Tag: christianity

Do You Believe, or Do You Just Agree?

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What kind of a question is that? I think one that we need to think about.

I know many people who say they are a “Believer” but they make up their own rules, and they are more like a “Buffet Believer” than a Believer that obeys the Lord. I also know many people, all raised within one of the Christian religions, who say they believe in God and Jesus, and pass it off with as much enthusiasm as when they say they believe the Mets will win the pennant this year.

These people have been brought up being told that Jesus died for their sins, that they are going to heaven so long as they are “good” people (where ‘good’ is what the world says ‘good’ is), and although they all believe in Jesus they are anything but what we who have been “born again” would consider a Believer.

Even the demons believe in Jesus / Yeshua; in fact, they are the most stringent and trusting believers because they have met Him, they have seen His Father, they know His power and that’s why they shake from fear at the very mention of His name. I think the demons have a better chance of getting to Heaven than the vast majority of people I know who say they believe in Jesus.

This is because of the wrongful teachings that have been handed down over the centuries. Too many humans telling other humans what God wants us to do, what is the right way to worship, creating traditions that only enforce their power over others instead of truly bringing glory to God.

Here’s a list from Wikipedia of the different forms of Christian worship (I am presenting it as an example, not as a definite and complete listing):

Catholic Church

The Latin Church

Eastern Catholic Churches

Other churches and movements

Independent (self-identified as Catholic)

Eastern Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodox Church

Oriental Orthodoxy

Church of the East

Medieval sects

Protestantism

Proto-Protestant Groups

Lutheranism

Anglicanism

Anglican Communion

Other Anglican Churches

Calvinism

Continental Reformed churches

Presbyterianism

Congregationalist Churches

Anabaptists and Schwarzenau Brethren

Plymouth Brethren and Free Evangelical Churches

Methodists

Pietists and Holiness Churches

Baptists

Spiritual Baptists

Apostolic Churches – Irvingites

Pentecostalism

Charismatics

Neo-Charismatic Churches

African Initiated Churches

Messianic Judaism \ Jewish Christians (Ed: really should be under Judaism) 

United and uniting churches

Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement

Southcottites

Millerites and comparable groups

Adventist (Sunday observing)

Adventist (Seventh Day Sabbath/Saturday observing)

Church of God movements (Sunday observing)

Church of God movements (Seventh Day Sabbath/Saturday observing)

Sabbath-Keeping Movements, Separated from Adventists

Sacred Name groups

Movements not related to the Millerites but comparable to them

Sabbath-Keeping movements, predating the Millerites

Latter Day Saints

Oneness Pentecostalism

Unitarianism and Universalism

Bible Student groups

Swedenborgianism

Christian Science

Other non-Trinitarians

New Thought

Esoteric Christianity

Racialist groups

Syncretistic religions incorporating elements of Christianity

Christian Movements

Internet Churches

LGBT-affirming Christian denominations

Interdenominational (ecumenical) churches and organizations

What’s with that? There is one God, and He gave us the Torah with the Mitzvot, Hukkim and Mishpatim (Laws, ordinances and regulations) and He said to obey these throughout all our generations. If these are the instructions directly from God, then how is it possible to have so many different groups of people worshipping the Lord in all these different ways?  Was God that confusing when He outlined the laws?

Moses said that to obey the Lord isn’t that hard: he said the laws aren’t so far from us that we need to send someone to get them or so high we couldn’t reach them. He also was adamant not to add to or take away from any of these laws, yet how can we have so many different means and ways of worshipping God, all with their own sets of “laws” if we never strayed from God’s Torah as He gave it to us?

Even the Jewish people, the ones that were given the Law and are the protectors and guardians of Torah, have 6 different sects that worship differently.

How can we know the difference between those that agree and those that truly believe? I guess the same way we know who to trust and who not to trust- by their fruit, by their ethics, by the way they live. People don’t mean what they say, they mean what they do, so are you a “believer” or just someone who repeats what you have been told, accepting things blindly because they are easy to live with?

Yakov (James) told us to be doers of the law and not just hearers of it. Decide if you really believe in Yeshua/Jesus; decide to accept the responsibility of knowing that He died so you can have a chance at salvation. The truth, Brothers and Sisters, is that you can’t make it on your own, and just because someone with a theological degree tells you the Spirit of God is in you and you are saved by the blood (after being able to answer three questions correctly) doesn’t mean you are a believer, or saved.

You need to decide that you are going to believe; you need to live your life showing that you are a believer by being a doer of the Word; you need to take possession of your salvation. You need to ask God for forgiveness: you, and only you because no one else can do it for you! If you just agree with what your Priest or Pastor or Rabbi, for that matter, has told you about salvation without deciding for yourself based on your own relationship with God, then you are a blind person being led by another blind person.

If you have decided to believe, halleluya! If you just agree, please please please get on the ball and make up your own mind!

Get real people- we’re talking about Eternity here!

Beware of Advice: Part 2

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Yesterday we talked about how just because something seems to be alright or feels “right”, that doesn’t make it right.

We need to know what God tells us is right, and what God tells us is wrong. I do believe that “going with your gut feeling” is often the right thing to do, but only when our “guts” are in the right frame of mind.

What I mean is this: if I was someone who had a moral foundation, a conscience, and a sense of right from wrong according to normal societal mores and biblical beliefs, then my “gut” would be trustworthy. On the other hand, if I was immoral, hedonistic, and did not know or care what happened to others, my “gut” should be the last thing I listen to.

The problem, as you most likely already know, is that the people with the least trustworthy guts are the ones that believe their guts are fine. Too often we have the inmates running the asylum instead of the other way around.

