Sadly, for millennia Christians who, I believe, truly want to serve and worship God, have been told they don’t have to follow the Torah.

They’ve been taught that Yeshua did away with the law, or that they only need to be faithful to be saved, or as Gentiles they only have to follow the 4 requirements in Acts 15, or they only have to follow the moral laws, not the ceremonial ones, or that they don’t have to do anything more than just “call on the name of the Lord” to be saved.

“Hey, I just Whatsapp’d God- am I saved now?”

Truth be told, none of those things are correct.

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I am Jewish, born and raised from Jewish parents, taught in a reform Jewish synagogue, and when I was in my mid-40’s, I accepted that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah God promised to send, but I did not convert to anything or become a Christian (which my Jewish brothers and sisters would claim I am if I “believe in Jesus”).

What happened was that I did not become a Born-Again Christian, but rather, a Born-Anew Jew! Which is just what happened to the tens of thousands of Jews who were living during the ministry of Yeshua and who accepted him as the Messiah.

So, as a Jew, it is hard for me to understand why Christianity insists that it’s followers should live and act as Yeshua did, but- in the same breath- tells them to reject everything that he did, which was to obey every instruction for worship and treating each other that his father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, told us all to do in the Torah.

Don’t get ahead of me! I am not going to defend the Torah today, and this lesson is not to be an apologetic for the Torah. All I am going to do is ask why anyone who believes that God exists would not want to obey the Torah.

What is the Torah? It is God’s User Manual for righteous living.

And despite the way James stated it, it is not an all or nothing thing: it is a guide, as Shaul said, a guardian, and as such we do our best to do what it says to do.

But, since no human being is capable of living righteously- at least, not all the time- God gave us the sacrificial system in the Torah so we could be forgiven when we screw-up, which he knew we would do. That’s why he gave us the sacrificial system! DUH! Then he sent Yeshua to act as a permanent sacrifice for sin, replacing the need to bring an animal to be sacrificed at the temple in Jerusalem, which was the Torah command for any sacrifice to be accepted.

So, you can see how Yeshua’s sacrifice came in REALLY handy, especially after the temple was destroyed! Yeshua did not do away with the sacrificial system; all he did was to replace the need to sacrifice an animal at the temple, so now through Yeshua we can receive forgiveness anytime, anywhere.

The truth is, most Christians don’t have any idea what the Torah is, and that includes most Jews, as well! You think it is a bunch of laws, such as what is kosher and the 10 Commandments, and you are right- those laws are in there, but there is so much more to it.

Did you know that the Torah is a historical narrative, one that is being validated more and more by archaeological discoveries?

Did you know that the Torah defines a set of proper business ethics (Deut. 25)?

Did you know it has a form of a health code (Lev. 11; 14; 15)?

Did you know the Torah defines acceptable interpersonal relationships, i.e., which are proper and which are sinful? (Lev.18)?

Did you know the Torah has a penal code that stipulates the type and degree of punishment for any number of crimes, from capital crimes like murder, to torts, to misdemeanors such as loss or destruction of someone else’s property in your possession? (Lev. 24)

Did you know that the Torah is a Ketuba (marriage certificate) between a people and God, through the covenants God made with us?

BTW… the covenants God made have always been inclusive of the previous covenants: no covenant ever did away with any previous covenant.

And here’s a good reason why anyone and everyone should obey…did you know that in Deuteronomy 28, God promises to totally bless anyone who obeys his Torah?

We can’t ever earn salvation, but we can earn blessings, and who can bless better than God? Really! Why wouldn’t anyone who believes in God, who believes God is trustworthy to do as he says, not want to receive blessings?

So, again, I ask: What’s so terrible about obeying the Torah?

Christianity makes it sound like if you obey the Torah, you are disqualified from salvation. How stupid is that? Why would God punish anyone for doing what he said he wants us to do?

Can you tell me why Christianity has this thing for the Torah? Why does it insist that if you obey the Torah you can’t really be saved? All I ever hear is that doing all that “Jewish” stuff means you aren’t really saved because you are “under the law”?

Fools! False teachers! Without the law, there can be no salvation because the lawless are to be punished. Being “under the law” doesn’t mean being obedient to the Torah, it means being legalistic, which is a performance-based system for salvation.

Performing activities in order to earn salvation will not work, and demonstrates faith in works and not faith in God.

Here’s a really hard word to accept, but is undeniable: anyone who can be 100% obedient to 100% of the Torah, 100% of the time, will be saved! How can I say that?

I can say that because Yeshua was risen from the grave! He was a sinless lamb, which means he was 100% obedient to the Torah, and being sinless he was saved from death, and now sits at the right hand of God. He wasn’t resurrected because he was the Messiah, it is because he was the Messiah that he was able to be sinless, which is why he was resurrected.

So, let’s review: the Torah is a history book, it tells us what perversities we are to avoid in our relationship with others, it defines fair business practices, it has a penal code, it has a health code, it acts as a constitution for a nation, it tells us how God wants us to worship him, and more than anything else it defines what sin is, and how to be forgiven when we sin.

Once again, the Torah is not just a bunch of laws, it is God’s GPS, directing us how to live a righteous life.

Don’t you agree that true faith in, and love for God will generate in us a real desire to please him? And doesn’t it make sense that if we do what God said he wants us to do, that he will be pleased?

