Tag: Babylon

Prophetic messages that reference or define Babylon which can be a literal ancient kingdom or a present or future realm which believers must exit either literally or metaphorically.

Paganism in Christianity

It really boils down to a binary choice: Are we going to worship the God of the Bible or not? And if you want to know who the harlot of Revelation is, start here.

These notes do not do this message justice. Please watch the video for undeniable proof about the paganism in Christianity.

Refresh where we’ve been. Studying the Torah. It’s clear as can be that God forbids us from making up our own ways of worshiping Him and he has explicitly told us not to worship the ways of the nations. Yom Kippur starts just 24 hours from now. This is the time to talk about repenting of sins. Often time we focus on the “love your neighbor” type sins that we need to repent of. This is a great topic, but I want to talk about the “love God with all your heart” sins today. We learn that the Day of Atonement includes sins committed in ignorance. Well, the paganism inside of Christianity contains an incredible amount of sins committed in ignorance. After today, though, you won’t be ignorant any more.

Slide 2 For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen; these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. “You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all. (Act 19:24-26)

The disciples were preaching against idolatry. They were not Christianizing pagan practices.  This topic is the one that got me out of mainstream Christianity. Once I accepted that the biggest doctrines of Christianity of Sunday, Christmas, crosses, and Easter were not founded on scripture, I dove into a period of study to find out where they came from. In reality, I was trying desperately to find a way for those doctrines to be true. I was desperate to find some mechanism for what I was learning to be wrong. Because if it were true, then all of my ancestors, relatives, and friends were in deep error. The word for blending religious practices is syncretism but in the bible, it’s called harlotry or adultery.

The reason this is important is because it is THE sin that Israel kept committing over and over. We just finished a year of deep diving into Torah. What topic was addressed more than any other? That’s right, worshiping other gods or blending pagan worship with worship of the true God. This sin did not stop being a sin after Yeshua died. In fact, this sin defines God’s people all the way to the end of this age.

Slide 3 After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; BECAUSE HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and HE HAS AVENGED THE BLOOD OF HIS BOND-SERVANTS ON HER.” (Rev 19:1-2)

The great harlot. Yes, this includes sexual immorality but it is talking more about paganism. The end time bad guy is the great harlot. That means idolatry, worshiping false gods, and taking Yahweh’s Name in vain are the big sins of the end times. They were the big sins when Abraham lived, the big sins when Moses lived, the big sins when Israel got smote, Israel refused these sins after they came back from captivity, we see the Apostles going all over the earth preaching against false gods, and then the end times judgment is about false god worship. This all adds up to spiritual harlotry, or syncretism, being a very big sin whenever you live.

Slide 4 Pat Robertson video

Pat Robertson and that lady are very popular Protestant ministers. Tens of millions of people follow these people and others like them. For them to be so open about this is shocking. The big reason I put this video up is to show that they actually know all the things I’m teaching today. And they don’t care. Idolatry is wrong. It’s the sin that Yahweh destroyed Israel for over and over. He loathed it, and He forbade any blending whatsoever. It’s a strange idea to say that Yahweh killed all the idolators of Egypt and Canaan, then punished Israel for doing it by killing them, and then all of a sudden it’s OK in the New Testament. That would be a God of confusion, whom Yahweh is not. We know from Acts that they preached against idolatry to the point that the merchants thought the world would turn from it. We need to stick with that. We need to get this stuff out of our lives.

Slide 5 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to YHVH.” So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. (Exo 32:1-6)

This is specifically the blending that is forbidden. Nobody is allowed to make up how they worship Yahweh. None of us get to make that decision. Aaron was left in charge of the nation and folded, quickly, too. This is the huge warning against clergy blending things, it’s simply a death penalty sin. Many people were executed for this right then and there. They named the calf YHVH and made up a day for worship that included celebratory practices. This is all of the bad stuff wrapped up in one. Their celebratory practices included lewd behavior so the net result was similar to Saturnalia, a multi-day wintertime celebration by pagans that included debauchery, and treated December 25 and January 1 as holy days. Pat Robertson acknowledged that clergy decided to Christianize that, which is completely forbidden and why we do what we do. And Christianity’s acceptance of these practices is a cause of the end time harlotry. Those who know better are not telling their flocks the truth.