There will come a time in everyone’s death (not during their lifetime, only after) when they will be in THE court- God’s courtroom. God will be sitting on His Throne of Judgement, and on one side will be the prosecution (HaSatan, the Devil, himself) and the other side will be the Defence Attorney. Satan, which means the Accuser, all throughout your life has been trying to tell you that God is a liar; he accuses God of not telling you the truth. He started that way in Eden, telling Eve that she wouldn’t die if she ate the apple (effectively saying God lied to her, right?) Now, when you need him most, he will accuse you– he will accuse you of failing to do as God commanded. And if you say that he was the one who told you to “go with your feelings”, that “if it feels good, do it”, or that you don’t need to obey the Torah because the law was done away with when Yeshua was resurrected, God will say something like, “I understand, but what he told you is not what I told you, and what I say counts!” At that  point you’re only chance to escape damnation is the argument from your defence attorney.

But wait! Where’s the defence attorney? In the courts that men run, a defence attorney is appointed to you if you don’t have one of your own, but God’s court is not like man’s court- if you don’t have a defence attorney, you are defending yourself. And if you have to defend yourself against God’s Torah, and His judgement of how well you have obeyed Torah….OY! You’re in hot water now, Baby!

However, if you have accepted Yeshua as your Messiah and asked Him to be your Saviour, you have the best defence lawyer there is, ever has been, or ever will. He makes Darrow look like a dork, Dershkowitz look like a dweeb,  and Webster look like a wimp.  Yeshua has only one argument for the defence, and it is all He needs. He says, “Father, this one is mine.”

Not guilty by means of the sacrifice; case closed (gavel slams and shofar blows); who’s next on the docket?

Here is good advice you can trust: Yeshua really is the Messiah God promised all those many, many years ago. I know if you are Jewish this is a hard word to accept, but please take it from me, a Jew who didn’t even care for most of my life, it is the truth. We have been told a lie since we were born, by people we trusted, who were told the same lie by people they trusted since they were born, back and back and back, all the way to somewhere around 100 CE. That’s my guess when the “Christian” religions started being developed by men, and Judaism and Christianity began to separate.

It went from: Jews who accepted Yeshua as Messiah and Jews who didn’t, the rest being Gentiles who were pagans;

to: Jews, Jews and Gentiles who believed in Jesus but were being separated from Torah by religion, and the Gentiles who were still pagans.

And the enemy has been trying to widen that gap ever since. He has been very successful at keeping both Gentiles and Jews from the truth, which makes his “kingdom” grow, meaning that there are more and more people being led away from God, and thereby, worshipping what the enemy stands for instead of what God stands for.

That’s how this works: there is no “middle ground”, there are no minor sins and major sins, there is only God’s way or the hell-way. The enemy doesn’t have to make you worship him, he only has to make you disobey God. It isn’t a choice to be bad, it’s only the choice not to do as God says. You can be a “good person” as far as the World is concerned: a loving parent, a faithful friend, go to worship every weekend, and even tithe. In fact, you can believe in Jesus, too! All of this won’t save you if you disobey God and ignore His commandments.

It takes more than just saying you believe. You need to want to do as God says, you need to provide good fruit, and you really, really need to read the Bible (the whole Bible) and accept that what God said is the way to be is as valid now as it always has been.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, any individual human being can do to save him or her self from the sin we are born into, and from our sinful nature. On our own we have no defence before the Lord. But when we have Yeshua as our defence attorney, it is His actions that save us. But we need to have him in our corner, and the way to do that is to accept His messianic calling as true, to accept we are sinners who can’t stop and ask forgiveness in Yeshua’s name (because we have no righteousness on our own), and to do T’Shuvah (to turn) from our sinfulness and live our lives as best we can doing what God said we should do.

And I mean what God said we should do, not what the Rabbi, Priest or Pastor tells you. Not what your “whatever” guru says, not what Cosmo recommends and certainly not what any other, non-Believing person tells you is alright to do.

You need to read the Bible and believe that God is in charge, Yeshua will stand for you if you stand for Him, and the enemy will do whatever he can to get you to ignore God’s commandments.

When I used to sell siding and window replacements, off telemarketed leads, often I was stopped at the front door and told that no matter what I said that person was not buying anything from me, so if I was going to try to sell him something (it was always the man who said this) I might as well leave right now. My answer was to ask him a question: “When you buy something, do you do it with no information at all about the product or do you want to know what you are buying?” The answer was, as I designed the question to elicit, always that they bought something they knew about. That was my lead to then say, “Of course you do- that’s the sensible way to buy. So, you do whatever you want to do- it’s not my decision and I won’t tell you how to spend your money. All I ask is that you let me give you the information you need to make a wise buying decision when you are ready. Is that OK?”

More often than not, the more obstinate someone was about not buying that day, the more likely I was going to make a sale.

The enemy is a better salesman than I ever was. I sold windows, I sold siding, I sold insurance, I sold estate planning, I sold advertising…all the things I sold were good products that helped people. The enemy sells pleasure, he sells ease, he sells hedonistic rewards and he sells sin, which is what we are made up of. What he sells looks like fun, it seems to be okay to have, it feels good, tastes good, and we want it. But what he is really selling is death and damnation.

God doesn’t sell anything- He is giving it away. But it costs you- you need to separate yourself from the world, you need to obey, you need to let go of friendships and family, you need to be alone in many ways from those you know and work with. The free gift of salvation is very costly in human terms; whereas the enemy sells you something that looks good but kills you, God gives you something that is hard to accept and costly in human terms, but will result in everlasting joy.

Tough call; yes, it is. It goes against our nature, but it is essential for us to make that choice. That’s why you need to know about what you are buying.

There is death for sale and salvation for the taking: learn about each so you can choose well.

Teaching is a Double-Edged Sword

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I believe, and have had it confirmed by others, that God has given me a gift for teaching. My mother was a teacher, so I learned some of how it’s done while still in the womb. Her sister was also in teaching, as a Vice-Principal. My older sister is a teacher with specific skills for handling troubled children. You could say the defective gene for teaching is in my system, but I like to think that God gave me the gift, also.

Here’s the problem: when you take on the responsibility of teaching, whether it be teaching Math or the Bible, you are shaping someone’s life. If you don’t mold that person correctly you could send them to hell in a handbasket.

