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!

This is going to be a long message, so please try to get through it, even though I know it is going to be really hard for almost everyone to hear.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
But I think it might be easier to get through by reading it, instead.

To begin with, no one really knows who wrote the gospels, and the names given are nothing more than educated guesses by Christians sometime in the second century.

The time line for each gospel is that Matthew was written circa 75- 85 A.D., Mark 70-75 A.D., Luke 80-90 A.D., and John 90-100 A.D., just before he is know no have died. As an interesting factoid, John was the only disciple not martyred.

There has to be some question why he wrote the gospel so much later than the other writers, being some 60+ years after the events he is supposedly recalling accurately. But more than this speculation, there are so many parts of John that are not like the other three, and in fact are in direct contradiction to what the other three say.

The other three are synoptic gospels, mainly giving a historic narrative of the teachings and events in Yeshua’s lifetime, also showing his lineage to prove his descent from David.
John’s gospel contains over 90% original material, using long theological and overly-spiritualized diatribe instead of the short, parables used in the other three. Another major difference is that it is only in John’s gospel do we find regular use of the “I am” statements, which are used, clearly, to indicate a divine presence of Yeshua.

Now let’s go chapter by chapter to find things that do not match or contradict what the other three gospels say.

John 1:29-34 has John the Immerser proclaiming that Yeshua was the lamb of God as he came to be immersed (1:29-34) and he says he saw the spirit coming down onto Yeshua like a dove. But he also says that he wouldn’t know who the Messiah was until the spirit came down on him.
Okay, so John the Immerser proclaims Yeshua as the lamb of God when he first sees him, before he was baptized, but then later in the Gospel it says John the Immerser didn’t know Yeshua was the son of God until AFTER the immersion!

So, what is it? Did he recognize him immediately or not? And in Matthew 3:13 John recognizes who Yeshua is and he says Yeshua should be baptizing him.

So the gospel not only contradicts itself, but is very different fromt he same event as described in Matthew. The one thing all four have in comment is the declaration of the spirit coming to land on Yeshua.

John 1:35 describes how Yeshua chose Simon and Andrew in a totally different manner than the other gospels, saying that they were with John the Baptist and they followed Yeshua when John declared him to be the son of God. But in the other three, Peter and Andrew were fishing when Yeshua calls them to follow him. This is a significant difference, in that John has them following the Baptist while the other three have them fishing.

And in John 1:42 Yeshua first meets Simon and then renames him Peter, while in Matthew he doesn’t say that until Matthew 16:16, after Simon proclaims Yeshua to be the Messiah. In Mark he doesn’t rename him until later when in Mark 3:13 he appoints the 12.

In John 3:17 he says he did not come into the world to judge but to save, yet later in John 9:39 he says he came into the world for judgement. Whether we want to say that his presence was a judgment on those who rejected him, or he judged people who rejected him, either way, judging passively or actively, his presence DID create judgement, and that is in direct contradiction to him saying he did not come to judge but to save, especially if his presence acted as any kind of judgement which did not save but ended up condemning! In John 3:19, Yeshua actually says that there is a judgment, right after he says he did not come to judge!

In John 4 we read about how he talked to the Samaritan woman, even accepting a drink from her, and telling her that he is the Messiah (John 4:25-26). But in Matthew 16:20, Mark 8:29, and Luke 9:21 he specifically tells his disciples NOT to tell anyone he is the Messiah! In John 10:25 Yeshua answers the Judeans who ask him if he is the Messiah that he has already told them and they don’t trust him.

The next thing that is a complete contradiction of the other three is that in John 4, he not only tells the woman he is the Messiah, but teaches in their town for 2 days; but in Matthew 15:21 he says he came only for the children of Israel (Shomron was not considered to be Jewish). And although he did heal the slave of the Centurian (Luke 7:1) and healed the daughter of the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24), he stated these two showed so much faith that he did as they said. But his objective was always the direct children of Israel, the Jews, and not anyone else. There is nothing in any of the other three gospels even indicating he taught anywhere but in Israeli lands.

In John 8:58 when Yeshua declares that “before Abraham was, I am” is clearly a definitive statement of eternal being. There is nothing even close to that in any of the other Gospels, and (as pointed out earlier) the use of the words, “I am” throughout John’s gospel is a clear claim of divinity, since God first used those words when Moses asked who he should say sent him.

In no other gospel except John does Yeshua come even close to claiming to be God, identified as God, as one with God, or any of the other spiritually confusing rhetoric we read in this one, unique gospel.

In John 12 he says that Judah the betrayer was stealing from the community purse he was in charge of, yet that is never mentioned or even implied in the other gospels. You would think something like that might be important to note.

Again we hear him say, in John 12:47 that Yeshua did not come to judge anyone, but then he says that what he has spoken will judge them. Well, what is it? If his word judges people, then he is judging them; passively or actively, they are being judged by what he is saying and that is a judgment that he is responsible for doing.

The betrayal is also described very differently. In Matthew 26:23, Yeshua only says the one who is dipping his bread with me will betray me, and then they all ask, “Is it I?”. In Mark 14 and Luke 22:21 he says the one dipping his bread with me, but in none of those three gospels does he address Judas directly as he does in John, nor do they say Judas was a thief.

