Shabbat shalom and welcome back to the fascinating story Jacob's Stairway. Again I have to apologise for the long delay in continuing what was originally conceived as a Passover Season 2026 series but ongoing illness and other urgent family matters overtook me once more. Again, because of the long delay in bringing this third part to you (there will be a fourth and final one next week), let's quickly go over the previous material as a month's gap has a way of dulling the memory.

On the previous two occasions we looked at the Story of Nathanael (Part A) (also known as the Apostle Bartholomew) and then we began the first of the three-part Story of Jacob (Part B1), of which this is the second (Part B2). You will remember we looked at Jacob's carnal weaknesses, his aspirations to serve Yahweh, and we understood the importance of pursuing a life of holiness and every man and woman's final overcoming the flesh, which we will talking more about today. We studied the importance of the birthright of the firstborn son and why that practice must be restored in the end-time Remnant as an integral part of New Covenant Israelite Patriarchal Order. We looked at Esau's poor marriage choices outside the covenant of his father, Jacob's cheating of Esau and flight to Paddan Aram both to escape his brother Esau's wrath and to find a wife from among his own kinsfolk. Finally, we were reminded of his prophetic dream of a 'ladder' - more correctly, a stairway - and looked at the three stages of everyone's spiritual journey. We'll be seeing next week how that three-stage principle repeats itself through the prophetic symbolism of the festivals and the family set-up of the three founding fathers of Israel. So if you have forgotten the contents of these two previous sermons, do please look over them again for the sake of continuity. Gone are the days when I could deliver one-and-a-half hour-long sermons! That hopefully brings you up to speed.

So what I now want to do is take you back in time to the day before Pesach (Passover), some 5 weeks ago. This is what happened. I had been listening to my audio Bible, as I do every morning while getting ready for the day, and the chapter of the day was Genesis 28. Jacob, you will recall, had cheated Esau of his birthright. Both he and his mother, Rebekah, had committed several serious sins, both against their respective father and husband, and against Yahweh! As I was listening to the tape my attention was arrested by some details I had previously overlooked on the many occasions I had read this passage over the last 45 years or so.

Like Jacob our forefather Jacob who finally gained control over his fleshy nature at Peniel, by the River Jabbok, we are all, alas, deceivers - whether we know it or not - and remain so until we have overcome the scarnal nature inherited from Adam. That is the only way we can becomee true Israelites - as overcomers, which is why overcoming is stressed so many times in the Book of Revelation. Jacob was a trickster, as was his mother Rebekah from whom we suppose he learned the art, who encouraged her son to deceive their husband and father, and by an act of trickery - deception - they did wrong for what they supposed was a righteous end. They thought that 'the end justifies the means'. They sinned. Never mind that Jacob was more spiritual than Esau, which was undoubtedly Rebekah's excuse, but what they did was still a lie.

Only Isaac had the right to transfer the birthright away from Esau to Jacob, as Jacob was to do when he transferred his birthright fron Reuben to Joseph, and when later in Egypt he gave it to the younger Ephraim instead of to the elder Manasseh. That is why Reuben and Ephraim - France and Britain, the representatives of those two bloodlines - were at war for so many centuries, and why first East Manasseh and Ephraim - Germany and Britain - fought two ghastly fratricidal world wars with each other. And it's why West Manasseh tricked Ephraim - the United States and Britain, respectively - with a false flag event, the Boston Tea Party (a deception they later repeated in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Vietnam too), to give an excuse to break away from Ephraim's headship. And it's why West Manasseh (the USA) conspired to destroy Ephraim's (Britain's) Empire, and did so through by bankrupting it, becoming the world hegemon until today. And because West Manasseh (USA) has resorted to trickery, taking something that was never his to take in the first place, he is being deposed little by little even now as I speak. That doesn't mean Ephraim (Britain) will get back what he lost, mind you, because Ephraim has been up to trickery himself over the centuries. Work it out. The USA became the indisputable de facto world power in 1945. Britain, the firstborn, was heavily in debt to the USA from two world wars, and only finally paid it off on 29 December 2006, both of which the USA entered late. Britain tried to exert it's power one last time in 1956 in the Suez Canal Crisis, together with France (Reuben) and the Israeli Republic (Esau), and was dealt the final death-blow to its attempts to remain a superpower [1]. 1945 was 70 years exactly last year (2025) when the USA and its allies (almost entirely Israelite nations) despicably conspired through NATO to destroy Russia using Ukrainians as a proxy. We see the hand of Jacob the Deceiver again and again, don't we?

