holy Place where He dwelt on earth in the Old Testament and on the Day of Pentecost He came down to dwell in the holy hearts of the disciples who were in the upper room.
The human heart is where God chooses to dwell on the earth.
He awaits your invitation for Him to enter your heart.
You must allow Him in, of your own free will.
Repentance is the act that opens our hearts to Jesus.