For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.  And no wonder, for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not a great thing if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

2 Corinthians 11:13–15 (LEB)

The statement by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians, “And no wonder, for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light” is proved to be a true statement, especially when we consider the festivals and sabbats around “the light”. We need not look any further than the October 31st and November 1st festival of Samhain, coming up at the end of the month. The following is from http://www.pagangrimoire.com, and it explains the sabbats of witchcraft. Historically, these days are associated with sun god worship, and have been celebrated since antiquity.

The Wheel of the Year: The 8 Festivals in the Wiccan Calendar

The Christian religion, consisting of thousands of sects, has adopted most of these days one way or another. Isn’t it suspicious that the major Christian and secular holy days fall on these sun god sabbats? This time of year churches will host “trunk or treat” nights on the Samhain sabbat eve and relate it to “shining the light”. This happens all over North America, and trunk or treats seem to have replaced the traditional “harvest parties”, churches would host in order to celebrate Halloween in the past. The following is from pagangrimoire.com:

“Samhain, or best known as Halloween, is Celtic New Year’s Eve and the final harvest. It’s when the veil between the world of the living and the dead is the thinnest and when pagans believe spirits easiest roam the earth and when it is easiest to communicate with them. Samhain is a time to honor all those who have come before, for all that was gifted to us during the year, to ask for guidance, and to set intentions as the turning of the wheel begins again.

Wiccans believe this is when the god dies and when the Goddess both reaches her highest power as the Crone and is pregnant with the god that will be born at Yule. And hence, the cycle begins again. It is, because the divide between the world’s is at is thinnest, also one of the most powerful nights to do magic.” pagangrimoire.com

These traditions follow the ancient birth myth celebrated in honour of “Jesus” at Yule, which was renamed by Christians to “Christmas”. “When the Goddess both reaches her highest power as the Crone and is pregnant with the god that will be born at Yule. ” Different cultures throughout history celebrated these days, and just like Christianity, they had different names for the days they celebrated. None of the eight sabbats are celebrating the Creator God, Yahuah, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Bible.

1 Corinthians 10:18–22 (LEB): ¹⁸ Consider Israel according to the flesh: are not the ones who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar? ¹⁹ Therefore, what am I saying? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? ²⁰ No, but that the things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to become sharers with demons. ²¹ You are not able to drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You are not able to share the table of the Lord and the table of demons. ²² Or are we attempting to provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than he is, are we?

Churches will claim that somehow, because of Jesus, we can now own these days from sun god worship and witchcraft and turn them into days to honour the true God. However, the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob said to absolutely not do this very thing.

Deuteronomy 12:29–32 (LEB): 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, 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.’ 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. 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.”

The Church thinks it is above these instructions that God gave His chosen people, even though He punished these people for doing exactly what the church is doing with these ancient sabbats. This is pure deception from the false light. These types of festivals are what Balaak used to ensare Israel by the advice of Balaam.

Numbers 25:1–5 (LEB): 25 When Israel dwelled in Shittim, the people began to prostitute themselves with the daughters of Moab. ² And they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and worshiped their gods. ³ So Israel was joined together to Baal Peor, and Yahweh became angry with Israel. ⁴ Yahweh said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and hang them before Yahweh in the sun, so the fierce anger of Yahweh will turn from Israel.” ⁵ So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill his men who are joined together with Baal Peor.”

Micah 6:5 (LEB): 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.”

This is not an obsolete story from the Old Testament. It is an example how God will judge His people for celebrating the sun god holiday wheel of witchcraft. We are reminded of this event by Yeshua in the revelation of John.

Revelation 2:14–16 (LEB): ¹⁴ But I have a few things against you: that you have there those who hold fast to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat food sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. ¹⁵ So likewise you also have those who hold fast to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. ¹⁶ Therefore repent! But if you do not, I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war with them with the sword from my mouth.

When he says “commit sexual immorality” it is a reference to other gods. Using these sabbats for “Jesus” is equivalent to sacrificing food to idols and sexual immorality with the false god of light, which all of these holy days honour. Yeshua, called Jesus in Greek, said this to the church: “Therefore repent! But if you do not, I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war with them with the sword from my mouth.” At this point people will scream, “rightly divide”, so they can continue celebrating the false holy days. “Rightly divide” is a term misused by dispensationlists quoting second Timothy 2:15. Please see my blog post, Dividing God’s Word is Risky Business for more on this subject.

Hosea 5:1–7 (LEB): 5 Hear this, O priests! Give heed, O house of Israel! Listen, O house of the king! Because the judgment applies to you; because you have been a snare for Mizpah, and a net spread out on Tabor; ² they dug a deep pit in Shittim, but I am a punishment for all of them. ³ I myself know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me; because now you have played the whore, O Ephraim—Israel is defiled. ⁴ Their deeds do not permit them to return them to God. Because a spirit of whoredom is in their midst, they do not know Yahweh. ⁵ The pride of Israel testifies against him, and Israel and Ephraim stumble in their guilt, and Judah stumbles with them. ⁶ With their flocks and herds they will go to seek Yahweh, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them. ⁷ They have dealt faithlessly with Yahweh because they have borne illegitimate children. Now the new moon will devour them with their fields.

Harvest parties and trunk or treats are more Protestant ways to celebrate the ancient deities . The Catholic Church made it a day to honour the dead saints and martyrs. The following is from Britannica.com:

“The first evidence for the November 1 date of celebration and of the broadening of the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs occurred during the reign of Pope Gregory III (731–741), who dedicated a chapel in St. Peter’s, Rome, on November 1 in honour of all saints. In 800 All Saints’ Day was kept by Alcuin on November 1, and it also appeared in a 9th-century English calendar on that day. In 837 Pope Gregory IV ordered its general observance. In medieval England the festival was known as All Hallows, and its eve is still known as Halloween. The period from October 31 to November 2 (All Souls’ Day) is sometimes known as Allhallowtide.“

The Father gave us His special holy days through Israel. They have nothing to do with the false light holidays that the world celebrates. We are currently at the end of Sukkot, or the feast of booths, which is a week long festival celebrating the fall harvest and the time that the Israelites lived in tents in the wilderness. It is a remembrance of how God delivered His people from slavery and it points to a time when this will happen again.

Jeremiah 23:7–8 (LEB): ⁷ “Therefore look, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when they will no longer say, ‘As Yahweh lives who led up the Israelites from the land of Egypt,’ ⁸ but ‘As Yahweh lives, who led up, and who brought the offspring of the house of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where he had driven them.’ Then they will live in their land.”

I believe this is the same gathering Yeshua is speaking about in Matthew 24:31: “ And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect together from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other end of it.”

We can celebrate these days in honour of the true light, even though there is no longer a temple, we are scattered in the dispersion, and our offerings are with our lips, not literal grain and animal offerings.

Hebrews 13:12–16 (LEB): ¹² Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the gate, in order that he might sanctify the people by his own blood. ¹³ So we must go out to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. ¹⁴ For here we do not have a permanent city, but we seek the city that is to come. ¹⁵ Therefore through him let us offer up a sacrifice of praise continually to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. ¹⁶ And do not neglect doing good and generosity, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.

We are going to be celebrating these feasts in the future city in the kingdom of God, so why not practice now? There will be no one celebrating Halloween or Christmas in God’s city of the future.

Zechariah 14:16–18 (LEB): ¹⁶ And then every survivor from all those nations coming against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, and celebrate the Feast of Booths. ¹⁷ And then whoever of the clans of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, it will not rain on them. ¹⁸ And if the clan of Egypt will not go up and come in, on them will be that plague Yahweh inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths.

Are you serving the Creator God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the false light antichrist? By honouring the days that have been dedicated to witchcraft we show the god of our choice. As Yeshua told the women accused of adultery, “Go and sin no more”.

Photo by Dyu – Ha on Unsplash

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise),  “in order that it may be well with you, and you may live a long time on the earth.” And fathers, do not make your children angry, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:1–4 (LEB)

The Apostle Paul reinforced the commandment from the Torah to “honour your father and mother”. Why would Paul suggest this commandment was important if he truly preached a different gospel than the other apostles, as some popular sects of Christianity claim? The importance of the commandments is emphasized by Paul just as much as it was by the other apostles and the Messiah Yeshua, called “Jesus” in Greek.

