Author: Steven R. Bruck

Parashah Korach 2020 (Korach) Numbers 16 – 18

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This is a well-known story of rebellion; Korach, a Levite, jealous of Moses organized other Levites, all leaders within their tribes, to rebel against Moses and Aaron and to appoint a different leader (who he thought should be himself.)

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Meanwhile, Dathan and Abiram, from the tribe of Reuben, also led a rebellion against Moses for their failure to enter the land, having just been driven out by the inhabitants.

Moses tells the men, a total of 250 of them, to bring their fire pans to the Tent of Meeting in the morning and God will show them what he wants. Moses also goes to the tents of Korach, Abiram, and Dathan and calls them out to tell them how God will handle this rebellion, which isn’t really against Moses and Aaron but is against God.

First, Moses tells those whose tents are close to these men to move away from them because if they don’t, they might suffer the same punishment that the rebels will have to undergo. Fortunately for them, the surrounding families listen.

Moses then tells the rebels that if God hasn’t placed Moses in charge, Abiram, Dathan, and Korach will live long lives. On the other hand, if God is the one who put Moses in charge, then the earth will open its mouth and swallow these men and all they have- family, tents, and possessions- and send them to Sheol, alive!

No sooner does Moses finish speaking than the ground splits open and Abiram, Dathan, Korach, their families, and their tents are swallowed up, after which the ground closes over them.

At the same time, fire comes out from the Tent of Meeting and totally incinerates all 250 men, being so hot that their brass offering plates are melted.

Despite this obvious show of God’s intervention and appointment of Moses and Aaron, the people still are in an uproar and blame Moses for the death of the men. God sends a plague among the people that starts to kills multitudes, but Aaron takes incense from the altar and goes into the crowd and stands between the people and the plague to stop it.

God has the 12 tribal leaders each bring their staff to the Tent of Meeting, Aaron representing the Levites, and tells Moses to say to the people that the staff which grows buds will belong to the one who is God’s choice for serving him as Cohen. In the morning, only one staff has buds on it, Aaron’s staff, and more than buds, it has flowers and ripe almonds, as well.

This parashah ends with God giving the instructions, again, regarding how the Cohen and Levite are to serve him and that they are to be paid from the tithes.

For those of you who follow this ministry (thank you!), you know I rarely ever allow politics to enter these messages. However, when we look at what happened in this Shabbat reading and what is happening in the US today, there is such a direct relationship I can’t ignore it.

The rebellion within the United States, with cities of two separate states declaring themselves as a sovereign entity, is exactly what happened to the nation of Israel under Moses. There is such a spirit of rebellion against legitimate authority that I would think Korach has found his way back up from Sheol!

We have a President who was legally elected, yet since the very day he took office, there have been rebellions against his authority and position. And not just by outside forces, but by the leaders of states within the Union. Just like under Korach (or should I say, Pelosi?), many important and powerful leaders of the tribes of America (i.e., Congresspersons and Senators) have taken up their firepans and tried to oust President Trump, with little more than weak and often (we found out later) manufactured stories claiming he was disqualified for office.

Today there are the CHAD and CHAZ groups in their separate states who are declaring themselves free of the properly instituted authorities, such as the police. They have established zones of anarchy, and proliferate violence as their means of control.

In truth, they have no control: that is SOP within an anarchistic society. Sooner or later the proper authority, which has been authorized by the Constitution, will remove these rebels and (hopefully) prosecute them in accordance with their illegal activities.

If God had not intervened on behalf of Moses and Aaron, it is very likely that the general populace would have gone along with Korach, Abiram, and Dathan. What has been proven in the Bible (as shown by the Israelites) is that the crowd will follow whoever is popular or promises them what they want.  We saw this at the sin of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32), we saw it with the Korach rebellion (Numbers 16), we saw it with their constant complaining which caused God to send snakes (Numbers 21), and we saw it during the Sin of Baal-Peor when Balaam had the Midianite women entice the men into sinful behavior (Numbers 25.) 

The people rebelled against proper authority (that would be God, of course), times too numerous to mention here, from the very day they were freed from Egyptian bondage until the time of the Babylonian exile.

