My People

According to the agriculturally corrected Biblical calendar of the Creator,* Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year begins at the same time as the weekly Shabbat, or Sabbath.  Originally, Adonai Himself called this the Feast of Trumpets, or Yom Teruah (Day of Trumpets).

By the way, if any of my readers have questions about this stuff, I'd be glad to try to answer them.

What follows is an example that shows the glaring difference between my people and the people who want to wipe them off the face of the earth. 



The Jihadi Muslims have stated plainly that they love death more than the Jews love life.  No argument here.

*No, I don't follow the rabbinic calendar as do 98% of the rest of the devoutly religious Jewish world.  I'm in an odd niche, believing that Yeshua is the Messiah and following a purer adherence to the Torah. This day, which starts at sundown Friday, is also the beginning of the New Moon, also known as Rosh Chodesh (lit. Head of the Month)

Long Live, O' Live, Olive

Our new olive tree

The nicest birthday gift I received this year came from my lovely wife, Twyla. I consider it ours, and not mine. Every time I walk past it, it makes me smile.  I think of how much joy it will bring me to care for it and shape it as it grows.  Olive trees are one of the ideal trees for pruning and shaping.  Olive trees, the fruit, and the oil, all have special meaning. Now, I've got this cute little Manzanilla olive tree in the back yard, in a pot.  We won't put it in the ground, unfortunately, but you'll understand why.  The olive tree is known to botanists as Olea europaea, with six basic subspecies and over twenty well known cultivars, each having unique qualities and flavors.

Olive trees may seem like a paradox.  They are extremely tough compared to most plants in the entire plant kingdom, yet severe enough cold can kill them.  In fact, they are more likely to be killed by too much water or too much cold and yet they are known to survive severe drought and even fire. A mature and healthy olive tree can be chopped down to the ground and its root system will put up new shoots and likely survive and thrive.  Same thing can happen if you burn one of these trees to the ground.  Olive trees don't like a fully tropical environment.  They prefer a moderately cold period in order to flower and set fruit well.  Apparently it needs to get below 45° F for some time.  Perhaps someone could adapt one of the many olive species to an always warm climate, but why bother?

Olive wood vase

Once olive trees become well established in the right environment they can grow very old.  In several places around the Mediterranean Sea, there are olive trees that are over 2,000 years old.  It is undeniable that some of the trees on the Mount of Olives outside the old city walls of Jerusalem are at least two millennia old. Olive wood from the Holy Land and wherever it grows is used to make all kinds of things. From furniture to eating utensils and even small communion or kiddush cups.  We happen to have a couple such kiddush cups from Israel. Most people probably agree that it would be a sin to use any kind of stain on the wood before sealing it. The wood is just too beautiful with all the variances of grain color and naturally occurring patterns.  Of course, there is no reason to seal any wood that is used for food or beverage consumption.  Some may think that it's just a coincidence that wood still makes the best cutting surface for food.  Not just because wood won't dull a knife edge quickly the way other materials might, but because there are natural substances in wood that are powerfully anti-microbial.  This is true even with very old cutting boards.

A Torah Scroll

Very fine olive wood is often selected to be used for the spindles upon which a Kosher Torah scroll is wound.

Every part of the olive tree is used.  The wood, the leaves, and the fruit which is classified as a drupe.  The simple way to think of a drupe is "stone fruit," meaning it has a hard pit in the middle of a fleshy, edible fruit that contains the actual seed inside of that inner hard shell.  Peaches and cherries are examples of drupes. The various cultivars of olives can be described as having flavors and aromas anywhere from fragrant and fruity to buttery and meat-like.  How's that for a range of tastes?

The olive tree is nothing like a conifer or a holly, but it too, is an evergreen.  This is a big benefit if you live where the temperatures make it necessary to move a potted specimen indoors to protect from hard freezing. Unless you allow the tree to get stressed very much, it's leaves don't turn brown and drop off.  Olive trees don't mind frost.  Damage does not occur to the tender parts of the tree, such as new branch and twig growth, unless the temperature gets below 22° F and it takes several hours below 15° to do serious damage to the thicker parts of the tree.  This is why it's a good idea to keep an olive tree in a nice pot and be prepared to move it inside if you live where it gets consistently colder than those temperatures, as we do here.  An olive tree can produce a fairly decent amount of fruit in a five to eight gallon sized pot.  Fruit production will depend on the species and cultivar, weather conditions and the level of care given the tree.

