Romans Part V

You can find the beginning of this study by clicking on this link.

Chapter 14 begins with a passage that can easily be misunderstood by someone with no understanding of the historical context of the time in first century Rome, or a well-established understanding of the rest of Scripture. Before you think you understand what the author is trying to say, you need to know if you have the right answers to certain questions.  Who is the writer talking to?  Why does that matter?  What does that audience already know?  What are the assumptions that are taken for granted by all the parties concerned?

A reader two thousand years removed from the situation that is being spoken about has a lot to learn before a rational understanding can be made.

The first verse is easy enough to understand, since most of us have probably been in churches where the "old timers" have treated new converts with thinly veiled disdain for having little to no knowledge of the Bible or spiritual matters.  But what's this thing about eating meat or not eating meat?  In order for us to really understand Paul's point, we need a thorough understanding of what was going on in the first century.  Not just in Israel or Rome but the known world in general.

Atheism was a tiny sliver of a minority philosophy among a few philosophers, but better than 99% of the world believed in some kind of deity or multiple deities.  All of the false religions believed in sacrificing to their gods.  Usually not so much for sin, well, actually, almost none of it for sin.  It was mostly a kind of appeasement or bribe for good fortune.  People who held such religious beliefs might look to the opinions of the self-appointed priests or gurus of the various religions or they just thought up ways to worship on their own or copied their parents' methods of worship.  They might sacrifice all kinds of things.  They also would have sacrificed many of the same kind of kosher animals that the Jews used in worship.

Let's take a moment to look back at the Acts of the Apostles.  In chapter 15 we have the episode where the leadership, seemingly headed by James, led by the Holy Spirit, comes up with the minimum requirements for a letter addressed to the new Gentile converts.  One of the four items mentioned is abstaining from meat sacrificed to idols.  A second item is things that have been strangled, a method of killing that didn't allow for proper bleeding out.  A third prohibition was from ingesting any blood directly.  While Torah and the Oral Law had very specific instructions on how to slaughter animals for sacrifice and even for general consumption, the pagans had no such rules.  Some African cultures, to this day, drink fresh blood taken from cattle.  Some people in America and Europe think nothing of eating a concoction called blood pudding.


While the instructions were clear that the new followers of Messiah were to abstain from "knowingly" ingesting blood, or eating an animal that had certainly been sacrificed to a false god, some of the people were so afraid of transgressing the rule that they would just give up meat altogether.  Some of these people still could not bring themselves to the idea that this God of the Jews was totally unlike the capricious and sinister gods of the pagan religions.  Such were gods who would punish you for making mistakes out of ignorance.  Paul was admonishing the brethren to tolerate these newcomers and not give them a hard time as they were still learning.

But did Paul contradict the instructions that had gone out from the Apostles at Jerusalem?  No.  According to Acts chapter 21, Paul wanted to make sure that he was in complete agreement with the leadership when it came to issues of faithfully following Torah. The distinction Paul is making is this:  While some understand the new freedom in Messiah, that the excessive rules and "hedge around the Law" by the Rabbis no longer applied to the believers, those who still wanted to be extra cautious about not violating Torah by not eating any meat that they couldn't be sure was kosher were not to be looked down upon by other believers.  Stated another way, some believers were willing to eat beef or goat or lamb or chicken that they got from non-believers with the simple assurance that it had been slaughtered properly and not used in a religious sacrifice.  Other believers, however, just weren't willing to take that chance with all the pagan sacrificing going on.  Their consciences wouldn't permit them to take that chance.

On this issue, Paul simply tells them to quit using it as an excuse to judge each other on a matter best left to God.  It's really that simple.  But is this a passage that can be used by Gentiles to excuse the eating of unclean animals?  No.  Remember the instructions of the Apostles through James in Acts 15.  The assumption of the leadership was that new Gentile believers would go to synagogue and learn Torah.  Their Jewish fellow believers would show them the proper way to slaughter and kasher their meat and know which animals were acceptable for consumption and which were not.

But because of the matter of conscience with some believers, Paul makes it clear that if your brother doesn't want to risk violating Torah by eating the meat that you are serving, don't take offense.  Better yet, don't serve him meat if he doesn't want to eat it.  We have unbelieving friends who wouldn't dream of inviting us over for dinner and serving pork.  If unbelievers can show that kind of good sense, how much more so should believers?

As for his statement that all things are clean, we need to keep it in the same context as what Messiah said when he dealt with the issue of hand washing.  That it was not what we ate that defiled us nearly so much as what defiled us spiritually based on our thoughts. When faced with the choice of eating pork or shellfish, or starving to death, we are going to eat what's available.  Long before Messiah came, the Rabbis understood that we are to LIVE according to Torah, not die by Torah.  That which imparts life or eases human suffering always supersedes any prohibitions in Torah.  Messiah proved that in healing on the Sabbath.  He never said Torah was wrong.  He simply reminded the religious leaders of their own training and teaching, that doing good and alleviating pain or suffering and bringing praise and honor to God were most important. That's right. There is and always has been a hierarchy that allows for breaking the laws in Torah.

Let's say I  was invited to someone's house for dinner, and they did not know anything about Torah or kosher eating.  My host or hostess went to a lot of trouble to prepare the meal and they were very proud of their effort. They have no intention of doing anything less than being gracious.   The main course is a pork chop.  What do I do?  I eat it.  I will silently pray to God that what I am doing is performing a mitzvah, which He is already well aware of.  I will eat it and be gracious about it and thank them for their hospitality.  I won't correct them or do anything that might cause them embarrassment.  My concern for the feelings of my host or hostess is more important in this case than breaking this part of Torah.  The greater command of Torah is to love my neighbor as much as I love myself.

Romans Part IV

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, click this.

In my last post, Honor The King, I was specifically focused on the problem of people using Romans 13 in two inappropriate ways.  First, to suggest that we have to show honor and deference to evil rulers, and second the idea that we have rulers in the United States. Darn it; I didn't use John the Baptist as an example either.  I need to go back and update that post.  John, cousin of the Messiah, very publicly condemned Herod for committing terrible sin.  Herod was illegitimate as a king over Israel, and everyone knew it.   Jerome Corsi has recently published a book that proves that the current usurper at Pennsylvania Avenue is just as illegitimate as president.

Call me a "birther" all you want to.  The real idiot is someone who can't distinguish truth from fiction.

The purpose of this post is to pick up from where I left off in the complete study of Paul's letter to the congregation in Rome, for the express purpose of seeing if he ever said that we don't need to keep Torah any more.  I had gotten through chapter eleven and all I can discern so far is that he was making it clear that the Law of Moses has a purpose and we have no reason to disregard either the Torah or Messiah's admonition that He never came to abolish the Torah, or the prophets.

Paul was explaining that the pattern holds from the earliest time.  First Adonai saves us through his mercy and grace.  Being a God of order and righteousness, He requires that restitution be made, but He makes it Himself.  However, he expects us to then live our lives according to His rules out of gratitude.  We establish that the law is true and good.

So we now pick up the study of Romans at chapter twelve.  Paul is urging the brethren at Rome to make their bodies a living sacrifice as a spiritual form of worship.  Why does he write this?  Because all good Jews know that God commanded that the only real physical sacrifices could be made at the Temple. God made it clear when he showed Moses the heavenly Tabernacle and told him to construct it on earth, that man would no longer be allowed to sacrifice on his own terms anywhere he wanted to.  Why is this important to Paul's discussion in the letter?

After the diaspora of 600 years previous, many Jews had not returned to the land of Israel, either because they couldn't or wouldn't, but they were still aware of the prohibition of not offering sacrifices on their own. The rabbinic teaching became that the closest thing they could do to sacrifice  would be to study Torah.  Quite sensible, since John's gospel begins by telling us that Yeshua and the Word are one and the same.  The rabbis alluded to this for centuries before John wrote his gospel.  The sages taught that Torah was eternal and that Adonai created the universe through His Torah.