America has been through tough times before and came out of it stronger, but I am concerned about what is happening to her today. The pandemic has shown that we are a society composed of easily frightened, easily duped, and easily led sheep. We know that people are like sheep, easily led astray (Isaiah told us that) but it is one thing to read about it in the Bible, and quite another to see how true it is when people wear face masks and isolate themselves because they are told lies and exaggerations without questioning the truth of it.

And common sense? Well, that is rare under any condition, but it is so rare today that it seems to be an extinct commodity.

We need to remember, just as the Israelites were reminded, that God is in charge and that whoever is in charge, legally, was placed there by God. We are told this in Romans 13 (CJB):

Everyone is to obey the governing authorities. For there is no authority that is not from God, and the existing authorities have been placed where they are by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities is resisting what God has instituted; and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.

If people are dissatisfied with the leadership, there are legal means for removing the leaders, and those procedures should be followed. It takes longer than open rebellion, but it is the legal and correct way to oust a bad leader. In the meantime, we are obligated legally and spiritually to respect our leaders.

Today’s parashah is so perfectly timed to what is happening in the US today that you might even think God planned it. If you ask me, I don’t think what is happening is from God; on the contrary, it seems evident to me that this is the work of Satan. Our society has a spirit of Korach running rampant through it, and our legislative bodies have a spirit of Absalom taking charge of them. Rebellion, social unrest, lies, and false teachings abound, while the people show they are mindless sheep, blind to the truth, speechless against the evil (you can’t understand what they say through the cloth masks, anyway), being led dancing to their own destruction.

I am afraid. I am afraid for our country, for our economy, and for the people who claim to be doing what they do to save lives, while what they are doing is refusing to acknowledge that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. And more than anything else, I am afraid and concerned about how so many people can so blatantly disobey the law and get away with it; and I don’t mean just the rioters in the streets, but the elected leaders of our cities, states and our federal government, whose members are sworn to defend the Constitution.

I don’t how this will all turn out, if we will have a new normal or if we will even be able to return to the old normal, but I trust in God to get us through it and will wait, patiently on the Lord (although I have to say, I am SO fed up with all this mishigas!)

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with others, and check out my website and books. I am starting on my 4th book, which I am calling “The ‘I Don’t Want to Read the Bible!‘ Bible.”

Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

God is More Than Just Love

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I have heard, oh so often, that God is love.

I have heard that the God of the Old Covenant is all about destruction and violence and rules, but the God of the New Covenant is all about love.

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I have also heard that there are false teachers and that those who sin and teach others to sin will be in big trouble when they have to explain what they did to God.

And the reason they will be in big trouble is that although God is a loving God, he is MUCH more than that.

He is the Creator of everything, which includes right from wrong. He is also the Judge of the Universe which (for the record) includes Earth and all that live on the Earth. In fact, he is not just the judge, but the jury and the executioner, as well.

God is holy; he is so holy that he is the holiest of all that is holy, and as such he is also faithful to his word. When God tells us that disobedience will be met with punishment, because he is holy, he must dish out that punishment to the disobedient.

Where his love comes into play is that even when he punishes, his love for all of his creation will result in a punishment that is actually merciful, meaning it will still be terrible, but not as terrible as we actually deserve.

For example, his love for Israel (the Northern Kingdom) was the only reason that he waited so long before punishing them: he was giving them time to repent. But once God reached the end of his patience, his punishment was, indeed, terrible; but, he did not totally destroy his people, as they deserved. In fact, he sustained them even after they were spread throughout the Diaspora, and he promised to return them to their homeland one day.

For the past 75 years, we have seen this regathering happening and it is wonderful.

People are so happy to hear about God’s love for them just as they are, which is misleading people to believe that because they are loved God will allow them to continue to do just what they have always done. This is the message that traditional Christianity sends, which ignores all the laws and regulations necessary to receive blessings.

You’re right, God will bless those who do not do everything in the Torah because he is a loving God, and sometimes in order to bless the righteous, the sinful get blessed too- it’s like collateral blessings. On the other hand, when the sinful are punished (sad to say) the righteous are sometimes collateral damage (Everyone Gets Rained On) and suffer along with the sinful.