Being obedient to the Torah is not disqualification from salvation, it is simply living as God said to live, and as Yeshua lived, and when you do you get blessed out the ying-yang!

So, nu? If it demonstrates the truth of your faith and gets you tons of blessings, to boot!…what’s so terrible about obeying the Torah?

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

What is one of the first things Christians are taught? Isn’t it that they are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus? Doesn’t that bracelet with the “WWJD” on it mean that the wearer wants to live their life the way Jesus did?

Then why is it that Christianity (and Judaism, as well) says that you either follow the Torah or you follow Yeshua, but you can’t follow both. Don’t they know that Yeshua followed the Torah?

BTW..(in case you didn’t know, Yeshua is Jesus’s real name)

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Being raised Jewish (and, for the record, I am still Jewish, not Christian), I was taught that this guy Jesus was a Jew but he rejected Judaism and created Christianity. So, to a Jew, if you “believe in Jesus” (whatever that is supposed to mean) you are no longer Jewish, but you have to be a Christian!

Isn’t that strange? Jews want to convert believing Jews to Christianity even more than the Christians do!

The truth is this: to believe that Yeshua is the MOST “Jewish” thing anyone can do.

Yeshua had to have lived his life in total, 100% obedience to the Torah. At that time, the Torah was the User Manual for righteousness (and, you know what?-it still is), so because Yeshua was raised from the dead, proving absolutely that his death was an acceptable sacrifice, the fact is that he had to have lived his life obedient to the laws, commandments, regulations, Holy Days, and everything else that is in the Torah, AND that he is the Messiah God promised to send to us!

The Epistles, which is what Christianity is actually based on, weren’t even written then; and, even now, they have nothing at all to do with how Yeshua lived and worshipped.

Both Jews and Christians have had it wrong since the beginning: Yeshua was, is, and will always be obedient to God’s Torah, and in order to do as Yeshua did, to follow in his footsteps, and to live a righteous life, according to what GOD says and not to some man-made religion, you have to be obedient to the Torah and live it as Yeshua did.

Yeshua is the embodiment of the New Covenant: not the biblical books from Matthew through Revelation, but the real New Covenant, the one (and the only one) God made through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31). That covenant says that God will write his Torah on our hearts. Reading about Yeshua, we can see that he was not just obedient to the Torah, but he was Torah in the flesh (despite my opinion about John’s Gospel, he did get that part right), and the living example of the fulfillment of the New Covenant, having the Torah written on his heart.

So, nu? If you really want to do as Yeshua did, and you really want to live as he did, and you really want to follow in his footsteps, the Arthur Murray version of those dance steps are in the Torah- nowhere else, just the Torah. If you decide to accept that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised, that through his sacrifice we can be forgiven, and you try to live as he did, obedient to the Torah (we can never be as obedient as he was, so we do our best)… if you do all that, then you are on the right path to eternal joy.

Thank you again for being here, and please remember to subscribe and share these messages.

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

When we read the Gospels, we see that Yeshua mentioned 2 of the 10 Commandments during his sermon on the Mount, but throughout the Gospels he didn’t really talk a lot about the Torah.

Have you ever wondered why the Son of God didn’t teach people about the Torah, yet Shaul talked about the Torah a lot?

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I believe the answer is simply this: Yeshua was talking to Jews, and Shaul was talking to Gentiles.

The Jews knew the Torah, but what they didn’t know was the deeper, spiritual meaning of the Torah because all the Pharisees ever taught was the P’shat, the “plain language” of the Torah.

Yeshua taught what is called the Remes, the deeper, spiritual meaning. This was in order to fulfill part of his calling as the Messiah, which was to bring to fruition God’s New Covenant, the one he made through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31), namely to write his Torah on our hearts.

The part of the Bible called the New Covenant (or New Testament, if you prefer) has no covenants in it, at all. In truth, God doesn’t speak in it to the people, except for the one time he spoke to the apostles that accompanied Yeshua onto the mountain when Moses and Elijah appeared (Matthew 17). At that time, all God said was something to the effect of “This is my son, listen to him.”

The real new covenant God made was fulfilled by Yeshua when he taught us the true meaning of God’s laws, and that didn’t involve him quoting from the Torah, but teaching what the Torah meant in a new way. Why do you think it is often said of him that no one has ever taught the way he did? Why did the people say he taught as if he had authority? It was because he taught us the “heart” of the Torah, and since he was talking to Jews, he didn’t need to explain where these laws came from because they already knew.

Now, when Shaul (Paul) wrote his letters, he did have to mention the Torah and explain about it because he was talking, for the most part, to Gentiles who did not know the Torah.

In Acts 15, when Ya’akov (James) suggested the 4 initial rules for these new believers to follow (I say initial because they weren’t the only rules, just what they should start with), he stated that they will be learning the Torah as they continue to attend Shabbat services, indicating (clearly!) that these neophyte believers in Yeshua were converting to a Torah-obedient lifestyle.

So, I don’t have any real mind-blowing revelation for you today, just a basic teaching in case anyone ever asks, “If Yeshua was the Messiah, why didn’t he teach about the Torah?”. Actually, what you will most likely hear is that Yeshua taught the Torah was not necessary, and that is why he didn’t mention it that much.