Olive trees hate to have their "feet wet."  Not only do olive trees produce better and tastier olives in drier conditions, they are very susceptible to fungal disease if they are planted in very rich soil that stays moist all the time.  The conditions that are great for most vegetables and other plants are totally wrong for olives.  They prefer rocky, sandy, almost consistently dry earth to grow well in and produce the richest tasting olives.  When the trees are just getting started they need some care and better conditions, but the older they get, and the more trials they endure,  the tougher they get.  Is there a lesson here, or what?


The olive leaves are now harvested because it has been discovered that they have anti-aging, immune system stimulating, and anti-biotic effects.  Of course, it has been known since the Garden of Eden that olive oil is an anti-biotic and has many healing qualities. But actual clinical research has shown that  olive leaf extracts are proven to reduce blood pressure, fight fungi infections, and reduce inflammation.  A fresh extract of the leaves was recently shown to have more than double the antioxidant qualities than that of green tea extract.  On top of that, it had 400% of the vitamin C content.

Among natural medicine practioners, olive leaf is used to fight all kinds of viral infections, including colds and flu, yeast infections, and ailments such as Epstein-Barr, shingles, and herpes.  Consumption of both the oil and the leaf extract reduce blood levels of low density lipoproteins or LDL cholesterol.

Ancient olive press

Olives are one of the few fruits that are good to eat whether picked green or fully ripe.  They can be preserved in pickling brine or in their own oil.  The process of extracting the oil  would take an entire post by itself, and perhaps the day will come when we might want to experiment in learning how to do just that.  In ancient times it was done by grinding the olive flesh into paste and then crushing it between mats of palm frond or grass mats, using pits carved out of rock and using small cranes with counterbalances to load stones on top of the mats.  The liquid is crushed out of the meat of the fruit and then the watery part separates from the oil.  Olives that are grown for their oil have up to half of their weight in oil.

Somebody is probably wondering about the designation "Extra-Virgin" for olive oil.  How can something be "extra-virgin?"  Kind of like being "extra-dead."  You either are or you aren't.  Actually it developed as a grade and has a very specific meaning.  Not only is it from the very first pressing of olives, but it has to have a certain subjective grade of aroma and taste, as well as a maximum level of fatty acid content no greater than 0.8 gram per 100 grams.  The first pressing of the olive oil was what Adonai commanded be for use in lighting the menorah and menorot in the Temple, and for use in formulating anointing oil.  In case you want to know, olive oil in Hebrew is "shemen zaiyeet" or "oil of olives."

I hope that in the future, I will be able to share pictures as I cultivate this tree and more like it.  The blooming and fruiting, the pruning and care.  By the way, if you live in the panhandle of Florida or Southern Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and can plant such trees in an area where it can stay well drained after rain, you might consider planting as many olive trees as you can.  I know I would.

Shalom Y'all

Think A Second Time

It is only the second time since starting this blog that I have had a request to post on something.  I didn't do it the first time because I felt insufficiently moved to do a good job on it.  If there is one thing I know about blogs, it is this; if the writer is not passionate about the subject, it won't be worth reading.

In the case of the death of Osama bin-Laden, emotions apparently have been running high.  I say apparently because that seems to be what the media want  it to seem like. But ask yourself if, beyond the commentary-on-the-weather type of chit chat with folks you happened to encounter in your day back on Monday and Tuesday, how much time did you or any of those people spend celebrating or mourning the news about it?

What I found interesting about the story was how rapidly the story changed from moment to moment.  This in spite of the fact that we don't have television and don't watch the news.  I stay informed by surfing the web so I can quickly filter through all the mind numbing garbage, such as how important it was that the new princess' dress was somehow upstaged by her little sister or something to that effect.  The headlines on the Yahoo start page make my jaw drop only at their inanity and worthlessness.

The story about bin-laden is not really about his death.  What should make any thinking person sit up and take notice is how the story unfolded. What should scare the hell out of the American people is how incompetent are the people in the White House, or if it isn't incompetence, it is how stupid the American people are for not recognizing when they are being manipulated.

The request of me was to post on the apparent celebrating about the death of bin-laden by so many Americans, and supposedly Christian ones at that.  I promise I will get to that, but first, we need to think about what is really going on.  I commented at another blog because the story was still fresh when people immediately began to question whether or not bin-laden was dead and I agreed that there were too many problems with the official story and this from an administration that lies so much you can't trust them to tell you that the sky is blue.  For my opinion I was accused of wearing a tin-foil hat.  Like I care.

