Why Shaul is So Misunderstood

Shaul, also known as Paul, said that he had a thorn in his side that was placed there to keep him humble.

I think I know what that thorn was.

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

Shaul was so educated that he had trouble getting some pretty simple ideas out in a way that they were easy to understand. Even Kefa (Peter), in 2 Peter 3:16, said that Shaul’s letters were difficult to comprehend. He said:

His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Shaul was the sort of man who had two problems when it came to communicating:

  1. He couldn’t say a sentence in less than a paragraph; and
  2. He used Jewish logic when talking to Gentiles.

Now, you may be wondering what “Jewish logic” is, so let me explain: we Jews always answer a question with a question and we will never tell you what something is until we first tell you everything it isn’t.

Here’s an interesting factoid: did you know that scholars believe of the many letters credited to Shaul nearly 1/3 or more of them might not have actually been written by him? They believe that some might have been written by those with him or by scribes working off of his notes. I have done an entire teaching series on the Epistles by Shaul, and if you are interested in looking that over, here is the link: Shaul’s letters.

When reading the letters, if we ignore what we have been told they mean, and read them fresh- as I do- then you can see that he follows a distinct pattern.

He starts off with describing his current situation, a little of what he has done, gives thanks to God and then starts to butter-up the people he is writing to by saying how he has loved them and brags about them to other congregations (although with the Galatians, he gets right down to it).

Then, after putting their minds at ease, he rips into them with what he hears they are doing that is wrong, from being pressured into legalistic observance to having interpersonal relationship problems, and even power struggles within some congregations.

For the record: Legalism is NOT about just obeying the Torah, but doing what the Torah says in order to get points, i.e., to earn salvation. We cannot ever earn salvation: obedience is to be based on faithful trust in God and not only on proper performance (James 2:14-26).

These letters from Shaul are not God-breathed scripture (Shaul never says God told him what to say) but more like managerial directives, pep-talks (so to speak) in order to get these believing Gentiles to learn how to live a faithfully observant life to remain on track, while not saying to reject or ignore the Torah at all.

Look at Romans 2:13:

It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

And when Shaul talks about how Abraham was considered righteous because of his faith (Romans 4), there is never mention of Genesis 26:5, where God confirmed his promises to Abraham with Isaac, saying that:

All this is because Avraham heeded what I said and did what I told him to do — he followed my mitzvot, my regulations and my teachings.

Shaul was trying to get pagans who were raised to lead a hedonistic, sexually perverse, and drunken lifestyle to give it all up and act according to God’s rules for righteousness (that is in the Torah) so that after they die they will have eternal joy. Let’s face it, people- that’s a hard sell!

Now, add to that the fact that the men are being told on top of all they have to give up, they also have to get the top of their penis cut off, and you’re got a big NO SALE showing on the register.

James and the Elders in Jerusalem knew what Shaul was trying to do, and so they sent that letter (Acts 15) to support the slow and easy shift Shaul was teaching, going from pagan to Torah observant, by putting just four INITIAL requirements to be immediately part of their conversion. James knew that the Torah would be learned eventually and he even said so, in Acts 15:21 (another verse Christians are never taught).

So, poor Shaul! Between the difficult act of helping Gentiles make a paradigm shift from pagan practices to Torah observance, especially with the external pressures to make immediate and total conversion to Judaism, and being so difficult to understand because he just can’t say something without making it almost impossible to follow, well…that thorn really made things difficult.

And later on, when the Jewish leaders were dead and only Gentiles remained in charge, it was very easy for those who didn’t want to be associated with the Jews (because of the political issues with Rome) and- I believe- because they just didn’t want to give up so much, they misused and misinterpreted those letters from Shaul in order to misdirect people (just as Kefa said they would) onto a path of Torah rejection instead of Torah observance.

And once that misdirection started to take hold, they added completely rejecting the Torah instituting Replacement Theology, and eventually even rejecting God by replacing him with his Messiah!

Even today I hear people say that any Christian who even wants to be Torah observant isn’t really saved because they are “under the law”!

I don’t know if Shaul is able to see how his instructions have been so mistreated, but if he can I have to believe he is really upset with how he has been the reason so many millions of God-fearing people over the centuries have been led into destruction, happily dancing and singing all the way to Sheol thinking they are going to heaven.

If you believe that the Torah is just for Jews, that you only need to believe in Jesus (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean), and that if you are a good person and love your neighbor you will go to heaven, I feel sorry for you and suggest with all my heart, that you read the entire Bible- Genesis through Revelation- and forget what you have been taught. And each time you open it up, first ask God to show you what HE wants you to know.

The only place in the entire Bible where God, himself, tells us how to worship him and how to treat each other is in the Torah- if you follow anything other than what God says, you are rejecting him.

PLEASE! Trust in God, really do as Yeshua did and obey the Torah, and reject any man-made religion. No one can be 100% Torah observant, which is why God sent Yeshua, and just because we can’t do it is no excuse to not try.

We can never be sinless, but we can always sin less.

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!

My Problem with John’s Gospel

This is going to be a long message, so please try to get through it, even though I know it is going to be really hard for almost everyone to hear.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
But I think it might be easier to get through by reading it, instead.

To begin with, no one really knows who wrote the gospels, and the names given are nothing more than educated guesses by Christians sometime in the second century.

