Author: Steven R. Bruck

No Longer Can Christianity Say This

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I want to mention before I start that even though I have always had an English translation of the LXX (Septuagint), I haven’t ever read it through. So I thought that after going through my Complete Jewish Bible (for the umpteenth time) I would try the LXX.

Man-oh-Manischewitz, is it ever different! The verbiage and spelling of words and places is so different from the other Tanakh’s I have. I thought I might try to read the original, but to tell the truth, it is all Greek to me.

OK, let’s get to today’s message…

I always write about how far away Christianity has wandered from worshiping God the way he told us to do it (in the Torah), and there is a story- true or not, I don’t know- that demonstrates just what I mean.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

The story goes like this… sometime in the middle of the 13th Century, as the Pope (allegedly Innocent IV) showed Thomas Aquinas a room filled with church gold and treasure, the Pope remarked that the Church could no longer say,

“Silver and gold have I none”
(referencing Peter in Acts 3:6).

Thomas Aquinas replied,

“True, holy Father, but neither can the Church say, ‘Rise up and walk'”

The reason the prophets in the Tanakh and Yeshua, as well as his disciples after him, could perform those miraculous wonders was because God had given them the power to do so through his Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit). The Ruach is God’s cable connection to us humans so we can know what he wants us to do, and which also empowers us to do it.

Now, for a little IT lesson, coming from a retired IT professional (yeah, that’s me!), the signal strength sent through a cable disintegrates quickly as the length of cable it travels increases. That is why often we use a repeater, a device that boosts the signal strength along a long cable to ensure the recipient gets all of the message intact.

Now, getting back to the Ruach, as we get further away from the proper worship of God, our ability to perform actions or hear his messages clearly via his Ruach connection to us becomes weaker and weaker.

Until, finally, as the Church in Thomas Aquinas’s time had become, it was no longer able to perform miracles because it had gotten too far “downstream” from God.

Now, of course, since God is always everywhere, we can’t really get far away from him, physically, but we certainly can leave him way behind us, spiritually.

And that is what I keep trying to get my Gentile brothers and sisters who accept Yeshua as the Messiah to realize. They constantly stick like glue to Church rhetoric about how Gentiles are treated differently by God, that the son of God came to earth to tell us it is OK to reject everything his father said to do, and even to the point where some say Jews have been rejected by God and Christians are now the chosen people.

Well, from what I read in the Bible, God constantly says he will never reject the Jews. And Yeshua never said anything about the Torah being over; in fact, he specifically states (Matthew 5:17) that he did not come to change anything, and that NOTHING! in the Torah will change until all things come to pass.

And all things means after the Apocalypse: after the Enemy is finally defeated, after the new earth and new Jerusalem are lowered from heaven, and after Yeshua is sitting on the throne.

So, unless you can show me all those things are here today, everyone- Jew and Gentile- who say they believe in God and say they believe Yeshua is the Messiah, and say they believe through Yeshua’s sacrifice we can receive forgiveness… well, they all need to follow the Torah if they want to be able to have the strongest signal strength from God’s Ruach HaKodesh.

Every mitzvot (law) you obey in the Torah acts like a repeater of God’s Ruach, and not only that, but God promises everyone- again, Jew and Gentile- who obeys his Torah that he will bless them (Deuteronomy 28).

And this is something else I will never understand: why would anyone who believes and trusts in God’s word NOT want to receive blessings which God promises to give them?

I mean, really? Is having lobster bisque and porkchops more important to you than receiving blessings from God?

I can’t imagine rejecting blessings from God for some food I like, but from what I see and read most Christians are like Esau- giving up something really valuable for a lousy bowl of stew.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

Don’t Shoot the Messenger But Shoot the One Who Garbled It

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Happy 251st birthday to my fellow United States Marines!

The message that Yeshua the Messiah brought to us nearly two millennia ago was that the kingdom of God is near.

We read in the Bible how the power elite in Jerusalem “shot” that messenger; today, I believe the ones we should shoot are those who have garbled the message.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

So, who is responsible for garbling the message and why did they do it? If you ask me, and even if you don’t, I’m gonna tell ya, anyway.