In just six days there have been so many changes to the story of how the operation was conducted, who saw what, and who was killed, that we now have more questions than were generated by the Kennedy assassination.  All the proof I need that idiots are in the White House is that they bragged about having OBL's computers and other informational assets.  Who in their right mind gives a terrorist enemy a complete heads-up like that?  That is black-hole stupid. (Check my glossary page.)  What you release for public consumption is that the computers and other electronic equipment and papers were destroyed by OBL's men when they heard the raid beginning and what little survived the attack didn't seem to be anything of importance.

We are told that OBL was positively identified with DNA.  We had OBL's DNA?  No.  It was DNA from a family member.  Really?  That means there are only a couple of dozen other people who could also show enough similar markers for some lab rat to claim that it was OBL.  We can't see photos.  Body has been dumped.  Yeah.  And according to some "moderate" commenting at another blog, I'm a tin-foil hat kook.  I could only be more honored if Keith Olberman would declare me the worst person in the world.

On to the issue of celebrating the death of OBL.  I find it interesting that this is now an issue when nothing much has been said since 2001 about the deaths of many, many other members of Al Qaeda.  If you are just a nameless foot soldier, it doesn't rise to the level of discussion in the media.  Why?  Because it wouldn't inflame emotions on both sides to the level that such a high profile character does.  Since at least 2006, the media has quit even pretending that they are objective.  The purpose is twofold.  Either find or create controversy to drive ratings and a statist agenda, and use their soapbox to divert attention from the truly important issues.  Bringing attention to people who seem to be chastising those who are happy that OBL is dead is a great way to rabble rouse and keep the attention on that story.  Let's get people fighting about this issue in little sound bytes that don't really solve anything but keep the attention focused on a story that ultimately has nothing to do with the more serious problems at hand.  If you haven't seen the movie, "Wag the Dog" with DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman, I suggest you do.

I say that because I'm one of those people who believes that we live in a post-modern, post Christian, post enlightenment era.  Ninety percent or more of those who claim some kind of allegiance to Christianity in some form or denomination would not comprehend true allegiance to the Messiah of the Bible if they were actually confronted with it.  For the brief background on why I say that, see Why I Am Not A Christian.

What follows is my brief reply to a comment left here at the end of the post Three Days and Three Nights.

The question:  I know this is not about your above post but what do you think about all the Christians rejoicing over bin laden's death?

My reply:

Your question is something that prompts me to consider doing a multi post series on the subject.  

My initial reaction is that how much someone engages in schadenfreude tells me how much their heart belongs to Adonai.   I can be glad that OBL is dead because it means that evil may be diminished, and we are commanded to hate that which is evil, because God Himself hates what is evil.  There is absolutely no sin in rejoicing when evil is punished.  However, some people seem overly selective about which evil being overcome makes them happy.  A bigger problem is how too many people seem to think the problem lies primarily with that one man, and fail to recognize that there is a much bigger problem.  The same thing applies to Obama.  Dennis Prager pointed this out a while back.

I've always been bothered by people who take the concept of loving our enemies and praying for them to an odd extreme.  This is because, once again, "Christians" take select verses in isolation or almost in a vacuum and build doctrines around them without considering the entire Bible as our guide. 

An enemy can range from someone you are related to, with whom you don't get along with, all the way to someone who is hell-bent on destroying you.  The Psalms are full of cries for God to recompense the evil-doers.  David is described as a man after God's own heart.  God Himself said this of David.  This is why the conquering, returning Messiah in glory is known by the appellation of Meshiach ben-David.  David was a warrior who slayed thousands.  When Messiah returns it will be a blood-bath and yet, we will be expected to rejoice.  Hard to imagine.  To some, it is so unimaginable that I have heard people who claim to be Christians say that their God is not the God of the Old Testament.  How convenient.  David slayed the enemies of Israel and God empowered him to do so.  Yet, isn't it interesting that in 1 Samuel 25 we have the story that when David was about to take personal vengeance on Nabal, God put it in the heart of the beautiful and intelligent woman Abigail to intervene and get David to realize that there is a difference between carrying out God's vengeance on His behalf and acting on one's own.  All of Scripture is useful for training in righteousness.

The same God who loved us enough to come and die for us is the same God who commanded Saul to slay all the Amalekites.  Every man, woman, and child and all their livestock to be sure that all the evil would be destroyed.  I could get into the deeper reasons for such drastic action but most people just aren't ready to discuss such things. 

