Empowered or Enabled?

April 9, 2015 Leave a comment

Although the definition of these words is very similar, meaning to give someone the ability to do something, the connotation (general usage) is that to empower is to help someone do something beneficial for themselves, and to enable is when we allow someone or support them in doing things harmful to themselves. For instance, we empower people to feel good about their job by paying them a fair wage, and we enable people to hurt themselves when we give money to a homeless person (unfortunately, the money usually goes to drugs or booze- that’s why I don’t give money to beggars but I do offer to buy them food. It takes more of my time to get them something, and it costs more than just giving them change, but it helps them more, and I feel much better. Try it.)

Therefore, if you allow me these usages (’empowering’ is good for you and ‘enabling’ is bad for you), the question today is, “What is your religious leader doing for you spiritually? Are you being empowered to do as the Lord asks, or are you being enabled to do what is easy and comfortable for you by being given ‘excuses’ for ignoring God’s commands?”

Another way to look at this is to start by remembering that God has told us, over and over, how He will bless us when we do as he commands, but when we refuse (i.e., reject Him) we will be cursed and will not receive those blessings (check out the beginning of Vayikra and D’varim, Chapter 28, as well as N’Varim, the writings of the Prophets.) If you are being taught that the Torah is still valid and that Yeshua (Jesus) observed Torah and taught others to do the same, and that Shaul (Paul) did not say ignore Torah but only was talking about how Torah will not be needed AFTER Yeshua returns and is still necessary and should be observed, then you are being empowered to receive all of God’s blessings.

On the other hand, if you are being taught Replacement Theology (the Jews are no longer the Chosen people) and that Yeshua did away with “the Law” so that all you need to do to be saved is ask God for forgiveness and you can pretty much go on living as you have, you are being enabled to sin. And if you lead a sinful life, without any concern for God’s commandments or ordinances, you will not receive His blessings (other than the ones He will probably still give you, now and then, only because He is a loving and compassionate God) and you may find yourself being told by Yeshua that He does not know you.

Don’t forget those parables about the maidens who were left out of the wedding, even though they were invited, because they came up short-handed at the time the groom arrived; and that Yeshua told us there are many who will call Him Lord but at the Judgement He will reject them because they did not follow Him. Check it out in Luke 6 (“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?), and it’s also in Matthew. Didn’t Yeshua say that if we love Him we will do as He commands? And what did he command us to do? To follow Him, and He followed Torah, so we need to follow Torah, too.

Yeshua did as His father told Him to do, which is what God tells us all to do, which is found in the Torah. God has no religion, only Torah. Yeshua is the living Torah, so to ignore the Torah is, literally, to ignore Yeshua. And if you ignore Yeshua you will not be on the path to salvation, you will be traveling the Highway to Hell.

I am not saying you will absolutely go to hell if you don’t completely follow Torah, because just trying to observe Torah will not save you. Faith will save you, but if you CAN follow Torah…if you can live every stroke of the pen in Torah as Yeshua did, then you don’t need Yeshua to be your sin sacrifice. Of course, if any human being could follow Torah exactly and completely, then that person would screw up the curve and Yeshua wouldn’t be needed. That means there would be three people in heaven: God, Yeshua and that one creep who ruined it for the rest of us!

It comes down to this: we are saved by faith. Faithfully believing in the existence of God, faithfully believing that Yeshua is the Messiah who sacrificed His life as a sin sacrifice for all of us, AND faithfully doing T’Shuvah, which is demonstrated and proven by spending the rest of our lives sinning less by obeying God more. That means that following the Torah will not necessarily get you into heaven, and not following it will not necessarily keep you out, but the more you follow it the more blessings you will receive on Earth (as God promises), the more fruit you will produce to bring before the Lord at Judgement Day, and the closer you will be to Yeshua.

If you are being told that you need to obey God, which means all that God says we should do to worship Him as He commands us to do in the Torah and as Yeshua confirms we should do, then your religious leaders are empowering you to receive God’s blessings and helping you to be the greatest in the Kingdom of God.

If you are being told by your religious leaders that the Torah is dead, all you need to do is accept Jesus as your Saviour, ask for forgiveness and (pretty much) that’s all it takes- it is set, it can’t be taken away and your are guaranteed to go to heaven so long as you are a “good” person, then you are being enabled to sin and they are separating you from God, preventing you from receiving all His blessings, and possibly giving you a ticket straight to Sheol.