In John 14:26 Yeshua says that the Holy Spirit will be sent by God in his (Yeshua’s) name, which does go along with the narrative in Acts 2:1; but, later in John 20:22, it says that Yeshua, after being resurrected, breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit, which goes against the way Yeshua said it would be done and also against what is recorded in Acts.

He also tells them, at that time, they have the authority to forgive or not forgive sins. In the other gospels Yeshua says that all sins are forgivable (except against the Holy Spirit), but here he is saying, essentially, that if the disciples don’t forgive a sin it won’t be forgiven.

What happened to Matthew 6:14-15 when Yeshua said if we do not forgive someone’s sin, we will not be forgiven? Clearly this choice to forgive or retain sins is a direct contradiction to what Yeshua says in the other gospels, and to his teaching about that 7 times 70 times we should forgive thing, as well!

And what do the other gospels say about the Holy Spirit being given? There is no mention of the giving of the Holy Spirit in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. However, the Holy Spirit is only mentioned in Acts 2 as coming on the Disciples at the Shavuot celebration.

Here’s more!

Yeshua often refers to “their Torah” or ‘their law” when he is debating with the Power Elite in Jerusalem in John 10:34 and John 15:25. No Jew would ever say, “their Torah” because it is always our Torah, so he would say, “the Torah”.

Finally, when Yeshua is taken prisoner, John says he also went into the courts with Peter; in fact, John says he was known to the Cohen HaGadol and he was the one who got Peter into the courtyard. Now that would be an important thing to note, yet not one of the other three, all of which retell this part of the history, mention John ever being there. And nowhere is there ever any mention of John having any connection to or familiarity with the Cohen HaGadol.

And none of the other three have Tomas calling Yeshua his Lord and his God! They do call Yeshua “Lord”, but not to be confused with THE Lord, God the Father; rather with Lord being a title of authority.

And besides these obvious and undeniable contradictions to the other three gospels, which violates the interpretative tool called Hermeneutics, the overly spiritualized double talk- if could you see him you would see me but you don’t see me so you can’t see him, but since you see me ….yada-yadda-yadda- is confusing and unlike the way Yeshua talked or taught in any of the other three gospels.

Because of these many, many issues, I have come to believe that this gospel is not just a false one, but was not even written by the same John who lived and walked with Yeshua. The emphasis on the divinity of Yeshua, the different way Yeshua talked, and the many contradictions to the other gospels has inevitably led me to the conclusion that I think this was written by a Gentile using the name John (it could have been his real name) who was not a direct disciple, but one whose purpose in writing this so-called gospel was to write a gospel that would help to further separate the Gentile believers from the Jewish believers.

Remember also that at the time this gospel was written, most of the Jewish leaders of the original movement accepting Yeshua as the Messiah had all but died out, and this Jewish movement was being taken further and further away from its Jewish roots, creating a totally different religion based not on Yeshua’s Torah teachings as much as on the misinterpretation of letters written by Shaul to congregations of Gentiles who were being pressured to get circumcised and having power struggles within their organizations.

Another factor at that time was the animosity between Judea and Rome was building, coming to a head in 132-33 A.D. with the Bar Kokhba rebellion. These Gentiles who were being taught Torah began to think that the closer they got to a Jewish lifestyle, the more Rome would consider them Jews and not Romans, putting them on the firing line, so to speak, with the Jewish population. As pagans they were safe, but as Jews they were a target for Roman persecution, so they decided it was safer to change their form of worship.

Of course, that idea backfired because after the Jews were put down for good, this new religion become a target for Rome.

At the end of the first century, as noted by Ignatius of Antioch in 110 A.D., Gentiles were already meeting on their own Sabbath, which they changed to be on the first day of the week.
When John’s gospel was written, by then the move away from Torah and Judaism had been well under way, and this is why I believe this gospel, so contradictory to the other earlier gospels and the only one where there is clearly a desire to prove Yeshua is God, was definitely written in order to keep any self-respecting Jew from wanting anything to do with this guy Jesus (as is still true to this very day), and so was not written by the real disciple, Yochanan ben Zebedee but by a Gentile man using the name John.

All this being said, I still read the book when I am going through the Bible because although I know it is a false gospel designed specifically to keep Jews out of the (now) Christian religion, and also to prove the divinity of Jesus (which is more along the lines of the prior Pagan beliefs those Gentile believers were comfortable with), it does have some things in there of value.

Hey, accidents happen, and this one accidentally has some proper worshipful stuff in it.

So read it if you will, but be aware of the differences and contradictions, and know that God never changes. If you are reading something in a version of the Bible that doesn’t jive with any other part of the Bible or any other Bible you have read, know it to be questionable at best, and probably wrong at worst.

There are so many different versions of the Bible in so many hundreds of different languages that you have to read every one of those versions with discretion and discernment. And remember that the New Covenant writings are by Jews, but there wasn’t any Jew, ever, who was part of the coalition which put that part of the Bible together! According to Google, by the late second century (around 170–200 A.D.), a core collection—including the four gospels and the letters of Paul—was widely accepted and cited as authoritative by church leaders like Irenaeus.

The criteria used for judging which texts belonged in the Bible was based on apostolic origin (written by or closely tied to an apostle), orthodoxy (consistent with true Christian teaching, which by then was very different from Torah), and widespread liturgical use.