Slide 6 Ankh and Crosses It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured; and the veil of the temple was torn in two. (Luk 23:44-45)

Rome crucified people to show they were in charge. The excruciating public execution was meant to teach a lesson. Often people were crucified at the entrance of a city so all coming and going had to be reminded of who was in charge. There’s one instance where 1000 people were crucified at the same time to crush a rebellion and show the world what happens if you defy Rome. In this literal sense, it’s bizarre that the cross became a symbol of anything holy. But in a religious sense, crosses are a symbol of sun worship and have been since Egypt, hence the ankh on the picture. Do we think Yahweh want’s us to use an Egyptian religious icon in our worship of Him? Rhetorical question.

Crosses are a symbol of religions that Yahweh commanded His people to avoid and destroy. The cross is how the Messiah was executed for a couple of reasons, one being that’s how non-Romans were executed by Rome. It showed He was not Roman and served its gruesome purpose, but who would ever use the instrument of murder to memorialize someone? At the reformation, many protestant faiths took those things down but they keep coming back. We don’t use these because they are pagan and for a bunch of other reasons.

Yeshua being killed on the symbol of a sun god was a huge insult. The sun going dark when He died showed that sun god did not win but the sun, the moon, and the stars are under Yahweh and Yeshua’s authority. But now you know a little why you don’t see any crosses around here!

Slide 7 And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.

(Act 12:4 KJV)

When he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people. (Act 12:4 NAS95)

Easter is also pagan. The first thing I want to show you is the remarkable syncretism that found it’s way into the KJV, the most popular Bible ever. The Greek word behind Easter is Pascha, which is the same as paschal lamb. There is ZERO doubt this is supposed to be Passover. Easter is a day for the pagan Goddess Eostre!

Slide 8 more Easter. This one is everywhere. Fertility goddess. Yes, Starbucks logo is a fertility goddess and they know it.

Slide 9 Sun Day

This is a sermon all by itself, but Sunday worship isn’t just an invented day to replace the Sabbath. Sol Invictus was one of the gods in the Roman empire that became the god of the Roman empire in the second and third centuries. Christmas traces to this god as well as Sunday worship. You may not realize it, but our days of the week and even some of our months are named after Roman gods. Sun-day is exactly that, the day of worshiping the sun god. Saturday is Saturn day, and so on. Rome hated the Jews and the Jews were known by Shabbat. No working, resting, no commerce from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. The Romans wanted this gone. Christians were forced to give up the Sabbath when Christianity became the Roman religion, but it wasn’t really Christianity. It was a mixed up faith that all the Roman regions could adopt. And they worshiped on Sunday, not Shabbat. So Shabbat was banned, first by clergy and then by civil law. There are numerous quotes from both Catholics and Protestants about the change. The Catholics brazenly claim to have switched the day of worship and brag that the Protestants follow them. And they are correct. Sunday worship is 100% pagan, unless it’s Pentecost Sunday or some other high day. The Bible only sanctifies Shabbat.

Slide 10 Repent

This is a ton of information and just skims the top a bit. Many of us got into this faith of keeping the commandments because we discovered just one of these items was a huge error and then we unraveled all of it. When people discover this, their faith is often shaken and they go through a period of study that can last years. I was one of those types. You have to come to a point, though, about whether you will obey and turn from this wickedness or not. As I showed earlier, classically trained ministers know what we teach and they simply do not care. They somehow conclude that it’s OK to allow idolatry and syncretism even though the bible and history say no. It’s not even close to a grey area. We are not supposed to do any of these things at all, let alone in the Name of Yahweh.

Abraham was the first Hebrew. The word Hebrew means “one from beyond” but can also mean to cross over. Abraham crossed over from idolatry to worship of Yahweh. Crossing the Red Sea and then the Jordan also symbolizes this. After the faith went forth from Zion in the first century, people are invited to become as Abraham all over the world. We are invited to cross over from idolatry to worshiping the trued God. Take the invite.

