The news is full of those screaming to “Free Palestine”, as well as those saying, “From the River to the Sea”, both having the same desired result- the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews.

And don’t think this is just about Jews in Israel- it is about Judaism, itself! Israel is just the first step.

But God has already told us what the result will be to these antisemitic terrosists.

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

In Ezekiel 36, God is speaking to the children of Israel who have been disbursed and defeated by their enemies, all because of the way they have violated Torah and defamed God’s name, both in Israel and even in the lands to which they were disbursed.

But God says that because those enemies of Israel have boasted about the troubles the people of God have suffered, and stated how they will take over the land now deserted (pretty much the “river to the sea” thing), God will punish them and return and bless the children of Israel.

In other words, as ignorant Americans and others cry to “Free Palestine!” (which doesn’t even exist, so how can you free something that doesn’t exist?), God has already told them that he will free his people to take over and remain forever in the land he promised to give us.

There was never really any established “state” of Palestine, to begin with!

After the Jewish revolts against Rome (especially the Bar Kokhba Revolt, AD 132–135), the Roman Emperor Hadrian deliberately renamed the province of Judea to Syria Palaestina, adding insult to injury by renaming the land after the ancient enemies of the Jewish people, the Philistines. This was later anglisized to Palestine, which wasn’t a state but a territory first controlled by the Ottoman Empire until England took it over.

It continued to be called Palestine but it was never established as a state with any constitution or recognized official documentation. The closest thing that came to any kind of official constitution was created in 2003 by the PLA, a terrorist organization which also created this whole “Palestinian people” propaganda program; they call it the “Palestinian Basic Law” which creates their fantasized state of Palestine with their own governing authority, even claiming Jerusalem as their capital.

While there are so many ignorant and genocidal puppets calling for the “River to the Sea”, which would be the end of Israel and Judaism, God has told them what will happen- he will establish his people and destroy their enemies. That which the PLA and all those terrorist organizations want to do will come back down on their own heads.

We can see that happening even today. Sadly, it will get worse before it gets better, but no matter how rough the ride, what matters is where you end up, and the final destination will be Israel under God’s protection, and the enemies of Israel, who- for the record- are the enemies of God (not a place I would want to be) will be totally destroyed.

My advice to the “Free Palestine” idiots is this: be careful what you ask for because what you want to happen to us is going to happen to you!

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!

I have always said that God has no religion; religion was created by men in order to have power over other men.

This has been the reason that so many people who think they are worshipping God correctly are actually on the wrong path.

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

Judaism is based on the Torah, which are the first five books of the Bible and are, in fact, the only place in the entire Bible where God, himself, tells us how to worship him and how to treat each other.

Christianity grew from a Jewish movement that accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah God promised to send, and after Yeshua’s crucifixion and resurrection, allowed Gentiles into that movement. These neophyte Gentile believers were learning about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as learning about the Torah.

The confusion began with Shaul (Paul) teaching the many Gentile messianic congregations he formed (there was no “church” in the First Century) about obeying the Torah out of a faithful trust in God, and not in order to earn salvation. His problems were exclusively with the believing Jews who were forcing the Gentiles to undergo B’rit Milah (circumcision) in order to be saved.

The Elders in Jerusalem, led by Yacov (James) helped in this by writing a letter that identified 4 requirements- INITIAL requirements, not the only requirements- for these Gentile believers to obey, stating that they would eventually learn the Torah by attending Shabbat services (Acts 15).

These Gentile believers had another problem, besides the believing Jews “legalizing” them, and that was Rome. You see, the Jews had been rebelling against Roman rule, and there were three major rebellions, the third and final one being around 170 CE, which resulted in the death of thousands of Jews and most of the remaining Jews being disbursed throughout the Diaspora. The Romans added insult to injury by retitling Judea to Syria Palaestina, which in English is Palestine.

The problems and confusion that has caused is for another discussion.

So, as the Jewish movement became more and more infiltrated with Gentiles (sorry, but that is the best word I can use) and as the Jewish leaders die, no more Jews were coming in because the Gentile leaders were transforming this Jewish movement into a new religion, rejecting the Torah and forming their own holidays and rituals. By the end of the Second Century, they had a polytheistic religion by creating the idea of the Trinity, which was an absolute turn-off to the Jews, even those who were willing to hear about this guy Yeshua, now rebranded as Jesus, a Christian savior.

