Tag: divinity

Is Yeshua God?

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I am proving myself either crazy, suicidal or brave by even thinking about approaching this topic.

But, then again, if I believe I am given insight (the same should be the rule with everyone) and can show in the bible why I believe this way, then I should share it with you. If you disagree with me, I will not say you are wrong- I am simply telling you what I believe. I wish more people could have discussions without attacking each other’s beliefs, because in the long run, God will be the judge if I am right or wrong, and it is up to Him to set me straight. If we disagree, we should be able to do so with mutual respect, compassion, and leave it at we agree to disagree. Too often I see and hear people attacking each other, insulting each other, calling each other stupid or uneducated simply because they don’t agree. That is not how we should act.

So, here it comes.

Let’s start with the basics: Yeshua is the Messiah, and He existed before He came to earth. I really don’t know if He was God then, and became a separate entity in order to exist in our physical plane, or if He was always a separate entity but equal in divinity to God. I can’t find anything in the bible except that He appears to have been an eternal being with divine powers.

When He came to earth, He had to be able to suffer the temptations and illnesses of all humans (Isaiah 53) and to be able to die. For that to happen, and here is what is really amazing- which most people never understand the impact of- He voluntarily stripped off His divinity and took on a mantle of flesh! Yeshua was divine, He was eternal, He was all-powerful, yet He gave all that up just so that He could be a human being and die in order to give us a chance, just a chance, to be with God forever. Have you ever really thought about that? Could you have done that?

When Yeshua was born, He came out of Miryam’s womb as a human being: not eternal, not divine, just plain, old human. I say again, He had to be totally human so that He could take on our sins (a divine being cannot be associated with sin) and so that He could die. A sacrifice that cannot die (in other words, a divine being that is immortal) would not have been a “real’ sacrifice, and without a sacrificial death there is no remittance of sin, and our salvation is unfounded. But…our salvation is founded in that death, for Yeshua surely did die. The spear in His side proved it. So, whatever Yeshua was before He came to earth, He was 100% human while He lived on the earth and all the miracles He performed were done with the power that came from (a separate and unique) God through the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), which was the same exact way miracles had been performed by the Prophets before Him, and by the Apostles after Him.

The one, and most important, difference between Yeshua and all other humans was that Yeshua was not born into the sin of Adam and Eve. Because of His supernatural birth, and through His resurrection, His sacrifice was able to free us of our sins and continues to do so, for now He is a Priest and Cohen forever (Hebrews 7:17.) His blood is still viable, He is still able to cleanse us with His blood because it still exists, and will forever.

I think that every time someone asks for forgiveness in Yeshua’s name, He spills a little more of His blood.

Finally, Yeshua was resurrected and became eternal, again, but he is not divine because he has to serve as Cohen HaGadol for all humanity until the plan of salvation is complete, which won’t be until the Millennial Rule is over, the Adversary and all his demons are thrown into the Lake of Fire and the new heaven, new earth and new Jerusalem appear. In other words, He is still a separate and unique living entity from God. Once all is done, I do not know what will happen. Maybe He will remain the way He is, maybe He will be divine again and still the Son, maybe He will be “absorbed” back into God (which would imply the Holy Spirit would be,also) and there will be just the one and only God…who knows? I sure don’t! But, then again, who cares? I won’t, because I will be in God’s presence for all eternity, and it won’t really matter.

So, now for the biblical “proof” that I have for my position. First off, every letter that Shaul wrote to the Messianic Communities started off with a greeting from Shaul, then from God AND Yeshua. Not God, who is Yeshua, not Yeshua, who is God, but from “God the Father and Yeshua the Messiah.” Every letter from every Apostle, who lived with Yeshua for years, identifies God and Yeshua as separate entities. In Revelation 20:6– now remember that this book is the vision given to John directly from Yeshua- it says this:

Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Yeshua and will reign with him for a thousand years.

