Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him. 

Nahum 1:6

The Dead Sea scrolls are fragments of ancient, sacred texts that were found in the caves of Qumran in the late 1940’s. They were a significant discovery because they provide the oldest fragments of books of the Bible like Genesis, plus copies of books such as Jubilees and Enoch. Before the discovery of these fragments, Enoch was considered a relatively new work. Recently, some new fragments were found from the books of Zechariah and Nahum.

“The largest fragment contains portions of Zechariah 8:16–17, and some smaller bits are identified as Nahum 1:5–6. These pieces appear to be connected to other previously discovered fragments from the same cave along the ancient gorge of Nahal Hever, and were part of a single large scroll including all of the minor prophets.” Christianitytoday.com, March 2021

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/march-web-only/new-dead-sea-scrolls-discovery-bible-translation-israel.html

An interesting point from the article in Christianitytoday.com is that the Paleo Hebrew version of the Lord’s name, YHWH, was used in these Greek manuscripts instead of the Greek word Kurios that is found in newer Greek texts. The Paleo script for YHWH is 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄. Picture your favourite English version having 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 everywhere it currently has LORD. It would be a much more honest way of presenting the name.

The contents of the fragments found are also of interest. Perhaps a message that is appropriate for the church of 2021. The fragment that contains the verses from Zechariah reminds us to follow the commandments.

Zec 8:16 These are the things that you must do: speak truth, each of you, with his neighbor; practice trustworthy judgment and peace in your gates.
Zec 8:17 Do not devise evil in your hearts against your neighbor, and do not love a false oath, because all these are things I hate,” declares Yahweh.

John the Baptist had a similar message. He came to prepare the way for the Messiah.

Luk 3:10 And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?”
Luk 3:11 And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”
Luk 3:12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?”
Luk 3:13 And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.”
Luk 3:14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

The summary of these instructions is to repent and follow the commandments. The prophet Malachi told us John the Baptist would come as Elijah teaching the Ten Commandments. Malachi chapter four is on the page before the gospel of Matthew in most Bibles.

Mal 4:4 “Remember the instruction of my servant Moses, which I commanded him at Horeb to all Israel, the rules and regulations.
Mal 4:5 Look! I am going to send to you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh!
Mal 4:6 And he will bring back the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the hearts of the sons to their fathers, so that I will not come and strike the land with a ban.”

I am not sure why the commandments have been so easily abandoned. They have been the same from the beginning, never changed by Jesus, Paul or any scriptural authority. There are commands that we no longer are able to keep due to the absence of a temple, the lack of a Levite priest system and the fact Jesus became our high priest. That doesn’t nullify the Ten Commandments and the method we are to be righteous before God.

The next fragment recently found from the Prophet Nahum, discusses the impending judgement of Yahweh. In the Lexham English version of the Bible, verse six is translated with the line “rocks are shattered before him”.

Nah 1:5 Mountains quake before him; the hills shake apart. The earth heaves before him—the world and all her inhabitants.
Nah 1:6 His indignation—who can stand before it? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; rocks are shattered before him.

However, in the King James Version of the Bible, the same line is translated “and the rocks are thrown down by him”.

Nah 1:5 The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.
Nah 1:6 Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.

There is a big difference between shattering rocks in front of you and throwing down rocks; especially if you happen to be on the receiving end. Which translation is correct? This is where a person has to study the words of the original language. So often we will dissect the constitution of our church down to the minute detail, yet never regard what the scripture says in the same detail that is granted to the church constitution. The bylaws and constitution of a church have no eternal consequences or benefits, as the words of scripture do. The word that is translated “thrown down” in one translation and “shattered” in another translation is Strong’s H5422. It can actually be translated both ways.

H5422
נתץ
nâthats
BDB Definition:
1) to pull down, break down, cast down, throw down, beat down, destroy, overthrow, break out (teeth)
1a) (Qal)
1a1) to pull down
1a2) to break down, break off
1b) (Niphal) to be pulled or broken down
1c) (Piel) to tear down
1d) (Pual) to be torn down
1e) (Hophal) to be broken, be broken down

To a Hebrew reader, this may give a different picture than rocks shattering. There are other verses that give a similar meaning where Yahweh told His people to tear down (shatter) the sacred trees and stone pillars.

Exo 34:13 You shall tear down (H5422) their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim
Exo 34:14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),
Exo 34:15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice,
Exo 34:16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.

Just as the early congregation of believers didn’t shatter the sacred trees and pillars, the current generation still uses these symbols for their worship. Lawlessness, wickedness, and disregard for the instructions of Yahweh will bring the final destruction of everyone who will not listen, just as Peter described quoting Deuteronomy 18.

Act 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,
Act 3:20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus,
Act 3:21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.
Act 3:22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.
Act 3:23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’
Act 3:24 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days.

People are not listening to the prophet and son of God who said “if you love me, keep my commandments” and “ my commandments are not my own, but my Father’s who sent me”. As a result, the Earth will be destroyed.

Rev 6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
Rev 6:13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
Rev 6:14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
Rev 6:15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
Rev 6:16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
Rev 6:17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Stars falling from the sky like unripened figs sounds like someone throwing rocks, or maybe meteors. When the penalty for breaking many of the commandments is stoning, this should not be a surprise.

Mat 13:40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.
Mat 13:41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers,
Mat 13:42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Mat 13:43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

We find the same narrative in the Old Testament as the New Testament. Righteous shine, but law-breakers get locked out of the kingdom. Shouldn’t we be concerned about this? Which laws? “He who has ears let him hear” is similar to “Listen up! This is important.” in today’s language.

Mal 4:1 “For look! The day is about to come, burning like an oven, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble. The coming day will consume them,” says Yahweh of hosts. “It will not leave behind for them root or branch.
Mal 4:2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings, and you will go out and leap like fattened calves.
Mal 4:3 You will trample down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I am going to act,” says Yahweh of hosts.

For those that think deliberately not honouring the Sabbaths will not bring any consequences; are you sure? Why? For those who think it is okay to do things Yahweh says He hates; what reward will it bring? Those who have no regard for Yahweh and His commandments, which Jesus also taught, will find themselves in tribulation in the latter days, just as recorded in Deuteronomy chapter four:

Deu 4:25 “When you have had children and grandchildren and you have grown old in the land and you act corruptly and you make a divine image of the form of anything and you do evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God, thus provoking him to anger,
Deu 4:26 I call to witness against you today the heaven and the earth, that you will perish soon and completely from the land that you are crossing the Jordan into it to take possession of it; you will not live long on it, but you will be completely destroyed.
Deu 4:27 And Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations to where Yahweh will lead you.
Deu 4:28 And you will there serve gods made by human hands, of wood and stone, gods that cannot see and cannot hear and cannot eat and cannot smell.
Deu 4:29 But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God and will find him, if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deu 4:30 In your distress when all these things have found you in the latter days, then you will return to Yahweh your God, and you will listen to his voice.
Deu 4:31 For Yahweh your God is a compassionate God; he will not abandon you, and he will not destroy you, and he will not forget the covenant of your ancestors that he swore to them.

Another prophecy for the “latter days” is the following:

Deu 30:8 And you will again listen to the voice of Yahweh, and you will do all his commandments that I am commanding you today.

Therefore, seek the Lord while He can still be found, repent and return to His ways. His ways are His commandments. Don’t be a law-breaker.

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.”

Revelation 3:15-19

Just as starting to watch a three hour movie at the beginning of the third hour will cause confusion, starting to read and understand a book two-thirds of the way through the book will be equally confusing. This is no less true with the Bible. Often people are told to read the New Testament and not get bogged down in the so-called Old Testament. Although a person can start out with New Testament concepts, complete immersion in the whole Bible is the only way to understand the writings of the New Testament and the teachings therein. We must remember that the warning in the opening scripture is from Jesus to those in the church.

Paul was a Pharisee who was “educated at the feet of Gamaliel”. He very likely memorized the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah. Once he had his literal “coming to Jesus” moment on the road to Damascus, he had to revisit all that he had learned.

Gal 1:13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
Gal 1:14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
Gal 1:15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace,
Gal 1:16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone;
Gal 1:17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.
Gal 1:18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days.
Gal 1:19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.

Paul spent three years unlearning errors he picked up being zealous in Judaism, also trying to apply all his learning of scripture to what he witnessed during his encounter with the Messiah on the road to Damascus and the days after. A large amount of what we consider scripture today comes from Paul’s work, and with him having such a broad understanding of the Torah, writings and prophets, Paul was an excellent choice to explain all that was contained in scripture to the future generations in light of the Messiah. However, the future generations, including those of us today, failed to do our part.

2Pe 3:14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
2Pe 3:15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
2Pe 3:16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
2Pe 3:17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.
2Pe 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Peter knew that Paul was deep and people would pervert his teachings to promote their own way of life. To “be found without spot or blemish” is Peter’s way of saying to walk righteous before the Lord, just as the parents of John the Baptist did, as described in Luke. Keep the commandments.

Luk 1:6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

When Peter warned not to be carried away by the error of lawless people who twist Paul’s writings, he was speaking of those who break the commandments of Yahweh, and use Paul’s writings to justify it. A large portion of Christian doctrine today is based on the twisting of Paul’s words in order to justify lawlessness, or the breaking of Yahweh’s commandments. Jesus prophesied about this very thing:

Mat 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
Mat 7:23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

What has always been the will of the Father other than for His people to be obedient to His instructions? So how do we determine what Paul is trying to say in all of his letters to the various churches without falling into the trap of twisting the scriptures? Peter tells us in his warning that ignorant and unstable people will twist Paul’s writings. The first step is not to be ignorant of the scriptures, then second, do not be an unstable person. Also, do not listen to ignorant and unstable people that try to teach what Paul says. The only way to discern this is to have the Holy Spirit of truth, and study like Paul did. How do you get the Spirit of Truth that Jesus speaks of? It is a bit of a catch twenty-two.

Joh 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Joh 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,
Joh 14:17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
Joh 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Joh 14:19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.
Joh 14:20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
Joh 14:21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Joh 14:22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”
Joh 14:23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
Joh 14:24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.

Jesus tells us the those who keep His commandments will receive the Spirit of Truth. Some will try to say that the commandments of Jesus are different than those of the Father, calling it the “law of Christ”, a term found in Paul’s writings. Jesus plainly tells us the words that He speaks are not His, but those of His Father. There is an old heresy called Marcionism, that hides in the doctrine of dispensationalism today. This belief system of Marcionism make Jesus’s ways different than Yahweh by claiming Jesus’s father was a different God than Yahweh. Dispensationalism achieves the same result by claiming Yahweh changed the way He does things in the so-called “age of grace”, when Yahweh doesn’t change.

Where then does a person start studying scripture? The beginning is a good place. Do you have faith to believe Yahweh created the world as described in Genesis, or do you think you can blend humanistic theories with creation? Do you know why Yahweh had to destroy the Earth with a flood, what Jeroboam did that the church still does today, the blessings Jacob gave His children and how they are still relevant, and what the great sin of Israel was to cause Yahweh to say “they are not my people”? All of these events are paramount to understanding what is being said in the New Testament. There are many more resources available today than ever before. A person can have access to every resource that exists today from their laptop or tablet. It takes a lot of work to “seek the Lord with all your heart”.

Psa 119:1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of Yahweh.
Psa 119:2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies; they seek him with a whole heart.
Psa 119:3 They also do no wrong; they walk in his ways.
Psa 119:4 You have commanded your precepts, that we should keep them diligently.
Psa 119:5 Oh that my ways were steadfast, to keep your statutes!
Psa 119:6 Then I would not be ashamed when I look to all your commands.
Psa 119:7 I will give you thanks with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous laws.
Psa 119:8 I will heed your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.

The big sin of Israel was to forsake the commandments of Yahweh. A person must understand Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea and Daniel, which is not a small task. The books are easier to understand if they are viewed within the history of what is taking place at the time of their writing. The prophetic warnings are there for the people of God not to make the same mistakes if given another chance. That other chance was given when Yahweh sent His son Jesus, or actually Yeshua, in Hebrew. Jesus made a way for the people of Yahweh, who were cut off, to come back into covenant again. This is one of the concepts that Paul explains in his letter to the Romans.

Rom 11:16 If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.
Rom 11:17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree,
Rom 11:18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.
Rom 11:19 Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”
Rom 11:20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.
Rom 11:21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.
Rom 11:22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.
Rom 11:23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.
Rom 11:24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

In verse 22, Paul speaks of kindness, and that if we don’t continue in His kindness, we will be cut off. Kindness is a misleading translation. It is Strong’s G5544. It could say “provided you continue in God’s usefulness or moral excellence”. What is God’s usefulness or moral excellence if not the Ten Commandments?

G5544
χρηστότης
chrēstotēs
khray-stot’-ace
From G5543; usefulness, that is, moral excellence (in character or demeanor): – gentleness, good (-ness), kindness.

Paul tells us that if God didn’t spare the natural branches (divorce of the northern kingdom) then we that are grafted in can also be cut off. Yet in the previous chapter, Paul seemingly says to just confess Jesus and you will be saved. Forget about those commandments of Moses, all you need is Jesus.

Rom 10:5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
Rom 10:6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down)
Rom 10:7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).
Rom 10:8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
Rom 10:9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Rom 10:10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

This is where ignorant and unstable people, as Peter explained, will cause people to err into lawlessness or iniquity. The word confess, Strong’s G3670 does not merely mean to proclaim or to say you believe in Jesus. It implies being the same as Jesus in thinking and actions, being in covenant, a changed heart, acknowledging and understanding your sin as Yahweh sees it. This is different than trying to follow the letter of the law to be saved. Just because it is different, doesn’t nullify the holy laws of Yahweh. It was always faith that brought obedience. Following commandments without faith isn’t loving God.