It’s up to you to decide what you will do, not anyone else, because God will hold you totally accountable for what you do.

How Did The Kingdom of God Split?

January 15, 2015 1 Comment

The Kingdom of God was preached to us by Yeshua. Even if you don’t believe He was/is the Messiah God promised, He did preach about God’s kingdom. He never created a new religion.

So if Yeshua was Jewish, preached about Jewish law and customs, stuck totally to what the Torah tells us (there wasn’t any other scripture then: Duh!!) and never created or spawned a new religion, why is it that we have Judaism and Christianity today?

Shouldn’t we just have Jews that don’t believe He was Messiah and Jews that do? We have Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Messianic Jews; if you look close, you would think the difference between the Orthodox and Reform Jews is enough to be two totally different religions.

Within Christianity you have Catholics (Eastern and Western), Protestants, Methodists, AME, Amish, Episcopalians, Baptists (Southern and others), Lutherans, et.al. ad infinitum.

But if the Jews all follow the Torah, and the Christians all follow Jesus, how can there be so many different types? With such divergent beliefs?

The answer is because these religions, all of them, are not from God. They are from mankind. They are the improper and sinful (yes, sinful and blasphemous, actually) creations of people who think they know more than God.

God has no religion. He told us how to worship Him and how to get along with each other. His laws, rulings, regulations and commandments are for everyone who chooses Him as their God. He separates the Levite only, to behave differently in some respects, because they were chosen by God to minister to Him so they have to be a little bit more “holy” in their lifestyles. Other than the Levites, everyone lives the same rules all the time, and they live them the same way.

When Yeshua taught, He taught what was in the Torah. Nothing more, nothing less. Why His teachings were so influential is because He taught not traditions and rules above what God wanted, but he interpreted and explained the existing rules with a depth of understanding that no one else could have. He is the living Torah, and He was there when the laws were given to Moshe. He was there from the beginning, and He could not possibly teach anything different than what is in Torah because He IS Torah! Yochanan (John) tells us in the very first line of his Gospel that the Word became flesh. If Yeshua taught anything other than what is in the Torah, or even implied that we should do something different, he was teaching against Himself. He said that a house divided against itself cannot stand- how much more so if someone teaches that what He is saying and stands for is wrong?

What happened is this: in Yeshua’s time there were two types of people: Jews and pagans. Next, we had Jews who rejected Yeshua as their Messiah (more for political reasons than any other), Jews who accepted Him as their Messiah (news flash!: they both lived and worshipped the same way), Gentiles and pagans (if you will allow, I will use the term Gentile here to identify a person who is not born Jewish but is in the process of converting to a Jewish lifestyle.) It stayed that way for the next 200 years or so, with more and more pagans accepting Yeshua and, thereby, becoming Gentiles (as I am using the term.)

Here’s a revelation: at the beginning of what we (today) call “Christianity”, if you were a pagan and accepted Yeshua as your Messiah, you were converting to Judaism. Paul did NOT convert to Christianity, the “Elders of the Church” were not Christians (haven’t you ever wondered why the Bible calls that chapter in Acts, “Paul’s Conversion” but it never relates the term “conversion” to any of the other disciples?), and the fact is there never was a “church” in Jerusalem at that time. There was no “church”- there were only temples. Some were pagan and some were Jewish. It’s only in recent times that the word “Temple” is understood to be a Jewish place of worship. The same is true for the word “Synagogue”. The definition of that Greek word is not a Jewish place of worship, but a gathering, or grouping. Again, only the modern cultural meaning of “Synagogue” is a Jewish place of worship.

Back to the lesson. So, we have the “mainstream” Jews, the Messianic Jews (which includes the converting Gentiles) and the pagans. That’s it. Since there were so many more pagans than Jews, it is obvious the number of Gentiles would grow faster than the number of Jews as Messianic Judaism grew.

