Author: Steven R. Bruck
Better NOT Call Saul
One of the issues Yeshua had with the Pharisees and their teachings was that some of their man-made traditions were given precedence over what God said. These traditions have become part of Halacha, the Way to Walk, which is defined in the Talmud.
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Today, more often than not, religious Jews seek to get their answers from the Talmud before they look to the Torah or any other part of the Tanakh. This is, in my opinion, no different than the mistake of placing what men say over what God says that we made way back then, in the First Century.
But that’s what the Jews do, so what does this have to do with calling Saul, whose Greek name used in the New Covenant is Paul (get the reference in the title, now?)
Christians have based most of their beliefs and doctrines not on the Torah or the Gospels, but for the most part on the letters that Saul, and other people, wrote to the (mostly) Gentile congregations throughout the Middle East.
God told us exactly what he wanted from us in the Torah- that is the ONLY place in the entire Bible where we often read “And God said to Moses, ‘Tell the children of Israel (whatever the commandment was)'”.
What we read in the Torah isn’t divinely inspired, it is divinely dictated! It isn’t someone telling us what God told him, which could be subject to interpretation, but it is the very words God used.
Saul was never given direct instructions from God, and when he talked of God’s commandments, he quoted from the Tanakh, but mostly what Saul told his congregations to do was from Saul.
Oh, yes, I know what you are saying: all those instructions were divinely inspired. Well, if they were, since God told Isaiah (Isaiah 55:11) that his word never returns void, then why is it that most of Christianity’s doctrines and dogma, based mostly on the Epistles of Saul, ignore God’s word? Isn’t that the epitome of God’s word returning void?
If someone said something that caused people to reject the Torah, how can that come from God? Didn’t God tell us the laws in the Torah are valid throughout our generations?
Oh, wait, I know- you are going to tell me that those laws are just for Jews, right? Well, think about this: throughout the Torah, God says there is just one law for both the Israelite and the foreigner joined with them and Saul says, in Romans 11:11, that when you accept Yeshua as your Messiah you are now grafted into Israel and an adopted child of Abraham. So, you are now an Israelite (spiritually, if not physically), and as such God says you are to be treated just as a native-born Jew, and like it or not, that means you are also subject to the same laws that Jews are, which is the Torah.
Perhaps that is why Saul also warns his Gentile converts to Judaism, which is what they were becoming when they accepted Yeshua, not to brag or feel superior to the Jews they were now joining.
Look, it isn’t Saul’s fault his letters, which he never intended to override God’s commandments, have been used that way. But what it comes down to is this: the complaint Yeshua had against the Pharisees for making man-made laws more important than God’s commandments has been repeated by Christianity. Instead of learning from the mistakes the Jews made, they not only made the same ones but made them even worse because:
Jews following Talmudic Halacha do not reject the Torah but Christianity misconstruing the Epistles Saul and others wrote, does reject the Torah.
And when you reject the Torah, you reject God. That may be a hard word to hear, and I am sure most Christians reading this right now are shaking their heads back and forth, saying to themselves, “No, no- he is just plain wrong: what about 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where we are told:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Well, you are right! All scripture IS God-breathed, but what was scripture then? It was the Tanakh!!! There was no other scripture, and the instructions from Saul were not some future prophecy or divinely inspired to also cover the not yet written New Covenant, which is (in fact) a bible put together by Gentiles who had already rejected any and everything Jewish.
NO! What Saul was talking about was the Tanakh, the “Jewish Bible” which was the only scripture he knew, and what was being taught to these neophyte Believers so that they could be thoroughly equipped for righteousness.
And that, my friends, means that if you are not following the scripture Saul meant, which is the Torah then, by definition, you are not being equipped for righteousness.
That should be a scary thought, and I pray that you are open to hearing what I am saying. Not because I am saying anything of my own, which I’m not, but because what I am saying is the same thing that God told Moses, that God told Isaiah, and what Saul really meant when he told Timothy how to teach the Gentile Believers under his authority.
God has no religion, but men created religion so that they could have power over other men. This is obvious just by looking at all the different religions, with different forms of worship, but all are supposed to worship the same God, who said he never changes. If he never changes, doesn’t that mean his instructions will never change? If he says everyone who sojourns with (i.e., is grafted into) his chosen people are to be subject to the same law as they must, doesn’t that mean they are also to obey the same laws?
We all have Free Will, and so we can each make our own choice of who to listen to regarding how we live which is, essentially, the way we worship God. For Jews, we can choose to follow Halacha from the Talmud or what God says in the Torah; and for Christians, they can choose to follow the doctrines and dogma created by Constantine (and any number of Popes over the centuries) based on letters from Saul and other men, or they can choose to follow what God says in the Torah.
