We all are constantly bombarded with the Pollyanna fairy tale that all our loved ones are waiting for us in heaven, and that when we die they will all come to greet us.

Well, I have a Spoiler Alert for you!

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

First off, the Bible doesn’t say we go to heaven- that is some man-made fantasy. What the Bible does tell us is that we will be on a new earth, where there will be peace, we will each have our own land, fruit trees, vineyards, etc. and we will be in the presence of the Almighty, forever.

Alright, yeah, that sounds like heaven, but there are no clouds, we aren’t in the sky, and no one gets wings (sorry, Clarence).

So, what’s the truth about salvation, about the afterlife in God’s presence? How many actually get there? Can we count on everyone we know and love being there, waiting open-armed to greet us?

Let’s see what the Messiah tells us; in Matthew 7:13-14, Yeshua says this:

Go in through the narrow gate;
for the gate that leads to destruction is wide and the road broad, and many travel it;  
but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Hmmmm….that doesn’t sound very promising, does it?

The truth about the afterlife is that most likely everyone you think is waiting for you won’t be there, and if you do see most everyone you expected to be there waiting for you, you’re probably not in the place you thought you would be.

The reason I am being such a Debbie Downer here is because I want you to be in the right place- I want you to be in God’s presence, joyful and secure for all eternity. But if I propagate the Christian lies that faith is all you need because Jesus did away with the law, and if you are a good person and love others you will be in heaven with all your loved ones, well, then I would be a false teacher.

And given that God holds teachers to a much higher standard (James 3:1), I choose to burst bubbles than to blow bigger ones, and later find myself walking through a wide gate with many others on the same road.

Nope- not for me!

So, please consider that if it was easy to be saved, everyone would do it, but the Messiah, who knows what he is talking about, is telling us it is exactly the opposite!

It goes along with that old saw: if it is worth having, it is worth working for, which means if being obedient to God is hard for you to do, then you are probably on the right track.

On the other hand, if doing what you believe is obedient to God is no sweat, you’re most likely on the wrong road.

This has been a hard word to hear, and even harder to accept, but it is the truth. And if you choose to believe that fairy tale about angels, wings, harps, and that all your loved ones are waiting for you, yadda-yadda-yadda, then you are lying to yourself, to your children, and to anyone and everyone you share that lie with.

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!

In this chapter, God is telling Jeremiah about the destruction he has caused on his inheritance, Israel, because of their evil ways, that devastation being the result of God allowing the surrounding armies to attack them successfully.

But he also warns those armies about what will happen to them.

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

It is sometimes hard to understand how God will use the enemies of Israel as his rod of discipline, but then turn against those enemies and destroy them! He does say, at times, that although he did have them perform his discipline, they went further than he allowed, and as such, their zeal in destroying for the sake of destroying would lead to their own destruction.

Yeah, I know- I don’t really get it, either, but then again, it’s God. God can do what he wants, and he doesn’t need our understanding or our permission, just our trust in the fact that what he does is always for the best of all in the end.

So, let’s see what the warning is:

“Here is what Adonai says: “As for all my evil neighbors who encroach on the heritage I gave to my people Isra’el as their possession, I will uproot them from their own land, and I will uproot Y’hudah from among them. Then, after I have uprooted them, I will take pity on them again and bring them back, each one to his inheritance, each one to his own land. Then, if they will carefully learn my people’s ways, swearing by my name, ‘As Adonai lives,’ just as they taught my people to swear by Ba‘al, they will be built up among my people.  But if they refuse to listen, then I will uproot that nation, uproot and destroy it,” says Adonai.”

Since this is Jeremiah, we can safely assume that the “evil neighbor” is Babylon. And the inheritance God is mentioning is clearly the land of Israel (not the current small percentage we have today, but the full amount of land God promised to give to us).

Now, I am going to interpret this passage in a more modern context: Babylon represents Christianity, and the inheritance is not the land, but the Torah. The encroachment is not a military attack but the way the nations of the world (through the UN) have constantly come against Israel and supported their enemies.

As for Christianity, it has always reduced the importance of Jews through their overt antisemitic actions, such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and more subtle antisemitism, such as in modern times when the “Church” turned a blind eye to the Holocaust.

So, the rest of God’s warning is that for encroaching on his people (by supporting their enemies) and on their inheritance (meaning the rejection of Torah by Christianity), they will themselves be uprooted.

And we have seen some of that happen- Egypt was the world power, but after enslaving us they were destroyed; Spain used to be a world power, but after the Inquisition they have been reduced to a non-power; England screwed us over when they gave us Israel, but then they started to lose their world power through the loss of their colonies, and the “church” has been separated into dozens of separate religions, none of which work with the other.

And through all of this, for nearly 6,000 years, the Jews have remained steadfast because we have the Torah.