The Bible is pretty specific about this: check out these verses:

Proverbs 22:6       Yacov (James) 3:1-2    Luke 6:40 (this one demands we teach by example)

2 Timothy 2:15     Mattitayu (Matthew) 5:19    Nehemiah 8:8      Romans 2:21

There are other verses, but from these you can get the idea that there is great power in teaching. The power to mold and shape someone, which is the same power to turn them aside from the truth and lead them to wrongful decisions. There is the power to save, and the power to destroy.

In the world today there are many teachings, both right and wrong. There are teachings that tell us somethings are bad and there are teachings that tell us the same, exact things are not bad.  The Catholic church says priests are not to get married, but the other Christian religions and the Torah teach that the Kohanim (Priests) are allowed to marry (but there are restrictions on the type of woman they are allowed to marry.) Another teaching is that being kosher is only for Jews, but Yeshua was kosher and we are told to be like Yeshua, to “Do what Jesus would have done”, so why is it taught that we don’t have to keep kosher? If you read my book you will learn more on how this idea that kosher laws are done away with is wrong.

The world teaches you to look out only for yourself and the Bible teaches us to care for others as much as ourselves. The world teaches to live for today and the Bible teaches us to live for Eternity.

So many different things, and all seemingly opposing each other. For those of us who want to teach about God’s way and to lead others to the salvation that Yeshua made possible, we have to work against the world and all the teachings therein. Then, we have to work against all the wrongful teachings that the Christian world has proliferated: Yeshua did away with Torah, Torah is just for Jews, Jews are Christ-killers and because they rejected Jesus God has rejected them so the Christians are the new Chosen People (this is called Replacement Theology), the church leadership shouldn’t get married, or (at the other end) the church leaders can be homosexual. Eat anything you want but you can’t drink alcoholic beverages or dance, and there are hundreds of other teachings, each religion with it’s own ideas, and all claiming this is God’s way.

God has no religion, only commandments. They’re all in the Torah- there is nothing “new” in the New Covenant writings. Get with the program , people!

Then there’s the big one, which I think will send more people to hell than anything else we are being told: if you’re a good person you get to go to heaven. That is a lie from the pit of Sheol (hell) and even Yeshua says He is not good, only His father in heaven is good. So, then, who can be good if only God is good?

What we are being taught is a roadmap, a sort of spiritual GPS, and it is sending us somewhere… but to where?

Here’s is a lesson I offer that is true: we are all sinners. No one is good, no one is worthy, and no one has a snowballs’ chance in Heck of being saved without Yeshua HaMashiach. Simple, straight-forward, Biblically sound, and awesome to realize. Scary actually.

If you want to teach about God, make sure you read the verses I quoted above, and don’t forget this: Yeshua said those who sin and teach others to sin will be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. The good news is that you may be teaching wrong things and still be saved, as this verse implies, and the bad news is I don’t think you will hear Yeshua say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Not if you teach others to sin. Here’s the really bad news: how will you feel if you are in Heaven and people you taught did not make it because of your teachings? Through all eternity you will know they are suffering because of you.

To teach God’s word means you need to live God’s word, and I am the biggest failure of all in doing this. I am teaching do what I say (actually, what God says) and not what I do. Truthfully, we all do this, teach what we can’t do, since we are all sinners without hope of redemption on our own, so no one is going to live a perfect life. That was done already, and we only needed it for the one time. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, because we can sin less.

Here is another lesson you can count on as being true: we will never be able to say we don’t sin at all, but we can always sin less than we do now.

If you want to teach, think about it. You don’t know what you are getting into. If you have the gift, use it, but if you aren’t sure then ask those who are faithful and spiritually mature. Trust their judgement and, more than anything, ask God what He wants you to do. Ask Him to show you what gift(s) He has given you, and work with those. There is nothing more satisfying than doing good for the Lord, and if my gift was toilet cleaning, I would clean the toilets so well that no one would even want to use them, for fear of making them dirty again.

Of course, I am glad that’s not my gifting, but my point is this: whatever God leads you to do, do it well. Do what we are told to do in Colossians 3:23 (I am really breaking my rules about not giving exact locations today, aren’t I?) and you will always feel a sense of fulfillment from your work.

I love doing what I do…this blog, writing my book (c’mon, already- buy it!) and being able to give the message at my place of worship, now and then. And I always, always, always  hold myself up to the Word of God, making sure everything I say and teach about is able to be found in the Bible. I also tell everyone, including you, to test me and verify whatever I say is in the Bible to really be there.

I once read you shouldn’t believe everything you read, but then I didn’t know what to do!

Be careful when you teach because the ones you are teaching are depending on you to guide them to the truth and to their salvation. Don’t let them down.

How Did The Kingdom of God Split?

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The Kingdom of God was preached to us by Yeshua. Even if you don’t believe He was/is the Messiah God promised, He did preach about God’s kingdom. He never created a new religion.

So if Yeshua was Jewish, preached about Jewish law and customs, stuck totally to what the Torah tells us (there wasn’t any other scripture then: Duh!!) and never created or spawned a new religion, why is it that we have Judaism and Christianity today?

Shouldn’t we just have Jews that don’t believe He was Messiah and Jews that do? We have Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Messianic Jews; if you look close, you would think the difference between the Orthodox and Reform Jews is enough to be two totally different religions.

Within Christianity you have Catholics (Eastern and Western), Protestants, Methodists, AME, Amish, Episcopalians, Baptists (Southern and others), Lutherans, et.al. ad infinitum.

But if the Jews all follow the Torah, and the Christians all follow Jesus, how can there be so many different types? With such divergent beliefs?

The answer is because these religions, all of them, are not from God. They are from mankind. They are the improper and sinful (yes, sinful and blasphemous, actually) creations of people who think they know more than God.

God has no religion. He told us how to worship Him and how to get along with each other. His laws, rulings, regulations and commandments are for everyone who chooses Him as their God. He separates the Levite only, to behave differently in some respects, because they were chosen by God to minister to Him so they have to be a little bit more “holy” in their lifestyles. Other than the Levites, everyone lives the same rules all the time, and they live them the same way.