While Jews living in Rome had long understood that they could not offer sacrifices outside of the Temple system in Jerusalem, Roman gentiles had been living under the old pagan way of offering sacrifices to any or many gods, whenever and wherever they chose.  Accepting this Jewish Messiah was a radical departure from what they were used to.  Paul wanted them to understand that even though they might not be able to sacrifice in the traditional way, either because they couldn't go to Jerusalem to the Temple or because even if they went there, if they weren't circumcised they couldn't enter the Temple proper, in order to offer sacrifices anyway.
Therefore, Paul gives them specific instruction on the kinds of things they can do that serve as spiritual sacrifice.  That is essentially all of chapter twelve.

Most of what I have to say about Romans chapter 13 is contained in my post, Honor The King.  Click on the title and go read it if you haven't done so.  As for the rest of the chapter, I've seen the summary of verses 8 through 10 get horribly abused in the church.  How so?  Because most Christians have this amorphous, undefined, laissez faire attitude about what it means to love their neighbor.  I've heard some of the worst gossip and backbiting go on in churches under the guise of praying for people. I've had Christians have me bid on jobs and then expect a huge discount below an already fair price.  That one gets me because it assumes that I would charge a lot more money to a non-believer, or that I charge too much for my services, period.

I see people who claim to be proud Christians doing things all the time because it is the "accepted" way of doing things as far as the world is concerned, but they never stop to ask if it meets God's standard of loving their neighbor.  This is why studying the Torah and applying the standards to our behavior is so important.  Even after we come to Messiah and repent, accepting salvation, we still have a fallen, fleshly, selfish nature that we have to struggle with every day.  It requires us to study and contemplate what God requires as the standard of love.  It's not about our feelings.  The Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) might nudge us in the right direction, but the Bible is full of admonitions to study and learn the Word.  For whatever reasons of God's choosing, He doesn't just inject it into our heads or download it like an autoexec.bat file.

And the admonition is to study the WHOLE Bible.  You can't make a proper judgment of what a few isolated Scriptures mean and how they apply unless you have a real working knowledge of all the Bible.  And since there isn't a single human being walking the planet who can accomplish all that, we are admonished to gather and fellowship with other believers.  God created us to be social animals.  And while I can agree with temporary sabbaticals on occasion, I can find nothing in Scripture that approves of living a sheltered monastic lifestyle.

Maybe the next post will wrap up this study of Romans.

Shalom Y'all

Honor The King

UPDATED: 09:00 EDT/ GMT -4  on Monday, June 13, 2011

In conversation amongst Bible believers and at the same time contemplating current events and outrageous behavior by government (I know, I know; when does that not happen?), it seems inevitable that the Scriptural admonition to obey the rulers appointed over us comes into play.

Not that I have any illusions that folks so inclined to study only that which they want to, and believe that which they want to, are going to be swayed by anything I have to say on the matter, I've stewed over this issue in my mind and prayed about it for a couple of weeks now, wanting to be sure that I wasn't letting my own desire cloud my judgment regarding this matter.

I will continue to think on it long and hard and always be open to deeper truth about it, but right now, I'm ready to hold court.

There are several verses in the Bible regarding obedience to authority, but the one that gets misused and abused the most by Christians is Paul's admonition to the congregation in Rome; specifically in chapter thirteen.  Yet they take his words and not only do they isolate them from all the rest of the text of Scripture but they isolate the first part from the rest of the context in which Paul places it.

"Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, an those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.  For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.  Do you want to have no fear of authority?  Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good.  But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil. . . ."  Romans 13:1-5 (NASB)

I say this verse gets misused and abused because, going back to Bill Clinton, when the sitting president was doing things that were blatantly wrong, unlawful, and in direct violation of the Constitution and I expressed my disgust over such actions, I was admonished with the verse above.  When I have said that I have nothing but utter contempt for the president, be he Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush or the current golfer using the People's House, I have had Christians react as if I was doing something I should repent of and be ashamed for doing.  Truly wishing to do the right thing and honor the ultimate authority, the Creator of the universe, I've prayed for wisdom in this regard.  Following my own admonitions to take the entire Bible as my counsel, I will lay out the case in my defense.

God repeatedly warned His people that they should not want a king. He expressly warned them in 1 Samuel chapter 8 that requesting a king would result in lots of bad stuff.  The irony was that the people were asking for a king "like the other nations" because the sons of the priest Eli were corrupt.  But rather than pray to Adonai for deliverance, they choose to jump from the frying pan into the fire by asking for someone who would have greater, consolidated power over them to oppress them even more.  Go figure.  The bottom line is that those who ask for a human king are rejecting God.  What I have learned from this that when I talk to those who express concern over showing respect and deference to human rulers, I often find a corresponding lack of respect and concern for God's Word.  Perhaps I can delve more deeply into examples of that later, but the short of it is that I see many examples of Christians who will disobey God's direct commandments because they can use the cover of obeying man-made law.

God had rules for the king that He appointed.  When that king got out of line, God sent a prophet to give correction.  This scenario is repeated enough throughout the Bible that I shouldn't need to cite examples.  The text of Romans 13 quoted above has been abused for centuries, outside of the theocratic/monarchy of Israel, and is known as "divine right of kings" justifying monarchies in doing any damnable and horrific thing they wanted to do. Yet, if you read what Paul writes in whole and in context, the assumption is that our obedience is in the mundane, benign and beneficial aspects.  The instruction of Romans 13 is not to obey everything and in all circumstances.  Once again, in taking the whole counsel of the Bible, I can cite Peter in Acts, after having been commanded by the Sanhedrin to never preach about Yeshua/Jesus again, that the Apostles must obey God rather than men.  Yet here was a body of rulers who had the ostensible authority of God Himself.  And let's not forget that Yeshua Himself had told the disciples that those religious leaders sat in Moses' seat and had the authority to declare halakhah (the right way to do things).


In other words, we are called to obey when the rulers are ruling in the right way and demanding good behavior, but when the rulers are demanding that we directly disobey God, we have no choice but to rebel.
What I find very interesting in my own case is that I have not rebelled against any authority of the president of the United States.  I have merely expressed my contempt for the president and many members of congress showing flagrant disregard for the Law and the Constitution, appointing others who do the same and proceeding to destroy the United States of America.

Somehow this erroneous thinking has crept into the minds of Americans that we have a government system that is something like a monarchy or oligarchy.  This is wrong.  The founding fathers debated, argued and reasoned out that nothing good could possibly come from two forms of government: democracy and oligarchy.

Let me pause here to say that I am using oligarchy very broadly.  Elected representatives come and go, but the idea is that a group of people are ruling us and not representing us or following the supreme law of the land, the Constitution.  The whole purpose of creating a Constitution was to put chains on government.  To protect the individual as a sovereign entity, able to follow the dictates of his own conscience to follow God.  And do not make the mistake of leaving off the very important words "to follow God."  John Adams put it best when he said that the Constitution was designed for the governance of a religious and moral people and that it was wholly inadequate for any other.  Check the sidebar for my page on other essential quotes.

On the flip side of the coin, our founders totally detested the idea of democracy.  Yes, I said that correctly.  Yes, I do know what I'm talking about.  The proof of what I write is in the history, debates, writings, minutes of the meetings of Congress, the federalist and anti-federalist papers.  The founders loathed the idea of democracy.  It was a pleasure to find that idea expressed in the movie, "The Patriot" by Mel Gibson:

"Tell me, sir, why should I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?  A legislature can trample a man's rights just as easily as a king can."

