I am sure we all know someone who has complained about God because of some tsouris (troubles) they have had in their life, saying that God didn’t do what he should have done, or why did he do what he did.

But is it God who failed to be the way he is supposed to be, or was it their expectation of who God is that was wrong?

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Christianity teaches that God is forgiving and holy and compassionate, and that is also how he is described in the Tanakh. And he really is like that.

But he is more than that- he is also the Holy One of Israel who is judge, jury, and executioner of those who disobey his rules. He is compassionate and understands our weaknesses, but unless we are humble, contrite, and accept Yeshua as our Messiah, faithfully believing that through his sacrifice we are able to receive forgiveness of sins, we are not going to see that side of God.

Humans are prideful, and as such, we don’t like the idea that God is all-powerful and the ultimate authority. We want to compartmentalize him into a God who forgives us, whose divine powers are there to help us, and who always loves us. As such, he will forgive us anything and we don’t really have to do much, other than love each other and say we believe Yeshua is the Messiah.

Judaism has learned it ain’t that easy- we know that the instructions God gave us in the Torah are not just for us, but for everyone, and we also know that as much as God loves us and really wants to forgive us (Ezekiel 18:23), he is too holy to ignore his own rules.

Deuteronomy 28 is at once the most wonderful and frightening chapter in the entire Bible. That is where God promises a plethora of wonderful blessings for those who obey his Torah, then he goes on to tell us all the terrible and horrible curses that will befall us if we refuse to obey his Torah. It is known as the “Blessings and Curses” chapter.

Christianity teaches the opposite, in that they say love each other and “believe in Jesus” (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean) and you will be saved. It rejects nearly every commandment, law, regulation, ordinance, Holy Day, and lifestyle that God says we should live.
Talk about unreasonable expectations, if you go by what most Christian religions teach, rejecting God, his commandments, and even replacing him with his son, they make salvation look like a “Come-As-You-Are” party!

In the Torah, God is pretty clear on what we can expect from him, and what he expects from us.

It seems to me that people reject God because they have lost a loved one, or because they prayed for something they didn’t get, or because they grew up forced to be in a religion that they didn’t like. They become angry, and because of the wrong expectations they were taught about what to expect from God, instead of realizing their expectations were wrong, they project that anger directly against God, blaming him for not being what they wanted him to be.

My experience with people who blame and/or reject God because they have suffered losses or had prayers go unanswered do so because they do not consider that what they expected from God was wrong, to begin with.

Our human pridefulness cannot accept the ultimate and unquestionable authority of God. It kills us that he can do whatever the heck he wants to, and that not only do we do not have the need to know, but he doesn’t have to explain anything to us!

And I believe that is why so many people reject God; they just can’t handle the fact that he doesn’t have to be the way they want him to be.

And that is a shame, because until someone has the emotional maturity to be humble before God (and yes- you need to be emotionally mature to be humble) and to read the Torah so they can know who he is and what he expects from them, they will never have the correct expectation of who and what God is.

And whether we are talking about God or just life in general, when your expectations are unreasonable you will never be satisfied.

Thank you for being here, and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem

One of the biggest arguments within Christianity is the idea of the Trinity, meaning that God, Yeshua (Jesus), and the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) are all really the same entity, in different forms.

It is a very hotly argued topic, but my question is this:

With regard to how we are saved, does it really matter if Yeshua is God or not?

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

I know that there are a lot of people right now who are screaming, “Of course it does!”

OK, why? Are we saved by believing that Yeshua is God? Is there anywhere in the Gospels or the writings of Shaul (Paul) that states if we do not believe Yeshua and God are the exact same entity, we can’t be saved? Doesn’t Shaul write about how important it is to faithfully believe that Yeshua is the Messiah?

Look, I don’t believe Yeshua is God simply because it doesn’t make sense, spiritually or biblically. There are some 130 messianic passages in the Tanakh, yet not one of them indicates that the Messiah is going to be God.

Every single person who ever existed was created through the joining of a human male with a human female, with three exceptions: Adam, Eve, and Yeshua. And because of Adam’s major screwup, we are all born with a sinful nature (called the Yetzer Hara), also referred to as Original Sin, which traditionally has been passed down from Adam; original sin is transmitted through the father.

But Yeshua’s father was not human, and was not sinful- in fact, he was (and is) the holiest of all holies that has, does, or ever will exist. Yeshua had to be 100% human so that he could live a human life and know human temptations. But as the messiah, he also needed to be imbued with the Holy Spirit, which is the inheritance he received from that divine conception. It was his humanity filled completely with Holy Spirit that empowered him to overcome sin. And because he was able to live a sinless life he was an acceptable sacrifice for others- which was the ultimate the goal of the Messiah’s first coming.