As we prepare for Yom Kippur, let’s call to mind all of our sins. Today’s message was new information to some of you but old hat to others. I have some books on order to share that will educate everyone on the details of this wickedness. But I wanted to put this out just before Yom Kippur so we can repent comprehensively. Shalom.

Pray for Babylon

Exploring the different applications of the word “Babylon”, speculation about the end time Babylon, and how we are to come out of her today.

Audio only below. Audio with slides above.

Slide 2 And I saw another angel flying in midheaven with an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation, tribe, language, and people; and he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth, and sea and springs of waters.” And another angel, a second one, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”(Rev 14:6-8)

When I got into the faith once delivered, there was no doubt the end time Babylon was the Roman Catholic Church. This was universally accepted as fitting the verses in the book of Revelation. We can be quite certain John wasn’t talking about literal Babylon in the book of Revelation. That was a real place in those days, in Persia, and Peter wrote to the believers there. These believers would be Jews who did not come back from the exile hundreds of years prior that the apostles went and preached Yeshua to. Babylon at that time was not powerful enough to do much except hope Rome didn’t decide to expand that far. There’s no way John was talking about contemporary Babylon in the book of Revelation.

For hundreds of years people have been convinced the Roman Catholic Church was the Babylon of Revelation because it fit, to a degree, if you were a protestant. It came out of the Roman empire and continues the pagan practices that Rome brought into Christianity to this day. It is still the largest Christian denomination, practicing pagan rituals in plain sight, but it’s a shadow of what it was before the reformation. In fact, it’s a shadow of what it was just 50 years ago. In the US, it doesn’t even enforce its own doctrines.

Scripture can have different levels of meaning beyond the literal. The word Babylon is a great example of this. After the flood, the people tried to make a tower so tall that Yahweh would not be able to drown everyone again. That’s a pretty interesting psyche there. You can have the tower to survive the flood, but what will you eat? Oh, and I’m sure the people building that tower all thought they would be allowed on it if it should ever rain again, not just their leaders. 😊 The world had one language at that time so Yahweh confused the languages and scattered the people to effectively set technology and cooperation back due to their actions. Then He called the place Babylon, which means confusion. He confused their languages. The word Babylon, from inception, had more than one meaning – a place, and confusion.

It has come to have more meanings. When there’s a system or government that thinks it is out of reach of the Most High, just like those at the tower of Babylon, you have Babylon. Another usage is the mixing of religious practices, which is technically called synctretism, and is biblically called harlotry, can also be associated with Babylon. The Persian Empire, headquartered in literal Babylon, purposely mixed up religious practices and cultures in order to dilute any individual culture and to assimilate everyone. When they took Jerusalem captive, their intention was to do this to the Jews. The Greeks tried the same thing after the return from Babylon. And the Romans tried the same exact thing in AD 70. In all these schemes, the evil invaders want to erase the faith of Yahweh from the earth and replace it with polytheism, idolatry, and even satanism. When Rome converted to Christianity, this is what the priests did. They blended in the pagan practices all over the world into Christianity which is why the statue of Apollo in Rome is called Peter, the birthday of Mithra is now called Christmas, the worship of the pagan goddess Diana aka Astarte is now called Easter, polytheism is now called the Trinity, and the worship of a woman and child is associated with Mary. These practices are also associated with Babylon because the word means confusion and these mixed up systems are a mess of confusion.

In Revelation, if John was talking about a literal place being Babylon in his day in the book of Revelation, it was very likely literal Rome. That was the city that ruled the known world and was the seat of all uncleanness. The world’s economy depended on Rome and when it fell, it absolutely did throw the world into economic chaos. No longer could ships sail their cargoes unimpeded pretty much wherever they wanted to go, if they just had that Roman flag on their masts.