We are expected to study the Bible in totality in order to have wisdom when it comes to these things.  When it comes to who we should be directing our anger, I am far angrier at Bill Clinton.  It is documented fact that WJC was informed about OBL's terrorist activities and plans, and worse, he had no less than three chances to either capture or kill OBL.  These facts are so indisputable that a TV movie was made about it.  Can't remember which network.  See Richard Miniter's book, "Losing Bin-Laden."

It is hard to put all of the things I think about this situation into a few short paragraphs.

End of reply.

If we wish to be disciples of the God of the Bible, that's where we need to go for guidance.  Scripture tells me several things about this.  Starting with Noah, God gave the directive that men who commit murder are to be put to death, and that his fellow man is to carry out that sentence.  The subject is not elaborated on in Genesis, but that is true with a lot of subjects.  I can't get into the value of oral tradition for clearing this stuff up, because too many Christians are totally dismissive of the Oral Law.  This is the Midrash and is the essence of the Talmud.  It fills in a lot of the blanks that exist in Torah.  This is a very simplistic way of putting it, but it will have to do, since I don't expect many who read this blog to be scholars of Judaica.  

There is nothing in the New Testament that indicates that this has changed.  When Adonai delivered the more complete revelation of Torah to Moses at Mt. Sinai, we could understand the difference between pre-meditated, malicious murder and manslaughter and provisions were made for the difference.  But God maintained that man, and especially His chosen people were to render careful and deliberate judgments.  The Biblical understanding is that God Himself allows or causes governments to be raised up and brought down as He sees fit, and that one of the purposes of government is to administer justice.  Not "social justice," which is just a euphemism for Marxist wealth redistribution.  Not welfare. Not equality of outcome.  

There is nothing wrong with rejoicing when justice is done for the sake of the innocent and for the sake of righteousness.  But if all we are doing is taking delight in revenge it would reveal a disconnect from the heart of the Creator.  Several verses point to this.  Proverbs 24:17:  "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and He turn away His anger from him."  Of course, I'll admit that the second half of that verse does make it sound like you don't want God to think you are enjoying your enemies suffering too much so that he will withdraw the punishment from your enemy, and you don't want that.  But guess what?  God already knows your heart.  If you haven't already renewed your thinking in this area, it isn't likely you are going to suddenly start.

The purpose of being a disciple is to grow closer to God and to be like Him.  What is God's opinion on this matter?  

"Do I desire at all the death of the wicked man? . . . Is it not rather his return from his ways, that he might live?" Ezekiel 18:23 (Artscroll Tanakh)  This is among many verses where God makes it clear that He wishes for man to repent and turn to righteousness so that He does not have to punish.  Some people like to cite the passages in the Old Testament which make God out to be some kind of capricious slaughterer of mankind.  The reality is that He tolerates a tremendous amount of evil before He finally gets fed up, then the critics point to the fact that He tolerates a lot of evil without doing anything.  He told Abraham in advance that his offspring would end up enslaved for four hundred years before He would do something about it.  Likewise the people living in the promised land would continue in their evil ways before He would help the Children of Israel drive them out.

Most people who claim some sort of belief in the Bible get stumped by the atheist or agnostic on the issue of evil because they are too lazy to think this issue through, to study on it, and to take advantage of all the great believing philosophers who have come before and written extensively on the subject. It is hard to write about the question of whether or not "Christians" should rejoice at the death of OBL without dealing somewhat with the question of evil itself.  In short, evil is the natural consequence of allowing for free will in both the angelic realm and in the material realm of humanity.  This is because there cannot be real love without free choice and free will.  Real love is a choice and a decision and a matter of action, not an emotion.  In fact, many times the decision to love means going directly against one's emotions, either when they are "good" or bad.

Emotionally, I may be repulsed by the idea of having to hurt someone, yet true love may demand that I hurt them.  Dr. James Dobson tells the story of having to hold his three year old son tightly while a physician did a spinal tap on the boy.  He said there was a mirror over the counter just level with the examining table and the two of them were positioned so that they could see the reflection of each other's faces.  Dr. Dobson tried to describe the incredible emotional pain of having to see the agony in his son's face as the doctor was shoving a needle in his son's back.  The look of questioning horror in the child's eyes as if to ask, "How can you be helping this man hurt me like this?"  Yet how do you explain such a thing to a three-year-old?  Dr. Dobson understood the lesson far beyond that mere experience. It made him think of how it must pain God when He has to let us experience terrible pain for our own good; knowing that it is temporary and that eternity is far more important.