What started out as a Jewish movement accepting Yeshua as the Messiah and even allowing Gentiles to join to receive salvation, was mutated into a new religion called Christianity which was against Judaism and rejected the Torah.

Within Judaism there are 6 sects: Chasidic/Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox (modern-day Pharisees), Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Messianic (although mainstream Jews do not accept Messianic as Jewish). And we can see that there are different ways that Jews interpret how to obey the Torah, but we are all basing our worship of God on how he said to do it.

Now, if you ask Google how many different Christian religions there are, this is the answer you will get:

There are an estimated 45,000 to over 49,000 Christian denominations globally. This massive number exists because of differing historical interpretations, cultural shifts, and the rapid growth of independent, localized churches.

So, we have to ask ourselves this question: how can there be so many different ways to worship God with so many different tenets and credos and holidays if they are all basing their worship on the Bible?

And the answer is obvious: they are not basing it on what God said but on what some human being said.

Christianity is not based on the Torah, although it does recognize the 10 Commandments and takes some things from the Torah.

The truth is that Christianity, for the most part, is a man-made religion that is based on an anti-Torah foundation, misusing and misinterpreting letters some Pharisee wrote to Gentile congregations having interpersonal power struggles and issues of faith. It is not based on how God said to live and worship him, but on what people have said how they want you to worship God.

That brings us back to the question I asked in the title of today’s message: Whom do you obey?

If you want to obey God, then you really need to do what God said to do, and if you have been taught differently, then how can you be obeying God? You can’t! You have to be obeying some man-made religion that has rejected what God said to do.

If you are thinking to yourself, “How can I be wrong if there are millions of Christians doing (pretty much) what I do?”, think about this:

When I meet God at Judgement Day, as we all will have to, I can say, “I tried my best to live as you said I should.”

But if you follow a religion that is not Torah based, the best you can say is, “I did what they told me I should do.”

Now, I can’t speak for the Big Guy upstairs, but I believe his answer to you would be something like this:
“I understand, my child, that you did what they told you to do, but it is what I say that counts!”

Do you really want to hear that when where you will spend eternity is being decided?

Oh, by the way, if you think Yeshua will get you out of that situation, don’t count on it, because he lived and taught the Torah and he never said anyone should ignore his father’s rules. In fact, he already has warned you about this in Matthew 7:21-23:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, only those who do what my Father in heaven wants.

Chew on that the next time your religion tells you the Torah is just for Jews.

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 let me wish you Chag Sameach Shavuot!

I have often wondered about this: if God knows our minds and hearts, why bother to test us?

I mean, he already knows what we will do, so what’s the point?

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

After thinking it over, I came to the realization that God doesn’t test us so he will see what we do, he test us so that WE will see what we do.

Let’s look at Abraham: when Abraham and Sarah went to Egypt to escape the famine (Genesis 12), Abraham asked Sarah to say she was his sister because she was quite a hottie and he was afraid he would be killed so another man could take her as his own wife (it ended up being the Pharaoh).

I don’t get it: it was wrong to take a man’s wife away from him,
but if you killed him first then it was OK. SMH!

I believe this showed Abraham’s faith was not yet ready for him to be given a son, since he didn’t trust in God to protect him. And this wasn’t the only time: he did the same thing later when he was in the land that belonged to Abimelech (Genesis 20). Fortunately, when she was with Pharaoh and Abimelech, God intervened to protect her from being misused; but, still and all, it showed Abraham’s faith wasn’t strong enough yet for his greatest test.

God knows that the one thing human beings rarely understand is their own heart. The best way for us to know what we will do in any given situation is to be in that situation: we may say we would do what is right when asked, but we really don’t know what we will actually do until we are in the midst of the trouble.

I hate to admit it, but I believe that if I lived in Yeshua’s time, it is very likely that I would be in the crowd asking for Barabbas.

It is always easy to know what we should do, but until we are facing that situation, no one can be sure how they will react.

That is why God tests us- it isn’t because he doesn’t know what we will do, it is to show us what we will do.

In war, no one can tell what they will do until the bullets start to fly, and even in everyday life, you don’t really know what you will do until you have to do something.

When you see a homeless person on the street, do you pass them by or offer to buy them something to eat?

When you have old clothes still in pretty good shape, do you toss them in the garbage or clean them and take them to a Goodwill?

These are tests- remember what Yeshua said about feeding him when he was hungry and clothing him when he had no clothes (Matthew 25)?

