Episode 70: Mark 15–The Crush of the Crowds and the Calling of the Twelve
With the five controversy dialogues behind us, what will be the consequences? This week we will start with a brand new theme (while still keeping all the old ones) that will be carried through to the end of the Gospel–insiders vs outsiders. Yeshua/Jesus will respond to His rejection by both the self-proclaimed and semi-official Jewish leadership by choosing the building blocks of his new community. He will begin with the Twelve and build from there. We’ll be talking about disciples vs customers and why it is so important that we have the calling of the Twelve directly after being mobbed by those desperate for healing at the seashore.
Transcript below–unedited. I am only able to be out of bed for short periods at a time. Waiting on a COVID test. So this won’t be colorized or anything. I will come back later after I have recovered. (Okay, I fixed it and was shocked to uncover a COLOSSAL BRAIN DEAD LEVEL error in what I said. Geez, some days we just don’t bring the goods but I did mention it below and fixed it. And we all tested negative for COVID so I just have that nasty mystery viral respiratory infection going around this summer. No pneumonia. Thank God.)
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Mark 15—The Crush of the Crowd and the Calling of the Twelve
7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. 11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.
13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. 14 And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 15 and have authority to cast out demons. 16 He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 17 James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); 18 Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
Alright, we just spent the last five weeks on the controversy dialogues. In them, there is a growing human opposition to what Yeshua is doing and claiming to be able to do. The challenges go from strictly internal, in the thoughts of His accusers, to openly plotting against His life. And it’s in the aftermath of the Pharisees going to the Herodians, on the Sabbath no less, in order to find a way to kill Him (which seems to have gone nowhere, by the way) that this week’s section of Scripture opens up. In Chapter one, He did battle with the forces of the demonic and with sickness and disease. Then, we see the undesignated scribes, then the scribes of the Pharisees, and the Pharisees themselves increasingly checking Him out and challenging Him, even going so far as to try and entrap Him. As this goes on, He grows increasingly popular with the regular everyday Jews, the Am Ha’aretz, the people of the land. But not for the reasons He would desire. They seek Him out not for the message of the Kingdom but in order that their desperate physical needs for healing and deliverance can be met. Sadly, He is being treated more like a magician than God’s messenger but it is hard to blame them. The Jews of the first century knew hardship that most of us can’t even begin to imagine. Just think of a world where one-third of your children never made it to their first birthday and 72% were dead by the age of sixteen!
Everyone has their challenges to overcome in being able to hear the message of the Kingdom—some serious and some petty. We must always look for ourselves in each story—not as the heroes but as the villains, as the clueless, and as the weak. The only hero here is Yeshua—that part is already taken!
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. My resource list is in the transcript of part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.
This week, we are picking back up where we left off, with Mark chapter three, verse seven. Even though it is connected to the previous material, Mark is also starting a brand new section with brand new themes for us to explore. That doesn’t mean that old themes are dropping off—the Yahweh-Warrior vs Israel’s oppressors will be ongoing to the very end, obviously. The legitimacy of His authority, which up to now has been challenged by the self-appointed leadership (Pharisees had no real authority of their own), will now be questioned (next week, actually) by actual authorities from Jerusalem as to the source. Hint: they aren’t thinking that source is a good one. But we also have two entirely new themes—that of insiders vs outsiders and kinship relations—what constitutes a spiritual family vs blood relations. So, we’ll be discussing something called fictive kinship in the coming weeks and address some misconceptions about it.
This section of the Gospel of Mark is referred to by scholars as the first part of “the Way” discourse. Yeshua’s teachings will finally be told, to us, in parables. He will chose His inner circle—as well as the inner circle of that inner circle—and He will be making His way toward Jerusalem and His crucifixion.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the text:
7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him.
Why did Yeshua and His disciples withdraw to the sea? Well, the way Mark records the action, it would appear that it is in response to the threat of the Pharisees and their hated enemies, the Herodians, coming together on the Sabbath to see how He might be assassinated. We have several occasions where, instead of standing firm in the face of attempts on His life, that He actually decides that discretion is the better part of valor and escapes instead. It simply was not His time yet and only a fool invites death when it can be avoided. So, another recurring theme here, He withdraws to a “lonely place”—in this case to the sea but sometimes to the eremos, the wilderness. This is the place of His strength where traditionally Israel has been weak. It was at the sea that the Israelites accused God of leaving them and their children to die during the Exodus, before Moses delivered them by opening up a path through the sea. It was in the wilderness where Israel repeatedly failed to be faithful. But the wilderness is where Yeshua defeated Satan during His temptation, where He repeatedly retreats in order to pray, and where He will soon perform other miracles in the face of His disciple’s faithlessness and fear.