Slide 3 “This is what Yahweh of armies, the Elohim of Israel, says to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. ‘Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may give birth to sons and daughters; and grow in numbers there and do not decrease. ‘Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHVH in its behalf; for in its prosperity will be your prosperity.’” (Jer 29:4-7)

Here’s the part about praying for Babylon but it’s phrased as seeking the prosperity of the city where they were sent.

Jeremiah is being quite literal here. I’ve gone back in time to talk about the captivity in Babylon to show a point. Judea had been sacked, Jerusalem is in ruins, and the Jews were largely carried off to literal Babylon. They were carried off by their enemies and became exiles and even captives in a far off land. They could have looked at this predicament as an opportunity to launch a guerilla warfare campaign or resist some other way, but Yahweh, through Jeremiah, said “no, you’re there for a reason and you will come out in due time. Make lives for yourselves.” The Jews were allowed to retain their identity in Babylon, with some even becoming government officials. In fact, Yahweh used the power of the Babylonian government to restore and rebuild Judea through Nehemiah and Ezra. Their mission for the time in Babylon was to exist, procreate, and make lives for themselves. They were not to try and escape, make their own Torah compounds, or try to overthrow the government that took them captive, but to understand their predicament was part of a much large plan Yahweh had for them.

How do we apply this principle today? The Babylon in Revelation is something that we understand exists in the end of days. The context of Revelation pretty much requires this to be something future, even though it has past applications. We can spend a lot of time speculating on this, as many have done in the past. Today, it doesn’t look like mainstream Christianity in any form has the power to be something like this Babylon. The Roman Catholic Church is a shadow of its former self and its adherents completely ignore the tenets of their faith without consequence. Almost all the Catholic politicians who go on television with ashes on their forehead after Ash Wednesday are in favor of abortion, a reprehensible practice that is against Catholicism, and nothing happens to them. So we can know that the Catholic church is effectively neutered in the public square. This is in stark contrast to days of old when kings had to ask the Pope’s permission to invade countries and such. Articles have been written that we live in a post-Christian world because the rest of Christianity has sadly diminished in influence to the point of being just another lobbying group here in the US. In Europe it sounds even worse. This is sad and a topic for another day but it’s hard to imagine Babylon being a religious authority in a world that has shunned religion almost wholesale.

In my view, the end time Babylon system probably has something to do with government. In our system of government, the government is supposed to represent the people. The present national government does not. Our state governments often do represent the people and some states are pushing back hard against the debauchery. Our little congregation is a 501c3 so we cannot endorse specific candidates, but we absolutely can lobby for issues. Freedom of religion, assembly, education, against abortion, and other issues are founded in religious institutions. The right to an education is rooted in the ability for people to understand the bible, which is derived from our nation’s protestant Christian founding. The right to be born seems God-given and not even need defending. But our national government is almost completely out of control and constrained by pretty much nothing at this point. It’s corrupt and justice is not equally meted out. People have different rules based on their political affiliation and station in life, which is most ironic because this country was founded to crush such systems. Here, though, we still can have a voice and can still matter. We can unite with other Christians to support issues and traditional values, if we so choose. This is not a requirement by any means.

There’s another place the Babylonian system can be, or be part of, today. Corporations and the economy are rife with Babylonian, and even hedonistic, practices. Large companies and athletic organizations operate in almost instant concert to push satanic and abominable practices in our faces. This is apart from government and happening at breakneck speed. These companies are literally evangelizing for the Adversary now. Target’s recent abominable issue where they put children’s swimsuits in their stores for “trans kids” is just disgusting and the designer of this is an avowed Satanist. What happened with the LA Dodgers having trans men show up as nuns and be honored is disgusting and dismaying. The phrase “Sodom and Gomorrah” is actually trending on Twitter, which is quite remarkable when we realize how far removed we are from being the Christian nation we used to be. In this realm we have a voice because we can choose where to shop, but the choices to get stuff from minimally non-political companies are getting scarce.

When the Jews were carried off to literal Babylon, they knew it would be exactly 70 years until they were restored. The end-time Babylon is a rather global power that survives until the return of the Messiah. Is there some time marker for this? I think so.