It started way back at the end of the first century when the Jewish leaders of the movement within Judaism which accepted that Yeshua was the Messiah had all died off or been martyred. The Gentile leaders who were being taught the Torah by Shaul and his associates throughout the Middle East and Asia were concerned about being connected with the Jews, who had been in constant rebellion against Roman rule.

As pagans, they were safe, but as their lifestyle began to become more “Jewish”, which was happening under Shaul’s teachings, they were concerned they may become targets of Rome.

During the latter part of the first century, the Jews who were joining the movement within Judaism that they called “The Way” were being persecuted by the power elite in Jerusalem and their cohorts in the other Sanhedrim.

The reason for that was simple: if Yeshua was the Messiah, he would be king and those political hacks who made up much of the Judean judicial system at that time would have been out of a job. They knew to stay in power they had to get rid of him.

After Rome kicked Jewish tuchas in 132-133 AD and dispersed many of them throughout the Roman territory, leaving only a handful still in Judea (which they renamed to Syria Philistia, later translated to Palestine), those Jewish Believers didn’t have to worry about the Jews, anymore. But that didn’t help the Gentiles because now that their issue with the Jews was over, Rome could concentrate on these (now called) Christians because they had been under the radar, so to speak, but now were obvious to Rome as a religion worshipping a God different from the Roman gods.

And that dog didn’t hunt as far as Rome was concerned.

So the idea to reject much of the Torah to avoid being a target of Rome backfired until the third century, when Constantine legalized what had become a totally different, anti-Torah religion.

You need to remember that the only way we can be in the presence of the Lord is to be sinless- God will not abide sin in his presence. That is why he gave us the sacrificial system, so we could cleanse ourselves of our sin and reunite with him.

Yeshua’s message that the kingdom of God is near was founded on the fact that he knew his sacrifice would provide the means for us to reconnect with God by being forgiven of sin when the temple would no longer be available. You see, according to the Torah no sacrifice would be accepted unless it was done at the place where God put his name, which was (DUH!) the temple in Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 12:5-11).

The message from Yeshua included learning the heart of the Torah, what we call the Remes– the deeper, spiritual meaning of the law. This is evident in his Sermon on the Mount, but what happened was that later on religion got in the way.

The early Gentile Christians led (what had been) a Jewish movement away from Judaism, and over the past two thousand years they have continually been splitting hairs and creating new sects, divisions, and movements so that today there are literally thousands of Christian religions throughout the world.

The original message has been mangled, garbled, and completely mutated into something that doesn’t bring us closer to God, but leads people away from him!

Nu? What do we do?

My suggestion is that you reject any religion that rejects whatever God said to do in the Torah. Next, read the entire Bible- Genesis through Revelation- and ask God to show you his truth in it.

Think about this: God anointed the Jewish people to be his nation of priests to the world (Exodus 19:6) and then gave us the Torah, which is God’s “User Manual for Righteousness“. True, no one can be 100% Torah observant, which is why he gave us the sacrificial system because God wants everyone (Jew and Gentile) to live-meaning to have eternal life with him- and he said so in Ezekiel 18:23. So, if God made the Jews his priests to the world and gave us his instructions for worship and how to treat each other in the Torah, how is it that anyone would think the Torah was just for Jews? I mean, really? As priests we are obligated to bring God’s instructions for how to be with him throughout eternity to the world.

God promised Abraham that the world would be blessed by his descendants in Genesis 12:3, which is why he gave us the Torah and made us his priests to take it to the world! The Torah, along with Yeshua, is the blessing that God promised Abraham the world would receive.

And yet, the world has rejected it!

The message that Yeshua brought has been garbled and rejected because people prefer a man-made, easy-peasy, come-as-you-are salvation religion to doing what God said.

And we can’t really shoot the ones who garbled the message, but God can and I believe he will when they come before him.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

The Purpose for Yeshua’s First Coming

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Many times I have heard Christians tell me that Yeshua came to the earth in order to institute the New Covenant.

This is because that is what they have been taught, but it is wrong.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

I think the first thing we need to do is establish what the new covenant really is, and to do that we have to leave the gospels and all those letters behind, and go back to the Book of the Prophets, specifically Jeremiah 31:31-33, which is where we are told what the new covenant is.

And this is the new covenant God promises (CJB):

It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them,” says Adonai. ) “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will any of them teach his fellow community member or his brother, ‘Know Adonai’; for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest; because I will forgive their wickednesses and remember their sins no more.”