As for bringing us back from where we were sent in punishment, we have seen this happen as the State of Israel has flourished, and is now a world-leader in technology, agriculture, and science.

Not only that, but since its inception, 25% of all Nobel prizes awarded went to Jews. To put this in perspective, there are only about 2 of us for every 1,000 people in the world.

Ya tink maybe God meant what he said when he told Abraham his descendants would be a blessing to the world??

OK, back to Jeremiah- the last part of God’s warning, and this is the one you really need to hear, is that after God separates his people from their enemies, and both are back in their own country, if the enemies (i.e., nations of the world) do not learn the Torah, then they will eventually and finally be uprooted and destroyed.

In other words, if Christians do not stop telling Jews to ignore the Torah (equivalent to God’s saying “swear by Ba’al”) but rather learn to obey God’s Torah (i.e., swear by Adonai), they will be destroyed in the Acharit haYamim (End Days).

I could explain this in more detail, but I think that statement is enough to make someone who really believes in God to stop and think. If you believe that God means what he says, then you had better consider that ignoring anything God says to do is just rejecting God.

And that includes encroaching on his inheritance, which means anyone who supports the enemies of Israel, which today are the UN, Hamas and all the other terrorists, anything that is termed “Palestinian”, and the restriction of Israel’s right to recover its’ hostages and take back Gaza, then your eternal future is looking really bleak.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, Gaza originally belonged to Israel, but in 1994 they stupidly gave to the Arabs as a peace offering, and instead of working with us they have allowed it to become the center of anti-Israeli terrorist activities.

So, God warns the Gentiles in the world who have proven they are enemies to the Jews that they must come around to either obeying God (and not a religion) through obedience to his Torah, or they will eventually be destroyed.

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 this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

(Only three more days until we can have a real sandwich again!)

You know what the biggest problem we have is when we’re trying to see things from God’s perspective?

It’s that we are a finite being, but he is not.

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

When we talk about forgiveness, there is the forgiveness we give to and receive from other human beings, and then there is the forgiveness we receive from God. But human forgiveness is only good for now, meaning while I am alive. However, God’s forgiveness isn’t relevant to my life here on earth, but is totally tied into my life after death.

And despite being forgiven by either humans or God, there is no chance of not having to suffer the consequences of what I did to need forgiveness.

Let’s say I rob someone, and when the police catch me, the person I robbed refuses to press charges and I go free. It seems that I got off the hook, but in truth God knows what I did, and the consequence of that sin will follow me the rest of my life, unless and until I repent of it, and ask forgiveness- not from the person I robbed (which I should do, anyway), but from God.

Here’s what crazy… if the person I robbed files charges and I go to jail, I suffer here and now for my sins, but if I repent and ask God for forgiveness, my eternity will be pleasant. But, on the other side of this equation, if the person I robbed doesn’t forgive me, their eternity may be threatened!

And for people who think that someone doesn’t deserve to be forgiven, God says (in Ezekiel 18:23) that he doesn’t want anyone to die (meaning on an eternal level), but rather that they turn from their sinful ways so they can live (again, referring to an eternal level). So, if God wants to forgive everyone, who are we to judge whether or not they deserve it?

Here is something else I think many people do not understand: forgiving someone doesn’t make them right with God- no! Their relationship with God is between them and God. Forgiving someone makes YOU right with God! We are not commanded to ask for forgiveness, but when I read Matthew 6:14-15, it seems pretty obvious to me that we are, at least, expected to forgive others…unconditionally.

For the record, that verse goes like this:

 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  
But if you do not forgive others their sins,
your Father will not forgive your sins.

So, forgiveness doesn’t get anyone off the hook while they are alive, but it can make eternity a lot easier to take. And I am not talking about the bad guy, I am talking about the one who was sinned against.

So, if you sin, you need to repent and ask forgiveness from God, first and foremost, and then you should also ask forgiveness from the one you sinned against. Not so much to save your own skin, but to give them the chance to save theirs.

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!

There are so many titles and names that we read throughout the Bible for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But which of these is the “real” name? The arguments for one of any number of them goes on and on and on.

But God tells us how HE wants to be known, and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many people ignore that.

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

After Moses asked what name should he use when the people ask who sent him, God gave a name we call the Tetragrammaton, which is composed of three Hebrew letters, the Yud, Heh, and Vav, and it looks like this:

יהוה

Now, Hebrew is a language that doesn’t have vowels, so no one can really know how those 4 letters are to be pronounced. In Judaism, we use the word “Adonai”, which means “Lord”, to represent God. Sometime in the past, the vowels for Adonai were placed under the letters of the Tetragrammaton, and so when we have yud-heh-vav-heh with the sounds of ah, o, and ah under them, we get Yahovah, or Jehovah.