Notice it says priests (cohanim) of God AND of Yeshua: not priest of God, who is Yeshua, or of God who is Messiah, but “of God and of Yeshua.” The vision of John sees two separate, unique entities ruling in heaven.

There are some places where we hear Yeshua refer to Himself as being the “A” and the “Z”, and how before Abraham was, He is, which means He had no beginning and no end, and that is true in my understanding. As I started off saying, He was eternal and divine, then He gave that up to die, but when He was resurrected, although not divine, He is again eternal, so being ‘the beginning and the end’ while remaining a separate being from God is a valid statement about Himself.  He also constantly talked using parables and riddles, hyperbole and speaking spiritually in the same breath He would speak regarding the physical world. He was of spiritual birth but in a physical form, so He was in both a spiritual and physical place at the same time. Sort of like the Prophets that were taken up in the spirit (Ezekiel, for example) but still physically present on earth. But Yeshua was able to be in both places at the same time and stay in control of Himself.

When He told His Talmudim (students, or Disciples) that when we see Him we see the Father so He and the Father are One, it was a metaphorical statement. He said that He did nothing other than what the Father told Him to do, and said nothing other than what the Father told Him to say, which means (literally) Yeshua was a puppet, so to speak, whose actions and words were not of His own but directly from the Father. That being the case, in His statement that when we see Him we see the Father, for they are One, He was telling us that He is a perfect representation of what the Father does and says. A separate, unique and different entity but still only doing and saying what the Father wants Him to do and say, therefore, seeing Him is seeing the Father, in a matter of speaking, and as such, there is no difference between them from the viewpoint of what Yeshua did and said.

This is very hard to understand, and you don’t have to agree with my belief. If you would like to discuss this, I would ask that you post your comments below, but please don’t be abusive or impolite. I review all comments before they are made public and one’s that do not serve to edify or educate, but are simply attacks without merit, will not be honored with a reply.

Hopefully, those of you who believe differently may have an open mind, and think what I believe may be possible, and maybe there are those who believe as I believe. Let me add one more thing, if I may- we don’t need to know if Yeshua is God or not, really. All we need is to do T’Shuvah (repentance), be faithfully obedient to God, accept Yeshua as our Messiah, observe Torah (as best we can) and constantly ask forgiveness of our sins by reason of Yeshua’s sacrifice.

 

 

is willing to obey enough?

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Why do we obey? When we are told to do something, we always have the choice to obey or refuse. There is a middle course- obey the order but don’t do it the way we were told. That isn’t really refusing, but it’s pretty darn close to it.

In the military you obey for one of two reasons: the first reason is if you don’t, you get in trouble, which can mean anything from losing free time to losing money to going to the Brig. The second reason is that you trust the officer giving the order and do what he or she says out of respect, and knowing that what they are asking you to do is for a good reason. You don’t have to know their reason, you just have to trust that they have a good one.

At the workplace (I think) most obey in order to keep their job- obedience from desire to remain out of trouble. And yet, as above, obedience does often come from knowing the manager has a good reason, respect for the person and trust that they know things need to be done in a certain way because that is the best way to do it.

We obey traffic laws so we don’t get a ticket, but overall we recognize that when everyone drives lawfully we protect ourselves and others. This obedience comes more from a desire for self-preservation than from respect for the Department of Motor Vehicles.

However, whether in the military, at the workplace, or even within a family unit, some people will refuse to do what they have been told to do and make excuses, saying someone else told them a different way, they didn’t understand, they got bogged down with other work and will get to it soon, yadda-yadda-yadda. Nearly everyone can find an excuse for not doing what they were told that will not result in them getting into too much trouble.

If you have been agreeing with me so far, I hope we can agree that when it comes down to it, there are two different motivations for obedience:

  1. To prevent getting into trouble; and
  2. Obedience that comes from respect and trust for (maybe we can add desire to please) the one telling you what to do, whether or not you understand why.

Now….what about obedience to God? What is the main motivation for that? As we said above, it is either because we fear retaliation (going to hell) or because we trust in God that what He tells us to do is for our benefit and that He knows what He is doing.