To me, this is a no-brainer, but to the Jewish Orthodoxy and most Christians, it represents making a major paradigm shift in their lifestyle.
And we all know how people feel about change, even when it has eternal consequences.
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Can Sinners Still Get Into Heaven?
It seems ridiculous that a sinner would be allowed in heaven, doesn’t it? I mean, really? If I sin, then I cannot be in the presence of the Lord, God Almighty, can I?
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No, of course not.
But then why does Yeshua say this, in Matthew 5:19 (CJB):
So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yeshua just finished telling those thousands who were listening to his Sermon on the Mount that he did not come to change anything in the Torah, and when he follows that up with this statement it is clear that he is saying there are those who will sin and teach others to sin, but they will still be allowed into heaven.
How can that be? Well, I think I know the answer!
There is a difference between sinning by volition, and sinning accidentally. We are told throughout the Tanakh that God sees the heart and he knows our mind, which means when we are praying or acting in some way, God knows better than we do our true motivation. We may know we are sinning but don’t care, or we may know we are sinning and regret it, asking God for help to overcome it, or we may be sinning and not know we are sinning, at all.
If you sin, you know it, and you just don’t care that makes you an unrepentant sinner, and I don’t believe an unrepentant sinner is going to be allowed into heaven.
If you are sinning and hate that you do so, which is often the category I find myself in, and constantly asking God to help you overcome this sin, that is repentance. And, I believe any repentant sinner asking for help and forgiveness will be heard by our compassionate and understanding Father in heaven. I also believe he will help you to overcome that sin, but it is not something that he will not just do for you. Just as he told Cain, sin is crouching at everyone’s door and we must overcome it. God will help, and he will forgive when we repent and ask forgiveness through Yeshua, but it is up to each and every one of us to overcome sin in our lives.
The last type of sinner I identified, which is the one I believe Yeshua was talking about, is the sinner who is sinning and has no idea that he or she is sinning. As such, this person will teach others to sin, all the while thinking it is a proper form of worship because this is what they were taught, by those who were taught the same thing, by those who were also taught the same thing, going back for millennia.
In other words, just about every Christian who has been taught that the Torah is just for Jews, or that Born Again Christians are now God’s Chosen people (Replacement Theology), or that Jews have to convert to Christianity to be saved has been sinning. Not on purpose and not even knowing it, but still and all, sinning. And not only have they been sinning, but they have taught others to sin, as well.
These are the ones I believe Yeshua was talking about, but wait a minute! – there were no Christians when Yeshua walked the earth, so how could he be talking about them?
The very next lesson Yeshua gave after talking about those who sin and teach others to do so was to teach the Remes, which is the spiritual meaning of the Torah commandments. He taught the spiritual meaning of “Do not murder” and “Do not commit adultery” and implicitly identified the Pharisees as having taught only the P’shat, the plain or literal meaning. Because of this teaching, the people were not being properly instructed in what God really wanted from them- a heart for obedience, not just obedience for the sake of earning salvation.
The Pharisees were teaching performance-based salvation, and Yeshua was teaching that obedience should be from faithful desire to do what God wants from us, spiritually as well as physically.
The Pharisees weren’t really teaching to sin, but their rabbinic traditions did, as Yeshua pointed out, often take precedence over what God said, and THAT is a sin. They never intended to sin, and they never wanted anyone else to sin, but there it is- they were sinning and teaching others to do so.
At that time, the means for forgiveness was there- the temple still stood in Jerusalem and anyone could bring their sacrifice to receive forgiveness, but before that century ended, the temple was gone and the only means of forgiveness, the only path to Adonai, was through Yeshua.
So, today we have Christians who are sinning and teaching others to sin by rejecting the Torah completely, and we also have Jews that are sinning and teaching others to sin by rejecting Yeshua as the Messiah, leaving them with no means of forgiveness, at all!
Yet, so long as these people do repent of the sins they know of, and ask forgiveness, I believe God will hear their prayers and act, because he is an understanding and compassionate God who is more than willing to work with us, so long as we want to work with him.
So, yes, Virginia- there are sinners in heaven, but not those who do so on purpose without repentance. A repentant sinner- as King David points out in Psalm 51 – is someone who approaches God with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and (if they have accepted Yeshua) will find forgiveness and be allowed into the kingdom of heaven.
I feel for my Jewish brothers and sisters who reject even hearing about Yeshua because even though God will listen to them, they will have no Intercessor on their behalf when they come before his Throne of Judgment.