Now we come to Rome during the time of Constantine. Please allow me to simplify the whole Council of Nicene thing to this: Constantine made being a Believer in Yeshua acceptable and popular. However, the “mainstream” Jews had ostracized themselves from Rome (a couple of rebellions will tend to do that) so the followers of the Christ (as He was just starting to be referred to at that time) were on the A list and the non-followers of the Christ were lower than whale poop, so far as the Roman government was concerned. It is only natural (not acceptable, but natural) that the Gentiles would shy away from the more obvious “Jewish” religious practices to stay below the radar, so to speak. The Elders of the Messianic movement did not require these Gentiles to do a full and complete conversion to the Judaic practices, so there was a growing difference in the worship practices between the Messianic Gentiles, the Messianic Jews and the Jews that did not accept Yeshua. This continued to grow until the difference became a span, then a chasm, then (ultimately) a spiritual and religious schism that has only grown over the past two millennia. And the driving force behind this were the traditions and rules that people created.

Thanks be to God that His will will be done, and we can see this today as the “Church” is beginning to recognize their roots in Judaism, that they do not need to convert to Judaism to be saved, and that they need to support and help the Jewish people to know and accept their own Messiah so that He will return (read Matthew and you will see why I say this.) The influx of Jews returning to the Land is being supported today by many Christian groups, and the Messianic Jewish movement is, from my experience, still composed more of Gentiles returning to the ways God said we should live than Jews who already live that way.

The “Church” is also just beginning to realize that Jews who accept Yeshua do not have to convert to Christianity in order to be saved. There is still Replacement Theology, there is still an ungodly amount of anti-Semitic teaching in the Christian world, and there is still an ungodly amount of anti-Messianic teaching in the Jewish world. But we are making tremendous progress towards overcoming that.

When all is said and done, the Tribulation is over, the Enemy is in the Lake of Fire, the new world and the new Jerusalem have settled, all the Christians that will be there will be amazed when they are expected to live as Jews. Not as Jews live today, because the Torah is so often ignored in lieu of Talmudic Halakha (how to walk; regulations), but live as God said we should live- in His Torah. The Torah will be the only guide, the only law, the only way. That which the Christian world (for the most part) has been teaching is done away with will be the only thing there is. Read Jeremiah 31:31 if you want to know why I say this.

What does this all boil down to? It boils down to this: if you expect to be in the Olam Haba (the world to come), you’d better get comfortable living as the Torah says you should. It’ll make things much easier on you.

The Torah is All We Need: Everything Else is Commentary

January 12, 2015 Leave a comment

When Yeshua was asked what is the most important commandment of all, His answer was simple- Love the Lord and love each other; on these two commandments pivot all the writings and the Prophets.

Notice He didn’t say , “…and all the other stuff that will be added later.”

The Christian world has historically tried to get away from Torah. They have taught (what I should say is: mis-taught) that the Torah is done away with because Yeshua lived it perfectly. Oh, yeah- that makes sense: once something is done right we never have to do it that way again? Duh!!

The Torah is everything we need to know, and all the commandments we are to follow if we want to obey God the way He said we should. Like it or not, that’s the truth. Yeshua/Jesus had to die for our sins, which were the sins outlined and defined in the Torah. There was no other Bible then.

The fact that our sins are paid for is not license to continue sinning, and not doing what God told us to do in the Torah is still a sin. We still need to be forgiven, and if we don’t really want to stop and we don’t really care about what God said to do (as Christianity often teaches) then we are sinners that the blood of Messiah won’t clean.

That’s right- the Grace of God can cover any sin, but it will not cover a sin that is done over and over because the sinner doesn’t care about what God says.

Our human legal system is all screwed up when you consider that a criminal, one who acts outside the legal system and doesn’t care about what the laws are, often has more protection under those laws than the victim. We protect the guilty with the very laws the guilty reject.

Not so with God. His laws are for everyone, and when we reject His laws we are rejecting Him. He loves us and wants us to live, but He is also our Judge, Jury and Executioner so if we choose to ignore and reject His laws (thereby rejecting Him), those laws will not protect us. Reject God and you will be rejected- the Bible is clear on that point.

The Torah tells us 2 things: how to worship God and how to treat each other. Torah is just the first 5 books- the ones that Moshe wrote in accordance with what God told him to write- and all the books that come after the Torah are commentary. They show us how the Torah was used, and misused, by the people throughout the centuries. When the people did T’Shuvah and cried out to God, and meant it, He provided them with a judge or a king that could protect them from their enemies. When they were sitting pretty, they went back to ignoring and rejecting God.