He was born of flesh and spirit, but even though his conception was divine, he was not divine. What was divine was the Ruach HaKodesh that lived within him, just as we who accept Yeshua and have asked for this gift from God, have the Ruach HaKodesh inside us.

Do you believe you have the indwelling Holy Spirit? Does that make you God?

But let’s get back to this salvation thing: if I believe Yeshua is God, am I more “saved” than someone who doesn’t believe that? What if he is God, and I believe he is not, does that mean I can’t be saved?

Even if I believe he is the Messiah?

If I believe Yeshua is the Messiah and believe I can receive forgiveness of my sins by means of the shedding of his innocent blood, but I don’t believe he is God, am I doomed to damnation?
Everything I read in the Bible states that faith is how we are saved, but it must be a faith that motivates us to obey God and reject sin.

But nothing says we have to believe that Yeshua is God to be saved.

Let’s wrap this up: I will never tell anyone what they must believe, so believe what you choose to, but I believe that Yeshua is not God, and more than that, I believe it doesn’t matter whether he is or not when it comes to salvation because we are not saved by the belief that Yeshua is God, but by faithfully believing he is the Messiah God promised to send. And that he died for our sins, and because he was sinless he was resurrected, proving he was an acceptable sacrifice.
And that he now sits at the right hand of his Father, the one and only God, interceding for us.
You know, when you think about it, if he is God, why would God intercede with himself?
Like I said, I don’t believe that Yeshua’s being God or not has any effect on how we are saved, but since it causes so much division within the body of the Messiah, doesn’t it make sense that we all just concentrate on Yeshua’s role as the Messiah, and let God remain God?

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages (yes, even this one) with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

First of all, we need to remember that when Yeshua (Jesus) walked the earth, the only “word of God” that existed then was the Torah.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Do you really understand what the New Covenant is? I’ll give you a hint… it isn’t found anywhere in the New Covenant writings.

Here is the new covenant that God made with Israel, which Yeshua also made available to the Gentiles, and it is in Jeremiah 31:31-33 (CJB):

Here, the days are coming,” says Adonai, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Isra’el and with the house of Y’hudah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them,” says Adonai. “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will any of them teach his fellow community member or his brother, ‘Know Adonai’; for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest; because I will forgive their wickednesses and remember their sins no more.”

That is quite a covenant, wouldn’t you agree? It also happens to be the last covenant God made with us and I believe that is because it is the last one we will ever need.

In essence, God is saying that the Torah will be more than just a document we read, it will become a physical part of us, like blood or an organ, something that is an integral part of our very existence.

And that is what Yeshua brought to us- when he says in Matthew 5:17 that he fulfilled the law, he was teaching us the Torah’s spiritual meaning, the very “heart” of the Torah, and so that when we accepted him, and received through his name the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit), we were having the Torah written on our hearts.

In other words, what Yeshua really fulfilled was not just a proper interpretation of the Torah, but he fulfilled the new covenant God gave to us through Jeremiah.

And as Shaul (Paul) points out in Romans, it was to the Jew first, then to the Gentile.

But then, the problems began: the main population of the Jewish people, having been coerced and threatened with excommunication by the power elite of Jerusalem, rejected Yeshua as the Messiah.

Later, after all the Jewish leaders of this new sect within Judaism died off, the movement was led by Gentiles who then rejected the Torah and created their own religion in order to not be targeted by the Romans, who were dealing with a Jewish rebellion.

Of course, that only worked to get the Jewish power elite coming against them. Later on, after the Romans destroyed the temple and killed thousands of Jews in their final battle, these Gentile believers thought they would be OK.

NOT!

Surprise! Now Rome came after them because the one thing Rome hated more than rebellion was some new religion being formed within their controlled territory.

So, what we have now, two millennia later, are Jews who stick to Torah obedience as God directed us to, and Christians, who profess to worship God, who say they follow in the footsteps of Yeshua, but reject nearly every single law, ordinance, regulation, and commandment God gave, which Yeshua obeyed perfectly, in order to follow man-made regulations, ceremonies, holidays, and tenets.

You know, within Judaism there are 5 different sects (6, if you count Messianic Judaism), but the one thing that is constant in all is that the Torah is the ultimate user Manual for Righteousness. From the Ultra-Orthodox (Chasidic) all the way down to the Reconstructionists, we go from extreme Torah observers to a humanistic viewpoint, but we all are trying to be Torah-obedient, in one way or another.

But Christianity, well, Christianity has a lot more than just 5 or 6 sects.

