Sadly, most Christian religions (and there are certainly enough of them!) have taught their followers that the Torah is just for Jews, and that it is made up of laws and requirements that they, as followers of Jesus, don’t have to obey.

They seem to totally ignore the fact that Jesus followed the Torah, and that the Torah is so much more than just laws and commandments.

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The Torah contains history, wisdom, social mores, a code of justice and a penal system, it contains programs for ensuring the health of the community, and yes- commandments and laws that are not man-made, as with almost every Christian canon, but instead come directly from God.

And, sorry to burst bubbles, but they aren’t just for Jews, they are for everyone.

If a Christian wants to truly follow in the footsteps of Yeshua (that’s Jesus’ REAL name), doing what he did the way he did it, then they have no option but to follow what is written in the Torah because that is how he worshipped, how he lived, the festivals and Holy Days he celebrated, and what he taught all those who accepted him as their Messiah to do, as well.

In Genesis 28:14, God tells Abraham that the whole world will be blessed by his descendants, then later (in Exodus 19:6) God tells Moses that he has chosen the children of Israel (i.e., Abraham’s descendants, the Jewish people) to be God’s kingdom of priests, and as such, they are to learn the Torah and then bring it to the rest of the world. The final part of God’s plan was to have Yeshua, the Messiah, come from God’s kingdom of priests, and teach the deeper, spiritual meaning of the Torah to all people, Jew and Gentile, making it possible for all to be saved (by obedience to God’s true word) through Yeshua’s sacrifice, which replaced the need to bring an animal sacrifice to the temple.

In short, God chose Abraham to be the father of a nation of Torah-observant priests, who will bring God’s true word (meaning not a man-made religion), given through Moses to the Jews first, then to the Gentiles (ooh- does that sound familiar?) through his Messiah, Yeshua, who’s sacrificial death made receiving forgiveness possible after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

The Torah has God’s instructions for how we all are to worship him, and how we all are to treat each other, and anyone who says that this map to righteousness is not for everyone is leading people down the path to destruction.

If your religion tells you that following the Messiah’s teachings means that what God says to do doesn’t relate to you, well, I guess their Messiah must be a different one from the one God sent. I mean, really? Would a Messiah sent by God tell people to reject God?

Think about that.

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

I know, I know- you have always been told that Yeshua (Jesus) is your Savior, and if you call on his name, you will be saved, your sins will be forgiven, you will be cleansed, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Well, it takes a lot more than that.

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Did you ever think that every demon in hell knows Yeshua? In fact, they have seen him, but do you think that they are saved? I don’t.

This is a very short and simple, but maybe hard to hear word, that I want to share with you-

Yeshua ain’t enough!

God will not forgive an unrepentant sinner, and I do not believe that Yeshua will intercede for someone who continually sins and expects that they will be automatically forgiven just because they believe (and they really do!) that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send.

You may disagree, especially if you are one of those who have been misled into accepting that lie from the pit of Sheol that is known as OSAS (Once Saved, Always Saved).

But the truth is, as seen throughout the Tanach, just going through the motions without repentance is useless.

In the New Covenant, the writer of Hebrews tells us (Hebrews 10:26-30):

For if we deliberately continue to sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but only the terrifying prospect of Judgment, of raging fire that will consume the enemies. Someone who disregards the Torah of Moshe is put to death without mercy on the word of two or three witnesses. Think how much worse will be the punishment deserved by someone who has trampled underfoot the Son of God; who has treated as something common the blood of the covenant which made him holy; and who has insulted the Spirit, giver of God’s grace.

Here’s the thing: God is not stupid. He knows your heart, he knows what you are thinking, and if you say you are sorry, but you really aren’t, he will know. And he will not forgive you if you really aren’t sorry that you sinned.

And you know what? You’ll probably piss off Yeshua, as well, because after all he went through just so that you are able to ask God to forgive your sins, here you are without any real feelings of remorse or repentance.

So, when it comes down to it, accepting that Yeshua is your Messiah is not as important as being honestly, heartfully, and genuinely repentant for having committed a sin.

Oh, don’t get me wrong- you definitely need to accept Yeshua as your Messiah because without him, your chances of being cleansed of your sin haven’t got much of a chance.