G3670
ὁμολογέω
homologeō
hom-ol-og-eh’-o
From a compound of the base of G3674 and G3056; to assent, that is, covenant, acknowledge: – con- (pro-) fess, confession is made, give thanks, promise.

Exo 20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
Exo 20:2 “I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.
Exo 20:3 “There shall be for you no other gods before me.
Exo 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a divine image with any form that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth below or that is in the water below the earth.
Exo 20:5 You will not bow down to them, and you will not serve them, because I am Yahweh your God, a jealous God, punishing the guilt of the parents on the children on the third and on the fourth generations of those hating me,
Exo 20:6 and showing loyal love to thousands of generations of those loving me and of those keeping my commandments.

Jesus also spoke of branches that would be cut off, gathered up and burned if they did not produce good fruit and stay grafted in. What is this good fruit? Is it defined by the individual? A denomination or pastor perhaps? Society norms? No, Jesus defines it for us; “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love”. Combine that with what we read earlier: John 14:24 “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” It seems crystal clear what is considered good fruit.

Joh 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.
Joh 15:2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
Joh 15:3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
Joh 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
Joh 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Joh 15:6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
Joh 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Joh 15:8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
Joh 15:9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.
Joh 15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

The metaphor of burning the branches that did not stay grafted into the vine is not good news for “eternal security” theology. It implies that it is possible to be grafted in and then cut off just as Paul spoke about in the passage of the letter to the Romans we looked at earlier. Do not take my word for this. It is the mission of the reader to study these things for themselves. Be like the people of Berea, not the Thessalonians.

Act 17:10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue.
Act 17:11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
Act 17:12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.
Act 17:13 But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.

I believe scripture is written so that it is not clear to the casual reader. This is the reason for “seek and you will find”. If you are happy to think that Yahweh’s commands are done away with by reading a few verses in Paul’s writings, ignoring the rest of scripture, you can close the book and go on your way “confessing” Jesus with your mouth but not your heart, inserting earplugs, having been led astray by ignorant and unstable people. There are many warnings to this type of person which I have tried to present in my blog posts. There are those Jesus tells to depart because He didn’t know them (even though they thought they were doing mighty works in His name), the foolish virgins, the person who built their house on sand, the rich man and Lazarus, the teachers of Balaam, and those who listen to Jezebel. The only way to understand this is to learn of Balaam, Jezebel and all the examples given of people who handled the commandments of Yahweh and Moses in a wrong manner.

Yeshua said, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

Luk 16:27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—
Luk 16:28 for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’
Luk 16:29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’
Luk 16:30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
Luk 16:31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

Jannes and Jambres, the sons of Balaam, resisted Moses. This is Paul condensing the commandments for people who possibly never studied them.

2Ti 3:1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
2Ti 3:2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
2Ti 3:3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,
2Ti 3:4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
2Ti 3:5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
2Ti 3:6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions,
2Ti 3:7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
2Ti 3:8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.
2Ti 3:9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

My hope is to break through the years of deception and share the truth to those who may never have heard it, that is those in the church. There are many being cooked like a lobster as the heat is turned up and their minds sent into delusion.

2Th 2:7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.
2Th 2:8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
2Th 2:9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders,
2Th 2:10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
2Th 2:11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
2Th 2:12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

What is the truth shown by the Spirit of Truth? It is defined in scripture.

Psa 119:151 You are near, O Yahweh, and all your commands are truth.
Psa 119:152 Concerning your testimonies, I knew long ago that you have established them forever.
Psa 119:153 See my misery and rescue me, for I do not forget your law.
Psa 119:154 Plead my cause and redeem me; preserve my life according to your word.
Psa 119:155 Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek your statutes.
Psa 119:156 Your mercies are great, O Yahweh; preserve my life according to your ordinances.
Psa 119:157 My persecutors and enemies are many, yet I do not turn aside from your testimonies.
Psa 119:158 I see the treacherous and I feel disgust, because they do not heed your word.
Psa 119:159 Consider that I love your precepts; O Yahweh, according to your loyal love preserve my life.
Psa 119:160 The whole of your word is truth, and your every righteous judgment endures forever.

If studying the Bible only amounts to reading a cute story in a devotional with some possibly misapplied scripture to accompany it, the truth and “whole of the word“ will be extremely hard to find. It is up to you to search these matters out. What is the definition of being lukewarm if it is not caring enough to see what Yahweh is telling us for ourselves?

Rev 3:15 “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot!
Rev 3:16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
Rev 3:17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
Rev 3:18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.
Rev 3:19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

“So be zealous and repent”. Zealous in what? Keeping the commandments. Repent from what? Breaking the commandments. This is a continuous theme through all of scripture.

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8

There is an interesting documentary I recently watched called The Way, that had an interview with a practicing pagan witch. At their spring festival they had a sign that read “Keep Eostre in Easter”. I thought that was a clever play on the Christian saying “Keep Christ in Christmas”. The term “pagan” and “Christian” didn’t start out as endearing titles for these people groups, but they seemed to become acceptable over time. Generally speaking, a pagan is a polytheist that practices the ancient religions of the world, involving, but not limited to, the sun, moon, equinox’s and solstices. Easter is a spring festival celebrating the spring fertility goddess, Easter. Other names for Easter in different cultures are Ishtar, Isis, Venus, Astarte, Asherah, and the queen of heaven. The following video is the trailer of The Way documentary.

Jer 7:17 Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
Jer 7:18 The children are gathering wood, and the fathers are kindling the fire, and the women are kneading dough to make sacrificial cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out libations to other gods for the sake of provoking me to anger.
Jer 7:19 Are they provoking me to anger? ” declares Yahweh, “Is it not themselves they hurt, for the sake of the shame of their faces?”
Jer 7:20 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Look, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on the humankind, and on the animal, and on the tree of the field, and on the fruit of the ground, and it will not be extinguished.”

These sacrificial cakes are still part of Christianity and the Easter festival today. Please see the following website for more on that subject: https://gathervictoria.com/2018/03/28/hot-cross-buns-cakes-for-the-moon-goddess/.

One could argue that Jeremiah 7:20 is prophetic and referring to the great day of Yahweh, because of its apocalyptic references. They are similar to those found in Malachi.

Mal 4:1 “For look! The day is about to come, burning like an oven, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble. The coming day will consume them,” says Yahweh of hosts. “It will not leave behind for them root or branch.

With Jesus Christ being such a big part of the Easter festival, along with the sex goddess, fertility egg hunts, ham dinners, and the fertility goddess’s rabbit symbols, it begs the question; “Is the Christian Jesus the son of Yahweh, the Creator God of the Jewish Bible, or is He actually Tammuz?”.

Eze 8:13 And he said to me, “Still you will see again greater detestable things that they are doing.”
Eze 8:14 And he brought me to the doorway of the gate of the house of Yahweh that is toward the north, and look! There were the women sitting weeping for Tammuz.
Eze 8:15 And he said to me, “Have you seen, son of man? Still you will see again greater detestable things than these.”
Eze 8:16 And he brought me to the inner courtyard of the house of Yahweh, and look, at the doorway of the temple of Yahweh, between the portico and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of Yahweh and their faces toward the east, and they were bowing down toward the east before the sun.
Eze 8:17 And he said to me, “Have you seen, son of man? Was it too small a thing for the house of Judah to do the detestable things that they did here? For they filled up the land with violence, and they provoked me to anger again, and look! They are putting the branch to their nose.
Eze 8:18 And so I will act in rage, and my eye will not take pity, and I will not have compassion, and they will cry in my ear with a loud voice, and I will not hear them.”

Some churches have realized the pagan blending issues and started calling Easter “Resurrection Sunday”. It still involves the fertility goddess’s egg hunts and ham dinners, but at least it is a step in the right direction. Many non-Christians see the hypocrisy of the pagan blending and the polytheist themes of Easter. Unfortunately, most Christians will fight tooth and nail to dismiss any notion that their traditions around Easter are not Biblical, and go against basic commandments of Yahweh.

Deu 12:29 “When Yahweh your God has cut off the nations whom you are about to go to, to dispossess them before you, and you have dispossessed them, and you live in their land,
Deu 12:30 take care so that you are not ensnared into imitating them after their being destroyed from before you, and so that you not enquire concerning their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods, and thus I myself want to do also.’
Deu 12:31 You must not do so toward Yahweh your God, because of every detestable thing they have done for their gods Yahweh hates, for even their sons and their daughters they would burn in the fire to their gods.
Deu 12:32 All of the things that I am commanding you, you must diligently observe; you shall not add to it, and you shall not take away from it.”

Yahweh says we are not even to mention other gods, and Christianity has named their single, most important, holy day after an ancient sex goddess. It is really hard to understand, to say the least.

Exo 23:13  “‘And you will be attentive to all that I have said to you, and you will not profess the name of other gods; it will not be heard in your mouth. 

Performing a quick search on the internet, it is possible to find those who will say that Easter is not the name of the fertility sex goddess; however, they are either uninformed, lying or in denial. Note this definition from Cyclopedia of Biblical Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature:

“(πάσχα, a Greek form of the Hebrews פֵּסִח, and so Latinized by the Vulgate pascha), i.e., Passover. Easter is a word of Saxon origin, and imports a goddess of the Saxons, or, rather, of the East, Estera, in honor of whom sacrifices being annually offered about the Passover time of the year (spring), the name became attached by association of ideas to the Christian festival of the resurrection, which happened at the time of the Passover: hence we say Easter-day, Easter Sunday,, but very improperly; as we by no means refer the festival then kept to the goddess of the ancient Saxons. So the present German word for Easter Ostern, is referred to the same goddess, Estera or Ostera.”

The image of “Jesus Christ” has become far removed from the son of Yahweh, due to myths and the imaginations of men, so much so, that many people like to use the Hebrew name of the saviour, Yeshua, when referring to the son of God. Yeshua means the salvation of God. One distinction between Yeshua and Jesus is that Yeshua was crucified on Pasach, not on Good Friday. There is no mention of “Good Friday” in the Bible because it is an invention of man. Likewise, there is no mention of “Resurrection Sunday” in the Bible. Jesus had ample time to explain to the Apostles these new festivals and feasts that He allegedly wanted the church to adopt after His resurrection, including the Sun-day Sabbath. There is no mention of any changes because the feast days, Sabbaths and festivals were already established which Jesus walked out and the Church celebrated until these Greek and Roman influences arrived.

The Jerusalem council tried to deal with the issue of the pagan fertility gods by instructing the new converts to leave these practices.

Act 15:19 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God,
Act 15:20 but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.
Act 15:21 For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

Paul warned the Galatians not to return to their festivals, that many will try to claim are speaking of the festivals of Yahweh; however, the people of the nations, such as the Galatians, never honoured these days of Yahweh when they “did not know God”. This is how they were cut off from Yahweh in the first place; by turning to other gods and their practices for generations.

Gal 4:8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.
Gal 4:9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
Gal 4:10 You observe days and months and seasons and years!
Gal 4:11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

Peter also warned the Galatians not to return to their pagan ways.

1Pe 1:14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
1Pe 1:15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,
1Pe 1:16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1Pe 1:17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,
1Pe 1:18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,
1Pe 1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

This blog post is for those who look at these things, cannot reconcile them with scripture, and are unable to get adequate answers from church leadership. It is for those who think Jesus is a myth because of the contradictions found with these festivals and scripture. It is even for those in the Jewish faith who can in no way recognize Jesus as their Messiah due to all the false things attributed to Him, such as eating of unclean meats, rejecting the Creator’s Sabbath for the day of the sun and the general disregard for the Torah.

One discrepancy is the notion that Jesus was crucified on a Friday and rose on a Sunday. With a little knowledge of Yahweh’s feast days listed in Leviticus, and reading the Gospel accounts, it can be easily determined that Jesus was not put on the cross on a Friday, resurrecting on a Sunday. The only sign Jesus would give was the sign of Jonah, and it is completely ignored.

Mat 12:38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
Mat 12:39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Mat 12:40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

I have been told by church leadership that back in Jesus’s time any part of the day was considered “a day”, so Friday night , Saturday and Sunday morning were considered three days. Thankfully, Jesus himself defined what a day was considered in His time. It is much like our day in 2021.

Joh 11:8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?”
Joh 11:9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.
Joh 11:10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”

Jesus told us there was twelve hours in a day and that He would spend three days and three nights in the heart of the Earth. By the definition Jesus gives us of a day, He would be in the ground 36 hours of daylight. This leaves another 36 hours of night time to complete three days and three nights. That cannot be done between Friday night and Sunday morning, and it doesn’t have to be. The Apostle John explains that Jesus was taken off the cross before the start of Unleavened Bread. This Sabbath started at the end of Passover.

Joh 19:31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

The day after Passover is a day that no regular work is done.

Lev 23:4 “‘These are Yahweh’s appointed times, holy assemblies, which you shall proclaim at their appointed time.
Lev 23:5 In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month at the evening is Yahweh’s Passover.
Lev 23:6 And on the fifteenth day of this month is Yahweh’s Feast of Unleavened Bread; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
Lev 23:7 On the first day there shall be a holy assembly for you; you shall not do any regular work.

If Passover was on a Wednesday, Jesus was taken off the cross and placed in the tomb before dark, because the day started at sundown. Thursday was the first day of Unleavened Bread and a Sabbath. The three days and three nights can be reconciled with Jesus rising before sundown on the regular Saturday Sabbath, then meeting the woman at the tomb early Sunday. Sunday after Passover was considered First Fruits, a time an offering would be made at the temple. Paul calls Jesus the first fruits of the resurrection.

1Co 15:15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
1Co 15:16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
1Co 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
1Co 15:18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
1Co 15:19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
1Co 15:20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

People steeped in church tradition will pay little attention to these details wanting to carry on in their false traditions. Yahweh hates the blending of traditions from other religions as stated in the verses in Deuteronomy we looked at earlier. This is what Jesus was telling the Samaritan woman from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They were cut off from the promises of Yahweh for these same practices the church does today. Jesus came to make a way for the Northern Kingdom and as a result, all the nations to come back into covenant.