Let’s look at the list of regions that people have traveled from. There is one surprising inclusion and two surprising exclusions. Galilee, no shock there because He’s in Galilee. That’s the northernmost part of Israel in Yeshua’s day. Then Judea, (and this is the region, not the province because if they were referring to the province that would include Samaria and Idumea) to the south where Jerusalem is located. Obviously, Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem were all Jewish strongholds, with large Jewish population bases and under the authority of Herod Antipas (Galilee) and the Romans under Pontius Pilate (Judea and Jerusalem). Then we have Idumea, which is where the Herods came from and they were Edomites, descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau who were forcibly converted to Judaism during the days of John Hyrcanus but never accepted as equals. The phrase “beyond the Jordan” is sometimes called “Transjordan” and refers to the land to the east of the Jordan River which still belonged to the Roman Empire but bordered on the Parthian Empire to the East. And then, people from the regions of Tyre and Sidon came as well. These were pagan areas with some Jewish presence in them. Sidon is obviously the area from which Jezebel originated. What we do not see is a reference to either Samaria, wedged between Judea in the south and Galilee in the north or the Decapolis, the ten Hellenized cities which were largely populated by pagans to the east of the Sea of Galilee. During the course of His ministry, according to Mark, Yeshua will travel to every single one of these areas, except Herod’s stronghold of Idumea. In fact, He travels only as far south as Jerusalem.
***(See note at end of paragraph)***We see two references to “a great crowd” and if you have been following all of these you might be wondering, “Which word for great are we dealing with? Is it egeiro, which corresponds to Isaiah’s rabbim? Or is it polys?” Well, this time it is polys. I know, rabbim is more exciting because of all the promises in the servant songs about the Servant doing great deeds on behalf of the many, but this time it is polys. (Okay, so I have no idea what was going through my mind when I said this because polys is the Greek Septuagint substitution for rabbim, as I taught in Mark part 10 and egeiro is the word for “raise up.” I guess we just all have our bad days and this was one of mine. I hadn’t even had a stroke in like a year when this happened so I can’t blame that. Crossed wires for sure. My apologies.)
The word for crowd is a fun one—plethos and if you have ever seen the old comedy The Three Amigos you might remember the funny scene about the word plethora—a word meaning abundance—so, the crowd could be called a great abundance. Hey, wait—does that sound like fishing language to you? Like a great catch? Right by the seashore? Hmmm…but alas, the verse says they came to Him, not that they were following Him. This scene is to remind us of a similar one after Yeshua healed the paralytic and withdrew to the sea, where many came after him. And what did He do next? He found Levi and called him to follow Him. This isn’t an accident. Paralytic healed—retreat to sea—call Levi. Withered hand healed—retreat to sea—call the twelve.
9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him.
This is not a positive situation. Again, we see that He can’t even preach without being mobbed. And what did He come for? Was it to heal? No, it was to preach the Gospel and I know that bothers people sometimes but let’s look back to chapter one:
35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”
Now, He goes on to preach elsewhere and does in fact deliver and heal people but that is a side thing—without the preaching of the message of the Kingdom, all the healing is simply a super nice thing to do. But Yeshua didn’t come to be nice but to deliver the message of the Gospel, that Heaven is now invading earth and in His person. Restoration is a side effect of the Gospel. It’s a perk and a bonus, but it cannot replace the Gospel. These people chasing Him down, they want to be healed. They want to see the miracles. This is not an organized gathering, otherwise He could stand by the sea without fear of getting wet. People aren’t sitting down and listening, they were physically pressing in and wanting to touch Him. This is invasive and pushy and demanding. This isn’t allowing Him to be the one in charge. This is very much a desperate, impatient mob treating Him more like a magician than as a prophet. The crowds are dazzled by Him, certainly, but fear and amazement aren’t the same thing as faith. And faith is the only thing that matters. I can put coins in a vending machine and push some buttons and get what I want and, if I have never seen one before, I can find the experience amazing, but that’s as far as it goes.
11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.
I like what Witherington says about this—how ironic that the wrong beings say the right things about Yeshua!
