Recently one of the Messianic groups on Facebook was asking about why people in that group seemed so legalistic, not lighting fires on Shabbat, etc.

My answer is one of those that I felt was worth sharing here, especially because it was the topic I felt led to discuss today, anyway.

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

I started out justifying my reasons for feeling that what I said was worth listening to, so for the benefit of anyone out there who is not familiar with me, and not to brag (honest!), I left that part in. So, here is how I replied:

“I am Jewish (in fact, I have the genetic marker of a Levite), raised Reform, a Bar Mitzvah, and accepted Yeshua as my Messiah about 30 years ago. I have served in many ways in both a Messianic synagogue and a Hebraic Roots church, and even have some credentials from the Messianic Bible Institute. I also have an online ministry with hundreds of international followers (messianicmoment.com).

I say this just so that you know my background, and certainly not to brag.

In all this time, my experience is that a Messianic Jewish congregation is usually composed of less than 40% Jews.

I believe the neo-legalism that has infiltrated Messianic Judaism is because so many Messianic congregations are mostly composed of people who came from some Christian background, where (again, this is from my personal experience) they were raised in a legalistic environment.

Christianity is, in my opinion, a very legalistic religion, having created its own tenets and traditions, and forms of worship that are elaborate and very ceremonial. And that “do-it-because-you-are-supposed-to-do-it” regimen has not left all of the people who have left the religion.

Here are what I consider to be neo-legalistic ideologies that have infiltrated Messianic Judaism:

1. This recent drek (Yiddish for garbage, and sometimes even worse words!) about Christmas and Easter being pagan holidays (despite the fact there are no pagan gods involved);

2. The Holy Namers (if you don’t pronounce the Tetragrammaton or the name of the Messiah the way they say then you are praying to a false god);

3. The calendar people who insist that you are celebrating on the wrong day because their calendar is the correct one (even though in ancient days the beginning of the month could be off by a few days simply because it was too cloudy to verify the new moon was out).

All of these “religious” ideologies are representative of a legalistic mindset.

Legalism is a performance-based salvation, where “doing” has more importance than faith.

If you do anything in order to be “correct”, then you are doing it for the wrong reason.

Faithful obedience, the kind that counts with God, is doing what God said (meaning what is in the Torah, not what some religion says) to the best of your ability simply because God said to do it.

If you need proof or justification, well… that is not a faith-based system. ”

And that is where I left it.

I am not going to open a discussion about those holidays, but I will give a quickie demonstration of why I believe they are not pagan:

You go to a restaurant and order a chicken salad sandwich, and they bring you a tuna fish salad sandwich, so you say,” Hey! I ordered chicken”
“Yes, Sir, I know, but this was made the same day and has all the same ingredients we use for chicken salad, so it is no different.”
“Uh, yes it is- there is no chicken in here, only tuna fish. I asked for chicken.”
“Well, Sir, there used to be chicken in it but now there is tuna fish, so it is essentially the same thing. We use the same ingredients and make it the same way, and both are served on bread so they are no different.”
“Yes, they are different- one is made from chicken and one is made from tuna.”

If a holiday once was chicken, but now is tuna, they aren’t the same thing; if once, thousands of years ago, on a certain day they celebrated Saturn, but today they celebrate Yeshua, they are different. Even if some things seem to be the same, such as decorations and use of a tree, or eggs and bunnies… they are not the same.

These legalists also have just enough knowledge to be wrong.

For instance, the calendar thing- in the ancient days, the new moon had to be verified by at least three people, and if the weather was overcast then they couldn’t validate if there was a new moon or not until they could actually see the darn thing! That means their new moons could not be as exact and trustworthy as modern day calendars.

The modern Jewish calendar was created by Hillel II in 358/359 AD. Before 359 AD, the Sanhedrin used testimonies of witnesses seeing the new crescent moon. Hillel II replaced this with a calculated system. Hillel’s calendar relies on a 19-year cycle (Metonic cycle), containing 12 common years and 7 leap years (which add a second month of Adar), and the reason he did this was so that Jews in the Diaspora would be able to celebrate the Holy Days at the same time.

You want an absolutely exact calendar? Fine, here’s how to get it- create a time machine, go back to the first day of freedom from Egypt and move through time marking down each new moon for the past 3,300 or so years.

And to add one more nail to their coffin, God doesn’t live on a linear plane of existence as we do, and I truly believe that if we all agree to a certain calendar, and we all celebrate the same Holy Day at the same time, then we are in accordance with the Torah.