Is that the one and only correct way to pronounce those letters? Maybe; all we can state with certainty is that it is a pronunciation we made up.

In Exodus 3:13, we read:

God said to Moshe, “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh [I am/will be what I am/will be],” and added, “Here is what to say to the people of Isra’el: ‘Ehyeh has sent me to you.’”

So here, God says that we are to call him “I am”.

In Exodus 3:14-15, we read:

God said further to Moshe, “Say this to the people of Isra’el: ‘Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [Adonai], the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, the God of Yitz’chak and the God of Ya‘akov, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered generation after generation.

Now God says we are to call him the God of our fathers, the God of Avraham, etc. , and that is how he is to be known throughout our generations!

In Isaiah 51:15, God said:

For I am Adonai your God, who stirs up the sea, who makes its waves roar — Adonai-Tzva’ot is my name.
(Lord of Hosts)

Oy! Now he wants to be called Adonai Tzva’ot!

So, even God doesn’t know what to call himself, since he has told us no less than three different ways to refer to him.

C’mon…make up your mind, already!

And that wasn’t enough for us! We had to go and make up even more names for him, such as El Shaddai (God Almighty), El Elyon (God on High), Jehovah Jira (God who Provides), and these are just some examples. If you do an Internet search, there are some 100+ names used to identify God.

But are any of these really a “name”? To me, they are more of a title or description than some unique identifier, such as Steven or Harry, or Elizabeth, or Mary.

Why do we even have names? Isn’t it to identify someone as different from someone else? I mean, if we were all called “Steven” (I picked that name because I am most comfortable with it) , and someone yelled, “Hey, Steven!”, wouldn’t everybody look? How would any of us know which “Steven” the person was calling to?

So, in human society, we need to have a name which may have meaning in our native tongue, but is specifically designed to identify us as separate and unique from anyone else like us, i.e., human.

But God isn’t human, and there is no other like him, so he doesn’t really need a name, does he? Yet we still have to be able to have some way to refer to him, so since we don’t really know how to pronounce Y-H-V-H, we use titles, such as God (which isn’t a name, it is a description), or Adonai (Lord), or Yah (God), or El Elyon (God on high), or…well, you get the idea.

So, nu? To all you “Holy Namers” out there who insist that if we don’t use the name for God that you believe is the one and only correct name for him, consider that God- you know who I mean, that guy who created the universe, who flooded the earth, who brought the Jewish people out from Egyptian slavery, who gave the world the 10 Commandments, who did all those miraculous things throughout history, and who sent Yeshua, the Messiah so that we all can be saved from our sins (still with me?)- never gave us just one name or title by which to call him.

And if you ask me, because God identifies himself in different ways, using different titles, then it seems very clear to me that if we use those same names he uses, he won’t have a problem with it.

Thank you for being here, and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. 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 last story in the Book of Numbers is about a man who was caught collecting sticks on the Shabbat. After Moses consulted God, the verdict was that the man must be stoned to death for violating the command about not working on the Shabbat.

But what God said next shows that he wants to help us protect ourselves from being punished.

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

God had given us the commandment to honor the Sabbath (Exodus 20), and one important way was not to do any ordinary work on that day. Well, this guy went out to collect sticks, which was ordinary work, and even worse than that, he probably was going to use them to start a fire, which is another violation of the Shabbat (Exodus 35:3).

Now, this seems to be the first recorded event of someone violating the Shabbat, and so his punishment was pretty harsh- he was to be stoned to death.

And he was.

But, as Paul Harvey used to say, “Now, for the rest of the story…”

In Numbers 15:37-41, God commands us to make tzitzit, those strings that hang down from all four corners of our garments.

The idea is that when we wear these, it will remind us to obey all of God’s commandments.

That makes sense, but then again, who walks around looking at their waist?

Yes, I have to see them when I put them on each morning (the garment that has these on them that is worn under the shirt is called a Katan), but who remembers everything you do in the morning as you are going through your day?

The Tzitzit are really there for you to be a reminder to everyone else you meet, because they are the ones who see your tzitzit all the time. And, when you are a constant reminder to your neighbor that they must remember to obey God, then you are actually showing them love, because you are helping them to avoid sinning, which leads to eternal damnation.

So, nu? Did you ever think of tzitzit in this way? Or that by being a constant reminder to people how to obey God, through speech and actions, that you might be saving their eternal soul?

That’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? When you obey God, not only are you helping yourself, but you are an example to others that might just motivate them to be more obedient, and thereby saving their soul!

But I am not talking about being obedient to a religion- no! I am talking about being obedient to God, and the only way to obey God is to do as he says, right? Well, there is only one place in the entire Bible where we are told, exactly and undeniably, what God wants us to do because he tells Moses to instruct us in that way, and that is in the Torah.

POP! (That’s the sound of Christian “the law is done away with” bubbles being burst).

