In His Name

This is the next installment in the series that began with Why I Am Not A Christian.  You can return here to click on the subsequent essays: Two, Three, Four, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10.


Lots of Christian denominations in the breathless "charismatic" wing will go on wild rants about invoking the name of Jesus.  Such rants, er, I guess I mean "sermons" are usually a mile wide and an inch deep.  And since it brings the subject to mind, it usually compares to the practice in many independent congregations to engage in what I call "broken-record" worship.  Now, before someone accuses me of being too critical, let me ask God, right here in front of the witnesses (No, not you JWs) who read this blog, to correct me if what I am about to say is wrong.  I just don't see how taking a little chorus of a song and repeating it over, and over, and over for a thirty or forty minute stretch at 110 decibels is somehow honoring to God.  To me, it invokes images of new age cults engaging in repetitive chants in order to empty their minds and achieve oneness with their navel or whatever.  I'd rather sing some stodgy old hymns that have great and meaningful lyrics that you have to actually think about and tell an important story or attribute of God than to sing the same line, "I am a friend of God" or "Better is one day in Your house" eighty-five times or for thirty minutes, which ever comes first.

If that isn't bad enough, imagine a preacher who spends 40 minutes talking about what the five smooth stones were saying to each other in David's pouch about which one of them get's to kill Goliath.  No, my imagination isn't good enough to come up with a whopper like that.  I remember being stunned by being surrounded by people shouting "Hallelujah!" and "Preach on!"  and wondering for the life of me what could possibly be edifying about any of this.  The reason it comes to mind over fifteen years later is because of the sheer stupidity and spectacle of it.  It wasn't like I walked out of that service (probably long before he was finished) thinking to myself, "Wow, this is understanding that is going to make such a difference in my Christian walk."

In a world that is hurting for answers, the last thing they need is mindless nonsense being associated with the Real God.  People need to hear the evidence for why they can trust the Bible.  They need to hear reasonable answers to skeptics about the Bible being just a bunch of myths invented to enslave people to a religious system.  People need to know that science doesn't conflict with anything the Bible says about history or anything else it addresses.  Real advances in the hard sciences show that the Bible can indeed be trusted.  There are facts and evidence that explain why the universe appears to be so old while the Bible claims an age of about 6,000 years.  People should have the opportunity to hear the logical, systematic explanations for why the atheist position isn't just illogical, but downright stupid.  By the way, I distinguish between atheists who don't really care about the argument, versus those who are militant in their religious fervor against God.

There are many, but not all of those associated with charismatic congregations who have this idea that if they simply attach the name of Jesus to whatever they are doing, and it seems like a good thing, God will bless, condone and sanctify it.  This stems from a serious misunderstanding of what it means from the ancient Biblical concept of "in My name."  We need to have the proper understanding of the phrase.

From the time Yeshua inaugurated His ministry and chose His disciples it was clear that he was no ordinary Rabbi.  But the modern, western, Christianized mind should never make the mistake of thinking that He did not teach in the exact same manner as all the sages who came before Him.  In case you haven't been keeping up with this series, let me pause here to fill in some things and repeat some things because they are well worth making clear.  There are Rabbis and there are Sages.  Sages were the top Rabbis.  They weren't appointed by anyone (unless you want to count the Holy Spirit).  They reached their status because they were recognized by the people as exceptional Torah scholars who practiced what they preached.  Just as a catholic nun would hold up Mother Teresa as a standard for piety and devoutness, a sage was the Rabbi everybody was hoping would be willing to take you on as a disciple, because everybody around knew that this guy had the answers and lived out everything that he preached.  The thing that probably shocks the mind of a modern westerner is the fact that when a Rabbi took you on as a disciple -- from the time of Noah until maybe a thousand years ago, the disciple lived with their Rabbi or Master.  It was nothing new or weird or different that the disciples of Yeshua of Nazareth spent all of their time with the Master.  It was a twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week deal.  They slept in the same houses, they ate all their meals together.  Every waking moment was spent learning how to do everything exactly the way their Master did it and memorizing the words that He spoke. Keeping in mind that you first had to have memorized the Torah and pretty much the Prophets and the Psalms.