Slide 4 For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; (Rom 11:25)

This is kind of an obscure verse where Paul uses the phrase “the fullness of the gentiles”. Paul writes this to the congregation at Rome which comprised both those Jewish by birth and the gentiles who were grafted in. He’s writing to articulate a balance and this bit comes right after he says that gentile believers in Messiah are grafted in, we are part of the commonwealth of Israel through the blood of Yeshua. Paul goes on:

Slide 5 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:2)

We who are grafted in have a mission to be in the world but not conformed to it. The hope for us today is that regular people are waking up because of the Babylonian debauchery that we are being soaked in. People have had it and maybe that’s the fullness of the gentiles, when people have had it to the point that they repent and return, or turn, to Yahweh and His Son. And we need to be here to help them as this happens. So let’s pray for as many as possible to wake up and depart from Babylon. Shalom.

Everybody is Wrong… Except Me

The third stage of coming out of Babylon results in a period where you think you’re the only one in the world who can see the truth. That’s not the case, and this message is intended to let you know you’re not alone. I also include some tips for avoiding some doctrinal pitfalls on your walk.

Everybody is wrong… except me. 

There are stages to coming out of Babylon. Well, we can call them stages, but it is different for everyone. The first is simply hearing the call. Whether you’ve been in a Christian denomination your whole life and realize some grievous error or you decide to pick up a bible the first time and start seeing that mainstream Christianity doesn’t line up to the WORD, just getting on the path is the first step. 

The second step is normally pretty long. Years long. For those on this path, it’s generally about four years of independent study. It’s not like step one ends, and step two begins, mind you. This step is indistinguishable from step 1. You started, and now you’re going to finish. But you don’t even know what finished looks like. We start with reading the bible from cover to cover, any translation will do (NASB is preferred), and then you realize you’ve been at it for a long time. You seek out other translations and start to use Strong’s numbers or other translations. For me, I spent a lot of time trying to prove the false doctrines to be true. I did not want my family to be so wrong. I did not want the majority of mankind to have steered so wrong. So I studied and studied, trying desperately to find some magic verse or philosophy to effectively all of what I had just learned about the bible and the faith once delivered. Toward the end of stage two, folks often become like the title of today’s message. Everybody is wrong but me. And we think we’ve lost our minds. There are enormous denominations that have taught millions, if not billions, of people things completely contrary to the bible and only we seem to see it. And we see it so clearly that we start trying to convince others, which very seldom works. 

Then we enter a period where we look for fellowship. Surely there have to be others out there like me. Surely others have figured this all out, too. And with the fellowship comes new teachings. When I came to this, the internet was a pretty new thing, and finding fellowship or other resources was difficult. I started my path somewhere around 1999 or 2000. The internet was a lot more pure back then. Having a website or an online presence was much more difficult; almost all of it was in print, not podcasts and videos. The benefit of that was that there weren’t so many crazy doctrines out there. We had to spend time learning, and that time often meant reading actual books, not listening to videos from who knows who. Today, it’s a complete deluge of information. And there are a lot of strange teachings out there that have taken on a life of their own. It’s surreal because we all got into this looking for the truth, and it’s quite possible to end up in a worse state than when we started by adopting strange teachings because the speaker used Hebrew words once in a while. So here’s a little guide to navigating stage three – looking for fellowship and using online resources: 

The first thing is that to get here, you have to have read the bible cover to cover at least once. You’ve probably done it a couple of times and know a lot more than most ministers by this stage. The Ruach ha Kodesh, the Holy Spirit, brought you through, so keep trusting the Spirit and you know knowledge. If you hear something odd, or something that seems contrary to the Bible, then it probably warrants investigation.  

There are a number of buckets that doctrine belongs in. The amount of things in these buckets changes over time. Let’s name the buckets: 

Truth or Fact – these are the things that are 100% established by the Bible and aren’t going to change. The commandments go here. The state of the dead and resurrections go here. That Yeshua is the Messiah and Yahweh is the Father go here. These are concrete, proven, indisputable things. 

