AT&T Recognizes Gay Marriages as a Viable Market

No video today. I have been gone for almost two weeks because I was on vacation (I don’t post on a public forum that I will not be home for a week.) The first week Donna and I were on an anniversary cruise, the second week I have been home suffering from a kidney stone that appeared the third day of the cruise (it didn’t ruin the cruise but it certainly placed a damper on it.) Today is the first day I feel better, after two operations over the past five days.

Watching TV last night I couldn’t believe what I saw.

I saw a commercial for AT&T services. It had a young female with short dark hair saying she was an “okay” babysitter. Her part was written so that she is a Bimbo, and the two parents are getting more and more concerned about leaving their children with her because she just doesn’t seem to know what she is doing. The point being that okay isn’t good enough, so we should use AT&T to get the most reliable service.

What does this have to do with my title? The two parents were both men.

Now, before anyone who is a member of the LGBTQ community comes down on me, I am not saying anything against you. In fact, I have often posted that homosexuality is as normal a part of society as anything else because it has been around as far back as the ancient world.

As a God-fearing man, I don’t condone or accept homosexuality and recognize it as a sinful lifestyle, but then again, so is lying, adultery and all the other sins people commit that are just as normal a part of our society.

I am writing about this because there are two messages here: one is obvious and the other is more subliminal.

First off, you need to understand that Sales and Marketing is not a social or economic science- it is based on the science of psychology. I was in Sales for over 15 years and I can tell you, absolutely, that it is based solely on psychological manipulation. To be a good salesperson or marketing professional you need to understand how people think, their basic nature and how to get them to tell you what they desire, even if they don’t really know what it is, themselves. In other words, you have to be able to make them believe that, on their own, they came to the answer you have given them.

Next, you need to also know that when a section of society is viewed by marketing professionals to have enough economic influence to be a target for their advertising, they will advertise directly to them.

Now, back to the messages: the obvious message is that AT&T’s marketing experts have determined the LGBTQ community has enough economic power to be addressed as a separate and unique market. For those people who are members of that community, this should be seen as a major feather in their cap, so to speak, because to some degree it shows they are an accepted member of our society.

The subliminal message that is of concern to me is the same exact thing: that this lifestyle is being shown to be as acceptable as the traditional heterosexual family unit. The subtle psychological manipulation is while people are consciously focused on the Bimbo babysitter, subliminally they are made to believe that a same-sex parent family unit is normal.

No matter how anyone feels about homosexuality, history has shown it to be a failure with regards to societal advancement. Look at Sodom, Gomorrah, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and other nations throughout history that have had homosexuality as an accepted part of their society. Those that have survived until today are in ruins, and the others, well…they just aren’t here anymore.

How can there be gay Pastors marrying each other? Whoever heard of an LGBTQ church or Gay Christians, which is the epitome of an Oxymoron? And what about the traditional synagogues and churches who are supporting the LGBTQ community? One would think this couldn’t be, yet these things exist in our society, so what are we to do about it?

I don’t think there is anything we can do about it.  It is here, we don’t have to like it or accept it, but we do have to learn to live with it. It has been here since Day 1 and will not go away until the Messiah returns, the Apocalypse is over, the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven, yadda-yadda-yadda. When God’s plan of salvation is complete, then this lifestyle will no longer exist. For those who are members of this community, all I can say is you still have time to reconsider.

There can be no argument that human sexuality is proven by science to be composed of both physical (hormonal) and psychological influences. With today’s technological advancements in medicine, anyone can choose to change their sexual orientation and even their physical gender. Even if one wants to argue there is no choice, there is the opportunity to make a choice.

So there you have it! Those of us who worship God as he says we should and have traditional, heterosexual relationships are going to have to get used to homosexual relationships. We don’t have to condone or like it, we can talk against it, but it will not go away. This is what the Bible says will happen, so in some way, I am willing to embrace it as a necessary part of the overall plan of salvation.