That is such a foreign concept to modern people.  Imagine living and learning in such constant closeness that the only things you don't do together are bathing and defacating.  Sorry if that seems too graphic for you, but I want to be faithful to the facts.  No wonder that the gospels tell us that Yeshua spent a lot of time finding a solitary place to pray. So, what does this have to do with the point about "in My name?"

In order for anyone to have any respect for a man invoking the phrase, "in the name of . . ." the listeners would have to know that the person was a disciple in good standing of the Rabbi whose name they were using for authority.  Otherwise, what you were saying had no more importance than the sound of a chicken clucking.  Today, there are people in the churches who use the name Jesus as if there is some kind of celestial voice recognition software floating in the ethersphere and if you just say that name you get some kind of spiritual respect.  But we are given a wonderful real event in the book of Acts which demonstrates that such would be faulty thinking.

In Acts 19, Paul has come to Ephesus, a city in western Turkey and greatly devoted to the worship of Artemis.  Paul used the synagogue as his local base of operations, reasoning from the Scriptures about Messiah with the local Jews who had settled there after the big Babylonian diaspora.  Adonai was giving credence to Paul's message by performing extraordinary miracles through his hands.  Knowledge of this activity naturally spread through the area to the point that even some Jewish exorcists were willing to try using the name of Yeshua "whom Paul preaches."  Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva tried to do this to a man who was possessed by a demon, and with disastrous results.  The demon says to these pretenders, "I recognize Yeshua, and I even know about Paul, but who are you?"  Then this demon-possessed man beats these guys badly enough to send them running, naked and bleeding.

Before I move on, please note the wording by the demon.  "I recognize . . ."  This isn't a casual phrase.  The demon is acknowledging Yeshua's identity in the same way that the demon in the man at the Capernaum synagogue cried out, "I know who you are -- the Holy One of God." (Luke 4:34)  This title is one repeatedly used in the book of Isaiah to refer to the God of Israel.  It doesn't easily translate from the Hebrew because there is no equivalent word "of."  English translators stick "of" in there to make it read better for us, but those Jews in the synagogue on that day heard a demon recognize that they were all standing in the presence of God Almighty.  They all knew what it meant and they were amazed at His power and authority.

Back to Acts 19: Let me give you an analogy.  Let's say a bunch of thugs take over a small town.  A couple of guys from the neighboring town decide to take it upon themselves to go save those poor people from this oppression.  They are outnumbered and out-gunned, but they decide to try to look official and when they ride into town they even announce themselves as being there "in the name of the Law."  Problem is; the thugs already know who are and are not the duly appointed law men in the land and they know that these guys are just playing vigilantes.  The thugs simply make sport of these guys and send them off wounded.  The thugs know that they can get away with this because those guys lacked both the power and authority to get the job done.

There is this passage in Matthew 7 that always bothered me when I was calling myself a Christian.  "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"   Matthew 7:23

What law was he talking about?  He seems to be clearly saying that invoking his name and even doing very good things and even miraculous things is not good enough if I am practicing lawlessness.  Which laws?  Who's laws?

Problem was, I hadn't yet learned to take the Bible as a whole.  The answer was right there all along.  Not even in another book or epistle, but in the very same sermon that the Master was giving at the time.  All I had to do was go back to chapter 5 of Matthew, early in this sermon.  "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law . . ."  Matthew 5:17  So, how do we define those who practice lawlessness?  Those who deny that we need to keep Torah.  If I were to try to define Matthew 7:23 as referring to any other law and especially man-made law, the verse would not just be meaningless, it would be stupid.

By coming to the understanding of Scripture as a cohesive whole, I can see that in order to legitimately operate in the authority of God, I have to follow His rules and guidelines.  Notice in Matt 7:23 the assumption is that, come the judgment, there will be such people.  I don't want to be one of them.  I would rather risk having God say to me at the judgment, "That was nice of you to observe and keep all those commandments and teachings of Mine, but it really wasn't necessary."  rather than hear Him say, "You've got no excuse.  I think I made myself pretty clear  in that sermon on the mount, and in Luke 16:17 and in plenty of other places in My Word."

Choose carefully.  Choose wisely.

In the next installment, we will ponder the meaning of Yeshua's sinlessness.