Let’s all pray for those who sin and teach others to sin, that their eyes be opened and their hearts softened so that they will not be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven.
And give thanks to God who sees the heart and judges fairly, with compassion and mercy.
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Parashah Naso 2021 (Take) Numbers 4:21 – 7
As we read at the beginning of this book, the first thing that God had Moses do was to take a census to determine the number of men able to go to battle. In this parashah, God has Moses count the Levites and identifies who is to carry which parts of the Tabernacle.
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God gives instructions that all lepers must be placed outside the camp, in order that the camp not become defiled because Adonai will dwell within the camp.
He also gives instructions regarding when a husband suspects a wife of adultery, restitution for sinning against a brother Israelite, laws for vow-making, and the manner in which the Cohen shall bless the people, known as the Aaronic Blessing (Numbers 6:23-26.)
This parashah ends detailing (in exacting detail) the gifts that each of the twelve tribes brought to the Tabernacle after it had been set up and anointed.
In my Chumash, the commentary states the gifts were identical because there was such harmony between the tribes that no one tribe wanted to outdo the other, therefore they all gave the same gifts.
But then it goes on to state how the gifts were representative of the history of each tribe, whereas each identical item had a different significance, relating specifically to that tribe. These different meanings were based on the tribe’s history.
For example, Numbers 7:12 tells us the first tribe to bring their gifts was Judah, presented by Nahshon, and the Midrash tells us that Nahshon was honored to be the first to present the gifts because when the Red Sea was parted and the Israelites were hesitant to enter, Nahshon boldly plunged in, trusting that God would protect them.
Another example was that the silver charger presented by Reuben’s tribe recalled to mind that Reuben’s words saved Joseph’s life, quoting Proverbs 10:20 which says “The tongue of the just is as choice silver.”
Of course, none of this is found anywhere in the Torah. These stories and comments are the fabrication of the Rabbis over the years, which is what the Talmud really is all about: it is called the Oral Law but in reality, it is rabbinical mythology that tries to explain things we read in the Torah.
Another example is that we read at the end of Genesis 17 about the circumcision of Abraham, and the very next chapter starts with the visitation of the three angels. Well, the Torah has no defined timeline between these two events, but the Talmud tells us the angels visited on the third day after Abraham’s B’rit Milah, the day when the pain is the worst, and that it was a sign of Abraham’s devotion and humility that despite his pain, he got up and served these strangers.
Total fiction, not biblically substantiated in any way, but still and all a really nice story, and probably not that far from the truth, with regards to the type of man Abraham was.
I believe the Talmud is a wonderful book, full of much wisdom from many of the most studious and scholarly Rabbis of the past couple of millennia. BUT…it is not scripture. It is a work of fiction based on scripture, not unlike Hollywood making up what seems to be a nice way to see things that happened in history, but it’s not real.
Now, having said that, we can’t say all of it wasn’t real, because the truth is we do not know the time between the visitation of the angels and Abraham’s circumcision. It could have been days or even months later- we just don’t know, so the Talmud narrative could be true. Who knows? Maybe God gave a special insight to whoever came up with that, or maybe it is just something someone thought would fit in nicely.
We’ll never know, but to read it doesn’t weaken our faith, and that is an important point to understand when confirming my belief that studying the Talmud is not a bad idea. What we read may be man-made, but it doesn’t do anything to reduce our faith, and actually is designed to increase our understanding of God and his ways, which can only strengthen our faith.
Studying the Talmud will, at the very least, give you a good “feel’ for the Jewish mindset, and it will especially help you to understand Jewish Logic, which is my term for the way Jews argue. A Jew will never tell you what something is until he first tells you everything it isn’t. When you learn to recognize this methodology, then the letters that Shaul (Paul) wrote will become much easier to understand, and you will be able to see why they have been misunderstood and misinterpreted by Christians for so many years.
The Talmud also instructs us in how we are to obey the Torah in our everyday lives, which is called Halacha (The Way to Walk), and is what the Orthodox and Chasidic Jew learns from the time they can understand right from wrong. In the more religious sects of Judaism, the study of the Talmud comes even before the study of the Torah!
Sometimes we read instructions in the Torah and we can’t understand the reasons why God gave them. Often, there seems to be something missing: for example, we read about sacrificing an animal, and the Torah states we must treat our animals humanely, but there is nothing anywhere in the Torah telling us how to kill the animal humanely. However, the Talmud describes this process, which is called the Shechitah. So, the Talmud sort of “fills in” the missing parts, and even though it is all man-made tradition, I have never seen anything in the Talmud (although I am certainly not well-versed in it) that would be detrimental to our faith in God. The underlying foundation of the Talmud is the very word of God, so it builds on this and adds to it in a manner that is designed to help us better worship and obey the Torah.