According to Google, there are as many as 45,000 different religions or sects that fall within the term “Christian”.

Forty-five thousand!

Now, as I recall, that nice Jewish tent-maker from Tarsus, in his letter to the Corinthians, said that God is not a god of confusion, but of peace.

You know what? If you ask me, when a religion has as its root tenet that it worships God and follows in the footsteps of Yeshua, but has some 45,000 different ways to do that, well… I am sorry, but I’ve gotta say that is one confused religion!

Hey, Folks- it’s easy! Really! God made the Jews his nation of priests to the world (Ex. 19:6), then he gave us the Torah, then he sent us the Messiah to teach us the true, spiritual meaning of the Torah, then the disciples of the Messiah brought the Torah (being God’s priests to the world) to the Goyim, which is Hebrew for the nations.

Simply stated, God gave Jews the Torah for us to learn so we could bring it to everyone else in the world.

Then the Goyim screwed it all up by rejecting the Torah, making up their own religions, and forcing us Jews to either convert or be tortured and killed.

Talk about killing the messenger!

So, what should you do? My suggestion is simple: read the entire Bible (that means start at Genesis and go through to Revelation) and then pray on it, asking God to guide you to HIS truth.

And let me offer this thought: when you stand before God at Judgement Day (which we all will have to do), and God asks why you didn’t do any of the things he said you should do, I guess that you will answer saying that you did what they told you to do because you thought they knew what they were talking about. I can’t speak for God, but I think he might say something to this effect…

“I know you only did what they told you to do, but it is what I say that counts.”

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

It starts with the creation of everything. Human beings are created, and God gives us the gift of Free Will, because his love for us is such that he will allow us to choose where we spend eternity.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

God wants us to love him freely and without being forced to, but free will is a two-edged sword: if we choose to obey God from love for him, we will live, but if we choose to reject God from love for ourselves, we will die.

Happily for us, God is not just willing to forgive us, but he truly desires to do so (Ez. 18:23), and so he provides a means for us to be forgiven.

But not yet.

God eventually chooses Abraham, and promises that through his descendants the entire world will be blessed.

But first he needed to protect us. You see, Levi and Rueben had placed the entire Jewish population at risk by slaughtering an entire town in retribution for the prince raping their sister, Dinah, so God had the entire family go to Egypt.

(Yeah, I know I am skipping some events, but the main message remains valid.)

After a time, the family grows into a nation, and then God shows himself to the nation through the miraculous events he causes, freeing his people from slavery and bringing them into the desert.

Now we come to the main point of today’s message: God’s plan for the Jews and the rest of the world.

1. He tells Moses to separate the Levites, who will serve God for the House of Israel (Num. 3:10-12; Num. 8:5-22).
2. God tells Moses that the House of Israel will be his (meaning God’s) nation of priests to the world (Ex. 19:6). They have to be priests to the world because the Levites are already priests to Israel, and all that is left to priest to….is the rest of the world. Duh!
3. God gives this nation of priests the Big Ten (Ex. 20), and over time, through Moses the entire Torah to learn so that they can teach it to the world.
4. God promises, in Deut. 28, that if we obey his Torah we will be blessed, so it works like this: God gives us Jews the Torah promising if we obey it, we will be blessed, then he tells the Jews to bring it to the world, so the world can be blessed, as well, fulfilling the promise he made to Abraham.
5. He sends the Messiah, Yeshua, so that when the sacrificial system is not available (after the destruction of the temple) there will still be a means for his people, as well as all people, to receive the forgiveness he wants us to have, so long as we faithfully accept his Messiah and continue to obey God’s Torah, just as Messiah Yeshua did.
   

My purpose is to do the best I can to teach others how religions are misleading us, and the only way to truly worship God correctly is the way God said to do it!

Again…DUH!

When the Messiah returns, I believe there will be a third temple, and the sacrificial system will be reinstituted, but not for sin- Yeshua took care of that one. There are many other sacrifices to be made, such as the wholly burnt sacrifice (demonstrating our total devotion to God), the Thanksgiving sacrifice, the daily sacrifices, the Rosh Hodesh and Holy Day sacrifices, not to mention any voluntary sacrifices people wish to make.

Well, that’s the plan, Folks! It is laid out clearly throughout the Bible, and despite what Christianity has taught, this plan is confirmed by Yeshua and the teachings within the New Covenant writings.

I think many of you already kinda knew this is what God’s plan was, from the start, but have become complacent and happy to use your religion as an excuse for taking the easy way out. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but salvation is not a Come-As-You-Are Party. It is free for the asking, and once given no one can take it away from you.

But you can throw it away by not following God’s User Manual for Righteousness, colloquially known as the Torah.