When Yeshua taught, He taught what was in the Torah. Nothing more, nothing less. Why His teachings were so influential is because He taught not traditions and rules above what God wanted, but he interpreted and explained the existing rules with a depth of understanding that no one else could have. He is the living Torah, and He was there when the laws were given to Moshe. He was there from the beginning, and He could not possibly teach anything different than what is in Torah because He IS Torah!  Yochanan (John) tells us in the very first line of his Gospel that the Word became flesh. If Yeshua taught anything other than what is in the Torah, or even implied that we should do something different, he was teaching against Himself. He said that a house divided against itself cannot stand- how much more so if someone teaches that what He is saying and stands for is wrong?

What happened is this: in Yeshua’s time there were two types of people: Jews and pagans.  Next, we had Jews who rejected Yeshua as their Messiah (more for political reasons than any other), Jews who accepted Him as their Messiah (news flash!: they both lived and worshipped the same way), Gentiles and pagans (if you will allow, I will use the term Gentile here to identify a person who is not born Jewish but is in the process of converting to a Jewish lifestyle.) It stayed that way for the next 200 years or so, with more and more pagans accepting Yeshua and, thereby, becoming Gentiles (as I am using the term.)

Here’s a revelation: at the beginning of what we (today) call “Christianity”, if you were a pagan and accepted Yeshua as your Messiah, you were converting to Judaism. Paul did NOT convert to Christianity, the “Elders of the Church” were not Christians (haven’t you ever wondered why the Bible calls that chapter in Acts, “Paul’s Conversion” but it never relates the term “conversion” to any of the other disciples?), and the fact is there never was a “church” in Jerusalem at that time. There was no “church”- there were only temples. Some were pagan and some were Jewish. It’s only in recent times that the word “Temple” is understood to be a Jewish place of worship. The same is true for the word “Synagogue”. The definition of that Greek word is not a Jewish place of worship, but a gathering, or grouping. Again, only the modern cultural meaning of “Synagogue” is a Jewish place of worship.

Back to the lesson. So, we have the “mainstream” Jews, the Messianic Jews (which includes the converting Gentiles) and the pagans. That’s it. Since there were so many more pagans than Jews, it is obvious the number of Gentiles would grow faster than the number of Jews as Messianic Judaism grew.

Now we come to Rome during the time of Constantine. Please allow me to simplify the whole Council of Nicene thing to this: Constantine made being a Believer in Yeshua acceptable and popular. However, the “mainstream” Jews had ostracized themselves from Rome (a couple of rebellions will tend to do that) so the followers of the Christ (as He was just starting to be referred to at that time)  were on the A list and the non-followers of the Christ were lower than whale poop, so far as the Roman government was concerned. It is only natural (not acceptable, but natural) that the Gentiles would shy away from the more obvious “Jewish” religious practices to stay below the radar, so to speak. The Elders of the Messianic movement did not require these Gentiles to do a full and complete conversion to the Judaic practices, so there was a growing difference in the worship practices between the Messianic Gentiles, the Messianic Jews and the Jews that did not accept Yeshua. This continued to grow until the difference became a span, then a chasm, then (ultimately) a spiritual and religious schism that has only grown over the past two millennia. And the driving force behind this were the traditions and rules that people created.

Thanks be to God that His will will be done, and we can see this today as the “Church” is beginning to recognize their roots in Judaism, that they do not need to convert to Judaism to be saved, and that they need to support and help the Jewish people to know and accept their own Messiah so that He will return (read Matthew and you will see why I say this.) The influx of Jews returning to the Land is being supported today by many Christian groups, and the Messianic Jewish movement is, from my experience, still composed more of Gentiles returning to the ways God said we should live than Jews who already live that way.

The “Church” is also just beginning to realize that Jews who accept Yeshua do not have to convert to Christianity in order to be saved. There is still Replacement Theology, there is still an ungodly amount of anti-Semitic teaching in the Christian world, and there is still an ungodly amount of anti-Messianic teaching in the Jewish world. But we are making tremendous progress towards overcoming that.

When all is said and done, the Tribulation is over, the Enemy is in the Lake of Fire, the new world and the new Jerusalem have settled, all the Christians that will be there will be amazed when they are expected to live as Jews. Not as Jews live today, because the Torah is so often ignored in lieu of Talmudic Halakha (how to walk; regulations), but live as God said we should live- in His Torah. The Torah will be the only guide, the only law, the only way. That which the Christian world (for the most part) has been teaching is done away with will be the only thing there is. Read Jeremiah 31:31 if you want to know why I say this.

What does this all boil down to? It boils down to this: if you expect to be in the Olam Haba (the world to come), you’d better get comfortable living as the Torah says you should. It’ll make things much easier on you.

You Love Me? Really?

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We all know that the Lord loves us. Whether or not we love Him, He loves us. His love is unconditional, it is forever, it is based on who He is and not who we are (thank God for that!), and it will cause Him to judge us fairly with mercy. Which we all need.

It is so much above human love, and so far beyond human understanding; how can any of us, really, associate with what He did when He sent His only son to die for us so that we could be close to Him. Something we could never have achieved on our own, even though it isn’t that hard. After all, Moshe told us that it isn’t so far away we need to send someone to get it for us, or so deep we can’t retrieve it, or so high above us we can’t reach it. It is right there, right in front of us.

But we can’t get hold of it, not a real good hold. So God did for us what we should have done for ourselves, at a great cost. Yeshua stripped His robes of righteousness and took on a mantle of flesh: filthy, dirty and mortal coverings that He wore just as the rest of us. Except despite this, He did not sin in the flesh that causes all the rest of us to sin. He survived unblemished, He showed us how to live, and He properly interpreted God’s word for us (which means Jesus/Yeshua did NOT create a new religion- those that followed after Constantine created a different religion, but Yeshua taught from the Tanakh and taught how to follow the Torah correctly.) Yeshua died so that I could live; so that you could live. It was, and is, a very personal thing.

Do you love the Lord? Most everyone I ever met who is Born Again says “YES!! Emphatically! Totally! Absolutely!”