Then what of combating evil?  No matter how much I would wish it were not so, there are people who have completely given themselves over to evil, and as with most evil, it is in the name of doing good.  The German people of the 1930s followed Hitler because everything he told them seemed perfectly good and rational.  It seemed perfectly good and rational to people who believed in the science of the day, and that they deserved to take their rightful place in history as the ruling class.  It made perfect sense that inferior "races" be subjugated or outright eliminated for the good of their society and the world as a whole.

One German stands out during this period who exemplifies the Biblical model: Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  His full biography is well worth reading, but at least go to the link and read the very condensed bio at Wikipedia.  The essential point is that DB was the real deal.  He sought peace and to follow the God of the Bible to his best ability, and it eventually carried him to martyrdom by trying to assassinate Hitler.  Bonhoeffer took no joy in what he was called to do.  But like all truly great heroes, he looked around and thought, somebody has to do something, and why should I think that somebody else should do it while I play it safe?  But he took no delight in the task.

People who think that waterboarding, or sleep deprivation, or inducing purely psychological fear is some kind of torture are idiots.  Yes. I said it.  Idiots.  Furthermore, that is a stand alone argument, meaning that I have the same opinion of the technique even if my enemy uses it.  I would rather the Taliban use such techniques than to cut off body parts or do other things to maim and disfigure.  I think the type of interrogation techniques should be used on the basis of the kind of intelligence sought.  If I'm not sure what to expect and I have plenty of time to analyze all the information, I'm going to handle the subject in such a way that he'll want to be my best friend when it's all said and done.  In the intelligence business, it's far more valuable to "turn" someone and have them working for you.  On the other hand, if I have just hours to get someone to tell me where a nuclear or any kind of WMD is located before it kills thousands, tens of thousands or millions of people, there are no rules of engagement any more.  None.  Too bad if that offends your tender sensibilities, but I will not put the comfort of an evil terrorist above thousands of lives and unimaginable suffering of my fellow citizens who are innocent of any kind of war crime.

It boils down to making good, rational decisions.  I have never understood the outrage of people who think that covert assassinations should be out of bounds to the U.S. or any righteously acting country.  Please explain to me how it makes sense to go to war with another country and force men in uniform to fight and die and also risk the "collateral damage" of innocent non-combatants because somebody decided it was "uncivilized" to just take out the leadership and then warn their successors that the same action could be repeated.

Being a true believer means answering the call to righteous action.  First we should seek peace and reconciliation.  We should answer the call to make disciples of all men, and we can only do that by our example first and our words second.  But we are also called to resist evil and that can be everything from refusing to engage in gossip at the office or in the church fellowship hall to double-tapping a couple of nine millimeter slugs from an MP5 into the frontal lobe of a terrorist mastermind.  We can then rejoice that evil has been vanquished, but we don't need to celebrate like our favorite team just won the championship.

All of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation have something to teach us about every aspect of life, but we have to take it as a whole.  It takes time to become familiar enough with all of the Scriptures to have it make that kind of impact on our lives.  You can only apply something at the level to which you have truly mastered it.  The big paradox comes from the fact that you can never master it.  Keep trying.

What Upset The Jews?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did God Mean Forever?

This is post number eight in the series: Why I Am Not A Christian.


In my studies and teaching of Biblical apologetics, I was always troubled by the fact that I couldn't reconcile a couple of ideas.  Why did Adonai give these all of these commandments to the Children of Israel and anyone who desired to become a God-fearer, and tell them that they are permanent and eternal?  Why didn't Adonai explain when He gave the Law that these things would only be necessary until Messiah showed up?  Over and over in Scripture we find that when we make a serious error about doctrine, it is because we did not pay careful attention to the wording that God used.  Let's look at some of these verses.


Exodus 12:14  "Now this day [Passover] will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance."

Exodus 12:17  "You shall also observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt; therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance."

Exodus 12:24  "And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever."

Exodus 27:21  "In the tent of meeting, outside the veil which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the LORD; it shall be a perpetual statute throughout their generations for the sons of Israel."

Exodus 28:43  "And they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they enter the tent of meeting, or when they approach the altar to minister  in the holy place, so that they do not incur guilt and die. It shall be a statute forever to him and to his descendants after him."

Exodus 29:28  "And it shall be for Aaron and his sons as their portion forever from the sons of Israel, for it is a heave offering; . . ."