He didn’t mention where his teaching came from because he didn’t need to: he was talking to Jews, and they already knew the Torah. What they didn’t know was what Yeshua taught them, so that the Torah would be written on their hearts and not just on parchment.

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

In Matthew 7:15, Yeshua (Jesus) says, “Beware of the false prophets! They come to you wearing sheep’s clothing, but underneath they are hungry wolves!”

This warning is stated throughout the Bible, often by Shaul (Paul), mainly as a warning against false teachings. Yet, because so much of Christianity is based on Shaul’s letters and rejects most of God’s commandments, I sometimes wonder if Shaul was a sheep or a wolf?

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Shaul is a very confusing fellow: he is at once a Pharisee, boasting about his Jewish heritage and training, and he always taught in the synagogues before going to the Gentiles. On the other hand, he also said so many things that appear to be against the Torah, such as regarding food and circumcision (two often repeated issues), one has to wonder where his loyalties really lie.

For the most part, Christian holidays, tenets, canon and ceremonies do not come from the Torah, but are rebranded pagan holidays and man-made traditions. And, because so much of Christianity is based on what Shaul wrote in the letters to his congregations, which were having issues of faith and interpersonal relationship problems, I have come to wonder if the Gentiles were misled by Shaul to form a new religion that goes against God. Is it possible that one of the most world-shattering events in Christianity- Shaul’s revelation of Messiah Yeshua- was really Satan pretending to be Yeshua?

You know, that wouldn’t be something the Prince of Lies wouldn’t do. And, because at that time many of the paganist Gentiles were learning the proper worship of God, sending someone like Shaul to confuse and misdirect them would be a smart thing to do.

After all, look at how successfully his letters have been used to misdirect millions to reject God’s Torah!

Of course, this thought borders on blasphemy, doesn’t it? And the last thing I would ever want to do is insult the Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit), but we are told to be as wise as serpents, which (to me) means not to avoid questioning anything or anyone who does anything, in any way, to redirect us from obedience to God’s instructions in the Torah.

So, after thinking it over, and asking for guidance from above, I have come to the conclusion that Shaul was, indeed, called by Yeshua to bring the Good News of salvation through Yeshua to all peoples, Jews and Gentiles, alike. BUT…although Shaul was not a wolf, he made it possible for the wolves to easily infiltrate and control the congregations he formed.

And they didn’t start to redirect the sheep away from God’s instructions, which Shaul was trying to get them to learn (at a pace they could handle), until well after Shaul and most every other Jewish disciple and leader of what was (initially) a Jewish sect, was dead and gone.

By the end of the First Century, Jews accepting Yeshua as their Messiah was tapering off, and more and more Gentiles were coming into this sect, and some were wolves who decided that, for both political and (in my opinion) personal reasons, redirected the people into a more casual worship. This new religion they created rejected many of the rules and regulations God gave to us through Moses, and redefined salvation from accepting Yeshua as their Messiah and living a Torah-observant lifestyle to a new religion whose only requirements are to believe in Jesus and love each other.

They turned Yeshua’s teachings from a God-fearing Torah observant lifestyle into a “come-as-you-are” party.

Remember that Shaul told the Corinthians he would be whatever he had to be in order to get the Good News out to people (1 Corinthians 9:20). We see this in his Epistles, each one directed to a specific congregation, addressing their specific problems. This ended up with what was said to one congregation may have been stated differently to another, adding to the confusion his letters usually caused (see 2 Peter 3:16), creating the opportunity for his letters to be misused by the wolves in sheep’s clothing, hiding in his congregations and secretly working for Satan.

Shaul was not the wolf in sheep’s clothing, but in his zeal to get the Good News out to everyone and by “playing to his audience”, he wasn’t consistent. And that inconsistency left the gate open for the wolves to infiltrate and eventually lead his flock away from Yeshua and towards destruction.

Thank you for being here and please remember to subscribe and share.

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

Two of the traditional Christian tenets are that when one professes faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as the son of God, they become an adopted child of Abraham, and the other is that as Gentiles, they are not required to obey the Torah, which is only for Jews.

But if they are now adopted children of Abraham, and the “blood” children of Abraham have to obey the Torah, doesn’t that beg the question: “Do the adopted children get to have different rules in the same household?”

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In his letter to the Galatians, Shaul (Paul) said that when someone belongs to Messiah they are children of Abraham. The direct descendants of Abraham, who are Jews, are required to obey the Torah, so shouldn’t those adopted into our father’s family also have to obey the same rules we do?

Let’s take a hypothetical example: say you are a parent of three children, born to you and your spouse. You raise them to be God-fearing and self-sufficient, as any good parent should. You have rules on how they should treat people, rules for living as a family, and rules for worshiping as a family; these children represent the Jews who first came to accept Yeshua as the Messiah.

Next, you can’t have any more children but because you love kids, you adopt three more kids, all around the same age as your own. Do they get to live a different lifestyle? Do they get to worship differently from the rest of the family? Do they get to refuse the food served at dinnertime to eat what they want to eat? When the family enjoys a day of rest, do they get to change that to a different day? These adopted children would be the Gentiles that came to faith in Messiah sometime around the middle to the end of the First Century, after the main population of Jews who would accept Yeshua began to taper off, and the movement began to mutate to a new religion.