So, to all who have been taught that Yeshua has instituted the new covenant, let me ask you this:

Has the Torah been written on your heart and does everyone know the Lord God?


If you can’t answer that in the affirmative, then guess what? The new covenant ain’t here yet.

And also notice how God’s new covenant isn’t about rejecting or ignoring the Torah, but by writing the Torah on our hearts!

There is only one Torah, that’s the first five books of the Bible, and that is the one that every person under the new covenant will have written on their hearts- not some set of tenets and doctrines created by men.

Now, despite the fact that Christianity has either totally ignored or (worse than that) misinterpreted what Yeshua himself said, let’s see what he tells us is the reason he came to the earth.

Let us begin with Matthew 5:17-19 (CJB):

Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete.  Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah — not until everything that must happen has happened. So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Notice how he says nothing in the Torah will change until all things have come to pass- meaning, of course, the Apocalypse and the events foretold in Revelation have all been completed. Again, I ask you this:

Have the seven shofars been blown and have the seven bowls of God’s righteous anger been poured out over the earth?

No? Well, then, the new covenant can’t be here and nothing in the Torah has changed for anyone and everyone who says they accept Yeshua as their Messiah.

What a bummer, right? What you have been told is an easy-peasy religion to follow is not the thing that Yeshua said he requires.

So what does Yeshua require of those who want to follow him? He tells us in Matthew 16:24-25 (CJB):

Then Yeshua told his talmidim, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him say ‘No’ to himself, take up his execution-stake, and keep following me.  For whoever wants to save his own life will destroy it, but whoever destroys his life for my sake will find it. 

What this means is that if your religion is easy to follow, not too many demands, and pretty much says heaven is a Come-As-You-Are party, then you are most likely on the wrong path to true salvation.

So now I will tell you what I believe, based on what he said, is the reason Yeshua came to the earth in his first coming:

He came to provide the means for us to receive forgiveness of sins before the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, which rendered the sacrificial system impossible to obey.

And he said so, himself, here in Matthew 20:28 (CJB), as well as in Mark and Luke:

For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve — and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So there you have it- forget what your religion has told you, forget about the references to the new covenant we read in the gospels during the Pesach Seder (which were never meant to be immediate, but prophetic) and stick with the factual statements made by the Messiah, himself, as to why he came.

He came to provide the means for us to be forgiven of sin after the temple would be destroyed. The things he taught and the miracles he performed were just to demonstrate that he is the Messiah, but not the reason he came.

And the real new covenant is still way off in the future, although the way the world is today, it seems to be getting a lot closer. But it won’t happen until we receive a new heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), which will be ready for God to write his Torah on it, and all that we read about in Revelation will be over and done with.

Until then, consider what Yeshua said about those who disobey the least of God’s mitzvot (commandments) and teach others to do so.

Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

Eternity Insurance

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Do you know what you buy which you hope you never use? It’s insurance.

Buying insurance is making a bet with a company where you hope they win because the only way you win is by losing something important.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Insurance is, economically, of little utility because we pay money for something that has no intrinsic value or usefulness unless we need it, which we hope we never do.

An old adage that insurance salespeople use, which I used when I sold insurance, is:

You can’t buy home owners insurance when there is smoke coming out of the attic.

Now, let’s transition into a more spiritual conversation about insurance.

Many Christians have been taught that the Torah is only for Jews, and as Gentiles all they need to do is believe in Jesus, be a good person who loves their neighbor, and they will be saved.

Easy peasy.

One problem with that is Yeshua (Jesus) himself said that no one is good but his father in heaven (Mark 10:17 and again in Luke 18:18), and who really knows what it means when they say, “believe in Jesus”?

Every demon in hell, as well as Satan, all believe in Jesus; in fact, they know and see him! Do you really think they are saved? I don’t think so.

And Yeshua also said even sinners love those who love them (Luke 6:32), so these Christian teachings seem to be lacking substance when compared to what Yeshua actually said.

That’s why I suggest to every Gentile out there who has been told they don’t need to obey what is in the Torah to consider the Torah as salvation insurance.