It is like the kidney stone I have been struggling with for nearly two weeks now. I drink water to clear out the system, knowing that evacuation of that water will be very painful, but I still drink more. I know that I have to deal with this and that it won’t go away until it goes away.

So, too, with the way the world is heading. Destruction is coming and the society we live in, as well as the political events happening all over the world, are telling us, absolutely, that the end is really getting close.

We all have free will to choose how we will live. I have made my choice, and you have to make yours. All I can say is that I hope you choose wisely.

 

hebraic roots and messianic judaism: two sides of the same coin?

I am a Jewish man. I was born a Jew, from Jewish parents of Russian descent. I was raised in a Reform Jewish environment, and since neither of my parents ever really embraced being Jewish, my B’rit Milah (circumcision) and Bar Mitzvah were as much a “This is what we do” thing as it was a spiritual acknowledgement of my covenant with God. When I grew older I forgot about religious observance, and always felt distant from God yet desiring to be closer. What kept me away was my desire to sin, which constantly overcame my desire to know the Lord for some 40-odd years. It was a series of traumatic events that led to my desire to know God, and a determination to finally either know Him or reject the whole thing, once and for all. Thankfully, I did get to know God, and then I also needed to know the truth about this guy Jesus, who most of my life I was told was Jewish but started His own religion and was someone we Jews killed.

Now I know who Jesus really is: a Jewish man named Yeshua ben Yosef, who is in truth the Messiah God promised would come, who was born Jewish, lived a Jewish life and died Jewish. He was still Jewish when he was resurrected. During His life He observed the Torah and never-ever started a new religion (for the record, modern day Christianity is from Constantine, not Yeshua.) So, now that I am still Jewish (I am not a Christian, a Christian-Jew, a Hebrew-Christian or anything other than a Jew) but have accepted Yeshua as my Messiah and recognize that He is the son of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that means I am no longer just a Jewish man, but I am a Messianic Jewish man.

Messianic Judaism is not Jews for Jesus. Jews for Jesus is an organization, a non-profit company with a “religious” mandate to bring the truth of the Messiah to Jewish people. One of the things that I wish they would do is stop sending Jews willing to know Yeshua to Christian churches. Not that Christian churches are a bad place, but most Christian churches are not Hebraic Roots churches (Oy! Another label!) and many, many Christian churches have a “don’t need Torah” attitude, and (worse than that) some are Replacement Theologists.

The Hebraic Roots Movement is similar to Messianic Judaism in that Messianic Judaism is for Jews (and Christians, too- most Messianic congregations I have known actually have more Gentiles than Jews) who accept Jesus (Yeshua is the preferred name) as the Messiah, but still maintain the Jewish lifestyle and worship rooted in observance and obedience to the Torah. Hebraic roots congregations are Christians (and some Messianic Jews, like me) who desire to get to know and worship the Lord as Yeshua did, worshiping as they did in the First Century.

Essentially, if a person is someone who has accepted that Yeshua/Jesus is the Messiah, and worships as the followers of Yeshua did in the First Century when He walked the earth (and for about two centuries after that), then they are either Messianic Jews (if they are Jewish by birth) or Hebraic Roots Christians (if they are Gentile by birth.)

Same coin, different sides.

By the way- this is obviously a very simplistic explanation. I am hoping that it is effective in getting across the idea that anyone who worships the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who accepts that Yeshua was born a man by Divine conception, who believes He was and still is the Messiah God promised in the Old Covenant writings, is thereby one in the body of Messiah. And, whether or not they were born Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, whatever- when they accept Yeshua as their Messiah, they also accept His lifestyle. Which was, as we would label it today, Judaism. In fact, more similar to Orthodox Judaism than any other sect within Judaism.