And although Yeshua certainly had trouble with some of the rabbinic regulations, which later were part of the Talmud, he wasn’t against all man-made traditions, only those which had been given precedence over the instructions from God.
So, with regard to today’s parashah reading, reading the Torah narrative seems remarkably redundant, each of the twelve tribes presenting the exact same things, so why didn’t Moses just write what was given, and end it by saying each tribe gave the same? I don’t know, but we do know that when we see things repeated in the Bible it is usually to make an impact on the importance of what we are reading. Maybe, just maybe, Moses repeated each tribe’s gifts so that later someone, like whoever wrote about this in the Talmud, could explain how each identical item represented something unique to the tribe that presented it?
That’s why the Talmud isn’t such a bad book to know: you just have to be able to separate the wheat from the tares, so to speak, when reading it. Knowing the Tanakh is the first step, so that when you read the Talmud stories you can know which is biblical and which is not.
A funny aside: when I was touring Israel in 2016, I was the only Jew in the group and our Israeli guide was an expert in relating the Bible stories to the geography we were visiting. However, he was relating Talmudic stories as well as biblical stories, so throughout the trip, I kept raising my hand and saying, “Yosi- that was from the Talmud, right?” to which he would confess it was. I don’t know if he appreciated that or not, but we are still friends on Facebook, so I guess it didn’t really bother him.
In my opinion, a student of the Bible should not ignore the Talmud but become at least a little familiar with it as a means of better rounding out one’s understanding of Judaism and the Jewish mindset.
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Why The Judeans Didn’t Fight For Yeshua
When Yeshua was preaching in Jerusalem, thousands of people came to hear him, as did thousands when he was wandering from one Judean town to another.
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Yet, despite there being thousands who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised to send, after the Sanhedrin found him guilty of a capital crime and the power elite in Jerusalem aroused the crowds to ask for his death, the people followed their lead and called for his crucifixion.
Have you ever asked yourself, “If they knew he was the Messiah, why didn’t they rebel against the Sanhedrin to save Yeshua’s life?”
Most people will say because they didn’t want to be thrown out of the temple or made into a social pariah. In fact, we read in the Gospels how many who followed Yeshua were doing so in secret because the people had been told that anyone following Yeshua would be excommunicated.
But there may have been a different reason.
In John 11:47 we read that the Cohen HaGadol, Caiaphas, suggested that Yeshua be killed in order to save the people. The leaders of Judea were deathly afraid that because of the commotion being stirred up in the city and around the Temple, Rome would come down hard on the people and possibly no longer allow them to practice Judaism. You see, Judea was a rare example of Rome allowing the inhabitants to maintain their religion; normally, when Rome took over, the populace was forced to practice the Roman paganist religion. There were Roman soldiers stationed throughout the land, and especially around the Temple, so any commotion or public unrest, such as Yeshua throwing out the money changers or the argumentation between people about accepting or rejecting him, could cause Rome to no longer allow Judaism to be practiced. Besides the obvious horror that would cause, it also would mean the members of all the Sanhedrins and the Temple officials (meaning all the Levites and Cohanim) would be out of a job.
Alright, then, that explains why the leadership wanted him dead, but that doesn’t fully answer why the people didn’t rebel against their leaders when they believed Yeshua to be the Messiah.
I believe the answer is in the Torah.
In the Book of Deuteronomy (D’varim), Chapter 17 is one of the places Moses is instructing the people about their need to rid Israel of anyone who is rejecting God’s instructions, laws, commandments, or regulations. He also states that any case which is too difficult for the local judges is to be brought before the Cohanim where God places his name, which (eventually) would be the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.
Now, here is where the answer to the question of why the people didn’t revolt against the Sanhedrin is found. In Deuteronomy 17: 12, Moses gives this command to the people:
Anyone presumptuous enough not to pay attention to the cohen appointed there to serve Adonai your God or to the judge — that person must die.
Wow! The Torah says that anyone who goes against the decision of the judges, which in this case is the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, is to be killed. Not just excommunicated, as the Gospels infer, but killed!
And Yeshua had just been tried and convicted by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, who were calling for his death.
No wonder there was no outcry of “Unjust!” or “Down with the Sanhedrin!” The Torah, itself, forbade anyone to rebel against the judgment of the court. Even though those courts were not really filled with Cohanim, who were Levites, but often enough with political “hacks” who were appointed by Herod, the least qualified king Israel ever saw. Herod was not a descendant of David, and many of the members of the Sanhedrin throughout the land were not Levites or Cohanim, but political appointees. In the writings of Josephus, he records that Caiaphas was made high priest by the Roman procurator Valerius Gratus after Simon ben Camithus had been deposed.