Wearing tzitzit is a commandment, in and of itself, but many Jews do not do that, myself included (I am ashamed to say). Mostly just the Orthodox and Chasidic are obedient to this commandment. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be living tzitzit, in how we treat each other and show our obedience to God’s Torah in many other ways.

So, whether you wear tzitzit or not, always be a reminder to others how to obey God’s commandments, and not those of some religion, especially if that religion tells you the Torah is only for Jews. Yeshua (Jesus) lived in 100% accordance with the Torah, 100% of the time, so if you want to follow in the footsteps of the Messiah, and DWJD, then you have no option other than to read and know the Torah so that you can live the way it tells us to live, as best as you can.

Trying our best to be Torah observant is as good as we humans will ever get to be, and thanks to Yeshua’s sacrifice for us, when we fail we have his blood to wash away our sin.

Thank you for being here, and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. 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 would like to share a personal experience with you, one that I confess I am a bit ashamed of, yet I also am proud that I did the right thing, eventually.

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

The backstory starts with us receiving a large tax refund, as well as some other “found” money from an insurance account. Considering this financial blessing, and taking into account the hurricane season will begin in June, and that I am getting just too darn old to be putting some 13 large, plywood shutters up on every window (which I have done no less than 6 or 7 times in the past 12 years), we decided to use this financial windfall to replace the original, 40-year-old metal windows with Category 5 hurricane proof windows.

Which are REALLY expensive! But I’ll never have to put up shutters, again.

OK, I’m almost there… this past Friday we decided on a company and the sales rep asked if he could finalize the paperwork the next day, and I immediately said yes, that would be fine. I knew the next day was Shabbat, but I allowed my desire to get this project started to override my desire to be Torah obedient.

And the moment I said it was OK to do the paperwork on Shabbat, the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) slapped me upside my head and said, “Hey! It’s Shabbat, duh!”.

And this is why I feel ashamed- I ignored the Spirit’s guidance. Why? Because my fleshly desire to do this overrode my spiritual desire to be obedient.

But that wasn’t all that I did to be ashamed of!

No, still trying to justify my buying something on Shabbat, I tried to come up with some loophole, some biblically acceptable justification to allow me to do the paperwork. Even though no actual cash would be exchanging hands, I would be putting a deposit down using a charge card, and that is buying.

One excuse I tried was telling myself that Yeshua said to “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no” (Matthew 5:37), and so even though it would be violating the Shabbat, I was telling myself that I agreed to let him come, so I can’t go back on my word.

That didn’t work, really, because I knew that the real “yes” was buying the replacement windows, and to simply reset the paperwork date was not going against my word.

Then I tried to ask God to forgive me because I am sorry (I really did feel repentant that I agreed so quickly) but I am going to go ahead with this, anyway. However, that just didn’t sit right with me because I know that God can’t really forgive someone for purposefully sinning, especially when it would be very easy to just avoid it by resetting the date.

That night was a sleepless night, and I decided to call the man early in the morning and reset the date to Monday. And when I made that decision, I felt proud that I overcame my flesh.

And it worked out well because when I texted him to reset it, he said that he was really busy that day, anyway, and resetting the date would be good for him.

So, here I am, ashamed to have ignored the Holy Spirit just to buy something because I wanted to. And when I did obey the Torah by resetting the date, that made me feel a little proud of myself.

I later realized that I just lived out one of the parables that Yeshua told! In Matthew 21:28–32, he told us of the two sons. The one son immediately said he would do as his father asked, but never did, and the other son initially refused to do as his father asked, but later obeyed (that was me).

The message from all this is not about me, or what I did, but about how we can be disobedient and still remain right in God’s eyes if we repent of that sin and then do as we should have done, from the start.

Righteousness is not easy for us; it goes against our most basic instinct, which is the Yetzer Hara (Evil Inclination). It is only when we listen to the Yetzer Tov (Good Inclination), which motivates us to be obedient to God, that we can do what is right in God’s eyes.

So, if you find yourself doing wrong, don’t just let it go because you’ve been told that God will forgive you so long as you believe that Yeshua died for your sins. Personally, I don’t think God will forgive someone who is not repentant, and to use Yeshua’s sacrifice as some sort of absolution for you when you know you are sinning is not going to get you anywhere.

No amount of “Our Father’s” or “Hail Mary’s” is going to help an unrepentant sinner.

So listen to that still, small voice in your head the moment it speaks to you. You know, if the Holy Spirit took form, I think it would look just like Jiminy Cricket, because we are all like Pinocchio. He wanted to be a real boy, and we want to be a real Tzaddik (righteous person), but like the little, wooden boy who let his personal desires cause his nose to grow, we also have to watch out that our noses don’t grow, as well.

And being Jewish, I don’t need my nose to be any bigger than it already is.

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. 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!