Joh 4:19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
Joh 4:20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
Joh 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
Joh 4:22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Joh 4:23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
Joh 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

How can a person worship in spirit and truth with all the myths we have inherited about His things? This is prophesied, and I am afraid for the church that has followed in the footsteps of the Northern Kingdom.

2Ti 4:3 For there will be a time when they will not put up with sound teaching, but in accordance with their own desires, they will accumulate for themselves teachers, because they have an insatiable curiosity,
2Ti 4:4 and they will turn away from the hearing of the truth, but will turn to myths.

Jer 16:19 O Yahweh, my strength, and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth, and they will say, “Our ancestors have inherited only lies, vanity, and there is no profit in them.

Most people do not realize that Jeremiah is largely speaking to the church today and in the future. There will be a reckoning or tribulation when people will have to decide who they worship, and return to the true worship Yahweh always wanted, which is obedience to His word.

Deu 4:23 Watch out for yourselves so that you do not forget the covenant of Yahweh your God that he had made with you and make for yourselves a divine image of the form of anything that Yahweh your God has forbidden,
Deu 4:24 for Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.
Deu 4:25 “When you have had children and grandchildren and you have grown old in the land and you act corruptly and you make a divine image of the form of anything and you do evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God, thus provoking him to anger,
Deu 4:26 I call to witness against you today the heaven and the earth, that you will perish soon and completely from the land that you are crossing the Jordan into it to take possession of it; you will not live long on it, but you will be completely destroyed.
Deu 4:27 And Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations to where Yahweh will lead you.
Deu 4:28 And you will there serve gods made by human hands, of wood and stone, gods that cannot see and cannot hear and cannot eat and cannot smell.
Deu 4:29 But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God and will find him, if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deu 4:30 In your distress when all these things have found you in the latter days, then you will return to Yahweh your God, and you will listen to his voice.

What are we to do then? Continue in the traditions of other gods and anger Yahweh, or abandon these vain traditions of foreign gods and keep the feasts that He gave us forever? Both Jesus and the early church kept the feasts of Yahweh. If Jesus ate clean food, observed the Saturday Sabbath and kept the feasts that Yahweh commanded us to keep, why does the church not teach us to do the same?

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.
Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

1 John 2:3-6

The term AntiChrist is used many times in describing Biblical, prophetic events. It is sort of a hook word to get people’s attention, possibly sell some books, or draw someone’s attention to read this blog. Although there is much that could be said about events that may take place in the future, the Apostle John was warning of an AntiChrist spirit that was present in the first century. How much more has that spirit festered, given the time that has passed since that early warning?

1Jn 2:18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.

What is this AntiChrist spirit that John is speaking about? How can a spirit or person be AntiChrist? A quick study on the term itself may be helpful. The term comes from Strong’s G500:

G500
ἀντίχριστος
antichristos
Thayer Definition:
1) the adversary of the Messiah
Part of Speech: noun masculine
A Related Word by Thayer’s/Strong’s Number: from G473 and G5547

G473
ἀντί
anti
Thayer Definition:
1) over against, opposite to, before
2) for, instead of, in place of (something)
2a) instead of
2b) for
2c) for that, because
2d) wherefore, for this cause

An adversary to the Messiah isn’t really that helpful of a definition. Breaking it down further, Strong’s G473 is for the word “anti”. We know the Messiah is Jesus, or in Hebrew, Yeshua. To be anti Messiah or Christ, it is something that opposes or takes the place of the Messiah. An AntiChrist spirit could be looked at as an imposter, posing as the Spirit of Messiah, but being quite the opposite of the Messiah.

John warns of the AntiChrists that have come in the first century; how many more exist today? One type of AntiChrist John speaks of is one who denies the Father and the son.

1Jn 2:18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
1Jn 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
1Jn 2:20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.
1Jn 2:21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.
1Jn 2:22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
1Jn 2:23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
1Jn 2:24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.
1Jn 2:25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.
1Jn 2:26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.
1Jn 2:27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

In the first century there were many who believed Jesus was not the son of the Old Testament God, Yahweh, thus denying the Father. These Gnostics believed the Old Testament God was a mean, law giving God, a demiurge that was not the true enlightenment. Jesus was supposedly from the true god of light. Sounds silly, right? However, the same AntiChrist spirit is alive today, although not using terms like demiurge, or claiming that Jesus is from a different God. Today the nature of Jesus is just changed not to align with Yahweh’s nature of the Old Testament.

Marcion was one of these early teachers that separated Jesus from the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh. Irenæous, an early church father, explains some of Marcion’s crimes:

Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord.

Irenæus describes one of the blasphemous acts of Marcion was to claim Jesus abolished the prophets and law of Yahweh. Despite church fathers writing volumes against the doctrines of Marcion and others, their beliefs tickled the ears of their audiences and many of these belief systems are held strongly in Christianity today.

2Ti 4:3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
2Ti 4:4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

In the second century, Marcion’s teachings were easy to distinguish from the true gospel, and there were people like Irenæus pointing out these errors. Today, the teachings of Marcion are still being preached from modern pulpits, and just like many doctrines, have twisted and morphed into something still accepted by the masses of church goers.

Today the AntiChrist spirit of Marcion lives on through teachers proclaiming Jesus taught something different than His Father. Jesus clearly dismisses this.

Joh 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
Joh 10:28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Joh 10:29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Joh 10:30 I and the Father are one.”

Another verse where Jesus likens believing the Father to believing Him:

Joh 12:44 And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.
Joh 12:45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.
Joh 12:46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.

The modern teacher of Marcionism doesn’t try to dismiss the Creator God as some demiurge; however, implies that the Father just changes the way He does things through the different dispensations of time. They say Yahweh, or the LORD, used to make people follow laws, observe certain special days, and live a certain way; but now through Jesus, He does not expect anyone to do that any more. Jesus came and made it okay to worship on the same days as the other nations worship their gods with the same traditions. Jesus did away with the laws, sabbaths and ways of the Father that were just designed for a different time. They claim that Yahweh is cool now with everything he hated before Jesus came. This way of thinking has been called dispensationalism since the early 20th century, but it is rooted in Marcionism and the AntiChrist spirit John taught about.

1Jn 3:4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
1Jn 3:5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
1Jn 3:6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
1Jn 3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.

Sin is defined as lawlessness by John. Let’s look at the two words in question here. Sin, Strong’s G266, and lawlessness, derived from Strong’s G459.

G266
ἁμαρτία
hamartia
Thayer Definition:
1) equivalent to 264
1a) to be without a share in
1b) to miss the mark
1c) to err, be mistaken
1d) to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour,to do or go wrong
1e) to wander from the law of God, violate God’s law, sin

G459
ἄνομος
anomos
Thayer Definition:
1) destitute of (the Mosaic) law
1a) of the Gentiles
2) departing from the law, a violator of the law, lawless, wicked

Breaking the law of Yahweh is sin? This is not a popular teaching. “All you need is Jesus” after all. Yet what is the warning Jesus gives that I often bring up?

Mat 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
Mat 7:23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

There is going to be a group of people who did great things in the name of the LORD, and He is going to say “depart, I never knew you”! How can this be? People who think they are working for Jesus, and Jesus says He doesn’t even know them? This should scare every church goer and give them an intensity to study scripture and not end up being one of these people. Are you going to take your pastor’s word that you have it right? How about a television evangelist you never even met? Spend your whole life serving Jesus, and if you got it wrong, He will say he didn’t know you and you are a worker of iniquity. Take the earplugs out and remove the blinders. What is a worker of iniquity or one who practices lawlessness, if not someone who disregards the laws of Yahweh? David knew this and wrote about it in the Psalms.

Psa 119:160 The whole of your word is truth, and your every righteous judgment endures forever.
Psa 119:161 Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart trembles because of your word.
Psa 119:162 I am rejoicing over your word, like one who finds great spoil.
Psa 119:163 I hate and abhor falsehood; I love your law.
Psa 119:164 I praise you seven times in the day for your righteous ordinances.
Psa 119:165 Great peace is for those who love your law, and they do not have a cause for stumbling.

Psalms 103 is often the subject of sermons, refrigerator mounted, self-help scripture:

Psa 103:1 Of David. Bless Yahweh, O my soul, and all within me, bless his holy name.
Psa 103:2 Bless Yahweh, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits:
Psa 103:3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,
Psa 103:4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with loyal love and mercies,
Psa 103:5 who satisfies your life with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Psa 103:6 Yahweh does deeds of justice and judgments for all who are oppressed,
Psa 103:7 who made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.
Psa 103:8 Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loyal love.
Psa 103:9 He does not dispute continually, nor keep his anger forever.
Psa 103:10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us according to our iniquities.
Psa 103:11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, so his loyal love prevails over those who fear him.
Psa 103:12 As far as east is from west, so he has removed far from us the guilt of our transgressions.
Psa 103:13 As a father pities his children, so Yahweh pities those who fear him.
Psa 103:14 For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.
Psa 103:15 As for man, his days are like the grass. As the flower of the field, so he blossoms.
Psa 103:16 When the wind passes over it, it is no more, and its place knows it no longer.

These are conditional statements. The chapter does not stop at verse 16. Pay close attention to the rest of the chapter:

Psa 103:17 But the loyal love of Yahweh is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to their children’s children,
Psa 103:18 to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his precepts.
Psa 103:19 Yahweh has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Psa 103:20 Bless Yahweh, you his angels, you mighty heroes who do his word by obeying the sound of his word.
Psa 103:21 Bless Yahweh, all you his hosts, you his attendants who do his will.
Psa 103:22 Bless Yahweh, all his works, in all the places of his dominion. Bless Yahweh, O my soul.

Even His angels and attendants do His will. How much more should we? Paul asked a similar question:

Rom 6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
Rom 6:16 Do you not know that to whomever you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to whomever you obey, whether sin, leading to death, or obedience, leading to righteousness?
Rom 6:17 But thanks be to God that you were slaves of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted,
Rom 6:18 and having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.

Replace the word sin with its definition, “without Yahweh’s laws”, or lawlessness and iniquity. Verse 6:15 would read: “ Shall we practice lawlessness because we are not under law but under grace?”. Before Yeshua, everyone was under the curse of the law for breaking it. There was not any animal sacrifice that was given to fix that problem, much to the misunderstanding of many. Through Yeshua we no longer have to be separated from Yahweh’s people. Why would anyone think we are okay to do the things that caused the separation in the first place? Rejecting Yahweh’s feasts, laws, statues and precepts, and embracing the practices of the nations through worship of their gods, symbols and festivals, caused all the problems. Notwithstanding the commandment that was broke in the garden by Adam.

This is the gospel in the words of John the Baptist and Yeshua:

Mat 3:1 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea,
Mat 3:2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Mat 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Repent from what? Lawlessness, iniquity and breaking the laws of Yahweh. Yeshua had the same message as the Father, Moses and the prophets had from the beginning, He just made doing it possible for everyone.

My blog posts are mostly directed to those who are in the church, or some version of organized religion. I try to challenge the system of beliefs that have crept into Christianity, or the Way, over approximately the last 1900 years, such as, witchcraft, worship of ancient, polytheistic deities in the name of Yahweh, antinomianism (Yahweh’s perfect instructions “done away with”) and general apostasy. There is ample material to keep writing on those subjects forever; however, what about the commission of addressing the people who think they are a result of exploding space rocks or star dust? They have no hope outside of this mortal life and depraved world. I have never been at a place in my life where I didn’t recognize the awesomeness of creation, the divine order and obvious hand of a Creator, so it is hard for me to relate to an atheist, but looking at the mythology and hypocrisy organized religion has adopted, I can see where it would be a place of refuge from religion in general. Atheism also brings its own cult like tendencies; such as, holding on to nineteenth century beliefs, instead of embracing modern scientific discoveries that may challenge those belief systems, or making science and humanism a type of god.

Since atheists do not believe in the authority of scripture and that it was breathed from the Creator through chosen men, I suppose convincing an atheist from scripture would be near impossible. I will not try to persuade anyone in this blog post, but possibly point out some of the similarities in our shared skepticism of religion in general, and explain why I still embrace the idea of a intelligent creator, whose existence affects our future. From a 2009 article in the Guardian, atheist Michael Ruse makes some valid points that we can start with:

“As a professional philosopher my first question naturally is: “What or who is an atheist?” If you mean someone who absolutely and utterly does not believe there is any God or meaning then I doubt there are many in this group. Richard Dawkins denies being such a person. If you mean someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn’t think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night, then I guess a lot of us are atheists. But there is certainly a split, a schism, in our ranks. I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists, generally today known as the “new atheists”, loathe and detest my thinking. Richard Dawkins has likened me to the pusillanimous appeaser at Munich, Neville Chamberlain. Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, says (echoing Orwell) that only someone with pretensions to the intelligentsia could believe the silly things I believe. And energetic blogger PZ Myers refers to me as a “clueless gobshite” because I confessed to seeing why true believers might find the Kentucky Creationist Museum convincing. I will spare you what my fellow philosopher Dan Dennett has to say about me.”

Michael Ruse is indicating that he is not “atheist enough” for the new atheist sect. He is willing to at least acknowledge there could be a God, but not overly concerned about it. People like Dawkins, who has since passed, have a more anti-creator mentality. Michael Ruse continues in the same article:

“Second, unlike the new atheists, I take scholarship seriously. I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery. Dawkins was indignant when, on the grounds that inanimate objects cannot have emotions, philosophers like Mary Midgley criticised his metaphorical notion of a selfish gene. Sauce for the biological goose is sauce for the atheist gander. There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.”

From this view, there are at least two types of atheists. The first type of atheist isn’t all that concerned about the existence of a Creator God, the other type of atheist is hell bent on denying the existence of a creator and disparages anyone who might suggest such an idea.