My answer to how these adopted children should be treated would be the same as what happened to these neophyte believing Gentiles making this paradigm shift from paganism to Judaism, which is what they were doing- at least, initially.

The way these newly adopted children should be treated within the family is to be given some leeway, as they were not raised the same way the natural children were. They need an opportunity to learn the rules, slowly, at a pace they can handle, and not be forced to do everything the natural born children have been doing because that would result in one day waking up, and finding the adopted children have run away.

So, you start them off with basic rules they can handle, such as make their bed each morning, help set the table, take out the garbage, and go to worship as a family. As they gain experience in the family, they will learn from watching their siblings all the other rules.

Does this sound like something from the Bible? Well, it is- you can find it in Acts Chapter 15, verses 19-23, when Ya’akov (James) suggested just giving the new Gentile believers a few rules to start with, so as not to place any obstacles in their way. He also says they will eventually learn the entire Torah because it is read at every Shabbat service, demonstrating that the Elders expected these Gentiles to be attending Shabbat worship services with their (now) adopted family, the Jews.

So, what do we have? This hypothetical is really more of an analogy to represent the truth of being an adopted child of Abraham- you are NOT free from the rules of the natural born children, but you are allowed to assimilate into the family at a pace you can handle.

The problem those early believing Gentiles had, which Shaul ran into throughout his ministry, was the legalistic pressure to be completely assimilated immediately into Judaism. His answer was the same that Ya’akov and the Elders agreed with, which is what we did with our hypothetical family- teach them slowly, step-by-step, so they can assimilate easily, and not be scared off.

Here’s what I mean by being scared off: you go to a Pagan worshipper, and explain how they can have eternal joy and blessings on earth by faithfully accepting that there is only one God, and Yeshua is the Messiah and his son.

“OK, that sounds good. What else do I have to do?”
“You must confess your sins and ask forgiveness through Yeshua’s sacrifice, then live a righteous life, giving up the hedonism that you have been doing.”
“Well, I guess for eternal joy I can do that. Anything else?”
“Uh, there is one other, little thing you have to do right away.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You have to let us cut off the top of your penis.”
(total silence)
“That’s it! So, whaddaya say?”
“Um, right, well… Oh gee! Look at the sundial- I didn’t realize it was this late, and I have an important appointment to go to. How about I get back to you later?”

You can see that an all-at-once conversion from paganism to Torah obedience would not work in many cases with the men, while it would probably be easier for the women to accept.

Here’s the point of today’s message: if you are adopted into a family, you are expected to follow the rules of that family; maybe not all at once, but eventually. However, what Christianity has done was to reject the father who adopted them and create a new family on their own. They ran away from the loving parents who adopted them (that would be God and Yeshua), and taught their new family to reject all that their adopted parents had been trying to teach them.

If you ask me, that’s no way to thank someone who accepted you into their family.

Thank you for being here and please remember to subscribe and share these messages.

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

If you go to almost any Bible, and turn to Acts Chapter 9, you will find a caption that says something to the effect of, “Paul converts on the road to Damascus.”

The problem with that caption is that it is a total lie!

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Christianity has based nearly every tenet and canon on misunderstanding and misusing the letters that Shaul (Paul’s real name) wrote, which were to congregations composed mostly of Gentiles who wanted to be part of this movement that promised eternal joy after they die if they simply accept that this Jewish guy named Yeshua is the son of that Jewish God, Adonai, and that when they do that they can be forgiven of their sins.

I would think one of the first obstacles Shaul had to face is that pagans don’t have sins because what they do is OK with their gods; after all, their gods did it, all the time! Once Shaul could get these Gentiles who wanted something better to listen to him, then he had a starting point.

Most Bibles will lead you to believe that these early Christians (even though that wasn’t a term of affection, at that time) were all Gentiles, the movement accepting Yeshua as the Messiah was initially only Jews. The thousands who were fed, the thousands who accepted him as Messiah at that first Shavuot (Pentecost) after his crucifixion were all Jews, who (for the record) never converted to anything but remained Jews living a Torah-observant lifestyle!

After all, he said he came only for the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:24), and the spreading of his “Good News” didn’t reach Gentiles until a while after he was raised into heaven.

The fact is that until after Yeshua was taken up into heaven, Gentiles were not a significant part of the movement of those Jews who accepted the Messiahship (is that a word?) of Yeshua.

Now, when Shaul was riding to Damascus to persecute the believing Jews, and he got knocked off his high horse (literally, as well as figuratively), he did not convert to a different religion. What happened is simply that he changed his belief regarding Yeshua as the Messiah. That was the only thing that changed, and despite how many people call him a Christian saint or use his letters as justification for ignoring the Torah, Shaul was a Torah-observant Pharisee his entire life and never taught against the Torah.

Prove it, you say? I don’t have to prove it because Shaul, himself, says so!

Let’s take a look at Acts 24:14, where Shaul was making a defense to the Roman governor when he was accused of desecrating the Temple and teaching against the Torah:

But this I do admit to you: I worship the God of our fathers in accordance with the Way (which they call a sect). I continue to believe everything that accords with the Torah and everything written in the Prophets. And I continue to have a hope in God – which they too accept – that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.