That doesn’t mean you are out of the race, no- I believe (and you can disagree) that God can do whatever he wants to, and if someone doesn’t really think Yeshua is the Messiah, but they try to live in accordance with God’s Torah as best they can (which is the most any of us are capable of doing), and they know they sinned, and they are truly repentant, and they sincerely ask God to forgive them, well, I think he just might. Even without Yeshua, even without the temple, even without a sacrifice.

Why would he do that? Because I believe, reading in the Tanakh how God describes himself, that he is our loving, compassionate, merciful, and understanding Savior, and if he feels that someone is genuinely sorry for sinning, and he feels that person deserves to be forgiven, then I believe- temple sacrifice or not, Yeshua’s sacrifice or not, that God will forgive them!

I could be wrong, and so I always suggest it is best to accept Yeshua as your Messiah, and to be truly repentant when you screw up, and to honestly confess it, and ask forgiveness of God, each and every time. I ask forgiveness every morning, even if I don’t think I did anything wrong, because I know myself, and that means that I probably did do something wrong.

And you probably did something wrong, also.

Okay, that’s it for today, so have a blessed day, l’hitraot, and Baruch HaShem!

For those of you who are wondering, “What the heck is a LIFO?”, it is an accounting system for calculating the cost of goods being sold to determine the profit margin. Last In, First Out (LIFO) means that you calculate your profit based on how much it cost to produce the most recently manufactured products.

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IMPORTANT: My website was destroyed by a hacker a while ago and I lost my subscriber list, so even if you have subscribed in the past, please do so again.

We all know that God keeps a record of our lives, what we did that was righteous, and what did that was not so righteous. And when we come before him at Judgement Day, he reviews all of our activities. Normally, this should scare the bejeezus out of everyone, but those of us who have accepted Yeshua as our Messiah, and tried to live our lives as he did (which, for the record, is not a “Christian’ life, but a Jewish one) have him there as our advocate, and before we stand in front of the Lord, his blood will be sprinkled on us and cleanse us of all sin.

Or something like that.

But another thing that we have going for us is that when God calculates our sins vs. our mitzvot (in this usage, meaning good works), he counts the most recent activities first.

How do I know this? Because he said this is what he does, and told us about it through the prophet Ezekiel.

Just look at Ezekiel 18: the entire chapter is devoted to God explaining that he will no longer make parents suffer for their children’s sins, or children suffer for their parent’s sins. But more than that, he says that no matter how sinful someone had been in the past, if they do t’shuvah (turn from sin) then their sins will be forgotten, and their righteous acts will be how they are judged. And, if the opposite happens, where a righteous person begins to sin, his righteous acts will be ignored, and he will be judged on what he has been doing recently.

So, you see, God uses LIFO- no matter how sinful you have been, if you accept Yeshua as your Messiah, confess your sins and ask forgiveness by means of Yeshua’s blood, then you will be cleansed, and so long as from that point forward, you live as obedient (as you can) to the way God said to live in the Torah (and not what some man-made religion tells you), then all that you had done before will be as far from you as the East is from the West.

That’s all there is to it: your sins are not to be inherited by your children, neither will their acts of Tzedakah (charity) be credited to you: you will be judged solely on your own life, and so will everyone else.

Thank you, again, for being here and please remember to re-subscribe, and share these messages. That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and an early, Shabbat Shalom!

Before the Messiah was sent to us, we were given the Torah to identify what sin was, and we had the sacrificial system and the temple in Jerusalem to provide us the means for being forgiven when we did sin.

But after the temple was destroyed, things changed.

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The Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, was always available to us; God gave it when needed, such as with Samson when he needed strength, and Elijah after he defeated the prophets of Ba’al (1 Kings 18), and it came upon King Shaul a few times, as well as many other times with many other people. But that gift of the spirit was a temporary loan- it fell on them, then was retrieved. Except maybe for Moses, no one had an indwelling spirit.

Then God sent Yeshua, the Messiah: after he did his thing, he sent the Ruach to his disciples, but this time it was indwelling- they got it, and they kept it. Even better, they were able to baptize (in Hebrew it is called a Tevilah) people in the name of Yeshua and have others also receive the indwelling Ruach.

Now we had a permanent counselor, sort of like Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket, to help us stay on the path of righteousness.