The time line for each gospel is that Matthew was written circa 75- 85 A.D., Mark 70-75 A.D., Luke 80-90 A.D., and John 90-100 A.D., just before he is know no have died. As an interesting factoid, John was the only disciple not martyred.

There has to be some question why he wrote the gospel so much later than the other writers, being some 60+ years after the events he is supposedly recalling accurately. But more than this speculation, there are so many parts of John that are not like the other three, and in fact are in direct contradiction to what the other three say.

The other three are synoptic gospels, mainly giving a historic narrative of the teachings and events in Yeshua’s lifetime, also showing his lineage to prove his descent from David.
John’s gospel contains over 90% original material, using long theological and overly-spiritualized diatribe instead of the short, parables used in the other three. Another major difference is that it is only in John’s gospel do we find regular use of the “I am” statements, which are used, clearly, to indicate a divine presence of Yeshua.

Now let’s go chapter by chapter to find things that do not match or contradict what the other three gospels say.

John 1:29-34 has John the Immerser proclaiming that Yeshua was the lamb of God as he came to be immersed (1:29-34) and he says he saw the spirit coming down onto Yeshua like a dove. But he also says that he wouldn’t know who the Messiah was until the spirit came down on him.
Okay, so John the Immerser proclaims Yeshua as the lamb of God when he first sees him, before he was baptized, but then later in the Gospel it says John the Immerser didn’t know Yeshua was the son of God until AFTER the immersion!

So, what is it? Did he recognize him immediately or not? And in Matthew 3:13 John recognizes who Yeshua is and he says Yeshua should be baptizing him.

So the gospel not only contradicts itself, but is very different fromt he same event as described in Matthew. The one thing all four have in comment is the declaration of the spirit coming to land on Yeshua.

John 1:35 describes how Yeshua chose Simon and Andrew in a totally different manner than the other gospels, saying that they were with John the Baptist and they followed Yeshua when John declared him to be the son of God. But in the other three, Peter and Andrew were fishing when Yeshua calls them to follow him. This is a significant difference, in that John has them following the Baptist while the other three have them fishing.

And in John 1:42 Yeshua first meets Simon and then renames him Peter, while in Matthew he doesn’t say that until Matthew 16:16, after Simon proclaims Yeshua to be the Messiah. In Mark he doesn’t rename him until later when in Mark 3:13 he appoints the 12.


In John 3:17 he says he did not come into the world to judge but to save, yet later in John 9:39 he says he came into the world for judgement. Whether we want to say that his presence was a judgment on those who rejected him, or he judged people who rejected him, either way, judging passively or actively, his presence DID create judgement, and that is in direct contradiction to him saying he did not come to judge but to save, especially if his presence acted as any kind of judgement which did not save but ended up condemning! In John 3:19, Yeshua actually says that there is a judgment, right after he says he did not come to judge!

In John 4 we read about how he talked to the Samaritan woman, even accepting a drink from her, and telling her that he is the Messiah (John 4:25-26). But in Matthew 16:20, Mark 8:29, and Luke 9:21 he specifically tells his disciples NOT to tell anyone he is the Messiah! In John 10:25 Yeshua answers the Judeans who ask him if he is the Messiah that he has already told them and they don’t trust him.

The next thing that is a complete contradiction of the other three is that in John 4, he not only tells the woman he is the Messiah, but teaches in their town for 2 days; but in Matthew 15:21 he says he came only for the children of Israel (Shomron was not considered to be Jewish). And although he did heal the slave of the Centurian (Luke 7:1) and healed the daughter of the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24), he stated these two showed so much faith that he did as they said. But his objective was always the direct children of Israel, the Jews, and not anyone else. There is nothing in any of the other three gospels even indicating he taught anywhere but in Israeli lands.

In John 8:58 when Yeshua declares that “before Abraham was, I am” is clearly a definitive statement of eternal being. There is nothing even close to that in any of the other Gospels, and (as pointed out earlier) the use of the words, “I am” throughout John’s gospel is a clear claim of divinity, since God first used those words when Moses asked who he should say sent him.

In no other gospel except John does Yeshua come even close to claiming to be God, identified as God, as one with God, or any of the other spiritually confusing rhetoric we read in this one, unique gospel.

In John 12 he says that Judah the betrayer was stealing from the community purse he was in charge of, yet that is never mentioned or even implied in the other gospels. You would think something like that might be important to note.

Again we hear him say, in John 12:47 that Yeshua did not come to judge anyone, but then he says that what he has spoken will judge them. Well, what is it? If his word judges people, then he is judging them; passively or actively, they are being judged by what he is saying and that is a judgment that he is responsible for doing.

The betrayal is also described very differently. In Matthew 26:23, Yeshua only says the one who is dipping his bread with me will betray me, and then they all ask, “Is it I?”. In Mark 14 and Luke 22:21 he says the one dipping his bread with me, but in none of those three gospels does he address Judas directly as he does in John, nor do they say Judas was a thief.

In John 14:26 Yeshua says that the Holy Spirit will be sent by God in his (Yeshua’s) name, which does go along with the narrative in Acts 2:1; but, later in John 20:22, it says that Yeshua, after being resurrected, breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit, which goes against the way Yeshua said it would be done and also against what is recorded in Acts.