But I digress.  The founding fathers did not want a king and they didn't want an oligarchy, and to try to prevent that from happening, they created a Constitution that was purposely designed to make it very hard and cumbersome to pass laws or do anything to rule over the people.  In fact, the founders created our form of government with the express idea that we DON'T HAVE RULERS.  We are supposed to have elected public servants who are supposed to understand that the power to administer only those things that are necessary to an orderly society, borrow their power from the sovereign people.  When you see members of Congress, or the Executive branch, or even the Supreme Court as rulers, you have fallen into a dangerous trap.  You have gotten stuck on stupid.  You deserve to be told what to do by people who think there are 57 States, vote on 2,000 page bills that create dictatorial power for bureaucrats, and send lewd and obscene pictures of themselves over the internet.  You need a first lady to be your nanny and tell you what to eat.



As another example of how evil it can be to carry the passage from Romans 13 to absurd extreme; what if you were living in Germany under Adolf Hitler after he acquired all the dictatorial control of the country?  Would you have quoted Romans 13 to Dietrich Boenhoffer or Corrie Ten Boom?  Would you have cooperated in revealing the hiding places of Jews or gone out to help round them up?

As a Christian in today's United States, would you work in an abortion mill?  It's the law of the land, right?  Five out of nine justices on the Supreme Court in 1973 said that the right to kill a baby in the womb was something that existed in the Constitution.  Right there.  In invisible ink.  Between the lines of other black marks. Somewhere.  It's there, just trust us.  We went to law school.

If you were a Christian during the civil rights movement in the sixties, how would you have felt if someone quoted Romans 13 to you in an effort to make you sit down and shut up while black people were being persecuted and denied their rights to equal treatment under the law?

It would be bad enough for so-called believers in God to try to correct me with Scriptures such as Romans 13 if we lived in an actual monarchy when the king or queen was doing things that were blatantly against God's law,  or even against plain decency and common morality.  But it truly makes me sick when they use Romans 13 as if it even remotely applies to an administration or congress or even the Supreme court that is openly and flagrantly violating the ultimate and supreme law of the land, and expects me to show respect for it.

I don't think so, Sparky.

The only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.  So I will continue to express the reasons why the president and many members of congress are fully deserving of contempt and derision for violating their oaths of office; for entering into their positions with the full intention of violating that oath and doing the things they do in order to "transform" this society.

You people who like to quote Romans 13 need to go look at the exchange between Paul and the high priest in the Temple in Acts 23. Ananias unrighteously orders that Paul be struck. When Paul calls him on his evil act, Ananias appeals to his own position of Kohen Gadol.  But Paul, in so many words, corrects that error by pointing out that the man's unlawful use of his power rendered his position meaningless.  I don't need to engage in any deep midrashic thought to understand the lesson there for myself as a believer.  It means that God does not condemn me for expressing contempt for those who abuse their position or authority.

Paul wrote that passage above because this radical new idea of freedom in Messiah was already being abused by some people as an excuse to not follow any law or earthly authority.  Such thinking needed to be corrected.

If we are never supposed to criticize anyone in authority, you need to explain to me why Yeshua said what He said to the Pharisees and Sadduccees.  I'm going to give you the same advice that Messiah gave to those same religious leaders:  "Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment."

Camping's Doomsday Fail

Yes, I know the book was written by Robert Fitzpatrick.  Read on.

If time were not an issue, I would really like to take this "Doomsday Code" book and debunk each and every issue one at a time. There is so much wrong with the book that explains how someone can come up with such egregious nonsense about prophecy, that it could not all possibly be dealt with in a single post or even a three part series.  It would take nearly the same number of pages as the book (about 380) to explain all the error.  This post is going to have to stay narrower in scope than that.  It's still a very long post.

First, I don't expect anyone who is not interested in Biblical prophecy to understand much of what I'm going to explain because many of the concepts, references, and language will be foreign to the average Christian, let alone a non-believer.  If you are not familiar with terms like pre-tribulational, post-millennial, dispensation, preterist, eschatology, replacement theology, and the like, you will be lost in this essay. For this essay to be an easy read, you would need to be familiar with the arguments surrounding these terms.

Second, one would need to know the history of end-time prophecy failures going back to 1988.  Amazingly, the author of the Doomsday Code defends the failures of those predictions.  Robert Fitzpatrick is not an original thinker.  It has become obvious to everyone who follows heretical teaching, and especially heretical teaching about prophecy, that Fitzpatrick is nothing more than a hired pen for Harold Camping.  I may simply refer to the false doctrine of this book from here on out as belonging to Camping.

Thirdly, I would like to make the main issue of this essay to be understanding how such bad doctrine comes about and thrives. How does the believer rightly discern truth from Scripture and avoid looking stupid and carrying the Lord's name in vain. That is where the focus of the believer ought to be.  And yes, that really is the meaning of the third of the ten commandments

Let's start with an amazing quote from Fitzpatrick's book:

"For one thing, we need to understand that every word of the Bible, in the original language in which it was written, is the word of God. In 2 Timothy 3:16, we read: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:"
The original Greek, translated in this scripture as “given by inspiration of God,” carries the idea that scripture is “God breathed.” It's as if each word came from the mouth of God. God also took care to be sure that the Bible was preserved in tact [sic]- every word of it - down through the ages. He raised up a class of Jewish scribes who faithfully and accurately copied out the exact words, checking and rechecking so that there would be no error. If we come across a scripture that appears to contradict something else we have read in the Bible, we need to dig (and pray!) a bit deeper for understanding. . . .  By examining the way a word is used elsewhere in the Bible, you may be better able to understand the sense in which it is used in a scripture you are studying. This approach to the Bible works because the Bible is a cohesive whole, all coming from a single source.  [from page xxii of the Introduction]

The problem is, Fitzpatrick proceeded to ignore all of that advice in writing the rest of the book.  In reading the book I discover that "Replacement Theology" and worse abounds.  This is the idea that the "Christian" church has replaced Israel in God's plan throughout the pages of the Bible and history.  This is a direct denial of what Paul wrote to Timothy in the above quote, it denies the clear teaching of Paul in his letter to the Romans, and denies the prophecies of Scripture about Israel that have yet to be fulfilled, such as Ezekiel 38, and of what was just quoted from the book.  An important rule of proper Biblical interpretation is that you cannot interpret the meaning of one verse to be in direct opposition to the meaning of any other verse.  For clarification's sake, we are talking about the understanding of meaning, and not interpretation of translation.

Another indispensible rule of interpretation is exegesis versus eisegesis.  Eisegesis is essentially reading the meaning that you want into the text.  Fitzpatrick actually prepares us for the fact that he is going to commit this crime in chapter two on page 15:

"The intended meaning of a scripture will be its spiritual meaning: that's what God is teaching us. Sometimes the spiritual meaning is extremely difficult to understand, especially because the apparent meaning ontradicts it."

Whenever somebody claiming to be a Bible teacher starts in with something like that, he had better have lots and lots of scholarship, reason, and logic to back up what he's trying to prove.  Even the most respected Jewish sages and Bible scholars in the Christian world know that a basic rule of interpretation is that any deeper, or "spiritual" meaning should never, never contradict the plain meaning of the text.

 Torah scholars going back centuries believe that there are four levels of meaning embedded in the Torah. Jewish scholars use the word PaRDeS, the Hebrew word for orchard,  to remember these four levels. The first is Peshat; the plain, literal reading of the text. It is most often understood to be "simple" or the simple path.  The idea is that while you can enjoy all the other stuff along the path, the path keeps you from getting lost.  If you stray too far out into the weeds, you lose the correct way.  When you start coming up with interpretations where you change words or redefine them from their plain meaning, you can make the text say anything you want to and devolve into a bunch of nonsense.  The following three levels of exegesis must follow from the first level and not contradict it.  This is the heart of exegesis, the meaning of which is to draw out the meaning that the author intended.  All proper Biblical understanding flows from the idea that we are to avoid reading into the text what we would like for it to mean, and instead, we search out to understand the meaning as God Himself intended.