His admission that he worshipped God in accordance with the “Way” simply meant that he accepted Yeshua was the Messiah God promised to send- there was no church, there was no Christian canon, the New Covenant wasn’t even written yet, and the majority of followers of Yeshua were still Torah-observant Jews.

It wasn’t until near the end of Shaul’s missionary work, sometime around 65 AD, that the number of Gentiles now being called Christians outnumbered the remaining Jews accepting Yeshua as the Messiah.

By the end of the First Century, what started as a Jewish movement had mutated into a totally different religion.

If you ask me, and even if you don’t (because this is my ministry and I’ll say what I believe), the main reason that Christianity has become so completely different from its Judaic roots is because the Gentiles who became the leaders of the movement after all the original, Jewish apostles and shamashim (Hebrew for leaders) died off, decided that all this Jewish stuff would get them in trouble with Rome. You see, there were three rebellions by the Jews in Judea against Roman occupation and rule (the third and last was in 70-73 AD, when the second temple was destroyed), and if these previously “safe” Gentiles now associated with the Jewish population, they were afraid they would also get on Rome’s “Hit List”. So, they changed things around to separate themselves from the Jews, starting with changing the day of the Sabbath, eventually misinterpreting Shaul’s letters to indicate following the Torah was wrong.

Of course, the way Shaul wrote, misinterpreting his stuff was easy.

But, to get back on track, Shaul was a Torah-observant Jew all his life, never converting to anything, especially not what we know today as Christianity. He continually taught how to be Torah observant, but required this conversion from paganism to Judaism to take place only a few steps at a time (which the Elders in Jerusalem agreed with- read Acts 15:21).

His arguments against circumcision and other Jewish forms of worship were never meant to tell these neophyte believers to ignore the Torah, only that they must not succumb to the legalism being forced on them (legalism meaning to obey the Torah as a means of earning salvation). He really never had any issues with Gentiles getting circumcised, so long as the reason was to be faithful to the Torah, and not just to be “correct”.

There are many other places in the Epistles that Shaul wrote that justify the fact he never converted to any other religion, and never stopped being a Torah-observant Jew. The truth is that if Christians want to live and worship as Yeshua (Jesus) did, then they need to get familiar with what God said to do (in the Torah) regarding how to worship him and how to treat each other, because that’s really the way Yeshua lived.

Thank you for being here; don’t forget to subscribe and share these messages. That’s it for today, so… l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Okay, okay, I know…everyone calls Yeshua (Jesus) the Savior, but what does the “savior” do?

When we define a savior, Yeshua doesn’t completely fill the bill.

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A savior is someone who saves others, mostly used when describing keeping someone from danger or from losing their life.

In the case of Yeshua, he allegedly saves us from the second death, the condemnation to Sheol (hell) as the punishment for our sinful life. But I say we need a better understanding of “being saved” in a spiritual sense.

Let’s start by clearing this very important issue up, once and for all- God forgives sins, not Yeshua.

Yes, Yeshua was given authority to do that on the earth (Matthew 9:6), but once his role as the sacrificial lamb of God was completed, he was resurrected and is now sitting at the right hand of God, where he serves not as forgiver of sin but as our Intercessor with God.

Think about this: an Intercessor is someone who is intervenes on the behalf of someone else. As such, the intercessor has no power to do anything, other than act in a way to help the one he is interceding for. Since Yeshua is our intercessor (Hebrews 7:25), then he- by definition- is not the one who forgives our sins. Indeed, when we accept Yeshua as our Messiah, he will then stand between us and God, interceding on our behalf to allow us to enter into God’s presence.

When we accept Yeshua as the Messiah (not as God!), and ask forgiveness FROM GOD by means of the innocent blood Yeshua shed for us (in place of bringing an animal to the temple, which no longer existed after 73 AD), we can be forgiven of our sins.

First off, we need to understand that by having our sins forgiven we won’t go to Sheol when judged at Judgement Day; and that is what it means to be “saved”.

Got it, so far? Good- let’s continue…

Yeshua’s sacrifice created the shedding of innocent blood, and when we accept Yeshua as our Messiah, we can ask forgiveness of sin by means of that shed blood. You could say, in a way, that Yeshua saves us because he provided the means for our forgiveness, but in reality, he only provided the way to be saved.

Ultimately, it is God who forgives our sins, and THAT is what saves us.

I would also like to point out that Mashiach, the Hebrew word for Messiah, means “anointed one”. Yeshua (which means “salvation of God”) was anointed by God (at his baptism by Yochanan) to be the Messiah God promised to send. The role of the Messiah was to live a sinless life and die to provide the innocent blood necessary for the forgiveness of sin (Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 9:22). And, when we faithfully accept that Yeshua is the Messiah, we are able to call upon that blood when asking God to forgive us, which is the way we are saved.

So, it isn’t technically correct to call Yeshua the savior because he isn’t the one who forgives our sins, which is the way we are saved. Yeshua is the Messiah, God is our savior because not only did he provide the Messiah (the only way to be forgiven of sin after the temple was destroyed), but God is the ONLY one who forgives our sins, saving us from Sheol.

Look at it this way: a certain medicine can save your life from a disease, but is it the medicine that is the real savior, or the one who created the medicine? We may say “This medicine saved my life”, but it is that the one who created the medicine who is the real savior.

