Tag: Truth

Can You Do this One Thing for God?

If you knew there was something you were supposed to do for God, would you do it?

Imagine being at the crucifixion. Imagine being one of the disciples and witnessing the greatest Teacher of all time, the One to restore Israel, being murdered innocently by the overwhelming Roman Empire. Imagine watching your own countrymen defy their own laws to get Him crucified. Imagine hearing the cheers and jeers while watching. How helpless would you feel?

Did you know there is an annual holiday for being helpless that is part of the prophecy for the Messiah? Did you know that we’re supposed to be keeping this holiday?

When considerable time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous, since even the fast was already over, Paul started admonishing them, saying to them, “Men, I perceive that the voyage will certainly be with damage and great loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.” (Act 27:9-10)

The author of Acts, whom we believe to be Luke, referenced the change of seasons by using the Day of Atonement. The seas were changing because the planet was entering fall and that’s when seas got rough over there. Acts 27 is about Paul’s journey to Rome which occurred about 60 AD and was then recorded later. This casual reference three decades after Yeshua’s death and resurrection proves the Apostles continued to observe this day and intended for all who read Acts to be doing the same. This day starts at sunset, September 24th and ends Monday, September 25th at sunset this year. If you look outside here in the Kansas City Metro, you can see the seasons changing and the corn being harvested. Right on time.

One can fast for the faith pretty much whenever. But once a year, we are all supposed to fast. In reality, it’s deeper than that. It’s a day to humble our souls and fasting is part of that humbling. There are many ways to think about it, but it’s a day when we refuse food and water for 24 whole hours, from sunset to sunset, and effectively show how helpless we are. We need God to provide food and water for us to survive. We need Him to provide air to breathe as well. We are incapable of sustaining ourselves at all, let alone save ourselves from he wrath to come.

Many people, in fact almost all of Christianity, look at the faith of the Old Testament as a works based salvation. This day dispels that myth completely. This day shows that we literally must do nothing to be saved. Remember that helplessness I mentioned above? We are commanded to do exactly nothing so that someone else can atone for our sins. This, brothers and sisters, is from the Torah, the Old Testament, from long before Yeshua. Yeshua’s death shows us a fuller meaning of this day.

The Day of Atonement aka Yom Kippur aka the fast is also supremely impactful because everyone must do exactly the same nothing at the same time. This shows how we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory. It’s a leveling of the playing field, showing that rich or poor, royalty or commoner, we all must fast and humble our souls or be removed from the Kingdom of God.

Everyone does the same humbling but the High Priest had work to do in temple days. The High Priest had to do extra purification work and then offer sacrifices for himself and then for the people. The book of Hebrews speaks of this in great detail and shows how Yeshua’s sacrifice fulfills Yom Kippur as well as Passover. We have a High Priest that willingly died sinless in order to mediate between us and Yahweh. Observing the fast shows our appreciation for that sacrifice.

Humbling ourselves also includes calling to mind our sins and shortcomings and repenting. The Day of Atonement was specifically to cleanse Israel of sins year by year. While Yeshua’s sacrifice accomplished this task once for all time, looking forward and looking backward, we still need to honor the day and call to mind our sins, as is evidenced by the verse on the screen. Judaism has a liturgy on Yom Kippur publicly confessing everything one can think of. Please do not wait for Yom Kippur to confess your sins. Prepare over these next few days. Reflect on your past year, or, if this is your first time, your entire life. Realize when you have wronged others and sinned against Yahweh. One sin we in the west don’t realize is idolatry, which is alive and well but masked behind a Christian veil. I will speak of this at length on Shabbat this week. Remember, the Torah tells us what sin is, so we study the Torah to live properly and understand where we have fallen short.

Yom Kippur is a day for the forgiveness of sins committed in ignorance as well. This is a remarkable blessing because as we learn the Bible, we continually learn sins we didn’t know of before. For teachers, we also sin when we teach incorrectly. Before we know things fully, we can often steer people wrong. This is very bad, but those are sins committed in ignorance.