The next level of understanding is Remez. This refers to "hints" or more deep and allegorical meaning of the text without changing the plain meaning of the text.  For example; many of the events of Joseph's life directly hint at the events of Yeshua's (Jesus') life.  That doesn't mean that Joseph or the events that happened to him or Egypt, or Jacob and his sons are to be taken as anything other than literal events, but those events were a foreshadowing of the coming, suffering, Messiah.  The same applies to Moses.

The third level of understanding is called the Derash, which means "to dig", and a teaching on this level is referred to as a "midrash." Most of what we know to be the Jewish religious traditions are the result of midrashic explanation of the Torah.  Yeshua agreed with the vast majority of the midrashic teaching that was followed by the pharisees of His day.  Only where it departed from the plain meaning of the text of Torah did He correct them.  Most midrashic teaching is based on broad understanding of quite a few texts of Scripture and not some extrapolated conjecture based on just one or two verses.  Midrashic teachings on Scripture are always considered debatable and never carry the weight of infallible dogma.  However, some of it has become so well accepted as truth over the centuries that nobody has a reason to question it.

The fourth and last level is called Sod (rhymes with "mode") and is the esoteric level,  really deep meaning that the sages derive.  An example could be the belief that women are just naturally more spiritual than men and that is why they are exempt from many of the rules such as wearing tzitzit and praying three times a day at specific times as the orthodox do.  This is where the Qabbalistic writings come from and they are not intended for those who are not deeply grounded in basic Torah study, even though they too, are never supposed to violate the Peshat understanding of Scripture.

There is so much wrong with Camping's interpretations of Scripture because he so blatantly violates the rules of exegesis.  In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black we have this quote from page 210:

"These false apostles, deceitful workers, are church leaders who appear to be ministers of righteousness but who are actually ministers of Satan! Just as the early church was being “seeded” with tares - people who looked like true believers but were not - the early church was also being infiltrated by false apostles. Now you may be wondering if this situation which occurred ages ago may have been corrected, so that the church could go on to a glorious future until the end of time. Sadly, that is not the case."

Then, incredibly, on page 211, he quotes the passage from 2 Thess. 2:1-4 which explains why he is wrong about the Doomsday prediction.  I will come back to that passage in a moment, because that is the passage which I will use to prove why Camping is wrong and how badly he departs from exegesis.

See this quote from page 229:

"Incredibly, the entire focus of these annual feasts is on the Lord Jesus. It is so sad that, even today, many Jews all around the world are so careful to keep these feast days but are unaware of their significance."

Let me tell you what is sad.  That people who claim to be followers of the Messiah have abandoned God's appointed feasts on His designated calendar and cannot begin to understand their true significance because they have trashed thousands of years of hard earned Jewish wisdom and understanding and bought into some idea that Yeshua came and created a whole new religion.  But Camping's doctrine gets even worse.

In spite of what he wrote in the introduction, Fitzpatrick goes on to say the following on pages 266-267:

"Many people read Mark 13:32 and understand it to mean that the timing - the day and the hour of the rapture - cannot possibly be known because not even the Son of God knows it; but the scripture can't have that meaning.  [Warning! - Warning! - Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!  Where's the html code that let's me make this insert flash?]  The Lord Jesus must know the timing. Remember, it was He who wrote the Bible. He is the Word of God and He is God. It was He who told Daniel to “seal the book” to the time of the end; and it was He who unsealed that book (the Bible), as we read in Revelation 5. It was only after the book was unsealed in these latter days that we learned the timing of God's plan. The Lord Jesus, therefore, must have known the timing; but if that is so, we must search to understand the meaning of the scripture telling us the Son does not know of “that day and that hour.”

I've been in the world of Christendom long enough to understand most all of the doctrinal positions from original sin to transubstantiation in the eucharist.  I understand the trinitarian doctrine, but when you carry it to an extreme that causes you to contradict direct statements of Scripture, such as the one above, then there is a serious problem with your doctrine.  You don't search to understand (read re-interpret) the Scripture to make it work with your doctrine and your desire to know something that God has repeatedly made clear that you cannot know.

While we cannot know the day or the hour, we can pay attention to the signs.  Yeshua did give us the signs to look for so as to know that the time is getting closer.  He told us to watch and pray.  I could go through a list of things, but many of them could be considered vague or ambiguous.  I don't need many or even a few to demonstrate why Camping's prediction was doomed to failure.  My example also proves pre-tribulationalist doctrine wrong as well.  There isn't going to be two second comings of Messiah as required by pre-trib doctrine; some secret catching away and then some months or days or years later Messiah comes back to administer justice.

Paul made it clear that there was one event that the believers could look for that had to happen before the "catching away of the saints" (in Greek it is called the harpazo).  It helps to make sure that we understand the full context of Paul's statement.  In Paul's first letter to the Thessolonians, he is explaining how the new believers need not worry about the fate of those who have died.  He does this by giving the details of what will happen when the Lord comes back for his own and brings about the resurrection of the dead.  The key details make it clear that everyone can know that the event is happening.  "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; . . ."  This statement is in agreement with the angels who spoke to the disciples at Messiah's ascension. That Yeshua would come down the same way he went up.  Other Scripture confirms that the conquering King Messiah would touch down on the Mount of Olives.  The point here is that Paul is talking about the triumphal return of Messiah at the "end days."  Paul continues: "and the dead in Messiah shall rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord." (1 Thess. 4:16-17)

We can surmise from the text that someone or some group was causing the believers in Thessolonica to worry that they had missed the return of Messiah.  By this time in the first century, there were already heretics who were teaching all sorts of bizarre doctrines about Messiah and the way of salvation.  People who tried to blend beliefs from the pagan religions or that you had to prove complete adherence to all the Jewish traditions in order to earn salvation.  The problem is, it didn't stop even after Paul's first letter.  Therefore, he had to write a second letter, reasserting his authority and warning that those who taught false doctrine about the return of Messiah would suffer judgment "on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, . . ."  And continuing in his second letter on this very same subject, he now gives the Thessalonicans more details about the second coming so that they can rest assured what to look for and how not to be fooled by false prophets.  Here is the text:

"Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, that you may not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come."

Let's be perfectly clear in our understanding  of the subject.  Paul uses three distinct features to make sure that we are talking about one, single event.  The coming of Messiah; or in Greek the parousia.  The gathering together to Him; which is in Greek the harpazo, or "catching away."  Both of these features being part of "the day of the Lord" which is a very specific phrase repeated throughout prophetic Scripture to describe when God comes to earth in final judgment.  Bear in mind that Paul spent time with these people as he described in the first letter, teaching them and building them up as a congregation.  He expected them to understand what he was saying.  He chose his words carefully (or you could say the Holy Spirit was choosing the words carefully since this was meant to be Scripture for all believers into the future and we were all supposed to learn from it.).  Paul continues:

"Let no one in any way deceive you, for *it* will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction."

Stop and be sure  you understand what the pronoun *it* is referring to.  One should not need an advanced degree in language to comprehend that *it* is referring to the event described in verses one and two of the second chapter of 2nd Thessalonians.  Any reader who does not understand that, needs to seek remedial reading instruction as soon as possible.

Verse three also tells us what the two things are that must occur before the parousia, harpazo, and the "day of the Lord" can happen.  While the apostasy might not be something that everyone can agree on in easily definable terms, the "man of lawlessness" is pretty much understood by all believers to be THE anti-Christ, or the final archtype Antichrist.  He wasn't the first of his kind.  Paul wrote those verses being fully aware of Antiochus Epiphanes and what he did in the Temple at Jerusalem.  Such was considered an "abomination of desolation" which required the cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple.  The miracle of that re-dedication is why we celebrate Channukah today.   But this Antichrist is defined by Paul in verse nine as having all the power of Satan, being able to perform miracles and wonders.
In verse four, Paul explains that this Antichrist, this man, will exalt himself above all gods and will take his seat in the Temple, declaring himself to be the only god.  Such an event would be another "abomination of desolation" and fitting the description given by Messiah Himself in Matthew 24:15 as part of the answer to the direct questions of the disciples about the sign of His coming and the end of the age.  Read the whole 24th chapter of Matthew.