The one thing that bothers me more than anything else about these neo-legalistic theologies is that they insult God. How? By clearly indicating that God does not know our hearts and minds, that he is so egocentric and obsessive-compulsive that if we use Adonai instead of Jehovah, he will reject one of those prayers. They imply that by using “Lord” we are praying to Ba’al, and that God can’t tell the difference.

Now, as for you Holy Namers, I offer this bit of wisdom:

We are saved by faith, not by pronunciation.

Can you see how legalistic these ideologies are? They have absolutely no bearing on salvation, since salvation comes from faithfully believing that Yeshua is the Messiah and through the blood he shed we can find forgiveness of sin, which is the only way to be allowed into God’s presence, which is what being “saved” means.

And don’t even get me started on the Trinity thing!

There are so many religious differences not just within Christianity, but also within Judaism, and everything that is not specified in the Torah is man-made. That doesn’t mean a man-made ceremony or tradition is bad, unless it overrides and is given higher precedence than what God said to do in his Torah.

And, obviously, if what your religion teaches ignores anything from the Torah, then it is a religion that rejects God- something his son, the Messiah Yeshua, NEVER said or taught anyone they should do.

So what’s the point? The point is that Moses was right when he said that obeying God is not so hard (Deuteronomy 30:11-14). The issue is whether you try to be obedient to God, or try to be obedient to a man-made religion.

We will all face God one day, and when I do I will be able to tell him that I tried to obey his Torah. If your religion has taught you that the Torah is only for Jews, then you will have to tell God that you tried to obey what some man-made religion told you to do and you didn’t obey his Torah.

So, nu? … which one of those forms of worship do you think God will honor?

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!

I am the first one to say that taking a verse or passage from the Bible out of context is asking for a misinterpretation. But I think that looking at Isaiah 5:20 is an exception to that rule.

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

The chapter in Isaiah begins with a warning to the people how they were given everything one could ask for from God, but instead of worshiping him properly they rebelled against him and so, as a result of their rejection he will take away from them what they have been given.

Verses 11-23 give warning to those who drink too much, who have misused property boundaries, and who- in general- have rejected God’s laws in how they react and interact with others. From verse 23 to the end he tells them how God will punish them.

So this entire chapter is about how, having been given so many good things, by rejecting the way God said to live they will end up having all that good stuff taken away from them and given to others.

Today, throughout the world, we see one of those warnings being exemplified by our own political parties, as well as the mass media. I am speaking about Isaiah 5:20, which says (CJB):

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who change darkness into light and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter!

There is a rise of antisemitism throughout the world, and especially here in America. Did you know that it was Jewish money that paid the troops during the Revolutionary War, without which today we would be driving on the wrong side of the street! This country owes SO much to us Jews, yet today there is rampant antisemitism: the media is behind this because they are calling what Israel is doing to protect itself bad, and what Hamas and the other terrorist organizations are doing as good.

That’s exactly what Isaiah warned us about in this one passage.

People in America are protesting against the military action in Iran (there isn’t a war without a declaration of war), something that the Christians in Iran are ecstatic about! After all, our CIA (being asked to do so by Great Britain) removed the democratically elected Prime Minster and installed the Shah back in the 1950s, which ended up pretty bad for the Iranians. Now we are freeing them from the same sort of despotic rule that the person we had placed in charge initiated.

There are even American colleges supporting terrorists attacking innocent civilians, claiming that Israel is being genocidal while the truth is that the terrorists have one goal- to totally destroy all Jews in Israel. These cowardly monsters murder, rape, and then mutilate the dead bodies to drag through the streets, while the Gazan’s cheer!

And Israel isn’t their goal, the world is. These terrorists live to kill, and they are only starting with the Jews in Israel. Their influence is seen all over the world with the rampant rise of antisemitism, and once all the Jews are gone, believe me they will turn against the Christians, next.

What do you think “From the river to the sea” means? It doesn’t mean freedom for those alleged Palestinian people (a reference to people who never existed but was a propaganda program initiated by Yasser Arafat back in the 1970’s) to live in Israel, it means to totally destroy all Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

These Arab nations do not want the land- they had access to it for centuries before 1948, and never once built any permanent cities or businesses. The ones that were asked to leave when Israel became a state were nomads.