Widespread litugical use is another way of saying what the people were used to because they liked it, and not having to obey Torah is a lot easier than having to obey it.

And when they say it was based on Christian teaching, that is based mostly on Shaul’s (Paul) letters, and had little or nothing to do with Torah anymore.

Thanks in part to this so-called Gospel of John, by the middle of the second century what had been a Jewish movement to accept Yeshua as the Messiah God promised to send became an anti-Torah religion that proclaimed Jesus was God, replacing both the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the Torah he gave us with man-made tenets, holidays, and even changed the Anointed One of God (the Messiah) into a Gentile Savior who they worship in place of God.

So, nu? Now you know why I cannot accept John’s gospel as a real gospel, but rather as a means of further separating Gentiles from Jews by making Yeshua into God and, by doing that making it nearly impossible for Jews to join in.

If you are still here, please comment and consider sharing this message, as well as all my others, with everyone you know. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, hoping those who follow this ministry will continue to do so, and also hoping that I have upset many of you who have been taught that John’s gospel is the most important one by making you think, “I hate to admit it, but he makes sense.”

Let me wish you an early Shabbat Shalom and a very joyous Shemini Atzeret!

Okay, let’s start by remembering exactly who Yeshua is and how he lived: he was, is, and always shall be the Jewish Messiah who lived a perfectly observant Torah life.

Now, can we agree that, in general, to follow someone is to do as they did?

If you said “No”, then close this page and go play Solitaire or stream something stupid because nothing I say from this point on will matter to you.

If you said “Yes” and if you are not Jewish, then do you live your life trying to be as obedient to the Torah as Yeshua was?

Now, if your answer to that question is either “No”, or what may be worse, it is “I am a Gentile believer and as such I do not have to follow the Torah”, then the next thing is to ask yourself is this question:

“How can I follow Yeshua when I do not live or worship as he did?”

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

That’s a tough question, isn’t it? I think the reason it is tough is because there is really no logical or even sensible answer that would explain how you can follow someone when you don’t do anything they do.

I probably should stop right here because, well…what else is there?

Either you live the same way Yeshua lived, or you are following someone else: there is no way around that because it is a given, a prima fascie condition, an absolute truth.

My suggestion is that you go back to the Gospels (just the first three- ignore John’s gospel because it is a false one) and see that Yeshua taught exclusively from the Torah and never said anything even close to suggesting people ignore his father’s instructions or reject what God said to do.

You want to know where all that drek about Gentiles not having to obey the Torah comes from? It’s from letters men wrote to Gentiles trying to teach them the Torah a little at a time, which later were transformed into justification for rejecting the Torah.

Shaul’s (Paul) letters are convoluted Jewish logic and so have easily been misused and misinterpreted to fit a Gentile desire to reject the Torah, yet somehow making-up reasons why they can still be saved.

(By the way- Jewish logic is my own term, and I explain it as we Jews will answer questions with questions and never tell you what something is until we tell you everything it isn’t.)

It is easy, really- the only place in the entire Bible where God, himself, tells us how he wants us to worship him and how he wants us to treat each other is found ONLY in those first five books. God doesn’t make any new commandments or tell us we can ignore any of the existing ones that he dictated to Moses anywhere throughout the rest of the Bible.

I can’t stand the fact that the Torah is called “The Mosaic Law” because it isn’t from Moses! The only thing Moses had to do with the Torah is that he was God’s stenographer, taking down what God told him to write and teaching it to the people.

In truth, everything after Deuteronomy is either historical narrative or commentary.

So, nu! … I will leave you with this thought:

If you really want to follow Yeshua, to do what he did, to act as he acted, to worship as he worshipped, then you have to live in accordance with the Torah.

How can you say you love and worship God and want to be as Yeshua is when you reject and ignore what God said to do and what Messiah Yeshua did when he was on the earth?

I was going to stop here, but I think I need to add one more thought for you.

We all will have to meet God at Judgement Day, and when asked why we lived the way we did, anyone who has rejected the Torah will have to say,

“I did what they told me I should do.”

Now, I can’t speak for God, but I think he will respond with something to the effect of:

“I know you did what they told you to do, but it is what I say that counts.”

PLEASE! Consider that if you think following some man-made religion will save you.

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!

Growing up Jewish, I was subject to many accusations from my Christian friends stating that it was us Jews who killed God (meaning Jesus Christ).

Of course, my reply was that it was the Romans who actually killed him, but now I know it wasn’t really them.

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

The answer to who really killed Yeshua is…. I did.

Actually, you did, too!

In fact, everyone killed him; without his death, God’s desire that no one should have to die (Ezekiel 18:23) cannot be accomplished.

God wants everyone, Jew and Gentile, to be in his presence forever because he doesn’t care about religion, he cares about faithfully believing in him and accepting Yeshua as the Messiah he promised to send. Without Yeshua’s sacrificial blood to cleanse us of our sins, no one has any chance of being forgiven.

God will not abide sin in his presence, so we need to be forgiven of our sins, which cleanses us, in order to be with him.

Yeshua’s sacrifice replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, which (according to the Torah) was the only place where any sacrifice would be accepted. With the destruction of the temple around 70-73 AD, there was no way for anyone to be forgiven, except by means of the innocent blood shed when Yeshua was killed.