As I said from the start, you were given Free Will to decide where you will spend eternity: please decide wisely.

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know- Shaul says in Ephesians 2:8 that no one is saved by works, it is a gift from God and not from works.

But when explains what he means, he doesn’t trash the Torah.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

First off, you need to know this: to properly understand the Bible, you cannot take a sentence or a few words from here and there, but must always use the tool called “Circles of Context”. That means you interpret the words in the sentence using the culturally accepted meaning of those words, at the time they were being written. Then, you review the sentence within the paragraph, the paragraph within the letter, and take into consideration who wrote the letter, to whom, and for what reason.

Now, Ephesians was written to the people living in…(wait for it)… Ephesus. We know from reading all the Epistles that Ephesus was a constant problem for the young believing congregations there, who faced pressure from without, and from within. So, the main reason Shaul wrote to them was to get them back on track, and the way to do that was to reignite their passionate faith in Yeshua, while also reducing the pressure they felt from the Legalists, who throughout Asia were telling these neophyte, Gentile believers they had to undergo circumcision or they wouldn’t really be saved.

What Shaul goes on to say, after saying that salvation is not from works, is that it is from faith so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:9). He was pointing out that it is through Messiah Yeshua, and only through Yeshua, that these Gentiles were now able to be included in receiving salvation, previously only available to the Jews.

But he doesn’t trash the Torah, he is reinitiating faith in Yeshua, which is the beginning of obedience to Torah.

When James suggested those 4 initial requirements for new believers to obey right away (Acts 15), he said that the Gentiles would eventually learn the law of Moses (i.e., Torah obedience) as they continued to attend Shabbat services.

You know, I’m glad that James never lived to see what happened with his suggestion, because by the end of the first century the (now) Gentile leadership of what had been a Jewish movement changed their Sabbath day, and never studied the Torah. In fact, they have rejected it to this very day.

Nowhere in the entire New Covenant does any apostle or disciple who knew and worked with Messiah Yeshua deny the value or worth of the Torah, or tell people that obedience to the Torah is wrong. No one ever said that works are useless. Never!

Most of the Epistles were directed at maintaining faith in God and Yeshua; all they said was that they cannot depend on works, alone, to gain salvation.

The Torah is God’s User Manual for Righteousness, and you have to ask yourself this question: if the Torah isn’t what God wants us to do, then why give it to us?

I’ll tell you why: just before he gave us the Torah, God told Moses that he chose the Jewish people to be his nation of priests (Ex. 19:6). Now, when someone becomes a priest, he learns how to worship God, right? He has to know the proper prayers, rites, rituals, celebrations, and history; in other words, he needs to know pretty much everything that God expects of people so that he can teach others what God wants from them.

Because God chose us to be his priests, then gave us the Torah, I think it is obvious that God wanted us to learn the Torah so that as his priests, we would bring Torah to the world.

Despite what your religion may have told you, the Torah IS the way God wants EVERYONE to live!

This is the absolute truth about the Torah: if anyone lives in 100% obedience to the Torah, 100% of the time, they will be righteous in God’s eyes, and as such they will be resurrected to eternal life in God’s presence. Like the title of today’s message says, Yes!- obedience to the Torah WILL save you!

How can I say that when Christianity has been saying for two millennia that you can’t be saved by the Torah? Easily! You see, it has already been done, and the guy who did it was raised up to heaven.

I think you know who that guy is.

The problem we humans have, and the only reason people say you can’t be saved by the Torah, is because our sinful nature doesn’t allow us to be 100% obedient, 100% of the time. That is why God sent the Messiah- so when we screw up, as we all do, we have a means to be forgiven.

I know this message is something that would make most any Christian think, “Nah! That can’t be- everyone I ever heard, loved, trusted, or knew has told me that all I need to do is to believe in Jesus and love others, and I go to heaven.” Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

Well, sinners love others, and every demon in Hell believes Jesus is the Messiah, so nu? do you think they are saved?

No?

Then maybe you haven’t been told the whole story. Maybe, just maybe, you need to follow some rules about how to worship God and how to treat each other that your religion hasn’t filled you in on.

And you know what? That’s why God gave us the Torah, because it tells us how HE wants us to do those things. And if you have faith in Yeshua, and trust that what God says is always for your benefit, then that faith and trust should motivate you to obey what God says you should do.

Hey, look…I’m not here to tell you what to believe or what you must do, that’s up to you. All I am saying is that you can choose to obey what a religion says to do, which is probably going to involve rejecting God, or you can choose to reject what a religion says to do, and obey God.

When you think about it, that choice is pretty much a no-brainer, isn’t it?