I worship at a Hebraic Roots church (zionistrevivalcenter.org) and am one of only maybe 3 or 4 Jewish-born members. We are very small, no more than 15-20 or so “regulars” but we will, with God’s blessings, grow. I believe there is a growing desire in the Christian world to get closer to Jesus, since most of what He really is and what He really taught has been thrown out and replaced with Christian rhetoric, ritual and Anti-Semitic diatribe (such as the Replacement Theology claim that God has rejected the Jews for rejecting Yeshua, and Christians are now the “Chosen people.” Really? I don’t think so- God is pretty clear about His devotion and love for the Jewish people throughout the Bible.)

The aim of this blog-ministry of mine is to help people understand that God doesn’t have any religion, just rules. His rules were given to us in the Torah and the Torah is meant for everyone. It is not, and was never meant to be, exclusive to Jews. It was given to the Jews to bring to the world.

Whatever belief system you have now, does it respect the Torah? Do you believe (or have you been told to believe) that the Torah is valid for everyone? Do you believe that God still expects you to obey the laws of Kashrut outlined in Leviticus 11? Do you honor God by celebrating the festivals God said we are to celebrate and in the manner He described in Leviticus 23?

Or- do you believe (or have been told) that the Torah is only for Jews? Were you taught that Jews receive their salvation from Torah but Christians are saved by the Blood of Christ? Do you believe that the only things in the Old Covenant that are valid for you are the “moral laws” that God gave the Jews? If so, you have a very rude awakening coming to you.

Here’s the truth- the biblical truth that you can verify in the bible- Yeshua lived and worshiped as a Jew. The Disciples lived and worshiped as Jews. Shaul (Paul) never “converted” to Christianity- it didn’t even exist then! The followers of Yeshua were Jews who met in the synagogue or, if under social or political attack, met in their homes but NEVER stopped worshiping as Jews. There was no “church” in the first century- the “church” (as we know it today) was formed by Constantine and the Council of Nicene a couple of centuries after Yeshua walked the earth. The truth, my friends, is that if you believe Jesus is the Son of God and you claim to worship Him, than you should be worshiping God, not Jesus, and worshiping God as Jesus did.

I see bracelets with “WWJD” on them, and hear all the time that Christians should do as Jesus did and walk as Jesus walked, yet the Christian world teaches (for the most part) to do nothing like what Jesus did, and to walk a path Jesus would never have even thought of walking! Consider this: the world is about to celebrate the birth of the Messiah and enjoy a holiday feast in His honor with food that He would have considered an abomination to see on His dinner table! I am talking about the traditional Christmas Ham, of course. When you think about it, eating ham on a day designed to celebrate Jesus’s birth is, in fact, disrespectful to God and to Jesus.

The end is always coming closer. That is just simple math- our timeline moves in one direction, and the end is at, well…the end, so every day, every hour, every breath brings us all closer to the final judgement. And the real kicker is that we don’t know when the end is! Bummer! That means that the best possible time to get yourself right in accordance with God (through Yeshua) is now. Right now. And that means if you haven’t accepted your own sinfulness, now’s the time to get with the program. We all hear about asking for forgiveness, but the truth is until you accept your own sinfulness and inability to overcome it, there’s no desire to ask anyone for forgiveness. So, first and foremost, we have to accept and “own” our sinful nature as being against God and we have to want to change it, to do T’Shuvah. Then, and only then, will our request for forgiveness through Yeshua’s sacrificial death on our behalf, be honest.

Next, accept that the truth that God’s will is for us to live as He said we should, which is defined and outlined in the Torah. Yeshua taught nothing but what is in the Torah- He respected it, He observed it perfectly, and he taught others to do so. He never, never, never taught anything against or outside the Torah. What really happened is God gave the Torah to Moses, the people added too many rules and regulations on their own and when Yeshua came to earth to teach the truth, He upset the “religious” authority by telling people that it is God’s authority that counts. We were only looking at the words of the Torah, and Yeshua taught us the spirit of the Torah. And He was all about the Torah and all about God.

If you want to  worship God in a way that will please God, then doesn’t it just make sense to worship God as He said to worship Him? To live your life in the manner He said to live it?

Duh!