He also tells them, at that time, they have the authority to forgive or not forgive sins. In the other gospels Yeshua says that all sins are forgivable (except against the Holy Spirit), but here he is saying, essentially, that if the disciples don’t forgive a sin it won’t be forgiven.

What happened to Matthew 6:14-15 when Yeshua said if we do not forgive someone’s sin, we will not be forgiven? Clearly this choice to forgive or retain sins is a direct contradiction to what Yeshua says in the other gospels, and to his teaching about that 7 times 70 times we should forgive thing, as well!

And what do the other gospels say about the Holy Spirit being given? There is no mention of the giving of the Holy Spirit in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. However, the Holy Spirit is only mentioned in Acts 2 as coming on the Disciples at the Shavuot celebration.

Here’s more!

Yeshua often refers to “their Torah” or ‘their law” when he is debating with the Power Elite in Jerusalem in John 10:34 and John 15:25. No Jew would ever say, “their Torah” because it is always our Torah, so he would say, “the Torah”.

Finally, when Yeshua is taken prisoner, John says he also went into the courts with Peter; in fact, John says he was known to the Cohen HaGadol and he was the one who got Peter into the courtyard. Now that would be an important thing to note, yet not one of the other three, all of which retell this part of the history, mention John ever being there. And nowhere is there ever any mention of John having any connection to or familiarity with the Cohen HaGadol.

And none of the other three have Tomas calling Yeshua his Lord and his God! They do call Yeshua “Lord”, but not to be confused with THE Lord, God the Father; rather with Lord being a title of authority.

And besides these obvious and undeniable contradictions to the other three gospels, which violates the interpretative tool called Hermeneutics, the overly spiritualized double talk- if could you see him you would see me but you don’t see me so you can’t see him, but since you see me ….yada-yadda-yadda- is confusing and unlike the way Yeshua talked or taught in any of the other three gospels.

Because of these many, many issues, I have come to believe that this gospel is not just a false one, but was not even written by the same John who lived and walked with Yeshua. The emphasis on the divinity of Yeshua, the different way Yeshua talked, and the many contradictions to the other gospels has inevitably led me to the conclusion that I think this was written by a Gentile using the name John (it could have been his real name) who was not a direct disciple, but one whose purpose in writing this so-called gospel was to write a gospel that would help to further separate the Gentile believers from the Jewish believers.

Remember also that at the time this gospel was written, most of the Jewish leaders of the original movement accepting Yeshua as the Messiah had all but died out, and this Jewish movement was being taken further and further away from its Jewish roots, creating a totally different religion based not on Yeshua’s Torah teachings as much as on the misinterpretation of letters written by Shaul to congregations of Gentiles who were being pressured to get circumcised and having power struggles within their organizations.

Another factor at that time was the animosity between Judea and Rome was building, coming to a head in 132-33 A.D. with the Bar Kokhba rebellion. These Gentiles who were being taught Torah began to think that the closer they got to a Jewish lifestyle, the more Rome would consider them Jews and not Romans, putting them on the firing line, so to speak, with the Jewish population. As pagans they were safe, but as Jews they were a target for Roman persecution, so they decided it was safer to change their form of worship.

Of course, that idea backfired because after the Jews were put down for good, this new religion become a target for Rome.

At the end of the first century, as noted by Ignatius of Antioch in 110 A.D., Gentiles were already meeting on their own Sabbath, which they changed to be on the first day of the week.
When John’s gospel was written, by then the move away from Torah and Judaism had been well under way, and this is why I believe this gospel, so contradictory to the other earlier gospels and the only one where there is clearly a desire to prove Yeshua is God, was definitely written in order to keep any self-respecting Jew from wanting anything to do with this guy Jesus (as is still true to this very day), and so was not written by the real disciple, Yochanan ben Zebedee but by a Gentile man using the name John.

All this being said, I still read the book when I am going through the Bible because although I know it is a false gospel designed specifically to keep Jews out of the (now) Christian religion, and also to prove the divinity of Jesus (which is more along the lines of the prior Pagan beliefs those Gentile believers were comfortable with), it does have some things in there of value.

Hey, accidents happen, and this one accidentally has some proper worshipful stuff in it.

So read it if you will, but be aware of the differences and contradictions, and know that God never changes. If you are reading something in a version of the Bible that doesn’t jive with any other part of the Bible or any other Bible you have read, know it to be questionable at best, and probably wrong at worst.

There are so many different versions of the Bible in so many hundreds of different languages that you have to read every one of those versions with discretion and discernment. And remember that the New Covenant writings are by Jews, but there wasn’t any Jew, ever, who was part of the coalition which put that part of the Bible together! According to Google, by the late second century (around 170–200 A.D.), a core collection—including the four gospels and the letters of Paul—was widely accepted and cited as authoritative by church leaders like Irenaeus.

The criteria used for judging which texts belonged in the Bible was based on apostolic origin (written by or closely tied to an apostle), orthodoxy (consistent with true Christian teaching, which by then was very different from Torah), and widespread liturgical use.

Widespread litugical use is another way of saying what the people were used to because they liked it, and not having to obey Torah is a lot easier than having to obey it.

And when they say it was based on Christian teaching, that is based mostly on Shaul’s (Paul) letters, and had little or nothing to do with Torah anymore.