What Upset The Jews?

In Acts chapter 22 we have the scene of Paul's last time of making a public statement before becoming a prisoner of Rome until his death.  His arrest was the result of the Roman military commander's fear that an insurrection or riot was breaking out.  It would be his head that would roll if order were not restored quickly.  What exactly caused the uproar?  It was assumed that Paul had brought uncircumcised gentiles into the area of the Temple forbidden to them by Torah.  Why was Paul there?  To prove that the rumors about him teaching against obeying Torah were unfounded and untrue.  Keep that firmly in mind.  A second thing you need to consider is the fact that the body of believers led by Peter and James and the other Apostles had stayed in Jerusalem and were enjoying much success bringing more and more fellow Jews into the congregation of believers in Messiah.  They wouldn't have been able to do that if they were preaching that Torah was no longer in effect.  Quite the opposite.  The Sanhedrin would have had the support of the people in dragging the Apostle out of the gates and stoning them to death.

Remember, it was Paul's missionary efforts to the Gentiles and the revelation of the Holy Spirit that adult male Gentiles did not have to be circumcised in order to be saved that had the die-hard Judaizers in an uproar.  Such men were insisting that, according to their interpretations and their dictates that salvation came according to what they considered the right way.  Stop and think.  If the Apostles in Jerusalem were teaching people that Torah had become void, all the Jewish leaders and the people would have been after them to destroy them.  Why did they only go after Paul?

Now that Paul has been arrested, he appeals to his Roman citizenship to have the commander of the Roman cohort to let him speak in his defense to the Jews who have attacked him.  Let us examine carefully this speech to the Jews and make sure we are clear about what it is that makes them angry.

"Brethren and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you."  And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew dialect, they became even more quiet; and he said, "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly  according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, just as you all are today.  And I persecuted this Way [this Way being belief in the Messiah, the Pharisee from Nazareth] to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify.  From them I also received letters  to the brethren [Jews living outside the Israeli territory], and started off  for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.  And it came about that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?'  And I answered, 'Who art Thou, Lord?' And He said to me, I am Yeshua the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.'

Anybody start screaming yet?  No.  Remember now, this crowd is full of men who were present to hear Yeshua of Nazareth with their own ears and beheld all the events regarding His death.  They no doubt knew about the miracles.  They no doubt knew all the reports by people who had seen the man after His resurrection.  Not a man in this crowd who was listening to Paul speak could shout out that he was lying.  Nobody in this crowd could accuse Paul of advocating belief in a false prophet, or a Torah breaker.  They remained silent.

Paul was relating to this crowd that several years back,  Yeshua [Jesus] appeared to Paul and struck him blind and made it abundantly clear that he was claiming Paul for His own.  I have to stop and marvel at this point.  If Yeshua's main point was about bringing about a whole new religious system and way of thinking, why in the world would he choose Paul to be the guy who pens most of the New Testament?  Paul: an intellectual Torah scholar and student of Gamaliel who was so influential with the Sanhedrin that they put him in charge of hunting down those who were preaching about this Yeshua the Nazarene.  Paul was a man who would end up writing his letters to the believers from prison, quoting Scripture because it was all in his head.

I want you to take special care to think about this next verse.  You don't get to just read over it and go, "well, isn't that nice."

Acts 22:12:  "And a certain Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard of the Law, and well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there."

Ananias was a man who kept Torah.  He kept Torah so well that all of his friends and neighbors were willing and ready to say that, "Hey, that Ananias guy, he's the real thing.  He keeps the Torah.  He's a Holy man."  Paul was using Ananias as a known standard.  Paul could have as much as said the following:   "The way we know that he's a Holy man is not because he has some free-floating, amorphous concept of loving his neighbor. He keeps the knowable, measureable standard of Torah.  I know the Law and you know the Law and if anything I am saying isn't true, let someone come forward and prove me wrong."