That is why there is no way to the father except through Yeshua (John 14:6).

So, if everyone else on the earth was 100% righteous, with me being the only exception, I believe Yeshua would have undergone all the torture he did and even die…just to save me.

And he would have done the same just to save you.

So, it wasn’t the power elite in Jerusalem who killed him, although they set him up for death.

And it wasn’t Pilate who killed him because all he did was pass a judgement that he didn’t want to, but did so under duress from the people.

And the soldiers who nailed him to that execution stake didn’t kill him, because, well…he was alive even after they did it.

And even God, who accepted his spirit (Luke 23:46), didn’t really kill him since Yeshua asked him to do it.

No, it wasn’t Jews or Romans or even God who killed Yeshua- it was me, it was you, it was all of us.

If we had not been sinning, then even after being forgiven continuing to sin (because it is in our very DNA to do so), Yeshua would not have had to die.

Truthfully, if we were able to be sinless there would be no need for a Messiah at all.

Lucky for us, God knew better.

I believe he had planned for the Messiah since the very beginning, which is why John says that everything was made through him (John 1:3), meaning all that God did was designed with the Messiah in mind.

The next time you hear someone place blame on anyone for the death of Yeshua, you just tell them:

“Truth is the one who caused the death of the Messiah is…YOU!”

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!

It is assumed that Yeshua was sacrificed in the year 33 AD, and that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed around the year 72 AD, roughly two generations later.

I believe God sent Yeshua when he did because he knew the temple would be gone, and with it the only way we could be forgiven of sin.

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

To start with, the Torah states that God will not accept any sacrifice unless it is performed at the location where he will place his name (Deuteronomy 12:5), which was first at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, then as the tent moved to Gilgal then Shiloh, and finally to the City of David, people had to travel there to make their sacrifices.

After Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, that was the last (and still the only) place where God put his name, and therefor where sacrifices will be accepted.

Now, I think we all can agree that God knows what is going to happen, even if the only reason he knows that is because he can make whatever he wants to happen, happen, and happen exactly when he wants it to happen, and happen exactly the way he wants it to happen.

As my generation used to say, he is a real “happening” kind of guy!

So, knowing that Rome would soon be destroying the temple, and based on his never-ending desire to forgive us of our sins (Ezekiel 18:23), I believe he sent Messiah Yeshua before the destruction of the temple so that afterward, we could still be forgiven of sin.

Okay, now you may be thinking that he should have sent Messiah way back sometime before 605-587 BCE, when the Babylonian exile occurred and the first temple was destroyed. With that event, there was no way for anyone to receive forgiveness.

My answer would be that maybe since the exile was punishment for not having obeyed the Torah regulations, God wasn’t at that time willing to forgive anyone. After all, they were being punished. They violated many Torah commandments, not the least of which was worshipping other gods, and the people also failed to give the land a Shabbat rest every 7th year for 490 years!

God exiled the people from the land to give it rest, and he chose to exile them one year for each Shabbat rest the land did not get, which over 490 years means they would be exiled for 70 years.

God is really good with math!

Since the exile would be only for a short time, I think God was not willing to allow forgiveness until the punishment was over. That may sound harsh, but he is God and who will tell him what he can or can’t do?

Not me!

So, after the exile the people did return and rebuilt the temple, beginning what we call the second temple period, and forgiveness of sin was once again available.

Let’s now fast-forward to when Yeshua made forgiveness of sin possible by his sacrifice, which replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple; that is why he said the only way to the father (i.e., being free of sin) is through him (John 14:6).

After Yeshua made forgiveness possible anywhere and any time, Rome destroys the temple making the path to forgiveness under the Torah impossible.

Impossible, that is, unless you have faithfully accepted that Yeshua is the Messiah and through his sacrifice forgiveness is still available.

I started out by saying I believe the timing of Yeshua’s appearance two generations before the temple destruction was planned, and now I’ll explain why I say that.

At that time there was no Internet, mail service took a long time, and the best way for news to spread was by word-of-mouth as people traveled to trade their goods and while tending their herds and flocks.

For people to be aware of what happened in Jerusalem when Yeshua was crucified, and especially what happened for the 40 days or so after he was resurrected, needed time to get spread around. The Gospels make it clear that many thousands of people knew of him, but that was in the general area around Jerusalem, mostly in the Southern Kingdom territory.

I read that he covered about 20 square miles during his three year ministry, 80-90% of it in the area of the Galilee, while Israel contained about 8,000 square miles during that time, so he didn’t cover that much territory.

But over two generations, some 40-50 years, I believe that much of what he did had time to spread all over the land, and that gave people time to accept him before the temple was gone.

Those who rejected him as Messiah would soon find themselves, their kids, and all their descendants stuck without any way to be forgiven of sin.

Of course, there is no biblical justification for this drash of mine, and I often have preached how it is dangerous to try to make an argument out of nothing, but I still think “what if” or “why that” now and then. I mean, we humans are curious and there is that innate need to know “why?” that I have found in nearly everyone I have ever known.

Myself, included.

So, nu?.. do you think I’m making any sense with this? Would you agree that it is possible God timed Yeshua’s appearance for the reasons I believe?

Let me know, and thank you for being here. Please do 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!