The media and politicians accusing Israel of genocide have it totally backward: Hamas and Hezbollah and ISIS, et.al., are the ones who want genocide, while the Israeli IDF has warned civilians of coming attacks against these terrorists, have sent food and medical supplies (which the terrorists have intercepted and not given to their own people), and tried to be as careful as possible when attacking, even though the terrorists hide under hospitals and next to schools, showing they have absolutely no concern for their own people.

And what does the mass media do? They support the terrorists, attacking in the papers Israel and anyone supporting Israel with twisted news reports and out-and-out lies!

Isaiah warned against those who call evil good and good evil, and that is exactly what we are seeing in the world, today- yes, even here in America, the land of the free.

HAH! The land of the free and the home of the brave is now the country of the ignorant, the land of the sheep, and the home of the misled.

What did Shaul (Paul) call Satan? Didn’t he call him the Prince of the Power of the Air (Ephesians 2:2)? And how does the news travel throughout the world? Isn’t it through the air?

See my point? We are being led down the path to destruction by the media and the political leadership of the world, centered in the United Nations, which I believe should be re-titled United Nations Against Israel. After all, that is clearly their desired goal.

So, what is all this rambling about? After all, I have stated that this ministry is not for political discussion, but I am not really talking about politics, I am talking about the political leadership leading us into damnation, helped along by the media.

Isaiah also states in this chapter (verse 13) that the people are being destroyed by their lack of knowledge, which Hosea reaffirms in his warnings, as well (Hosea 4:6, which I have at the bottom of my ministry home page).

So, I am saying all this as a warning to you, to ask that you please do not automatically believe anything you hear, about anyone or any country, from any source without thoroughly confirming it with multiple searches throughout the Internet. You may have to go through three or four pages of “hits” before you find some website you can trust, or at least gives what appears to be a fair report.

And this is especially true of anything you hear from anyone (yes, even me) regarding the Bible: you certainly do not want to be one of those destroyed because of your lack of knowledge.

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!

Many passages from the Bible have a special meaning all on their own, but we should always be cautious when taking a single verse or passage out of context.

In this case, I believe the message for today on this one passage is keeping with the overall gist of God’s word.

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

To start off, let’s review this chapter: Yeshua is teaching all about heaven and about the way people should be acting. He goes through the Beatitudes (affectionately called the “Be- attitudes”) and immediately precedes this passage with telling us he has not come to change any of the Torah laws but to fulfill (meaning interpret correctly) those laws. He specifically tells us that nothing will change until everything that must happen is accomplished.

In other words, until the Acharit HaYamim (End Days/Apocalypse) has been completed, and there is the new earth and new Jerusalem lowered from heaven, the Torah is intact, valid, and necessary.

I know that freaks out a lot of Christians who have been lied to about this passage, but that is just too darn bad- the Torah is for everyone who professes to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and who believes Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah that God promised to send. Like it or not.

So, now that we know the context of where this passage comes from, let’s look at the passage, itself (CJB):

So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The message seems pretty clear- those who fail to teach the Torah will be considered least in the kingdom of heaven, but those who teach the Torah (which this ministry does) will be called great in heaven.

Okay, one thing we need to realize is that people do not go to heaven, so that must mean the ones being called least or great are somewhere else.

And that somewhere else doesn’t have to be on the earth: it could certainly be in Sheol.

This makes sense to me because how can someone who teaches to ignore the Torah ever get to be in heaven? The Torah defines sin, and if you teach to ignore the Torah, then you are, in effect, teaching how to sin, and that certainly won’t get you in good standing with God.

So those who have accepted Yeshua as their Messiah and teach others to obey the Torah are going to not only be saved, living on the new earth in God’s presence forever, but will also be considered great by God, Yeshua, and all the angelic host.

In essence, they will have a really good rep with the angels.

That also means those who, whether accepting Yeshua as their Messiah or not, teach to ignore the Torah will not be in God’s presence, and when the angelic host speak of them, the angels will consider them less than valuable or worthy of anything …and that will also be how they are viewed by God and Yeshua.

Personally, I am not as concerned with how I am perceived in heaven as I am about being saved. For all I care, they can consider me one of the less important or spiritual of all those who are saved, just so long as I am saved. I am more than happy to be relegated to “sleep outside the Tabernacle” (as Joshua did), just so long as I am where it is.

So let this passage be a warning to all who have been taught (especially those who teach) that the Torah is only for Jews, and Gentiles accepting Yeshua as their Messiah do not have to concern themselves with it. It doesn’t matter what form of justification you are given by your religious leaders, because Yeshua himself says that they are considered least by God and all of the heavenly host.