Let's not just gloss over this point as if it has little weight in the story.  If every word of Scripture is supposed to be breathed out by the God of the universe, we should think about what makes the choice of words important.  Why did God decide that these particular details are important for us to know?  Paul defends himself before all of these Jews by making a point that he is just as zealous for Torah as those who are trying to find reason to kill him.  He makes the point that he has had an encounter with the very entity whom he was persecuting.  At this point in time, no one has been able to deny the events of just a few years earlier regarding the Nazarene, the only remaining sticking point for some of the Jews was whether or not followers of the one they proclaimed as Messiah were advocating breaking from Torah, because on that point alone they would put down any follower of Yeshua of Nazareth and it would give credence to the idea that Yeshua was a false prophet as described in Deuteronomy 13.

Keep in mind that Paul's whole purpose in going to the Temple was to disprove the rumor that he was advocating any departure from Torah.  He also makes the point that the man who was sent to restore his sight and instruct him on what to do next was also considered a righteous man based on keeping the Torah.  The problem arises because those who still didn't accept the proofs that Yeshua was the Messiah wanted any evidence they could that would discredit this "Way."  Also keep in mind that the detractors couldn't find any fault with the believers who remained in Jerusalem, and their really big problem was due to this idea that Paul was taking the message of conversion to the Gentiles.  In fact, that point was where things got ugly.

"And He [God, Messiah] said to me, 'Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'" And they listened to him up to this statement, and then they raised their voices and said, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!"  Acts 22:21-22

They listened to him "up to this statement, . . ."  Notice that they couldn't argue with anything else that he said.  Paul's "crime" in the eyes of these Jews was not that he was violating, nor was he advocating that anyone violate Torah, but that he was letting them know that if they didn't want to believe in God's one and only Messiah, then the Gentiles would be given the opportunity to repent, receive salvation and learn Torah.  Such a concept was outrageous to "The Chosen" ones.  Centuries of tradition was being turned on its head.  As long as anyone could remember, Gentiles who wanted to become followers of God needed to come to the devout Jews to learn the ways of God, be circumcised and then baptized.  But now Paul was correcting their bad assumptions, (which he also held until his Damascus road experience).  Just like the children of Abraham who walked out of Egypt, God would save His children from bondage first, and then out of gratitude, they would learn His ways (Torah).

Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus The Christ) is inseparable from His Word, the Torah.  John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  You can't have one without the other.  You can lift a verse out of one of Paul's letters to try and make it sound like believers don't have to keep Torah, but in so doing, you do violence to the rest of Scripture.  We do well to remember that we are very imperfect human beings, and that if our understanding of a passage doesn't harmonize with all the other passages, it is we who are in error.  There are not two Gods.  There is not a God of the Old Testament and then a different God of the New Testament.  Those who think so have merely a god of their own understanding, which is no god at all.

Big Conference In Acts

This is post five in the series:  Why I Am Not A Christian   You can find it in the February archive.


Returning to the fifteenth chapter of Acts, we see that the debate which arose from the “party of circumcision” created enough stir among the new believers at Antioch, they determined to send Paul and Barnabas back to Jerusalem to confer with Peter, the other Apostles, and the elders in order to get a ruling on the issue.  I infer from verse two that Paul was already against the circumcision thing, but in humility agreed to go back to Jerusalem and submit to the judgment of the senior Apostles.  This would prove to be more confirmation to Peter as to the meaning of what happened to him back in Chapter 10, and reiterated by James during this conference.

Here you have a major meeting over this issue with all of the most senior elders, the Apostles, and the great learned Rabbi Paul who had been a summa cum laude Torah scholar under Gamaliel.  The apostles, and perhaps dozens of the disciples gathered there, had lived with the Master and heard Him expound on all of the Tanakh.  In my mind a question arises: If Yeshua had given them the idea that following Torah was no longer required, or even a major concern, why did they have to debate and reason out what to do?

Then comes the solution, and it is a solution that Christians just gloss over without thinking carefully about what was decided at that major tribunal.  Please note that nobody stood up and said, “Hey, come on!  This is a moot point since the Law got nailed to the cross with our savior.”  I couldn't find those words in the text.  What did happen is that James stood up and essentially said that, based on what had happened with Peter at Cornelius’ house and what had been happening with Paul and Barnabas, the Holy Spirit was telling them to accept the Goyim just as they were.  However, the gentiles needed some direction since this Judaism thing was so new and strange to them, and it wasn’t right to start loading them down with an overwhelming burden of new rules to follow, so let’s just give them four important, but simple rules to follow, and they can start learning the rest at their local synagogue where the Torah is taught every Sabbath.