I love God, too, but I don’t feel it.  I feel love for my wife. I feel love for my children (even though they have rejected me, so in that way I know a little about how God must feel), but I confess I don’t feel love for God- I know I have love for Him. Maybe because He is so wonderful, so far from me (in holiness, but not emotionally or relationship-wise), or maybe just because I am really selfish with using the word “love”, I don’t have the same emotional sense I feel with other humans. I love the Lord, and I am His bride (wow- to say such a thing in today’s world, and so close to election time, is scary) and those who read this most likely know the true meaning of that reference. But I just can’t honestly say I love God and feel it. I want to, I know I do, but I don’t feel it. I do feel unworthy, unresponsive, and undeserving of what He feels for me because I just don’t know how to return it. And I absolutely know that He deserves it.

Maybe my real problem is that I can’t separate the holy love I know for God from the romantic love I feel as a human. How many of you out there love someone because of how they make you feel? You feel whole, completed with the other person, right? My relationship with God has made me feel completed as a Jewish man, I feel that I have (finally) come full circle with God and we are on the same page, so to speak. My relationship is wonderful and fulfilling with the Lord- exactly what He planned when He sent Messiah. And more than anything or anyone else that ever was, God deserves my love. He has earned it because He gave me life, because of His sacrifice for me, through His devotion to me, through all He has done during my meager life that has protected me and kept me from harm, both physical and spiritual. God is worthy of my worship, my devotion, and more than anything, my love. He is worthy and deserving of everyone’s love.

However, I am not. That’s why I am confessing to you that I don’t “buy it” when a stranger, or even someone I worship with regularly and would call a friend or acquaintance, comes to me at the worship and says, “I love you, Brother!” I don’t doubt their sincerity, but I doubt they really love me. Not me. Maybe the spirit of God that they expect I should be housing? I could go along with that. But not me. They don’t know me. They haven’t seen me at my worst. They haven’t  heard the words I use when I am angry and frustrated (for me, those two emotions are so close together they are almost like Siamese Twins.) They haven’t heard my vengeful talk when I am wronged; I don’t take vengeance- that is for the Lord. But, I do plan it out for Him, now and then. They haven’t seen my evil twin, Skippy, at work when he locks me in the basement and takes over for me in real life, going to work and impersonating me. He angers the clients, makes trouble for the co-workers, he even gets my wife angry at him. It takes a lot to get Skippy to leave town; fortunately, he doesn’t get along with the Ruach HaKodesh so the closer I get to God the less often Skippy comes around.

But if you met Skippy, you certainly wouldn’t say to him, “I love you , Brother!” You would probably say something more like, “Oh Brother!”

I don’t tell people whom I don’t really know that I love them. I am not much of a hugger, either. I find it very impolite when someone hugs another person without asking permission. It isn’t their love for me that makes them want to hug me- it is their own desire to feel loved. They physically misuse my body, they assault me, in order to feel that they are loved. And if I should say, “I’m not really a hugger” their response more often than not is, “Well, I am.” and they proceed to violate my space, my body and my rights by hugging me. And if I should complain, guess who’s at fault? That’s right- they blame me for not loving as the Lord loves. They insult God’s love and cheapen what Yeshua did by ( as the psychologists call it) “projecting” their feelings at me instead of reflecting on what I said.

{By the way, to those who know me and those who worship with me, if you are thinking you should keep your distance don’t worry- I do hug people I feel comfortable with, and if you offer and I reply with a hug, it’s OK. If I should stick my hand out, that’s the signal that I am not comfortable enough yet. It’s not a rejection, it’s just caution on my part. Don’t stop asking, and please do not be upset or feel rejected if it isn’t time yet. It will be, eventually.}

You love me? Really? I don’t think so. I don’t think humans have that kind of love. Again, I don’t doubt your sincerity, and I appreciate your attempt  to be more like God, but love for others is worth a lot to me, and I don’t just throw it at the feet of anyone who says they are a child of God. It is like throwing pearls before swine, in my book. I pretty much start of with giving everyone the benefit of the doubt when I first meet them, or start to work with them, and I assume (and expect) they will be professional, dependable and trustworthy. I trust them and am looking forward to working with them, or knowing them as friends, whatever the relationship is supposed to be. It is up to them to give me cause to feel otherwise.

But it’s not like that with love. Love is something that the Bible teaches us we should have for each other. Love thy neighbor as thyself- Leviticus 19:18 (for those who don’t know this, when Yeshua gave us the “Golden Rule” He was quoting from Torah. There is nothing ‘New” in the New Covenant)- is the standard for all of us. Yeshua said the two most important commandments (in this order, by the way) are to love God, and love each other. He told His disciples that the way people will know they are His disciples is if they love each other. There is nothing but love in the life of a true Believer, a real worshipper of God. Shaul tells us, ultimately, no matter how many gifts he has been given, no matter how many talents he has, no matter how hard he works for the Lord, if he has not love, he has nothing.

I guess I am just a step or two above nothing. I have love, but I am selfish with it. I am too ensnared in the world, still, to separate the romantic version of love from the holy love that God feels for us. And, I am sorry to say, I don’t think I am that much different from most everyone else.  I believe that people cannot love the way God loves, but I do honor their attempt. That’s why when someone says they love me, I don’t argue with them. I may thank them, I most likely won’t say anything, and I guarantee I won’t say that I love them, too. I don’t know them that well, I am not that Godly, and I am certainly not that open with my feelings.

I hope you are different. I hope that some of you reading this will pity my weakness, my fleshly curse that prevents me from feeling love the way God does and keeps me chained to the emotional, romantic understanding of love that is a bane, in many ways, of humanity. Pray for me, if you will, and pray for yourself that you are really feeling the intercessory power that comes from truly loving as God does- not romantically, not selfishly, not humanly.

I doubt that I will ever feel that way, at least, not in this body. I do believe that once resurrected, I will be beyond the human level of emotions; I believe that we will all, those of us resurrected to the second life, no longer have emotional feelings as we do now. Our sense of love and emotional closeness to each other will be beyond the physical and it will be as God feels- love that is so powerful, so much a part of us that it is like breath, and as such we will be in total joy just being with each other.