We all know that after Yeshua was resurrected salvation became available to the Gentiles who were willing to faithfully accept that Yeshua is the Messiah the God of the Jews promised to send.

And in doing so, they also obligated themselves to accept the same laws and way of life that the Jews led.

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

Now, I’m sure that many Christians reading what I just wrote about the Gentiles being obligated to live as Jews lived if they accepted Yeshua as their Messiah are thinking:

“Well, no! We only have to do those 4 things in the letter they wrote (Acts 15) and the Torah is no longer valid for Gentiles because we have the law of Christ and we don’t have to follow the laws of Moses.”

I understand that is what many, MANY Christians have been taught, but I am here to say that is not correct.

Sorry, but the only place in the entire Bible where any of that church rhetoric comes from is not from God or Yeshua- it is a false teaching stemming from confusing language in letters written by a man to congregations of Gentiles he was teaching to be Torah obedient, but doing so slowly so that he wouldn’t lose them to their old habits.

Shaul (Paul) wrote to congregations that were started by him, teaching them the Torah but at a pace they could handle. That is why it has been so easy for Gentiles who did not want to worship God as God said to do (in the Torah) to change things around.

You see, at that time there was a constant rebellion against Roman rule by the Jews, and as these Gentiles began to accept Yeshua and be taught the Jewish way of worship, they felt they would be associated with the jews and, as such, become targets of Rome.

So, to politically protect themselves from Rome, they separated themselves from the Jews by changing how they worshipped.

And as for those 4 things in the letter James suggested, Christianity loves to teach that those are all Gentiles have to do, but James never said that! In fact, he suggested those 4 things as initial “must-do’s” never intending them to be the only things to do, and that is confirmed by Acts 15:21 when he said that these neophyte believers would learn the law of Moses while attending Shabbat services every week, when the laws were always being read.

So, again, sorry, but the truth is that Gentiles who accept Yeshua as their Messiah also have to accept the Torah as their way of life.

But they didn’t, and (as I mentioned) in order to separate themselves from the Jews, they decided to cover their own tuchas by changing how they worshipped from the way Yeshua worshipped to a way that was not pagan or Jewish, creating a new religion that was soon to be called Christianity.

And that is when they pruned themselves from the Tree of Life, which is the Torah. They created a new man-made religion which has rejected nearly everything God said he wanted from those who worship him.

They rejected his Holy Days and created their own.

They rejected his Shabbat and made their own.

In truth, they rejected God.

How did they reject God? Well, first off, when you reject what God says to do, you have rejected God, and by the middle of the Second Century they had created the idea of a Trinity which replaced God the Father with Jesus the Savior by making them one and the same entity.

Christians pray to Jesus, they ask Jesus for forgiveness of sins (which he, himself, said he could do only while on the earth in Matthew 9:1-8), and there is at least one Christian religion that says any priest can forgive your sins!

Personally, I think they came up with that idea because a celibate life is boring, and by creating this confession thing they could add a little vicarious excitement into their life by hearing what others were doing.

Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer chases Bugs up a tree? Bugs is at the end of a branch, with Elmer on that same branch sitting next to the trunk, sawing away at the part that Bugs is on. And when he saws all the way through the branch, the tree and Elmer fall, while the separated branch Bugs is on miraculously stays suspended in the air!

Christianity thinks it can do what Bugs did and get away with it.

If any Gentile states they have been grafted onto the Tree of Life but don’t obey the Torah, well they may have been grafted on at one time but by choosing to reject the Torah they have pruned themself from the Tree of Life, and are grafted onto nothing.

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!

Time for another lesson in how to get people to listen to you.

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

Okay, first off let’s remember this very important rule:

People believe only half of what you tell them, but 100% of what they say.

Therefore, in order to get them to even listen to you, you have to first get them to doubt what they already believe.

“How do I do you do that?” You ask them why.

Ask them to explain why they believe what they believe, and that is how you start to get them to doubt themselves because, for the most part, they will give you parroted answers.

What is a parroted answer? Parrots learn to reply to instructions in a way that makes it appear they know what they are doing, but the truth is that they have no understanding- they are just repeating what they have been told in response to some stimulus.

No disrespect meant, but it’s like talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses- they know verses and passages but they don’t know the proper interpretation because they take everything out of context in order to make it fit into their programmed belief system.

Here’s an example based on Christians being taught that Yeshua did away with the law: you ask them why they believe Yeshua did away with the law and they will most likely say he completed it, maybe even quoting Matthew 5:17.

That’s when you ask this question: “If something isn’t what it used to be, does that mean it has been changed?”

(The best way to control a discussion is to ask questions, and you need to ask leading questions, in that the question leads to the answer you want.)

Of course they will have to answer “Yes”, so then you ask them if Yeshua said (in that verse) that he did not come to change anything, but you say he did away with the law, isn’t that changing something? He said he didn’t come to change anything, but you say he did change something? How do you explain that?

This is when you look at their eyes. If their eyes go up to the right top side of their sockets, according to Neuro-Linguistic Programming theory that means they are trying to create an answer that they don’t have.

Accept it- ministry is Sales and Sales is all about psychology.