Yep.  It’s right there in Acts 15:19-21.  “Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood. For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”

Please notice that James is making reasonable assumptions here.  It was assumed that gentile converts would begin learning Torah, as gentile converts had for centuries.  James further assumes that it is perfectly reasonable to demand at least four things that can be observed immediately by the new converts and note that three of them are not in the Ten Commandments.  Note that James assumes that the new converts are going to be attending the local synagogue on the Sabbath.

In order for the importance of what James said to penetrate the “Christianized” mind, one needs to be familiar with Jewish history and understanding.  Since the Children of Israel left Egypt, it was understood that their purpose as stated in the Torah was to be a light (teacher) to the nations.  Israel’s mission as given by God was to be a priesthood that interceded for the nations and to show the example of how a people were supposed to live.  Ergo, when people of other nations saw that example and how blessed it was to follow Torah, they could become proselytes and be grafted in.

However, prior to the Messiah and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the procedure was for a gentile to study and begin living the life of Torah observance, and once the elders around him could see that he was serious about his commitment, he could then be circumcised and then after healing from that, he would undergo mikvah (baptism), immersing three times (without anyone touching him, in a pool of running water) and this was viewed as the old self dying and being washed away and the new man who rose up out of the water was considered fully Jewish, not to be treated any differently than one who came from generations that could be traced to Abraham.

But go back to what James said that became the majority opinion of the court. They didn’t throw out all of Torah for the gentiles.  All of those Apostles and disciples present had all heard the Master say plainly that they were to go and baptize all men, teaching them everything He had taught them.  James was expressing what the rest of them all understood. Perhaps up to that point, it was assumed that when the Master said to baptize, just like it had always been done, that the circumcision was also done.  But here, the Holy Spirit was revealing something new.  The things that the gentiles can start to do immediately, they can do.  As they attend the local synagogue, they will begin to learn and observe Torah with the help of the Jewish believers.

There is another important lesson here as well.  Note that even as with the Centurion Cornelius, gentiles having received the Holy Spirit, -- pay attention -- still needed to learn what to do.  You don’t get saved and suddenly have understanding about how to live a righteous life.  Peter, Paul and James wrote plenty in the New Testament to this effect.  Did you know that Martin Luther went so overboard on his "justification by faith" view, that he advocated to strike the book of James from the New Testament?  James made it clear that the way to know whether or not someone had true faith was to observe his actions.  Anyone can talk a good game, but as James knew, the Master had said, "By their fruit you will know them."

The only thing that changed with regard to Torah observance in Acts 15, was the idea that salvation depended on circumcision.  And that is not to say that circumcision was done away with.  Otherwise, how do you explain Paul circumcising Timothy? Paul never said that circumcision is wrong now and should never be done.  What he fought against was the idea that you could be saved by following a procedure and elevating such observance above the saving work of the Messiah.  I’m sure that as new gentile believers entered the Torah community and had children, eight-day-old boys were being circumcised on a regular basis, and men who wanted to be able to enter the Temple proper got circumcised and let their beards and payess grow out and put on tzitzit.  Sincere believers, so grateful for their salvation, desire to obey the Creator who shows them such love and mercy.  Following Torah is not a burden, but a blessing.

To a modern, western, Christianized mind, it may indeed seem like a burden.  Many people bristle at having to learn anything new.  It is just so damned easy to throw words around, such as, “We’re under grace and not the Law.”  Even though what Paul was saying in context is: “We have been forgiven and will not have to suffer the penalty of the Law.”  Big difference.

Christians like to say that we only have two rules: Love God and love our neighbor.  But when you start probing to see what that really means it begins to look like a shoddy façade that disguises the fact that we want to do our own thing and not be held to a visible, measurable standard.  This is why James wrote his epistle in the New Testament.  This is why the un-churched look at Christians and scream “hypocrites!”  They may not exactly know how to articulate it, but they instinctively know that there’s something badly wrong about a rubber yardstick.

We’ve only looked at two examples from Acts.  There is still more to come.  To get to the next essay, click on Lesson About Food.