On this note, we all must remember to be humble throughout the year and to be teachable. When Yeshua came the first time, the folks who had the hardest time accepting Him were those who thought they had their doctrine figured out completely. He told us specifically to come to the Kingdom like children, innocent and ready to learn from our Master the way a child looks to His parents. The knowledge of the fast is very powerful and impactful, please receive this information like a child. Investigate and understand that if Yeshua could die for us, then we can surely go 24 hours without food and water, abstain from all work, and get together in His Name one day a year. Remember, the disciples were told Yeshua was going to die, watched it, heard Him cry out scripture on the cross, and didn’t understand it until He was resurrected and then explained it to them. The author of Hebrews was obviously an educated Jew who had to be able to learn new information, like how Yeshua is now the High Priest sitting at the right hand of God. These examples of some of the most blessed people in history being teachable is an example for us all. Being able to accept new information is difficult, especially when one was raised to believe things a particular way. So our example from the disciples turned apostles is that we must be strong in our faith, but not so strong that the Messiah or His Father cannot show us a fuller understanding.

I will close with the question again. Can you do this one thing? Can you humble yourself for 24 hours to show your love of Yahweh and Yeshua? Can you?

Enter the Kingdom of God While the Gates are Still Open!

What signs should really warn us of the return of the Messiah and the end of the age? Can mankind reverse the decline we are on and how would that be achieved? Is it still possible to repent and join the family of God? Click here to find out!

The Aleph and the Tav

Explaining the myth versus the truth of the doctrines about the Aleph and the Tav. For more on myths versus truths, please watch the message here Myths versus Truth – (firstcenturychristianity.net)

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Myths versus Truth

A message about the myths that circulate the commandment keeping Christians such as Messianic, Hebrew Roots, and Sacred Name Movement folks.

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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.  

Truth is Truth

Truth is ready to be discovered if we trust the Spirit and are willing to break away from credal Christianity.

We must challenge the doctrines of men.

Did you know there is a controversy over who discovered mechanical flight first? Being Americans, we naturally know that the Wright Brothers were the first to fly an airplane. But between 1895 and 1906, there are several people who claim to have conducted the first manned flight. And guess what? Many of them are correct. These people did fly something, and in their regions, they were the first to do it. These people were not stealing ideas from each other and claiming credit, they figured it out about the same time and before new could travel fast, if at all.

The reason I bring this up is to illustrate how truth is simply truth. Mankind had wanted to build a flying machine for hundreds of years. Gliders and hot air balloons were a reality, so we knew it was possible to get up there and possible for the air-plane to work. An airplane is called this because its body and wings form a geometric plane on which the craft glides on the air. It compresses the air beneath it to give it rigidity. It’s similar to surfing and you feel this when trying to move a board in a strong wind. With enough thrust, the glide becomes a flight. As technology progressed where we had strong yet light enough materials coupled with the internal combustion engine and some propeller or propellers, it became a real possibility. And many men (and likely women) realized how to get it done at the same time. Because knowledge, technology, and resources all came together at the same time. This illustrates how truth is discovered and is simply “true”. This is only one example among a great many where different, and isolated, people have made scientific or engineering discoveries at nearly the same time because they had the means to discover truth at similar times. It even happens on a grand scale. Continental drift was discovered in a similar fashion, where people operating telescope observatories on different parts of the globe realized their observatories were actually moving. They anticipated their platforms to be perfectly still but the math didn’t add up. Air travel figures into this, too, as many pilots had the opportunity to see the coastlines of Europe and North America and realized they could fit together as a puzzle. Submarine captains were also realizing something similar. Somebody put all this together to realize that the surface of our planet is not stationary. And this is quite recent as well, hence the plane and submarine references.

The amount of people who have come to the knowledge of the truth of scripture in the last twenty years is astonishing. This is how we start our walk. Arriving at the truth is an inevitability if we let the words say what they say. But what’s happening now is different from the historical changes in doctrine. I often mused that if someone who was educated but completely isolated from religion ever read the bible, they would come to something similar to what we do. I imagined that perhaps someone from a godless, communist country could get their hands on a bible, any bible, and just read it, they would not come up with the doctrines of mainstream Christianity but their worship would look very similar to ours. I understand this has actually happened over time, once even with some people or pirates who got shipwrecked in the Caribbean. They read the bible and started a Christian society that followed the Torah. But for us, something else has to happen. A little different.

Slide 2 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” (Joh 16:13)

This is literally about prophecy but it applies to our walk. The context is that Yeshua was about to be crucified and they would not realize what was happening but after, the Spirit would come and lead them into all truth. But this does apply to us today in a similar manner. It’s absolutely possible for us to read the Bible as a technical manual and apply its truth to our lives in a very academic fashion. But to make the words actually matter, well that takes supernatural power. That takes the Spirit.