Thanks in part to this so-called Gospel of John, by the middle of the second century what had been a Jewish movement to accept Yeshua as the Messiah God promised to send became an anti-Torah religion that proclaimed Jesus was God, replacing both the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the Torah he gave us with man-made tenets, holidays, and even changed the Anointed One of God (the Messiah) into a Gentile Savior who they worship in place of God.

So, nu? Now you know why I cannot accept John’s gospel as a real gospel, but rather as a means of further separating Gentiles from Jews by making Yeshua into God and, by doing that making it nearly impossible for Jews to join in.

If you are still here, please comment and consider sharing this message, as well as all my others, with everyone you know. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, hoping those who follow this ministry will continue to do so, and also hoping that I have upset many of you who have been taught that John’s gospel is the most important one by making you think, “I hate to admit it, but he makes sense.”

Let me wish you an early Shabbat Shalom and a very joyous Shemini Atzeret!

Is Your Religion Worldly or Godly?

If we agree that religion is the worship of a supernatural entity, then unless that entity is of the world we live in, the religion shouldn’t be centered on worldly things, right? And therefore, your chosen house of worship should not be centered on worldly things, either.

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

I think we can all agree that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not of the world, and those of us who worship him, whether Jewish or Christian, whether or not you believe Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah or not, or maybe even that he is the God of Abraham, et.al, the practices and tenets of your religion should not be centered on worldly things.

But what do we see in the world today?

We see so many different things churches, and even some synagogues are doing that reflect their acceptance- even support- of LGBTQ+ activities.

I recently saw something about some Episcopalian reverend saying that God was a transsexual!

And there are LGBTQ+ churches! And “regular” churches that are allowing same-sex marriages!

And even Israel recently supported a Gay Rights Pride Parade in Tel Aviv!

Oy gevalt!

So, if your place of worship is, in any way, condoning, accepting, or supporting Gay Rights in any form, then you should consider if you want to worship as God said or as the world wants you to.

I am not a Homophobic person, although by now so many people will be accusing me of that because they don’t listen or think about what they hear- they simply react like Pavlov’s dogs salivating when the bell rings, going through life already primed to defend something that may not even be challenged.

I know homosexuals; I have friends and even family members who are homosexual, and I love them. I never tell them they are doomed for hell or insult them, or even try to get them to change their lifestyle. They are doing what they believe is right, and I can be their friend without agreeing or condoning their choice of lifestyle.

I believe very strongly that we can hate the sin while loving the sinner.

But if I was in a house of worship that supported homosexuality, in any of the multitude of forms it has created for itself, I would get out of there as fast as I could.

And although I don’t tell people what to believe or what to do, I would go as far as to suggest if your church or synagogue has shown any support in any way for any homosexual activity, then you might want to consider what God would think of that.

The LGBTQ+ Community says God loves them just as they are, which is true because God loves all his children, but that doesn’t mean he is not going to punish them for violating his laws.

The Bible is clear that men sleeping with men as with a woman or animal sodomy (Leviticus 18:22-23) is an abomination, and in Deuteronomy 22:5 that any cross-dressing is also a sin.

Forgiveness is an eternal condition, and while on the earth if you sin you will suffer the consequences, and (most likely) so will those you love as collateral damage from your sin.

The one thing the Bible shows me is that there is such a thing as guilt by association: when the leadership of Israel sinned, the people suffered along with the leaders. That means, at least in my opinion, that someone who is part of a worldly-oriented church or synagogue will be held as guilty as the Priest or Rabbi leading that house of incorrect worship.

So consider whether you want to please the world by associating with those who support sin, or to be more like God wants you to be. I am not saying to reject friends or family who are LGBTQ+ people, but just not show any acceptance or support of that lifestyle choice.

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!

Which Life Is More Important to You?

The popular saying among many people is that you only get one life, so live it to its fullest.

That sounds like a wise saying, but in my opinion it is wrong because this life is given to us for only one reason: to decide where we will spend eternity.

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

Non-believers and Sadducees (if there are any left) don’t really believe in an afterlife. Some may believe in reincarnation, which- if you ask me- is nothing more than being able to make all the same mistakes you made the first time, but as a different person.

Those who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also must believe in the second life we are to have, the one that comes after this mortal existence and the one that we should be planning for when this life is over.

Which brings us to today’s message: Which life is more important to you?

If you prefer to get the most out of this mortal life that you can, you will probably find that you have to reject the way God says to live because the world is sinful, and the pleasures of a mortal existence preclude being able to live that life righteously.

What I mean is this: you can’t be a hedonistic, sexually perverse drunkard (which is, after all, the way to get the most out of this mortal life) and expect that God will accept you.

Salvation is not a “Come-As-You-Are” party; Yeshua said that to follow him we must, essentially, give up nearly everything that the world finds valuable.

That is why it was such a hard sell for Shaul (Paul) to get the Gentiles living a worldly lifestyle to give it up in order to find peace and joy after they die. And, given the pressures placed upon these neophyte, Gentile Believers to get circumcised only helped to undermine Shaul’s work.

Even the Edlers in Jerusalem knew, when writing that letter in Acts 15, that the Gentiles would have to learn Torah obedience slowly, a step at a time (as Isaiah said about the Northern Tribes in Isaiah 28:1-13, when he said the people needed to be taken slowly, precept upon precept, line upon line).

And James confirmed this in Acts 15:21 when he said that the Gentiles would eventually learn the Torah by attending Shabbat services.