Romans 7:11–12 (LEB): ¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. ¹² So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Sin is identified by knowing God’s commandments. It is the only benchmark of behavior, so when we are opposed to the commandments, we are really opposing God. No one will ever succeed opposing the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even if an ear tickling preacher is claiming it is right to do so.

Yeshua used the commandment “to honour your father and mother” as an example to explain to the Pharisees about how important it was to not place man-made traditions and rules ahead of the commandments of God.

Mark 7:8–13 (LEB): ⁸ Abandoning the commandment of God, you hold fast to the tradition of men.” ⁹ And he said to them, “You splendidly ignore the commandment of God so that you can keep your tradition. ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘The one who speaks evil of father or mother must certainly die.’ ¹¹ But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or to his mother, “Whatever benefit you would have received from me is corban” (that is, a gift to God), ¹² you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, ¹³ thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and you do many similar things such as this.”

There are people today that do not want children to honour their father and mother. They want to break up the family unit because it is a way to gain control of society. Once children start listening to state agents over their parents and grandparents, then society can be socially engineered to believe any propaganda that the state wants to promote. This philosophy is nothing new. Karl Marx proposed this idea in the Communist Manifesto.

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this
infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family,
based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed
form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this
state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of
the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of
capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of
children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations,
when we replace home education by social.”

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by
the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win.”

Excerpt From
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx
https://books.apple.com/ca/book/the-communist-manifesto/id395544966
This material may be protected by copyright.

I don’t believe Karl Marx envisioned communism to look like the societies that Lennon and Stalin created where the government murdered sixty million people. Some of the socialist forms of government we have today are not working either. Brazil is a good example of this and they are turning away from socialism due to its disastrous results. North America has had people pushing it towards communism for decades and it is going to be a painful cycle. The road back to a free society from communism is long, deadly, and hard. The efforts of overthrowing the “bourgeois” and replacing the old ruling class historically results in food shortages, poor living conditions for everyone, and totalitarian governments living off of the backs of the people they oppress. This is likely the opposite of what Karl Marx was dreaming.

In Plato’s Republic, the idea of a perfect state is also discussed. Creating a virtuous ruling class, or “guardians” was the theme of this type of state. The family is also attacked in this system.

“The law, I said, which is the sequel of this and of all that has preceded, is to the following effect,—’that the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.’”

Excerpt From
The Republic
Plato
https://books.apple.com/ca/book/the-republic/id395535342
This material may be protected by copyright.

The reason these systems do not work is simple to understand if one believes that there is a Creator that has already given us the instructions we need to live in harmony with each other and nature, providing enough resources for everyone. However, much like communism, religion has not succeeded either. Religion often brings man-made rules, greed and people being convinced that they need not worry about the Creator’s instructions because they are old and out dated. When religion was in complete control, the period was called the dark ages for good reasons.

Matthew 19:3–6 (LEB): ³ And Pharisees came up to him in order to test him, and asked if it was permitted for a man to divorce his wife for any cause. ⁴ And he answered and said, “Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female ⁵ and said, ‘On account of this a man will leave his father and his mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate.”

The family unit is very important in a functioning society. It only works when the Creator is honoured by doing what he said, and he said to honour your father and mother. There were no exceptions for fathers and mothers who did a terrible job raising their family, or wayward parents that ended up in jail for heinous acts. How one honours these types of parents may look differently then how one honours loving fathers and mothers that unselfishly raised their children.

Behind the people thinking that these antichrist societal changes will make living better for everyone, are entities that want to enslave and rule over people. I say “entities” because they are both human and super-natural. These are the forces deceiving people that the way we were created is some how wrong, and that the instructions of the Creator are to be destroyed.

Ephesians 6:11–13 (LEB): ¹¹ Put on the full armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil, ¹² because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. ¹³ Because of this, take up the full armour of God, in order that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand.

It becomes easier once we understand the attack on the family unit and children today is an age old struggle with dark forces that are simply using different means to achieve the same goals. Alice Bailey gave us insight into the new age plan in her book Stages in the Externalisation , written in the early twentieth century. Alice Bailey states, “The three main channels through which the preparation for the new age is going on might be regarded as the Church, the Masonic Fraternity and the educational field. All of them are as yet in relatively static condition, and all are as yet failing to meet the need and to respond to the inner pressure. But in all of these three movements, disciples of the Great Ones are to be found and they are steadily gathering momentum and will before long enter upon their designated task.”.

The “Great Ones”, whom Alice Bailey references, are the same entities Paul refers to as principalities and rulers. The Church has been a great tool for these “Great Ones” because they have convinced themselves that God’s laws no longer apply and have adopted all the “Great Ones'” holidays and traditions. We will be seeing this in full force soon with “trunk or treat” gatherings at churches supposedly shining the light of God. However, it is the light of the wrong god. The “Great Ones” gain their power by the Church ignoring the commandments of God.

2 Timothy 4:3–5 (LEB): 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, ⁴ and they will turn away from the hearing of the truth, but will turn to myths. ⁵ But you, be self-controlled in all things, bear hardship patiently, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

The only “truth” is the word of God and these entities will use whatever groups of people who will do their bidding. Unfortunately, it is often the Church that embraces the wrong god in the name of “Jesus”. We see the end result of all of this in the book of Daniel. The current social order, consisting of an amalgamation of all the historical, worldly empires, (and who knows what else) will be destroyed, and the kingdom of God will be in power on the earth.

Daniel 2:43–45 (LEB): ⁴³ And in that you saw the iron was mixed with wet clay, so they will mix in marriage and they will not cling to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. ⁴⁴ And in the day of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and the kingdom will not be left for another nation, and it will bring an end to all these kingdoms, but it will stand forever. ⁴⁵ Inasmuch as you saw that a stone from the mountain was chiseled out but not by hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, thereby the great God made known to the king what will be in the future, and the dream is certain and its explanation trustworthy.”

Honour your father and mother and value your family. Ignore the cries from the people trying to destroy the family, remembering that they have been with us for thousands of years in various forms. Study the instructions that the Father in heaven gave us and live in them.

Featured photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

 I hate and abhor falsehood; I love your law. I praise you seven times in the day
for your righteous ordinances. Great peace is for those who love your law,
and they do not have a cause for stumbling. I hope for your salvation, O Yahweh,
and do your commands.

Psalm 119:163–166 (LEB)

There are many people today in the thousands of sects found in Christianity that deride the instructions of the Creator God of the universe. This Creator God gave us His name, YHWH, and sent us His son to teach us His ways properly, and redeem us from slavery and death. In Christianity, God’s instructions are viewed as “old Jewish law”, “done away with”, and “nailed to the cross”. There are too many variations of opinion in the different sects to mention here, but it is safe to generalize that they would mostly agree that His laws are impossible to keep, burdensome and that we should not even try. I completely disagree with this theology.

One of the problems comes from translating the Hebrew word “Torah” to the English word law. This translation does not provide a clear meaning of the word “Torah”, although this could be a definition of the word “Torah”.

This pie chart shows all the ways “Torah” is translated to English in scripture. The root of the word “Torah” has to do with shooting an arrow. We shoot the arrow towards the mark and try to aim true. With Bible software such as Logos, one can look at all the Bible verses where in Hebrew the word “Torah” is used, but in English, words such as instruction, law, and teaching are used. If one knows what “Torah” means, then understanding these passages becomes easier to the reader.

What does God’s laws and instructions have to do with freedom? Unfortunately, in modern times laws often take away freedoms. These are man-made rules, not the Torah of God. If we just look at the ten commandments we can easily see freedom in God’s instructions.