Paul thus exhorts the believers at Thessalonica that unless this event of another evil man, the final evil man with the power of Satan, coming into the Temple and desecrating it happens for all to see, keeping with the prophecy of Messiah Himself, there would be no return of Messiah.  End of story.

In wrapping this whole issue up, I can state with the utmost confidence that I don't need to re-define any plain readings of Scripture to make it say what it doesn't say. I  come to the clear conclusion that while "no man can know the day nor the hour" of the return of Messiah or the actual moment that begins the "day of the Lord," I not only can, but I am exhorted by Scripture to know and watch for the signs that must take place before Messiah returns.  So, all you pre-tribbers out there reading this: you have been warned.  You see, the Scripture teaches that Messiah's return, and our "catching away" or rapture, and the beginning of the "day of the Lord" cannot happen until the events that Paul and the Messiah described.  Those events cannot happen until a Temple has been built and is in service in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.  The "Holy place" is the Holy of Holies.  You can allegorize it away as being or representing something else, but you do so to your own detriment.

The biggest problem with this whole mess is that it gives skeptics of the Bible something to laugh at.  They won't say that Harold Camping and Robert Fitzpatrick were wrong about what the Bible teaches.  They'll say that all of those Christians who believe in that silly Bible are all a bunch of idiots.  They will mock God and ridicule the Bible.

All those who claim allegiance to Messiah are called upon to study and show themselves to be faithful disciples, understanding the Word of God properly and leading others to salvation, not creating opportunities for evil to seem successful.

If you can't understand how to use the comments feature, you can email me with your questions, comments, or criticisms at the address in the sidebar.

Shalom Y'all

Never Enough Time

I truly wish I had been able to post my full essay on why Harold Camping and his doomsday prophecy was wrong on Sunday, May 22, 2011.  However, the Ben-David Farm doesn't just stop needing attention because false prophets raise their ugly heads.

I'm still reading Mr. Fitzpatrick's book, The Doomsday Code, because I do believe it is important to be fair in my analysis.  In case you didn't know, as I didn't know at first, Mr. Fitzpatrick simply penned the book, but the ideas are all from Harold Camping.  I got to hear a former staff member for the Christian Research Institute on someone else's internet radio program, who founded her own ministry called Apostasy Alert. Jackie Alnor has been documenting false teachers in Christendom for many years now, but unfortunately, she herself claims to be in the pre-tribulation rapture camp, so her understanding of Biblical hermeneutics needs some serious work as well.  Therein lies the danger of focusing too much on examining heresy and not enough on studying the truth.

That aside, Alnor has been familiar with Camping's nonsense for years, including his false prediction about Jesus coming back in 1994.  You would have thought that such an event would have diminished Camping's heretical ministry to obscurity, but unfortunately, people are especially gullible when it comes to religious issues.  This is because so much of what makes up the religious world is all about feelings and has little to nothing to do with facts, history, reason, or logic, making it fair game for skeptics to sit back and laugh at those who claim any belief in any god; the real one or any number of false ones.

So, I'm working on the post.  I want to do a good, thorough job, but also not go down a bunch of odd rabbit trails.  My time is limited and dictated by the needs of the farm.  I also have to wade through a lot of information to focus on just the relevant parts of Camping's thought processes.  Most of the first half of Fitzpatrick's book is apparently about getting non-believers to accept the Bible and speaks of history and prophecy in general and has some other bad doctrine mixed in there as well.  When I distill out the issues of eschatology and have a complete, coherent argument on the issue, I will post it.

Please be patient with me.

Doomsday Debacle

I could have waited until May 22nd and posted on this subject, but I want to take a stand now and make sure everybody who reads my blog knows that I think Mr. Fitzpatrick is an embarrassment to Christianity.  He is doing the very thing that Scripture warns not to do.

Oh, I don't mean predicting Messiah's return.  That's just part of it. He is teaching a bunch of false doctrine with his book.  His biggest problem is that he is causing the Bible and The Creator to be mocked.  Granted that pagans will mock the Bible anyway, but "Christians" are not supposed to give them the reason and ammunition to do so.

I'm not ready to post a full expose on Mr. Fitzpatrick's egregious theory.  I downloaded the PDF file of his book and have only made my way to page 148 of a 384 page book.  I've already found so many errors I can't stand it.  It will not be easy limiting myself to just explaining why his doomsday prediction alone is wrong.

Stay tuned.    Shalom Y'all.

Three Days, Three Nights

When did Yeshua die and when did He rise?

When I was still identifying with Christians, I would encounter skeptics and later on Muslims using the same questions to point out that Christians were either stupid, inconsistent, or both.  I would often sidestep the problems or simply chalk it up to a lack of faith on the part of the skeptic.  I didn't want to have to recognize and deal with my own error or the laziness I had for dealing with that error.  It was pretty silly considering I was also teaching apologetics; teaching why you could trust the Bible on everything it said, but I didn't want to deal with certain issues because it would cause ill feelings in the church itself.  I liked the traditions and didn't want to change them either, and I certainly didn't want to risk the alienation of friends and family by pointing out error and correcting it.  I'd already gone through that when discovered that the pre-tribulational view of eschatology was wrong and I had family members get very angry with me for pointing out where Scripture made it clear that it was wrong.

Now that I've taken on Christmas and Easter as not just being pagan, but in direct violation of God's Word, I should also tackle the issue of Yeshua's death and resurrection and how important it is that we get this right.  I can't just put it on the back burner of insignificant details any more.  I've invested too much time and energy into telling people that the biggest difference between belief in the Bible and the Messiah versus all other religions in the world is that the Bible is verifiable truth in history.  These aren't just fantastic stories or myths designed to illustrate some "greater truth."  If the Bible is not telling the actual truth about people, places, and events, then I'm an idiot and no one should listen to me.  So if I pass off traditions of the church that are proveably false and which skeptics can use to discredit the Bible, I'm not doing God any favors.  And while it is one thing to pass on bad information in ignorance, it is evil to pass on lies when you know they are lies.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Yeshua HaMashiach, or the man that many in the Western world refer to as Jesus Christ, was not crucified and did not die on a Friday.  He also did not rise from the grave on Sunday morning.  Yeshua, the promised Messiah was crucified on a Wednesday afternoon during the same time that the Passover lambs were being slaughtered.  In keeping with prophecy, both in the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the words of Yeshua Himself, he would be dead in the grave for three days and three nights.  In case you have never thought of it before, you can't get three full days out of Friday night to Sunday morning at sunrise.  If the Friday night to Sunday morning scenario is how it went down, that would make Jesus out to be a liar.  That's not what I am out to prove.  I'm out to prove that God and His Word are true and that the traditions of men are at fault.  Now, if you love your denomination and your tradition more than you love God and the truth, this is going to be very difficult for you to look into.  I wouldn't be surprised if I've lost some readers into the first paragraph.

In order for us to understand how this error occurred, we need to understand history.  We also need a better understanding of the Hebrew, Biblical roots of the faith.  Since the Roman Empire hijacked Christianity in the fourth century, several things have happened.  First is that much understanding of the Tanakh, or "Old Testament" became lost to the Gentile converts.  Secondly, a lot of pagan beliefs and practices got blended into church practices with a veneer of new meaning to make it palatable to believers.  Third, an insidious hatred of anything Jewish or of "The Law" crept into the churches. And finally, the calendar and almost everything about reckoning time became corrupted from God's way to man's way.