I can hardly wait.

Where Did the Salvation GPS Go Wrong?

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How did it happen? In the First Century, if you were a Gentile (read that as Pagan, ’cause that’s all there was if you weren’t Jewish) and you accepted Yeshua as your Messiah, you were becoming Jewish. In Acts we read how the Elders decided, in regards to what the new Believers had to do, on four things (not eat food sacrificed to idols, not eat anything strangled, not eat the blood, and no fornication) that were initially forbidden. These were never meant to be the only things that were forbidden, it was just a stepping stone. When you read the rest of that section you see they justified this as being the start because the law of Moses would be read every Shabbat, indicating (clearly) that the new Believers were expected to be worshipping at Shabbat services and they would learn the other laws and requirements there. So, in essence, being a Gentile who wanted salvation during Yeshua’s time meant becoming Jewish.

Today, when a Jewish person wants to accept Yeshua as his or her Messiah, the Gentile world, which has overall rejected Torah, tells that person they must stop being Jewish and become a Christian. And what requirements are there? Do they have regulations regarding food- no. Do they have regulations regarding the Ten Commandments- not really, since Grace is supposed to cover everything. Actually, the only regulation they have is that you must reject the Torah and Judaism! I have been told, and I have heard from many others that they were also told, “You aren’t really under the blood of Christ if you still do those Jewish things.”

So sad.

When I was studying for my Certificate in Messianic Studies, I had an essay question asking how the separation between Judaism and Christianity occurred. Here is what I said:

As more and more Gentiles came to be grafted in, the Jewish representation became less and less. As persecution of the Jews grew during the 3rd and 4th centuries it actually was safer for believers to be “less Jewish”. Of course, Constantine didn’t help things, either. Eventually the Jewishness was overwritten with Gentile ideals and cultural ways, so that the church grew apart from the roots. It is like the scientific principle of phototropism. Phototropism is the tendency for a plant to grow towards the sunniest area, which explains why so many trees have trunks that are weirdly shaped. The church, which was grafted in and at first learning about the light (of the world) grew towards that light. What happened was the Enemy shone another light that detracted them from the true light and their branches grew in the wrong direction.

Did I mean to say that the “Church” is now of the Devil? As dangerous as this may be to admit, the truth is: that is exactly what I meant.

Now, now…don’t get all up in a fury. It is a hard word to hear, but before you send hate mail and stop following my ministry-blog, think about this: God gave us the Torah. He gave it to everyone who is to follow and worship Him. John says that there was the Word (Torah- it was the only word of God there was then), and the Word became flesh (he was talking about Yeshua- duh!). Now, later on Yeshua tells us that a house divided against itself cannot stand. So…if the Word/Torah became flesh, that means Yeshua is the living Word of God, or the Living Torah. If He taught that we should not obey or follow Torah, He is a house divided against Himself. In fact, it would be the same as Yeshua saying, “Don’t pay attention to what I say.” Now, no one will argue that Ha Satan is the enemy of God, right?  And does the Enemy want us to become closer to God, or does he want to drive a wedge between us and God so that we get so far from God we will worship the Enemy, instead? Okay- I am hoping we are all on the same page here, which is that the Enemy of God doesn’t want us to be close to God.

God says the way to be close to Him, and Yeshua says the way to show we love Him, is to (get ready- here it comes)… OBEY HIS COMMANDMENTS!!!

And where are His commandments? (three guesses, and the first two don’t count)… IN THE TORAH!!!

Get it? Telling people that want salvation that they do not have to obey the Torah separates us from God, it rejects Messiah and demonstrates we do NOT love him. That is the work of the Devil, and anyone who teaches that Yeshua did away with even so much as single stroke of the Torah is doing the work of Ha Satan because it is drawing that person away from God.

Judaism and Christianity should not be different, they should be the same thing. The Manual warns us that in the Acharit HaYamim (the End Days) there will be one world religion and one world government. This is not a bad thing, in and of itself; what makes it work or not work will be who is the one in charge. The Enemy will initially be the one to run things but he will be put down forever and then Yeshua will be the Eternal King of the Earth. Actually, if there is going to be only one religion throughout the world, there really won’t be any religion, will there? It will be  just us and God and the way we live.

In the beginning, salvation was for the Jews. “Jews” meaning anyone and everyone who worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as He commanded us to worship Him. As early as the Exodus we see many Gentiles sojourning with the Jewish people, converting to their way of life and way of worship. When Messiah came, many Jewish people (maybe as many as a quarter of a million Jews) accepted Him and the Grace that God gave through Him. They never stopped practicing Judaism. And through Messiah, salvation now came not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles, as well.  They were grafted in and thereby saved, so long as they took their spiritual nourishment from the root of the Etz Chaim (Tree of Life, i.e., the Torah.) Gentiles who were saved were becoming Jews, accepting and worshipping a single way before God, as God said they should. That is the way it was at the very beginning, and how it was supposed to be. But we lost our way.

We need to get everyone back on the path that God said to follow. We all need to be getting closer to God, not further away. We need to reset the spiritual GPS so that we follow the straightest path to God, and that leads us to the Torah trail, not the Christian crossroads.

God has no religion, only Torah. Yeshua taught nothing different from Torah. Shaul never taught anything but Torah. John tells us that Yeshua is the Torah.

Hello? Christianity? You there? You listening?  Get with the program and return to working for the right guy.

 

 

A Short Introduction to the Torah

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I am going to discuss, briefly, what the Torah is for the benefit of any readers who may not be all that familiar with it. I could do an entire Bible study on the Torah, not the scripture it has but for all the other aspects of it. However, all I really would like to do today is just give you a brief outline, one I have used in Bible and Messianic 101 classes

Let’s begin with the word, “Torah.” Although it is often referred to as “law”, it’s actual meaning is “Teaching.” The Christian world uses the connotation of “law” as a means to dissuade people from believing they need to obey Torah. The general teaching is that the regulations, laws (mitzvot) and rules that God gave to His people contained in the Torah represent legalism. This is not true, and meat for another discussion. Leave us to say that the commandments are for anyone who wishes to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, at any time, and for all time.

The Torah contains the Five Books of Moses, and is also called the Pentateuch (Greek for Five Books). That is the Torah. The Tanakh is the entire Old Covenant, and is an acronym made of Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings, such as Ruth, Psalms, Proverbs, etc.) The writings of the Prophets are broken down into the major and minor Prophets.

The Torah is more than just five books telling the history of the Jewish people and the laws God gave us. It serves as a Ketuba, or marriage certificate, between God and His people. It is also a Covenant made between God and His people, specifically the Noadic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic and “new” covenant, which was fulfilled when Yeshua was resurrected and the Ruach HaKodesh was given to those who accept Yeshua as their Messiah.

The Torah also serves as a constitution, essentially listing the civil and penal laws that form a nation. Finally, the Torah teaches us about sin, and teaches us right from wrong (Shaul talks about this in Romans.)

The Torah contains a total of 613 commandments, about 1/3 of which describe the sacrificial system that was only valid for use at the Temple. With the destruction of the Temple, non-Messianic Jews have had no place to atone for sins. For those who have accepted that Yeshua is the Messiah, His death was our atonement, so we have to feel great pain and fellowship with the Jewish people who believe they have no atonement. It’s so sad for them to think they have no atonement and are anxiously waiting for the Messiah to atone for them, and He has been here, waiting for them, for over two thousand years. Well, that’s (also) another discussion.

The laws are broken down into different groups:

Mishpatim are regulations:

  1. Mishpatim- those regulations which we can understand why they exist;
  2. Dupah- those regualtions that need to be, and are, explained why they are given to us; and
  3. Hucah-those that are unexplained and/or unknown why we have them (but we still have to follow them)

Mitzvot are laws and Chukim are ordinances. I have never really found anything that definitively identifies the differences between regulations, laws, and ordinances. The important thing for us to remember is that no matter what they are called, they are all what God wants us to do, and are all important to obey.

The Oral Torah (Sheb’al Peh)  is a traditional compilation of regulations supposedly given to Moshe which he did not write down. They are today the Rabbinic interpretations of the Torah and have expanded into the Talmud. Talmud details for us Halakha, or ‘The Way to Walk”. In other words, it tells us how to live a Jewish lifestyle, in every part of our daily activities. And I mean, e-v-e-r-y part. The origins are pre-Christian Era, and they come from two “schools” of thought- the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud.

The Talmud started as the Oral Torah, which was eventually compiled and written as the Mishna, an explanation of the laws. The Mishna didn’t quite cover it all, so they added the Gemara. Together these make up the Talmud, which is a magnificent Tome of some 20 plus volumes of Rabbinic lore, written in groups called Orders and Tractates.

Although considered to be scripture by Orthodox Jews, it is (I say this respectfully) not scripture. It is wonderful wisdom, and helps to identify what a Jewish person is, how to live, and how to perform the things in the Torah we are told to do, but not always how to do it. It is based on the Word of God, but it is not His Word. It is Rabbinic wisdom and Jewish folklore.

Overall, due to the differences in how people (meaning religion) say to worship God, even within the “purity” of Torah, Jews have split into different sects:

1. The Ultra Orthodox, or Chasidic;

2. The Orthodox (leftover from the Pharisees);

3. The Conservative (less reliance on Oral Law)

4.  The Reform (believe only moral laws are mandatory, less concerned about “ceremonial” laws);

5.  The Reconstructionists (believe in the traditions more than the written laws);

6. The Messianic Jews (believe that Yeshua/Jesus is the Messiah God promised and follow the laws and regulations throughout the Torah.)

We see evidence of the Torah in Jewish lives in different ways: people wearing Tzttzit (the fringes commanded to be worn in Numbers) and a Kippur (covering, also called a Yarmulke). A Mezzuzah on the lentils of the doorways, those who follow the laws of Kashrut (Kosher laws- I follow them according to Leviticus 11, not according to the Rabbinic laws, which are extremely difficult to follow) and the celebration of Shabbat (Sabbath) on the proper day, Friday night through to Saturday night.

The New Covenant writings have been very tough on the Torah. It amazes (and disgusts) me that the teachings of Yeshua have been turned into polemics against the Torah, the very book He helped write! In the Gospel of John, Yochanan (John) tells us there was the Word of God, and the Word became flesh. That was Yeshua. Yeshua told the Pharisees that a house divided against itself cannot stand: so, if Yochanan was correct that the Word of God became flesh (don’t forget- the only Word they had was Torah) and Yeshua was correct that a house divided against itself can’t stand, then how can Christianity teach that Yeshua did away with the Law, which is the Word, which is Him? Oy! Where do they come up with this stuff?

Check out  Matthew 5:17, 2nd Timothy 3:16, Romans 7:12 and Isaiah 56. These references all make an apologetic argument for the validity of Torah. Yet, if you look at Galatians 3:10 / 3:28 / 5: 1-4 / 2:15-16, these are historically used as  a polemic against the Torah.

The final part of today’s little lesson is to ask: “Who should follow Torah ?”  Should it be just Jews? Should it be Jews and Believers (Born Again)? After all, since Born Again Christians accept Yeshua/Jesus as their Savior and are trying to do as He tells us to do, which is to obey Scripture, the only Scripture He taught was Torah. It makes sense and follows, naturally, that they should live in accordance with Torah, right?

My answer is that everyone who professes to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should follow Torah because (here it is again):  God has no religion. If you say you follow God, if you say you accept Jesus/Yeshua as your Messiah, and you love to say how much you love Him, He told us that the way we show how much we love Him is to follow His commandments, which are/is/always have been/ always will be: the Torah!

That’s right, boys and girls: if you profess to follow Yeshua, and you love Him, then you need to obey every rule, regulation, ordinance and law in the Torah, as best as you can. That doesn’t mean pick and choose, that means try to do them all. The only ones that you don’t have to do are the ones you physically can’t, i.e., the sacrifices at the Temple. Therefore, if you haven’t been reading the Tanakh, better get started- that’s where the background and teachings of the entire New Covenant are based and found. There is nothing “new” in the New Covenant.

If you don’t read everything from Genesis through Revelations, you aren’t getting the whole teaching.

 

 

 

Parashah Re’eh

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(NOTE: this week is actually Shof’tim,  which I did last week. Last week should have been Re’eh, which I am doing this week.)

This parashah has many of the commandments we live by in our daily life. Eating, treatment of others, finances, worship, etc. This is just one of a couple of places where we are given His laws, commandments, rules, and regulations (I have never really gotten a good explanation of the differences. Anyone know?) As with most times when we are told how we should worship, eat, and treat each other (pretty much how we live), there are the two promises that precede God’s commandments: the blessings we will receive if we obey, and the curses we will suffer if we don’t.

Sounds a little unfair, doesn’t it? I mean, God says if you do as I say you will get blessed, but if you choose not to do these things you will suffer. There’s no discourse, there’s no give-and-take, there’s only His way or the Hell-way. Really? I don’t count, is that it? What am I- chopped liver?

Actually, no. You are a worm. You are a sinner from before you left the womb, and your righteousness is nothing more than filthy (the true interpretation is: menstrual) rags before the Lord.

On the other hand, you are a child of God, esteemed and loved, above the angels, and a treasured diadem.

Oy! Make up your mind, already!

There are people who would say God isn’t fair because He makes all the rules, and we don’t get a chance to decide which ones we want. After all, it is a covenant, right? Two people, two sides, two opinions.  Why don’t we get a say in this?

Because He is God. He does make the rules, He does get to choose, He doesn’t have to listen to us. Frankly, I trust His judgement about what is best for me much better than I trust my own, and I got no problem with God being totally in charge. The only problem I have is actually doing as He requires, even though I want to. Sounds like that nice Jewish boy from Tarsus who said he doesn’t do what he wants to do, and does what he doesn’t want to do. He called himself a wretch, and all I can say is: amen to that! I know how he felt.

I think this is what makes it hard for many people to give themselves to the Lord. They simply do not want to give up control of their life. The world teaches us to be in charge, to watch out for Numero Uno, and never trust anyone. We are actually looked down upon by the world when we give total control of our life to the Lord. We are told that we are weak when we patiently deal with people who are mean to us, and when we accept our problems as part of living and “give it to the Lord” we are told that we use Him as a crutch to avoid dealing with our problems.

I don’t think giving our life to the Lord means we lose control of it. We have free will, we can make decisions, and we are given the rules (as in this parashah) that direct how we should live, yet we still can make plans for ourselves, we still can choose what we want to do as a career, we can sail along on God’s super liner to Eternity or we can jump ship. God is not requiring of us to do any more or less than our society does when requiring us to obey its laws. True, as a society we make our own laws, different cultures have different laws to reflect their own needs and desires. So why is it different when God tells us His laws? Maybe because we don’t get a vote. Well, like it or not, that’s how it is, folks.

Is it really very different? After all, when humans make laws we get to vote on them, and if you didn’t vote for the law, you still are subject to it. If you break it, you suffer the consequences.

God makes laws that we don’t get a vote on, and if we break them we suffer the consequences. Oh wait a minute!! We get a break. We have a Messiah who took on our sin for us, so (as far as spiritual consequences go) we don’t have to suffer for our failure to obey. In this existence, i.e., the physical world, we do suffer for our sins, but thanks to Messiah Yeshua we don’t have to suffer for all eternity.

Where do you find that in the law books at the City Courtroom? Any precedence for eternal salvation from the Supreme Court?  Maybe the Governor can pardon you, or the President, but that’s as close as it gets. And they do it, case by case: Yeshua did it for everyone. Everyone who is living, everyone who has lived, and everyone who isn’t even born yet. Until the end of time.

Whoa! That’s not so bad.The laws in society I get to partake in making, but even if I don’t like them I will have to live with them. If I obey them, I get nothing. If I break them I go to jail. I may get a pardon for a single occurrence, but that is exceptionally rare.

The laws God makes I don’t get a vote on, but just like in society, I still have to live with the ones that exist. If I obey them I receive wonderful blessings. If I break them, I get cursed, which really translates to I don’t get the blessings. In other words, when I break God’s laws I get nothing from God and live in a cursed world. As for a pardon, it’s not rare, it’s not just for a single occurrence, and it is for all eternity. All I need to do is accept it, and do T’Shuvah (to atone, to “turn” from my sinning ways.) Thanks to Yeshua, we have an eternal “Get Out of Jail” card. It’s not a license to sin, and although it is an escape clause we have to live up to it and change our ways or it doesn’t count.

Still, all in all, it’s a lot better than the laws we make ourselves.

In the end, I prefer to accept, willingly and gratefully, the laws that God has given me for how I am to live my life. They come before the laws of Mankind, as far as I am concerned, and since most human laws are based on God’s laws, they aren’t all that different. It’s really our attitude that makes all the difference; acceptance or refusal. In other words, pridefulness or worshipful humility. Oohh- that hurt! That hits home, doesn’t it? You mean if I don’t like the fact that God tells me what to do without me getting a say I am prideful?

In a word: yes. God is above all, he is the Almighty, the Creator and King, the Everlasting One, The Holy of Holies, He dah Man!! If you don’t want to receive His laws and commandments with joy, then you must think you are better than Him. That’s human pride speaking.

God’s laws are the best; yes, we don’t get a vote in them. But then again, this is not a human kingdom we are dealing with. It’s not like the Colonial Days when we cried ” No taxation without representation!” It’s way more than that. It’s Eternity. It’s how we live now and where we live forever. It’s the way it is, take it or leave it.

You know, because we can choose to live in accordance with His laws or reject them, we do have a vote, don’t we?  When you cast your ballot, I recommend you vote for God.