Deuteronomy 5:6–21 (LEB): ⁶ ‘I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. ⁷ There shall not be for you other gods besides me. ⁸ ‘You shall not make for yourself a divine image of any type of form that is in the heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. ⁹ ‘You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, punishing the guilt of fathers upon their children and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those hating me, ¹⁰ but showing loyal love to thousands of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments. ¹¹ ‘You shall not take up the name of Yahweh your God for a worthless purpose, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who uses his name for a worthless purpose. ¹² ‘Observe the Sabbath day to make it holy, just as Yahweh your God has commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall work, and you shall do all of your work, ¹⁴ but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Yahweh your God; you shall not do any work, or your son, or your daughter, or your slave, or your slave woman, or your ox, or your donkey, or any of your domestic animals, or your resident alien who is in your towns, so that your slave and your slave woman may rest as you rest. ¹⁵ And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath. ¹⁶ ‘Honor your father and your mother, as Yahweh your God commanded you, so that it will be good for you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you. ¹⁷ ‘You shall not murder. ¹⁸ ‘And you shall not commit adultery. ¹⁹ ‘And you shall not steal. ²⁰ ‘And you shall not falsely bear evidence against your neighbor. ²¹ ‘And you shall not covet the wife of your neighbor, and you shall not crave the house of your neighbor, his field or his slave or his slave woman or his ox and his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’

Any other God besides the Father is a false god, and we can easily become enslaved by these false gods whether they are imaginary, demons or the dark rulers and principalities spoken about by Paul. There is no freedom when one is involved with these false gods. False gods in religion, including Christianity, abound, and use religion to enslave innocent people who are searching for the Creator.

I was raised in the Christian church where one would hear a sermon a couple times a year about making false gods out of sports, jobs or celebrities. Although there is some truth in this, the real false gods are man-made religious rules that make the commandments of God void. Mark 7:8 (LEB) “Abandoning the commandment of God, you hold fast to the tradition of men.” Many of these traditions that replace God’s commandments come from actual false gods. For example, Easter replaced Passover, the sun gods Zeus, Mithra or Woden have been brought into the church in place of YHWH with all their traditions and symbols at Christmas time. Christianity even honors the day of the sun over the Sabbath. I don’t care what reason is used, it is replacing the commandment of God with man’s tradition, employing gods of others. It is all deception, unfortunately.

1 Corinthians 10:19–22 (LEB): ¹⁹ Therefore, what am I saying? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? ²⁰ No, but that the things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to become sharers with demons. ²¹ You are not able to drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You are not able to share the table of the Lord and the table of demons. ²² Or are we attempting to provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than he is, are we?*

If we look at a scenario where one covets the belongings of someone else, it is easy to see the path of coveting leading to stealing, which then leads to murder in many cases. This robs people of the freedom of having personal property. It also robs everyone of a peaceful life, needing to be worried about locking up their possessions and finding they have been stolen anyway. We can even look at how groups of people form coalitions can collectively rob people of their personal belongings, supposedly for the betterment of society. We see this in many forms of government in the way of unreasonable taxes and the picking of winners and losers by government. Socialists, communists and other totalitarian forms of government are guilty of this and it is why they oppose God so vehemently. There will be a price to pay for people in power that steal from the masses.

Revelation 6:14–17 (LEB): ¹⁴ And the sky was split apart like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved from their place. ¹⁵ And the kings of the earth, and the most important people, and the military leaders, and the rich, and the powerful, and every slave and free person hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, ¹⁶ And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, ¹⁷ because the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

The advantages of the commandment to not commit adultery or break wedlock should be self evident. There is no freedom having multiple marriages ending in divorce, or several illegitimate families. Often this creates hardships in lives that can never be over come. One becomes a prisoner of a lifestyle with endless child support, conflict and turmoil.

Matthew 19:3–9 (LEB): ³ And Pharisees came up to him in order to test him, and asked if it was permitted for a man to divorce his wife for any cause. ⁴ And he answered and said, “Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female ⁵ and said, ‘On account of this a man will leave his father and his mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate.” ⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a document—a certificate of divorce—and to divorce her?” ⁸ He said to them, “Moses, with reference to your hardness of heart, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not like this. ⁹ Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except on the basis of sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

Yeshua doubles down on the commandments here by saying even what was permitted in the “law of Moses” was not as strict as originally intended by God.

Paul reaffirms the commandment to honor our father and mother. By giving us the commandment to honor our mother and father, the heavenly Father shows that we have the right to have a mother and father. It is easy to see today what happens when we do not honor our mothers and fathers. We descend into total chaos. Children should be taught by their grandparents and parents, not indoctrinated by government run institutions that try to break the family nucleus. Both Plato and Marx have the state raising children in their philosophies, which comes from being against a higher entity having moral authority over society. Just as governments steal land, wages and other freedoms, it is no accident that the state is now attacking the commandment to honor our mothers and fathers, imposing twisted ideology on our children.

Ephesians 6:1–4 (LEB): 6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), ³ “in order that it may be well with you, and you may _⌊live a long time_⌋ on the earth.” ⁴ And fathers, do not make your children angry, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The Sabbath is another mark of a free man. Who gives their people a day to rest other than the Father and Creator God of Israel? The ones who wish to enslave us will change the Sabbath, say it is a burden to keep, or give many chores to do on the Sabbath when the Father said to rest and not make your family or employees work. Jesus reaffirms the importance of the Sabbath to the Pharisees who continually added burdens to the instructions of God.

Matthew 12:11–12 (LEB): ¹¹ But he said to them, “What man will there be among you who will have one sheep and if this one fell into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² Then to what degree is a man worth more than a sheep? So then, it is permitted to do good on the Sabbath.”

Matthew 12:7–8 (LEB): ⁷ And if you had known what it means, ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. ⁸ For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

These “laws” are not intended to be burdensome or too hard. They are instructions about how to live a successful life on earth in harmony with other humans, nature and the Creator. The people who claim these instructions of God, reinforced by Yeshua, are not important, need to look around the world and see the results of disobedience to God’s words.

Deuteronomy 30:11–16 (LEB): ¹¹ “For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too wonderful for you, and it is not too far from you. ¹² It is not in the heavens so that you might say, ‘Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us and cause us to hear it, so that we may do it?’ ¹³ And it is not beyond the sea, so that you might say, ‘Who will cross for us to the other side of the sea and take it for us and cause us to hear it, so that we may do it?’ ¹⁴ But the word is very near you, even in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it. ¹⁵ “See, I am setting before you today life and prosperity and death and disaster; ¹⁶ what I am commanding you today is to love Yahweh your God by going in his ways and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his regulations, and then you will live, and you will become numerous, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land where you are going.

We could list all of the instructions of God and point out all the freedoms we have when we follow God’s laws. Anyone who teaches against the instructions of God, as good intentions as they may have, is working against God. There are many teaching against God’s laws who are used by the enemy to lead people astray. The Sabbath is a great example of this. Keeping the Sabbath was declared the mark of a person belonging to the Creator. It comes with many blessings, so what better way to rob people of this status and these blessings than to change it, say it is no longer important, or add many rules to keeping it?

Isaiah 56:6–7 (LEB): 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, 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,”

One can listen to the entities trying to enslave them by believing that God’s instructions are no longer important, impossible to keep, or even a sin to try to keep according to some sects of Christianity. I suggest studying these matters and not listening to those teaching contrary to the God of Abraham and his son Yeshua. It is true that “Great peace is for those who love your law, and they do not have a cause for stumbling”.

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

 It has a great and high wall that has twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written on the gates which are of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel—on the east, three gates, and on the north, three gates, and on the south, three gates, and on the west, three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Revelation 21:12-14 (LEB)

Prophets and dreamers have been leading people astray since the beginning, and we see this happening today, probably more than ever before, thanks to social media, television and the many platforms where anyone can voice their opinions. I realize many will say I am conducting the same sort of business by writing on these subjects. How can one sift through the millions of voices and find the truth? My suggestion is to follow the commandments of God as written in Scripture and let the Spirit of truth be the guide of all truth.

John 16:12–13 (LEB): ¹² I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them now. ¹³ But when he—the Spirit of truth—comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will proclaim to you the things to come.

A similar message is given to us later by John:

1 John 2:27 (LEB): ²⁷ And as for you, the anointing which you received from him remains in you, and you do not have need that anyone teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you reside in him.

Christianity has all but collapsed in the twenty-first century due to the thousands of sects and false teachings. Is this the great apostasy, or “falling away” that Paul spoke about? I think that this event happened hundreds of year ago, but there is always a remnant of people staying true to the Creator God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

One of the biggest dreams from false prophets is the theology of dispensationalism. This is where people believe that we are in the “age of grace” where the commandments of God are irrelevant, and the only teaching we should follow is that of the letters of apostle Paul that he wrote to assemblies of believers in the first century. This false teaching tells us that the rest of the bible is written for the “Jews” and all we have to do is say we believe in Jesus with our lips. It really follows the Santa Claus model, “just believe” and you will get your presents.