The bottom line is that God makes the rules and because he is holy, faithful, trustworthy, and never-changing we can depend, absolutely, on his also judging according to HIS rules (not what any religion says), punishing those who have rejected his instructions exactly as he said he would in the Torah.

God does love each and every one of us, and it is because of that wonderful and infinite love that he will punish those who do wrong. Not as a means of enforcing his will, or out of the kind of prideful anger that humans feel when they are ignored or rejected, but because the only way a sinner will turn to God is when that sinner realizes the consequences of the sin he or she is doing. And the consequence of sin, as Shaul (Paul) tells us in Romans, is death.

God punishes the guilty out of love so that they will have every possible chance to turn from their sin (do t’shuva) and by turning from those sins, be able to remain alive and live eternally in peace and joy.

The big lie from Christianity is that we are all okay because God is love; the truth is that because God is love us he will punish the guilty.

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I always welcome your comments.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

 

Religion is the True Parochet

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The parochet, for those who aren’t familiar with the Hebrew word, is the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Tent of Meeting Moses had built in the desert, in accordance with the instructions God gave him.

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According to the Talmud, it is a sign of respect for the Torah scrolls kept inside the aron kodesh, the holy ark.

In the Tanakh (Exodus 40) we are told that after placing the tablets God gave Moses into the Ark, the curtain was placed between the Ark and the rest of the area.

In essence, the parochet is a type of barrier between God and the people.

When Yeshua gave up his spirit, which was the means for us to receive forgiveness of sins and, thereby, come closer to God, the parochet in Solomon’s temple was torn, from top to bottom, representing that now there was no barrier between us and God.

When the parochet was torn after Yeshua’s death, the Cohanim replaced it, but not too long after that a new parochet was created. This wasn’t one with blue and purple yarn, and it wasn’t one we could see or feel or smell, but it became a barrier between the people and God that is more difficult to pass through than any cloth curtain ever was.

This newer parochet, this invisible and impassable parochet, this impenetrable barrier between God and people is called…religion.

As I have said over and over, God has no religion. God gave instructions to Moses that were to be passed along and taught to the world. These instructions teach us how to worship God as he wants us to worship Him, and also how to treat each other as God wants us to treat each other. They are found in the Torah and we were specifically told that they are to be valid throughout our generations.

That means forever.

Religion, on the other hand, is the creation of mankind and its sole purpose is for people to have power over other people.

Every Judeo-Christian religious sect or denomination professes to worship the one, true God, whose name is spelled Y-H-V-H. And all these different religions agree that he is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow, never changing.

Yet, they all have different ways to worship him and different ways of following his instructions.

The one thing that all religions have in common is that they have developed their own rules, doctrines, laws, traditions, and rituals, most of which have no basis or requirement by God in his Torah, and many of which actually ignore God’s instructions in the Torah.

And what justification do they give for ignoring what God said to do? They blame it all on his son, the Messiah, who they claim told them they don’t have to obey God anymore.

This same son whose testimony throughout his ministry on earth was that he does only what his father in heaven tells him to do!

The Cohanim replaced the torn cloth parochet, but later men like Ignatius and Constantine, followed in turn by the Popes and organizers of new religions like Luther, Young, et.al. , created their own religions, which acts as a parochet separating those who followed them from God by replacing God’s instructions with their own.

So, what are we to do?

My suggestion is that you find out what God said you should do and compare it with what your religion tells you to do, then choose who you want to obey: God or men?

I might add one last thing: before you choose who to follow, you might want to consider that at the final judgment it won’t be the originator of your religion who will be sitting on the Throne of Judgment, it will be God, and he might be a little perturbed with anyone who chose to ignore his instructions.

Just a little something to think about while you still have the time.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share these messages out with others, and remember that I always welcome your comments.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Parashah Shelach Lecha 2020 (Send forth) Numbers 13 – 15

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The Israelites are within sight of the Holy Land, and Moses picks 12 men, princes and leaders within their tribe, to scout out the land, the people, and bring back military intelligence so that the invasion and taking over of the land can be planned.