Evidently, just the sight of Yeshua now puts demons into a panic. Just His very appearance is now all it takes to provoke a conflict. I am thinking it is no longer just that they recognize Him when they see Him but that they are worried and on the lookout for Him. On one hand, they are falling down before Him, probably in recognition of His superior spiritual authority or in fear or both. We talked a number of weeks back about naming magic back during the first exorcism of the man with a demon in the synagogue. Many scholars believe that the demon was trying to gain control over Yeshua by naming Him, thought by ancients to give people authority over any god or demon that one knew the true name of. You can go online and look up the myth of Isis and Ra (or Re) and how she overcomes Him by finding out the true pronunciation of His name and using it against him. So, were the demons trying to do this as a desperate show of force? Maybe. But Yeshua wasn’t having any of it.
Why is He shushing them? Let’s go back to Isaiah again. This time 52:15–
Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.
53:7 He was oppressed, though he humbled himself and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, he opened not his mouth.
This is interesting, from the Aramaic paraphrase (Targum) on Isaiah–the very creative first-century “take” on it:
53:7He prayed, and he was answered, and ere even he had opened his mouth he was accepted; the mighty of the peoples he will deliver up like a sheep to the slaughter and like a lamb dumb before her shearers; there shall be none before him opening his mouth or saying a word
Remember that although the prophets had always been interpreted in such a way as to make human beings be the bad guys that Yahweh would defeat and destroy, Yeshua brought in an entirely new interpretation by fighting the powers behind the people—Satan and his demons. Yeshua brings forth an understanding that all creation is oppressed, and not just the classically vulnerable, but all humanity, by the evil conducting things behind the curtains. Although it is true that some are actively and eagerly cooperating and collaborating with the ruler of this world (and it is our job to give him dominion over less and less “real estate” –namely us)—although some people collaborate, we do not fight against them so much as we fight the powers behind them. I think prayer destroyed Hitler, honestly. The guy started out mean but he just became more and more insane as the years went by. He made mistakes that cost Germany the war—crazy mistakes like invading Russia. I mean, we all know what the greatest classic blunder is, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” And he did it, turning an ally into an enemy for no reason whatsoever except that I believe prayer was compromising his judgment more and more. Satan’s power is limited—God’s isn’t.
And so, although Isaiah seems to be about people being silenced, in reality, it was Satan and his devils who were silenced by the Messiah. They don’t seem to die out as people do and so they are far more dangerous than people. So, that’s why I think they were silenced. I mean, yes, Yeshua didn’t want them trying to use their silly name mojo on him not because it might work but because it was probably supremely annoying, but also, He was having enough issues with the human powers that be without being outed at this point. But Scripture foretold that the “kings” would be silenced, and this is what Yeshua did when He didn’t allow the demons to speak through and rule over the human beings He came to deliver.
Now, before we get to the calling of the Twelve, which will take us back into another huge Exodus reference, I want to talk about these people who were following Him but not actually following Him. I highly recommend Richard Wurmbrand’s books Tortured for Christ and In God’s Underground. This quote is from In God’s Underground. He was a Romanian Pastor in the former Soviet Union who spent a great deal of time imprisoned for His witness of the Gospel. If you aren’t familiar with Him, I absolutely implore you to change that.
A man who visits a barber to be shaved, or who orders a suit from a tailor, is not a disciple, but a customer. So one who comes to the Savior only to be saved is the Savior’s customer, not His disciple. A disciple is one who says to Christ, ‘How I long to do work like Yours! To go from place to place taking away fear; bringing instead joy, truth, comfort, and life eternal!
This is so profound. All these people, pressing in and touching Him—customers. Probably the overwhelming majority were nothing but customers. They wanted deliverance from what ailed them physically. They wanted deliverance from demons. And these aren’t evil desires. But if that’s all they want then that’s all they are going to get and that is beyond tragic. A person in a quadriplegic’s body confined to a bed for fifty years who knows the Savior is in possession of a greater freedom and hope than the person who went to a revial, got healed and spent those fifty years as a world-class athlete, if they didn’t also come out of it with a saving knowledge of Christ. The quadriplegic can serve God, like Joni Eareckson-Tada, and bring restoration and emotional healing to millions, while all the athlete can do is thrill people, win a few bets for gamblers, and fill his own wall full of trophies. That guy was just a customer—he went to the rally but came home empty handed compared to the one who actually becomes a disciple. Joni, of course, went through times of deep depression and anger—of course! But she came through it refined and she has continued to do work like our Messiah’s. She has taken away fear and has brought joy, truth, comfort and eternal life to countless disabled individuals and their loved ones. She changed people’s ideas about serving God and the “limitations” of being disabled. I know that, as a special needs mom and someone also who has to deal with having strokes and TIA’s, I look at her and I never give up. When I am feeling good I just work twice as hard in order to make up for the times that my thinker is on the fritz. Sometimes, I am four weeks ahead in my recordings, like right now, and sometimes I am struggling to catch up. But Joni showed me never to allow my disability to be an excuse for giving up. I don’t want to be a customer!!!