There really should be more evidence than Paul’s letters if there are really two separate peoples of God, Israel and the Church, where the church is raptured and taken to a galaxy far away while Israel is “left behind”. People also like to use this verse in Revelation to prove the rapture theory:

Revelation 4:1–2 (LEB): 4 After these things I looked, and behold, an open door in heaven, and the former voice that I had heard like a trumpet speaking with me was saying, “Come up here and I will show you the things which must take place after these things.” ² Immediately I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one was seated on the throne.

John is given a vision of heaven on the things to come in the first century, and in 2023 this supposedly translates to a rapture of the church. These are dreamers that are fabricating these theologies, and thousands, if not millions, believe it without ever studying for themselves, or asking for the Spirit of truth.

Deuteronomy 13:1–4 (LEB): “If a prophet stands up in your midst or a dreamer of dreams and he gives to you a sign or wonder, 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,’ 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. 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.

“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“. This means these false teachings are built into the system by God, so that anyone who hates the instructions of God, does not want to learn the truth or take time to seek God, is able to parrot the dreamers and feel good about themselves while driving down the road of destruction.

A question arises if Paul is the only person we are to listen to as the modern day church. Why do the foundations of the new Jerusalem only have twelve foundations of the apostles and not thirteen?

Revelation 21:9–14 (LEB): ⁹ And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” ¹⁰ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and lofty mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, ¹¹ that has the glory of God. Its radiance is like a precious stone, something like a jasper stone, shining like crystal. ¹² It has a great and high wall that has twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written on the gates which are of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel—¹³ on the east, three gates, and on the north, three gates, and on the south, three gates, and on the west, three gates. ¹⁴ And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

I would think that there would be a “Paul” foundation stone if the “Church” was a separate group of people who are to forsake God’s commandments and follow only the teachings of Paul. There should also be a “Church gate”. Of course, I don’t believe Paul was teaching anything false or that he would agree with the theology of dispensationalism created from his letters by “unstable, ignorant” people. Even Peter tells us this will happen.

2 Peter 3:14–17 (LEB): ¹⁴ Therefore, dear friends, because you are waiting for these things, make every effort to be found at peace, spotless and unblemished in him. ¹⁵ And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our dear brother Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom that was given to him, ¹⁶ as he does also in all his letters, speaking in them about these things, in which there are some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, as they also do the rest of the scriptures. ¹⁷ Therefore, dear friends, because you know this beforehand, guard yourselves so that you do not lose your own safe position because you have been led away by the error of lawless persons.

Lawless people are not the ones breaking the speed limit in this case. “Lawless” in this context means no regard for God’s instructions. The Greek word, ἄθεσμος, translated to lawless in English, is defined as follows:

ἄθεσμος, lawless, ignoring the (divine) ordinances.

Alexander Souter, A Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917), 7.

I have shared this diagram before showing the diagram of the theology of dispensationalism:

“Rightly dividing the word of truth” is the cornerstone phrase for this theology, and dispensationlists will say “rightly divide” anytime someone mentions the words of Jesus, John, or anyone else in the Bible that tells us to keep the commandments of God or casts doubts on the viability of dispensationalism. The problem with using this one statement from a letter written by Paul to Timothy as the cornerstone to bat down any nay-sayers is that it is translated differently than “rightly divide” in many Bible translations.

2 Timothy 2:15 (LEB): ¹⁵ Make every effort to present yourself approved to God, a worker having no need to be ashamed, guiding the word of truth along a straight path.

I wrote a recent blog post on this subject called, Dividing God’s Word is Risky Business. Paul also told Timothy many other things that dispensationlists must not consider, or “divide” out of their theology.

2 Timothy 3:14–17 (LEB): ¹⁴ But you continue in the things which you have learned and are convinced of, because you know from whom you learned them, ¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the holy writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ in order that the person of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Earlier in this letter to Timothy, Paul actually tells Timothy to follow the commandments of God. Unfortunately, people hate the commandments of God so much that they are not inquisitive about these verses at all.

2 Timothy 3:1–9 (LEB): 3 But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come, ² for people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ hardhearted, irreconcilable, slanderous, without self-control, savage, with no interest for what is good, ⁴ traitors, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than loving God, ⁵ maintaining a form of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid these people. ⁶ For from these are those who slip into houses and captivate foolish women loaded down with sins, led by various kinds of desires, ⁷ always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. ⁸ And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these oppose the truth, people corrupted in mind, disqualified concerning the faith. ⁹ But they will not progress to a greater extent, for their folly will be quite evident to everyone, as also the folly of those two was.

Paul starts out with a summary of the ten commandments that people will disregard in the future and then compares them to Jannes and Jambres, who also opposed Moses. These two were the sons of Balaam. All of this is essentially a hidden code today, but would have been plain instruction to Timothy. He is comparing Moses to the truth. The law of God is the truth. Yeshua, called Jesus in Greek, is the truth manifested in human form because he is the Word of God. He never negated the written word, he embodied it.

So why is this block of letters written by Paul to some churches in the old world used so often to distort the truth? Why didn’t God have Paul write clearly so a child today could not distort or be ignorant about what he is saying? It is to give you, the reader a comfortable way out of regarding God’s instructions. It is how God works. If one really loves God they will seek Him and want to do what he says to do. There are cold (unbelievers), hot (believers) and lukewarm (those in a delusion that believe they can do whatever they want to in the name of grace).

Revelation 3:14–19 (LEB): ¹⁴ “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “This is what the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the originator of God’s creation, says: ¹⁵ ‘I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! ¹⁶ Thus, because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am about to vomit you out of my mouth! ¹⁷ Because you are saying, “I am rich, and have become rich, and I have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked, ¹⁸ I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire, in order that you may become rich, and white clothing, in order that you may be clothed and the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and eye salve to smear on your eyes, in order that you may see. ¹⁹ As many as I love, I reprove and discipline. Be zealous, therefore, and repent!

Repenting is turning away from sin and sin is defined as breaking God’s commandments. Study these subjects diligently because it is very important. Repent and believe the gospel!

Photo by Thor Alvis on Unsplash

And they have been informed about you that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles the abandonment of Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or to live according to our customs.

Acts 21:21 (LEB)

People have been misrepresenting the Apostle Paul ever since his conversion on the road to Damascus. Early followers of Jesus accused Paul of teaching against Moses, and to this day, hyper-grace, the age of grace, and dispensationalism are all rooted in misunderstanding Paul, or claiming Paul came with a new message.

Colossians 2:16–23 (LEB): ¹⁶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you with reference to eating or drinking or participation in a feast or a new moon or a Sabbath, ¹⁷ which are a shadow of what is to come, but the reality is Christ. ¹⁸ Let no one condemn you, taking pleasure in humility and the worship of angels, going into detail about the things which he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, ¹⁹ and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by the ligaments and sinews, grows with the growth of God.

²⁰ If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as if living in the world? ²¹ “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,” ²² which things are all meant for destruction by consuming according to human commandments and teachings, ²³ which things although they have, to be sure, an appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and humility and unsparing treatment of the body, do not have any value against the indulgence of the flesh.

As far back as the fourth century church father Tertullian, these verses from Paul have been used to teach that Christians should no longer concern themselves with the Sabbaths or Feast days of the Creator. These words are also used to “prove” that Christians no longer need to be concerned with the dietary instructions given to us in Leviticus.

Someone who holds to this belief system must view the laws given to Moses from God as “elemental spirits of the world” and “an appearance of self-made religion”. Is Paul really saying these things about the laws of God? I do not believe so. Martin Luther taught that the law of God actually is what Paul was saying and was equal to the “elements of the world”. The following is from the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology :

Even the law is reckoned as among the elements of the world (cf. the 1st person plur., vv. 3, 5) and hence is declared null and void. Thus “the elements of the world” cover all the things in which man places his trust apart from the living God revealed in Christ; they become his gods, and he becomes their slave (cf. Luther’s exposition of the First Commandment in the Large Catechism).

H. H.-Esser, “Στοιχεῖα,” ed. Lothar Coenen, Erich Beyreuther, and Hans Bietenhard, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 453.

Another view of the meaning of Paul’s words to the Colossians is that he was telling them not to let people discourage them from keeping the Sabbaths and to stay away from man-made religious rituals that would have been prominent in Colossae at the time. Paul had too high a regard of the law of God to be found comparing it to the elemental spirits of the world.