So, there you have it… we get to choose which life is more important to us, the one we live now during this short, mortal lifespan or the one we will be living throughout eternity.

The Torah is God’s User Manual for Righteousness, which Yeshua proved to be just that because he lived it perfectly his whole life, and was resurrected to the right hand of God.

Of course, you and I are not Yeshua; we are born into sin and can’t avoid it, which is why God first gave us the sacrificial system and then, when that wasn’t possible for us (because the temple was destroyed), he had already sent Yeshua so that through faith in him as the Messiah we could find forgiveness by means of his sacrifice.

For me, I choose to live by God’s Torah. That means I don’t accept anything that Christianity says about Torah being no longer valid for those who accept Yeshua as their Messiah, and I also reject Halacha when it overrides what God said we only need to do in the Torah.

Let me finish with this good news and bad news: the good news is that if you choose to live a worldly life you have until your last breath to repent, confess your sins and ask God to forgive you by means of Yeshua’s shed blood. Remember that Yeshua told us the first will be last, and the last will be first (Matthew 20:16).

The bad news is that once you’re dead, your one last chance to save your soul from eternal damnation is no longer available.

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!

Do Adopted Children Have Different Family Rules?

The letter Shaul (Paul) wrote to the Galatians tells how faithful trusting makes Gentiles who accept Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah adopted children of Abraham, and also children of God.

So do they get their own rules or do they follow the rules the natural born children follow?

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

Christianity has misused the letters written by apostles to neophyte, Gentile believers who have accepted that Yeshua is God’s Messiah, and that through following him they can receive eternal life. The way those letters have been misused is to interpret them as being anti-Torah, which was never their intention.

Shaul wrote to congregations to get them back on track in learning the proper (meaning Torah) worship of God, but Shaul knew he had to do that slowly since this was such a paradigm shift in lifestyle for these Gentiles, who were raised in a self-indulgent, hedonistic religion.

Hey, it’s hard to sell being righteous now for rewards later when your whole life you have been told it is good to be sexually perverse, eat to excess, and drink until you can’t see straight.

Now, add to that you also have to have the top of your penis cut off, and that’s when people say, “Sorry, I hear my mother calling and I’ve got to home now.”

Even James and the Elders in Jerusalem knew that Shaul was doing things the right way, in that the letter they wrote supporting Shaul’s activities was predicated by James saying (in Acts 15:21) that these Gentiles would eventually learn the Law of Moses (meaning the Torah, of course) because they would hear it in the synagogue at every Shabbat service. I think that is clearly indicating that they expected these adopted Gentiles would learn to live as the rest of their adopted family lives, which would be a Torah observant lifestyle.

I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent for a moment…

You know, Christianity doesn’t even call Yeshua what he is: he is the Messiah, in Hebrew Maschiach, which means “anointed one”. That clearly indicates he came from God, but they use the word “savior”, which is just someone who rescues from danger or peril. Yes, Yeshua saves us from ourselves, but is that really as definitive or spiritually important as being anointed by the Almighty?

I think they prefer “Savior” to “Messiah” because it doesn’t sound so “Jewish”.

Christ comes from the ancient Greek verb chriō (χριω), meaning to smear or rub with oil, which was the closest thing in the Greek language to the word “Maschiach”. You know what else? It seems strange to me that a religion which teaches to worship Yeshua, at the same time, reduces him from God’s anointed to some superhero status.

Alright… back to the main message.

Abraham is the father of the Jewish people, and through his descendants we received the Torah which, as children of Abraham and who worship the God of Abraham, we are required to obey.

So if Christians are adopted children of Abraham, they are now in the same family with us Jews.

Therefore, if you are adopted into someone’s family, are you expected to follow the family rules or do they give you a totally different set of rules, saying you don’t have to do what the natural born children have to do?

Don’t give your answer to me, but think of what answer God would want to hear.

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!

How Can You Say You Follow Yeshua When You Don’t Do What He Did?

Okay, let’s start by remembering exactly who Yeshua is and how he lived: he was, is, and always shall be the Jewish Messiah who lived a perfectly observant Torah life.

Now, can we agree that, in general, to follow someone is to do as they did?

If you said “No”, then close this page and go play Solitaire or stream something stupid because nothing I say from this point on will matter to you.

If you said “Yes” and if you are not Jewish, then do you live your life trying to be as obedient to the Torah as Yeshua was?

Now, if your answer to that question is either “No”, or what may be worse, it is “I am a Gentile believer and as such I do not have to follow the Torah”, then the next thing is to ask yourself is this question:

“How can I follow Yeshua when I do not live or worship as he did?”

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

That’s a tough question, isn’t it? I think the reason it is tough is because there is really no logical or even sensible answer that would explain how you can follow someone when you don’t do anything they do.

I probably should stop right here because, well…what else is there?

Either you live the same way Yeshua lived, or you are following someone else: there is no way around that because it is a given, a prima fascie condition, an absolute truth.

My suggestion is that you go back to the Gospels (just the first three- ignore John’s gospel because it is a false one) and see that Yeshua taught exclusively from the Torah and never said anything even close to suggesting people ignore his father’s instructions or reject what God said to do.

You want to know where all that drek about Gentiles not having to obey the Torah comes from? It’s from letters men wrote to Gentiles trying to teach them the Torah a little at a time, which later were transformed into justification for rejecting the Torah.