How many times have you wondered why the Jews keep the Sabbath on Saturday?  I know that as a kid, I always thought it odd that the Calendar shows Sunday as the first day of the week.  Why is that?  Because it is.  Know why it's called Sunday?  In honor of the Sun god.  You can call him Osiris, but it actually goes back to Nimrod, a grandson of Noah. In Hebrew, Sunday is simply Yom Rishon, or "day first."  I like how the Spanish language preserves the proof of what some of these days actually are.  Saturday is Sabbados, not hard to figure that one out.  Monday is really "moon day" as the Spanish confirmes by calling it Lunes, as in lunar. Explaining all of this background may make for a somewhat lengthy post, but all of this information really helps to comprehend how we got to this tangled mess.

Because the vast majority of Gentile Christians don't understand the Torah or the rest of the Old Testament that well, they will gloss over or miss, or just flat out misinterpret many details in the New Testament.  The issue over the death and resurrection of Yeshua is a wonderful example.  People read that they were in a hurry to get the body of Yeshua down off the cross because Sabbath was approaching.  All days begin and end at Sundown in the Biblical way of reckoning.  Why?  Because starting in Genesis, God said, "There was evening, and then morning, one day."  Now the problem for Gentiles untrained in the Scriptures is that they assumed that all Sabbaths are the seventh day of the week.  Not so.  God appointed several feast days and the two most notable feasts are the Passover and Sukkot (Feast of Booths or Tabernacles) in which the first and seventh days are "High Sabbaths" and they occur according to specific months and dates, instead of according to the week.  We just experienced it this month with Passover.  We observed the High Sabbath starting at sundown on Monday the 18th (going into the 15h day of Nisan)  Then we celebrated Shabbat on Saturday, and then we had a High Sabbath the very next Tuesday.

We have plenty of direct information in the gospels that tell us that Yeshua's crucifixion took place at Passover. This point is beyond argument.  The problem comes from Gentiles who started running the church in the fourth century tryin to impose things into the understanding of the events and introducing pagan rituals and customs into the celebration of Christ's death and resurrection. Remember that the religious leaders were hanging on every word of Yeshua, looking for a chance to discredit him as Messiah.  By the time of this Passover things had reached a boiling point because the people were all believing that Yeshua must be the Messiah.  Interestingly enough, Yeshua had made his triumphal entry on a donkey four days prior in fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel 9, and that was the same day that all the households of Israel were to choose a lamb to take into their houses for the three day period of inspection to make sure that the lamb met the flawless standard for sacrifice.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Yeshua has to celebrate the Passover Seder with His disciples a day early because He has an appointment with destiny. To what is us would be Tuesday night Yeshua gathers with His disciples in the upper room and conducts the Seder.  Wednesday is the fourteenth of Nisan.  Preparation day to the Jews.  This is unique to the Passover feast.  It is the last day to make sure that all the leaven (Chametz) has been cleared from the house.  This is the day when the lambs are slain at the time of the afternoon sacrifice at the Temple.  Yeshua was arrested in the middle of the night or in the early dark of morning of that Wednesday.  By the time the morning sun was well above the horizon, Yeshua had endured a kangaroo court trial by a handful (not a quorum) of the Sanhedrin, and been to Herod's palace.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of lambs were bleating in the Temple courtyard awaiting their slaughter for the Passover feast.  Women everywhere were rushing about making whatever final preparations were necessary because the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matzot) was about to begin at sundown.  Now the crucial thing to remember that the leaders wanted to catch Yeshua in a lie or in violating Torah.

Matthew 12:38-40 "Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas (Jonah) was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

Three days and three nights.  You can't lie down on Friday night, get up Sunday morning and call that three days and three nights.  No amount of verbal or linguistic gymnastics by either Catholic or Protestant theologians is going to get around that.  There is no need to, unless your purpose is to preserve tradition over the truth of Scripture.

According to the gospel text, we know with certainty which day it was on the Hebrew calendar (God's calendar), because John 19:31 states: "The Jews therefore, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away."  This means that the crucifixion took place on the 14th of Nisan, regardless of what day of the week it was. There is only one "day of preparation" on the Hebrew calendar.   But first an explanation for those who might be wondering: why the breaking of the legs?

Crucifixion is so incredibly slow and painful a death because it is the slowest, most agonizing form of asphyxiation.  However, the body still retains the overwhelming desire to survive so to take a breath is involuntary.  In crucifixion this means pushing one's feet against the stapes.  By breaking the legs of the victim, he can no longer push himself up to take a breath, and the pulmonary edema speeded up to hasten the death.  Torah demanded that none of the bones of the Passover lamb be broken (Exodus 12:46).  Scripture prophesied that no bones of the Messiah would be broken (Psalm 34:20).

As Yeshua was being raised up on the cross the priests in the Temple were slaughtering lambs as fast as they could as twighlight was approaching.  It must have been about this time that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were getting permission to take the body and a shroud, and hope they could get the body in Joseph's tomb before the High Sabbath was upon them.  Then they needed to get back home to observe the Passover, have the Seder meal and begin the Sabbath rest of the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  At sunset of that Thursday evening, that Sabbath would be over and then the women could purchase and work on preparing the spice mixture that they intended to use on the body of the Messiah.  But they would only have the daylight of Friday to do all that.  Then they needed to observe the weekly Sabbath that began at sundown on Friday night.

Luke 23:50-56  "And behold, a man named Joseph, who was a member of he Council, a good and righteous man (he had not consented to their plan and action), a man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was waiting for he kingdom of God; this man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.  And he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid Him in a tomb cut into the rock, where no one had ever lain.  And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin. And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment."

A lot of information is crammed into the verse above, but the events are in chronological order. Luke is known for being a very careful historian.  He doesn't mention anything about spices being brought by Nicodemus or Joseph. Maybe they did.  The time element here is important.  There wasn't time to do anything with the body because the sun was setting on the day of preparation.  There was only enough time to put the body in the linen shroud and lay it in the tomb.  The women followed along so they could know exactly where the body was and deal with the spices and wrapping of the body when there would be more time.  Luke doesn't explain religious procedure here because the assumption is that the reader understands all of that.  The women returned home, but they didn't start working on preparation of spices and ointments as soon as they got home.  When they got up the following morning, on what we would call Thursday, they were observing a High Sabbath.  It would be Friday morning before they would begin working on the spices and ointments and tearing up the cloth strips for wrapping the body and getting everything set to go back to the sepulchre.  Even though the text doesn't say it explicitly, it stands to reason that they all knew that a guard had been posted until at least the third day if not indefinately.  But there was not enough time on Friday to both get the anointing stuff and bindings prepared and go to the tomb and work on the body before the weekly Sabbath arrived, so they would have to wait until that Sabbath was over as well.  Even though the sabbath ended when three stars were visible in the sky on Saturday night, who would go to a tomb at night?  The women planned on going to the tomb at daybreak of the first day of the week, Yom Rishon.

Looking at the timeline again, we see that Yeshua would have been dead Wednesday night and placed in the tomb.  That's Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night; Thursday day, Friday day, and Saturday day until sundown.  Three days, and three nights.  And because Messiah is the Lord of the Sabbath, it would make sense that he rose from the dead at the end of the Sabbath day, not on Sunday morning, well into the first day of the week.  No need to push the resurrection to that artificial time frame.  The women couldn't come to the tomb until that time, but that is no reason to assume that God raised Him from the dead just before the women showed up hours after the first day of the week had begun.  We are told what the women saw after the fact, not that they witnessed the resurrection. There was an angel there to tell them He was gone, but the guards had all vanished by this time.

Another important piece of evidence to this case is the fact that for the first 300 years following the resurrection, the above scenario was accepted and taught by the early ekklesia (church).  Epiphanus, Victorinus of Petau in 307 AD, Lactantius, Wescott, Cassiodorus, and Gregory of Tours. Later, Finis Dake and R.A. Torrey also believed in a Wednesday crucifixion.  This is because they took the time to study Scripture and understand the God appointed Feast and how it was all observed by the Jews.

There are a couple of good essays that cover the same information with other details that you can find here and here.