Romans 7:11–12 (LEB): ¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. ¹² So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Can something like the law of God be bad and good at the same time? Paul told Timothy in one of his letters that the law had to be used lawfully. In another place in the letter to the Romans, Paul called the law spiritual. Something happens to a person spiritually when they submit themselves to the commandments of God; however, most of Christianity looks at God’s law with contempt. Paul has the same message as Jesus concerning the commandments and instructions of God.

Romans 2:26–29 (LEB): ²⁶ Therefore, if the uncircumcised person follows the requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be credited for circumcision? ²⁷ And the uncircumcised person by nature who carries out the law will judge you who, though provided with the precise written code and circumcision are a transgressor of the law. ²⁸ For the Jew is not one outwardly, nor is circumcision outwardly, in the flesh. ²⁹ But the Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter, whose praise is not from people but from God.

Jesus, or Yeshua in his Hebrew name, had a similar message to the Pharisees. He is speaking about all the traditions that were added to the Torah in these verses:

Mark 7:8–13 (LEB): ⁸ Abandoning the commandment of God, you hold fast to the tradition of men.” ⁹ And he said to them, “You splendidly ignore the commandment of God so that you can keep your tradition. ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘The one who speaks evil of father or mother must certainly die.’ ¹¹ But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or to his mother, “Whatever benefit you would have received from me is corban” (that is, a gift to God), ¹² you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, ¹³ thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and you do many similar things such as this.”

Christianity has made the Creator’s eternal command regarding the Sabbath void by changing it to a different day and requiring people to work on the Sabbath. Christianity has done this many ways with the commandments of God, just as the Jews had done, which Yeshua upbraided in Mark 7. Many times it is Paul that is misquoted to enable people to “make the commandment of God void”.

We could write a book of the discrepancies in the writings of Paul that make it look like he is telling Christians to ignore the law of God on one hand, yet praising it on the other hand. There are many theories that have been brought forth over the centuries as to why Paul appears to contradict himself so much. This phenomenon is as old as the first century, so much so, Peter addressed the issue.

2 Peter 3:14–18 (LEB): ¹⁴ Therefore, dear friends, because you are waiting for these things, make every effort to be found at peace, spotless and unblemished in him. ¹⁵ And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our dear brother Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom that was given to him, ¹⁶ as he does also in all his letters, speaking in them about these things, in which there are some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, as they also do the rest of the scriptures. ¹⁷ Therefore, dear friends, because you know this beforehand, guard yourselves so that you do not lose your own safe position because you have been led away by the error of lawless persons. 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

These words penned by Peter should be the end of the discussion. Paul is confusing to the ignorant and unstable and they will try to lead people to the error of lawlessness. Peter is calling all of the church fathers, pastors, professors, scholars and priests who have used Paul to abandon the law of God over the last two thousand years ignorant and unstable. I do not know how else one could read this. I also know Paul’s point in all his letters is to explain that keeping written code will not save a person outside of having that code written on their heart by the Spirit through faith in the Messiah. There is more than that though.

We can believe anything we want to believe and we can make the scriptures say anything we want them to say, which has been proven by 2000 years of contradicting doctrine and over 40,000 sects of Christianity. Therefore, how does one know who to believe? What are we to do about this? It is not an enemy that has made religion this way nor ignorant, unstable, “brilliant” men of God. It is the Creator God, who called Himself Yod Heh Waw Heh when Moses asked, “Who shall I say sent me?”. The only way to understand “the Way” is to search for the God of Abraham with all your heart and existence. These are the people God is yearning for so much that he sent Yeshua to find them and make a way for the whole world to be saved. If a person finds the things of God (not man) detestable, then perhaps that is not a good place to be.

Deuteronomy 13 (LEB): 13 “If a prophet stands up in your midst or a dreamer of dreams and he gives to you a sign or wonder, 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,’ 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. 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. ⁵ But that prophet or the dreamer of that dream shall be executed, for he spoke falsely about Yahweh your God, the one bringing you out from the land of Egypt and the one redeeming you from the house of slavery, in order to seduce you from the way that Yahweh your God commanded you to go in it; so in this way you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Following false doctrines and lawlessness is worshipping “false gods”. Paul has been transformed into a false god by Christianity. I believe he is confusing because anyone who wants to be lawless has ample materiel to convince themselves it is fine to abandon the commandments of God. Always be searching for the truth, and the truth is found in God’s commandments and statutes, hated by Christianity for hundreds of years.

Photo by Liviu Florescu on Unsplash.

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”

Matthew 16:15–16 (LEB)

There is so much confusion surrounding the person, Jesus Christ, to the point that there are multiple versions of Jesus Christ spread throughout Christianity. One could look at Christianity in 2023 as a polytheist religion because of the way each of the thousands of denominations define their own “Jesus Christ”.

Some regard Christianity as a polytheist religion due to the doctrines of the trinity. Polytheism is where members of a religion believe in multiple gods. These people outside of Christianity believe Christians have three gods, where some sects in Christianity view the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three separate gods, similar to other ancient trinities. I am not addressing that situation at all. I am looking at all of the fabricated versions of “Jesus Christ” and defining each version as a separate god. All the thousands of denominations fall under the label “Christianity”, even though the individual denominations many times do not view their counterparts as true Christians.

When one thinks of paganism in a historical framework, the religions of the Greek and Roman gods come to mind. These are polytheistic religions where there are many gods that are paid homage by their patrons.

Britannica.com definition of paganism:

paganism, Christian term used to designate those religions that do not worship the God of Abraham, the figure central to both Christianity and to other Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Islam. Christians have used the terms paganism and pagan, which typically carry pejorative connotations, to draw clear distinctions between themselves and those who they believe are worshipping false gods.

Do Christians today worship the God of Abraham? I would argue that they mostly do not. There are stipulations in order to worship a god, especially the Creator God of Abraham, Yahuah, who told us to declare His name by the four Hebrew letters, Yod, Heh, Waw, Heh. The Creator told Isaac, son of Abraham, the world would be blessed through his offspring because Abraham “listened to my voice and kept my charge: my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

Genesis 26:4–5 (LEB): And I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and I will give to your descendants all these lands. And all nations of the earth will be blessed through your offspring, because Abraham listened to my voice and kept my charge: my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

The Father told the people at Mount Horeb, in an audible voice, what they must do to worship Him .

Exodus 20:4–6 (LEB): 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. 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, ⁶ and showing loyal love to thousands of generations of those loving me and of those keeping my commandments.

If we examine Christianity today, we can conclude that for the most part, no one is keeping the commandments of the God of Abraham, thus by default, putting them into the pagan classification by the definition of paganism. Paganism: “Christian term used to designate those religions that do not worship the God of Abraham“. A Roman pagan from antiquity would feel at home at most Christian assemblies, and wonder who this new “Jesus” god is, especially when we look at all of the borrowed traditions, symbolism and holidays of Christianity from the ancient religions of Babylon and Rome.

Peter declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” when Jesus asked “Who do you say that I am?”. Due to all the misrepresentations of Jesus, I prefer to use his Hebrew name, Yeshua, to ensure we are talking about the real Messiah. Peter called him the “Christ”.

Matthew 16:15–17 (LEB): ¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ And Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” ¹⁷ And Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

In these verses it shows that Jesus was pleased that the Father revealed to Peter that he was the Christ and the Son of God. What is a “Christ”? The following is from the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology :

Χριστός G5986 (Christos), Christ; χρίω G5987 (chriō), spread, (in biblical Gk.) anoint; Μεσσίας G3549 (Messias), Messiah.

Christ is derived via the Lat. Christus from the Gk. Christos, which in the LXX and the NT is the Gk. equivalent of the Aram. mešîḥā’. This in turn corresponds to the Heb. māšîaḥ and denotes someone who has been ceremonially anointed for an office (→ Anoint).

From this definition, we get the term Messiah, and someone that is anointed for an office, given for the definition of “Christ”. From other places in scripture we can gather that Yeshua is the anointed King and Priest similar to the Melchizedek king and priest of Salem.

Hebrews 5:8–10 (LEB): ⁸ Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered, ⁹ and being perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation to all those who obey him, ¹⁰ being designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Andrew uses the word Messiah referring to Yeshua in John’s account.