That’s right! Hey, maybe you don’t need to obey God’s instructions for how to worship him and how to treat each other, instructions that come directly from God and not some man or woman who thinks he or she knows what God wants.

Maybe when you meet God at Judgement Day and tell him you preferred to obey a man-made religion instead of what he said to do, he might not be upset with that.

And maybe, just barely maybe, when you tell God that you rejected his Torah, which is the same as rejecting him, because some religion told you that you could that he’ll let you be saved, anyway.

Frankly, I don’t think that is a realistic expectation.

So, what can you do? You’ve spent a lifetime of rejecting God, but you really want to honor him and his Messiah by doing what is right in his eyes.

May I suggest you get eternity insurance?

How do I get that? Simple- you obey the Torah!

You know, over the many years I have been a Believer I have heard many Christians say that obeying the Torah means you really aren’t saved because (they say) you are under the law.

Well, what’s wrong with obeying the law? I mean, if there is no law, then aren’t you lawless, by definition? And I think we can all agree that the lawless will not be saved, right?

“But”, you say, “I am under the Law of Christ!”

Well, OK, what is that? I have read the Gospels many times and never once read where Yeshua said anything even close to “Here are my laws”. He teaches us about the Torah, and he says how we should treat each other based on what is in the Torah, and even according to Trinitarians who say he is God, if he is God then his laws are what God’s laws are, which are (you guessed it!)…the Torah!

And Yeshua lived a Torah obedient life, which is why he was sinless, so if you are told to be like Yeshua, how can you do that by not doing what he did?

So, even if as a Gentile you don’t need the Torah (and really, you do, no matter what some man-made religion tells you), if you faithfully believe Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, and that through his sacrifice you can be forgiven of sin, then what harm is there in obeying the Torah?

Who is anyone to tell you you’re not saved just because you want to do what pleases God the Father? If you faithfully accept Yeshua as the Messiah and believe his sacrifice is the means for you to be forgiven, then you are faithful. Following the instructions for worship that God gave can’t hurt you, but can ensure your salvation as insurance.

I guarantee that anyone who accepts Yeshua as their Messiah and obeys the Torah will not be condemned because God’s promises are totally trustworthy.

And don’t let people saying that because no one can be 100% Torah obedient why even try, because God is more interested in why you want to be obedient than how obedient you are.

And because he knew from the start that no one could be 100% perfect, he created the sacrificial system to be our Mulligan, our “Do-over” for when we fail to be obedient.

He later sent Yeshua when he knew the temple would be destroyed so we could still have that Mulligan; Yeshua makes forgiveness possible even though the temple no longer exists.

So, buy yourself some eternity insurance- it costs you nothing but obedience to the Torah, and one other benefit is what God promised in Deuteronomy 28, which is that anyone (and that means Gentiles, too) who obeys the Torah will be given blessings beyond counting.

Read that chapter and see what is in store for you when you get eternity insurance.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Taking a Personal Day

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Usually I get some message while riding my bike or in the middle of the night, such as the other day, but today I got nuttin!

But I also did a quickie video, so here it is: Quickie video.

So, I am taking a personal day off.

Please check me out next week, and if you haven’t done so, please listen to the message I posted the other day about loving the son while hating the father.

It is my longest message to date, almost 22 minutes, but I spoke from my heart and I believe the message came direct from God.

So until next week, let me wish you an early Shabbat Shalom.

How Can You Love the Son and Hate the Father?

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It’s about 0440 and I have been in bed for an hour already, silently preaching this to myself.
Donna woke up and seeing I was awke, when she asked what was wrong I said I can’t stop hearing and preaching this message!
She said I should just get up and record it.
This is about 20 minutes long and I am just doing the video, so please devote the time to hear it because I truly believe God wanted me to share this with you.

I just don’t know why Christians don’t understand this?

(Click here for the message)

How Paul Really Felt About the Torah

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The typical Christian view regarding the letters Shaul (Paul) wrote is that they are telling Gentile Believers that they are not subject to the Torah.

But Shaul tells us exactly what he believes about the Torah in some of his letters, and it goes against Christian teachings.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

We need to understand what Shaul was doing when he preached the Good News to the Gentile pagans throughout Asia and the Middle East. In fact, we should first establish what that so-called “good news” was: it wasn’t that they didn’t have to obey the Torah, it was about being able to share in the eternal salvation that God made possible for the Jewish people by accepting that Yeshua was the Messiah.