I would argue that the second type of atheist, the new atheist, belongs to a religious group where their god is the belief that there is no god. They “evangelize” just as Christians do by forcing their belief system as the only right one, idolizing evolution, science, physics or whatever in their mind disproves a creator. That type of atheist is probably not interested in what I have to say. I am appealing to the atheist that may have been raised in a religious environment, who through observing organized religion, came to the conclusion that there is no God.

There are many reasons why a person who is raised in the church may abandon religion altogether, or someone observing religion from the outside may never desire to get involved. This is where we can find some common ground. Some concerns are: “why does the God of the Old Testament seem like a genocidal maniac?”; “why do the characters of Jesus and Mary appear to be borrowed from Egyptian or older mythology”;“why do the Sumerians have a flood story that was seemingly borrowed by Moses”; and the list goes on. Unfortunately, many church goers and church leaders are unequipped to answer these questions, and do not even realize they are actually propelling these stumbling blocks through ignorance.

An example of this ignorance will soon be upon us with the Easter season. The name “Easter” is a morphed version of the name Eostre, the Saxon goddess of spring. She can be traced all the way back to Nimrod and Semiramis, or Inanna and Demuzi, Ishtar and Baal, or any other variation of the resurrecting god and mother goddesses of mythology. There are endless warnings through the prophets in scripture not to adopt the traditions of these myths, yet anyone today who points these errors out is considered heretical. The Romans were quick to morph the story of Yeshua, referred to as Jesus since the 1600’s, into their mythologies of the sun god and mother goddess because it made it more acceptable to the masses being forced into Christianity from polytheism. First century believers celebrated Pasach, and knew that Yeshua had nothing to do with the resurrecting sun god. The church has done such a good job of melding the two belief systems together, and very few take the sign of Yeshua being in the grave three nights and three days seriously. They quickly accept the Friday night to early Sunday morning scenario, which is ignorance of the feast days and Sabbaths shown in the New Testament, at best, and flat out lies the early pagan church used to distance itself from “Jewish” practices, at worst. “Jewish” practices, in this case, could also be defined as commandments of Yahweh found in Leviticus 23. Here is the sign of Jonah that Jesus gave:

Mat 12:38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
Mat 12:39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Mat 12:40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Some atheists don’t even believe Yeshua (Jesus) was a historical figure. There are many witnesses to His existence, so a person who doesn’t believe in His existence may fall into the “new atheist” category. However, the many versions of Jesus that we have today actually did not exist. That is why I prefer to use the name Yeshua to differentiate from the 40,000 different forms of Jesus in denominations today. The question everybody may ask is “What difference does it make?”. This is what sets the atheist apart from the believer.

I am not going to suggest that someone who believes in the Creator is going to be whisked away to place called heaven when they die, or an unbeliever immediately falls into a pit of burning sulphur at death. This has become the narrative in modern Christianity, but it was not always the case. The human body is not immortal nor does it have an immortal component on its own. Christians reading this would probably disagree, but I challenge them to search it out for themselves. They try to justify this doctrine by a statement the Apostle Paul makes about being absent from the body, and a statement Yeshua makes to the thief on the cross about being with Him in Paradise that day. Yeshua (Jesus), still had three nights and three days to spend in the grave at that point, plus another 40 days to spend on earth with a resurrected body, so the statement to the thief on the cross has to be examined more closely. Daniel seems to indicate staying in the grave until the resurrection, as does so many others in scripture.

Dan 12:1 “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.
Dan 12:2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Dan 12:3 And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

My goal is to be one of the people who turn many to righteousness. I have no doubt that the words of the Bible are true, and that they represent an accurate description of historical and futuristic events. Even the mythologies of the polytheists can be found in the Bible. The Bible sets the record of the polytheists’ gods and demigods straight. Peter spoke of the “angels who sinned held captive in Tartarus”.

2Pe 2:4 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but held them captive in Tartarus with chains of darkness and handed them over to be kept for judgment

If I believe and have faith in the Creator God, Yahweh, and I am wrong about His existence, I will never know. According to the atheist I will just go back to dust in my grave and stay there forever. There is no hope of being resurrected and having a future in the kingdom of God. There is no reason to be accountable to the laws of Yahweh, and to quote the occultist Alister Crowley, “Do what thou wilt”. However, if I am right, then I have hope in Yahweh, through faith in Yeshua of an eternal life, rewarded for following the ways of the Creator, where the atheist is still in a state of hopelessness. The Apostle Paul explains this in his first letter to the church at Corinth:

1Co 15:12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
1Co 15:13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
1Co 15:14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
1Co 15:15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
1Co 15:16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
1Co 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
1Co 15:18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
1Co 15:19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
1Co 15:20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

If you are a person who was turned off by religion for any number of reasons, don’t let that be what separates you from the Creator God forever. He can be found with the smallest amount of faith. He can also turn you over to a debased mind if you choose to block your ears.

Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Rom 1:19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Rom 1:20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Rom 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

There have always been seductive spirits to lead people away from the Creator. They hide the truth and cause people to believe lies. If there is no God, then man is the final authority. We can make our own rules and do whatever the majority collectively agrees is right, then say it is settled. This philosophy only works if the atheist is correct in his thinking, and there is no God. However, we do not settle matters of life and death of the innocent, or morality. These were all settled by the Word of Yahweh. The final balance of the scales or judgement of these matters, based on that Word, is coming. Whether people believe this or not really is irrelevant to its existence.

Mal 4:1 “For look! The day is about to come, burning like an oven, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble. The coming day will consume them,” says Yahweh of hosts. “It will not leave behind for them root or branch.
Mal 4:2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings, and you will go out and leap like fattened calves.
Mal 4:3 You will trample down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I am going to act,” says Yahweh of hosts.
Mal 4:4 “Remember the instruction of my servant Moses, which I commanded him at Horeb to all Israel, the rules and regulations.

All of these traditions, philosophies, and mythologies that have been brought into the church have been done so by an enemy to lure people away from God. It causes some people to use symbols from other gods to worship Yahweh, which He says He hates, and it causes other people to think the whole thing is ridiculous, turning them to atheism. It’s a win, win situation for the forces against Yahweh.

Col 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Once a person discovers the truth of scripture, there is nothing that can turn that person away. That in itself should be a witness of there being something more to life than just being the result of exploding space rocks. John the Baptist came preaching repentance, that is to be baptized and follow the commandments.

Luk 3:8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
Luk 3:9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

There are watchmen still calling people to repent today, although few and far between. I suggest taking this seriously so these words will not be called into remembrance when the God you deny is there in front of you, and can no longer be denied.

“Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness”.
2 THESSALONIANS 2:11-12

The term “righteousness” is found many times in scripture, and yet it is a word that gets very little attention in a positive manner. We often refer to people as self-righteous, but not necessarily righteous. There is a Biblical definition of righteousness found in the Psalms.

Psa 119:170 Let my supplication come before thee: deliver me according to thy word.
Psa 119:171 My lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy statutes.
Psa 119:172 My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness.
Psa 119:173 Let thine hand help me; for I have chosen thy precepts.
Psa 119:174 I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is my delight.

Righteousness equals “all of the commandments of the Creator” according to Psalms 119:172. Self-righteousness is something different. This is where the person or religious institution makes up the rules from their own imagination, or they make their personal preferences the measuring stick by which other people are compared. Following Yahweh’s instructions, which is His way, is following in His righteousness.

Another defining verse for the term righteous is found in Deuteronomy, after the Ten Commandments are recited.

Deu 6:24 And so Yahweh commanded us to observe all of these rules and to revere Yahweh our God for our benefit all the days that we live, as it is today.
Deu 6:25 And it shall be righteousness for us if we diligently observe and do all of this commandment before Yahweh our God, as he has commanded us.’

Righteousness has always been about keeping the commandments of Yahweh. Paul told us to be slaves of righteousness in his letter to the Romans.

Rom 6:15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
Rom 6:16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Rom 6:17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
Rom 6:18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

This can be confusing because so many have twisted Paul’s words over the years and would deny that we have any business keeping commandments, or that we could obtain righteousness in this manner. However, scripture is full of these references, and let’s not forget Peter’s warning that people would do this very thing with the writings of Paul.

2Pe 3:14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
2Pe 3:15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
2Pe 3:16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
2Pe 3:17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.

Being found without spot or blemish is done through keeping the commandments. An example of the confusion can be found in Galatians. It appears that Paul is contradicting himself from what he said in his letter to Romans.

Gal 3:19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
Gal 3:20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
Gal 3:21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.
Gal 3:22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Gal 3:23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
Gal 3:24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

No amount of law keeping could justify us. There were no sacrifices for rebelling against the commandments. The penalty was death. This should not be confused with the righteousness that comes with the commandments. In another place, Paul tells us the law is spiritual.

Rom 7:10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
Rom 7:11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
Rom 7:12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Rom 7:13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
Rom 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

The best places to clear up confusion with Paul’s letters, writing about different topics to different groups of people for specific purposes, are the words of the Father through the prophets, the Messiah and the other apostles. One must also keep in mind that Paul kept the commandments, as stated more than once in the book of Acts.

Act 24:14 But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets,
Act 24:15 having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.
Act 24:16 So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.

Let’s look at some other places in scripture to see what is said about righteousness.

Isa 51:6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.
Isa 51:7 “Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings.
Isa 51:8 For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”

Yahweh is addressing those who know righteousness, those whose heart is in His law. This is the reason that when one starts guarding and keeping the commandments through faith, they experience peace in their life, and are not left to the curses of disobedience. The apostle John speaks of this righteousness:

1Jn 3:6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
1Jn 3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.
1Jn 3:8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
1Jn 3:9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
1Jn 3:10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

I am making the argument that practicing righteousness is doing what the Father said to do, and doing it in love, not in a pious, legalistic fashion. Jesus, whose Hebrew name is Yeshua, meaning the salvation of God, told us similarly that we must be righteous. Our righteousness has to be more than that of the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of the first century.

Mat 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Mat 5:18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Mat 5:19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

In order to enter the kingdom of heaven, our righteousness has to exceed that of the Pharisees. This requires us to do something different than the Pharisees did. They placed commandments of their own imagination higher than the commandments of Yahweh, thus breaking the commandments of Yahweh.

Mat 15:1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,
Mat 15:2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”
Mat 15:3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?
Mat 15:4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’
Mat 15:5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,”
Mat 15:6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.
Mat 15:7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:
Mat 15:8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
Mat 15:9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

We should not be surprised that false teachers and prophets have deceived many into believing that we should no longer follow Yahweh’s instructions by twisting a few scriptures of Paul, just as Peter said they were doing in his day. Yahweh said He would send these prophets to do this in order to see who would be faithful to His word and who would go after their own lusts. In other words, if all it takes to convince a person to turn their back on Yahweh’s instructions, is a supposed spiritual authority telling them it is okay to do it, then their faith was not grounded on the solid rock of Yahweh’s Word, but in the shifting sand.

Deu 13:1 “If a prophet stands up in your midst or a dreamer of dreams and he gives to you a sign or wonder,
Deu 13:2 and the sign or the wonder comes about that he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (those whom you have not known), and let us serve them,’
Deu 13:3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer, for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your inner self.
Deu 13:4 You shall go after Yahweh your God, and him you shall revere, and his commandment you shall keep, and to his voice you shall listen, and him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.

One must remember that Yahweh only gave us His Word. There was nothing else, and He specifically told us to keep it that way.

Deu 4:15 “So you must be very careful for yourselves, because you did not see any form on the day Yahweh spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire,
Deu 4:16 so that you do not ruin yourselves and make for yourselves a divine image in a form of any image, a replica of male or female,
Deu 4:17 a replica of any animal that is upon the earth, a replica of any winged bird that flies in the air,
Deu 4:18 a replica of any creeping thing on the ground, a replica of any fish that is in the water below the earth.
Deu 4:19 And do this so that you do not lift your eyes toward heaven and observe the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of the heaven, and be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that Yahweh your God has allotted to all of the peoples under all of the heaven.

Yahweh then sent His Word in flesh, Yeshua, commonly referred to as Jesus today. Is the Jesus of our imagination, the same Word of Yahweh and salvation of Yah that was sent 2000 years ago? Only if He is in alignment with Yahweh’s Word. Unfortunately, many do not know, or try to know, the Word of Yahweh by studying it. They rely on other men and women to tell them what they think it means, instead of the Holy Spirit of Truth.

Hos 4:1 Hear the word of Yahweh, O children of Israel, for Yahweh has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, there is no knowledge of God in the land.
Hos 4:2 Swearing and lying, murdering and stealing, and adultery break out, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Hos 4:3 Therefore the land mourns, and all those living in it languish with the animals of the field, and the birds of the heaven, and even the fish of the sea are being swept away.
Hos 4:4 Yet, let no one contend, and let no one accuse, for with you, O priest, is my contention.
Hos 4:5 You will stumble by day, and the priest also will stumble with you at night. And I will destroy your mother;
Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from acting as a priest for me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
Hos 4:7 When they became many, their sin increased against me; they changed their glory into shame.
Hos 4:8 They feed on the sin of my people, they are greedy for their iniquity.
Hos 4:9 And it will be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways, and I will requite them for their deeds.

These Words still apply to the people of Yahweh today. Once a person studies and understands who Ephraim was and who these children are, it becomes painfully obvious that which is being spoken about.

Hos 4:17 Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.
Hos 4:18 When their drinking has ended, they surely indulge in sexual orgies. They love lewdness more than their glory.
Hos 4:19 A wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they will be ashamed because of their altars.

Ephraim is still consumed with idols of trees, eggs, pine cones, rabbits, heavenly hosts (sun worship), light, pillars and all other symbols from worship of other gods. We do not have to just look at Old Testament scriptures to find these concepts. Jesus, when speaking of the woman from the Northern kingdom, Ephraim, has this to say:

Joh 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
Joh 4:22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Joh 4:23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
Joh 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

If we worship Yahweh with things He said not to do, on days that are not associated with Him, but none other than Baal, can we say we are worshipping in spirit and truth, or are we like the Samaritan woman, and worship what we do not know?