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

One of the most divisive topics within Christianity today is the idea of the Trinity: God, Yeshua, and the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit) not being three separate and unique entities, but rather they are all God, only in three different identities.

But, when it comes down to it, as far as our salvation goes, does it really matter if they are three unique entities, or three versions of the same personage?

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Let’s begin to answer this question with the truth about the origin of the Trinity…

SPOILER ALERT!!! It didn’t come from the Bible.

The idea of a triune nature of God, i.e., God, son, and spirit all being the same entity, was introduced into Christianity by a man named Tertullian. This man lived from 145-220 A.D., and stated in his treatise, “On the Flesh of Christ”. He said that two beings are God, the Father and the Son, and, with the addition of the Holy Spirit, even three.

So, we begin by recognizing that the idea of the Trinity is not a biblical fact; in fact, it is not biblical, at all, but only one guy’s opinion.

I am always surprised that Christians never seem to see the hypocrisy of their own teachings! Christians are supposed to be monotheistic, right? One God, and just one God, the only true God, right? But if you say there are really three gods- God, the Father, Yeshua, God the son, and the Holy Spirit being God indwelling, then any way you look at it- that’s three gods, and more than just one God is polytheism, not monotheism.

And if you are going to start quoting the ridiculous double-talk from the Gospels of John, that doesn’t substantiate the Trinity, either. When John begins the supposed diatribe of Yeshua, saying “If you knew him, you would know me, but you don’t know him so you don’t know me, but I know him and he knows me…yadda-yadda-yadda”- this is NOT Yeshua claiming to be God.

Do you believe we are all “one” in the body of Messiah? If so, does that make us THE Messiah? If you are one with Yeshua, does that mean you ARE Yeshua?

Of course not! And when Yeshua tells us “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), he already stated (John 5:19) that he does only what the Father tells him to do, and says only what the Father tells him to say, So, since he is only doing and saying what God tells him to say, when we see him perform miracles or hear him teach, we are seeing God through him. Not that he is God, but that he is acting as God, with God’s approval and with the power of God given to him through the Holy Spirit.

What about the prophets that came before him, and the Apostles after him, all doing the same miraculous things Yeshua did…are they God? The Prophets spoke directly from God, and they performed works and miracles empowered by God, just as Yeshua claimed. They, too, just like Yeshua, spoke only what God told them to say, and did only what God told them to do, so…are they God?

I don’t think so, do you?

OK, so we have established that the Trinity isn’t substantiated by anything in the Bible, and speaking on behalf of God and doing what God tells and empowers you to do, doesn’t make you God.

So, nu… let’s get back to the original question: is the Trinity necessary for salvation?

The answer is: NO!

Why is it “No”? Because we are not saved by faith that Yeshua is God; we are saved by faith that Yeshua is the Messiah. We are saved by faithfully believing his death was accepted as a sin sacrifice, that he was resurrected, and that his shed blood replaces the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem in order to ask for forgiveness of sin.

If something doesn’t lead you towards salvation, it is leading you away from it!

This is how we receive salvation: faithfully believing that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, that his sacrifice is now the only means by which we can ask God for forgiveness (which is the only way we can enter into God’s presence), and that he will return to bring God’s peace to the earth for all eternity.

One other thing: since Judaism is based on the idea that God is one, God alone, and that when someone says God is three, that is a major turnoff for Jews. They cannot accept a Trinity, which means they will not be able to accept Yeshua as the Messiah.

Tertullian was a Gentile whose writings weren’t very “Jew-friendly”; in fact, he wrote several polemics against Judaism, calling it heresy, which is why I believe the idea of the Trinity was just another way of separating what had become Christianity from Judaism.

Whether Yeshua and God, and let’s not forget the Holy Spirit, are one entity or three separate entities, is NOT necessary for, or even a part of, receiving salvation.

So, to conclude… if you find yourself in a discussion of Trinity vs. Unity, just leave. All it will do is cause more dissension within the ranks, and we have enough of that, already.

Thank you for being here, and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, believer or not. After all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Sadly, for millennia Christians who, I believe, truly want to serve and worship God, have been told they don’t have to follow the Torah.

They’ve been taught that Yeshua did away with the law, or that they only need to be faithful to be saved, or as Gentiles they only have to follow the 4 requirements in Acts 15, or they only have to follow the moral laws, not the ceremonial ones, or that they don’t have to do anything more than just “call on the name of the Lord” to be saved.

“Hey, I just Whatsapp’d God- am I saved now?”

