First off, I want to say to everyone the traditional Jewish greeting we pass to each other on Yom Kippur, which is:
May you have an easy fast.

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So often over the years, I have heard Christians tell me that because we are saved by faith in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus), we do not have to fast on Yom Kippur, or even obey any of the Moedim (Holy Days) that God gave to the Jews, all of which are specified in Leviticus 23.

My response is to ask if they understand what Yom Kippur is about. They say it is the Day of Atonement when we ask forgiveness of all our sins. For those who really know Judaism, they add that we do this by afflicting ourselves (the traditional method is fasting) and pray that God will move from his Throne of Judgment to his Throne of Forgiveness, and inscribe us in his Book of Life.

So, I ask you: if Yom Kippur is how God said to ask him to forgive you of your sins, who doesn’t have sin?

If you are sinless, then you don’t need to ask forgiveness, right? But, then again, refusing to afflict yourself on Yom Kippur, in whichever way you feel afflicted, is rejecting a commandment from God, which is a sin. Yeshua never said to reject any of God’s Holy Days, and even Shaul (Paul) never said to reject any of God’s Holy Days. So, by saying we have forgiveness through Yeshua so we don’t have to fast or observe Yom Kippur is, by definition, a sin.

And that means you need to ask forgiveness on Yom Kippur.

Here are my two reasons for Christians to observe Yom Kippur:

1. It is a commandment from God; and
2. No one is without sin, so why not ask for forgiveness?

Christianity has been professing that Yeshua did away with the law, but if he did, then that means there is no law. If there is no law, then we have no need for a Messiah, right? I mean, the law is what defines sin, so if there is no law there is no sin, and if there is no sin, there is no need for forgiveness, so we don’t need to practice any religion.

The conundrum Christianity has created is that believing Yeshua, who obeyed every law in the Torah, is the Messiah God sent to bring us into communion with him makes you a Christian, and Christians don’t have to obey God’s laws in the Torah, which means they obey man-made laws that reject God, which is the opposite of what Yeshua came to do!

God gave us laws, credos, doctrines, Holy Days, etc., but if Yeshua set us free from the Torah, then shouldn’t we also be free from the man-made traditions, holidays, and commandments that are in Christianity? Doesn’t it make sense that if we can reject what God said we must do, then whatever men say is even less important? Isn’t God more powerful than humans? So, if what God said doesn’t count, then certainly a human-originated commandment or law has no power or value, at all.

I am Jewish: I was born Jewish from Jewish parents of Jewish parents, and I even have the Levitical DNA marker in my genes. When I accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised, I was reborn- not as a Christian but as a renewed Jew. My faith was stronger than it had ever been, my life became more in alignment with the Jewish lifestyle that Yeshua lived, and I have been blessed beyond belief since doing this.

Yeshua celebrated every single Holy Day that God commanded us to obey, and even though he was given the authority to forgive sins on earth, he still fasted on Yom Kippur.

Hold it a minute! There is not one mention in the New Covenant Gospels about Yeshua observing any Jewish Holy Day or holiday (the former being God-ordained, the latter being man-made) other than Hanukkah and Passover. So how do I know he celebrated Yom Kippur? Because he was resurrected, which proved his sacrifice was accepted by God. And if his sacrifice was accepted, that means he died sinless, a spiritual condition which could only have existed if he observed every commandment God gave in the Torah.

The only difference between the sacrificial system for the forgiveness of sin God created in the Torah and the current means of forgiveness of sin through Yeshua is that Yeshua replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, the only place where God said we could make a sacrifice. Other than that, we still need to confess our sins (a part of the Yom Kippur service called the Ashamnoo prayer), repent of them and ask for forgiveness from God, which we do during the Yom Kippur service when reciting the Al Het (All sins) prayer.

Yom Kippur is not just something that we can throw behind us because we can receive forgiveness through Yeshua anytime we ask for it. The Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot, Yom Teruah (now called Rosh HaShanah), Yom Kippur, and Sukkot are Holy Days that God commanded us to observe as part of the way we worship him. Throwing them behind our back is a direct rejection of God. Period.

Unless you can find someplace where Yeshua said once we accept him as the Messiah it was OK to reject everything that his father said, then you had better reconsider rejecting the observance of God’s Holy Days. And I am not talking about what Shaul said, or more accurately, what people over the millennia have misinterpreted what Shaul said because God is more important than people. Yes, even more important than that nice Jewish tentmaker from Tarsus.