Shaul’s (Paul) letters are convoluted Jewish logic and so have easily been misused and misinterpreted to fit a Gentile desire to reject the Torah, yet somehow making-up reasons why they can still be saved.

(By the way- Jewish logic is my own term, and I explain it as we Jews will answer questions with questions and never tell you what something is until we tell you everything it isn’t.)

It is easy, really- the only place in the entire Bible where God, himself, tells us how he wants us to worship him and how he wants us to treat each other is found ONLY in those first five books. God doesn’t make any new commandments or tell us we can ignore any of the existing ones that he dictated to Moses anywhere throughout the rest of the Bible.

I can’t stand the fact that the Torah is called “The Mosaic Law” because it isn’t from Moses! The only thing Moses had to do with the Torah is that he was God’s stenographer, taking down what God told him to write and teaching it to the people.

In truth, everything after Deuteronomy is either historical narrative or commentary.

So, nu! … I will leave you with this thought:

If you really want to follow Yeshua, to do what he did, to act as he acted, to worship as he worshipped, then you have to live in accordance with the Torah.

How can you say you love and worship God and want to be as Yeshua is when you reject and ignore what God said to do and what Messiah Yeshua did when he was on the earth?

I was going to stop here, but I think I need to add one more thought for you.

We all will have to meet God at Judgement Day, and when asked why we lived the way we did, anyone who has rejected the Torah will have to say,

“I did what they told me I should do.”

Now, I can’t speak for God, but I think he will respond with something to the effect of:

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

PLEASE! Consider that if you think following some man-made religion will save you.

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!

Who Really Killed Yeshua?

Growing up Jewish, I was subject to many accusations from my Christian friends stating that it was us Jews who killed God (meaning Jesus Christ).

Of course, my reply was that it was the Romans who actually killed him, but now I know it wasn’t really them.

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

The answer to who really killed Yeshua is…. I did.

Actually, you did, too!

In fact, everyone killed him; without his death, God’s desire that no one should have to die (Ezekiel 18:23) cannot be accomplished.

God wants everyone, Jew and Gentile, to be in his presence forever because he doesn’t care about religion, he cares about faithfully believing in him and accepting Yeshua as the Messiah he promised to send. Without Yeshua’s sacrificial blood to cleanse us of our sins, no one has any chance of being forgiven.

God will not abide sin in his presence, so we need to be forgiven of our sins, which cleanses us, in order to be with him.

Yeshua’s sacrifice replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, which (according to the Torah) was the only place where any sacrifice would be accepted. With the destruction of the temple around 70-73 AD, there was no way for anyone to be forgiven, except by means of the innocent blood shed when Yeshua was killed.

That is why there is no way to the father except through Yeshua (John 14:6).

So, if everyone else on the earth was 100% righteous, with me being the only exception, I believe Yeshua would have undergone all the torture he did and even die…just to save me.

And he would have done the same just to save you.

So, it wasn’t the power elite in Jerusalem who killed him, although they set him up for death.

And it wasn’t Pilate who killed him because all he did was pass a judgement that he didn’t want to, but did so under duress from the people.

And the soldiers who nailed him to that execution stake didn’t kill him, because, well…he was alive even after they did it.

And even God, who accepted his spirit (Luke 23:46), didn’t really kill him since Yeshua asked him to do it.

No, it wasn’t Jews or Romans or even God who killed Yeshua- it was me, it was you, it was all of us.

If we had not been sinning, then even after being forgiven continuing to sin (because it is in our very DNA to do so), Yeshua would not have had to die.

Truthfully, if we were able to be sinless there would be no need for a Messiah at all.

Lucky for us, God knew better.

I believe he had planned for the Messiah since the very beginning, which is why John says that everything was made through him (John 1:3), meaning all that God did was designed with the Messiah in mind.

The next time you hear someone place blame on anyone for the death of Yeshua, you just tell them:

“Truth is the one who caused the death of the Messiah is…YOU!”

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!

Why God Sent Messiah When He Did

It is assumed that Yeshua was sacrificed in the year 33 AD, and that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed around the year 72 AD, roughly two generations later.

I believe God sent Yeshua when he did because he knew the temple would be gone, and with it the only way we could be forgiven of sin.

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

To start with, the Torah states that God will not accept any sacrifice unless it is performed at the location where he will place his name (Deuteronomy 12:5), which was first at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, then as the tent moved to Gilgal then Shiloh, and finally to the City of David, people had to travel there to make their sacrifices.

After Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, that was the last (and still the only) place where God put his name, and therefor where sacrifices will be accepted.

Now, I think we all can agree that God knows what is going to happen, even if the only reason he knows that is because he can make whatever he wants to happen, happen, and happen exactly when he wants it to happen, and happen exactly the way he wants it to happen.

As my generation used to say, he is a real “happening” kind of guy!

So, knowing that Rome would soon be destroying the temple, and based on his never-ending desire to forgive us of our sins (Ezekiel 18:23), I believe he sent Messiah Yeshua before the destruction of the temple so that afterward, we could still be forgiven of sin.

Okay, now you may be thinking that he should have sent Messiah way back sometime before 605-587 BCE, when the Babylonian exile occurred and the first temple was destroyed. With that event, there was no way for anyone to receive forgiveness.