Paul warns Timothy of similar situations. We will have teachers telling us the the Jesus of their imagination did away with the instructions of Yahweh, and now “all we need is Jesus”. I have been told by a church leader in the past that we don’t need to worry about studying scripture because all we need is Jesus now. The superficial component of that mentality is very frustrating once a person sees for themself what is being taught in scripture. This is how the whole church is being deceived. Without studying and obedience, ignorance of scripture and ignorance of the nature of Yahweh abounds. Can the majority be wrong? Absolutely.

2Ti 4:3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
2Ti 4:4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

In order to understand these words, one must define sound teaching, truth and myths as defined in scripture. Teaching is not considered sound because you like it, it comes from a famous evangelist, or it is being taught by your favourite religious organization, singer, lodge or famous person. Paul tells Timothy where to find sound doctrine:

2Ti 3:12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
2Ti 3:13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
2Ti 3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it
2Ti 3:15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
2Ti 3:17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”. Remember that this was a letter from Paul to Timothy. Neither Paul or Timothy considered this scripture at the time of its writing. The only scripture they are referring to is the Torah, prophets and writings or what we call the Old Testament. I would also argue that they had sacred writings that are not in the redacted sixty-six book Bible we have today. The story of the Maccabees, for example, gives us a lot of history after Persia was conquered by Greece. It shows the people of Yahweh under the thumb of an anti-Christ figure spoken of in Daniel, sacrificing a pig on the altar during the winter solstice celebration. Very few today have any knowledge of this event in scripture because some political, religious leaders decided to remove it from scripture in 1647. Here is an excerpt from Maccabees. I recommend reading all four accounts of the Maccabees. This is from the King James Version of the Bible:

1Ma 1:51 In the selfsame manner wrote he to his whole kingdom, and appointed overseers over all the people, commanding the cities of Juda to sacrifice, city by city.
1Ma 1:52 Then many of the people were gathered unto them, to wit every one that forsook the law; and so they committed evils in the land;
1Ma 1:53 And drove the Israelites into secret places, even wheresoever they could flee for succour.
1Ma 1:54 Now the fifteenth day of the month Casleu, in the hundred forty and fifth year, they set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and builded idol altars throughout the cities of Juda on every side;
1Ma 1:55 And burnt incense at the doors of their houses, and in the streets.
1Ma 1:56 And when they had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, they burnt them with fire.
1Ma 1:57 And whosoever was found with any the book of the testament, or if any committed to the law, the king’s commandment was, that they should put him to death.
1Ma 1:58 Thus did they by their authority unto the Israelites every month, to as many as were found in the cities.
1Ma 1:59 Now the five and twentieth day of the month they did sacrifice upon the idol altar, which was upon the altar of God.
1Ma 1:60 At which time according to the commandment they put to death certain women, that had caused their children to be circumcised.
1Ma 1:61 And they hanged the infants about their necks, and rifled their houses, and slew them that had circumcised them.
1Ma 1:62 Howbeit many in Israel were fully resolved and confirmed in themselves not to eat any unclean thing.
1Ma 1:63 Wherefore the rather to die, that they might not be defiled with meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant: so then they died.
1Ma 1:64 And there was very great wrath upon Israel.

If a person did not forsake the instructions of Yahweh, and follow the instruction of the new king, they would be tortured and killed. Many remained faithful, and would not eat of the pig sacrificed on the altar, or refrain from having their children circumcised. I am suggesting nothing was different when the Romans took over the Christian faith. They even had “places of exercise” in Jerusalem. How much money has been spent on gymnasiums attached to churches instead of taking care of the needs of people in the community?

1Ma 1:13 Then certain of the people were so forward herein, that they went to the king, who gave them licence to do after the ordinances of the heathen:
1Ma 1:14 Whereupon they built a place of exercise at Jerusalem according to the customs of the heathen:
1Ma 1:15 And made themselves uncircumcised, and forsook the holy covenant, and joined themselves to the heathen, and were sold to do mischief.

Are we to believe that a couple hundred years after the righteous people of Yahweh were being killed for circumcising their children, not eating pork, or not forsaking the Torah, Yahweh would send His son to tell the descendants of those people that all that commandment keeping didn’t mean anything anyway? Then a few hundred years later the “church” would be aligned with the same holidays and practices of Antiochus Epiphanes? They would also torture and kill those “judiazers” of the faith who practiced the true Sabbaths, commandments and feasts of Yahweh? This is a logic vacuum.

It should be becoming clearer why some of these books have been removed from our Bibles. Righteousness is the same today as it was in the scriptures Paul told Timothy to read that would make him wise for salvation. Another example of righteousness was found in the mother and father of John the Baptist.

Luk 1:5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
Luk 1:6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

If the parents of John the Baptist could be righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of Yahweh, how much more should we strive to do this now that we have the Messiah to free us from the grips of the grave through His resurrection, and His Spirit to guide us?

Php 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Peter quotes the words of Yahweh that are spoken when He is giving the list of animals that are considered food in the Torah:

1Pe 1:14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
1Pe 1:15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,
1Pe 1:16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

The alternative is to follow unrighteousness, which will cause you to be under a strong delusion sent from Yahweh. I promise that it will not end well.

2Th 2:9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders,
2Th 2:10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
2Th 2:11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
2Th 2:12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

This is speaking of religious institutions today, those who refuse to love the truth. Psalms 119:160 , “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” They are sent a strong delusion and believe what is false. Such as: the wrong Sabbath, the wrong Holy days and feast days, the wrong names, the wrong identity, the wrong diet, and essentially, the wrong God. Instead of loving the truth of scripture and the commandments, they are having pleasure in unrighteousness, following their own lusts.

Try following in the the footsteps of the Messiah’s righteousness. I guarantee the Spirit of Truth, the Messiah promised us, will open the scriptures to those who are obedient.

Lately, the term “the great reset” has been thrown about concerning alleged world economic reform, green deals and such. There is even a book written by members of the World Economic Forum discussing this topic. The great reset that I want to discuss will have a much greater impact than any reset world leaders may be plotting. The Earth has already experienced some impactful resets.

After the first two humans broke the only commandment Yahweh gave them, they were cast out of the presence of Yahweh. Time went on, humanity grew, and with more people breaking more of Yahweh’s commands, He set into motion the first great reset.

Gen 6:11 And the earth was corrupted before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Gen 6:12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.
Gen 6:13 And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth was filled with violence because of them. Now, look, I am going to destroy them along with the earth.

Noah and his family were the only people on the face of the Earth that had not been corrupted. I believe this was a genetic corruption which I speak more about in Mixing Iron with Clay. Yahweh sent a great deluge that destroyed everything except Noah and his family, seven pair of every clean animal and a pair of every unclean animal.

Gen 7:1 Then Yahweh said to Noah, “Go—you and all your household—into the ark, for I have seen you are righteous before me in this generation.
Gen 7:2 From all the clean animals you must take for yourself seven pairs, a male and its mate. And from the animals that are not clean you must take two, a male and its mate,
Gen 7:3 as well as from the birds of heaven seven pairs, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of the earth.
Gen 7:4 For within seven days I will send rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights. And I will blot out all the living creatures that I have made from upon the face of the ground.”
Gen 7:5 And Noah did according to all that Yahweh commanded him.

It is interesting that many remote tribes on the Earth have a flood story passed down from their elders. After the flood, Noah was instructed to “go forth and multiply on the face of the Earth”.

Gen 8:14 And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.
Gen 8:15 And God spoke to Noah, saying:
Gen 8:16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.
Gen 8:17 Bring out with you all the living things which are with you, from all the living creatures—birds, and animals, and everything that creeps on the earth, and let them swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
Gen 8:18 So Noah went out, with his sons and his wife, and the wives of his sons with him.
Gen 8:19 Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, and everything that moves upon the earth, according to its families, went out from the ark.

Again, evil overtook men and caused them to disobey the commands of Yahweh. A king arose, named Nimrod, who built a great empire. He devised a plan to build a tower to the heavens to over take Yahweh and be a god. He taught men to worship the hosts of heaven and developed the mystery religions.

Gen 11:1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
Gen 11:2 And as people migrated from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
Gen 11:3 And they said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar.
Gen 11:4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches to the heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
Gen 11:5 Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that humankind was building.
Gen 11:6 And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them.
Gen 11:7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand each other’s language.”
Gen 11:8 So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.
Gen 11:9 Therefore its name was called Babel, for there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth, and there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

This story is an explanation for all of the different gods and demigods with the same attributes from the the ancient cultures on the Earth. Here Yahweh divided up the nations of the Earth to the sons of God. There were seventy individual entities as described in the Torah scrolls we have found in the caves of Qumran, which predate the Masoretic text. The English Standard Version of the Bible uses this text.

Deu 32:7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.
Deu 32:8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.
Deu 32:9 But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

The people were given over to these lesser spiritual entities, until Yahweh pulled Abraham from the nations, and made him a promise.

Gen 12:1 And Yahweh said to Abram, “Go out from your land and from your relatives, and from the house of your father, to the land that I will show you.
Gen 12:2 And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing.
Gen 12:3 And I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse. And all families of the earth will be blessed in you.”

Many years later, Abraham’s descendants found themselves as slaves in Egypt. Yahweh remembered His promise and delivered His chosen people from the grip of Egypt, bringing them into the wilderness where He made an everlasting covenant.

Deu 4:10 Remember the day that you stood before Yahweh your God at Horeb when Yahweh said to me, ‘Summon for me the people so that I can tell them my words, that they may learn to fear me all of the days they are alive on the earth and so that they may teach their children.
Deu 4:11 And so you came near, and you stood under the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire up to the heart of the heaven, dark with a very thick cloud.
Deu 4:12 And Yahweh spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard a sound of words, but you did not see a form—only a voice.
Deu 4:13 And he declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he charged you to observe, and he wrote them on the two tablets of stone.

Unfortunately, Yahweh’s chosen people eventually forgot the promise they made to keep the commandments, and they went after the gods of the other nations, making Yahweh very upset, to say the least. They used the Ashera tree and the stone pillar obelisk to worship God, much like people still do today. Yahweh compares it to an adulterous wife. In Jeremiah, Yahweh sets up another great reset. He is scattering His people to the nations, but they will eventually be able to return to the covenant if they repent.

Jer 3:6 Then Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah, the king, “Have you seen what apostate Israel has done? She has gone on every high hill and under every leafy tree and she has prostituted herself there.
Jer 3:7 And I thought, ‘After her doing all these things to me she will return,’ but she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
Jer 3:8 And I saw that for this very reason, that on account of apostate Israel committing adultery I divorced her and gave the letter of divorce to her. Yet her treacherous sister Judah was not afraid and she went and prostituted herself also.
Jer 3:9 And it was because of the frivolity of her fornication that she defiled the land and committed adultery with the stone and with the tree.
Jer 3:10 Yet even in all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares Yahweh.
Jer 3:11 Then Yahweh said to me, “Apostate Israel has proved herself more upright than treacherous Judah.
Jer 3:12 Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, ‘Return, apostate Israel,’ declares Yahweh. ‘I will not cause my anger to fall on you. For I am loyal,’ declares Yahweh. ‘I will not be angry forever.
Jer 3:13 Only acknowledge your guilt, that against Yahweh your God you have rebelled, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every leafy tree, and you have not obeyed my voice,’ declares Yahweh.”
Jer 3:14 “Return, apostate children,” declares Yahweh. “For I am your master, and I will take you one from a city and two from a clan, and I will bring you to Zion.
Jer 3:15 Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart and they will feed you knowledge and insight.

When Jesus, properly known as “the salvation of Yah” or Yeshua, arrives, He begins the next great reset. John the Baptist proclaims His coming:

Luk 3:1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
Luk 3:2 in the time of the high priest Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
Luk 3:3 And he went into all the surrounding region of the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
Luk 3:4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!
Luk 3:5 Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be leveled, and the crooked will become straight, and the rough road will become smooth,
Luk 3:6 and all flesh will see the salvation of God.'”

Jesus will make it possible for the people of Yahweh to come back into covenant with Him. This is the good news, so repent and be baptized!

Mat 26:26 Now while they were eating Jesus took bread and, after giving thanks, he broke it, and giving it to the disciples, he said, “Take, eat, this is my body.”
Mat 26:27 And after taking the cup and giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you,
Mat 26:28 for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Mat 26:29 But I tell you, from now on I will never drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father.”

Peter explains the meaning of all that took place after Jesus resurrected, and they received the power of the Spirit of God:

Act 3:11 And while he was holding fast to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s, utterly astonished.
Act 3:12 And when he saw it, Peter replied to the people, “Men and Israelites, why are you astonished at this? Or why are you staring at us, as if by our own power or godliness we have made him walk?
Act 3:13 The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in the presence of Pilate, after he had decided to release him.
Act 3:14 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One and demanded that a man—a murderer—be granted to you.
Act 3:15 And you killed the originator of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses!
Act 3:16 And on the basis of faith in his name, his name has made this man strong, whom you see and know, and the faith that is through him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.
Act 3:17 And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also.
Act 3:18 But the things which God foretold through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he has fulfilled in this way.
Act 3:19 Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be blotted out,
Act 3:20 so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and he may send the Christ appointed for you—Jesus,
Act 3:21 whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, about which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from earliest times.
Act 3:22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You will listen to him in everything that he says to you.
Act 3:23 And it will be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet will be destroyed utterly from the people.’
Act 3:24 And indeed, all the prophets from Samuel and all those who followed him have spoken about and proclaimed these days.
Act 3:25 You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God ordained with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed.’
Act 3:26 God, after he had raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning each of you back from your wickedness!”

We know that many people repented and came back to Yahweh. This is the story of the prodigal son. He was lost, then was found. However, as time goes on more prophecy has to be fulfilled.

Mat 24:3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Mat 24:4 And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray.
Mat 24:5 For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.
Mat 24:6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
Mat 24:7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
Mat 24:8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
Mat 24:9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.
Mat 24:10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one
Mat 24:11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
Mat 24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.
Mat 24:13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
Mat 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Mat 24:15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
Mat 24:16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Mat 24:17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house,
Mat 24:18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.
Mat 24:19 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days!
Mat 24:20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath.
Mat 24:21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
Mat 24:22 And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
Mat 24:23 Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it.
Mat 24:24 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
Mat 24:25 See, I have told you beforehand.
Mat 24:26 So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.
Mat 24:27 For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Mat 24:28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.
Mat 24:29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Mat 24:30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
Mat 24:31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The great day of Yahweh will be the the most dreadful reset ever. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff, and the goats from the sheep. In Malachi, the whole story of John the Baptist is foretold, and that we must repent and return to the commandments, or be stubble under the righteous’ feet.

Mal 4:1 “For look! The day is about to come, burning like an oven, and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble. The coming day will consume them,” says Yahweh of hosts. “It will not leave behind for them root or branch.
Mal 4:2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings, and you will go out and leap like fattened calves.
Mal 4:3 You will trample down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I am going to act,” says Yahweh of hosts.
Mal 4:4 “Remember the instruction of my servant Moses, which I commanded him at Horeb to all Israel, the rules and regulations.
Mal 4:5 Look! I am going to send to you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh!
Mal 4:6 And he will bring back the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the hearts of the sons to their fathers, so that I will not come and strike the land with a ban.”

After the final, “Day of the LORD”, great reset, Yahweh will restore His people to a garden of eden type environment. Please see The Great Day of Yahuah for more on what takes place on that day.

Rev 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Rev 21:2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Rev 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
Rev 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Rev 21:5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Rev 21:6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
Rev 21:7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
Rev 21:8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Jesus, the salvation of Yah, made a way for people of all nations to come back to covenant with Yahweh. Take advantage of this opportunity while you still can. The rulers and principalities of the Earth are plotting their great reset, but it will ultimately fail and it will be shown how inferior it is compared to the plans of Yahweh.

“But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat foods sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.”

Revelation 2:14

Sometimes we do not grasp all that is being said to the seven churches in the book of Revelation because we do not study the Old Testament enough to understand the depth of the references. What are the teachings of Balaam? Who is Balak? The book of Revelation is referring to future events, so we should pay attention to these matters. The warning given here in the opening quote also comes with consequences.

Rev 2:16 Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.

This warning to repent is to the church, and likely the church today. If we do not repent of these things that we probably don’t fully understand, we are going to be at war with the Messiah when He comes.

It gets worse though. This next type of church tolerates Jezebel and they will be thrown into a sick bed and into great tribulation. Who is Jezebel, and how is she relevant today? He says He is giving each according to their works, but I thought salvation didn’t involve anything more than inviting Jesus into our heart and carrying on with life as normal? What does works have to do with anything?

Rev 2:18 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
Rev 2:19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
Rev 2:20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
Rev 2:21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.
Rev 2:22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works,
Rev 2:23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.

There is a warning to another church to repent, and admiration for hating the ways of the Nicolaitans. What did they do? Shouldn’t we be concerned we are not doing the same thing? Again, there apparently are works we should be doing.

Rev 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Rev 2:6 Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

The first church we looked at was guilty of the same thing as the Nicolaitans.

Rev 2:15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

We need to find out more about Balaam, Balak, Jezebel, and the Nicolaitans in order to ensure we are not engaging in the same sorts of things they were.

Balaam was a prophet who was hired by an enemy of Israel to curse Israel. If we read in the book of Jasher, we see he was in Egypt. After Moses and Aaron visited the Pharaoh for the first time, Paraoh sent for Balaam. The following is from Jasher 79:27-31:

27. And when they had gone Pharaoh sent for Balaam the magician and to Jannes and Jambres his sons, and to all the magicians and conjurors and counsellors which belonged to the king, and they all came and sat before the king.
28. And the king told them all the words which Moses and his brother Aaron had spoken to him, and the magicians said to the king, But how came the men to thee, on account of the lions which were confined at the gate?
29. And the king said, Because they lifted up their rod against the lions and loosed them, and came to me, and the lions also rejoiced at them as a dog rejoices to meet his master.
30. And Balaam the son of Beor the magician answered the king, saying, These are none else than magicians like ourselves.
31. Now therefore send for them, and let them come and we will try them, and the king did so.

Paul must have read this passage in Jasher as well because he refers to Balaam’s sons, Jannes and Jambres, who are not mentioned anywhere else in the sixty-six book Bible.

2Ti 3:8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.

Many people have never heard of the book of Jasher, or simply don’t like it. We can pick up some more information about Balaam in the sixty-six book Bible as well.

Num 22:1 Then the people of Israel set out and camped in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan at Jericho.
Num 22:2 And Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites.
Num 22:3 And Moab was in great dread of the people, because they were many. Moab was overcome with fear of the people of Israel.
Num 22:4 And Moab said to the elders of Midian, “This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field.” So Balak the son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time,
Num 22:5 sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the people of Amaw, to call him, saying, “Behold, a people has come out of Egypt. They cover the face of the earth, and they are dwelling opposite me.
Num 22:6 Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

Balak wanted Balaam to curse the people of Israel. Balaam couldn’t do it and actually ended up blessing them instead. This doesn’t sound too bad so far, but Balaam was a prophet for hire. The details are not clear, but we get some more of the story later in scripture.

Num 25:1 When Israel dwelled in Shittim, the people began to prostitute themselves with the daughters of Moab.
Num 25:2 And they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and worshiped their gods.
Num 25:3 So Israel was joined together to Baal Peor, and Yahweh became angry with Israel.
Num 25:4 Yahweh said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and kill them before the sun, so the fierce anger of Yahweh will turn from Israel.”
Num 25:5 So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill his men who are joined together with Baal Peor.”
Num 25:6 And behold, a man from the Israelites came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman before the eyes of Moses and before the eyes of all of the community of the Israelites, and they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of assembly.
Num 25:7 When Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest saw, he got up from the midst of the community and took a spear in his hand.
Num 25:8 He went after the man of Israel into the woman’s section of the tent, and he drove the two of them, the man of Israel and the woman, into her belly. And the plague among the Israelites stopped.
Num 25:9 The ones who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand.

Here we see the people of Israel began mingling with the people of Moab. They were celebrating the feasts of the Moab’s god, Baal Peor, and “prostituting” with Moab’s daughters. Balak was unsuccessful in getting Israel cursed by Balaam, yet Balak was able to figure out how to get Yahweh himself to curse them. We read latter that Balaam advised Balak how to do this.

Num 31:16 Behold, these women caused the Israelites, by the word of Balaam, to be in apostasy against Yahweh in the matter of Peor, so that the plague was among the community of Yahweh.

Balaam knew the only way to bring a curse to Israel was to get them to break the commandments Yahweh had given them. He was able to get the women of Moab to seduce the Israelite men to come party with them at their feasts to Baal, the sun god.

The prophet Micah recounts these events:

Mic 6:5 O my people, remember what Balak the king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, so that you might know the righteous acts of Yahweh.”

The story of Balaam seems so obscure and hard to piece together, yet Jesus is telling the church through the Apostle John that they are guilty of the same sorts of acts. If they don’t repent they will experience the wrath of God! What exactly did Balaam do? He taught Balak to put a stumbling block in front of the children of Israel that caused them to blend their worship to the sun god Baal Peor. Balaam knew if they could cause the children of Israel to partake in festivals of other gods, they would bring the curse of the law of God upon themselves. These festivals are being celebrated today during the winter solstice, spring time feasts and in some churches throughout the whole year. It is the same thing. The idolatry of adultery with other gods. We are supposed to be in covenant with Yahweh. When we break that covenant it diminishes the work Jesus came to do, which was to make a way to allow us to come back into covenant with God.

Jezebel also brought Baal worship to Israel. She was married to Ahab.

1Ki 16:29 Now Ahab son of Omri became king over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah. Ahab son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years.
1Ki 16:30 But Ahab son of Omri did evil in the eyes of Yahweh more than all who were before him.
1Ki 16:31 If it wasn’t enough that he went after the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he also took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal the king of the Sidonians. He went and served Baal and bowed down to him.
1Ki 16:32 And he built an altar to Baal in the house of Baal which he had built in Samaria.
1Ki 16:33 Ahab also made the sacred pole, and he continued to provoke Yahweh the God of Israel more than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

The sacred pole was the Ashera tree or groves. Trees and pillars, like obelisks, are very important in Baal worship. Jezebel was responsible for many things the reader will have to research for themselves. Elijah sums up the sins of Ahab and Jezebel:

1Ki 18:17 When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is this you who throws Israel into confusion?”
1Ki 18:18 He said, “I did not throw Israel into confusion; rather you and the house of your father have by forsaking the commands of Yahweh when you went after the Baals!
1Ki 18:19 So then, send word and assemble all of Israel to me on Mount Carmel, with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at the table of Jezebel.”

Jezebel, much like Balaam, caused Israel to forsake the commandments of Yahweh and get involved with the things of other gods: Ashera and Baal, the queen of heaven and sun god. Jesus, or by His Hebrew name, Yeshua, or salvation, warned the church not to do what Balaam and Jezebel did. Are there any in the church today that “forsake the commandments of Yahweh, and go after the Baals”? What would forsaking the commandments of Yahweh look like today? The same as it looked in the times of Balaam and Jezebel. Yeshua says to repent or be put into tribulation and a sick bed. This is serious business. What would “going after the Baals” look like today? Are there feasts around the winter solstice, or other pagan feast days? Below is a calendar of Baal type Sabbaths and feasts:

These are the same times that were celebrated in all the nations throughout history. The dates are still celebrated today under different names. Christianity “Christianized” these dates throughout church history with special church services like Christ’s Mass and various days dedicated to saints. For example, Samhain starts the eve before November first and is known as hallow’s eve, or Halloween.

Finally, we have to look at the Nicolaitans. Unfortunately there is not very much information about this group of people. One view maintains that the Nicolaitans were lawless, not regarding the commandments of Yahweh. In Acts, the council gives the new converts the starting point of following Yahweh, followed by “for Moses is taught in all the synagogues”, implying they can start with the basics then learn more of the milk Moses taught.

Act 15:14 Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.
Act 15:15 And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
Act 15:16 After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:
Act 15:17 That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.
Act 15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.
Act 15:19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:
Act 15:20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
Act 15:21 For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.

These items to abstain from were woven into the fabric of the surrounding cultures’ religions with temple prostitutes and sacrifices to Baal type gods. The implication is that these new converts would learn the instructions of Yahweh at the synagogues when they attended on the Sabbath day. It is thought that the Nicolaitans still engaged in these sort of practices or approved of such things. The following is from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

The problem underlying the Nicolaitan controversy, though so little direct mention is made of it in Scripture, was in reality most important, and concerned the whole relation of Christianity to paganism and its usages. The Nicolaitans disobeyed the command issued to the Gentile churches, by the apostolic council held at Jerusalem in 49-50 AD, that they should refrain from the eating of “things sacrificed to idols” (Act 15:29). Such a restriction, though seemingly hard, in that it prevented the Christian communities from joining in public festivals, and so brought upon them suspicion and dislike, was yet necessary to prevent a return to a pagan laxity of morals. To this danger the Nicolaitans were themselves a glaring witness, and therefore John was justified in condemning them. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul gives warning against the same evil practices, basing his arguments on consideration for the weaker brethren (compare 1Co 8:1-13).

It comes down to pagan blending again, which breaks some very serious commands that Yahweh gave to people who choose to follow Him. This is why Yeshua (Jesus) gives such a dire warning for people to repent from these practices or be destroyed at His coming.

Deu 12:29 “When Yahweh your God has cut off the nations whom you are about to go to, to dispossess them before you, and you have dispossessed them, and you live in their land,
Deu 12:30 take care so that you are not ensnared into imitating them after their being destroyed from before you, and so that you not enquire concerning their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods, and thus I myself want to do also.’
Deu 12:31 You must not do so toward Yahweh your God, because of every detestable thing they have done for their gods Yahweh hates, for even their sons and their daughters they would burn in the fire to their gods.
Deu 12:32 All of the things that I am commanding you, you must diligently observe; you shall not add to it, and you shall not take away from it.”

Celebrating feasts of other gods is likened to sexual immorality. Often Israel is compared to a whore by Yahweh.

Hos 2:6 Therefore, Look! I am going to hedge her path with thorns, and I will build a stone wall, a stone wall against her, and she will not find her paths.
Hos 2:7 Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; she will seek them and not find them; and she will say, “I will go and return to my first husband because it was better for me then than now.”
Hos 2:8 But she did not know that it was I who gave her grain, new wine, and oil, and who gave her silver in abundance, and gold which they made into a Baal.
Hos 2:9 Therefore I will take again my grain in its time, and my wine in its season; and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness.
Hos 2:10 And now I will uncover her nakedness before the eyes of her lovers, and no one will rescue her from my hand.
Hos 2:11 And I will put an end to all her mirth, her festivals, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her appointed festivals;
Hos 2:12 and I will lay waste to her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, “They are my payment for prostitution, which my lovers gave to me.” I will make them a forest, and the wild animals of the field will devour them.
Hos 2:13 I will punish her for the days of the Baals, to whom she burns incense, and she decked herself with her ornamental ring and jewelry, and she went after her lovers, and forgot me—a declaration of Yahweh.

The celebrations of the nations’ gods are still evident today walking through any department store during one of the seasons of these festivals. The early believers struggled with these issues as well: “Such a restriction, though seemingly hard, in that it prevented the Christian communities from joining in public festivals, and so brought upon them suspicion and dislike”. These warnings to the churches are still relevant today. “Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works”.

“Elijah approached to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping over two opinions? If Yahweh is God, go after him; but if Baal, go after him.” But the people did not answer him a word. “1Kings 18:21

How did we arrive at this place in 2021, where religious organizations have created so many different versions of the Son of God? There is the New Age Jesus, the woke Jesus, the legalistic Jesus, the lawless Jesus, and the love Jesus, to name a few. In some denominations Jesus is God, in others, a created being, the son of God, a prophet, or basically anything anyone can imagine. How is it possible with one Bible, to have so many variations of one of the main characters?

When we make up a Jesus character in our imagination, or some religious leader makes up a type of Jesus, we end up knowing the fabricated Jesus, but does that count as knowing the real Jesus? Is it possible that this is what the Jesus in scripture meant with the following warning:

Mat 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
Mat 7:23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Mat 7:24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Mat 7:25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
Mat 7:26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
Mat 7:27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

According to these words, there will be people who thought they were doing good things to honour Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t even know who they are. They clearly had the wrong Jesus, even though they may have had good intentions, or they thought; “He knows my heart”. He said everyone who hears these words and does them will be like the wise man who built on the rock. The words He was speaking of in this case preceded that statement. The wise person is the one who does the will of the Father. In order to determine the correct understanding of Jesus, if this is sincerely our goal, we have to sort through all the false versions of Jesus. After all, He said we would have to do this:

Mar 13:21 And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it.
Mar 13:22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.
Mar 13:23 But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand.

If we look at the name “Jesus”, we find that it is a result of several linguistic alterations. The scripture tells us His name; or does it?

Mat 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Mat 1:19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
Mat 1:20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
Mat 1:21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

The scriptures handed down to us were written in Greek, but Jesus wasn’t Greek, He was a Jew, from the tribe of Judah, so His name would have been a Hebrew or Aramaic name. The English transliteration of “Jesus” is Strong’s G2424.

G2424
Ἰησοῦς
Iēsous
ee-ay-sooce’
Of Hebrew origin [H3091]; Jesus (that is, Jehoshua), the name of our Lord and two (three) other Israelites: – Jesus.

Iesous was the Greek name assigned to the son of God by someone at some point in church history. In the Greek Septuagint, a 200BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Iesous was the translation of Joshua the son of Nun. The best clue as to the name of the divine son of Joseph and Mary, is that His name means the salvation of His people. “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Joshua is the closest English name to Yeshua or Yahshua, which means Yahweh or Yahuah saves. Yahweh and Yahuah are versions of YHWH, יהוה, the Father, God of Israel, and Creator God of the Old Testament in the Bible. I use these interchangeably referring to the Father.

H3091
יהושׁע / יהושׁוּע
yehôshûa‛
BDB Definition:
Joshua or Jehoshua = “Jehovah is salvation”
1) son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim and successor to Moses as the leader of the children of Israel; led the conquest of Canaan
2) a resident of Beth-shemesh on whose land the Ark of the Covenant came to a stop after the Philistines returned it
3) son of Jehozadak and high priest after the restoration
4) governor of Jerusalem under king Josiah who gave his name to a gate of the city of Jerusalem

Yeshua told us there would be some interesting naming issues:

Joh 5:43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.
Joh 5:44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
Joh 5:45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.
Joh 5:46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.
Joh 5:47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

He says we should believe the writings of Moses in order to be able to believe His words. This doesn’t sound like some of the versions of Jesus I have heard about that say the writings of Moses are obsolete. Just as a side note, it is interesting that the Greeks had a goddess similarly named Iesu or a variation, who was a goddess of healing. It would be easy to get bogged down with all of this, but for our purpose, the name of the true saviour and Messiah is Yashua, which in English means the salvation of Yah, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The true Messiah, who comes in the Father’s name, must also agree with the Father.

Joh 5:19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

As Jesus was walking in the temple for Hanukkah, He said He and the Father are one.

Joh 10:25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me,
Joh 10:26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.
Joh 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
Joh 10:28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Joh 10:29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Joh 10:30 I and the Father are one.”

This means we should be able to spot a fake Jesus if he acts differently than the Father, Yahweh. Moses, whom the Messiah told us to listen to, also spoke these words:

Deu 18:15 “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your countrymen, and to him you shall listen.
Deu 18:16 This is according to all that you asked from Yahweh your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘I do not want again to hear the voice of Yahweh my God, and I do not want to see again this great fire, so that I may not die!’
Deu 18:17 And Yahweh said to me, ‘They are right in what they have said.
Deu 18:18 I will raise up a prophet for them from among their countrymen like you, and I will place my words into his mouth, and he shall speak to them everything that I command him.
Deu 18:19 And then the man that will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I will hold accountable.
Deu 18:20 However, the prophet that behaves presumptuously by speaking a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, and who speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet shall die.’

The Son of Yahweh in scripture was spoken of by Moses, and He would speak the words of the Father. In other words, He preached the commandments.

Mat 19:16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
Mat 19:17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”
Mat 19:18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness,
Mat 19:19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Mat 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Mat 5:18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Mat 5:19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The true Yeshua, of the New Testament, upheld the instructions of Yahweh, otherwise known as the Torah. He had to in order to “be one” with the Father. Yahweh himself will test us with false messiah’s who try to lead us away from His commandments. The real Messiah will not change Yahweh’s commandments. The Pharisees preached the commandments, but they also broke them by adding volumes of traditions to Yahweh’s laws, teaching them as commandments of God. This is why our righteousness, or commandment keeping, must exceed that of the Pharisees in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Words of the Messiah, not my words.)

Deu 13:1 “If a prophet stands up in your midst or a dreamer of dreams and he gives to you a sign or wonder,
Deu 13:2 and the sign or the wonder comes about that he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (those whom you have not known), and let us serve them,’
Deu 13:3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer, for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your inner self.
Deu 13:4 You shall go after Yahweh your God, and him you shall revere, and his commandment you shall keep, and to his voice you shall listen, and him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.

So far, we have a true Messiah that comes in the name of the Father, Yahweh, and keeps and teaches the commandments of Yahweh. What are some other unique qualities of the Father that we see the Son taking part in that would set Him apart from imposters? The Sabbath was a sign between Yahweh and His people, and one would expect that the Messiah, who is one with the Father, would celebrate the same day.

Exo 31:16 The Israelites will pay attention to the Sabbath in order to fulfill the Sabbath throughout their generations as a lasting covenant.
Exo 31:17 It is a sign between me and the Israelites forever, because in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh he ceased and recovered.”

Yahweh thinks very highly of His weekly Sabbath day, but for how long? Exodus 31:17, “It is a sign between me and the Israelites forever”.

Isa 56:1 Thus says Yahweh: “Observe justice and do righteousness, for my salvation is close to coming, and my justice to being revealed.
Isa 56:2 Happy is the man who does this, and the son of humankind who keeps hold of it, who keeps the Sabbath so as not to profane it, and who keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
Isa 56:3 And do not let the foreigner who joins himself to Yahweh say, “Surely Yahweh will separate me from his people.” And do not let the eunuch say, “Look! I am a dry tree!”
Isa 56:4 For thus says Yahweh, “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose that in which I delight, and who keep hold of my covenant.
Isa 56:5 And I will give them a monument and a name in my house and within my walls, better than sons and daughters; I will give him an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
Isa 56:6 And the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh to serve him and to love the name of Yahweh, to become his servants, every one who keeps the Sabbath, so as not to profane it, and those who keep hold of my covenant,
Isa 56:7 I will bring them to my holy mountain; I will make them merry in my house of prayer. their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,”
Isa 56:8 declares the Lord Yahweh, who gathers the scattered ones of Israel (still I will gather to him, to his gathered ones).

Also speaking of the future, Yahweh says the following:

Isa 66:22 “For just as the new heavens and earth that I am about to make shall stand before me,” declares Yahweh, “so shall your descendants and your name stand.
Isa 66:23 And this shall happen: From new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath all flesh shall come to bow in worship before me,” says Yahweh.
Isa 66:24 “And they shall go out and look at the corpses of the people who have rebelled against me, for their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

Can a Messiah that is one with the Father disregard the sign of the Sabbath, given to identify the people of Yahweh? Likewise, there are the feasts of Yahweh, which a Messiah, who was one with the Father, would be expected to uphold rather than create new feast days that correspond with those of Baal, who is on the opposing team.

Lev 23:1 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
Lev 23:2 “Speak to the Israelites, and say to them, ‘The festivals of Yahweh that you shall proclaim are holy assemblies; these are my appointed times.

The Hebrew word for appointed times is H4150. These are special days and Sabbaths set apart by the Father for His people. It makes sense that true Messiah would also have high regard for these days.

H4150
מועדה / מעד / מועד
mô‛êd / mô‛êd / mô‛âdâh
BDB Definition:
1) appointed place, appointed time, meeting
1a) appointed time
1a1) appointed time (general)
1a2) sacred season, set feast, appointed season
1b) appointed meeting
1c) appointed place
1d) appointed sign or signal
1e) tent of meeting

The Messiah in scripture kept the Sabbath as it was intended to be kept, and actually was part of the feast days being the Passover lamb, the first fruits of the resurrection three days and three nights later, and giving the Holy Spirit on Shavuot. Please read my blog post, Three Days and Three Night or a Two Nights and a Day for more on this subject.

Luk 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.

In another place:

Mar 2:27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Mar 2:28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

The true Messiah is the lord of the Sabbath because being the Word of Yahweh, He spoke it into existence. Lord in this case could be translated as master or owner of the Sabbath. Paul also speaks of the relationship of the Messiah with the feast days:

1Co 5:7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
1Co 5:8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The Sabbath day was never changed to Sunday by the authority of scripture or the Messiah, and the special feast days of Yahweh, celebrated by the true Messiah and early church were never changed to Christ’s mass and Easter, the Winter Solstice celebrations of Saturn and Mithras, and spring festival of the Queen of Heaven. These festivals will not be found in scripture in a positive light.

Jer 7:18 The children are gathering wood, and the fathers are kindling the fire, and the women are kneading dough to make sacrificial cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out libations to other gods for the sake of provoking me to anger.
Jer 7:19 Are they provoking me to anger? ” declares Yahweh, “Is it not themselves they hurt, for the sake of the shame of their faces?”
Jer 7:20 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Look, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on the humankind, and on the animal, and on the tree of the field, and on the fruit of the ground, and it will not be extinguished.”

Yahweh hates mixing the worship of Him with the traditions of other gods.

Amo 5:18 Alas, those who desire the day of Yahweh, why is this for you the day of Yahweh? It will be darkness and not light!
Amo 5:19 It will be as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him; or he went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall and a snake bit him.
Amo 5:20 Is not the day of Yahweh darkness and not light, and pitch dark with no brightness in it?
Amo 5:21 “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your assemblies.
Amo 5:22 Yes, even if you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and I will not look at the fellowship offerings of your fattened animals.
Amo 5:23 Remove from me the noise of your songs, and I do not want to hear the melody of your harps!

Another distinguishing feature of the Father is His unique people, Israel. In Ezekiel, He speaks of regathering His people from where they are scattered. This is not speaking of just the “Jews” from the tribe of Judah, of which some are currently dwelling in the political state of Israel, but all twelve tribes who have been scattered to the four corners of the Earth. This scattering and regathering is spoken of by most of the prophets and carries into the writings of the New Testament.

Eze 20:33 “As I live,” declares the Lord Yahweh, “surely with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm and with rage pouring forth I will reign as king over you!
Eze 20:34 And I will bring you from the peoples, and I will gather you from the countries to which you were scattered with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm and with rage poured out.
Eze 20:35 Then I will bring you to the desert of the peoples, and I will execute justice on you there face to face.
Eze 20:36 Just as I executed justice on your ancestors in the desert of the land of Egypt, likewise I will execute justice on you!” declares the Lord Yahweh.
Eze 20:37 “And I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.
Eze 20:38 And I will purge the rebels from among you and the ones transgressing against me; I will bring them out from the land where they are living as aliens, but into the land of Israel they will not come, and then you will know that I am Yahweh.
Eze 20:39 And you, house of Israel, thus says the Lord Yahweh: “Let each one go serve his idols now and after, if you are not listening to me, but my holy name you will not profane any longer with your gifts and with your idols.
Eze 20:40 “For on my holy mountain, on the mountain of the height of Israel,” declares the Lord Yahweh, “there all of the house of Israel will serve me, all of them, in the land. I will take pleasure in them, and there I will accept your contributions and the best of your portions with all of your holy objects.
Eze 20:41 I will accept you as a fragrant incense offering when I bring you out from the peoples and I gather you from the lands to which you were scattered, and I will show myself holy among you before the eyes of the nations.
Eze 20:42 And you will know that I am Yahweh when I bring you to the land of Israel, to the land that I swore to give to your ancestors.
Eze 20:43 And you will remember there your ways, and all of your deeds by which you were made unclean, and you will feel a loathing for yourself for all of your evils that you have done.
Eze 20:44 And you will know that I am Yahweh when I deal with you for the sake of my name and not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupted deeds, house of Israel,” declares the Lord Yahweh.

Paul speaks of being grafted back into to the natural olive tree. History is important here because ten of the tribes of Israel were cut off for breaking the covenant with Yahweh. They were then part of the Gentile nations. Through the Messiah, they could now be grafted back into the green olive tree along with the rest of the nations.

Rom 11:13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry
Rom 11:14 in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.
Rom 11:15 For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
Rom 11:16 If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.
Rom 11:17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree,
Rom 11:18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.
Rom 11:19 Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”
Rom 11:20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.
Rom 11:21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.
Rom 11:22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.
Rom 11:23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.
Rom 11:24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

The Messiah enabled all the people, through Israel, to be brought back to His covenant, as His people. There is not a new religion with a new group of people called the church. Paul explains how we are able to return to Yahweh, and be grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel.