Too many Christians I have met don’t realize that they are not obeying God but instead a bunch of ex-Pagans who made up a religion of their own, with their own rules and holidays to replace the ones God gave, justifying this new, man-made religion by misinterpreting what Shaul said in his letters to ex-pagans learning how to be Jewish.

Think about it: God gave instructions on how to worship him and treat each other, as well as many other regulations regarding civil and criminal law, business ethics, and appropriate interpersonal relationships in order to teach us how to live righteous and holy lives. He did this in the Torah, so nu? Does that sound like something you should ignore?

Look…if you still aren’t sure if Yom Kippur is something you should celebrate as God commanded, I will leave you with one last question: do you really think that the Messiah, sent to bring us back into communion with God, would do so by telling us to reject everything God said?

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages with everyone you know, and check out my books, as well. Please remember that I always welcome your comments, so don’t be shy about letting me know what you think, even if you disagree. Hey, I’m not always right and I do respectfully listen to what people tell me they believe. All I ask is that you be respectful of me, as well.

That’s it for today, and remember that it is easier on you if you do NOT eat a big meal tomorrow night before sunset.

L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

How many times do we read in the Bible that God says we are to be holy, as he is holy? Too many times to count, right?

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But we are human beings; mortal, finite, and born with iniquity in our very DNA! God is perfect, holy, eternal, and unchanging; he knows we are weak, sinful, and as stable as a leaf in a hurricane, so why would he even think to task us with such an enormous burden, to be as he is?

How can God, being fair and just, expect us to be the same way he is?

The answer is: he doesn’t. C’mon, people, get real! God absolutely knows that we could never be the exact same way he is, so what does he mean when he says, “Be holy, as I am holy”?

I believe he means to emulate the way he is.

“What way is that?” you may ask, and the answer is given by God, himself: he tells us the way he is throughout the Torah.

God is forgiving; God loves everyone, even those who hate and reject him; God is fair and just, not giving special treatment to anyone.

God wants to forgive but because he is holy and just he will punish those who do evil in his sight, so we, too, must be fair and just, willing to forgive but not allowing evil to go unpunished.

God is trustworthy- he says what he means and he does what he says, unfailingly. His “Yes” means yes, and his “No” means no! Therefore, we must be trustworthy and do as we promise.

That’s all there is to it! God is forgiving, loving, just, fair, and merciful but will not allow evil to go unpunished. He treats all people the same and will not be turned to the left or the right, maintaining his course along a moral and holy path.

This is hard for us to do, but it is possible. We can never be exactly as God is, but we can be holy, as he is holy by dealing with people the same way he deals with us.

And if you aren’t really sure how to do that, then read the Torah. That is where God tells us how to worship him, and how to treat each other in all the different relationships we have. God tells us how to act with our spouses, our family, our friends, and in our business relationships. He even tells us how we should deal with evil by giving us a Penal Code.

God tells us how he expects us to interact with him and each other, and that is possible for us to do.

So, yes, Virginia- there is a way we can be holy, as God is holy, and the way to do that is to deal with people the same way God deals with us.

We can never be exactly as God is, but we can emulate God in the way we deal with others.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, share these messages (to help this ministry grow), and check out my books. And remember: I always welcome your comments.

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

This is going to be a deceptively short and simple message today and is pretty much the definitive difference between Legalism and Faith.

It is such a simple concept that I am not even going to do a video.

Legalism is the belief in performance-based salvation, meaning that what we do is how we are saved, regardless of our actual feelings. This is what religion still teaches today, especially Christianity: just do what we tell you to do and you will be fine.

Faith-based salvation is what Yeshua brought to us because he went beyond the “just do it” legalistic teachings of the Pharisees, and taught us that why we do is just as important as what we do. He taught us the spiritual meaning of the law, the true “new covenant”, i.e. what it means to have the law written on our hearts.

And in the Torah, we are told that Abraham, the poster-child for faith, was considered righteous not just because he believed God (Genesis 15:6) but also because he DID everything that God told him to do (Genesis 26:5).

So no matter how faithful you think you are, if you don’t do what God said to do, and the ONLY place that is found is in the Torah, your faith is not going to get you anywhere (James 2:14). Conversely, if you don’t have faith but try to act in accordance with the Torah in order to earn salvation, you will fail because no one can do everything in the Torah perfectly. That is why God sent the Messiah.