Along with that acceptance came a paradigm shift in lifestyle, which Shaul was teaching them slowly, at a pace they could handle. Even the Elders in Jerusalem knew that was the best way to incorporate these ex-pagans into a Torah observant life, which is why they wrote the letter in Acts 15. That letter wasn’t telling the Gentiles that was all they had to do, it was telling them what they had to do initially. In Acts 15:21, James states that these Gentiles will learn the Torah hearing it preached at every Shabbat service: clearly, he expected the Gentiles to go to Shabbat services with the Jews and to learn the Torah from a slow, regular exposure to it.

So, in Romans Shaul doesn’t make an argument against the Torah, as Christianity has taught, but he was making a case FOR the Torah, in that the Torah teaches us what is right and wrong. Obviously, if there is no separation between right and wrong, then nothing is right and nothing is wrong, so everyone is either going to hell or is saved.

I think we can all agree that isn’t how it works.

In most Christian Bibles, the chapter in Acts where Shaul is knocked off his horse is titled “Paul’s Conversion on the Road to Damascus”.

WRONG!

Shaul never converted to anything- all his life he was a Torah observant Jew. The only thing that changed was his belief in who Yeshua was. That’s all there was to it; he never became a Christian and never told anyone to reject the Torah.

In all the years (nearly 30) I have been arguing that the Torah is valid for anyone who professes to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the arguments against me have almost always come from Romans or some of the other letters Shaul wrote. But I rarely, if ever, have seen arguments against the Torah from 2 Thessalonians or 1 Timothy. Maybe that’s because of what he said in those letters?

Let’s see: let’s take 2 Thessalonians 2: 3-11, where Shaul says:

Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For the Day will not come until after the Apostasy has come and the man who separates himself from Torah has been revealed, the one destined for doom. He will oppose himself to everything that people call a god or make an object of worship; he will put himself above them all, so that he will sit in the Temple of God and proclaim that he himself is God. Don’t you remember that when I was still with you, I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is restraining, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For already this separating from Torah is at work secretly, but it will be secretly only until he who is restraining is out of the way. Then the one who embodies separation from Torah will be revealed, the one whom the Lord Yeshua will slay with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the glory of his coming. When this man who avoids Torah comes, the Adversary will give him the power to work all kinds of false miracles, signs and wonders.

It seems pretty evident Shaul is saying that the Evil One will separate himself from Torah and teach others to do so, even proclaiming himself as God!

That sounds Trinitarian to me.

He says something similar in 1 Timothy 1:6-11:

Some, by aiming amiss, have wandered off into fruitless discussion.  They want to be teachers of Torah, but they understand neither their own words nor the matters about which they make such emphatic pronouncements.  We know that the Torah is good, provided one uses it in the way the Torah itself intends.  We are aware that Torah is not for a person who is righteous, but for those who are heedless of Torah and rebellious, ungodly and sinful, wicked and worldly, for people who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers,  the sexually immoral — both heterosexual and homosexual — slave dealers, liars, perjurers, and anyone who acts contrary to the sound teaching that accords with the Good News of the glorious and blessed God.

In both these letters, Shaul is absolutely confirming the value of the Torah and that it is necessary for teaching about God. In the letter to the Thessalonians, he is describing exactly what Christianity has done- its Gentile leaders separated themselves from Torah and declared Jesus to be God.

In his letter to Timothy, he confirms what Yeshua said in Matthew 9:12 that he came for the sinners and not the healthy. Shaul is saying the value of the Torah is to be the means by which to redirect sinners from their sins to the righteous living that God requires.

It’s not surprising to me that these verses never come up in discussions about the validity of the Torah for Gentiles because it’s easier to justify rejecting the Torah from twisting and misinterpreting what Shaul is talking about in his other letters, which is mostly about trust and faith being more important than a legalistic observance of Torah, specifically regarding the value of circumcision.

Read his other letters and you will see that circumcision is almost the definitive issue he had to deal with in those other congregations. He wasn’t ever against the Torah for Gentiles; he was against the Jews forcing the Gentiles to get circumcision and requiring total conversion to Judaism all at once to be saved.