John 1:40–42 (LEB): ⁴⁰ Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard John and followed him. ⁴¹ This one first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah!” (which is translated “Christ”). ⁴² He brought him to Jesus. Looking at him, Jesus said, “You are Simon the son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is interpreted “Peter”).

Messiah is the Hebrew word “mashiach” meaning someone anointed, to anoint someone, to smear, or spread oil over. Therefore, when Peter declared Yeshua to be the “Christ” and Son of the living God, they were not just speaking about any random person that was anointed for some random office. They knew this was the Elect One that had been prophesied to come. Enoch is a book that was found in the dead sea scrolls along side the oldest copy of Genesis that we have. The disciples of Yeshua quoted from this book and were well aware of its contents. The following is from the R.H. Charles translation of the book of Enoch:

XLIX. The Power and Wisdom of the Elect One.
CHAPTER XLIX.

l. For wisdom is poured out like water,
And glory faileth not before him for evermore.

2. For he is mighty in all the secrets of righteousness,
   And unrighteousness shall disappear as a shadow,
   And have no continuance;
   Because the Elect One standeth before the Lord of Spirits,
   And his glory is for ever and ever,
   And his might unto all generations.
3. And in him dwells the spirit of wisdom,
   And the spirit which gives insight,
   And the spirit of understanding and of might,
   And the spirit of those who have fallen asleep in righteousness.
4. And he shall judge the secret things,
   And none shall be able to utter a lying word before him;
   For he is the Elect One before the Lord of Spirits according to His good
   pleasure.

We see similar language in Isaiah.

Isaiah 11:1–5 (LEB): 11 And a shoot will come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from its roots will bear fruit. ² And the spirit of Yahweh shall rest on him— a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and might, a spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh. ³ And his breath is in the fear of Yahweh. And he shall judge not by his eyesight, and he shall rebuke not by what he hears with his ears. ⁴ But he shall judge the poor with righteousness, and he shall decide for the needy of the earth with rectitude. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and he shall kill the wicked person with the breath of his lips. ⁵ And righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

Messiah Yeshua, the Elect and Anointed One from the Lord of Spirits, who is the creator God and Father, told us he did not come with his own agenda and that he only did what he saw the Father do and only said what he heard the Father say.

John 12:48–50 (LEB): ⁴⁸ The one who rejects me and does not accept my words has one who judges him; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. ⁴⁹ For I have not spoken from myself, but the Father himself who sent me has commanded me what I should say and what I should speak. ⁵⁰ And I know that his commandment is eternal life. So the things that I say, just as the Father said to me, thus I say.”

By telling us this, we can conclude that everything Yeshua says must be in agreement with what the Father has said through His prophets. We can identify the fake Jesus Christ figures by seeing how they align with the words from God. After all, Yeshua is called the Word of God and only delivers this message. He is the way and the truth which is the same as the way and truth of the laws of God. Yeshua is the manifestation of the instructive words of his Father.

John 14:6 (LEB): ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Psalm 86:11 (LEB): ¹¹ Teach me, O Yahweh, your way, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name.

Psalm 119:150–152 (LEB): ¹⁵⁰ Those who pursue a wicked purpose draw near; they are far from your law. ¹⁵¹ You are near, O Yahweh, and all your commands are truth. ¹⁵² Concerning your testimonies, I knew long ago that you have established them forever.

Psalm 18:30 (LEB): ³⁰ This God—his way is blameless. The word of Yahweh is flawless. He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

Any “Jesus Christ” that does not align with the Father’s ways can therefore be labelled as a different god (“gods of others”, literally). So then, we can now see how each denomination of Christianity has different versions of Jesus Christ. Some say Jesus declared unclean animals fine to eat when the Father said “be holy for I am holy”. Some say Jesus changed the Sabbath to Sunday from the seventh day. Others say every day is the Sabbath because we rest in Jesus now. Those versions of Jesus cannot be Yeshua.

Exodus 31:12–17 (LEB): ¹² And Yahweh spoke to Moses and said, ¹³ “And you, speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘Surely you must keep my Sabbaths, because it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, in order to know that I am Yahweh, who consecrates you. ¹⁴ And you must keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you; defilers of it will surely be put to death, because anyone who does work on it—that person will be cut off from among his people. ¹⁵ On six days work can be done, and on the seventh _⌊is a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy day for Yahweh; anyone doing work on the Sabbath day will surely be put to death. ¹⁶ The Israelites will pay attention to the Sabbath in order to fulfill the Sabbath throughout their generations as a lasting covenant. 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.”

Some will say, “I am not an Israelite, so those verses do not apply to me. I am a gentile Christian!”. However, there is no such thing as a “gentile Christian”. One is either a gentile, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, or brought near to God and His covenants of promise through the Messiah. As we just read, the Sabbath is part of the lasting covenant.

Ephesians 2:11–13 (LEB): ¹¹ Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, the so-called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision in the flesh, made by hands, ¹² that you were at that time apart from Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, not having hope, and without God in the world. ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you, the ones who once were far away, have become near by the blood of Christ.

We could go on and on about the characteristics of the different versions of Jesus in the Christian religion today. We have some more progressive versions of Jesus that condone same-sex marriage, while others would have Jesus wearing two six shooters like someone from the wild west. We have the King James only Jesus and the social media Jesus that loves everyone, despite their unwillingness to repent.

This is the reason Christianity could be labelled a polytheistic religion. It does not matter if the sect says they follow Jesus Christ if they assign a different identity to him, other than his own. If their version of Jesus Christ disagrees with the ways and truth of the Creator, it is not Messiah Yeshua. Each version of Jesus Christ could have a different name, just as other religions have Buddha, Mohammad, and Hare Krishna.

John 4:19–24 (LEB): ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, that an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²² You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But an hour is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for indeed the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. ²⁴ God is spirit, and the ones who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Yeshua’s function was to enable people like the adulterous woman from Samaria to return to the Father. The Samaritans were part of the northern kingdom of Israel that had been divorced from the Father due to adultery with gods of others. They were in the same standing as the rest of the people from “the nations”, labelled as gentiles, after He issued them a certificate of divorce.

Jeremiah 3:6–8 (LEB): 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. 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. 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.

Worship in spirit and truth by searching the scriptures for the real Messiah Yeshua for yourself. Do not be content in one of the thousands of sects of Christianity with their every changing versions of “Jesus Christ”.

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV 1900)

Anytime someone disagrees with a doctrine or Biblical interpretation, usually Paul’s famous instruction to Timothy is used to remind the person, supposedly who has strayed, that they “must rightly divide the word of truth”. This verse from the King James translation of the Bible is used to reinforce the theology of dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a belief system that started in the late 19th century and spread through North America during the 20th century with the help of the Dallas Theological Seminary and C.I. Scofield’s study bible. Most evangelical Christians believe in some version of dispensationalism today as a result. The hard-core dispensationalist, who understands what they believe, holds that the words of Jesus in the Gospels were not spoken to you and I but to only the Jews. They insist that the writings of Paul are the sole source of authority where believers today should receive their instruction.

Should we be “rightly” dividing God’s word? Who determines what is right? If we say most of the Bible is written to someone else, it implies that we should not concern ourselves with anything the Creator, or Yeshua told us in these writings. After all, we are in the “age of grace”, the dispensation where God’s instructions don’t matter, according to this belief system. Dispensationalists will claim, “there is nothing one can do to obtain salvation”, yet even Paul preached repentance and performing deeds worthy of repentance. These “deeds worthy of repentance” are the instructions given to us by the Father, Yeshua (Jesus) and others, all contained in the entirety of scriptures. Paul testifies in these verses in the book of Acts:

Acts 26:19–20 (LEB): ¹⁹ “Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, ²⁰ but to those in Damascus first, and in Jerusalem and all the region of Judea and to the Gentiles, I proclaimed that they should repent and turn to God, doing deeds worthy of repentance.

Most Bible versions do not translate second Timothy 2:15 the same way as the King James version does. Without the King James version of the Bible we lose the “rightly dividing” phrase that has lead so many astray. Here are some examples of alternate translations:

2 Timothy 2:15 (LEB): ¹⁵ Make every effort to present yourself approved to God, a worker having no need to be ashamed, guiding the word of truth along a straight path.