The “I think” bucket. You’re going to have some ideas you believe but can’t prove. Everybody does. Even Paul wrote that he gave his opinion a time or two. Just be sure when you talk about these things that you label them as “I think” not “thus saith Yahweh”. A red flag warning is if you hear someone teaching something you know can’t be proven as fact. Be willing to challenge folks and ask how they got to those points. 

The “people say” bucket. These are points where there are settled opinions but they could go either way. You probably have a strong opinion on them and have settled into your belief system, but you still acknowledge the other side’s stance. Being able to do this is the sign of a mature believer, by the way. When to start the count for Shavuot falls into this bucket. 

The “I don’t know” bucket. You have to have one of these. If your minister never says, “I don’t know,” that’s a red flag warning. Frankly, there are things in scripture that may never make sense. It could be a translation issue, or we lack some piece of information that the original authors had. You’re “I don’t know” bucket will probably change over time. Mine has gotten smaller and bigger. 

When I was combing through things in online forums back in the day, I was flooded by doctrines. These were the doctrines of traditional Christianity.  Things like pacifism, apostolic succession, once saved, always saved, pan millennialism, and the like. I came up with an ad hoc system to sift through these things that I called “extreme fundamentalism.” Remember how I said you had to have gotten through the Bible at least once to get this far? Well, I had been through at least twice when I decided to venture out into the world, so I had a pretty good handle on what was biblical and what wasn’t. What I didn’t have was a ton of time to study each doctrine out so I implemented my homemade system to see if something was worth my time. For something to pass the test, it had to not contradict the main themes of the Bible. That’s the fundamental part. It had to jive with what the bible said or I moved on to step two. Step two was to take the concept to its logical conclusion, the extreme position, and see if it still made sense and didn’t contradict the Bible. So when people told me that the Sabbath was done away with, well, it wasn’t. The Bible never says this, and the commandments can’t change. So that was out. Then, if someone told me that apostolic succession was required, meaning each preacher in the NT had to be able to trace their authority back to Peter, well, that made no sense in the extreme because it would nullify the power of the Holy Spirit.  

Today, though, people coming to the truth have a far harder path navigating doctrines than 20 years ago. Frankly, it’s the wild west out there. The internet is a double-edged sword and that puts good teaching on the same footing as bad. In fact, the bad tends to be intriguing and different, so the bad gets more attention than the boring truth. So here are a couple of things that I will offer up so you don’t waste your time, but they are big in our movement: 

Paleo-Hebrew is a waste of time. I’ve spent more time on this than I care to admit. This is the pictographic Hebrew that is the precursor to the Ivri script. A brief lesson, the Hebrew script used today is called the Ashuri script. It’s very, very old, dating to the fall of the first temple. If you look at Strong’s, this is the script you will see today. The one before that, which was in use in the first century as well, is the Ivri script. There is no Torah written in this but fragments from Qumran. The one before that was hieroglyphics or pictograms. These pictograms represented sounds. Some will take the pictograms and make entire stories up about what words mean based on 21st-century characteristics of the images pictured. These stories will have nothing to do with the actual context of the word. While Hebrew characters definitely do trace back to pictograms, there is no value at all in trying to glean some biblical meaning by taking words apart. You are best to leave the words in context and also to understand real Hebrew and the meanings of the words.   

Gematria is neat when it works but also not much benefit. Hebrew letters each have a numeric value. So one adds up the value of each letter of a word and tries to find an association. Perhaps another word has the same sum, or you come up with a biblical number like 40, 7, or 8, and you can make some association. There isn’t a rule for what goes where here, so it’s just interesting and nifty when you see something, but it’s not something one should spend time on. You’re better off reading the words in context and trying to understand the real Hebrew meanings of words.  

Chiastic structures are really fun when you see them, but also not a lot of value unless you’re in your second or third decade of study. Chiastic structures are when a verse is kind of a hinge point, and the next verse up matches the verse below, then the second one up matches or associates with the second one below. These are real things, and the pattern is all over the Tanakh (old testament), but again they are just nifty. It’s best to just read the words in context trying to understand the real Hebrew meanings.  