Shaul’s good news was that salvation is available through faithful acceptance that Yeshua is the Messiah, that his sacrifice provides the means to be forgiven of sins, and that they must give up their paganistic lifestyle and live a righteous life.

The Torah is God’s “User Manual for Righteousness”, and that is why Shaul lived a Torah observant life and told his congregations to imitate him. And when he said that, he didn’t mean just to make their own living and not be a burden on anyone.

To imitate Shaul meant to live as he lived, which was a Torah observant life, just as the only way to follow Yeshua is to live and worship as he did, which was a Torah observant life.

There’s no question that a Jewish Believer should obey the Torah, and the issue of Gentiles accepting Yeshua as their Messiah needing to follow the Torah is really a no-brainer: the Torah is the way God said he wants those who worship him to live and treat each other. He tells us which Holy Days to observe, what to eat and what we shouldn’t eat, how to treat others in business and interpersonal relationships (including intimate relations), and how to punish those who break the laws.

And probably the most important thing of all- how to receive forgiveness of our sins.

Nothing in the Torah or the requirements of the Torah for all who profess to believe in and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob changed in any way when Yeshua walked the earth. Even the requirement to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem as a sacrifice to be forgiven of sin did not change, but with the destruction of the temple that became impossible. Yeshua came and allowed himself to be a sacrifice in order to replace the need to bring an animal to the temple to receive forgiveness.

Like it or not, the Torah is how God wants you to worship him and how God wants you to treat others. There is nothing in the New Covenant writings that justifies rejecting God’s instructions for righteousness.

Now, you can make all the arguments you want to from Shaul’s other letters justifying your rejection of the Torah, but when you meet God at Judgement Day and he asks you why you refused to do what he said to do, you go ahead and tell him he needs to check with Paul before he decides where you will spend eternity.

Yeah, let’s see how well that goes over with the Almighty.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

Why 400 Years of Slavery?

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When God told Abraham that his descendants would be slaves for 400 years (Genesis 15:13), I wonder if Abraham realized that this was actually for their own good?

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Now, you may be thinking how can 400 years of slavery be good for anyone, and that is a fair question.

But first, what were we dealing with before the family of Israel went down into Egypt?

We had the 11 sons of Israel, their sons, daughters, and slaves numbering about 73.

Joseph had already been placed in a position of power in Egypt by God to provide the means by which the descendants of Abraham would be enslaved.

And what about the rest of the world?

Well, the family of Israel (not even close to being a nation at that time) was living in Cana’an, and there were many other tribes and clans surrounding them. It seems from what we read about them that they were pretty well off, having cattle, herds, and money, so that means they were a tasty target for raiding parties.

These “Hebrews” were taking up a lot of land for their livestock, and they weren’t really natives- in truth, they were strangers in a strange land, and as such weren’t seen as “one of the regulars”, so to speak.

Now God had plans for this family, in that he wanted to fulfill his promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as many as the grains of sand on the beach, so to protect them he had to provide a safe environment for them to grow into a nation.

Egypt was the most powerful country in the world at that time, so what better way to protect this small family then to have them under the protection of the most powerful country in the world?

The problem was, of course, that once they were placed there, the tides would change and they would go from a small family to a large nation, which scared the Egyptians who didn’t know Joseph or all that he had done for Egypt.

It seems we are quick to forget the good people do for us. In the desert, the people often forgot all that God had accomplished when the smallest problems occurred. Later on, the family of Gideon was betrayed and murdered by the very people who they had helped to free from the Midianites and their allies, the Amalekites.

And let’s not forget how the people living in Jerusalem, who knew and experienced all the wonderful things King David had accomplished, were so easily redirected to following Absolom who had not one victory or had ever done anything for the people.

But I digress, so let’s get back to today’s lesson about the Egyptian slavery.

As slaves, the growing family of Israel would still be under Egyptian protection because they would be necessary for the Pharoah in building his tombs and edifices to demonstrate his power.

In other words, being slaves to Egypt was the safest place for this young tribal family to be while growing into a vast nation.

Through Egypt, God provided the protection from the outside world that Israel needed to become the nation he would anoint as his nation of priests (Exodus 19:6) so that they could bring God’s own instructions for how to worship him and how to treat each other to the world.