We are always tested, sometimes by God and other times by people, and (as I said) no one can really know what they will do until the test is before them. My suggestion is that we read the Bible constantly so that when there is a situation before us, we can recognize the test and by knowing what God wants from us, we will be able to pass it.

When we are in school we generally know when a test is coming, so we study for it in order to do well. In life, the best way to study is to know the Bible- the entire Bible- because it is a rare thing to know when life will test us; life is full of pop quizzes and surprise tests, and the best way to prepare for them is to know what is right in God’s eyes.

So, I’d say it is a good idea to review your past to see when you have already been tested; I believe we are tested daily but so few of us realize it.

I don’t know about you, but I want to have a passing grade when God reviews me at Judgement Day. And yes, Yeshua provides the “curve” to ensure I pass, but there are different levels when we will be on the new earth, and I want to make the Honor Roll.

Thank you for being here and please remember to 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!

For many years I have been saying that one of the greatest gifts God has given us is Free Will, the right to choose how we live our lives.

Recently, though, I have begun to think that when the prophecies of the End Days are fulfilled, the way God will do away with sin is to take away Free Will.

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

In the books of the Prophets (Nevi’im) we read how we will all be brought back to the Land and once there we will live in peace. The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) says that God will write his Torah (meaning teachings, i.e., how to worship him and how to treat each other) on our hearts, and in Ezekiel 36:26 God says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Jewish tradition has always considered the heart the center of intellect, will, and conscience. It is more than just the emotional center; it is also the thinking part of our consciousness. It is the inner, essential self that directs moral choices, where good and evil impulses battle, and where Torah is internalized.

The prophecies of the afterlife, once the bowls of wrath are emptied, the shofars sounded, etc., and Yeshua has defeated the Enemy once and for all, those of us who have accepted Yeshua, lived our lives in accordance with the way Yeshua lived his life, and tried our best (because no one can be perfect) to obey God, we will be the remnant of humanity that gets to live in God’s presence forever.

Shaul (Paul) tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that when we are resurrected we will be resurrected with a spiritual body, and Yeshua tells us that there is a difference between the earthly and the spiritual, so there is definitely something that will be significantly different when we are resurrected to eternal life.

And, since all the prophecies talk of joy, no more tears, no more suffering- all which are the result of sin- then it seems to me, now, that the only way we sinful creatures can be sinless will be to have the opportunity to be sinful taken away from us.

And the only way that can be done is to resurrect us without free will, so that we cannot choose to sin.

For many years I have said free will is a gift that God gave us so we could choose to love him and not be automatons, doing what we do because we didn’t have any choice, and I believe that is still true. However, now I believe it is true only while we are in this plane of existence.

When we are resurrected, it will be without free will because God will give us new heart, one with his Torah written on it so there won’t be an option to reject his Torah, any more than we have an option to reject using our heart.

And you know what? That is okay by me because what is important is that in this life we have proven our desire to live according to God’s instructions even though we are not able to do so.

What I am saying is that even though in this existence the idea that we do not have free will seems to de-humanize us, if we show God that while we have free will to disobey we don’t want to, in the afterlife he will reward us with eternal joy by taking away that potential to screw things up by sinning, because humans cannot live without sinning.

Sin is born into us in this existence not as a punishment, but as a means to show God that we are trying our best to live in accordance with his instructions (in the Torah), even though it goes against our basic nature. It is the struggle to be sinless that counts, not how sinless we are.

I now believe that the effort to be sinless is what counts with God, and having Yeshua to provide us the means to be forgiven of our sins is what keeps us in line for salvation.

In this life we must accept that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, that his sacrifice provides the means for us to be forgiven of sin, and that so long as we try to live our lives the same way that Yeshua lived his, which was to be Torah observant (obeying God and not men; men created religion to have power over other men), then our reward will be salvation, eternal life in God’s presence, with a new heart that is pure and sinless.

The greatest gift God has given us in this earthly life is free will, allowing us to choose what we will do, and the greatest gift God will give us in the afterlife is the lack of free will, preventing us from hurting ourselves by not having the ability to sin.

Thank you for being here and please remember to 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!

When reading the letters that Shaul (Paul) wrote, we often come to the problem he faced with believing Jews telling the neophyte believing Gentiles they must perform every Jewish ritual in order to be saved. This is known as “Legalism”, and most people think it started at that time.

But they are wrong.

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

Let’s first make sure we are all on the same page when it comes to understanding what legalism really is: it is a performance-based salvation, meaning that you earn salvation by doing what the Torah says you should do. Faith is secondary to performance, and often doesn’t even come into the picture.