So there you have it: faith and works are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin and one can’t function without the other. Faith is what must motivate us to do as God says; despite what you may have heard, Yeshua never changed anything and Shaul (Paul) never rejected the Torah or his Judaism. If you do not do as God said you should- not Paul or James or your Rabbi or your Priest, Minister, or whatever- but as God said to do, and you do it because you believe God’s promise of blessings (Deut. 28) and that salvation can now only be through Messiah Yeshua, then you are on the right path.

God has no religion, but men created religion to have power over other men, so if you succumb to religion you will be taken off the path of righteousness and directed down a path made up of ritual and false worship which ends in destruction.

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

L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

We all know (at least, I hope we all know) that unconditional means without any requirements or minimums. And we all know (at least, I hope we all know) that when we pray we are to pray to God and not to anyone else. We do NOT pray to a saint or even to Yeshua (Jesus), only to God; but, we should pray in the name of Messiah Yeshua because he said that when we pray in his name, it will be done.

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

For the record, even though in the Gospel of John where Yeshua says when we pray to him he will do as we ask, he means that he will intercede for us with his father, which is why he adds that he will do it to glorify the Lord. To pray exclusively to Yeshua would be wrong because Yeshua is the Intercessor of our prayers, not the Interceptor of them. John’s Gospel is ultra-spiritual and uses too much metaphor to be able to be understood easily. God said not to bow down or pray to anyone or anything but him, and that is one of the Big 10, so it really seems incomprehensible that his son, Yeshua, would tell us to do differently.

All that is well and good, we know what unconditional is, we know to pray to God, but what do I mean when I say to pray unconditionally? I mean to trust God to know what to do and how to do it.

Over the past 2 1/2 decades of my knowing the Lord and his Messiah, I have heard many people pray. And when they pray I hear them telling God what he should do, or how he should do it. For example:

“Lord, so-and-so is suffering with (whatever) so please do this, make that happen, ensure this is done this way, don’t forget to close the doors and turn off the lights, remember to feed the cat while they’re in the hospital, yadda-yadda-yadda…”

You know what? God knows what needs to be done, and in which order, and even all the sideline activities that are necessary. We don’t need to tell him what to do, and the truth is, he knows better than we ever will what is best to do and how to do it, so when I ask if you pray unconditionally, what I am asking is do you simply ask God to do something without all the requirements, instructions, and details?

In Numbers 12, after speaking out against Moses, God struck Miryam with leprosy. Did Moses go through a dissertation with God, asking him to make her skin as white as a newborn, or to give her back the cleanliness she once had by removing her leprosy?

No, he didn’t; all he asked was “God, please heal her!”

The reason I say we should pray without conditions or, worse yet, instructions, is because we should trust God to know what to do, how to do it, and even when it should be done. He is the LORD, he is the one who can heal and make well, and he is the one who punishes the unrighteous. Perhaps what we are praying against is something that God did for a purpose. Who can know? But when we pray, we need to do so without conditions so that God knows that in our hearts, we trust him to know and do what is best.

That’s all there is to it. Either we trust God or we don’t, and when we tell him what he should do and how to do it, that ain’t trust.

May I share my own experience? Long before I knew the Lord, I had a divorce, and at that time we had two children, aged 7 and 2. I constantly lift up my daughter and son to God, children who have been brainwashed by their mother over many years to hate and reject me, which they have done. There are so many things I want God to do to exonerate me but most importantly, to reconcile us. And as much as I would love to ask God to let the children know so many things about me that they were misinformed about, I don’t ask for that. I simply ask that he reconcile us and if that is not in his will, then to help them find him. I think that if they find God, then by his spirit they will want to reconcile, but the order and the timing are completely up to God.

I also know that God will never force anyone to accept him, which means no matter how much I pray, he will not force them to accept him or reconcile with me. I have done all I can for years to get them back, and now it is all up to God. But despite his unlimited power, I know also that if this never happens it isn’t because God didn’t try, it is because they refused to listen to him.

Yes, God can do anything, but he won’t force people to accept him or take away their free will.

Trust God to know and do what is necessary when you pray to him. Don’t place conditions on him or give instructions, just ask for what you want. Remember that Yeshua also told us God already knows what we want, and I think that he still desires us to ask him because that shows we are trusting in God to hear us and act.

It’s just like confessing of sin: God knows when we sin, and he also knows when we repent. He is willing, able, and more than that, desiring to forgive us, but the way it works is that we have to ask. We have to ask God to forgive us, we have to ask God for what we desire, and that is all we should do- just ask, trusting that he knows what to do and how to get it done.

Thank you for being here; please subscribe and share these messages. Also, check out my website, books, Facebook page, and discussion group (Just God’s Word).

And I always welcome your comments.

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

The answer to the question, “Are cheeseburgers kosher?” is a resounding NO!…and a resounding YES!

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If you ask any “mainstream” Jewish person, their answer will be “No” because their rabbi has taught them that any mixture of dairy and meat consumed within a certain number of hours is a sin (the time between eating one and the other is different depending upon whether you are Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jew.)

If you ask a Christian, born again or not, they will tell you it is a sin but only for the Jews because Christians are under Grace and the need to obey the Mosaic Laws is done away with when you accept Jesus as your Messiah.

Lastly, if you ask me, I will tell you that it is not a sin to have a cheeseburger because all God told us in Leviticus 11 (and a few other places within the Torah) is that we are not to boil a calf in its mother’s milk.

There is nothing, at all, anywhere in the Torah that says you cannot have dairy and meat together: that is strictly a Talmudic requirement.

If you aren’t familiar with the Talmud, it is considered by many Jews, especially within the Orthodox sects, to be as important as the Torah. This is because the Talmud is called the “Oral Law”, which is the many other commandments God gave to Moses that were not written down, but instead passed orally from Moses to Joshua, and so forth down through the centuries until it was finally written down in the Mishna, composed circa 300 CE. Later, the Gemara was added around 500 CE. There are two separate Talmud’s, the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian, or Jerusalem Talmud. The Talmud contains Halacha, which means “The Walk” or “The Way to Walk”, which is how Jews are to worship and live their lives. Everything from how far you can walk on Shabbat, to what kinds of dishes to have, to how hot your dishwasher has to be, to what lights to leave on Friday before Shabbat, to what you can wear, to how to groom yourself, to …well, you get the idea.

So if Jews say cheeseburgers aren’t kosher, and Christians say kosher isn’t required for people who believe in Jesus, why do I, a Jew who believes in Jesus, say that cheeseburgers are kosher and the kosher laws are still required?

I’ll tell you why: because God never said don’t mix dairy and meat together in the same meal and Yeshua never said any of the Mosaic laws, which include the kosher laws, are no longer necessary when you follow him.

Let’s get this straight: I do not condone or even suggest that we should change God’s commandments because of the difference between how people lived then and how we live today, but rather that we should know how they lived then and account for how we live today to ensure we follow not just the letter, but the spirit of the law.

God was clear when he spoke through the Prophets that he wants obedience, but obedience from a desire to please him and not as a means of earning salvation.

In other words, just going through the motions (what we call Legalism) is not enough.

I say cheeseburgers are kosher because when we consider what the culture and society were like when God gave that command, we know that back then you most likely owned the cow that gave the milk and birthed the calf, so you knew which calf belonged to which cow and which cow gave what milk. Knowing who belonged to whom, you could easily avoid using the milk that came from that calf’s mother to cook that mother’s calf.

God only knows why he gave this specific commandment, but it seems obvious there is spiritual importance in what God said. To me, this clearly indicates some relationship with child sacrifice, and the hideousness of parents eating their own children, which is often brought up as the epitome of horror resulting from being under siege.

Maybe being “under siege” doesn’t have to relate only to being surrounded by an enemy, but to being surrounded by sin? Such as when we live in a sinful and fallen world?

So, back to cheeseburgers: the meat in the cheeseburger comes from the beef cattle industry and the milk comes from the dairy farm industry: these are two totally different animals (pardon the expression), and in dairy farming the cows aren’t killed until they are no longer able to produce milk. And that isn’t part of the beef industry.

Calves are born in both the beef and dairy industries, but they stay within that industry. To violate the kashrut (kosher) commandment regarding boiling the calf in its mother’s milk, you would have to buy milk from the grocery store that was from the same cow that gave birth to the veal you bought from the grocery store, then boil that veal in that milk.

The milk production from United States dairy farms is about 21 billion gallons a year, and the meat Americans eat is not mainly from America, but the top four producers of meat sold in America are Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and Hong Kong. Considering these statistics, it seems pretty safe to say that there is no way in the world that anyone would ever be boiling a calf in its mother’s milk.

Unless you owned the cow and did it all on purpose.

So there you have it: if you want to live “rabbinically” kosher, obeying what men say which overrides what God said, then you will never eat any dairy with any meat product, ever. At least you won’t be sinning.

Or, you can ignore the kosher laws altogether, as Christians have been taught they can do, thereby always sinning: not just by violating the cow/milk/calf thing, but by pigging out on pig and having a shell of a time eating shellfish.

There is a third option: you could do as I do and be “biblically” kosher, eating what God said is OK to eat, and not eating what God said is not OK to eat.

This ministry is not here to tell you what you should do but to teach you what you need to know in order to make an informed decision, and now that you have been informed it is up to you to decide what you will do.

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know to help this ministry grow. Please subscribe to both my website and YouTube channel, and don’t forget to also check out my books and Facebook page.

And remember that I always welcome your comments.

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

Today we will go over how it all fits together. And if you are wondering just what it is that fits together, I will start by explaining what I mean.

And we will start out with God, which I think is a pretty good starting place.

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

When God created everything he knew exactly what he was doing. He created human beings with Free Will and allowed iniquity within our personality so that we could choose to worship him. After all, if he never gave us the opportunity to refuse his instructions, then worshipping him would be an empty and unmotivated act, not much more than simply reacting to a stimulus.

God also knew that because of our iniquity, that is, the innate desire to sin, that we would eventually need some way to lead us into eternal communion with God by providing an invulnerable means of forgiveness, and that way is through his Messiah. This Messiah was promised, first and foremost, to and for the Jewish people but would later provide salvation for the entire world.

That’s what I am talking about when I said we would go over how it all fits together. Now, here we go…

God rid the world of that first group from Adam and Eve, as well as from Cain, and started a new batch of humans through Noah. Noah’s grandson, Abram (not Abraham yet) was the one God selected whose faith was so strong that he was chosen to be the father of many nations (thus renamed “Abraham”), which God promised to him in Genesis 17:4.

The next step in God’s plan was to also tell Abraham that through his descendants the entire world would be blessed (Genesis 22:18).

The next step comes hundreds of years down the road when God told Moses that the nation of Israel, now freed from Egypt and on their way to the Promised Land, will be his nation of priests to the world (Exodus 19:6). After that, God gives Moses the Torah (Exodus 20) which is God’s instructions to the Jewish people regarding how they are to worship him and treat each other.

And here is where Christianity has gotten it all wrong: the Torah is not just for the Jews. Before God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, he anointed them as his nation of priests. What does a priest do? The Priest is the Intercessor between God and the people, serving God by teaching the people about God, which includes the proper way to worship him and how they should live their lives according to God’s way. Well, if the entire Jewish nation is God’s priests, they aren’t “priesting” to themselves, so who are they the priests for? Obviously, they are God’s priests to the world! And since the Torah is the worshiper’s User Manuel, which God gave to the Jews as his priests to teach the nations (i.e., Gentiles), that proves the Torah must be for everyone.

And the last part of this puzzle is Deuteronomy 28, one of the last chapters in the Torah, containing God’s promises of blessings for obedience to the way we are to worship him and treat each other that he instructed us to do, in the Torah.

One other thing to point out: God chose Abraham not just because he was faithful, but because he was also obedient. Yes, obedience was an integral part of Abrahams’ righteousness, and God told that to Isaac in Genesis 26:5.

God promises blessings to those who obey him, and the blessings are to come through Abraham’s seed, the Jewish people, and God gave them his instructions (the Torah) to learn how to receive those blessings. After learning the Torah, as God’s priests to the world, the Jewish people would now teach the rest of the world how to receive those blessings.

The greatest blessing of all to come from the Jewish people is, of course, the Messiah.

He makes it possible for us all to receive forgiveness, which became impossible (in accordance with the Torah) when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Yeshua the Messiah made forgiveness possible because he replaced the need to bring an animal to the temple, which was always part of God’s plan.

One last time for those in the back row who may not have heard it all: God chose Abraham to be the father of a nation that would bring God’s promised blessings to the entire world through their teaching, as priests of God, the instructions God gave in the Torah which tell us how to receive those blessings, the greatest blessing of all being the Messiah.

That’s it- pretty simple when you know how all the pieces fit together, isn’t it?

Thank you for being here and please share these messages with everyone you know. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel, as well as my website and Facebook page.

And please remember that I always welcome your comments.

Until next time, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Most of the people I have met over the years, both Jewish and Christian, know of the Torah. They know it is in the Bible (although it is a shame so many don’t know which books), they know it is full of laws and commandments, and most Christians have been taught that it is for Jews and they don’t really need to know it because they are under Grace (that is a whole different topic!).

The truth is that the Torah is more than just laws.

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

It is a historical narrative, teaching us about how God created the world, how sin entered into the world, and of the kingdoms that have risen and fallen over the past 5,000 or so years. It tells us of the different relationships within societies, of different religions, and the ways that people lived.

But the Torah is more than just a historical text.

The Torah is a Ketubah (Hebrew: marriage certificate) between a people and their God. The covenants that God made with us, the Jewish people, are no different than the marriage vows between a man and a woman (the only proper form of marriage) in that both promise to cherish and obey each other. Of course, God doesn’t have to obey anyone, but the idea that he will do things for us when we do as he says is similar. God promised fidelity to us (we shall always be his chosen people) and even through sickness and health (our sins and our repentance) he will comfort and stay with us, which he has done. We promised to do the same; sadly, we have way too often broken that vow and been guilty (more than anyone cares to count) of spiritual adultery. However, God is an understanding and loving spouse, and he has always been willing to take us back when we repent.

But the Torah is more than a historical text and a Ketubah.

The Torah is also a national constitution. It outlines and establishes a penal code, defining the laws regarding capital punishment, accidental manslaughter, and giving us the formulas for calculating proper financial compensation with torts. The Torah tells us what kind of people we should appoint as judges, as well as the rules under which they must perform their duties. It describes fair trade regulations (using proper weights and volume measurements), as well as other ethical trade practices.

But the Torah is more than a historical text, a Ketubah, and a constituttion.

The Torah is an instruction manual for the proper way to worship God. It outlines the procedures we need to follow to receive forgiveness of sin, as well as how to be cleansed from any ceremonial uncleanliness we may incur. It tells us what God expects from us and what he will do for us when we obey his instructions, as well as what will happen to us when we disobey. It tells us how wonderful our future can be, and how peaceful our lives will be when we follow the lifestyle that God has described for us.

But the Torah is more than a historical text, a Ketubah, a constitution, and a spiritual manual.

The Torah also promises the appearance of a Messiah, a man who will be able to bring us out from our sinful existence and receive forgiveness from God. The Torah promises that the Messiah will re-establish God’s kingship over the earth through the Messiah and allow us to have eternal communion with God. The Torah leads us to the pathway of eternal joy.

But the Torah is more than just a historical text, a Ketubah, a constitution, a spiritual manual, and a promise of the Messiah.

The Torah instructs us in the proper way to treat each other within the society. It tells us to love each other and be respectful of each other’s rights and possessions.

So, nu? Can you see now that the Torah is so much more than just a set of laws?

And there is one final thing I want you to know about the Torah.

The Torah is the ONLY place in the entire Bible where God dictates exactly how we are to act. There is nowhere else in the Bible where we read:

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the children of Israel that the Lord says….””.

True, the prophets received direct instructions from God on what to tell the people in order to bring them back into proper worship, but there was nothing new or different from what he had already dictated to Moses. The (Hebrew) Torah is the direct, unadulterated, and most dependably accurate word of God anywhere in the Bible.

If you knew how many checks and balances there are to ensure that every single Torah scroll is exactly the same as every other Torah scroll, you would know why the Torah is so dependable as the exact word of God, handed down exactly throughout the years. The Dead Sea Scrolls are also evidence of the accuracy of the Hebrew written Torah, as well as the other books within the Tanakh.

This cannot be said for any of the translated Bibles you will find, anywhere. There are so many different translations and each one, whether from Hebrew or from Greek, will always be “polluted” by the translator no matter how accurate they try to be.

Now that you have a better idea of all the wonderful things the Torah contains, and that it is the purest and most dependable record of what God said he wants from all of us, the only question you should be asking yourself now is, “Why does Christianity teach to reject it?”

Let me give you a hint: the answer has nothing to do with Yeshua (Jesus) because he never did or said to do anything other than what is in the Torah.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe to both my YouTube channel and website, and share these messages with everyone you know.

If you don’t already know this, I have written three books (available on Amazon; the links are on my website) and am working on a fourth, which is to debunk many of the traditional lies Christians and Jews have been told about Yeshua. Look for it to be available sometime near the end of this year.

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

I haven’t been posting for almost an entire week, and later I will tell you why.

When Shaul, that nice Jewish tentmaker from Tarsus, wrote to the Believers in Rome, he talked about Grace and obedience.

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

Now, for most Christians, they have been (mis)taught this letter confirms that because Grace overcomes sin we are no longer under the law. Even though in Chapters 5 and 6 he specifically states that Grace doesn’t allow anyone to continue to sin, Christianity has taught that the law is irrelevant because we are under Grace.

Well, here’s the kicker, Folks: without the law, there is no Grace!

Shaul also tells us in this letter that the Torah created sin (Romans 5:13), in that if there is nothing officially stating what is right or wrong (so to speak), then there may be a cultural (de facto) understanding of what is okay and what isn’t, but there is no authoritative (de jure) way to enforce that understanding.

Many people have been (mis)informed through their Pastors, Ministers, or Priests that Yeshua did away with the law because we are now under Grace, but without the law, there is only lawlessness. That is an a priori fact of life: if there is no law, there is only lawlessness. There is no middle of the road here, no gray matter, no subtle hues of color. It’s black or white, right or wrong, truth or lies: Grace doesn’t exist if there is nothing to receive Grace from.

If you believe that you are under Grace, then you must also be under obedience to God. Shaul tells us this when he said in Romans 5 and 6 that you were slaves to sin, but now are slaves to righteousness. In other words, where Torah couldn’t save you, through Yeshua you can receive Grace, which does save you; but, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the law. Or, as Shaul puts it, continue to sin.

Look, it’s as simple as this: The Torah can’t save us, but not because following the Torah doesn’t make us righteous. The Torah can’t save us because we can’t follow it correctly- the fault doesn’t lie within the Torah, it lies within us, and it is called iniquity. And because God wants everyone to have eternal life (Ezekiel 18:23), he sent the Messiah to provide a way for us to overcome our iniquity: that doesn’t mean the Torah is done away with, but simply that where we fail to obey the Torah, Grace is provided through Messiah to allow us to be forgiven of that failure to obey.

God’s Grace only counts on the spiritual plane; in the real world, there are always consequences of sin. When someone breaks the law, the judge has the authority to deal out punishment as he or she sees fit, which is a form of Grace. As such, you may be given Community Service instead of jail time, but you will have to pay, one way or another.

However, just because the human legal system allows the judge to show leniency, that doesn’t mean that you can break the law, and it’s the same way with God’s Grace and Torah obedience.

God gave his instructions for worshiping him and treating each other to Moses to teach the Jewish people, who God says is his nation of priests (Exodus 19:6) and as such, they will teach the world how God wants us ALL to live. Yeshua did nothing to change that other than to teach us the deeper, spiritual meaning of the Torah commandments.

Grace is a wonderful thing but it isn’t the whole enchilada: when we faithfully do what we can to obey and please the Lord, as he said we should in the Torah, God promises we will receive blessings (Deuteronomy 28); and, thanks to Yeshua, when we fail to obey we can receive forgiveness, which is what we call Grace.

Thank you for being here and please like the Facebook page, share the messages and subscribe to my website and my YouTube channel so that you are contacted next time I post.

I didn’t post anything last week because my older sister was visiting from Austin, Texas for my birthday and we were busy every day. It was a great visit and we had a lot of fun.

Until next time, l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

One of the issues Yeshua had with the Pharisees and their teachings was that some of their man-made traditions were given precedence over what God said. These traditions have become part of Halacha, the Way to Walk, which is defined in the Talmud.

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

Today, more often than not, religious Jews seek to get their answers from the Talmud before they look to the Torah or any other part of the Tanakh. This is, in my opinion, no different than the mistake of placing what men say over what God says that we made way back then, in the First Century.

But that’s what the Jews do, so what does this have to do with calling Saul, whose Greek name used in the New Covenant is Paul (get the reference in the title, now?)

Christians have based most of their beliefs and doctrines not on the Torah or the Gospels, but for the most part on the letters that Saul, and other people, wrote to the (mostly) Gentile congregations throughout the Middle East.