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The men are gone 40 days and bring back samples of the produce of the land. However, although they say the land is wonderful, they also demoralize the people by saying that the land is full of strong and gigantic people who the Israelites have no chance of defeating.  Except for Caleb and Joshua, the other 10 representatives of the tribes say there is no way they can win.

The people are so demoralized they want to stone Moses, but God intervenes and tells Moses to stand aside so he can destroy these people and make a new nation from Moses. Moses intercedes for the people, reminding God of his forgiveness, mercy, and patience and also arguing (effectively) that if God did destroy these people the other nations, who are in awe of him, would think he was not able to do as he said and bring these people into the land.

So, God relents but only to a point: the men who gave the bad report died from a plague, then and there, and the rest of the people were told they would wander in the desert. God decreed they would wander one year for each day the spies were in the land, so for the next 40 years, the people will wander in the desert until every single one who rebelled is dead. It will be the next generation, the generation born in freedom, who will inherit the land.

After this God reminds Moses of the requirements for worship when they enter the land.

This parashah ends with a story about a man who violates the Shabbat by gathering wood, and when brought to judgment God decrees that he shall be stoned to death by the entire congregation. In order to remind people not to violate the laws, God decreed the wearing of Tzitzit.

I think it really a shame that the generation who had been raised in slavery did not get to enjoy the bliss of living in freedom in the land that God promised to give them, but it was their own fault that they did not get to do that. If they had trusted in God and his servants, Moses and Aaron, the trip to Canaan would have been easier, there wouldn’t have been snakes or plague, and there wouldn’t have been the death of the thousands that the sin at Mount Sinai caused.

If only they had listened and obeyed, but they didn’t, so why didn’t they? Were they stupid?

No, they weren’t stupid, but they had a slave mentality. They weren’t able to live their own lives; they were able to make decisions, but they weren’t able to make good decisions because all of the important decisions, such as where to live, what to do with your life, who to worship and who to trust had been made for them.

After generations of being told what to do and what to think and how to worship, they had become mentally lazy. So, when they were given the chance to advance, to become self-determining, and to learn to trust in God, they failed to do so at every opportunity.

God had performed unbelievable miracles which they saw done in the land of Egypt and throughout their travels in the desert. Yet, despite the evidence, they still couldn’t trust in him when they came to a problem they felt unable to solve on their own. Their mental laziness had turned them into cowards and unable to trust even what they see and hear. They rejected their chance for freedom and demanded to be returned to what they were comfortable with, which was slavery.

This is the same problem we have today. People have been told how to worship and how to act for so long that they accept what they are told and don’t want to consider anything different. Religion has turned people from God-fearing (as God directed us) to religion-worshiping, doing what men have told them they should do instead of as God told us we should do.

This can only result in the same thing that happened to the rebellious Israelites: they will not be allowed into the Promised Land, meaning God’s presence which has been made possible through the Messiah.

God promised Abraham that his descendants would be in the Promised Land, and that promise was kept, but not in the way many people expected. God did not renege on his promise to that first generation of freed slaves, they refused to accept it, and God had to wait until there were people desiring to receive the promise.

If you think I am saying that there are many devoutly religious people, whether Jewish, Christian, Born Again or whatever, who worship God, who try to do what they believe is right, but who will be told: “Get thee away from me- I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21), well… you’re right! That’s exactly what I am saying.

And why would God reject those who have called on his name? Because they may have called on his name, but they are not the ones who can receive the promise because they worship as men have told them to do, and not as God said to do.

The truth is that “calling on his name” means to turn to him and worship him. It doesn’t mean to shout out whatever name you use for God- it has nothing to do pronunciation and everything to do with worshiping him as he has said to. People who call on his name but worship him and live their lives as some religion says to are not children of the covenant.

And to me, that is as big a travesty, if not more so, then the Egyptian born Jews not being allowed to enter the Promised Land. Here are people trying to do what is right, but they are too mentally lazy to certify that what they are being told is really what God wants. They have that same slave mentality, which we call a comfort zone, and they refuse to let go of it.