And I think we can agree that there is no one who outranks Yeshua.

Consider this: the Torah is God’s User Manual for Righteousness, and Yeshua proved that by living his life in complete obedience to it, which is why he was resurrected. God tells us how to worship him and how to treat each other in the Torah, so why would he tell Gentiles being grafted onto the tree God planted that they don’t have to do any of that?

Why would Yeshua show us how to live a Torah-observant life just to say that we don’t have to?

The Torah is God’s laws so if we do not live by them then we are, by definition, lawless, and which of you think that the lawless will be saved?

Oh, yeah, here’s one last thing: if you are going to parrot-repeat that ridiculous justification that there are some laws which are moral and some ceremonial and Gentiles only have to obey the moral ones, remember what James said in his letter (James 2:10), which is that to break one law is the same as breaking them all. And who is to say which is moral and which is not? Isn’t God moral? And if God is moral, then isn’t everything he says we should do morally correct?

You choose which laws you will follow if you want to, but as for me, I will try my very best to be as obedient to the Torah as I can be (no one can ever be as obedient as Yeshua) because when I meet God I want to be able to say, “I tried to be as you want me to be.”

How do you think God will react to the ones who can only say, “I didn’t do what you said because they told me I didn’t have to.“?

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

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

I know I say this sometimes and it doesn’t end up as I thought it would, but I really, REALLY think this should be a short-and-sweet message.

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

What does today’s title mean?

It refers to the drash (parable) Yeshua told of how a shepherd will leave 99 sheep alone to go find the one lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7; Matthew 18:12-14).

We are born lost, and what God is willing to do, actually desires to do, is to help us find our way to him. So for each step we take in his direction, he is willing to walk a mile to meet us on our way.

This is how much God desires to be in communion with his children; yes, even the ones who curse him and reject him.

Ezekiel 18:23 proves what I am saying, and if that isn’t enough, the entire Bible demonstrates God’s desire to have a relationship with us, but that relationship does have to be on his terms.

And to make sure we know what those terms are, he gave us the Torah: he first gave it to the Jews who, as his nation of priests (Exodus 19:6), would learn it so that they could then take it to the world. Then he sent Yeshua to teach us the deeper, spiritual meaning of those laws and commandments.

The Torah is more than just a bunch of commandments- it is a constitution for a nation, with a system of government (judges and Sanhedrin), a penal code defining punishments for both capital crimes and torts, rules for ethical business practices, rules regarding health concerns, defining what is morally right within interpersonal relationships, and a calendar of Holy Days on which to celebrate God and his many blessings he has given us.

The Torah is God’s “User Manual for Righteousness”.

And when we try to live in accordance with the Torah, as he commands us to do, we receive blessings each time we do something right (Deuteronomy 28).

So, in a nutshell, what we are talking about is how God is willing to go a mile just to meet us as we take steps to meet him.

All you need to do is take it a step at a time, and God will meet you before you know it!

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment, “like” these messages, and share them 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!

We all know God gave many different commandments to Moses during the 40 years in the desert, but have you ever considered that God never gave any other commandments, anywhere else, throughout the rest of the Bible?

I think that’s because God figures that when he says to do something, we should do it. Do you agree?

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

If you do agree, then can I ask you this question: do you try to do what God said to do, or do you do what your religion tells you to do?

For example, God says to rest on the 7th day, which is Saturday. Even the Gregorian (Christian) calendar has two starting days: Sunday for the non-business week and Monday for the business week, so the standard calendar used by most everyone in the world starts on Sunday, which means the 7th day is Saturday.

Yet most every Christian sabbath is on Sunday, the first day of the week, not the 7th, which is a rejection of what God said to do.

Here’s another example: in Leviticus 11, God tells us there are certain animals that he considers unclean and that we should not eat, but nearly every Christian I have ever known, even within Messianic Jewish synagogues and Hebraic Roots Churches, totally ignore that rule.

I hate to say it, but many Jews do, as well.

And, just for the record, as far as God is concerned (hey, this is not my opinion but is stated in the Bible), when we ignore or refuse to do what God says, he sees it as rejecting him. Remember what God said when the people called for a king (1 Samuel 8:7) (CJB):

Adonai said to Sh’mu’el, “Listen to the people, to everything they say to you; for it is not you they are rejecting; they are rejecting me; they don’t want me to be king over them.”