You are now on the right track, so while they are thinking you provide an answer- the one you want them to hear, and you do it respectfully and softly, such as …

“What he said is that not one letter or stroke of the pen in the Torah would change, so Torah obedience is still required by those who accept him as their Messiah. He said things wouldn’t change until everything was done, so if you can show me the new Jerusalem or the new earth, which Revelation talks about, then it appears Torah obedience is still valid for those who believe Yeshua is the Messiah.

So, do you believe he is the Messiah God promised to send?”

Again, you asked a question you already know the answer to, which would have to be “Yes”.

Now you follow that up with the one question that makes them really wonder if they are right: “So if you believe Yeshua is the Messiah, and he said the law remains valid, what do you think you should do?”

At this time, don’t be surprised or disappointed if they still hold to their old belief, but what you have done is to put a small crack in the dam they have built holding back the truth, and maybe with enough of this type of ministering, that crack will begin to widen and some of the truth may seep out. Eventually, with God’s help and proper questioning, you will be able to break down the dam their improper teaching has created, and they will accept what you are saying.

Here is an important fact to remember: people who are immediately convinced of what you are saying will be just as easily convinced of what someone else says later- they are not the ones who will benefit from your ministering to them.

So, watch where their eyes go when you ask them leading questions- if they go up to the left, then all they are doing is repeating what they have heard; but, if they go up to the right, then you are having an impact.

The ones who are stubbornly holding on to their beliefs, but whose eyes keep going up to the right when you ask them a question are the ones who have a chance of (eventually) changing their minds.

Be patient and practice on your own with the questions and answers you know you will need because most everyone comes back with the same church rhetoric, and you need to be prepared for it.

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

How many times have you seen that bumper-sticker that says “coexist” spelled out in different religious symbols?

It sounds like a good idea, but none of the religions represented by those symbols are called to coexist.  

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

In the Torah, God tells us that we are to be holy, as he is holy; I would give the biblical references but, frankly, there are too many of them so you can just take my word for it.  

Being holy doesn’t mean acting like some saint or being sinless (since no human being can be sinless), all it means is to be separate.  

And what should we be separate from? Why, the world, of course.

The idea of coexisting is fine with most Judea-Christian religions because we allow others to have the freedom to practice their religion without constraint or prejudice.

However, without naming names, let’s just say that not everyone is willing to do that.  

In reality, it’s pretty stupid to think that anyone is ever going to hold hands with a member of another religion that wants to destroy them and sing “Kumbaya“.

Get real, people- it ain’t gonna happen!

As for Israel, my spiritual homeland, I really wish they would stop trying to please the UN (which should be renamed to the United Nations Against Israel) and just wipe out the enemies that are attacking them, once and for all.

Joshua screwed-up by not eliminating all the enemies of God that he was told to eliminate, and that is why Israel is having so many problems, today. We need to learn from that mistake and not repeat it, which (sadly) is exactly what we are doing.

We know what the Bible says about the Acharit HaYamim (End Days) in Revelation, and also from many of the prophets, which is that the whole world will come against Israel before the return of the Messiah. And when he comes he will kick butt… and there won’t be any names left to take!

For those who may not be familiar with the adage, “Kick butt and take names“, the kicking butt part is easy to understand; for the ones whose butt you couldn’t kick, you take their name and send someone back who can kick it.

The truth is there is one God and he doesn’t have a religion, only his instructions for how to worship him and how to treat each other (that’s the Torah, God’s “User Manual for Righteousness”) and I don’t think he really doesn’t want to hear anything about any other way to do things.

People have free will, a gift from God, that no one should interfere with. That means anyone can practice any form of worship they want to without anyone forcing them to worship any other way. That ideal is a two-way street; in other words, you can do what you want and I can do what I want, but neither of us can force the other to do something else.

In Israel there are Jews, Christians and Muslims, and they all get along together, but in the rest of the world we see one religion (or political system) after another forcing conversions and torturing or killing those who remain faithful to their own beliefs.

The idea of different religions getting along is something that history has shown can’t happen, so get rid of the bumper-sticker and replace it with something that simply says, “In God, we trust” or maybe just leave the bumper clean.

Respect everyone’s right to choose for themself, and let them be- we all have enough to worry about regarding our own eternal condition.

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!

How about a nice, easy lesson today? Let’s talk covenants.

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

Before we talk about covenants, let’s make sure we are all on the same page as to what a covenant is: it is an agreement between two or more parties, and it can be conditional or unconditional.

Conditional covenants are those where each party promises to perform some act in order to make the covenant valid, and if either party violates their side of the agreement, then the covenant is rendered null and void.

Unconditional covenants are those where one side of the agreement promises to perform some act and the other side is not required to do anything.

Simple, right?

Okay, so the main 5 covenants we know from the Bible are these:

1. Noahdic Covenant– God promises unconditionally not to destroy life by a flood anymore, and the rainbow is the sign of that covenant.
2. Abrahamic Covenant– God promises Abraham that he will make him into a nation and give him the land of the Canaanites. He also promises that those who curse Abraham will be cursed, and those who bless him will be blessed. The sign of this covenant is that all the males of Abraham’s family and slaves must be circumcised.
3. The Mosaic Covenant- God promises to make us into a holy nation if we obey the laws he gives us. The sign of this covenant is the Shabbat (Sabbath).
4. The Davidic Covenant– God promises King David that so long as his children obey God’s commandments (in the Torah) then he will always have a descendant sitting on the throne. Most important about this is that he also promises to make David’s house a perpetual house, which is understood to be the promise that the Messiah will be a descendant of David.
5. The New Covenant– Despite what you may think, this is not in the New Covenant writings, but in Jeremiah 31:31. God promises to write his Torah on our hearts and forgive our sins so that no longer will anyone have to say “Know Adonai” because we will all know him.