And that’s all there is to it! God provided Abraham’s descendants a safe haven, although it was hell to live in, so that they could grow into the nation he promised he would make them.

There’s plenty more to tell, but that, my friends, is another story.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Why God Gives Us Commandments

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No one can escape having to obey someone at some time. We grow up obeying our parents, then it is our bosses, and we should always obey our spouse.

But what I want to talk about why we obey orders, and why we don’t.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

When we are growing up, we receive orders from our parents, which are usually meant to protect us from harming ourselves, and almost always contain some form of restriction to something we want to do, such as riding our bikes down a vertical sloping hill, running in to the street without looking first, or picking on our younger siblings.

Then we grow up and go to school, where we are given homework to complete. We obey for two reasons: one, to not get in trouble and two, to get a better grade. We obey those orders to gain something for ourselves, and it doesn’t really interfere too much with what we want to do, so there isn’t any great sacrifice on our part, which makes it easier to obey.

Eventually, we get a job and are given orders to obey. Again, we do so because if we don’t we suffer loss of money, inability to provide for our family, and we can’t order from Amazon or pay for Netflix- terrible sacrifices we have to make for not obeying, so we obey to avoid losing what we want. Unlike the orders from parents or school, which are designed to help us, work orders are designed to help the company. And like homework, we can easily schedule the orders from our Boss into our daily nine-to-five so it doesn’t take any real sacrifice on our part.

Where are we now? We have established that orders from parents and school are for our own good, and the ones from our parents usually require some sacrifice (we can’t do the crazy things we want to) and we obey them in order to stay out of trouble. Orders from work are also obeyed to stay out of trouble, but they have one difference- those orders are not for our good but designed for the good of the company.

Now, let’s talk about orders from God.

God gives us orders (called commandments) for the same reason our parents do- to protect us. Not so much from skinning our knees or losing a toy, but so that we can have eternal life in his presence.

God tells us in Ezekiel 18:23 that he doesn’t want anyone to die (that means Jews AND Gentiles), and since God sees things on an eternal plane that means he doesn’t want anyone to spend eternity outside of his presence.

The commandments are really easy to understand, and Moses tells us they are easy to do, which- one by one- they are. The hard part is doing them all, all the time, which is why God also gave us a “Do-Over Clause”, which is the sacrificial system. In fact, he spends the first seven chapters of Leviticus explaining it to us.

And, since he also knew the temple would be destroyed, in order to give people time to accept Yeshua as the Messiah, he sent him to replace the need to sacrifice an animal at the temple to receive forgiveness of sin (as the Torah required) some 40 years before the temple was gone.

So, if the commandments from God are easy to obey, and we have a revised “Do-Over Clause” through Yeshua, why is it that so many people refuse to obey orders that are from God which are designed to ensure that we spend eternity joyfully in the presence of the Lord?

I don’t have an exact answer, but I think I have one that makes sense… just like we don’t want to always obey our parents because it requires us to give up something we want to do, obeying God also requires we sacrifice something we want to do.

I know, I am also wondering what things could possibly be more important than eternal joy?

Well, eating anything you want to, not having to fast for an entire day once a year, not wanting to have to live a sexually righteous life as a single person (i.e., not fornicating), and any number of other (dare I say it?) hedonistic practices that a Torah-rejecting lifestyle allows.

Yeshua told us in Matthew 16:24 that to follow him we have to give up a lot of what we like, but so many Christians have been taught the exact opposite of what Yeshua said!

Christianity has, for the most part, taught that Gentiles do not have to follow the Torah and that all they need to do is follow the Law of Christ, which is not much more than being a good person and loving each other.

They forget that Yeshua said no one is good but God (Mark 10:18), and to love one another is not Yeshua’s order, but God ordered that in Leviticus 19:18.

The truth is there is no “Law of Christ”; that is a term created by Gentiles who had already mutated the Jewish movement to accept Yeshua as God’s Messiah into an anti-Torah religion that says it replaced Jews as God’s chosen.

Oh yeah! Replacement Theology was one of the very first tenets of the newly created Christian religion, being preached as early as the second century.

Christianity has taught that the Torah is only for Jews and Gentiles are saved simply by believing in Yeshua (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean), even though that is completely the opposite of what Yeshua told us we have to do to follow him in Marks’ Gospel (which is repeated in Luke).