You know, I hear so many excuses why it is okay to reject God’s Torah, but most people have no idea that there are different commandments, rules, laws, ordinances, etc. that are in there, which go beyond the Big 10.

Did yo know that the Torah has a penal code defining which crimes deserve what punishments? Did you know that it covers interpersonal relationships, defining what is proper and godly and what is perverse and sinful? The Torah tells us how God wants us to worship him, defining which days to celebrate and how we should act on those days. And most important of all, it tells us how to live in order to please God and how to be holy, as he is holy (which is, by the way, another Torah commandment).

God has rules he gave to us Jews to teach the world. How do I know? Because he said so!

Read Exodus 19:6– God tells Moses the Jews are to be his (meaning God’s) nation of priests, and since we already had our own priests, the Levites, then the other 11 tribes must be priests to whoever else there was, which was the Goyim, the nations… in other words, everyone else in the world.

There are many good reasons to obey God: to please him, to be a worshipful believer, to earn blessings (Deuteronomy 28), or to show that we trust him; but the bottom line is this: obedience demonstrates the level of our faithfulness.

If someone you love asks you to do something, won’t you do it for them?

Yet so many people say they love the Lord and in the same breath say that they don’t have to obey his Torah because his son did away with it.

Yeshua, however, often said that he does everything his father in heaven tells him to do. So if Yeshua was faithfully obeying his father, how can he then tell everyone else they don’t have to?

There can be no argument that ignoring the Holy Days specified in Leviticus 23, the rules for food in Leviticus 11, the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20, or any of the other commandments God gave throughout the entire Torah is a rejection of God.

I don’t give a hootenanny what you priest or pastor or minister or even your rabbi tells you- if God said to do it, do they outrank God?

Despite all the arguments why we should obey the Torah, and all the excuses why we don’t have to, it really comes down to this: if you believe that God is the ultimate authority and power in the Universe, why would you not obey him?

If you want to call yourself “faithful”, then that faith (as James said) MUST be demonstrated through what you do, and that really means how you worship God in your everyday activities throughout your life.

Worship isn’t what you do in church or shul, but how you live your life outside of those places.

I am going to finish with something I write very often, and pray that it will get through to at least someone, someday:

When you meet God at Judgement day, and we all will, and you tell him that you only did what they told you to do, I can’t speak for the Big Guy in the sky but I believe he might say something to this effect:

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

Thank you for being here and please remember to comment or like these messages to help me get more exposure on the Internet. And also share these 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!

How many understand the message about looking in the mirror in James 1:22-24?

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

It is a fundamental principle of Jewish study that the Torah is a mirror reflecting one’s own life, soul, and spiritual journey. 

The Book of James was written specifically to those believing Jews who lived in the Diaspora, and since Yacov (James) was Jewish, he knew about this teaching and so when he used it, he knew that his audience would understand, as well.

But how many Christians know what he was actually referring to?

Let’s see what he said (CJB):

Don’t deceive yourselves by only hearing what the Word says, but do it!  For whoever hears the Word but doesn’t do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror,  who looks at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

The only “Word” that existed when he said this was the Torah. That is not an opinion, it is historical fact, so what Jimmy was telling these messianic Jews was that they need to remain Jewish to stay on the right track for salvation. He did this because of the ever-growing influence of the Gentiles who were taking over this Jewish movement and teaching to reject much, if not all, of the Torah.

The Gentile introduction to salvation through Yeshua is considered to have begun with Kefa’s (Peter) conversion of Cornelius around 37-40 AD (Acts 10), and by the end of that century (after all the Jewish leaders had died or had been martyred) the now Gentile leadership of what was now a mostly Gentile sect was already separating itself from its Jewish roots.

Consequently, the further this movement got away from its Jewish roots, the further it got away from Yeshua.

The Book of James is considered to be one of the earliest written messages, sometime around 40-50 AD, and as such was written a little after the time that Gentiles started to come into (or should I say, infiltrate?) this evolving Jewish sect of Jews who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah. However, there was never any conversion because these Jewish believers continued living a Torah observant lifestyle, which is also how Yeshua lived and what he taught.

Sometime around 98 AD, Ignatius of Antioch stated that the Sabbath will be on a Sunday for (those who were now being called) Christians, and by the Council of Nicene, Christianity was not only totally foreign to its Jewish roots, but was anti-Jewish.

So, the idea that the Torah should be a mirror, meaning that when we see how God says to worship him and to treat each other we should recognize that this is what we do every day, has been lost to Christians.