So, now that we have the covenants down, let’s identify which ones are conditional and which aren’t.

There is really only one that is unconditional, the Noahdic Covenant. God doesn’t require anything from us in that covenant.

The other four are all conditional: for Abraham we need to be a circumcised male (although obviously females won’t have to undergo that), for the Mosaic Covenant we need to obey the Torah, and the Davidic Covenant is conditional upon David’s descendants obeying the Torah.

Although the New Covenant doesn’t specify any requirement, I have to believe that if someone has not turned their heart towards God they probably won’t be allowed into that covenant.

You may be thinking why God, who has always kept his side of the bargain even though we have often (actually, always) broken our side of his covenants, has still done what he said he would do regarding the conditional covenants.

I think the answer is this: God loves us so much that he is willing to allow us to screw up over and over, but he will not take advantage of his legal right to break his side of the covenant.

I believe this is pretty obvious when we see how many times God has allowed his people to violate his covenants yet was willing to forgive us when we did T’shuvah (turning from sin) in order that the covenant would remain in force.

Ezekiel 18:23 says it best: God doesn’t want to see anyone die (meaning an eternal death), which is why he maintains his side of broken covenants, just waiting for us to re-establish our side.

And when we fail to get around to replacing our heads on our shoulders from where we had them (I won’t say where, but the sun doesn’t shine there), God eventually runs out of patience and decides to give us some motivation, such as a plague, sending the sword against us, famine, etc. He still keeps his side, despite our violation, and instead of just leaving us be he tries to get us back on track.

However, for those who constantly and happily violate the covenants, God will allow them to go their own way, which I believe is very painful to him. But because he loves us so much, he is willing to allow us to kill ourselves, even when he doesn’t want that to happen.

One more thing about covenants- they are in force until one side breaks them or whatever time period they may have attached to them runs out. As for God’s Torah, he gives us a term limit- throughout all your generations.

That means as long as we are alive, those laws are valid and required to be in the covenant with God. Christianity has taught that you can violate the Mosaic Covenant without any repercussions, but that is a false teaching, unless you can show that you have no more generations.

Yeshua lived in accordance with all God’s covenants, including the Torah, which is why he was resurrected- like it or not, the Torah IS the path to salvation because it is God’s “User Manual for Righteousness”, and obedience to the Torah will result in salvation; Yeshua proved that by being resurrected.

The problem is that humans cannot do that, which is why God sent the Messiah, to cover our tuchas when we screw up.

Everyone is under the Noahdic Covenant, and can be under every other covenant if they choose to be obedient and meet the requirements for our side of the agreement. To be saved you do not have to be circumcised because being a member of the Abrahamic Covenant is not a requirement for salvation, but if you want to be saved you need to recognize that believing in Yeshua is NOT a part of any of the covenants, and salvation cannot be earned so it is not a covenental issue, either. Believing in Yeshua is required to receive forgiveness by means of the sacrificial blood he shed, replacing the need to bring an animal to the temple.

Salvation is eternal life, and it is a side-effect of the New Covenant, but (as I said earlier) I truly believe that anyone who rejects obedience to God’s Mosaic Covenant will not be allowed to participate in the New Covenant.

It just doesn’t make sense that God will allow those who purposefully reject his Torah to be forgiven, despite what your Christian religion may tell you.

Here is something to consider: at the end of time we will all face God, and some will say, “I tried to be obedient to your covenants” and others will say, “I did what my man-made religion told me was okay to do.”

So nu?… which of those people do you think God will accept into his presence?

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages, even with 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!

I have often stated that I believe the Gospel of John is a false gospel, and by that I mean it is not written by the real apostle John, and even more than that, I do not believe it was even written by a Jewish person.

Warning: this one will be longer than most of my messages.

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

I think we first have to remember that what started out as a movement within the Jewish people, one where Yeshua was being recognized as anything from a prophet to the Messiah, had originally been (except for a very few exceptions) only within the Jewish population . It wasn’t until about 3-4 years after his resurrection that Shaul (Paul) changed his mind about Yeshua and began to open the path to salvation through Yeshua (now recognized as the Messiah) to the Gentile population throughout the Middle East and Asia. This was a paradigm shift in lifestyle for those Gentiles, and Shaul was bringing them into Torah observance at a pace they could handle.

The problem was that the Jews were rebelling against Roman rule and, as such, the Gentile believers started to get worried that their conversion would target them along with the Jews, so that by the end of the First Century, when most of the original Jewish leaders had been martyred or dead and the majority of Jews who would believe in Yeshua had come and gone, the movement that was Jewish mutated into a new religion called Christianity, which by the middle of the Second Century (after the Jewish rebellion had been put down, once and for all around 132 AD), this new religion was targeted by Rome, anyway, because the one thing Rome hated more than rebellion was a religion other than their own in one of their territories.