13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.
Alright, so here we have Him leaving behind the customers and calling to Him a select few. And this is our first reference to our brand new theme of insiders vs outsiders. This says that they were the ones He desired and the Greek makes it clear that they were the ones Yeshua Himself desired. So, He made the choice. Yes, even Judas was His personal choice. He called these men to Him, and we know these were not His only disciples because we also see others referred to as disciples later, namely the seventy-two in Luke 10 who were also sent out. Matt 27:57 singles out Joseph of Arimathea as a disciple. Nor was it odd to have disciples in general. The Pharisees had disciples. The Pharisees called themselves disciples of Moses. John the Baptist also had disciples. It was something beneficial that Judaism had coopted from the Greeks, this close teacher/student relationship, only the Jews applied it to religious studies instead of philosophy.
Although He apparently had many disciples, he did choose a core group—but why?
14 And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach
Much to our collective surprise, He didn’t choose them in order to be exasperated and annoyed with them. But, as often than not or more often than not, that actually seems to be their purpose. But seriously, He chose them because He desired them, to be with them, and so that He could send them out. Yeshua wanted fellowship with a certain group of people and He chose them. No great mystery here—He chose a group of men to form a community with. Did the community go beyond them? Yes, we see in other verses that there was also a larger and legitimate following of people, like Mary, Martha and Lazarus, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, like Joanna and the Mary’s who supported Him out of their own wealth. But these twelve were the core group. And He called to them on the mountain, which is supposed to remind us of the calling of Moses and the elders to Yahweh at Mt Sinai where they came up to Him and dined with Him there. Yeshua is making a statement here. The Pharisees and the Scribes, the self-appointed leadership of the everyday people, have rejected Him and the Pharisees have even plotted to kill Him at this point. So Yeshua calls a twelve of His own choosing as the leaders of His new community. A picture of Sinai, only centered in Israel and not in the desert, and with twelve men (probably) from the Tribe of Judah instead of twelve men from twelve tribes. Does this mean that the other tribes were being written off? Nope. This is symbolic language. And there are those who say they were all somehow from the twelve tribes but as at least four of them and probably six were brothers, that just doesn’t really work out. We can’t fall into the modern trap of wanting everything to line up just so—they didn’t think that way and so we can’t read their document and force our way onto it.
So yes, He wanted them to go out and preach (and in the next verse, to have the authority to cast out demons) but first and foremost their job was to be with Him. Yeshua, like Yahweh, is relational. A Messiah who is not relational and deeply embedded in community cannot represent Yahweh who is all about the covenantal relational community. So, when we try to go it alone, we are not mirroring God character and I am not gonna lie, I struggle with this more than anything else in my walk. So, I am not picking on anyone here more than myself.
15 and have authority to cast out demons.
That’s a weird short verse, eh? Yeshua not only creates a community but He also gives out authority to do the work of vanquishing the real enemy, which is not people but demons. Not that everyone got this—I mean, James and John with their wanting to nuke the Samaritans and all. But like I always say, at least they asked first. We all know or at least suspect, I think, that Peter would have just gone ahead and done it. But it takes authority to cast out demons. And that authority cannot be demanded, it has to be granted by someone who themselves has the authority. This is very much a picture (one that will continue) again, of King David fighting his foes with the help of his mighty men. Remember that two of the controversies linked up to King David and his authority.
Oh, and I want to mention this verse from Isaiah, talking about the regathering of Israel in Isaiah 54:
13 All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.
I believe that this is a picture of that reality in the messianic Kingdom, where Yeshua will teach us all in person and not just through the agency of Scriptures and the Spirit.
16 He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter);
So, in the first century, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Simon (Shimon) and even in this list of twelve names, two of them are Simon. Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot, Simon the brother of Yeshua, Simon the leper, Simon of Cyrene, Simon Iscariot, Simon the Magician, Simon the Tanner. That’s eight right there and you see that each one has been given an identifier in order to tell them apart. Good thing too, dang. Like when I was in Kindergarten and there were like five Chris’s, girls and boys.