2 Timothy 2:15 (ESV): ¹⁵ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

In these two examples, the verse is translated using the words “guiding” and “handling” instead of “dividing”. When we divide the word of God into dispensations, such as the “age of grace”, where we “unhitch” from scripture, as mega-pastor Andy Stanley proclaims, we start seeing things such as music from Flamey Grant at the top of the Christian music charts. Please read the article from the Christian Post for more on that story. Drag Performer Flamey Grant First to Top Christian Music.

This sort of headline will be applauded by more progressive Christians and leave others scratching their heads asking, “How did we get here?”. I will address the sort of Christians that are having a hard time understanding this phenomenon. However, in order to understand this, one must leave behind the deception of dispensationalism and consider “guiding the word along a straight path” instead of dividing God’s word. There is no such thing as “rightly dividing” because dividing the word of God is a completely subjective undertaking. The frame work of dispensationalism is an example of people supposedly “rightly dividing”, but actually butchering the word of God and eventually progressing to the point of 50,000 denominations of Christianity and Flamey Grant topping the Christian charts.

We are all responsible for our own salvation, so I would rather take the time to understand the “word of truth” then to rely on preachers, pastors, church fathers or teachers and professors to tell me. When we are asked to give an account of our lives in the end, explaining our understanding of the doctrines of the “age of grace” will not suffice.

Paul’s letters are one sided glimpses into the affairs of the churches that he helped start. I say “helped” because he left behind leaders to carry on the work. Many of the new converts in these assemblies did not have any knowledge of the scriptures or the Father’s instructions for life and blessings. There also may not have been the ease of access to the scriptures and information that we have at our fingertips today. Much of Paul’s writings were simply explaining the principles of God’s word (the Old Testament) in a way that people with no previous knowledge of the God of Israel could understand, and the fact that through Yeshua the Messiah, they now had a way to be part of the family of the God of Israel if they left their former gods and ways behind. This is why we see these instructions given to the gentiles in the book of Acts with the understanding they will hear the entire word and instruction where “Moses has those who proclaim him in every city from ancient generations, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

Acts 15:19–21 (LEB): ¹⁹ Therefore I conclude we should not cause difficulty for those from among the Gentiles who turn to God, ²⁰ but we should write a letter to them to abstain from the pollution of idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood. ²¹ For Moses has those who proclaim him in every city from ancient generations, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

These commands from the Torah to abstain from the “pollution” of idols, sexual immorality, what has been strangled, and from blood are all listed in the instructions of God, first given to Israel, then proclaimed among the gentiles. The Torah is simply the first five books of the Old Testament in modern, English bibles.

Some Christians wrongly teach that these four items are all they need to be concerned about, then invent their own definitions of the pollution of idols and sexually immorality. These instructions were given very specifically to a group of people that were steeped in these four things from their former religion. These people were coming from a religious system that had temple prostitutes, both male and female, and sexual rituals were part of their religion. This is why the holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, handed down to Christianity from these pagan religions, have so much fertility symbolism in their decorations and traditions.

The leaders in the Jerusalem council intended for the people to continue learning how to live a life pleasing to the Father proven by their conclusion that Moses is taught every where in the synagogues. These items in Acts 15 were meant to be a starting point. For example, once my family realized the whole Bible was still relevant, we started resting on the Sabbath and following the dietary instructions found in Leviticus chapter 11. The more we studied, the more we learned. We then made adjustments once we saw the “straight path”.

The deception that we can define sin ourselves, or not be concerned with sin at all in “the age of grace” has a horrible future for the deceived. I would go as far as to say we are witnessing the forerunner to the “great deception”. Christians will already be so misinformed at the time of the end that they will accept whatever delusion is handed to them. Perhaps tricking Christians into believing they do not need to be concerned with sin against the instructions of God, giving them fake holy days to replace the Biblical feast days, and painting the Messiah as a law-breaking, antinomian, is the great deception.

The Creator tells us what will happen if we view His instructions as repulsive, irrelevant or for someone else.

Leviticus 26:14–16 (LEB): ¹⁴ “ ‘But if you do not listen to me and you do not carry out all these commands, ¹⁵ and if you reject my statutes and if your inner self abhors my regulations, to not carry out all my commands by your breaking my covenant, ¹⁶ I in turn will do this to you: then I will summon onto you horror, the wasting disease, and the fever that wastes eyes and that drains away life; and you shall sow your seed in vain, and your enemies shall eat it.

The entire chapter 26 of Leviticus tells us the benefits of keeping God’s instructions and the consequences of not having any regard for them at all. Yeshua also tells us where lawlessness (antinomianism) will lead.

Matthew 7:21–23 (LEB): ²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many miracles in your name?’ ²³ And then I will say to them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness!’

The only logical way we are able to ignore these words from the Messiah is to say we are in the “age of grace” and that these verses do not apply to us, or we can simply redefine lawlessness. That is extremely risky and I certainly will not take the word of the people teaching and preaching this type of theology any longer. I hope everyone reading this will take the time to study these matters for themselves and realize that the Creator’s instructions given to all twelve tribes of Israel are still valid for anyone that is willing to repent and make the God of Israel their God.

And God said, “Look—I am giving to you every plant that bears seed which is on the face of the whole earth, and every kind of tree that bears fruit. They shall be yours as food.”

Genesis 1:29 (LEB)

We spend much of our efforts speaking about Sabbaths, feast days, justice, mercy and the importance that we should place on the instructions of the Creator. These are all very important subjects. There is a whole aspect of life that interlocks with these truths and helps us be in tune with nature while we do our best to follow the instructions of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We must learn to work with the natural world around us and not go to war with nature.

One of the ways we can achieve peace with nature is to follow the ways that Yahweh gave us. Fighting nature is going against the instructions of Yahweh. He told us how the world works, and it is a much better experience when we align ourselves with His ways.

Leviticus 26:2–6 (LEB): ² “ ‘You shall keep my Sabbaths, and you shall revere my sanctuary; I am Yahweh.³ “ ‘If you walk in my statutes and you keep my commands and you do them, ⁴ then I will give you rains in their time, and the land shall give its produce, and the trees of the field shall give their fruit. ⁵ And for you the threshing season shall overtake the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall overtake the sowing, and you shall eat your food to your fill and you shall live securely in your land. ⁶ And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and there shall not be anybody who makes you afraid, and I will remove harmful animals from the land, and no sword shall pass through your land.

I used to spend much of my time on Sabbaths mowing the lawn and trimming everything, being what I refer to now as a “grass farmer”. Don’t misunderstand, I still like a neat lawn, but there was an obsessive compulsive component driving me in the past.

I was looking at some of the neglected areas around my house recently, and realized that I now have a sanctuary for bees, my own herbal pharmacy and wild plants to forage. I have been interested in plant medicine for a number of years and have been trying to learn the uses for the plants that have grown in the absence of a manicured lawn and field. It makes me believe that part of working with nature is using the plants it provides naturally, especially after reading the following section in the book of Jubilees.

Jubilees 10:10-14 (pseudepigrapha.com): And one of us He commanded that we should teach Noah all their medicines; for He knew that they would not walk in uprightness, nor strive in righteousness. And we did according to all His words: all the malignant evil ones we bound in the place of condemnation and a tenth part of them we left that they might be subject before Satan on the earth. And we explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. And Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from (hurting) the sons of Noah. And he gave all that he had written to Shem, his eldest son; for he loved him exceedingly above all his sons.

Jubilees is a book that was found in the caves of Qumran along with some of the oldest copies of scripture we have available to us. The narrative is similar to Genesis, however, it is written from the viewpoint of angels delivering the information to Moses. This may be a foreign concept to many Christians and actually make them cringe due to the strict adherence that is imposed in much of Christianity to the Westminster Confessions. However, we find Steven saying this very thing in the approved sixty-six book Bible.

Acts 7:51–53 (LEB): ⁵¹ “You stiff-necked people and uncircumcised in hearts and in your ears! You constantly resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so also do you! ⁵² Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand about the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become, ⁵³ you who received the law by directions of angels and have not observed it!”

Some of the variety of plants that have started growing on their own around my house are Mullen, Aster, St. John’s Wort, Yarrow, Golden Rod and of course things such as Dandelion, Hawthorn and Burdock, all of which have unique medicinal uses. Many of these plants and others can also be eaten, and have sustained people for thousands of years before processed food took over society’s diet. It is interesting how the corrupt food chain we have today has caused us to need more pharmaceuticals. Many of the store bought drugs are simply synthetically made compounds of the plants growing around us. One cannot put a patent on a naturally growing weed, so there is a method to market these plants allowing there to be boatloads of money to be made by the different drug companies.