Okay, so now we have the historical background to support why this Jewish movement was moving away from Judaism by the time John wrote his gospel.

According to scholars, John was exiled to Patmos around 93 AD, spent anywhere from 18 months to 3 years there, then was released and eventually returned to Ephesus, He died there around 100 AD at the approximate age of 92. He wrote about his vision of the Apocalypse while on Patmos, but his gospel wasn’t written until after he returned to Ephesus.

According to scholars, the three narrative gospels were each written sometime within 40 years or so of Yeshua’s death and resurrection around 30 AD: Mark wrote his gospel around 70 AD, Matthew and Luke were written around 80-85 AD.

Now what is funny here is that when you look up when Matthew was supposed to have died, it is sometime between 68-70 AD, some 10-15 years before he was supposed to have written his gospel! And if the other gospels were written within 40 years or so of the resurrection, why did John wait over 60 years?

I contend that no one really knows when the gospels were written, they only have guesses. And we know that many times scribes would write letters from notes made by someone, signing that person’s name. This is suspected to have been done with a number of Shaul’s (Paul) letters.

(You can check that out in the teaching series I have written regarding the Epistles- here is a link to that series of teachings: the Epistles.)

So, with these questionable issues about any and all of the gospels, let me go into some of the reasons I feel that John is not a valid gospel, at all, and written by a Gentile using the name of John.

One reason is that he doesn’t write about the Torah or the Jews correctly. What I mean is that a Jew would never call the people “the Jews”, which John does nearly 60 times throughout this gospel; to a Jew, the other Jews are “the people”. And a Jew would never, ever refer to the Torah as “their Torah”, which John does in his gospel.

Another reason I doubt the validity of John is because it fails the test of Hermeneutics, which is the exegesis tool that says every part of the Bible should not contradict any other part of the Bible, since it was all (allegedly) inspired by God, who never changes.

How John fails this test is, for one, where he refers to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4). The other three gospels are clear that Yeshua says he has come only for the children of Israel (Matthew 15:24) and explicitly says to his disciples not to tell anyone he is the Messiah (Matthew 16:20, Mark 8:30, and Luke 9:21), yet here in John he not only tells this Samaritan woman he is the Messiah (failing to match what the other gospels said), but he stays in her town and teaches there for 2 days (again, totally against what Yeshua says in the other gospels)!

And when it comes to the idea of the Trinity (which arguments for or against will not be part of this discussion), almost every justification for saying Yeshua is also God comes only from John’s gospel. Nowhere in any of the other Gospels does Yeshua even hint that he is God. And I also will go as far as to say the miracle of making wine from water (John 2) is designed specifically to show that Mary has some level of authority over Yeshua!

Think about it: the Roman Catholic Church (which was the only church until about 1054) has constantly had people pray to Mary to intervene with Jesus. This miracle indicates that she has that power, since he first said he didn’t want to do anything, but she went ahead and had him do it, anyway. And another thing: every miracle that Yeshua performed in the other three gospels had to do with healing of one sort or another- but in John he makes wine from water for a party! Why? I believe it is only to indicate the authority that Mary has over Yeshua and within the Catholic Church.

Another thing about John is that the writing is stylistically not “Jewish”. Even as confusing as Shaul’s letters are, John is full of double-talk and overly spiritualized metaphor that makes it almost impossible to tell when Yeshua is talking literally or figuratively.

I am Jewish and understand Jewish logic, which is that we Jews will tell you everything something is not before we tell you what it is, but John is written so confusingly that you don’t know what is real and what is not:
If you know me you know him, but you don’t know him so you can’t know me, and that is why you don’t know me because you don’t know him, yadda-yadda-yadda…

One last thing, and I appreciate anyone who has stayed with me this long: by the end of the First Century, the one thing that the Jews and (now called) Christians had in common was this: neither side wanted any more Jews joining this movement. Even Shaul recognized this shift by stating that the Jews will no longer accept Yeshua until the time of the Gentiles is over (Romans 11:25).

By the time John was supposed to have been written, already Christianity was separating itself from its Jewish beginnings by changing the Shabbat to Sunday (Ignatius of Antioch proclaimed that around 98 AD) and by the time of Tertullian’s influential writings (which, for the record, is where the term “trinity” originated) in the middle of the Second Century, Christianity had changed from a Jewish movement inviting Gentiles to a totally new Gentile religion that rejected the Jews and “their” Torah.

John’s gospel is written in a way that would turn-off any self-respecting Jew from even wanting to hear anything more about Yeshua. That is how I was raised, as many Jews have been for millennia, being taught that Jesus was a Jew but turned against Judaism and created Christianity.

Of course, that is untrue- Yeshua was, and still is, Jewish but he did not create Christianity! Men did, and they did so by misusing the letters Shaul wrote and doing everything they could to keep Jews from wanting to know anything about this new godhead of theirs called Jesus Christ.

And that is why I believe, for the reasons stated above, this so-called gospel was written by a Gentile leader of the new religion called Christianity designed specifically to keep Jews away and to further separate this new religion from its Jewish roots.

Thank you for staying through this, and I am sure it is very uncomfortable for many, especially Gentiles, to hear what I am saying. I am not telling anyone to change what they believe, only what I believe and why- you make up your own minds.

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