Exodus 30:21  "So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they may not die; and it shall be a perpetual statute for them, for Aaron and his descendants throughout their generations."

Exodus 31:16,17  "So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.  It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed."

Leviticus 10:15  ". . . so it shall be a thing perpetually due you and your sons with you, just as the LORD has commanded."

Leviticus 16:29 - 31  "And this shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls, and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; . . . It is to be a sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute."

Leviticus 23:21  "On this same day [Shavuot/Pentecost] you shall make a proclamation as well; you are to have a holy convocation. You shall do no laborious work. It is to be a perpetual statute in all your dwelling places throughout your generations."

Deuteronomy 5:29  "Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!"

Deuteronomy 11:1  "You shall therefore love the LORD your God, and always keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments."

Psalm 119:160  "The sum of Thy word is truth, and every one of Thy righteous ordinances is everlasting."


Do you notice the words, "eternal; permanent; perpetual; everlasting; forever; always?"  Do we mortal human beings somehow think that we understand better than God Himself?  Was poor old God confused about the meaning of those words?  Did He not think that it might seem inconsistent to say one thing now and then later say something else?  Was Jesus confused about His own mission and about the Law that God had given through Moses?  If God meant for us to disregard all of His laws, commandments, statutes, and ordinances as stated in the Torah once Messiah came, why didn't He just put that little addendum in all of those statements?  Why not say, "This is what you are to do until Messiah comes"?

Even after the first destruction of the Temple and the displacement of the Jews, none of the prophets or people of God believed that God's Laws had changed or become void.  God had actually foretold that punishment would come for disobeying His commnands.  When the people repented and returned to Torah, the blessings returned.  But it wasn't complete repentence, at least not on a national scale, and so God did exactly what He said He would and multiplied the same punishment sevenfold, which is why Israel did not become a nation again until May 18, 1948; the exact day that God said it would happen. (You have to do the math and convert from God's calendar to our present Gregorian calendar, but it works out exactly.)  Thus proving that He never changed His mind about anything He said in the Torah.

 When Yeshua (Jesus) chastized the religious leaders, it was because they had either created themselves, or learned to use traditions from the Oral Law to get around obeying the clear cut teachings of the Torah.  They had not stopped to question their own motivations and thought carefully about the very thing they recited every day in the "Sh'mah":  "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and strength."   Yeshua admonished the Jews for ostensibly, and outwardly obeying certain laws in the Torah for the express purpose of violating the spirit of the Law which first and foremost is about loving God and by extension, loving other people.  Let me give you an example.

It's Saturday morning.  I'm doing my best to be a Torah observant believer, so I'm resting on Shabbat, the sabbath.  My unbelieving neighbor knocks on my door and informs me that his wife needs to get to the airport, but his car won't start for some reason and if they can't leave in the next few minutes, she's going to miss her flight. Should I allow some heathen to interfere with my observance of God's Holy day of rest?  Some might say I should politely and lovingly explain to my neighbor that it is Shabbat and I can't be traveling that far and that acting as a taxi service constitutes work; that  I would be sinning against God by breaking His Holy sabbath.  In actuality, I would be committing a greater sin to do such a thing.  My neighbor is in need.  I can fulfill that need, which is a greater good than merely breaking the sabbath.  This was just part of the lesson that Yeshua was teaching in his parable of the "Good Samaritan."

All of the other laws of Torah were given by God to be a framework and edifice to support the two main purposes of the Law:  Love the Lord, and love your neighbor as yourself.  But how does it make sense to tear down the whole structure that was designed to support the centerpiece?  That would be like tearing down a cathedral and then pointing to the cross that used to stand behind the altar, but is now lying on a heap of rubble and talk about how nice it is that the stupid cathedral is no longer in the way of us seeing the cross.  I will readily admit that I simply kicked my mental incongruities to the curb in order to go along with the common "Christian" understanding of the Law versus Grace, until God backed me into a corner and demanded that I simply read His Word and dismiss human commentary on the matter and let the Holy Spirit guide me.  There is one iron-clad rule.  No verses of Scripture can be in contradiction to any other verses of Scripture.  What eliminated apparent contradictions was to dismiss interpretations that originated from Roman Catholic and Protestant anti-Jewish thought.  You cannot understand properly the words of Yeshua, or Peter, or Rabbi Paul by ignoring thousands of years of Jewish understanding and then reading their words through the lenses of men who had no history or training in Judaism or the Oral Law.  When these men spoke or wrote, they did so under the assumption that their audience had basic understanding and context.