Cheated of his birthright, Esau too has used trickery (at which he is masterful) to get back his rightful heritage, which he finally did in 1948. We are also witnesses of how his ongoing trickery is even now depriving him of that birthright as he gets hammered by a modern 'Persia', a birthright which is not going back to either Britain, the USA or Germany (though it was briefly returned to Britain in 1917 when she acquired Palestine before Esau claimed it...by trickery and violence). Ishmael has been claiming the birthright too, illegitimately, by starting his own religion and claiming he was the firstborn with the natural birthright! More trickery. More deception. Wherever you look, that's what you see. And not just in Abraham's descendants, but in all the world. The flesh rules this fallen planet everywhere.

But let's not get into all of that now. I simply want to show you, or remind you, that historical events haven't taken place in the past, and aren't taking place now, in a vacuum. Nothing is random or accidental. There is purpose being worked out, and in the mix is the chaos caused by deception and trickery, the hallmark of Satan. And the worst of it is that all of us - me and you - are Jacob-tricksters and -deceivers until we have learned to struggle to overcome the fleshy nature as Jacob did and have become like Nathanael too...overcomers. So don't go pointing figers because that finger of yours will bend back and point at you. That's what being a sinner - one who breaks Father's Torah - looks like: we blame-shift, we accuse, we deflect responsibility, and we're pretty crafty at it. And that's why we are commanded to get the leaven of sin out of our lives, and why seven full days at Chag haMatzah (the Feast of Unleavened Bread) are set apart to reminding us of the importance of being actively involved in sweeping sin out of our 'house' - our sukkah, our tent, our bayyit, our mortal bodies, our temple of flesh, something we're not very good at which is why we have to be reminded to do so for seven days each and every year. And we can't feast at the seven day-long Sukkot Marriage Supper of the Lamb as the Mystical Bride until we have done so. The thing is, we can't do this on our own. None of us can. And that's where Yah'shua (Jesus) comes into the picture.

You see, we're all after things we're not allowed to have...or sometimes are allowed to have but only when Yahweh says we can have them. Somtimes timing matters. So we deceive ourselves and others by trickery. We try to force the future and get slapped in the face for our trouble, until we finally yield sovereignty to El Elyon, the Most High God, Yahweh our Father in Heaven. How many times have you tried to force Yahweh's hand to get something you were not entitled to, or before its time?

You know, I am reminded of the story (and I could tell you many more) of the teenager who so much wanted a car. He made it known to his father that this was his fondest desire, for back in those days (I'm thinking of 1950's and 60's America mainly) owning a car was a status symbol amongst ones peers, a way to flaunt wealth and prosperity. The young man had taken his driver's test and passed. His birthday arrived. He had been brought up to be a Christian, mind you, but like all youth, there was an awful lot of flesh in the driver's seat of his soul. When his birthday came, he was presented with a wrapped parcel. Confused, expecting to find a car in the driveway with a large ribbon tied around it (as was often the custom in the United States back in the 50's and 60's sometimes) - he was expecting to find that car waiting for him to claim it. He tore the wrapping off the parcel and found to his horror a beautiful gold-embossed Bible inside with his name on it. Furious, he threw it to the ground in disgust, went up to his bedroom to grab some clothes a bag, and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

That teenage boy refused to speak to his father for many years. What he didn't know was that inside an envelope containing the card at the back of the Bible, was the key to a car his father had bought him which was hiddden in the garage. You see, he lusted after the gift more than he loved the giver. And whilst Yahweh wants to give us good things, when we don't get those good things the way we want, or when we want, we often reject Him, and stomp our carnal feet on the floor, reject Him and march arrogantly out of His Kingdom. That 16 year-old boy was guilty of idolatry and ingratitude - he loved the idea of a car more than he loved his father. So too do we when it comes to our Heavenly Father. That's the flesh-nature - demanding, entitled, and arrogant. And the boy's Christianity was revealed to be only skin-deep. But the story has a good ending. Years later, after his father died and he was sorting out his estate, he came across the Bible he had so contemptuously rejected. Thumbing through it as he remembered his father, he came across the envelope at the back. Opening it, he found the car keys and card, annotated by his father, which read: "Happy Birthday, son. Enjoy the car. God bless. Love, Dad". He burst into tears, repented of his selfishness, and resumed his Christian life again.