By the way, one little thing I would like to point out about the use of the word “savior”- it is a Christian term rebranding Jesus in order to further separate him from his Jewish role as the anointed one of God. Interpreting “Maschiach” as “Savior” has become standardized, but not because it is correct, only because for centuries that is what people have been told it means. Just another traditional Christian lie about who and what the real Messiah is.

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

Is anyone still there? I figured the title alone would get many, if not most, Christians to skip this.

I am a Jewish man who also believes that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, but despite what my Jewish brothers and sisters would say, and most Christians, as well, I am NOT a Christian!

I was raised in a reform Jewish household, and never really cared much for the traditions, especially when praying from a Siddur (prayer book) because I could never accept that if I was to pray to God that I had to use someone else’s words. When I was in my early 40’s, I came to realize the truth about Yeshua- not the Jesus I was raised to reject- and since then (which has been over a quarter of a century) I have read the entire Bible (Genesis through Revelation) many, many times.

Being raised Jewish, I have a unique view of the Gospels and the Epistles, since I was never indoctrinated to already “know” what they mean. I can read them with a totally fresh, unobstructed (by traditional teachings I was raised to believe) view, and as such see them in a way most Christians don’t, and sometimes refuse to.

When I was first seeking the truth about this guy Jesus, the one place most Christians told me to start with was the Gospel of John; now, after having read it so often, in different versions of the Bible, that is the one book I would tell new believers, especially Jews seeking the truth about their Messiah, to avoid at all costs!

Still with me? Good- now I will tell you why I reject John’s gospel.

But first, a little history: it is considered to have been written between 80-95 A.D., although some say it might have been earlier. Although traditional Christian teaching is that it was written by John the disciple and eyewitness to the life of Yeshua (Jesus), many scholars over the centuries have doubted this, and disagreed about who the real author is. The main reason for this is the significant difference between John’s gospel and the other three, as well as the difference in the writing style between John’s Gospel and Revelation, supposedly written by the same man.

Some of these differences are that nearly 90% of what occurs in John cannot be found in the other gospels, what the other gospels call “miracles” John describes as “signs”, and John is less concerned with Yeshua’s teachings and parables, concentrating instead on his relationship with God.

Now, let me tell you what I find to be so “wrong” with this gospel.

It fails the test for hermeneutics. That means that what Yeshua does and says in John is different from the other gospels. For example, in the other three he tells his disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah (Matthew 16:20) and prevents the exorcised demons from telling people who he is. Yet, in John, he openly and often claims to be the Messiah, such as when he talks to the woman at the well.

In the other three gospels, he refers to himself as the Son of Man, but in John he constantly refers to himself as the Son of God.

What really gets me is how he separates himself from the Jewish people and from the Torah!

How? By constantly referring to the people as “the Jews” or “the Judeans” and to the Torah as “their” Torah (or law, in many versions). If you are Jewish, as I am, when talking about other Jews, you would never call them “the Jews”- you’d refer to them as “the people”. And the Torah is never “their” Torah, it is “the” Torah, or “our” Torah. In John 8:7, 10:34, and 15:25, just as a few examples, Yeshua uses “The Jews” or “their Torah”, which indicates he considers himself separate from Jews and Torah.

Now let’s put these things in perspective.

The end of the First Century was a turning point for the new believers in Yeshua; there was constant battle between Rome and Jerusalem, and this contributed to the gentile believers thinking it wasn’t such a good idea to be associated with the Jewish population. My research shows that it was at the end of the First Century, right around the time this gospel was written, that the (now mostly) gentile leadership of this Jewish sect was changing things around to avoid the Roman authorities, because even though there was opposition (strong opposition) from the Jewish “power elite”, by the latter part of the First Century the Jews had their hands full fighting off Roman rule (The Jewish-Roman Wars lasted from 66 AD to 135 AD).

At that time, with most (if not all) of the original disciples dead or martyred, and most of the Jews who accepted Yeshua that we read about in the other three gospels also dead or dying, what was originally a Jewish movement to accept Yeshua as the Messiah was now being morphed into a totally new religion, which rejected the Jewish roots that it came from.

Around 98 A.D., the Sabbath was changed to Sunday by Ignatius of Antioch; also, there was less concern for learning the Torah as the gentile leaders of this new religion were interpreting Shaul’s (Paul) letters in a way that led them away from Torah, despite the fact that the Elders in Jerusalem expected these neophyte believers to be learning the Torah (Acts 15:19-21).

I believe that the Gospel of John was not written by a Jewish person! I believe it was written by a gentile believer in Jesus (no longer being called Yeshua) who wrote exclusively to the gentile believers to show them how Jesus considered himself separate from the Jewish population and from the Torah, in order to more easily assimilate them into the new religion this sect was becoming.

Also, John’s long-winded and convoluted speeches by Jesus about his relationship with God is nothing but confusing (when you see me you see him, but you don’t see him because you don’t see me, but I know him and if you knew me you would know him, but because you don’t accept me you don’t accept him, yadda, yadda, yadda….), and allows for the introduction of the Trinity.

In my opinion, John’s gospel is anything but “gospel”; rather, it is propaganda designed to help indoctrinate gentile believers into what was being formed as a new religion, and to keep Jews from wanting to join.