To conclude, I want to ask my Gentile friends who live by rejecting the Torah, as they have been taught to do, this question: God gave the commandments in the Torah specifically to ensure that those who obey receive blessings (Deuteronomy 28) and to make sure that they get to spend eternity in God’s presence, so even if you have been taught you don’t need to obey them, why would you not want to obey them if you get so much out of it?

And before you reply with the conditioned “church” rhetoric about “all I need is Jesus”, remember that Jesus said you need to sacrifice almost everything to follow him, so ask yourself, “What sacrifices have I made?”

Compare that to what Yeshua said you need to give up and then decide if you are really following him, or following some man-made religion that rejects what God said to do.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so L’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

Why Did God Send Us Yeshua?

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The generally accepted reason God sent Yeshua (Jesus) was to provide a means by which we would be able to receive forgiveness of sin, especially after the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed. Yeshua also was able to teach us the deeper, spiritual meaning of the Torah laws, being an example of how to live a life in complete accordance with the Torah.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

The “Church” has historically taught that Yeshua was the sinless “lamb of God” and that through his sacrifice we can be forgiven of our sins, which is, in fact, the only way that anyone can be allowed into God’s presence.

And that is true- his sacrificial death meant that we no longer had to bring and sacrifice an animal at the temple in Jerusalem, which is the only way any sacrifice would be accepted according to what God said in the Torah (Deuteronomy 12:4).

The traditional teaching also includes that anyone accepting Yeshua as their Messiah- Jew or Gentile- no longer is bound to obey the Torah because all anyone accepting Yeshua has to do is to follow Yeshua and the only law they have to obey is the “Law of Christ”.

That raises a problem because the only laws Yeshua teaches about are from the Torah! He doesn’t give us any laws of his own, so how can we follow someone who says reject the Torah but doesn’t tell us anything different than what the Torah says?

Let’s forget, just for the moment, the reason Christians have been told why Yeshua came to the earth, and see what he says.

In Matthew 5:17 he says this:

Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete.

For the record: the word “complete”, as Yeshua used it here, doesn’t mean to finish but to interpret correctly; at that time, that was the accepted and usual usage of the word when referring to the Torah.

He also said this in Matthew 20:28 (we also find it in Mark 10:45):

For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve — and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So according to the Messiah, himself, the reason he came was not to change anything, but to interpret the Torah correctly and to die so that many can live.

His sacrificial death was unique, as he was the most unique human being who ever lived, or ever will, in that he was born from the Spirit of God and he was the one and only anointed one from God. Because of his uniqueness, when he sacrificed himself it replaced the need to bring an animal to sacrifice at the temple, so that when the temple was destroyed some 40 years later, through Yeshua we could still receive forgiveness of sin.

He didn’t do anything to the Torah; he just provided another means of receiving forgiveness where the Torah was not able to do so because the temple wasn’t there.

So despite Christianity using Yeshua’s appearance on the earth as a reason to reject the Torah, even to the point of saying anyone who tries to obey the Torah is rejecting Yeshua and can’t be saved, Yeshua never said any of that.

Christians have been told that to obey the Torah is to reject Yeshua, and to obey Yeshua you must reject the Torah, which is tantamount to rejecting God.

Oh, but wait a minute!

Most Christians are told that Yeshua is God, so to follow Yeshua is to follow God, but God/Yeshua said he didn’t come to change anything, so everyone who follows Yeshua/God still has to obey the Torah, so how can anyone follow Yeshua/God while rejecting the Torah?

How can anyone not see this contradiction? And so, where does this leave you?

I’ll tell you where: it leaves you on the path to destruction because to reject the Torah is to reject God which, even in Yeshua is God, is still rejecting him.

Hello!…you can’t follow someone by not doing what they did!

You don’t win at Simon Says by not doing what Simon Says.

You can’t win at Follow the Leader when you do not do what the leader does.

We know absolutely that Yeshua followed the Torah all his life because he was Jewish and sinless, so how can you follow Yeshua if you do not follow the Torah?

If you can figure out how to follow Yeshua without doing anything he did, let me know how to do that because as far as I can see, it’s impossible to follow someone by not doing what they do.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!