Now we don't know what ran through Jacob's head when he wrestled with that malak (angel) by the River Jabokk at Peniel but I am quite sure one of the things was remembering how he cheated his brother and feeling the full force of the shame of it. As we saw last time, he wasn't completely lost. He bargained with Yahweh, promising to follow Him if He would protect him on his journey and give him food enough to eat. Interestingly, the two locations - Bethel where he saw his vision of a stairway into heaven, which was on the west side of the Jordan (Gen.28); and Peniel, where he proxy wrestled with Elohim (God), which was on the east side of the Jordan (Gen.32) - were only about 30-40 miles (50-56 km) apart. This journey reminds me of the saying that 'sometimes you must travel far to discover what is near'. Many a lapsed Christian will tell you that they had to move away from home to eventually rediscover that what they were actually looking for was already there in front of their very noses. So it was with the American lad who rejected his father and Christ because his flesh didn't get what it wanted. I too rejected Christianity as a boy because, in part, I used a cruel Anglican minister as an excuse to blame Christianity. It's only in my latter years that I have come to appreciate my Anglican heritage and now view it positively as a step in my journey to where I am now.

I'd like to end my message today by reminding you of something I said last time and then take that a stage further. Turn with me, if you would, to Genesis 28:10-19. I'll be reading from the New International Version, as we rejoin Jacob just after he had fled from Esau and headed out to Paddan Aram (Haran):

"Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway ('ladder') resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the malakim (angels) of Elohim (God) were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood Yahweh, and He said: 'I am Yahweh, the Elohim (God) of your father Abraham and the Elohim (God) of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.'

"When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, 'Surely Yahweh is in this place, and I was not aware of it.' He was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of Elohim (God); this is the gate of heaven.'

"Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz" (Gen.28:10-19, NIV).

Now I chose the NIV deliberately as it is typical of most English translations. He was clearly out in the wilderness and not in the actual 'city' which then was called Luz. In biblical parlance, not only is a 'city' (by our standards) not some giant metropolis but more like a village or small town. It was also common to refer to the entire area around a village, town or city by the same name as the city. The spot on which he lay, along with the actual area around it plus the village, town or city was therefore 'Luz' which he renamed 'Bethel' meaning 'House of El' (God). One of the best translations of Genesis I have ever read - by James D. Tabor, which is part of his Transparent English Bible (TEB), that I have mentioned quite a bit since the beginning of the year when I first obtained a copy - also makes it clear that Bathel not only references the spot on which Jacob lay and dreamed, but also what he calls the "positioned pillar" or pillow on which Jacob had previously lain his head. 'Bethel' was the stone, the pillar, the spot, the town and the whole area in a widening circle, the centrepoiht being the ROCK. Later David would use a rock to symbolise Yahweh (Ps.18:2), whom Jacob saw at the top of the stairway or ladder; and Paul would identify the "spiritual rock" that accompanied Israel in the First Exodus as "Christ" (1 Cor.10:4). Likewise, Christ is described as the "stone" that became the "cornerstone" (Mt.21:42; Ac.4:11). So the symbolism is clear enough. Not only is Christ the rock, the stone, the cornerstone, Jacob's stone pillow, but He is also Elohim (God) and Yahweh, for as the Son He is the 'Lesser Yahweh'.

Which takes us right back to Nathaniel who was promised a similar revelation to Jacob, for you will recall what the Saviour said to him:

"'I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the malakim (angels) of Elohim (God) ascending and descending on the Son of Man'" (John 1:51, NIV).

Now whether his original name was Bartholomew (meaning, 'Son of Talmai') and he was renamed Nathanael (meaning, 'Gift of God') later, or vice versa, we can only speculate about, but he does seem to have received a new name as Peter did, and Abram and Sarai before him. Doubtless both names were in use depending who was using it (I also have two names like that, Christopher and Lev-Tsiyon) and why Matthew used Nathanael and not Bartholomew we may never know. The important thing here is that we see in the Stairwell or Ladder Dream a picture of Jacob making a divine connection with Yahweh (the Rock) at the stop of the stairway through Yah'shua (the Stone). With his new foundation in Elohim (God), Jacob would begin his spiritual journey at Bethel and then return nearby to Peniel to complete the first stage as an overconmer and obtain a new name - Israel.

Next week we will complete our own journey of understanding as to who Jacob is when I will share with you another layer to the mystery of the meaning of the 'God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob'. Join with me then and in the meantime have a blessed continuing Sabbath and a fruitful week ahead as we stand on the edge of the cliff of the present æon and start the process of transitioning into the next one. Grace and peace to you all in Yah'shua (Jesus) our Master (Lord). Amen.

End Notes

[1] The boast that Britain and the USA have a 'special relationship' is a myth created by the USA to placate their former masters. They have been quiet adversaries since the American Revolution, with Britain a vassal of the USA like the other NATO members. The rôles played by each are military power (Washington DC, USA) and finances (City of London, UK), the Vatican (Rome) assuming religious leadership in this unholy trinity, with recent US political leadership including the Catholics Mike Pence and J.D.Vance (Vice Presidents) in Donald Trump's two administrations, John F. Kennedy & Joe Biden (Presidents) and Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker) in previous administrations, to give just a few examples.