God told us exactly what he wanted from us in the Torah- that is the ONLY place in the entire Bible where we often read “And God said to Moses, ‘Tell the children of Israel (whatever the commandment was)'”.

What we read in the Torah isn’t divinely inspired, it is divinely dictated! It isn’t someone telling us what God told him, which could be subject to interpretation, but it is the very words God used.

Saul was never given direct instructions from God, and when he talked of God’s commandments, he quoted from the Tanakh, but mostly what Saul told his congregations to do was from Saul.

Oh, yes, I know what you are saying: all those instructions were divinely inspired. Well, if they were, since God told Isaiah (Isaiah 55:11) that his word never returns void, then why is it that most of Christianity’s doctrines and dogma, based mostly on the Epistles of Saul, ignore God’s word? Isn’t that the epitome of God’s word returning void?

If someone said something that caused people to reject the Torah, how can that come from God? Didn’t God tell us the laws in the Torah are valid throughout our generations?

Oh, wait, I know- you are going to tell me that those laws are just for Jews, right? Well, think about this: throughout the Torah, God says there is just one law for both the Israelite and the foreigner joined with them and Saul says, in Romans 11:11, that when you accept Yeshua as your Messiah you are now grafted into Israel and an adopted child of Abraham. So, you are now an Israelite (spiritually, if not physically), and as such God says you are to be treated just as a native-born Jew, and like it or not, that means you are also subject to the same laws that Jews are, which is the Torah.

Perhaps that is why Saul also warns his Gentile converts to Judaism, which is what they were becoming when they accepted Yeshua, not to brag or feel superior to the Jews they were now joining.

Look, it isn’t Saul’s fault his letters, which he never intended to override God’s commandments, have been used that way. But what it comes down to is this: the complaint Yeshua had against the Pharisees for making man-made laws more important than God’s commandments has been repeated by Christianity. Instead of learning from the mistakes the Jews made, they not only made the same ones but made them even worse because:

Jews following Talmudic Halacha do not reject the Torah but Christianity misconstruing the Epistles Saul and others wrote, does reject the Torah.

And when you reject the Torah, you reject God. That may be a hard word to hear, and I am sure most Christians reading this right now are shaking their heads back and forth, saying to themselves, “No, no- he is just plain wrong: what about 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where we are told:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Well, you are right! All scripture IS God-breathed, but what was scripture then? It was the Tanakh!!! There was no other scripture, and the instructions from Saul were not some future prophecy or divinely inspired to also cover the not yet written New Covenant, which is (in fact) a bible put together by Gentiles who had already rejected any and everything Jewish.

NO! What Saul was talking about was the Tanakh, the “Jewish Bible” which was the only scripture he knew, and what was being taught to these neophyte Believers so that they could be thoroughly equipped for righteousness.

And that, my friends, means that if you are not following the scripture Saul meant, which is the Torah then, by definition, you are not being equipped for righteousness.

That should be a scary thought, and I pray that you are open to hearing what I am saying. Not because I am saying anything of my own, which I’m not, but because what I am saying is the same thing that God told Moses, that God told Isaiah, and what Saul really meant when he told Timothy how to teach the Gentile Believers under his authority.

God has no religion, but men created religion so that they could have power over other men. This is obvious just by looking at all the different religions, with different forms of worship, but all are supposed to worship the same God, who said he never changes. If he never changes, doesn’t that mean his instructions will never change? If he says everyone who sojourns with (i.e., is grafted into) his chosen people are to be subject to the same law as they must, doesn’t that mean they are also to obey the same laws?

We all have Free Will, and so we can each make our own choice of who to listen to regarding how we live which is, essentially, the way we worship God. For Jews, we can choose to follow Halacha from the Talmud or what God says in the Torah; and for Christians, they can choose to follow the doctrines and dogma created by Constantine (and any number of Popes over the centuries) based on letters from Saul and other men, or they can choose to follow what God says in the Torah.

To me, this is a no-brainer, but to the Jewish Orthodoxy and most Christians, it represents making a major paradigm shift in their lifestyle.

And we all know how people feel about change, even when it has eternal consequences.

Thank you for being here and please LIKE my Facebook page, click on the subscribe button in the right-hand margin and on my YouTube channel, as well (use the link above), and share these messages with everyone you know to help this ministry grow.

And I always welcome your comments.

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