My answer would be that maybe since the exile was punishment for not having obeyed the Torah regulations, God wasn’t at that time willing to forgive anyone. After all, they were being punished. They violated many Torah commandments, not the least of which was worshipping other gods, and the people also failed to give the land a Shabbat rest every 7th year for 490 years!

God exiled the people from the land to give it rest, and he chose to exile them one year for each Shabbat rest the land did not get, which over 490 years means they would be exiled for 70 years.

God is really good with math!

Since the exile would be only for a short time, I think God was not willing to allow forgiveness until the punishment was over. That may sound harsh, but he is God and who will tell him what he can or can’t do?

Not me!

So, after the exile the people did return and rebuilt the temple, beginning what we call the second temple period, and forgiveness of sin was once again available.

Let’s now fast-forward to when Yeshua made forgiveness of sin possible by his sacrifice, which replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple; that is why he said the only way to the father (i.e., being free of sin) is through him (John 14:6).

After Yeshua made forgiveness possible anywhere and any time, Rome destroys the temple making the path to forgiveness under the Torah impossible.

Impossible, that is, unless you have faithfully accepted that Yeshua is the Messiah and through his sacrifice forgiveness is still available.

I started out by saying I believe the timing of Yeshua’s appearance two generations before the temple destruction was planned, and now I’ll explain why I say that.

At that time there was no Internet, mail service took a long time, and the best way for news to spread was by word-of-mouth as people traveled to trade their goods and while tending their herds and flocks.

For people to be aware of what happened in Jerusalem when Yeshua was crucified, and especially what happened for the 40 days or so after he was resurrected, needed time to get spread around. The Gospels make it clear that many thousands of people knew of him, but that was in the general area around Jerusalem, mostly in the Southern Kingdom territory.

I read that he covered about 20 square miles during his three year ministry, 80-90% of it in the area of the Galilee, while Israel contained about 8,000 square miles during that time, so he didn’t cover that much territory.

But over two generations, some 40-50 years, I believe that much of what he did had time to spread all over the land, and that gave people time to accept him before the temple was gone.

Those who rejected him as Messiah would soon find themselves, their kids, and all their descendants stuck without any way to be forgiven of sin.

Of course, there is no biblical justification for this drash of mine, and I often have preached how it is dangerous to try to make an argument out of nothing, but I still think “what if” or “why that” now and then. I mean, we humans are curious and there is that innate need to know “why?” that I have found in nearly everyone I have ever known.

Myself, included.

So, nu?.. do you think I’m making any sense with this? Would you agree that it is possible God timed Yeshua’s appearance for the reasons I believe?

Let me know, and thank you for being here. Please do comment and 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!

If There is No Law, Then There is No Sin, So Why Do We Need a Messiah?

So many times I have heard people who claim to be Christians and to follow in Jesus’s footsteps say that he did away with the law.

And I have always wondered how anyone can believe that God sent his very own son to tell everyone they don’t have to obey him anymore.

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

I am going to make this one short and simple, and maybe not even answer the question I posed in the title because the one answer that really matters is, as usual, the one people come up with on their own.

Well, maybe not that short.

Perhaps that is why the path to salvation is a narrow road and the gate to eternal joy in God’s presence is a very thin one- it’s because people prefer what they want to what God says they need to do.

Christianity teaches that the son of God came to earth to provide a means for us to be forgiven (by his sacrificial death) because he died a sinless lamb of God.

That much they got right.

Of course, the only way that could be is for him to have lived a Torah observant life, never failing to do only what God said to do in the Torah.

The Torah was the only God-given instructions that existed back then, and (for the record) are still the only God-given instructions that exist today, since there is nothing “new” in any of the New Covenant writings.

So… most Christian rhetoric says that the Messiah’s death did away with the Torah, but since the Torah is what God gave us to show us what is sin and what is not (Romans 7:7), then if there is no more Torah there is no more sin.

That brings us back to the title of today’s message: if there is no sin why do we still need a Messiah?

If there is no Torah there is no sin, so why pray for forgiveness if there is nothing to be forgiven?

And please don’t say that there are still the moral laws because that also goes against the Bible.

In James 2:10, he says that if you break even one law then you have broken them all, so if you say there are some laws that are valid for Gentiles and some that are not, then you are still going against what the Bible says because if you reject one law, which is breaking it, then you have (effectively) broken them all, which would be a sin if the Torah was still valid, right?

Again, we always come back to the same thing: if there is no law then there is no sin, and if there is no sin then there is no longer a need for the Messiah and everyone- believer AND non-believer- are now saved.

Do you believe everyone is saved?

Do you believe that Gentiles don’t have to obey the Torah?

Do you really believe that God sent his son to the earth to tell us to reject all his laws?

I don’t believe any of those things!

What I believe is that God sent Yeshua to provide a means for us to be forgiven of our sins, which is the only way we can enter into God’s presence, and he did that not by doing away with the very means of attaining righteousness in God’s eyes (which is outlined in the Torah), but by replacing the need to bring an animal to the temple.

The Torah demands that all sacrifices must be made where God places his name (Deut. 4 and 12) and that was the temple in Jerusalem. With the destruction of that temple, there was no way to be forgiven of sin.