Slide 3 And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Messiah Yeshua, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1Co 2:1-5)

Paul had superiority of speech and wisdom and he knew he couldn’t make anyone believe. Paul’s pedigree, intellect, and knowledge surpasses almost all of mankind’s. His faith does, too. And he knew he couldn’t force change. It takes the Spirit to make the change. So take it to heart, brethren, that I can’t make the words meaningful, either. If these messages help you understand the Bible and bring meaning to it, it’s not me doing it. It’s the Spirit. And if these message inspire anyone, let them inspire you to read the Bible and let the Spirit guide you into all truth.

This is why the message is entitle Truth is Truth. We have to have faith that our Bibles are the true Word of God and then place our trust that He will lead us into what we need to know and when we need to know it.  

Slide 4 The Jews then said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find Him? He is not intending to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks, is He?” (Joh 7:35)

We’re still fighting this exclusionary spirit. Yeshua was disliked among the clergy of His day because He was not beholden to them for His knowledge or for His authority. He challenged their doctrines by means of His mere existence and one educated in Torah and all things related to Israel. They kept testing Him because they wanted to put Him into a box. If He believed in resurrection, He had to be a Pharisee. If he didn’t follow traditions of the elders, He had to be a Sadducee. And on and on. They wanted to put Him into a box so they could control Him. And they were terrified of Him teaching the Greeks (which means us). They wanted special, compartmentalized knowledge and control. He wanted to save all mankind.

Slide 5 Enter Credal Christianity

For the first 150 or so years of Christianity, aka The Way, aka, the Faith Once Delivered, we had that freedom. What’s really unusual is that we had that freedom in the synagogues. That’s where the Jews worship, dontcha know? And that’s where the faith started. Paul went right into the synagogues to teach Yeshua and Him crucified, challenging the clergy right to their faces. And it took a while for him to be expelled. The gentile converts also attended synagogue to hear Torah, as recorded in Acts 15. When the Jews finally had enough, the faith grew independent of central leadership. Until the Nicene council. Which I spoke of in my recent podcast about how God is not a Trinity.

Having a creed, or statement of beliefs, is almost a requirement. We had to have a statement to get the 501c3. So what happened after the first creed went into place? It grew. And then came the edicts. Over time, the faith became bloated with rules and rulings and it very quickly turned into a form of Rabbinic Judaism, where men became the gatekeepers of all dogma. But, worse than Judaism, these clergy men made themselves out to be the arbiters of salvation. If you didn’t agree to the creeds and dictates of the church, then you were excommunicated, which meant you lost your salvation. Worse, if you still didn’t shut up, they would kill you outright.

But if their doctrines were true, then why did they need to be enforced by, well, force? And this gets to the core of faith. Yahweh sent His Son to die so that mankind could have a shot at salvation – a shot at living with Him and His Son for eternity. It’s an invitation. What is the goal of trying to force this on anyone? If Yahweh wanted to force the issue, isn’t He powerful enough to do so?

Then we get to the reformation, but that didn’t pan out the way it should have, either. The believers did throw out the Catholic dogma, well some of it, but then they kept a lot and kept the church governance. Luther started Lutheranism. Calvin started Calvinism. And on and on. The Geneva bible is printed, which was great. It is the precursor to what we carry today. Small and cheap so each family could have one. But then you had men interpreting what things meant, so they didn’t get rid of Sunday worship, they kept the pork, they kept a lot of the pagan stuff. They became Catholic-light.

Slide 6 The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men. (Act 17:10-12)

Here we have Paul going into the synagogue in Berea and challenging the doctrines of the day. What did the people do? They searched the scriptures. And I bet those scriptures were the LXX in Greek. And they challenged their long held beliefs. Paul convinced them to check it out.

Today, we all have the scriptures. In every language. And we have reference material galore. And we can see the LXX and the MT. We can go nuts with this stuff. But you have a bible. If you don’t and need one, let me know and I’ll send one. An NASB, which is a modern, literal, translation not some special thing that fits my doctrine. Don’t be afraid to challenge doctrines. If they are true, then they will pass the test and be retained. If they are false, then adjustment is required. But there’s a third option that many find too uncomfortable to accept. It’s a little known place called “I don’t know”. If the doctrine is true, then it’s true. If it’s false, then it’s false. Even if you don’t have a better option. I don’t know is a fine place to be.

But just know that truth is truth. And if you are meant to find it, you will. If you trust Yahweh, Yeshua, and their Ruach, the Spirit, to guide you!