White fire and black fire is just silly. This is the idea that the spaces on a Torah scroll have meaning. It goes further than that, but there are actual people out there trying to glean information from the part of the paper that has no ink in it. I kid you not. 

The canon of scripture, the Apocrypha, and the pseudepigrapha works. You may be wondering what I just said, which is actually good. The canon of scripture is the 66 book bible. That’s your absolute foundation. And that’s plenty of information for a lifetime of study. But some want to add to those 66 books, which is what the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha books are. Apocrypha means  

These are some examples of doctrines or concepts that would be easy to get caught in and taken down bad paths. Trust me, been there, done that. These things can be more than a nuisance and time waster. They can be used to put bad doctrine into play, so you need to be careful where you spend your time and what you mentally consume. 

The last thing I want to touch on is using extra-biblical resources. And by this, I mean scholars. One of the things in the “I don’t know” bucket is why there appear to be thousands of people out there who know more about the bible than most people ever will, who know the truth and the true meanings of words, and who write that truth down for us, but will never actually follow what the Bible says. Alas, these folks exist, and they have made commentaries for us. And dictionaries. And concordances. So we use them. Both from the Jewish side and the Christian side. Because it’s impossible to start from scratch and if you’ve read the Bible, it’s pretty easy to see when these folks are out to lunch. So feel free to use the resources and build on other folks’ knowledge. Just understand that they are human beings, not inspired scripture.   

People who know the truth and don’t do it but are scholars… have to use them.  

Life in Babylon

The question comes up often as to how involved we should be in society as Messianic believers. This message shows that we should indeed be involved and the decision to overturn Roe v Wade proves it!

The Torah is a history of the beginning of time through to the edge of entering the promised land and the death of Moses. The ending purpose is to tell Israel how to live once they enter the land. What is often called “the law”, the Torah is actually a lifestyle document. It commands the people how to run their society once they enter the promised land. These instructions include blessings and cursings. Deut 32 tells what will happen when they fail to follow the instructions. Not if but when. The instructions for living outside the land are pretty scarce and quite bad. It’s meant to teach them a lesson, that abandoning Yah’s ways will result in a bad lifestyle and they will year to get it back.

Slide 2 ‘They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation, For a fire is kindled in My anger, And burns to the lowest part of Sheol, And consumes the earth with its yield, And sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. ‘I will heap misfortunes on them; I will use My arrows on them. (Deu 32:21-23)

We are part of Deut 32. We’re “that foolish nation”. These days, I feel God has taken that line to the extreme. Our literal nation has been its most foolish in memory in the last year to 18 months. Paul explains in Romans how this passage pertains to those of the nations, gentiles, who join Israel through the shed blood of Messiah and thus make Israel jealous. So we look to the Torah for our lifestyle, but there’s a problem. We’ve never experienced that lifestyle in full and it hasn’t even been possible since the close of scripture. So how do we live our lives in a Godly manner while coming to the truth in Babylon?

Slide 3 Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile, the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem.) The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, saying, “Thus says YHVH of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, ‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. ‘Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHVH on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.’ (Jer 29:1-7)

The instructions for life in exile come through Jeremiah. What’s unspoken here is, effectively, don’t be revolutionaries. Don’t try to start uprisings and free yourselves. Don’t forgo having children. Live life and have kids. Not only do not be revolutionaries but seek the welfare of the places they were sent. They were sent into exile for lack of belief and they needed to trust that Yahweh would restore them, which had already been prophesied through Isaiah. In fact, Babylon not only remained a power, Yahweh used that power to restore Judea through Nehemiah and Ezra. So Yahweh’s plan, which we can see in arrears, was to use Babylon to restore Judea and to use educated and useful Jews who knew when it was time to return. There was a plan and Jeremiah’s message was part of that plan.

These instructions were for the first exile. Our present circumstances are a little different.