The real new Covenant, Jeremiah 31:31, says that God will write his Torah on our hearts. This also reflects back on the analogy of the Torah being a mirror (get it? Reflect, Torah as a mirror, get it?).

OK, back to being serious… it is atsuv me’od (Hebrew for “very sad”) that because traditional Christian teaching is that the Torah is only for Jews, by rejecting the Torah Christians are excluding themselves from being able to partake in the new covenant. Why? Because you can’t have something you reject written on your heart.

Yacov wrote to believing Jews who were being influenced by Gentiles who accepted Yeshua, but were teaching to reject the way he lived and worshipped. That is why Yacov used this well-known analogy of the Torah being a mirror when he “drashed” about one who doesn’t do as God said is like someone who forgets what he looks like.

What he was saying was to really be who God wants you to be, the Torah has to be a mirror.

So, nu?… what do you see when you read the Torah?

Thank you for being here and please remember to like and comment on these messages, which helps me to get more exposure on the Internet. Also share these 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!

How often have you heard people tell you that you are saved by faith, and faith alone? Then someone else tells you that James said faith without works is dead. Then someone else tells you that works are useless.

Then someone else tells you all you need to do is ask God because the Bible says that all who call on his name will be saved.

For Pete’s sake, make up your mind- which is it?

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

Now here’s the kicker: works and faith do not save you, but they keep you saved.

Now that you are really confused or upset, let’s step back a bit and start with what does it really mean to be “saved”?

From my nearly three decades as a “saved” person, to me being saved means that when the Acharit haYamim, the End Days, are over and we all come before God when he is sitting on his Throne of Judgement, that we will be judged as righteous, i.e., without sin, and thereby allowed to remain in his divine presence for the rest of eternity.

But, since none of us are righteous, our “righteousness” being nothing more than filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), the only way we can be viewed as righteous is by means of the righteousness of Yeshua the Messiah. And that is possible only by accepting him as our Messiah.

So, what saves us is being sinless, and since the Bible is clear that no one is without sin, only because of Yeshua’s sinless life and his sacrifice can his blood, which is forever available to us, cleanse us and allow us to come before God as sinless, which is what saves us.

We are not saved by faith or works or anything else other than the way God said we are to be saved from the very beginning, which is through the sacrificial system defined in Leviticus, which shows us that forgiveness of sin must be through the shedding of innocent blood.

Now, as for faith and works, they are essential to stay saved. It is faith in Yeshua being the Messiah God promised to send that allows us to ask forgiveness through Yeshua’s sacrifice, and it is doing as God said to do, not some religion, that demonstrates the truth of our faith.

Christianity calls these acts of obedience “works” and we Jews call them “mitzvot”, but what is important is that whatever you call them, they are the things that God said to do and not what some religion tells you to do.

Within Judaism we have different levels of obedience, from secular Jews who are more interested in Jewish heritage and identify with Jewish culture, history, and peoplehood rather than religious belief or ritual observance to Chasidic Jews, living strictly by Halacha (as outlined in the Talmud) and calling all other sects of Judaism “Goyim”.

(Goyim in Hebrew means “nations”, but in modern language
it is used as a derogatory identifier of non-Jews).

In Christianity, sadly, nearly everything any one of the many, MANY different Christian religions tells you to do is almost always in complete opposition or totally ignoring what God said he wants us all to do, which is found only in one place in the entire Bible and that is in those first 5 books called the Torah.

That’s it, Folks- the only thing that saves us from eternal damnation is to be forgiven of sin, and the only way you can be forgiven of sin (now that the temple is gone) is through accepting Yeshua as your Messiah, and obeying what God said to do in the Torah.

Now, you may ask, “Are you saying that even if I faithfully accept Yeshua as my Messiah, call on the name of the Lord for forgiveness of my sins by means of Yeshua’s sacrifice, but don’t obey the Torah I will be damned, anyway?”

I can’t answer that because I am not God, who makes the final decision.

What I can say is that I believe your faith in God and Yeshua is demonstrated through how you live your life and is an intregal part of God’s decision about your eternal future.

Let me leave you with this: I believe because no one can be 100% obedient to the Torah, it isn’t how successful we are at obeying all of God’s mitzvot, but how hard we try that God will take into consideration.

The ones who should be worried are the ones who know what God wants them to do, but refuse to even try because they just don’t want to.

Thank you for being here and please remember to like and comment on these messages, which helps me get better exposure on the Internet. And please 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!