Jacob returns to his homeland and hears that Esau is coming to meet him, with 400 armed men. splits his camp, then sends gifts from his flocks, a bunch at a time, to his brother in order to try to appease his anger. But what is important to note is
Jacob leaves his home, travels to his Uncle Laban and while living there gains his wives and all his children except Benjamin. There is strife between them, though, as Jacob’s flocks get healthy and large while Laban’s grow weaker. Jacob leaves secretly and Laban goes after him to recover his
With the Christmas season already upon us (thanks to advertisers) there is a lot of “chatter” on Face Book regarding the pagan origins of this holiday (‘holiday’ meaning man-made, whereas ‘holy day’ is God-ordained) and how Constantine used it to bring the pagan Romans under the Christian banner, so to
Yeshua (Jesus) taught from the Torah, which was very familiar to the Jews in the First Century, so why is it, then, that we are constantly told no one understood His messages? Even the Apostles, His closest friends and followers, had to ask for an explanation. Perhaps it was because
A wonderful movement in Christianity that is gaining momentum is the Hebrew Roots movement. Basically, this is made up of Christians (mostly Gentiles) who are discovering the roots of their faith, the “real” Jesus (Yeshua) and the truth that the Torah has not been done away with, but is still
In the Parashah Toldot, Jacob offers to buy Esau’s birthright for a bowl of lentil stew, and Esau agrees. So, nu? Who did wrong? Was it Jacob for trying to buy his brother’s birthright, or was it Esau for selling it? And what could this mean to us regarding our
We all know the story of Jacob stealing the blessing from his brother, Esau. But…did he really steal it?
This time of the year people are all focused on the birth of Messiah, but His birth is not the thing we should really care about. We aren’t saved by His birth, and we aren’t saved by His death, either. What we are saved by is the resurrection, which proves
How can we be resurrected before we die? Maybe what is being resurrected isn’t our body, but something else within us.
In this parashah both Sarah and Abraham come to their deaths, and Isaac gets a wife. Abraham has told his servant to make sure that his son never goes back to the place where they came from, and this theme is repeated throughout the bible. What’s so bad about going