But Peter (petros) or even the Aramaic Cephas was not a proper name. Petros means rock and cephas means stone. People were given these, I guess you could call them surnames or nicknames as a way of setting them apart for a special job or because of a feature of their life, character, or appearance. Of course, Peter became a person’s name later, because of the Bible, but it was never a name before this.
17 James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder);
Here’s our first (complete) set of brothers, whom we already met in chapter one. Yeshua gives them a nonsense word as a name. It literally doesn’t mean sons of thunder in any sort of linguistic wrangling so maybe this is sort of like when I call my cat Monty, which my children named after a dead horse (just don’t ask), Goob. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s short for goober, which means peanut, but I am not calling him a peanut. Goob is what I call him when he is being ridiculous and it comes from a silly word that a fellow guild member used to call people back when I was gaming online back in the dark ages. He would use it when he was exasperated with someone. So, Goob is an inside name. Everyone in the family knows what it means but outsiders might not. And yes, he is the only cat in the house who turns his head when he hears it.
But anyway, you will notice that this is not actually a name change. No one ever calls them anything except James and John. Of course, James and John are actually English renderings of Ya’akov and Yohannan, with Ya’akov translated as Jacob in English. In my transcript, I will be including a link to a Biblical Archaeological Society article about the changing of the name from Jacob to James https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-versions-and-translations/james-or-jacob-in-the-bible/
Now, I mentioned David and his mighty men, of which there were thirty but there were three who were set apart from the rest. Here, we have the same thing with three of the disciples in an exclusive group within the group—Simon, James, and John, or Shimon, Ya’akov, and Yohannan. If this means they were the most responsible of the three then we have some issues because-Peter, oh gosh, and the “let’s wipe Samaria off the face of the earth” brothers. I guess it just means there is still hope for someone like me!
18 Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
Andrew, he was the first to come to Yeshua and he brought Peter to Yeshua as per John 1:40. Philip, we know, was from Bethsaida as per John 1:44. Bartholomew, we like know zero about but he is included in all four Gospels by name as one of the disciples, just like Philip. Then we have Matthew, who, were it not for the Gospel of Matthew 10:3, we would not know was the tax collector Levi, son of Alphaeus (we learn of his father’s name in Mark 2:13). And it was not uncommon for people to have more than one name. It could also be that with a new life, Levi wanted a new identity. Going forward, we have Thomas who is called the Twin in the Gospel of John and who is famous for being smart enough to doubt Yeshua’s private reappearance in light of Yeshua having warned them not to fall for such reports right before His death.
Then we have James the son of Alphaeus, which is also the name of Levi/Matthew’s father. Do we have two sets of brothers here or three? And if Thomas was the twin of another disciple, does that make it four sets of brothers? Interesting theory but entirely unprovable. But cool. Next is Thaddaeus, who is called Judas, son of James in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13. Then Simon the Zealot—not Canaanite as some versions and teachings will tell you. The word is Cannanean in Greek which is the transliteration of the Hebrew qanna’. We see this word pop up in later rabbinic writings as qannaim, those who are zealous for the Law. Not a Canaanite. Yeshua was liberal compared to many of His contemporaries, but none of His disciples was anything except Jewish!
And last, and certainly least—Judas Iscariot, who really needs no introduction. We are told that he is the betrayer. Hand-picked betrayer, actually. This is the first overt mention that something is going to go terribly wrong, from a purely humanistic point of view. There were two villages named Kiriot—one in Judea and another in Idumea. Was Judas the great-grandson of forced converts? Was he simply the token disciple from Judea and representative of the rejection from the south? I don’t know. Was he one of the sicarri? The assassins? I doubt it.
But these men are never set up on a pedestal for us. They are us. More than us in a lot of ways but in their flaws they are so totally US. The disciples are all so flawed that no one would make the mistake of worshipping them. They serve as a counterpoint to Yeshua’s perfection and as a beacon of hope that God can and will use anyone. And this is the new leadership—as Yeshua has been rejected by the old leadership.
Everything that has happened in today’s passage, happened because of the rejection we witnessed in each of the five controversies (well, in four of them anyway, He was not rejected in the third one, just challenged). Next week, the most serious charge yet will be made—that not only is Yeshua in league with Satan but that the spirit operating in Him is not holy. So, we’ll be talking about the much-debated and unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.