Eph 2:11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—
Eph 2:12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Eph 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Eph 2:14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility
Eph 2:15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,
Eph 2:16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
Eph 2:17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
Eph 2:18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
Eph 2:19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
Eph 2:20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,
Eph 2:21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

This means that through the real Messiah, we can be grafted back into Yahweh’s special people group. The people group didn’t change as dispensationalism teaches. For more on this, please read The Dangers of Dispensationalism. The original church was with Moses at Mount Horeb.

It is becoming clear that there are at least two messiahs. In the contemporary church, there is a messiah that has a different name, a different Sabbath day, a different set of commandments, different feast and festival days, and a different group of special people. The people that keep His Sabbath are cursed by the church (called anathema or excommunication). Those who keep His feast days are referred to as Judiazers by those in the church. Through the error of dispensationalism, the church also views the people of Yahweh (Israel) as different than themselves, having a different destination and future. One being an Earthly future, the other a spiritual future with Jesus. They take this view rather than Paul’s explanation of being grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel, partly due to rebellion and the implication that Yahweh’s commandments are still relevant. Of course with 40,000 denominations of the Christian church, these are broad generalizations; however, they are consistent with the main Catholic and protesting Catholic (Protestant) Church views.

All of this would lead a person to believe there is a messiah of a different god than Yahweh, if the whole of scripture is to be taken into consideration. Yahweh has a certain name, a special Sabbath day, special feast and festival days and an everlasting covenant with instructions for His special people. Would not His son, who does everything He sees the Father do, have the same name, Sabbath, feast days, festivals, commandments and people? This gets more disturbing considering the sabbaths and feast days that the contemporary church celebrates in honour of Jesus are those of Baal, the sun god.

2Ti 4:3 For there will be a time when they will not put up with sound teaching, but in accordance with their own desires, they will accumulate for themselves teachers, because they have an insatiable curiosity,
2Ti 4:4 and they will turn away from the hearing of the truth, but will turn to myths.

The true Messiah talks about food offered to idols, the ways of the Nicolaitans, Jezebel, and Balaam in the prophetic letters to the seven churches in Revelation.

Rev 2:18 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
Rev 2:19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
Rev 2:20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
Rev 2:21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.
Rev 2:22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works,
Rev 2:23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.
Rev 2:24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden.
Rev 2:25 Only hold fast what you have until I come.
Rev 2:26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations,
Rev 2:27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.
Rev 2:28 And I will give him the morning star.
Rev 2:29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

The references of sexual immorality are similar to that of Israel when they went after other gods, breaking the commandments of Yahweh, and eating food sacrificed to idols by way of mixing the things of Baal with Yahweh. Yahweh called them a whore. These antichrist types being spoken to in the church of Thyatira have lead people astray worshipping a different god than Yahweh. Jezebel could be viewed as the apostate church, or those in the church leading people away from Yahweh’s commandments, teaching the ways of Baal. One must have a basic understanding of the Torah, and the prophets, to understand these references and accusations that are being made by the Messiah. Unfortunately, in many cases, these books have been reduced to out of context verses taped to the refrigerator, or self help philosophy for the modern Christian.

Once again the scripture comes to mind that is a very serious matter for everyone to consider:

Mat 7:22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
Mat 7:23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

What must we do then? As Matthew chapter seven goes on we are told to build on the rock, not the sand. The true Messiah says the following:

Mat 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Peter tells a group of people coming to the realization they were deceived to also repent:

Act 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,
Act 3:20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus,
Act 3:21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.
Act 3:22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.
Act 3:23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’
Act 3:24 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days.

This is the reason the Messiah is called the salvation of God, or Yeshua. He is the only means by which those cut off from Israel can return back, and those from the nations can enter the covenant with the Father. It is no longer a covenant sealed with the blood of bulls, but now sealed with the blood of the Messiah. The Father Yahuah still loves the same things He always loved, and still hates the same things He always hated, so a person needs desperately to learn the ways of Yahuah, the Father. No one wants to hear “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity”, because “great was the fall of it”.

How many years are in one thousand generations? Sometimes a generation is considered 40 years. Other times, I have heard it said to be 70 years. If a generation is 40 years, then one thousand generations would be 40,000 years. If Moses’ era was around 1446 BCE, we are nearing 86 generations since the time of Moses on the 40 year cycle. If we use the 70 year cycle, we have had 49 generations since Moses. Consider these verses by King David:

1Ch 16:8 Give thanks to Yahweh; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the nations!
1Ch 16:9 Sing to him; sing praises to him; tell of his wondrous works!
1Ch 16:10 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those seeking Yahweh rejoice!
1Ch 16:11 Seek Yahweh and his strength; seek his face continually!
1Ch 16:12 Remember his wonderful works that he has done, his wonders and the judgments of his mouth,
1Ch 16:13 O offspring of Israel, his servant, O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones!
1Ch 16:14 He is Yahweh our God; his judgments are in all the earth.
1Ch 16:15 Remember his covenant forever, the word he commanded for a thousand generations,
1Ch 16:16 that he made with Abraham, his sworn oath to Isaac.

In the Psalms the message is repeated:

Psa 105:1 Give thanks to Yahweh; proclaim his name; make known his deeds among the peoples.
Psa 105:2 Sing to him; sing praises concerning him; tell of all his wonderful works.
Psa 105:3 Boast about his holy name. Let the heart of those who seek Yahweh rejoice.
Psa 105:4 Make supplication to Yahweh and his might; seek his face continually.
Psa 105:5 Remember his wonders that he has done, his signs and the judgments of his mouth,
Psa 105:6 O offspring of Abraham his servant, you descendants of Jacob, his chosen ones.
Psa 105:7 He is Yahweh our God; his judgments are in all the earth.
Psa 105:8 He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded for a thousand generations,
Psa 105:9 that he made with Abraham, and by his oath swore to Isaac.

Where does David get this idea that the covenant Yahweh made with Abraham, extended to the twelve tribes of Israel, would last a thousand generations? It is possibly this passage from Deuteronomy.

Deu 7:6 For you are a holy people for Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be for him a people, a treasured possession from among all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.
Deu 7:7 “Yahweh loved you and chose you not because of your great number exceeding all other peoples, for you are fewer than all of the peoples,
Deu 7:8 but because of the love of Yahweh for you and because of his keeping of the sworn oath that he swore to your ancestors, Yahweh brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.
Deu 7:9 So know that Yahweh your God, he is God, the trustworthy God, maintaining his covenant and his loyal love with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments to a thousand generations,
Deu 7:10 but repaying those who hate him in their own person to destroy them; he is not slow with those who hate him in their own person; he repays them.

If Yahweh will keep his covenant with those who love Him and keep His commandments for a thousand generations, how did we arrive at the place 49 generations later where many in the church claim we no longer have to keep His commandments? If it is taken into consideration that Yahweh’s commandments were cast aside starting in the fourth century, and in some cases earlier than that, we reduce the amount of generations significantly.

How did the omnipresent, omniscient Creator of the universe think He would have people keeping His commandments for a thousand generations, then all of a sudden, after not even 50 generations, supposedly no one has to keep them any more? Did He change His mind?

From the 347 CE Council of Laodecia, a Roman Canon I often quote, is still being followed by Catholic Churches and protesting Catholic (Protestant) Churches today.

Canon XXIX.
Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon XXIX.
A Christian shall not stop work on the Sabbath, but on the Lord’s Day.
Balsamon.
Here the Fathers order that no one of the faithful shall stop work on the Sabbath as do
the Jews, but that they should honour the Lord’s Day, on account of the Lord’s resurrection, and that on that day they should abstain from manual labour and go to church. But thus abstaining from work on Sunday they do not lay down as a necessity, but they add, “if they can.” For if through need or any other necessity any one worked on the Lord’s day this was not reckoned against him.

We know that in 347 CE, people knew what day the Sabbath was observed. This would have been the same day of the week that Jesus observed the Sabbath. In this Canon, the Church is essentially cursing (anathema) anyone who rests on the Sabbath.

Yahweh says something different about His Sabbaths:

Isa 58:13 If you hold your foot back from the Sabbath, from doing your affairs on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a pleasure, the holy day of Yahweh honorable, if you honor him more than doing your ways, than finding your affairs and speaking a word,
Isa 58:14 then you shall take your pleasure in Yahweh, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth, and I will feed you the heritage of Jacob your ancestor, for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.”

Who do we believe? Yahweh through His prophet Isaiah, or the Council of Laodicea? Churches today still choose the council of Laodicea over Yahweh. Can we conclude that we are even serving the same God any more? What did Jesus have John write to the Church of Laodecia prior to the council? Perhaps they ignored the warning to repent?

Rev 3:14 “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
Rev 3:15 “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot!
Rev 3:16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
Rev 3:17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
Rev 3:18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.
Rev 3:19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

Often we hear that Jesus somehow changed or did away with the Sabbath. Is this true? Where is the evidence? It would appear Jesus kept the Sabbath by His actions.

Luk 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.

There was no Biblical authority for the Church to change the Sabbath and curse anyone who keeps it. This is outrageous and shows us why we followed the commandments and kept the covenant for only a very small percentage of generations that Yahweh had intended.

There is more than the weekly Sabbath that we have abandoned. Yahweh’s special Sabbaths and feast days were traded for Baal’s feast days and Sabbaths, over time, by the church. Yahweh’s feast days were to be kept forever, not just a mere thousand generations, and they will be, even if the church only keeps the sun god days now.

The House of Israel, similar to the church, also profaned Yahweh’s Sabbaths and forsook His commandments. This is why they were cut off and divorced from Yahweh. They broke His covenant. Remember, Yahweh said He would remember His covenant for those who loved Him and kept His commandments for a thousand generations. Did Jesus come to eliminate Yahweh’s commandments? Did He come to start a new religion called Christianity that would curse those keeping Yahweh’s Sabbaths? In Jeremiah we see the woman of Israel baking cakes to Ishtar, the queen of Heaven.

Jer 7:16 “And you, you must not pray for this people, and you must not lift up for them a cry of entreaty or a prayer, and you must not plead with me, for I will not hear you.
Jer 7:17 Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
Jer 7:18 The children are gathering wood, and the fathers are kindling the fire, and the women are kneading dough to make sacrificial cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out libations to other gods for the sake of provoking me to anger.
Jer 7:19 Are they provoking me to anger? ” declares Yahweh, “Is it not themselves they hurt, for the sake of the shame of their faces?”
Jer 7:20 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Look, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on the humankind, and on the animal, and on the tree of the field, and on the fruit of the ground, and it will not be extinguished.”

Jesus has much to say about keeping the commandments. What gospel was Jesus proclaiming early in His ministry? In modern times we think the gospel is only that of proclaiming to people Jesus died and resurrected for atonement of their sin, but Jesus was proclaiming the gospel before that time was even revealed.

Mat 4:23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

What is this gospel of the kingdom that was being proclaimed by Jesus? It was similar to John the Baptist’s message. He was teaching repentance and a return to following the commandments.

Luk 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,
Luk 3:2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
Luk 3:3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Luk 3:4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Luk 3:5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways,
Luk 3:6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
Luk 3:7 He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Luk 3:8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
Luk 3:9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Luk 3:10 And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?”
Luk 3:11 And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”
Luk 3:12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?”
Luk 3:13 And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.”
Luk 3:14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

In other words, return to the covenant because the Kingdom of God was at hand, and the wrath of Yahweh is approaching. How could the nations enter, or in the case of Israel, re-enter the covenant with Yahweh? The House of Israel had been cut off and assimilated with the heathen nations foreign to Yahweh. The scripture Jesus read on the Sabbath in the synagogue gives us a clue.

Luk 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.
Luk 4:17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
Luk 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
Luk 4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Luk 4:20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
Luk 4:21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus would allow Israel and the nations that they assimilated with into covenant with Yahweh. This was prophesied by Jeremiah.

Jer 31:31 Look, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
Jer 31:32 not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day of my grasping them by their hand, bringing them out from the land of Egypt, my covenant that they themselves broke, though I myself was a master over them,” declares Yahweh.
Jer 31:33 “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put my law in their inward parts and on their hearts I will write it, and I will be to them God, and they themselves will be to me people.
Jer 31:34 And they will no longer teach each one his neighbor, or each one his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for all of them will know me, from their smallest and up to their greatest,” declares Yahweh, “for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will no longer remember.”

The law Yahweh writes in the hearts of His people is the same law and commandments His people would keep for a thousand generations. This is the grace He gives us.

Joh 1:17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ.

Grace isn’t a license to break the law of Moses, or Yahweh’s commandments given through Moses. Grace is Strong’s G5485

G5485
χάρις
charis
khar’-ece
From G5463; graciousness (as gratifying), of manner or act (abstract or concrete; literal, figurative or spiritual; especially the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life; including gratitude): – acceptable, benefit, favour, gift, grace (-ious), joy liberality, pleasure, thank (-s, -worthy).

Grace is divine influence on the heart, or Yahweh writing His law in the heart as He said He would.

What about the 347 CE Church council, who cursed the people of Yahweh, for keeping His commandments like the Sabbath? By what authority could they do such a thing that is still lasting today, 1647 years later? This sort of behaviour is also prophesied by Jeremiah.

Jer 23:16 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, “You must not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They are deluding you with visions of their mind, They do not speak from the mouth of Yahweh.
Jer 23:17 They are continually saying to those who disregard the word of Yahweh, ‘Peace it will be to you,’ and to each one who walks in the stubbornness of his heart they say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’
Jer 23:18 For who has stood in the council of Yahweh, that he has seen and heard his word? Who has listened attentively to his word and heard it?
Jer 23:19 Look, the storm of Yahweh has gone forth in wrath, even a whirling tempest. It will whirl upon the head of the wicked.
Jer 23:20 The anger of Yahweh will not turn back until his doing and until his keeping the plans of his mind. In latter days you will look closely at it with understanding.

Is this not what is being done even now? “In latter days you will look closely at it with understanding.” Here we are, in the latter days, understanding.