Truth be told, none of those things are correct.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

I am Jewish, born and raised from Jewish parents, taught in a reform Jewish synagogue, and when I was in my mid-40’s, I accepted that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah God promised to send, but I did not convert to anything or become a Christian (which my Jewish brothers and sisters would claim I am if I “believe in Jesus”).

What happened was that I did not become a Born-Again Christian, but rather, a Born-Anew Jew! Which is just what happened to the tens of thousands of Jews who were living during the ministry of Yeshua and who accepted him as the Messiah.

So, as a Jew, it is hard for me to understand why Christianity insists that it’s followers should live and act as Yeshua did, but- in the same breath- tells them to reject everything that he did, which was to obey every instruction for worship and treating each other that his father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, told us all to do in the Torah.

Don’t get ahead of me! I am not going to defend the Torah today, and this lesson is not to be an apologetic for the Torah. All I am going to do is ask why anyone who believes that God exists would not want to obey the Torah.

What is the Torah? It is God’s User Manual for righteous living.

And despite the way James stated it, it is not an all or nothing thing: it is a guide, as Shaul said, a guardian, and as such we do our best to do what it says to do.

But, since no human being is capable of living righteously- at least, not all the time- God gave us the sacrificial system in the Torah so we could be forgiven when we screw-up, which he knew we would do. That’s why he gave us the sacrificial system! DUH! Then he sent Yeshua to act as a permanent sacrifice for sin, replacing the need to bring an animal to be sacrificed at the temple in Jerusalem, which was the Torah command for any sacrifice to be accepted.

So, you can see how Yeshua’s sacrifice came in REALLY handy, especially after the temple was destroyed! Yeshua did not do away with the sacrificial system; all he did was to replace the need to sacrifice an animal at the temple, so now through Yeshua we can receive forgiveness anytime, anywhere.

The truth is, most Christians don’t have any idea what the Torah is, and that includes most Jews, as well! You think it is a bunch of laws, such as what is kosher and the 10 Commandments, and you are right- those laws are in there, but there is so much more to it.

Did you know that the Torah is a historical narrative, one that is being validated more and more by archaeological discoveries?

Did you know that the Torah defines a set of proper business ethics (Deut. 25)?

Did you know it has a form of a health code (Lev. 11; 14; 15)?

Did you know the Torah defines acceptable interpersonal relationships, i.e., which are proper and which are sinful? (Lev.18)?

Did you know the Torah has a penal code that stipulates the type and degree of punishment for any number of crimes, from capital crimes like murder, to torts, to misdemeanors such as loss or destruction of someone else’s property in your possession? (Lev. 24)

Did you know that the Torah is a Ketuba (marriage certificate) between a people and God, through the covenants God made with us?

BTW… the covenants God made have always been inclusive of the previous covenants: no covenant ever did away with any previous covenant.

And here’s a good reason why anyone and everyone should obey…did you know that in Deuteronomy 28, God promises to totally bless anyone who obeys his Torah?

We can’t ever earn salvation, but we can earn blessings, and who can bless better than God? Really! Why wouldn’t anyone who believes in God, who believes God is trustworthy to do as he says, not want to receive blessings?

So, again, I ask: What’s so terrible about obeying the Torah?

Christianity makes it sound like if you obey the Torah, you are disqualified from salvation. How stupid is that? Why would God punish anyone for doing what he said he wants us to do?

Can you tell me why Christianity has this thing for the Torah? Why does it insist that if you obey the Torah you can’t really be saved? All I ever hear is that doing all that “Jewish” stuff means you aren’t really saved because you are “under the law”?

Fools! False teachers! Without the law, there can be no salvation because the lawless are to be punished. Being “under the law” doesn’t mean being obedient to the Torah, it means being legalistic, which is a performance-based system for salvation.

Performing activities in order to earn salvation will not work, and demonstrates faith in works and not faith in God.

Here’s a really hard word to accept, but is undeniable: anyone who can be 100% obedient to 100% of the Torah, 100% of the time, will be saved! How can I say that?

I can say that because Yeshua was risen from the grave! He was a sinless lamb, which means he was 100% obedient to the Torah, and being sinless he was saved from death, and now sits at the right hand of God. He wasn’t resurrected because he was the Messiah, it is because he was the Messiah that he was able to be sinless, which is why he was resurrected.

So, let’s review: the Torah is a history book, it tells us what perversities we are to avoid in our relationship with others, it defines fair business practices, it has a penal code, it has a health code, it acts as a constitution for a nation, it tells us how God wants us to worship him, and more than anything else it defines what sin is, and how to be forgiven when we sin.

Once again, the Torah is not just a bunch of laws, it is God’s GPS, directing us how to live a righteous life.