Emperor Constantine is not God, we all know that- no argument from anyone on that point. Yet, there are millions of Christians who follow his rules and doctrines, purposefully ignoring what God said they should do, even though they have God’s instructions sitting there on their bookshelf! The path to salvation is right there, but they would rather be told what it means than to read it for themselves and that will be the cause of their destruction.

I am not preaching Legalism; I am pleading for people to make knowledgeable decisions, coming from the knowledge that can only be gained by reading the word of God, from Genesis through Revelation, and asking God to show you what he wants from you. God has a plan for each of us, and we will never know what it is if we listen to people. We have to hear it from God.

Even those of you who have been prophesied about, then later realized the prophecy was correct, I’ll bet if you think on it, you will remember that when you first heard someone tell you what God wants from you, you had already felt it in your heart and spirit.

Learn from this parashah the evils of a slave mentality, which is a tool of the Enemy, and start to grow out of your comfort zone; a religion-based comfort zone is NOT where God wants you to be. Our God is a God of action and growth, not one of sitting around being told what to think, so get with the program and read the Bible daily, asking God to reveal himself to you and make you aware of what he wants from you.

We all start out wandering in the desert, led by men who tell us which way we should go, and we will die in the desert following them unless we change course and follow God.

God is the only one who can lead us to the Promised Land.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages, and check out my website and my books.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

 

Why the Good Die and the Evil Live

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One of the questions regarding the existence of God I often hear is “Why would God allow evil people to live long and thrive while so many good people die young?”

The answer I give isn’t hard to understand, but it’s a tough one to accept for a person who doesn’t have faith in God.

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Before I give you my answer, I should say that I don’t have a lot of scripture to back this up and that it is based on my understanding of the nature of God.

I believe God has a purpose for everyone and a plan for their life. We are, each of us, allowed to do whatever we want to do so we can follow God’s plan for us or reject his plan and make our own. And even if we reject God’s plan for us, there is always an opportunity for us to change course, as I did when I was in my early 40s, which has led me to this ministry and writing the books I have written, and (best of all) by accepting God’s plan for me I was able to receive salvation and his Holy Spirit.

That is how I changed course, but most people do not accept God’s plan for them and do evil instead of good. So why does God allow that? It is because they still serve a purpose; what that purpose is we may not know or realize during our lifetime, but I believe, faithfully, that when someone refuses to do as God says, he will find a way to use their rejection of him to bring someone else closer to him.  We can see evidence of this in the Bible, many times when God used Pharaoh, the Philistines, and the kings of Assyria and Babylon to do evil things that brought the Israelites back to him.

So, if that explains why evil people are allowed to prosper, why do the good die so young, so often?

Again, I believe because God had a specific purpose and plan for them and once they have fulfilled that purpose, he calls them to their reward.

Remember, dying is only a sad thing for those of us left behind- for the ones who are saved by God’s grace and their belief in Messiah, they leave a fallen and cursed world to come into the eternal joy of God’s presence! Instead of being sad, we should rejoice in their victory.

But we are sad because we will miss them, and that is OK.

We all have a purpose and a part to play in God’s plan for humanity; often the ones who are godly suffer and die too soon while the ones who reject God, do evil, and abuse others are allowed to thrive and succeed in life.

This is where it becomes hard for those without faith or understanding of God to make sense of it all: the reason we are here, the reason for this existence, is to choose where we will spend eternity. Eternity is what matters, and God gives us enough time to choose where we will go after we die. That is why we often see good people die early- they’ve done what God wanted them to do.

The evil people get to live longer not as a reward, but because God is giving them extra time to change their decision.  That is part of what Grace is about- he will patiently allow evil people to continue in order to give them time to repent. God doesn’t want the evil to die in their sin (Ezekiel 18:23) so when we see evil thriving and think it unfair, in reality, they are doomed and running out of time to save themselves.

The answer to why evil people thrive and good people die young is that the evil ones need more time to repent, and the good ones have fulfilled their purpose and are receiving their reward of eternal joy.

When you think about it, the ones who die early have it better than the rest of us who have to stay behind and keep working.

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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!