One sure way to keep more Jews from joining was the subtle intimation that Jesus is God, himself, which is (even today) a major turn-off to Jews, who believe that God is a singular and totally unique entity. And the way Shaul’s letters, which were trying to get these new gentile believers to become Torah observant a little at a time, were misinterpreted and twisted to be polemics against the Torah, when they were actually apologetics for the Torah.

Let’s put it all together…the Gospel of John was written right at the time the Jewish sect of believers in Yeshua was growing with many more gentiles than Jews, and those gentile leaders wanted to get away from the “Jewishness” of this movement to avoid trouble with Rome (which later proved not to be such a good idea.) Add to this the misuse of the Epistles written by Shaul, and we can see clearly that this gospel was designed to distance Jesus from the Jews, from the Torah, and remove any lingering semblance of Judaism from this emerging religion called Christianity.

If it was up to me, the New Covenant would have the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the books of Acts, James, and Hebrews, and Revelation. All the rest just misdirects people from who Yeshua really is, and what he really taught.

Anyone still here? If you are, then maybe I made some sense to some of you. I doubt many, if any, are in total agreement with me, but if even some of this made sense, then I hope you will continue to study and keep an open mind. I never tell anyone what to believe, only what I believe, and why I believe it, and if that leads someone to a new understanding or even just to question what they have been told, then I feel I have succeeded.

The truth will always stand up to questioning, and if after reading this you think you might question what you have already believed about John’s gospel, then please continue to question it. You never know what you may find out, and when you pray to God to lead your search for the truth, I know he won’t ever mislead you.

I know, I know… the Jews rejected Jesus, which is why only Christians are saved.

But did the Jews really reject him? And are the Christians really saved?

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

Let’s think about this for a minute: we read in Matthew 15:24 that Yeshua (Jesus) is telling the woman at the well that he has come only for the lost sheep of Israel, i.e., the Jews. We read in all 4 Gospels how there were five thousand fed and at another time, four thousand fed. But those weren’t Christians, they were Jews. Yeshua went to the Jews, and when you read in the Gospels about the thousands upon thousands of people who followed him, who listened to him, who were healed by him, guess what?

They were all JEWS!

Not one Gentile ever got saved by Yeshua- that all happened well after Pentecost, which (again) was where thousands of Jews were saved.

So, all this drek you have heard about how all the Jews rejected Jesus is just that- drek! (Yiddish for garbage)

But what about the Gentiles who accepted him as the Messiah and were being converted to a Jewish way of life, which is what they were undergoing! They were learning about how Yeshua lived and what he preached, which was only and totally from the Torah.

This is another misleading traditional Christian teaching: Gentiles who accepted Jesus didn’t need to follow the Torah, but only to follow Jesus. Well, that is just ridiculous considering that Jesus lived a Torah-perfect life. If he hadn’t, then he would not have been the sinless lamb of God, and as such, his sacrificial death could not be accepted. But…this topic is for a different lesson.

By the end of the First Century, less than 70 years after Yeshua’s death and resurrection, when most of the original Jewish followers had died out and this new movement within Judaism had grown full of Gentiles, things changed.

First, the Shabbat was changed- by the now Gentile leadership- to Sunday. Then, the initial four requirements for new Believers that had been suggested by James (Acts 15) were taught to be the only things Gentile Believers had to do, despite the fact that James said they would be learning the Laws of Moses as they attended Shabbat services (Acts 15:21).

Next, Kashrut (Kosher laws) were ignored, then the Holy Days commanded to be observed in Leviticus 23 were ignored, and this once-messianic Jewish movement had now been mutated into a new religion, with its own tenets, holidays, and ceremonies. In fact, some of these traditional activities, such as burying their dead under the altar, go directly against the Torah and end up contaminating the entire church!

And what about relics? Oy!

Touching a dead body rendered one ceremonially unclean- you had to wash yourself and your clothes and wait until after dark before you could enter the synagogue area. Yet, Catholicism encourages wearing a relic or having one in your house.

Yeshua lived according to the Torah; for example, he told those he healed to go to the Cohen and be confirmed as healed, according to what the Torah required. This is irrefutable evidence that Yeshua obeyed, and taught others to obey, the Torah!

But where are any Torah requirements, of which Yeshua obeyed and taught others to obey, being observed in Christianity today, other than the 10 Commandments?

The Holy Days are ignored, most of what God decreed to be sinful in Leviticus 11 is ignored, and the traditional observances (such as Hanukkah) are also ignored; and, worse than that, God’s commanded Holy Days have been replaced with man-made holidays that are little more than rebranded pagan rituals.

And speaking of the 10 Commandments, Christians have changed most of the first commandment by removing what God said about how he saved us from slavery and splitting the second commandment into both the first and second. Don’t believe me? Well, check out what Google tells you is the first commandment and then see what God gave to Moses in Exodus 20.

So, reading the Gospels we see that thousands upon thousands of Jews accepted Yeshua, and it was only the “Power Elite” in Jerusalem that wanted him out of the way because he threatened their power and position. But Christianity today has become a totally different religion and way of life from the way Yeshua lived, worshipped, and taught others to do!