Of course, being humans, we often ignore that small, still voce in the back of our head because we not only have a spirit of righteousness, but our own spirit of sinfulness, called iniquity, which is (sadly) part of our DNA (in Judaism, we call iniquity the Yetzer Hara, and the righteous spirit the Yetzer Tov).

You know what I mean- that little imp in the red suit with the pitchfork on one shoulder, arguing with the little angel on the other shoulder.

After the temple was destroyed, there was no way for us to receive forgiveness of sin, according to the Torah, because God told us a sacrifice is only acceptable if we do it where he places his name (Deuteronomy 12:5-6), which was the temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 9:3).

So, nu? Now what can we do to be forgiven?

This is where Yeshua comes in: when we faithfully accept him as the Messiah God promised to send and believe in his resurrection as proof that his sacrifice was acceptable to God as a sin sacrifice, then we can ask forgiveness by means of Yeshua’s blood being spilt on our behalf. We don’t need to sacrifice an animal at the temple, or even be in Israel!

And more than that, when we accept Yeshua as our Messiah, we can then ask for, and be given, the Ruach HaKodesh, which will guide us in many ways: it will advise us when sin rises in our heart, it will give us supernatural understanding of God’s word, and it will convict us when we stray off the path of righteousness.

Before Yeshua we had the Torah, and – for the record- we STILL have the Torah to identify sin from righteousness, and we STILL are subject to obedience to the Torah, which are the instructions we have directly from God telling us how to worship him and how to treat each other, but now we also have the Ruach HaKodesh to guide us from committing sin, and Yeshua to provide the means of forgiveness for when we fail to listen to the Ruach.

Which, if we are honest with ourselves, is more often than I think any of us would like to admit.

If you ask me, I think it is better to have Yeshua and the Ruach than it was to have animal sacrifice at the temple, if for no other reason, I don’t have to buy round-trip tickets to Israel every time I screw up.

I would be bankrupt within a week.

Thank you, again, for being here and until next time, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

God told us how to worship him, which Holy Days he wants us to observe, and how to treat each other. he did all that right at the very beginning of the bible, in those first 5 books, called the Torah.

So why is it that the vast majority of Christians ignore most of those instructions, yet say they worship God and love him?

When you love someone, do you ignore them?

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Today’s message is really very simple: do you observe what God said to do, or do you follow what your man-made religion tells you to do?

“I follow Christ!”

Yeah, OK… how did he worship God? I’ll tell you how- by following the commandments God gave in the Torah. And if you wish to dispute that, then explain how, since the Torah was the only scripture at that time, if Yeshua disobeyed the Torah, which is a sin, he was able to be a sinless sacrifice?

Maybe you’d like to get back to me on that?

The simple truth is that religions, all religions (yes, that includes current-day Judaism, too) are way too influenced by man-made traditions, ceremonies, holidays, and tenets.

Moses tells us, in Deuteronomy 30:11, that the law is not too hard to follow. God tells us not to add to or take away from anything he tells us (Deuteronomy 4:2), yet we have additional holidays (holiday meaning man-made, whereas Holy Days are the ones God commanded us to observe) and ceremonies that have been added to the list God gave us. Now, that doesn’t mean these are sinful; so long as we don’t remove what God said to do (such as Christians ignoring Leviticus Chapters 11 and 23) or add to it, such as Halacha (rabbinical requirements adding to what God said to do with regard to fulfilling Torah law) in Judaism.

So, what do you think is best, really? Doing what your religious leader says you should do or doing what God says you should do?

I will leave you with this, something I say often: We will all meet God, so when you do and he asks why you worshipped the way you did, you might say something like…

“But Lord, I was only doing what they told me I am supposed to do!”

And although I won’t even try to speak for God, I think he may say something to the effect of…

“I know, my child, you only did what they told you to do, but it’s what I say that counts.”

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

Throughout the Bible we see how God uses people to perform his punishments on the sinful. Since God is unchanging, doesn’t it seem reasonable to consider that his methods would also be unchanging?

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God definitely did some supernatural things to Egypt to teach the Pharaoh that God is THE God, but he also used Moses to organize and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt and through the desert.

God used the prophets to bring the people back into proper worship and righteous living, although most of the time that didn’t work. One exception could be in 1 Kings 18, when fire fell from heaven on Elijah’s sacrifice on Mount Carmel in Shomron. That got people’s attention, but it didn’t last for long.