Don’t you agree that true faith in, and love for God will generate in us a real desire to please him? And doesn’t it make sense that if we do what God said he wants us to do, that he will be pleased?

Being obedient to the Torah is not disqualification from salvation, it is simply living as God said to live, and as Yeshua lived, and when you do you get blessed out the ying-yang!

So, nu? If it demonstrates the truth of your faith and gets you tons of blessings, to boot!…what’s so terrible about obeying the Torah?

Thank you for being here, and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even those non-believers. After all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

What is one of the first things Christians are taught? Isn’t it that they are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus? Doesn’t that bracelet with the “WWJD” on it mean that the wearer wants to live their life the way Jesus did?

Then why is it that Christianity (and Judaism, as well) says that you either follow the Torah or you follow Yeshua, but you can’t follow both. Don’t they know that Yeshua followed the Torah?

BTW..(in case you didn’t know, Yeshua is Jesus’s real name)

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Being raised Jewish (and, for the record, I am still Jewish, not Christian), I was taught that this guy Jesus was a Jew but he rejected Judaism and created Christianity. So, to a Jew, if you “believe in Jesus” (whatever that is supposed to mean) you are no longer Jewish, but you have to be a Christian!

Isn’t that strange? Jews want to convert believing Jews to Christianity even more than the Christians do!

The truth is this: to believe that Yeshua is the MOST “Jewish” thing anyone can do.

Yeshua had to have lived his life in total, 100% obedience to the Torah. At that time, the Torah was the User Manual for righteousness (and, you know what?-it still is), so because Yeshua was raised from the dead, proving absolutely that his death was an acceptable sacrifice, the fact is that he had to have lived his life obedient to the laws, commandments, regulations, Holy Days, and everything else that is in the Torah, AND that he is the Messiah God promised to send to us!

The Epistles, which is what Christianity is actually based on, weren’t even written then; and, even now, they have nothing at all to do with how Yeshua lived and worshipped.

Both Jews and Christians have had it wrong since the beginning: Yeshua was, is, and will always be obedient to God’s Torah, and in order to do as Yeshua did, to follow in his footsteps, and to live a righteous life, according to what GOD says and not to some man-made religion, you have to be obedient to the Torah and live it as Yeshua did.

Yeshua is the embodiment of the New Covenant: not the biblical books from Matthew through Revelation, but the real New Covenant, the one (and the only one) God made through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31). That covenant says that God will write his Torah on our hearts. Reading about Yeshua, we can see that he was not just obedient to the Torah, but he was Torah in the flesh (despite my opinion about John’s Gospel, he did get that part right), and the living example of the fulfillment of the New Covenant, having the Torah written on his heart.

So, nu? If you really want to do as Yeshua did, and you really want to live as he did, and you really want to follow in his footsteps, the Arthur Murray version of those dance steps are in the Torah- nowhere else, just the Torah. If you decide to accept that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised, that through his sacrifice we can be forgiven, and you try to live as he did, obedient to the Torah (we can never be as obedient as he was, so we do our best)… if you do all that, then you are on the right path to eternal joy.

Thank you again for being here, and please remember to subscribe and share these messages.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

When we read the Gospels, we see that Yeshua mentioned 2 of the 10 Commandments during his sermon on the Mount, but throughout the Gospels he didn’t really talk a lot about the Torah.

Have you ever wondered why the Son of God didn’t teach people about the Torah, yet Shaul talked about the Torah a lot?

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I believe the answer is simply this: Yeshua was talking to Jews, and Shaul was talking to Gentiles.

The Jews knew the Torah, but what they didn’t know was the deeper, spiritual meaning of the Torah because all the Pharisees ever taught was the P’shat, the “plain language” of the Torah.

Yeshua taught what is called the Remes, the deeper, spiritual meaning. This was in order to fulfill part of his calling as the Messiah, which was to bring to fruition God’s New Covenant, the one he made through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31), namely to write his Torah on our hearts.

The part of the Bible called the New Covenant (or New Testament, if you prefer) has no covenants in it, at all. In truth, God doesn’t speak in it to the people, except for the one time he spoke to the apostles that accompanied Yeshua onto the mountain when Moses and Elijah appeared (Matthew 17). At that time, all God said was something to the effect of “This is my son, listen to him.”

The real new covenant God made was fulfilled by Yeshua when he taught us the true meaning of God’s laws, and that didn’t involve him quoting from the Torah, but teaching what the Torah meant in a new way. Why do you think it is often said of him that no one has ever taught the way he did? Why did the people say he taught as if he had authority? It was because he taught us the “heart” of the Torah, and since he was talking to Jews, he didn’t need to explain where these laws came from because they already knew.