It is a cycle of rejection, suffering, coming to their senses and repenting, salvation, happiness, boredom, rejection, suffering, ….over and over. And here’s the kicker: after all the mistakes the Jewish people made between 1500 BCE and the time of Yeshua, since then the Christian world has not only made all the same mistakes, but they have brought it to a much higher level of rejection by making Yeshua their God and “the Father’ nothing more than a secondary thought. And teaching that the Torah, the very word of God and the Word that became the Flesh we know as Jesus, was done away with.

Consider this: if Jesus is the Word become flesh, and He said to do away with the Word, then isn’t He saying to ignore Him? Isn’t that a form of spiritual suicide? Does that make sense at all?

If the Torah was all Yeshua needed to teach about the Kingdom of God and the only set of laws and commandments He needed to follow to be an acceptable sacrifice, why do we need anything else? The New Covenant writings are comprised of the Gospels and the Epistles. The Gospels are historical in nature and the Epistles are clearly informative, outlining the details of how to live and treat each other and the proper way in which to worship God. If you read and interpret them carefully you will see that there is nothing “new” in the New Covenant writings- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Saul- they all wrote to the new Believers, a combination of Jewish people and pagans who were converting to Judaism, about how to live in accordance with the Torah.

Romans is a very misunderstood book. Shaul writes in it about the Torah and how it is to be reconciled with Yeshua’s teachings. The problem is that Shaul can’t say something straight out- too much education. He beats around the bush and talks in ways that are convoluted to the biblically uneducated. The result is that Romans has been historically quoted as a polemic against the Torah when it is, in fact, an apologetic. Shaul is talking in reverse- arguing about what he is trying to point out as wrong, and making a short, almost invisible statement at the end of a long argument that says, essentially, “NOT!” Read it, slowly and carefully, and you will see what I mean. In nearly every chapter he talks about how Yeshua overcame sin and how the Torah is fading away and how we are forgiven, and ends up with asking if that means the Torah is no longer valid, then says “God forbid!”

The Torah is God’s word. Moshe wrote down what God told Him to write down, which is all we need to know in order to properly worship God. That’s it. Das ist alles! Der ain’t no mo!!

Everything after the book of Deuteronomy is for us to read and understand as commentary, as “I have told you what you need to know and all the rest is to show you how lousy a job you have done with it.” Love God and love each other: the Son of God told us that is all we need to do. If we do that, the rest falls into place all on it’s own.

BUT…you still need to read and know the entire Bible so we can learn from the mistakes of others, and that way we won’t make the same mistakes (yeah- like that’s going to happen! Good luck with that!)

At the end of Deuteronomy we are commanded not to add to or take away from anything in the book. The Torah is one book, with 5 separate sections. Even though we call them “books”, in the Torah the separation between chapters is almost invisible, and the separation between books is little more than extra space between the lines of writing. It is, when you look at it, a complete, harmonious, and homogenous writing. It is the singular and definitive methodology for worshipping God and for treating each other. It is, as I like to say, the ultimate Users Manual.

It is what God commands anyone and everyone who professes to worship Him how to worship Him and how to treat each other. It tells us we do not need anything else, and commands us to not require anything else. The Torah is complete: we need do no more than what is there, and no less than what it says.

In the end, we all need Yeshua’s sacrifice to atone for us because the one thing I think everyone will agree on is this: we are sinners. We sin, we have sinned, we can’t stop sinning, and we will continue to do so. Individually and collectively. Yeshua died to give us a chance to escape the fate we all deserve and have earned for ourselves. The Grace of God is shown in His compassion and mercy, which is embodied by Messiah Yeshua. Those of us who have accepted (first) our own sinfulness and inability to stop committing sin, which has led us (next) to repentance and accepting the Grace of God through the sacrificial death of Yeshua, who we (finally) accept as the Messiah God promised, are saved from the judgement Torah requires.

That doesn’t mean the Torah is dead or meaningless. Being saved from our sins doesn’t give us license to continue sinning, and a sin is, by definition, doing something God says we shouldn’t do. It’s really quite simple: God says, “Do as I say because that is as I do. Be thou holy because I am holy.” He provided Yeshua because we can’t do as He says and we will never be as holy as He is.

God is the designer of the game; The Torah are the rules of the game.; Yeshua is our Get Out of Jail Free card.

Decide if you are going to play by the rules or not, and don’t let anyone else tell you what the rules are. Read them for yourself.