God used the Philistines, the Amorites, and other semitic kingdoms to punish the Israelites when they turned from God and sinned, and he used judges to encourage and lead the people to rebel against these kingdoms when they repented.

God used King Sennacherib of Assyria to punish the Northern Kingdom of Israel for all its sins.

God used Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to punish the kingdom of Judah for all its sins.

So, considering that God has used his creation to enforce his will and punish those others of his creation, when the End Days come, why not use mankind to punish mankind?

The Book of Revelation is rife with metaphor, and I know many people will believe that what we read in there is to be taken literally, but I don’t believe that. I truly believe that the destruction mentioned will be what happens- during a nuclear war, couldn’t we expect that 1/3 of the earth would be burnt, 1/3 of all living in the rivers and streams dying, the sun turning black (from the millions of tons of earth being thrown into the sky) and the stars falling from the sky (radioactive fallout)?

I wrote a poem when I was in high school and (fortunately for you I don’t remember it well enough to recite it now) the point of it was that God makes the world turn every day, he destroyed it once and promised not to do that again, but God still makes the world turn every day, and now he will let man destroy it in his own way.

Of course, there is nothing stopping God from having all those angels pour out his fury on the world in a majestic and supernatural way, as he did with Sodom and Gomorrah. And I may be way off thinking the End Days (in Hebrew, we call that the Acharit haYamim) won’t be supernaturally performed in order to demonstrate, undeniably, that there is a God and that this is all His doing. Really, that would be something to make people stand up and take notice.

Revelation tells us that despite all these horrors, people will still curse God’s name and fail to repent, which also makes me think that God will use people. Why? Because it is all about faith: if every one of these terrific destructive forces can be explained, then only the faithful will realize it is God doing it. Those without faith will fail to repent and continue to reject God’s existence and influence, which is tantamount to cursing his name.

God is very binomial: either you is or you ain’t, and if you do not accept God’s way of living, then you reject him, which is pretty much the same as cursing him.

I suppose we will have to wait until the Day of Judgement to see if it is God doing things supernaturally, or using people to do his handiwork. I don’t know about you, but as for me, I am more than happy for this question to remain unanswered during my lifetime.

That’s it for today, so thank you, again, for being here, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

There are two very important messages in the Megillah of Esther; one has to do with the fact that even if Esther didn’t ask the king for protection, it would come from some other source (this implies God’s protection, but did you know that this is the only book in the entire Bible where there is no mention of God, at all?), and the second was that Esther was where she was for such a time as this.

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Now, I am not implying that we are all beautiful, or raised by our uncle, or Jewish. Although Esther was all of those things, the most important thing that she was, if we go by Mordecai’s statement, was to be where she was, when she was.

I believe that we are all here for a reason, and that God has some plan for each of us; Shaul (Paul) taught this lesson, in a way, when he wrote to the Roman believers (Romans 9:19) and explained that God, like a potter, can make some vessels for holy use and others for common use.

In either case, isn’t it true that God is using us for some purpose he has in mind?

I am sure God’s purpose for me is to run this ministry. All the things that have happened to me, or haven’t happened to me, all the good and (certainly) all of the bad, have led me down a path that has placed me where I am now. Not so much where I am living, or in this marriage (for which I thank God every day), but where I am, spiritually.

So, nu? Have you thought about what is God’s purpose for you? It is very likely that you haven’t come to it yet, or that you are doing it, right now! I also believe that when wonderful people die too young, it is because they have done what God put them here to do, and so he is taking them to their reward.

You know, now that I think about it, that is a scary thought- what if I have done all God wanted me to do? Does that mean I am going to die soon? Hmmm… maybe another message for another time?

In any event, if you aren’t sure what God wants you to do, what purpose he has for creating you, don’t lose any sleep over it, even if you are an old person, like me. Remember that God didn’t use Moses until he was 80 years old.

My recommendation, with which I will end today’s message, is that if you aren’t sure why God put you here, then do as God has said he wants us all to do, which he spelled out in the Torah. I say this because I truly and faithfully believe that when you live your life to please God by doing as he has said to do, then his purpose for your life will become clear to you.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot, an early Shabbat Shalom, and Hag Sameach (happy holiday because Purim starts right after Shabbat)!