Now, when Shaul (Paul) wrote his letters, he did have to mention the Torah and explain about it because he was talking, for the most part, to Gentiles who did not know the Torah.

In Acts 15, when Ya’akov (James) suggested the 4 initial rules for these new believers to follow (I say initial because they weren’t the only rules, just what they should start with), he stated that they will be learning the Torah as they continue to attend Shabbat services, indicating (clearly!) that these neophyte believers in Yeshua were converting to a Torah-obedient lifestyle.

So, I don’t have any real mind-blowing revelation for you today, just a basic teaching in case anyone ever asks, “If Yeshua was the Messiah, why didn’t he teach about the Torah?”. Actually, what you will most likely hear is that Yeshua taught the Torah was not necessary, and that is why he didn’t mention it that much.

He didn’t mention where his teaching came from because he didn’t need to: he was talking to Jews, and they already knew the Torah. What they didn’t know was what Yeshua taught them, so that the Torah would be written on their hearts and not just on parchment.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

In Matthew 7:15, Yeshua (Jesus) says, “Beware of the false prophets! They come to you wearing sheep’s clothing, but underneath they are hungry wolves!”

This warning is stated throughout the Bible, often by Shaul (Paul), mainly as a warning against false teachings. Yet, because so much of Christianity is based on Shaul’s letters and rejects most of God’s commandments, I sometimes wonder if Shaul was a sheep or a wolf?

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Shaul is a very confusing fellow: he is at once a Pharisee, boasting about his Jewish heritage and training, and he always taught in the synagogues before going to the Gentiles. On the other hand, he also said so many things that appear to be against the Torah, such as regarding food and circumcision (two often repeated issues), one has to wonder where his loyalties really lie.

For the most part, Christian holidays, tenets, canon and ceremonies do not come from the Torah, but are rebranded pagan holidays and man-made traditions. And, because so much of Christianity is based on what Shaul wrote in the letters to his congregations, which were having issues of faith and interpersonal relationship problems, I have come to wonder if the Gentiles were misled by Shaul to form a new religion that goes against God. Is it possible that one of the most world-shattering events in Christianity- Shaul’s revelation of Messiah Yeshua- was really Satan pretending to be Yeshua?

You know, that wouldn’t be something the Prince of Lies wouldn’t do. And, because at that time many of the paganist Gentiles were learning the proper worship of God, sending someone like Shaul to confuse and misdirect them would be a smart thing to do.

After all, look at how successfully his letters have been used to misdirect millions to reject God’s Torah!

Of course, this thought borders on blasphemy, doesn’t it? And the last thing I would ever want to do is insult the Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit), but we are told to be as wise as serpents, which (to me) means not to avoid questioning anything or anyone who does anything, in any way, to redirect us from obedience to God’s instructions in the Torah.

So, after thinking it over, and asking for guidance from above, I have come to the conclusion that Shaul was, indeed, called by Yeshua to bring the Good News of salvation through Yeshua to all peoples, Jews and Gentiles, alike. BUT…although Shaul was not a wolf, he made it possible for the wolves to easily infiltrate and control the congregations he formed.

And they didn’t start to redirect the sheep away from God’s instructions, which Shaul was trying to get them to learn (at a pace they could handle), until well after Shaul and most every other Jewish disciple and leader of what was (initially) a Jewish sect, was dead and gone.

By the end of the First Century, Jews accepting Yeshua as their Messiah was tapering off, and more and more Gentiles were coming into this sect, and some were wolves who decided that, for both political and (in my opinion) personal reasons, redirected the people into a more casual worship. This new religion they created rejected many of the rules and regulations God gave to us through Moses, and redefined salvation from accepting Yeshua as their Messiah and living a Torah-observant lifestyle to a new religion whose only requirements are to believe in Jesus and love each other.

They turned Yeshua’s teachings from a God-fearing Torah observant lifestyle into a “come-as-you-are” party.

Remember that Shaul told the Corinthians he would be whatever he had to be in order to get the Good News out to people (1 Corinthians 9:20). We see this in his Epistles, each one directed to a specific congregation, addressing their specific problems. This ended up with what was said to one congregation may have been stated differently to another, adding to the confusion his letters usually caused (see 2 Peter 3:16), creating the opportunity for his letters to be misused by the wolves in sheep’s clothing, hiding in his congregations and secretly working for Satan.

Shaul was not the wolf in sheep’s clothing, but in his zeal to get the Good News out to everyone and by “playing to his audience”, he wasn’t consistent. And that inconsistency left the gate open for the wolves to infiltrate and eventually lead his flock away from Yeshua and towards destruction.

Thank you for being here and please remember to subscribe and share.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!