Maybe, now, we can better understand why there was no civil upheaval or rebellion against the Sanhedrin, and why the people were behind the call for Yeshua to be crucified.
The Judeans weren’t against Yeshua: they were obeying what is written in the Torah.
Talk about irony.
It was just the other day when I read that verse in Deuteronomy and the Ruach (Spirit) gave me this connection, and since then I am convinced that the people who did accept Yeshua as the Messiah were between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they knew he was sent by God and that rejecting him was tantamount to rejecting God; on the other hand, they knew that to disobey the Torah was also to reject God. There was no way they could win, so they went with what made the most sense at the time, and obeyed the Torah. This did, also, keep them from being socially ostracized and excommunicated from the temple.
Eventually, as we all know, the followers of Yeshua continued to grow, and as more Gentiles entered into salvation through Messiah Yeshua, the teachings of Yeshua became more polluted, misunderstood, and eventually mutated into the form of Christianity we have today, which is nothing like what Yeshua taught but what Constantine created in 325 C.E.
But that, my friends, is a different story.
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Is Yeshua Really Our Savior?
Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it?
The obvious answer is: YES! Of course, he is- that’s what the Messiah is all about!
Didn’t you hear that he died for our sins?
Didn’t you read in Isaiah that he was wounded for our transgressions?
Didn’t he, himself, say that the only way to the Father is through him?
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Yes, I know all that, but let’s step back for a moment and let me ask you…who sent him? Is Yeshua really our savior or the tool of our true savior, God?
The Messiah is the one who brings us back into communion with God, who removes our sins so that we can come into the presence of the Lord, and he is the one God promised to send us throughout the Tanakh, in order to provide a means for us to have our sins forgiven.
At first, God provided for the removal of sin through the sacrificial system, where an innocent animal is killed as a substitute for the death we deserve for having committed the sin. Innocent blood shed in placement of our blood, which should be shed.
When the animal is sacrificed, it has died for our sins; it was wounded for our transgressions, and by it’s stripes we are healed.
Sound familiar?
So, is that sheep our Savior? Do we call upon the name of the bull we killed when we ask for forgiveness?
Of course not- they are just sacrificial animals. So why, then, if they died for our sins do we not call them our savior? The truth is, they were- if not for that animals’ death, we would have to die.
So, nu? What makes Yeshua’s actions any different from these animals?
The difference is that the animal didn’t choose to die for us, and Yeshua did.
He had the opportunity to reject his role as the Messiah, just as Jonah (initially) rejected his calling to save Nineveh. Yeshua could have decided that he didn’t want to be the Messiah and simply live out his life as a normal, although highly spiritual, man. And I believe, if that had happened, God would simply have created another Messiah, in the same way that he would have saved the Jews in Shushan, as Mordecai told Esther in the Megillah of Hadassah 4:14:
For if you fail to speak up now, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from a different direction;
However, as we all know, Yeshua did not reject his calling to be the Messiah, the tool through which God provided the chance for everyone in the world to be saved from the eternal consequences of their sin.
So, the answer to my original question, “Is Yeshua really our savior?” is “Yes”… and “No.”
Yes- what he did allows us to be forgiven of our sins. He did this voluntarily and of his own free will, and since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem he has become our only means of salvation, which (by definition) makes him our savior.
But the original provider of this means of salvation is God, who divinely created, sent and empowered Yeshua to be the Messiah, so the answer to the question is also “No”, because if not for God there would be no way to be forgiven of our sins, at all. In fact, God is really the only one who can forgive sin. Yes, Yeshua had that authority when he was performing his ministry on earth, but now that his role is to be our Intercessor, he doesn’t forgive us but asks his father to forgive us because we are his sheep, and because he shed his blood for us.
Yeshua doesn’t forgive our sins- only God does. And if you’re not sure about that, then find the biblical passage that says the Messiah sits on the Throne of Judgment in heaven.
Now, there, there…don’t get all confused, and don’t worry that you have to change your beliefs about Yeshua being the savior of the world, because he is. But God is the ultimate power and authority, to whom Yeshua humbly submits (which he made clear throughout the Gospels), therefore God is our Savior because he sent Yeshua, who gave his human life so we could have eternal life.
Yeshua saved us when he gave his life as a substitution for ours, providing the pathway to salvation, but this was only possible because God sent him, which means our real savior is God.
God is the ultimate Savior of the world, and when we individually accept Yeshua as our Messiah, he becomes our personal savior.
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