Slide 4 “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.” (Dan 9:25-26)

The return, or end, of this exile is not prophesied in the Tanakh, what we call the Old Testament. The end of this one is prophesied in the New Testament. And this one ends with global destruction, then the return of the risen Messiah and the first resurrection. It’s a much different thing. Which is why the term coined by some “Second Exodus” doesn’t make sense. While there are parallels with the Exodus (which isn’t even called that in the Tanakh), what’s to come is a totally different thing. One could say the return from the Babylonian exile was kind of a second Exodus because they had to make a trek and relearn Torah. But in our present paradigm, people are coming to the knowledge of the truth without respect to ethnicity and wherever we are in the world, which is the purpose of today’s message. We don’t live in the first Babylon, we live in the greater Babylon for lack of a better word. 😊 We are not 70 people living in the USA that will turn into millions and march across the Atlantic ocean and on to the Jerusalem. We are not going to be taught the ten commandments standing at the base of a mountain. Those things were very special and very holy and very much singular events. We are also not Jews who were carried off into a specific country who are waiting to be called to march back to Judea and rebuild. We are not looking for a temple made with hands, brother and sisters. While those events prophecy and inform the future they are not going to be repeated. The Lamb of God has been sacrificed, that’s not going to happen again, and the temple we look for will be the original in shamayim, heaven, the one not built with hands.  

What happened before informs our present. While what will happen in the future is a bit different from the past restoration, we need to look at the instructions given through Jeremiah for how we should live in spiritual Babylon. Yahweh knows how each of us grew up. He knows when He called each of us to The Way. He knows our circumstances so we can trust that He doesn’t want us to isolate ourselves from society and we should participate in the betterment of society and the betterment of ourselves. The Jews in Babylon had a purpose: to exist and wait faithfully for the restoration. Our mission has that component, but also more. We are to prepare ourselves spiritually and preach the gospel, aiding in Yahweh’s calling of people and growing the flock while living in Babylon.

Slide 5 “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” (Joh 17:14-18)

Brothers and sisters, we aren’t sent into the world. We are born in it and come to the truth in it. We have a stake in it. We have to be salt and light. We have to work to better ourselves and our world. The desire to not be in the world is strong in us because we see right and wrong clearly. We don’t belong here. And ultimately we won’t be here. We have confidence in the resurrection of the dead and in the world to come. But we have to live here and we have a big stake in here being the best it can be.

Today is a day of celebration for our nation. 50 years of abortion legalized improperly has come to an end. My lifetime. Half a century. They made it as difficult as possible, including a recent assassination attempt on a judge. 49 years of abortion and then a Jubilee!

And this happened because all who fear God came together on this crucial point. We’ve had countless volunteers, hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless geniuses dedicate themselves to ridding our land of the abominable Roe v. Wade. The best we can hope for on that front is to be able to decide for ourselves through our country’s political systems. There can be no larger example of why we need to be involved in the welfare of Babylon. Yahweh hates sin. Jonah’s example preaching to Nineveh shows this before the New Covenant. Yahweh wants all to repent and come to the knowledge of the truth. The truth that our government never established a right for a baby to be killed in the womb is now established and enshrined by the blessed Clarence Thomas and his God-fearing peers. And guess what? None of those justices keep Shabbat or eat clean. They are opposed personally to Yahweh’s Torah. But they also are installed by Him to protect our rights.

Slide 6 “If, then, I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die; but if none of those things is true of which these men accuse me, no one can hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar.” Then when Festus had conferred with his council, he answered, “You have appealed to Caesar, to Caesar you shall go.” (Act 25:11-12)

The most extreme case of using one’s citizenship to further the kingdom of God is here on the board. Paul was such a unique individual. He was educated in everything and a citizen of both Judea and Rome. And he was called to spread the gospel to the nations, which he does here by forcing to be brought to Rome in chains. He had the ability to get an audience with the most powerful person on earth and he did so, risking his own life. 

We are blessed to live somewhere we can influence the government. This also causes us conflict because we are educated in Torah and know that this land will not be proper until the return of Yeshua. Today, though, let’s celebrate that for 50 years there have been enough God-fearing people in this land to rid the land of the atrocity of Roe v. Wade. Praise Yahweh!