One more thing.  Lest you be inclined to make the claim that those verses above only applied to the Jews, think again.  Paul makes the point in Ephesians 4:4-6:  "There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one LORD, on faith, one baptism, on God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all."  You don't get to claim that because you weren't born Jewish  the Torah doesn't apply to you.  God doesn't have two distinct flocks with two different sets of rules.  If you want to hold to such an idea, you have no claim to be a disciple of the God of the Bible.

I will be further buttressing this point when I pick up with a study of the 21st chapter of Acts, where I start by asking: "Was Paul Crazy?"

Administration and Law

Sorry if the title seems a little misleading.  This post is not about current politics in the United States.

This is another installment in the series on Why I'm Not A Christian.

The thought of an analogy came to me while reading something at another Messianic website.  The author was making a point about Hebrews chapter 7.  But to give a bit more background, I think I will go back to reiterating my main contention that the reason the church gets so much doctrine wrong is because of the lack of a good hermeneutic and taking the Scriptures as a complete whole, in obedience to 2 Timothy 3:16: "ALL Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; . . ."

In order to really get a handle on what the Holy Spirit is communicating through the author of the letter to the Hebrews, we have to keep a couple of things firmly in mind. First is that this is a letter written by a Jew who is deeply educated in all the Torah and the Oral Law.  I still suspect that the author is Rabbi Paul.  I believe that the tone and style of the letter are different from his other epistles simply because of his audience and the subject matter.  Other criticisms aside, plenty of authors can and do change their style of writing depending on audience and subject.  The second point is that this letter is for the purpose of explaining to Jewish minds why the coming of Messiah changes the administration of the Law, but doesn't change the Law.  Let me remind my gentle readers that this is important in order to keep the rule of non-contradiction and the admonishment of Yeshua in Matthew 5:17-19, and in Luke 16:17.  If we take any other verses of Scripture and interpret them to mean that which contradicts these other two, then there is something wrong with our understanding.

My analogy comes from what was provided by the founding fathers of the United States.  They drew up the Constitution because nearly all of them understood that men are inherently sinful and cannot be trusted with very much power, that they must be restrained.  "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," as Lord Acton put it.  The Constitution was written for the express purpose of putting chains on the power of government and those who would wield that power.  The Constitution does not grant or give people any rights whatsoever.  The Constitution and its original ten amendments simply recognize the God-given rights inherent in mankind and tells the government, "YOU cannot cross these lines."

The founders understood that the law needed to be in the form of a contract.  The law could not be something that any one man or group of men just arbitrarily decided to do.  Not even under the pretense of doing it for the "common good" or the "general welfare."   They understood that nothing tramples an individual's rights faster than democratic rule or opinion.  Freedom and democracy simply cannot coexist.  What the founders knew was needed was a contract that embodied the law and put restraints on anyone serving in the government.  When you take elective office, or are commissioned as an officer, you take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, not any man, group, or political party.

The idea here, is that people will come and go from the offices of power, but the law remains.  If the restrictions of the Constitution are actually followed by those in power, then legislation would not be passed that endangers the rights of all individuals.  The law of the land says that government doesn't get to decide what you can or cannot say about issues.  The burden of proof is on the government to convince a jury of your peers that you have broken the law.  No one has the right to deny you the use of arms or self defense and so on.  And ultimately, the founders understood that nobody should ever get elected and then claim that the popular vote gave them a mandate to violate the Constitution.  Yet this is what has gone on since at least Abraham Lincoln.

What does this have to do with the Bible?  Let's look at Torah in this light.  First of all, when did God's laws begin?  When was man given the laws of God regarding behavior, of clean and unclean things, tithing, making offerings, etc?  If you said Moses, you'd be wrong.

From the time that God Himself (Christ) walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, God has revealed His laws.  The Jewish sages have believed through their study of Torah, that God created the universe through Torah.  If that seems odd to you, consider that John 1 tells us that, "In the beginning was the Word . . . the Word was with God and the Word was God."  The Master told us that Torah is eternal.  The Psalms say the Torah is eternal.  He was trying to get us to see that He, as God, and His Word, are inseparable.