Now, let’s also realize something that traditional Christianity has taught which is wrong: you CAN be saved if you completely and always obey the Torah. How can I say that? Easily- someone proved it to be true, and that someone was Yeshua (Jesus). He lived a sinless life by obeying the Torah completely and after he died, he was raised to eternal life in God’s presence, which is what being saved means.

The fly in the ointment, so to speak, is that Yeshua was the only human able to live the Torah completely, all the time, so he was able to do what a human born of man and woman cannot do. God knew that, and he gave us the Torah so we would know right from wrong while at the same time provided a means of receiving forgiveness when we screwed up, which is the sacrificial system. Yeshua did not do away with that, he simply replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple to be forgiven by sacrificing himself, so that through what he did we can ask for forgiveness, even though the temple no longer exists.

Now, as for legalism before Yeshua’s time, we can go all the way back to the days of the Judges. We read how so many times people were worshipping other gods along with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They believed that so long as they went to services, or made the wave offerings, or sacrificed their sheep, goats, or oxen they would be OK.

The best example of this are the Samaritans, the left-overs in the Northern Kingdom after the Assyrian conquest. When Shomron (also called Israel) was defeated, Assyria disbursed most of the Jews throughout the Diaspora, leaving a remnant behind and adding to that remnant some of the peoples from other nations they had already conquered. After time, the religions of the Samaritans were bastardized collections of the different religions of the different people who lived there. That is why Samaritans were looked down upon by the Jews in the Southern Kingdom who were (supposedly) still worshipping God correctly.

When Elisha cured Naman of his Tzara’at (leprosy) in 2 Kings 5:10, Naman took some of the dirt back to his homeland so he could worship God, explaining that he will still have to worship the gods of his people when required to by his king. That is a form of legalism, thinking that by taking the dirt he is, somehow, doing what will allow him to also worship Adonai correctly.

Another example is when Nebuchadnezzar declared Adonai, the god of Daniel, the most powerful God of all (Daniel 2 and 4) he didn’t convert to Judaism. He still worshipped all his non-gods, but he acknowledged the existence and power of Adonai. He did what he thought would make him right in the eyes of the God of the Jews, but he was not faithful or obedient; he was trying to cover his tuchas, that’s all, and that is (essentially) what legalism is.

Later when Cyrus allowed the Jews to go back to Israel, ending the exile, he was doing what he thought would get in in good with their God, even to the point of providing supplies and funding the rebuilding of the temple… Legalism at its best, doing what will earn favor instead of doing from faithful trust and love.

We also can look to Constantine, who never truly converted (from what I have read), but simply legalized Christianity, adding it to his list of gods and religions he already followed. He might have done what Christians did, but if so, I am pretty sure (and yes, I am speculating) he only did it to be correct, not out of any real love or devotion to the one, true God.

Today there are still many in both Judaism and Christianity who believe doing what you should is what saves you, faithfully obeying their religion and as such, misplacing their devotion to worship and obey man-made traditions and tenets instead of trying to do what pleases God.

And I will help anyone who wants to know how to please God with this simple plan of action: do what he says, which is only found in one place, and that place is the Torah.

But don’t do it because you have to! If you don’t want to do as God says out of love for God and desire to please him, then don’t bother.

Think of obedience to the Torah not as a means of being righteous, but as a demonstration of your love and respect for God- if it isn’t a labor of love it will be impotent.

Why impotent? Because (as I’ve already pointed out) no human being can be 100% obedient to the Torah 100% of the time.

Finally, we need to realize that legalism not only existed way before Shaul, but it still exists today. Halacha (The Way to Walk) is a rabbinical collection of what to do to be correct in God’s eyes, and the “church” has so many different traditions and holidays and ways of worshipping that you MUST do (or you go to hell!) that faithfulness to God is replaced by faithfulness to a religion!

As I have said many times before, and will continue to say… GOD HAS NO RELIGION!

God has given the world his instructions for how to worship him and how to treat each other through his chosen priests, that’s us Jews (Exodus 19:6). Those aren’t just rules; they are a lifestyle and when we do what God says because we want to please him.

If you are the kind of person who is willing to do anything to please those you love here on earth, and that is the same reason you want to obey God, then you will never be legalistic.

I truly believe God isn’t as concerned with what you do as he is with why you do it.

Thank you for being here and please remember to 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!