The only conclusion is that Christians have rejected Yeshua completely, and replaced him with their own, man-made Savior (they don’t even call him a Messiah anymore) called Jesus Christ, who not only rejected what his father told people to do, but has killed his father’s chosen people over the past two Millennia for not rejecting what God said we should do and converting to this man-made religion.

So, if you consider yourself a God-fearing man or woman, but you have followed Christian teachings all your life, I suggest you stop listening to what they tell you and pay attention to what God says.

I warn you, although I won’t speak for God, I am pretty sure when you meet him (as we all will) at Judgement Day, he will not like it when you say you did as men told you to do, even though God told you what he wanted you to do.

Thank you for being here, and please remember to subscribe and share these messages. That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Before we can determine if Christianity is wrong, we should identify what the words “Christianity” and “wrong” represent.

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

I looked at a few definitions of Christianity on the Internet, and this one seems to be the most relevant and most often used:
Christianity is a religion based on the life, teachings, and death of Jesus Christ, who is believed to be the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

As for the word, “wrong”, again going to the Internet I found this definition on the Mirriam-Webster site:

The state of being mistaken or incorrect or not according to truth or facts. 

Now that we have identified what these terms mean, let’s state that, for the purpose of our discussion, Christianity is the religion based on the teachings and life of Christ, who we will call Yeshua (since that is his real name), and being wrong means not being in accordance or agreement with the facts.

So, let’s take a look at what Yeshua taught, since that is what Christianity is supposed to be based on.

The best place to get a good idea of what Yeshua taught is found in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). He taught the people from the Torah but didn’t teach how the Pharisees had been teaching; rather, he taught us the Remes of the laws God gave through Moses.

In Judaism, we use an exegesis tool, called PaRDeS, to properly interpret and understand God’s word. The P stands for P’shat, or plain language meaning, such as “Thou shalt not kill”. The R stands for Remes, which is a deeper, more spiritual understanding of the P’shat, such as if we so much as hate in our heart, we have killed. The D stands for Drash, which is a story with a moral ending, such as the many parables Yeshua gave, and the S stands for Sud, which is a sort of deep, mystical understanding of the word.

Yeshua often used a drash (parable) to teach the Remes of the laws God gave us in the Torah. He never taught to ignore any of his father’s commandments; in fact, in Matthew 22: 37-40, Yeshua stated that to love God and to love each other are the two most important commandments, and then he added that all the law and what the prophets taught are based on those two commandments. He never said these were the ONLY laws: just that they were the ones that all the rest were based on, indicating clearly that all the laws in the Torah are important and necessary, and these two were the foundation for the rest. He also stated in Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to change anything, specifically stating that not even a stroke from the Torah will be changed until all things have come to pass, meaning (obviously) not his death, but the Acharit HaYamim (End Days), also known as Judgement Day.

Yeshua never taught anything other than what his father said to do in the Torah.

But what does Christianity teach? One lesson from Christianity is that they are not under the Laws of Moses (which are really God’s laws, not Moses’) but they are only under the Law of Christ. Well, as we see, the “law of Christ” is the law of Moses, so that teaching is not in accordance with the facts; as such, based on the definition of “wrong”, Christianity is wrong.

This isn’t the only wrong, anti-Torah teaching or practice of Christianity. They bury their dead under the altar or on the church property, which (according to God) makes their church unclean and thereby unacceptable as a place to commune with him; they have rejected the Holy Days God said to celebrate, instead making up their own; instead of loving their neighbors, they have practiced torturing and/or killing Jews by the millions over the past two millennia to force them to reject the way God said to live, and there are many other Christian practices and teachings that go totally against what God said he wanted us to do.

And, as we’ve shown above, the things that Christianity has rejected are the very same things Yeshua taught.

I am sorry to be so straight-forward about this, but when we look at how God said he wants us to worship him and treat each other, what Holy Days he demands we observe, his rules on what is clean and unclean (not just physically, like food, but within interpersonal relationships, as well), and that Yeshua taught us the deeper, spiritual meaning of these laws while telling us he was not here to change any of them, the only conclusion any fair-minded and informed person can come to is that Christianity is wrong.

God has no religion: not Judaism, not Catholicism, not Episcopalian, Protestant, Baptist, etc., etc., etc. But, if we go by what God said he wants us to do, we have to conclude that Judaism is the closest to what God wants, even though Judaism isn’t exactly correct, either, what with so many different sects within it, and the different rules and requirements that are not in the Torah called Halacha.

The only “right” religion is no religion, and the only “right” way to worship God and treat each other is the way that God said, which he outlined clearly for all people in those first 5 books.

The truth is the only place in the entire Bible where God, himself, tells us how to live and worship is in those first 5 books: everything after Deuteronomy is just commentary. And, as far as the New Covenant is concerned, the only useable parts of that are the Gospels (but not John’s Gospel), Acts, and Revelation. Nearly two-thirds of the New Covenant are the Epistles, and they are not scripture (but they do quote from scripture), and they are not God-ordained or God-breathed (there is nothing in any of them that says “God told me to say…”), but in truth, they are nothing more than managerial directives to the (mostly) Gentile, neophyte believers throughout the Middle East and Asia who were losing their faith and being misdirected from the path of salvation.

Christianity is a man-made religion based on man-made rules and, for the most part, rejects almost everything God said to do; it couldn’t be more wrong.

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