Why the church changed to celebrating Easter is another issue that should be dealt with at length in another post.  Why the protestant churches still celebrate pagan holidays with pagan symbols and rituals is still another issue that we need to think about.

Paul’s Letter To The Romans: Part 2

To start at the beginning, click here.

Paul spends most of chapter five explaining the monumental accomplishment of Messiah suffering death and being raised again as the ultimate offering to atone for sin.  The idea of ritualistic sacrifice was nothing new to the Romans or the Greeks or any of the people inside or outside of Israel.  What was so amazing and foreign a concept to all of them, was the idea that one man could be the perfect and only necessary sacrifice for the transgressions of the whole world and for all time.  We are several centuries, which might as well be an eternity,  from having such a concept deeply ingrained in our way of life.  Therefore, I can say with confidence that what Paul was saying in chapter five had a much greater, and even a different impact on the hearers in Rome than it does on a modern western person.

But even after spending that much effort on explaining that God made it possible by sending His Shekinah into the body of a man in order to become such a perfect sacrifice that it could atone for all sin for all time, Paul asks the rhetorical question that begins chapter six: Do we continue sinning [violating Torah] in order to show how much greater the grace is than the offense against Torah?

He makes the point that we should be dead to sin. Just as when a Gentile in the past converted to Judaism and was circumcised and baptized into a new life of following Torah, the believer in Messiah became baptized into a new level of spirituality that empowered the believer to keep and obey Torah as never before.

Paul makes the statement in 6:14 that “sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.”   I have seen people purposefully sinning in ways that were obvious even to unbelievers, by just citing that second phrase in the verse.  “I’m not under the law,” they would say, “I’m under grace.”  This is an evil perversion of Paul’s message.  This is why the apostle Peter wrote in his second letter near the end of the letter that Paul wrote about these things that were “hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”  (2 Peter 3:16)

No doubt some Christians will cite Paul’s example of  marriage in chapter seven as the reason for not obeying Torah, but is that the right way to think of this passage?  First of all, the wording makes it clear that Paul is talking specifically to the Jews in Rome, rather as an aside.  He does this to illustrate the point that as lifelong Jews who saw themselves married to the Torah, they needed to now see themselves as betrothed to the real bridegroom; Messiah.  You can see this illustration in its proper perspective as long as you keep in mind the words of the Messiah Himself in Matthew 5:17-20.

In an effort to keep the reader from misunderstanding, Paul clarifies in 7:7 that the Law is not sin.  Rather, the Law shows us what sin is where we might not have been aware of it without the Law as a teacher.  In 7:12 Paul further states that “the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”  He goes on to explain that the flesh is powerfully inclined toward evil, so much so, in fact, that we cannot fully obey the Law [Torah] through our own human effort alone.  So, now we are all the way into chapter seven and Paul has repeatedly asked the rhetorical question, “Is the Law the problem?”  Answer: No, sin is the problem, and the Law is there to teach us about sin.

Perhaps one could be confused when coming to chapter eight and verse two.  This is a good place to make a point about the problem of translation.  In the NASB version, the translators do us the favor of distinguishing between the two types of law that Paul speaks of in Romans, and they do this by capitalizing “Law” when it refers to Torah and they don’t capitalize “law” when it refers to a general rule.

We must understand the difference here.  Ever since the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, Torah has been understood as “The Law of Moses.”  Torah does not actually directly translate as “law.”  Torah actually means “teaching.”  But the translators knew that using the word “teaching” would have meant a great loss of importance for the word.  They knew that the Greek mind, with its polytheistic religious understanding of God’s who were capricious and fallible as human beings, and interpret the word “teaching” as being more like a suggestion.  There was and is no singularly good word in Greek or English, or perhaps any other language that explains Torah.  Torah can be as simple as it needs to be so that all can obey it and more complex and deep than any scholar can ever hope to study it.

When Paul talks about the “law of sin and of death” in 8:2, he’s talking about a law as in the laws of physics.  In this case, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”   If you want to indulge in sin, the result is that you will pay the consequences.  The fact that Yeshua came and made the ultimate sacrifice to save us from the consequences of sin does not make the law obsolete.  If you get a ticket for running a stop sign and I step up in court and pay your fine, that does not make the stop sign disappear from the corner where you failed to stop.  And if you go out and get caught running that same stop sign, you are going to find yourself right back in front of the judge.

Paul continues in 8:3 & 4 to explain that since Messiah came to be the perfect offering for sin, we believers are empowered “in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, . . .”  This statement stands in direct opposition to any idea that Paul has claimed that the Law is obsolete.  On the contrary, he is saying that we can now obey and keep the Torah in a fuller and better way than it has ever been kept before, because the Holy Spirit will help us to “not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

The rest of chapter eight is reinforcing the idea that God chooses us who believe and orders our steps and that nothing we endure is in vain.  God will not leave us nor forsake us.

In chapter nine Paul begins by grieving for his fellow Jews who are not yet believers.  He lists the benefits of being the rightful heirs to the Kingdom of God.  If the Torah (the Law) is not something good and to be treasured, why is it in the list?  Why does Paul not simply cite the covenant and the promises as the reward?  Why does he also include the Law and Temple service?  Wouldn’t that seem odd several decades after the death and resurrection of Messiah?  If the Holy Spirit is directing Paul to write these things, why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit know to dismiss this keeping of the Law and Temple service as being obsolete?  Could it be that when God kept using those words in Torah about this stuff being “forever” and “always,” He actually meant it?

And lest anyone should try to misunderstand or twist Paul’s meaning by saying that all that stuff is just for the Jews, he goes on to point out that being born of the flesh to some bloodline is not what is important.  Those who believe in the God of Abraham and His Messiah are the true children of the promise.  The flesh counts for nothing.  He further elaborates on this theme by citing the prophet Hosea.

“I will call those who were not My people, My people, . . .”

Read the whole passage.  The idea is that Gentiles who believe and are called by God can now participate in His Kingdom, being called sons of God.  But did Daddy change the rules of the house?  I don’t see any evidence of that.  Gentiles can be adopted as sons of God and begin obeying Torah.  Paul calls it “pursuing righteousness.”   Paul says that the Gentiles have now obtained that righteousness by  pursuing it in faith by believing in Messiah.  The Jews [who don’t believe in Messiah] cannot obtain that righteousness because they insist  on pursuing it by their own effort in the flesh.

Chapter ten and verse four has a statement that I’m sure has been twisted by those who would like to think that Torah is no longer in effect.

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

No doubt someone will read that and think, “end of the law” so there you go, the Law is done.  We don’t have to worry about it any more.  Well, only if you take that verse out of context and forget everything else Paul has said up to this point in Romans and ignore what the Master said in Matthew 5:17-19.  By taking all of Scripture in whole and in context, I can paraphrase Romans 10:4 by saying it this way:

The Messiah is the end goal and fulfillment of the Torah for everyone who puts their trust in Him.

It takes several more words to make it clear, but the meaning is the same and it does not violate the rule of non-contradiction when interpreting Scripture.  Let me give you another example.  Let’s say Boeing came out with an advertisement that said, “The new  777 Dreamliner is the end in comfort, speed, and fuel efficiency for transoceanic air travel.”  Would you think that all international air travel had stopped?  Would you think that they were telling you that from now on, if you wanted to fly to other parts of the world it would have to be on slow, uncomfortable cattle cars disguised as jet planes? Or would you rightly take that to mean they believed that they had reached the epitome of design in that class?

Near the end of chapter ten, Paul reveals something important.  The Gentiles who could now be grafted in by faith and called to the obedience of Torah would create jealousy and anger in the hearts of Jews.  True believers would have real joy in keeping the Torah and thus make the Jews crazy with jealousy.  Jews don’t really see mainstream “Christianity” as anything to get upset about, except for the pogroms carried out in the past in the name of the church.  Jews see nearly all of “Christianity” as a completely different religion that has hijacked parts of the Old Testament and following a false messiah, who is proven false according to Deuteronomy 13.  The God of Abraham and Moses warned them that anyone who came along with miracles, but told them to depart from Torah was worthy of death.