Oh, wait! Let’s not forget those “middle-of-the-road” types that will do what they want to do and refuse to do what they don’t want to do, then find excuses for disobedience. Such as, “My Rabbi/Priest/Pastor/Minister told me I don’t have to do that anymore”, or “That was just because of health reasons, but we have better medicine today and things are cleaner”, or “The men who wrote the bible are chauvinists”, or the the one I really can’t stand,”That’s for Jews only; we are Christians and don’t need to do that because Jesus overcame it.”

Oy!! I really can’t stand that excuse, which is totally man-made by people who refuse to do what God says simply because they don’t want to, then use Jesus (real name- Yeshua) as their excuse, ignoring the truth that He did those things, Himself, and preached that everyone should.

When you obey God’s word, do you obey what He told Moses or what the Elders (in Acts) said Gentiles need to do? If you read the entire bible, you will see that everything the Apostles (in Hebrew they are called “Talmudim”) did and preached is all based on the Old Covenant writings, including the laws of Moses, and they never, ever said that Gentiles accepting Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah don’t have to follow the same rules and regulations as the Jews. That’s because there were no other religions that worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (BTW- He’s the same God of Jesus) that weren’t pagan. There were Pagans, and there were Jews, and the Jews worshiped God as God said they were supposed to. The same rules He gave Moses are the rules we are ALL told to obey.

God has no religion, only rules, regulations and commandments that are designed for our good. OUR good- not His. I mean, really- He’s God, the All Powerful, the Creator of Everything, the One and Only Almighty: do you really think there is anything, anywhere, that we humans could do or give Him that He can’t get anywhere except from us?

There is something God can only get from us: our worship, devotion and love.

I don’t obey every commandment, neither do you. None of us can, which is why Yeshua had to sacrifice not just His life on earth, but His divinity, too. But I try to obey, and more than that, I really, really want to be as obedient as I can simply because God asks me to do these things, and I trust God to know more than I do what is best for me. I also respect God, and as such want to do what he says I should out of respect for His justifiably absolute authority. Don’t think I am bragging- I try, but I fail, much more often than I succeed, but what I can boast about is that because of God’s Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), which leads me, I can obey more often than I ever did. I’m still not very good at obeying, but I am getting better at it, and that is not from fear of reprisal, but from fear of the Lord (in the biblical sense, which means to have an awesome reverence for God.)

Obeying just to avoid going to hell is better than not obeying, but it is like the good seed falling on the poor soil, which never takes root deep enough to last during tribulations. If you obey only what is easy to obey, only what you don’t mind obeying, and only because you don’t want to go to hell, then your obedience is probably not going to be enough when the fecal matter hits the air circulation unit. The enemy will offer you a much better program, one that will let you pick and choose what you want to do and promise eternal reward for it. Trust me- it’s a lie; anything worth having is worth working for, and if you are promised great rewards for doing nothing hard, you are going to be very, very disappointed.

Think of all the wonderful things God has done for you- and even if you are homeless, sickly, distraught, lonely, whatever- even in those sad and unhappy conditions, God has made sure that you are still here: you still have hope for things getting better and you can always turn your life around. God will help if you ask for it, but you need to get off your tuchas and work at it. The bible tells us that salvation is not easy, that obedience is possible but very hard, and that suffering will ensue as you strengthen your relationship with God. It only makes sense- the world we live in is cursed and under the authority of the enemy, so anything ‘Godly” is out of place. So what? God is more powerful than the enemy, and even if the enemy attacks you and destroys everything you have (as he did with Job), God can replace it, easily, and give you even more than you had. And what God can do for you eternally the enemy can’t even come close to doing.

Obey from love, obey from respect, obey from desire to please God (a labor of love, so to speak) and obey every commandment you can. Do all that God said we should do (which is every commandment and regulation found between Genesis and Revelations) and never give up trying to do better.

That kind of obedience will be more than enough.