THAT is why he sent Yeshua when he did. And that is why the Torah is still valid for everyone who professes to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Oh, but wait a minute! Many Christian religions (and brother, there are a lot of them!) teach that Yeshua IS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so I guess in that case they can justify that God is telling us we don’t have to obey him anymore.

Oh, but wait another minute! God also said that his commandments were for all our generations, which means as long as we are “generating”, his laws are still valid and Yeshua confirmed that by saying nothing will change until all things have come to pass (Matthew 5:17).

It seems that whether you believe God and Yeshua are totally separate entities or the same one, either way he/they both confirm that the Torah is valid for all believers, Jew and Gentile, until the Apocalypse is over.

Have the 7 scrolls been read?

Have the horsemen gone throughout the earth?

Is the anti-Christ in charge (don’t get political on me)?

Has 2/3 of the earth been destroyed?

Have the 7 bowls of God’s wrath been poured out over the earth?

Have you been marked by the angel God sent to identify the saved?

Has the new Jerusalem been lowered from heaven?

Is there still evil in the world?

Hmmm… I guess that means everything isn’t done yet, so nothing has changed, which means the Torah is still God’s law for righteousness and Yeshua is still a Messiah we need because there is still sin in the world.

Like it or not, the Torah is STILL God’s “User Manual for Righteousness” and Yeshua has not changed anything regarding obedience to the commandments in the Torah for all who believe in God.

There is one thing that has changed, and that is we no longer need the temple to be forgiven of sin because through faithful belief that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send and that after he died he was resurrected (proving that obedience to the Torah IS how we can be saved) so that now his shed blood replaced the need to sacrifice an animal at the temple.

If you prefer to believe that the son of God came to the earth to tell people to worship him and that they can reject everything his father said to do in the Torah because now he is in charge, well… good luck with that.

Thank you for being here and please comment and 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!!

After the Gentiles Were Grafted In, They Pruned Themselves

We all know that after Yeshua was resurrected salvation became available to the Gentiles who were willing to faithfully accept that Yeshua is the Messiah the God of the Jews promised to send.

And in doing so, they also obligated themselves to accept the same laws and way of life that the Jews led.

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

Now, I’m sure that many Christians reading what I just wrote about the Gentiles being obligated to live as Jews lived if they accepted Yeshua as their Messiah are thinking:

“Well, no! We only have to do those 4 things in the letter they wrote (Acts 15) and the Torah is no longer valid for Gentiles because we have the law of Christ and we don’t have to follow the laws of Moses.”

I understand that is what many, MANY Christians have been taught, but I am here to say that is not correct.

Sorry, but the only place in the entire Bible where any of that church rhetoric comes from is not from God or Yeshua- it is a false teaching stemming from confusing language in letters written by a man to congregations of Gentiles he was teaching to be Torah obedient, but doing so slowly so that he wouldn’t lose them to their old habits.

Shaul (Paul) wrote to congregations that were started by him, teaching them the Torah but at a pace they could handle. That is why it has been so easy for Gentiles who did not want to worship God as God said to do (in the Torah) to change things around.

You see, at that time there was a constant rebellion against Roman rule by the Jews, and as these Gentiles began to accept Yeshua and be taught the Jewish way of worship, they felt they would be associated with the jews and, as such, become targets of Rome.

So, to politically protect themselves from Rome, they separated themselves from the Jews by changing how they worshipped.

And as for those 4 things in the letter James suggested, Christianity loves to teach that those are all Gentiles have to do, but James never said that! In fact, he suggested those 4 things as initial “must-do’s” never intending them to be the only things to do, and that is confirmed by Acts 15:21 when he said that these neophyte believers would learn the law of Moses while attending Shabbat services every week, when the laws were always being read.

So, again, sorry, but the truth is that Gentiles who accept Yeshua as their Messiah also have to accept the Torah as their way of life.

But they didn’t, and (as I mentioned) in order to separate themselves from the Jews, they decided to cover their own tuchas by changing how they worshipped from the way Yeshua worshipped to a way that was not pagan or Jewish, creating a new religion that was soon to be called Christianity.

And that is when they pruned themselves from the Tree of Life, which is the Torah. They created a new man-made religion which has rejected nearly everything God said he wanted from those who worship him.

They rejected his Holy Days and created their own.

They rejected his Shabbat and made their own.

In truth, they rejected God.

How did they reject God? Well, first off, when you reject what God says to do, you have rejected God, and by the middle of the Second Century they had created the idea of a Trinity which replaced God the Father with Jesus the Savior by making them one and the same entity.

Christians pray to Jesus, they ask Jesus for forgiveness of sins (which he, himself, said he could do only while on the earth in Matthew 9:1-8), and there is at least one Christian religion that says any priest can forgive your sins!

Personally, I think they came up with that idea because a celibate life is boring, and by creating this confession thing they could add a little vicarious excitement into their life by hearing what others were doing.

Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer chases Bugs up a tree? Bugs is at the end of a branch, with Elmer on that same branch sitting next to the trunk, sawing away at the part that Bugs is on. And when he saws all the way through the branch, the tree and Elmer fall, while the separated branch Bugs is on miraculously stays suspended in the air!

Christianity thinks it can do what Bugs did and get away with it.

If any Gentile states they have been grafted onto the Tree of Life but don’t obey the Torah, well they may have been grafted on at one time but by choosing to reject the Torah they have pruned themself from the Tree of Life, and are grafted onto nothing.

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and 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!