Other plant life that can be used for our health and well-being are lichens found growing on trees, mushrooms and even pine needles. Pine needle tea is a good source of vitamins A , C and Selenium, for example.

Genesis 3:18 (LEB): ¹⁸ And thorns and thistles shall sprout for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

Plants have been used for medicine at least as far back as Noah, and he even wrote it down in a book to pass down to his children. This plant medicine was used to combat diseases caused by disobedience to the laws of Yahweh and from the demons that were allowed to stay on the earth to test us. Today we read all the warnings about plant medicine and see how much disdain there is towards its use in the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession. Could we have the answers to many of our medical problems growing in our neglected fields and lawns? What is more beautiful, mowed grass or life saving flowers growing around us?

Of course, there are people who have capitalized on herbal medicine and have created a market for consumers to buy pills for everything from milk thistle to oregano. Too much of a good thing can be harmful and our ancestors consumed these products by making teas and tinctures out of the plants, not buying high concentrated tablets. Everything gets corrupted with corporate greed and the laziness of consumers.

Revelation 18:21–24 (LEB): ²¹ And one powerful angel picked up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “In this way Babylon the great city will be thrown down with violence, and will never be found again! ²² And the sound of harpists and musicians and flute players and trumpeters will never be heard in you again! And every craftsman of every trade will never be found in you again! And the sound of a mill will never be heard in you again! ²³ And the light of a lamp will never shine in you again! And the sound of a bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again! For your merchants were the most important people of the earth, because with your sorcery they deceived all the nations. ²⁴ And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints and all those who had been slaughtered on the earth.

Strong’s G5758 is the word translated to sorcery in this version of the Bible. This is how “Babylon” deceived the whole world.

φαρμακεία
pharmakeia, n.c., use of drugs, sorcery, potions; spells.

The Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the Septuagint (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).

Without being too conspiratorial, it is not very difficult to see how the world is being deceived by drugs, potions and spells. The food chain has been corrupted in the name of “science” when it is actually greed that is driving things. The pharmaceutical industry is making billions of dollars for treatments created for mysterious illnesses caused by the corrupt food chain and men doing heinous acts. Most people do not regard the dietary instructions given to us by the Father. This is the One who many believe created everything, yet do not have the faith to eat what He said to eat and not eat what He said was not food.

The context of these verses in Isaiah are at the time of the return of the Messiah when he will deliver the wrath of Yahweh. This is in the future, and the dietary instructions are still valid.

Isaiah 66:16–17 (LEB): ¹⁶ For Yahweh enters into judgment on all flesh with fire and his sword, and those slain by Yahweh shall be many. ¹⁷ Those who sanctify themselves and those who cleanse themselves to go into the gardens after the one in the middle, eating the flesh of swine and detestable things and rodents together shall come to an end!” declares Yahweh.

All of these subjects are connected. The best course of action one can take is to study the words of Yahweh and do what the Creator of everything said to do. Do not fight the laws of nature, of which Yahweh’s laws are at the root. Learn how to live off of the land and leave the corruptions of this world behind!

Have you found yourself in a place where you cannot tolerate the manipulation, control and inconsistencies found in organized religion? Do you still yearn for an understanding of a creator or meaningful relationship with God? Please check out my book where I discuss many topics about these issues based on my personal experiences from fifty years of involvement in organized religion.

Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor of the man who fell among the robbers?” So he said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” And Jesus said to him, “You go and do likewise.”

Luke 10:36–37 (LEB)

In Christianity we often hear about “loving our neighbour”. When Jesus was asked which commandment was the most important, he first stated that loving God was the most important, then loving one’s neighbour was the second most important.

Luke 10:25–27 (LEB): ²⁵ And behold, a certain legal expert stood up to test him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ And he said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”* ²⁷ And he answered and said, “You shall love the Lord your God from all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus, or the name he was given at birth, Yeshua, was quoting the Shema. Many Christians are not familiar with these verses in Deuteronomy because it was a law of the church to forbid saying these verses. Christian Emperor, Justinian, even banned the Jews from reading this in the synagogues.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (LEB): ⁴ “Hear, Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is unique. ⁵ And you shall love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might. ⁶ And these words that I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ And you shall recite them to your children, and you shall talk about them at the time of your living in your house and at the time of your going on the road and at the time of your lying down and at the time of your rising up. ⁸ And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as an emblem between your eyes. ⁹ And you shall write them on the doorframe of your house and on your gates.

Yeshua fully embraced these words and “every word from the mouth of God”. The command to love our neighbour comes from Leviticus 19.

Leviticus 19:17–18 (LEB): ¹⁷ “ ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely rebuke your fellow citizen, so that you do not incur sin along with him. ¹⁸ You shall not seek vengeance, and you shall not harbor a grudge against your fellow citizens; and you shall love your neighbor like yourself; I am Yahweh.

When Yeshua went on to explain how to love one’s neighbour to the “legal expert”, he told him the story we know today as the parable of the good Samaritan. A Samaritan was one who was a descendant of the tribes of Israel that were not dispersed by the Assyrian empire. These would be who Yeshua described as “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.

Luke 10:30–37 (LEB): ³⁰ And Jesus replied and said, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who both stripped him and beat him. After inflicting blows on him, they went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹ Now by coincidence a certain priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. ³² And in the same way also a Levite, when he came down to the place and saw him, passed by on the opposite side. ³³ But a certain Samaritan who was traveling came up to him and, when he saw him, had compassion. ³⁴ And he came up and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine, and he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵ And on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him, and whatever you spend in addition, I will repay to you when I return. ³⁶ Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor of the man who fell among the robbers?” ³⁷ So he said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” And Jesus said to him, “You go and do likewise.”

This was a hard hitting parable because the two Levite priests who went out of their way not to go near the person laying half-dead on the road did so not because they were being complete jerks, but because if they came in contact with a dead person they would be considered ritually unclean and not be allowed to do service in the temple until they went through a multiple day waiting period. They could have been on the way to work at the temple as they passed by. Yeshua was reinforcing his message of “mercy not sacrifice” to this legal expert.

To make it worse, Yeshua also made the hero of this story a Samaritan. The Samaritans were the prodigal sons that were lost, as far as those in Judaism were concerned. They were descendants of the tribes of the Northern kingdom of Israel that were scattered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. The Northern kingdom of Israel, called the house of Israel or Ephraim, is not taught in Christianity, yet the house of Israel is discussed frequently in both new and old testaments of the Christian Bible.

Matthew 15:24 (LEB): ²⁴ But he answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Yeshua is showing the “legal expert”, likely a Pharisee, that mercy is more important than sacrifice, and used a people group that he came to save and reunite with Judah. There is a lot of information packed into the story of the good Samaritan. We, as Christians, learn the importance of the Torah teachings of loving Yahweh and one’s neighbour, showing that Yeshua’s intention was not to make the law obsolete, but to uphold and explain its application. The Levite priests were so distracted by their duties as priests, that they overlooked the importance of human life. Human life always takes precedence over other laws. If one of these priests had become ritually unclean in the attempts of helping the half-dead man, there was a protocol they would have to follow. It may have disrupted their daily routine for a few days, but Yeshua was saying “big deal”, and used the hated Samaritan as the hero to emphasize these principles.

Matthew 9:12–13 (LEB): ¹² And when he heard it, he said, “Those who are healthy do not have need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³ But go and learn what it means, “I want mercy and not sacrifice.” For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Sometimes we have to step out of our daily routine and get involved in messy situations. We need to study the word of God and learn to apply it as Yeshua taught us. Yeshua never made the law of God obsolete and Christianity is in this stupor thinking that God’s eternal laws do not apply to them. If this is the case, one would have to rewrite the Bible. Some have done this very thing by qualifying scripture with 19th century theology to ensure no one thinks we have to actually do what God said to do.

Matthew 5:17–19 (LEB): ¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. I have not come to destroy them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one tiny letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all takes place. ¹⁹ Therefore whoever abolishes one of the least of these commandments and teaches people to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever keeps them and teaches them, this person will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash