Gee, I just realized I haven’t posted anything since 2022! Maybe that’s because today is January 3, 2023?

The letter Shaul (Paul) wrote to the Galatian Believers has brought forth the idea of “Legalism”, which is generally understood by almost every Christian I have met as being “under the law”, meaning that people try to earn salvation through strict adherence to the commandments in the Torah.

However, they never consider that not following the commandments is called lawlessness.

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The right mix between strict adherence to the Torah and not trying to earn salvation is when we do the best we can to obey God’s instructions in order to please God and as a direct result of our faithful belief that everything God tells us to do is for our benefit.

Recently, there are many Christians who are beginning to recognize and accept their Jewish roots, and rejecting the anti-Torah teachings that Christianity has been proliferating for millennia. This is a good thing, no doubt, but it is also generating a new type of legalism- not like in Galatians, where the believing Jews were forcing the converting Gentiles to become Jewish overnight, but by Christians who are trying so hard to be obedient to the Torah that they are becoming overly zealous to the point of obsessive with minutia.

They are over-reacting to issues that have nothing to do with salvation, such as the new moon phases, Christian holidays, and the “proper” pronunciation of God’s name; so much so that they have created their own form of legalism.

The pendulum has swung to the opposite side of the spiritual lifestyle, so to speak, and instead of accepting Christian traditional teachings against the Torah, they have become obsessive about obeying the Torah.

Okay, that’s not bad- I mean, wanting to do as God said to do is fine, but so many have become so zealous that they are now doing things just so that they can say they are doing them. They need to remember what Shaul said in Galatians 4:18, which is that zealousness is good, so long as you are zealous for the right thing.

Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but the fact is doing so that you can say you are doing, is “legalism” in its purest form.

I am not saying that Christians who want to be Torah observant shouldn’t be that way: what I am saying, or trying to say, is that the Torah is our guide, our “How To Be Righteous” manual, but to get so obsessives as to argue about pronunciation, when the new moon really occurs, or which holidays should be celebrated and which are pagan is not edifying- it only causes disruption and dissention within the body of the Messiah.

I also have seen Christians who are “Buffet Believers”- they pick and choose which commandments and observances they like, then make up excuses why it is right to reject the others. This, too, is a form of legalism, and is just not right.

Look- living in complete accordance with the Torah is the epitome of righteousness, and (so far) the only human who was capable of doing that was Yeshua. Truth be told, despite what anyone has told you, if you live in exact and complete accordance with the Torah, it WILL save your soul. That is why God gave it to us, so we would know everything we have to do, and also why Yeshua was accepted as a sacrifice and “saved”- he was righteous in God’s eyes because he was 100% Torah observant.

The problem is, as I said, Yeshua was the only human to ever have done that, and is the only human who ever will. It’s because no human can be 100% Torah observant that God had to send us the Messiah- DUH!

So, if you are a person who was raised Christian, with all the traditional Christian drek about the Torah is only for Jews and all you need to do is believe in Jesus, be a good person, and love others and you will be saved, but have come to realize that it is wrong- good for you! Welcome to Club Torah. But PLEASE! Do not go crazy about calendars or holidays or pronunciation etc., because that will only lead you away from the path to righteousness.

If you do your best to obey what God said to do in the Torah, and make sure that whatever you do- whether it be rooted in Judaism or Christianity, that in your heart and soul and mind you are doing it for the glory of God and his Messiah, then I believe you are going to be fine.

You are doing what should be done, and when you screw it up, as you will (as we all do), be grateful that we have Yeshua.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know to help this ministry continue to grow. Also, please subscribe to both my website and YouTube channel, buy my books, and join my Facebook group called “Just Gods’ Word” (please make sure you agree to the rules or I can’t let you in).

And remember that I always welcome your comments.

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

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard Christians tell me that the God of the Jewish Bible is cruel, punitive, and unforgiving, whereas Jesus is all about love and forgiveness.

Of course, you won’t hear that from Jews because, well, Jews don’t read or even recognize the New Covenant as scripture.

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If you ask me, saying that God was different before Messiah came is not only wrong on every count, but insulting to God. It can only come from someone who doesn’t know God, or messiah Yeshua (Jesus) at all, and is probably just repeating what they have heard from someone just as ignorant as they are.

Do you think the God we read about in the Old Covenant is cruel? Well, he did allow Job to suffer greatly for a long time, he enslaved his people for 400 years, and he completely destroyed both the Northern and Southern kingdoms, even allowing his house in Jerusalem to be wrecked- twice!

But isn’t this the same God who killed Hananiah and his wife, Shapira, simply for lying about how much they received from the sale of their property (Acts 5)? I mean, really?- loving and compassionate, forgiving and caring but still, if you lie to me you die! That sounds like the same God of the Old Covenant to me.

And what about Yeshua in the temple, when he turned over the money changing tables and wrecked the booths of the people selling animals? If he was truly forgiving, wouldn’t he have nicely asked them to leave the temple? Something like, “C’mon, Guys, you know this is not what God wants from you. Please take your business out of the temple area, OK? Thanks a lot, hey- love ya!”

But who was it that said, in Ezekiel 18:23, that he doesn’t get pleasure from anyone dying, and prefers that they turn from their sin, and live? It was the God of the Old Covenant.

And who regathered his people from exile and protected them as they rebuilt the temple? It was the God of the Old Covenant.

And who gave them a miraculous victory over the Seleucid king who tried to destroy them completely? It was the God of the Old Covenant.

Wow! Ya know sumthun? He ain’t so nasty, after all.

There was a big difference between what God had to do in the Old Covenant and what he was able to do in the New Covenant. Actually, in the New Covenant, God didn’t do much himself, but did things through Yeshua.

You need to understand that God doesn’t work on a finite level, which is the only level we humans can understand. God sees everything on an eternal basis, so when he speaks of life and death, he doesn’t mean breathing or not breathing, he means where you spend eternity.

When God first chose Abraham to be the father of his chosen people, a people chosen to bring God’s salvation to the world, he had to first build up this man into a nation. That is why he told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved for 400 years (Genesis 15:13). Now, to those who don’t know how God works, it seems silly that he will make them a nation while they are enslaved. But it isn’t because he was cruel, it’s because he was smart.

The world back then was cruel and dangerous- a king of a town would destroy other towns, left and right, in order to become larger. If a small group of people, such as the 72 or 73 members of Abraham’s family, were to ever grow into a large number of people, they would have to be protected. So, God positioned them inside the strongest nation that existed at that time so they would be protected and given that chance to grow into a nation.

Yeah, OK, so they were enslaved and tortured and lived a horrible life, but that was also part of the plan, which was so God would be able to show them how powerful he was once the people were ready to fulfill God’s plan for them.

And once they were freed, God then had to be very strict with them to get them to leave their comfort zone of paganistic rituals and lifestyle, and take on the mantle of righteousness that they would receive from obedience to the Torah. If you read carefully, and think about it, every punishment that God exacted on the people when they were disobedient may seem cruel, but he was training the Jews to be his nation of priests (Exodus 19:6). When we read of a punishment, we also see that right after the punishment God followed it up with a way to avoid the punishment.

In Numbers 15, when the man was stoned for collecting sticks on the Shabbat, God ordered us to wear tzit-tzit as a reminder not to disobey.

In Numbers 21, when God sent snakes to punish the people, he also had Moses make a bronze serpent so the people could avoid dying.

When Abihu and Nadab were killed for offering strange fire while drunk (Leviticus 10), God ordered that no priest should drink liquor before approaching the sanctuary.

I was in management most of my career, and one of the things I noticed about good managers was that when they first took over, they were very strict. They wouldn’t “loosen the belt” until the people responsible to do the job proved trustworthy to do the work correctly.

This is what we are told in Proverbs 22:6, which says

“Train a child in the way he should go; and, even when old, he will not swerve from it.”

That has to be coupled with Proverbs 23:13-14, which says:

Don’t withhold discipline from a child — if you beat him with a stick, he won’t die!  If you beat him with a stick, you will save him from Sheol.

We had a lot of hard lessons to learn when God was teaching us how to be his priests to the world, and God had to be hard on us, since we are (as God has often told us) a stiff-necked and rebellious people.

By the time he sent the Messiah, these lessons were all well-known (but still ignored), and at that point God knew punishment was not going to change anything. At that time, as it is today, the punishment of those who are sinful is not so much now while they are living on the earth, but reserved for them in the afterlife.

God never changes, he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so the God of the Old Covenant is the same, exact God of the New Covenant.

What is different is which part of his plan for humanity he is exercising. He did the training, he did the punishment for disobedience, and the ways to remember not to be disobedient. He’s been true to his word with blessings when we obey, and he’s been true to his word with terrible punishment when we disobey.

We are now at the stage in God’s plan where all that we need to know- his Torah, who his Messiah is, and how we can save ourselves from eternal separation from God’s presence- has been given to us. What is left is God’s loving, compassionate, and patient nature causing him to wait until everyone he wants to have this chance to be saved has been given more than enough time to decide to obey or reject him.

If your religion has told you all that “Jewish” stuff in the Old Covenant isn’t for followers of Jesus, you might want to think about this: Jesus followed all that “Jewish” stuff, which is why he was an acceptable sacrifice.

God never changes, but his method for getting his message across does- from using harsh punishment to initially teach his people what he wants them to do, to sending prophets to get them back on track, to exile, to forgiveness and regathering his people from exile, to sending the Messiah, now our only way to receive forgiveness.

What comes next will be worldwide destruction and the creation of a new world for those who listened and obeyed. I don’t know when this will happen. Hey, even the son of God said he wasn’t privy to the date, so my suggestion is that you ignore your religion and start to pay attention to God, because it is what he said in the Torah that will be the plumb line you will be compared to.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know to help this ministry continue to grow. Subscribe to both my website and YouTube channel, buy my books, and join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word” (but please check that you agree to the rules or I cannot allow you to join).

And remember that I always welcome your comments.

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

I have seen many postings, especially at this time of the year, about how the Christmas tree is a pagan symbol and should not be erected. I have read how they misuse Isaiah 44:12-28 and also Jeremiah 10:3-4 to make the tree appear paganistic.

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Now, I have no problem, myself, with a Christmas tree because I do not bow down to it or pray to it. It is used as decoration and does not fall under the category of a graven image. Neither do I worship it.

And, for the record, the passages I referred to talk about making the tree into a god or goddess, bowing to it, praying to it, and treating it as an object of worship. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen or heard of anybody who has a Christmas tree doing any of that.

But there are many Christians who have a cross on their wall over every bed in their house, and nailed onto that cross is a graven image of Jesus. They also have statues of saints in their gardens or pictures of Jesus hanging on the walls of their house. They go to church and bow down and pray to a statue of Mary or Joseph.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

You shall not make for yourself any graven image, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

If it sounds familiar, it is the 2nd Commandment God gave to the world. He was serious when he said not to make an image of any kind, which includes paintings and statues, of anything, of anyone, anywhere, anytime, ever.

Period.

The truth is that the Christmas tree has ornaments that remind us of our past more than anything else- I mean, really! Who doesn’t have ornaments from their childhood? Who doesn’t recall all the past times they have spent with family or experiences that an ornament represents?

I am Jewish and have never had a tree until I married Donna, and during my lifetime I have been in many Christian homes and seen many, many Christmas trees, but never, ever have I seen or even heard of anyone thinking that the tree is a god or a goddess, bowed down to it, or made drink and grain offerings to it.

BUT, I have been in many Christian homes with crosses, images of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, or a statue of a saint in their garden.

If you ask me, I would much prefer that they get rid of their blatant violations of the 2nd Commandment and keep the Christmas tree.

And for those of you who are against the tree, well, that’s fine with me- I have no problem with that. But, if you have crosses with Jesus nailed to them, images or pictures of Jesus hanging around, statues in your garden, etc., then you are a hypocrite!

Think about that for a while, and especially before you chide anyone for having a Christmas tree.

Thank you for being here, and share these messages with everyone you know. Even if you disagree, they may not, so give them a chance.

Join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word” (please agree to the rules so I can let you join), subscribe to both my website and YouTube channel, and buy my books.

And I always welcome your comments- c’mon, let’s drash it out!

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

Is Yeshua the Messiah? Is Jesus the Messiah? Is either one of them God?

Or are we still looking for the Messiah, the one God promised to send throughout the Tanakh?

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The answer will change, depending on how you were raised, or which religion you listen to, or what you choose to believe despite how you were raised or which religion you listen to.

Me? I was raised as a Reform Jew, and like almost every Jew being raised by Jews (although, to be honest, my parents were not very “religious”, at all), I was taught that Jesus (growing up Jewish, I never heard the name “Yeshua” used, ever) was born a Jew but created a new religion called Christianity which hates Jews, so he was a traitor to his religion and his people. And he was definitely NOT the Messiah- we are still waiting.

Thank God that even though it took 40 years, I was introduced to Christians who did not ignore my Jewish beliefs, and showed me who Yeshua was, and is- the Jewish Messiah sent to the Jewish people, through whom all people can be saved.

Since then, I have learned that the early Jewish Believers did as always, but as more and more Gentiles were recruited, so to speak, by Shaul (Paul) and other missionaries, the Jewishness of the movement, as well as that of Yeshua, himself, was swiftly removed. By the 2nd century CE, instead of these believers following the Jewish way of life, as Yeshua did, they had a new guy, somebody named Jesus Christ, who was their Savior. The religion named after him, Christianity, is based almost totally on the letters that Shaul wrote, a Pharisee who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised, but who has been completely rebranded as someone who converted to Christianity when he had a vision of Jesus.

Since that time, his letters have been misused, misinterpreted, and mutated into polemics against people following the lifestyle and form of worship that Yeshua did all his life, and they have become the foundation for most of the tenets of modern Christianity.

So, who is Yeshua? He is the Jewish Messiah.

Who is Jesus Christ? He is the blond-haired, blue-eyed Christian savior who has sent his people to convert everyone they meet to Christianity. And as for Jews, the ones who killed Jesus, well- if they won’t renounce their religion and accept Jesus, then they should be killed.

Of course, you can torture them for a while; you know, just to give them a chance to change their mind.

How can I say such a terrible thing? I say it based on history- the Crusades, the Inquisition, Martin Luther, even the Nazi’s, whose belt buckles said “Gott mit uns”, which means “God is with us”.

Now, let’s talk about whether or not either Yeshua or Jesus is God.

Actually, let’s not- it doesn’t really matter as far as salvation through the Messiah is concerned, so choose what you want to believe. However, let me mention this: if you choose to believe that either Yeshua or Jesus is also God, himself, and you also believe (as most Christian religions teach) that Jesus did away with the Torah, then you will need to decide on one or the other of the following:

• If Jesus is God and he did away with the Torah, that means he changes his mind about how to worship him, so he could also change his mind about how to be saved, and if so, then how can you trust his promise of salvation?
• If Jesus is God and, as we have been told, he never changes his mind or goes back on his word, then if you have been ignoring the commandments regarding lifestyle and worship (which includes holidays) he gave in the Torah, you have not been following God, but men, and you have been sinning.

Not very pleasant alternatives, are they?

What to do? If I may suggest, you can re-evaluate your belief system by comparing it to what God says in the Torah, read the rest of the Tanakh, AND the entire New Covenant. And when you read the letters from Paul, do so fresh- as if you do not know what they mean. Compare them to what Paul learned about the Torah as a Pharisee, how he lived his life (sorry, but he never converted to anything- he was a Jewish Pharisee his entire life), and why he wrote those letters.

If you do that, I believe you might come to see that he was not writing the words he heard from God, but giving managerial directives to the congregations (there were no “churches” during Paul’s lifetime) he formed who were having either interpersonal issues or problems with maintaining faithfulness.

Let’s finish up with my answers to my own questions:

Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah God promised to send (please-don’t be childishly prideful about the correct pronunciation of his name- we are saved by faith in who he is, not by how we pronounce his name).

Jesus, as portrayed by Christianity, is not the one God sent. In fact, the name “Jesus Christ” a Latin translation of a Greek transliteration of the name “Yeshua” with the title “haMaschiach”.

(If you want the whole story about how that came to be, you can find it in the Introduction to “The Complete Jewish Bible”.)

The Messiah may be God, he may not be God- for me, it doesn’t matter: he didn’t come to the world in order to replace God but to be God’s messenger, and to sacrifice his life so that many can be saved. That is what we know from the Bible, and anything else is conjecture. Period.

One last answer- are we still looking for the Messiah, the one God promised to send? Well, yes…and no.

My Jewish brethren, for the most part, are still waiting because they reject Jesus as the Messiah and have never even learned about Yeshua. They don’t know the Messiah God sent, and they really don’t know why to reject Yeshua- they do so because they have been told to do so.

Christians, who believe Jesus is their Savior, aren’t waiting, but they believe only because they have been told to believe. In truth, they do not know the real Messiah God sent, either.

So, what should you do? I never tell anyone what to believe or what to do, but if I may make a suggestion? Read the Bible from Genesis through Revelation, and look for what is said in the New Covenant that matches what is said in the Old Covenant, because God really doesn’t change: he doesn’t go back on his word and he has never said his Torah is invalid, and- just for the record- neither did the guy we read about in the Gospels. And when you read the Epistles, as I said earlier, try to do so without already knowing what they mean.

If you can do that, honestly and with a truly open mind, using Circles of Context and Hermeneutics (if you aren’t familiar with those terms, you can learn about them here: Interpreting the Bible), I believe you will be surprised at how you have been spiritually misled by those who you have trusted.

They didn’t do it on purpose, though, so don’t be mad at them- they were just teaching what they were taught.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages, buy my books, especially my newest book (click here for a trailer), subscribe to my website and YouTube channel, and join my Facebook group called “Just God’s Word” (please make sure you read and click that you agree to the rules).

And remember- I always welcome your comments.

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

Oh- and an early Hanukkah Sameach, too!