Keep in mind as we continue this study, or go back and read the gospels and remember that the religious leaders could never successfully accuse Yeshua of violating Torah or advocating that anyone violate Torah.

Part three is found at On Romans & Olive Trees.

What is Sinless?

This is post number twelve in the series: Why I Am Not A Christian.  This series is posted so that you can start at the beginning and go from post to post in order.  If you are new here, this will make much more sense if you start at the beginning.


Let’s pretend for a moment that the churches in the modern world, and especially the United States, have not been so thoroughly infected with post-modern, relativistic thought; that there are actually people who believe that there is such a thing as objective truth.  I know that this is hard to swallow, considering the research that’s been done by Barna and his firm, but for the purposes of this study, let’s probe the idea that there are people who wish to claim allegiance to the Messiah of the Bible on the basis of the One who created everything and not the opinions of created beings.

Before anyone can undertake to be a disciple of the God of the Bible, one must decide who is the judge and who sets the standard.  If you have decided that you are going to pick and choose which things in Scripture apply to you, you might as well go off and start your own religion and be honest about what you call it.  “St. McGillicuddy’s Church of My Opinion,” for example.  If you are going to spend most or all of your time and energy focusing on one or two doctrines and only looking for those select texts that support your argument, then you’ve descended into making yourself the judge of Scripture.  It can be done very subtly, but done nonetheless.

In this installment, I decided to use sin as the example.  In many of the older denominations, sin is hardly, if at all, talked about.  But then people rarely talk about things that have no importance in their lives, whether positive or negative. And while sin may get preached about from the pulpits of the hyper-excitement charismatic denominations, it is practically undefined.  I’ve heard it said that it is not doing what you know you should do and doing what you know you should.  Alternately I could simply say, let your conscience be your guide.

Is that right?  Is that the Biblical standard?  I don’t think so.  Scripture tells me that “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth;” (Gen. 8:21).  “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)  In order to be clear, I must stop here and define what the Scripture is talking about when it says “heart.”  It means your mind.  Not a blood pump.  Not your emotions; although your emotions are inextricably linked to it.  Not your cogitating intellect.  It is talking about your non-physical being.  The part of you that needs the rational intellect to control it.  The corresponding feature in animals would be instinct.  It’s the part of you that has desires and needs.

When men simply decide that their own conscience is the standard, they can rationalize all kinds of things.  Do you think that Hitler thought of himself as evil?  Of course not.  He believed he was doing everything he did for the good of the people of Germany.  Geoffrey Dahmer admitted in an interview with a reporter that the reason he could justify killing and eating his victims was because if we are all evolved from the primordial slime, why should we not do whatever we want?  In a very sick way, Hitler made more moral sense than Dahmer, because at least Hitler was trying to do something he felt was good for his country, while Dahmer did what he did simply because it didn’t matter.  Or someone could argue that Hitler was more evil than Dahmer, because what’s the big deal of killing and eating a few people compared to murdering about eight million people?

Each person walking the planet can have their own, individual set of standards that they can call their conscience. In reality, that means that there is no standard at all.  This is why God gave us the Torah; His “Teaching.”  And because the vast majority of churches have abandoned the standard of Torah for what does and does not constitute sin, there is confusion and chaos.  You can go to one church and be made to feel guilty for wearing make-up or pants if you’re a woman.  You can go to another church and be a practicing homosexual and be made to feel that you are just fine the way you are and what you are doing is your own business.  There are people who quit going to church because they didn’t want to be convicted of sin, while there are other people who quit going to church because they are tired of there being no real standard and the hypocrisy drives them nuts.

Which reminds me that I need to do a comprehensive post on what is and is not hypocrisy.  That is another word that has been abused into near meaninglessness.

So, when the Bible speaks of Yeshua (Jesus) of being without sin, what does it mean?  If your concept of what constitutes sin is based on nothing more than your own personal conscience, then you can define Yeshua’s sinlessness as whatever you want to.  Have you ever thought about that?

If you choose not to study the same Scriptures that Yeshua studied which defines the standard of righteousness, and you instead have some undefined idea of what sinlessness is, then you create an image for yourself and apply that image to God.  This is backwards.  This is wrong.  This is idolatry.

What if you had been there when He made a whip of cords and drove the money-changers out of the Temple courts?  Not only was he angry, but he was downright violent.  Why was that not sinful?  When He was twelve and remained at the Temple asking questions and caused his parents to be worried, why wasn’t that sinful?  Then there was sassing His momma by asking her why she didn’t know that He had to be about His Daddy’s business.

If you have never studied Torah in depth and then only read the Gospels through the eyes of a modern Gentile, you are not going to understand what the writers of the Gospels meant when they said that Yeshua was without sin.  To the “Christianized” mind, a sinless Jesus is indefinable.  Seriously.  Take a moment and ponder this.  Can you, if you claim to be a Christian, clearly define to another person, what exactly made Jesus a sinless man?  Could any two people agree on that definition?

Would you say that Jesus was the embodiment of love?  Really?  Then why did he make so many people angry?  Do the words of Yeshua in Matthew 23 sound like someone full of love for everyone?  I remember being at a dinner with distant relatives and being chastised for believing in a standard of holiness. Someone said, “Jesus’ whole reason for coming to earth was to bring us peace and love.”

Really?  Matthew 10:34-39 quotes The Master as saying:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.  He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it.”

Can you see why it is dangerous to make broad statements when you don’t really know what you are talking about?  Don’t misunderstand my point and think that I am advocating for dominion theology or some form of militant Christianity.  In order to understand that quote above, you must take into account all of the teachings of Yeshua, and that includes what Torah says as well.  Could you consider the statement above to be hyperbole?  Yes and no.  As an aside I have to point out that it is ironic that “liberals” like to accuse us “Bible Thumpers” of only seeing things in black and white, and no shades of grey, when just the opposite is true.

Do I believe that some families will be torn apart over following Yeshua?  Absolutely.  Imagine you are an orthodox Jew who converts to Christianity.  Your family will consider you dead, mourn your loss, and may even have a formal “memorial” service for you.  If you are a muslim who converts, they may actually try to kill you.  So there is no hyperbole in such a case.

But you may simply have a stressful time dealing with family relationships once you become a devout believer in the God of the Bible.  The point is that discipleship can cost you a lot, but the ultimate reward is worth whatever sacrifice you may have to make.   Back to the question of what constitutes sin.

Another reason we need the Torah and the rest of Scripture to be the standard for what is and is not sin, is because there are a lot of people who like to run around saying that God told them something.  Even when I was still only a young Christian of about five years experience, and didn’t know near as much as I do now (which will never be enough), I used to get in some heated arguments with folks when I questioned the crap that was being taught by the likes of Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland and a lot of the bilge that comes from the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

I’ve heard people like Fred Price and Jesse Duplantis say some stupid and downright heretical things which should have gotten them banned from speaking in most churches, but instead they get applauded for it.  The particulars are not what’s important for the purposes of this essay, the point is that there has to be an immovable standard that settles any arguments.  That standard has to be Scripture.

By surrendering to the knowledge that Torah is eternal; that Yeshua is Torah and Torah is Yeshua; that the Holy Spirit would never, ever, contradict Scripture, and therefore, would never tell a believer something contradicted by Scripture; I can be assured that if I do my best to follow Torah, I need not be ashamed.  When I do fall short and violate Torah, I have the ultimate High Priest and advocate in Yeshua.

Yeshua has told us plainly and clearly that Torah is eternal and is still in effect.  He came to help us understand it better, and the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) is here to give us the power to carry it out daily if we are willing to listen and submit our will to His.

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.