Assembly Halls

The accounts of the plucking of the grain and the man with the withered hand are both recorded as having occurred on Sabbath days, and for that reason they are deliberately paired together in all three synoptic gospels. This thematic pairing is more apparent in Matthew and Luke, because the later medieval chapter division in Mark splits the pairing between the end and beginning of its second and third chapters. We should always remember to discard these artificial chapter divisions in our minds, since no passage of Scripture exists in a vacuum apart from the larger context of its book.

In our previous presentation concerning the possessed man in the Capernaum assembly hall, we discussed how the origin of unclean spirits both embodied and disembodied is tied to the fallen angels throughout Scripture, whose fornication is described in Genesis and 1 Enoch.

In our previous presentation we read Mark’s succinct account of the forty days in the wilderness, using it as an opportunity to identify the Adversary who tried Christ, and following an examination of the evidence, we came to the conclusion that they were an incredulous and scornful descendant of Cain, perhaps an individual or group from those racial vipers among the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to enquire of John the Baptist.