Cain and Abel knew the standards for offerings.  Abel obeyed and Cain did not.  Noah was simply told to gather two of every unclean animal and seven pairs of all the clean.  How did he know which was which long before Moses came along?  Abraham tithed to God through Melchizedek and participated in communion with bread and wine.  Abraham trained disciples, and God stated that Abraham kept all of God's laws and commandments.  We are not told it directly, but we can infer from the text that Abraham knew Torah from what was handed down and from God Himself visiting with him and speaking to him directly.  Somewhere along the line, Christians have assumed that the Law didn't exist until Moses, but the fact is; Moses simply wrote down in systematic form, everything that had already been known to the men who walked with God. Up until that time individual men and the families that they led were the guardians of the ways of God.  Moses came to deliver a whole nation made up of the Children of Israel and a mixed multitude whom Adonai saved out of bondage in Egypt.

In that event, please make careful note of the order of the events.  God hears the cry of his chosen people, on the schedule that he had already told Abraham about in Genesis 15, when Adonai unilaterally established His covenant with Abraham and Abraham's descendants forever.  God had arranged it so that Jacob and his sons would end up in Egypt, being delivered by a beloved son who was left for dead, betrayed for some silver coins.  (I think I see a pattern there.)  The Children of Israel by this time were mere slaves and we are not told that they were following anything close to the Torah.  Otherwise, why the need for Moses to receive them from Adonai?  Does the LORD tell Moses to go to the sons of Jacob and get them to start obeying the ten commandments and then He would save them?  No.

HaShem ("The Name") tells Moses that he has a plan and what to expect from Pharoah.  I'm going to paraphrase this for simplicity, but I won't violate Scripture.  Adonai set out to show the world who the One and Only True God was by taking down the most powerful empire  at the time.  And he wasn't going to do it just any way.  He was going to make a mockery of their false gods and sorcery tricks. When He concluded everything with the destruction of the entire Egyptian army, word would spread from there to every populated place.  From Sudan to beyond Persia, from North of Turkey to across the Mediterranean, people would hear about this event.

Then, not because the children of Israel's righteousness, but because of His covenant and the sake of His own honor, He would save His chosen people.  Note this.  Salvation came first.  It would be many days before Adonai would place the choice before the people about obeying Torah.  Think about that for a moment.  From the time of the first Passover until the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai was 50 days.  From the time of  the ultimate Passover, or the crucifixion of Messiah until the disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentacost was 50 days.  Ah, that repeating pattern thing. The history of the world is God's unfolding revelation.  Each new cycle contains foreshadowing of events to come

So, going back to Hebrews chapter 7 and what the writer is trying to convey.  That Messiah has come and established a new administration.  The Torah is still valid and in effect but under a new management. Because the ultimate sacrifice had been made, we could all be in the priesthood and appeal directly to God for atonement.  When understood in this light, we see that harmony exists in all Scripture.  Yes, Torah is eternal and we can believe what Yeshua said about it.  Yes, what Paul said in Romans about us not having to suffer the penalty of the Law is true, but we still establish the Law.  Apparent contradictions fall away to dust.  We can now understand how the Law continues to be in effect and true and good, yet at the same time we have an advocate in court who makes atonement for us when we come in contrition and brokenness.  You can admit that you violated the Torah, but instead of having to sacrifice a bull or goat or doves, you appeal to the ultimate sacrifice for your atonement.

Now imagine you get hauled into court and when charged with a crime, you decide to take the attitude that the law just doesn't apply to you.  How do you think the judge would react?

Just because the Torah or Law of Moses was given to be administered at first with imperfect men who had to atone for their own sins before they could atone on behalf of the people, doesn't mean that when the perfect Messiah came to atone for us that the Law or Torah just disappeared.  It is still there.  Just as the One who gave His life for it said it would always be.  He just made a way for us to appeal to His perfect atonement without needing a Temple or having to kill animals.

In the next installment, I ask the question: "Did God Mean Forever?"

Why I Am Not A Christian

I became a Christian in the autumn of 1985, had a “born again” kind of experience, but was completely a babe in the woods when it came to this new belief system.  This in spite of the fact that I was in America surrounded by Churches.  This would prove to be the problem.

Truly appreciating real science, I questioned everything.  I especially questioned my new found belief system and had doubts that nearly caused me to abandon it altogether.  But there was the breakthrough, when I found out that God does not fear our toughest inquisitions. Neither of His Word nor His creation.

Before going on, I feel the need to address the various types of readers who might stray here and need some sort of introduction.

If you are a non-believer in the God of the Hebrew Bible, but you have an open mind and simply want to understand why there is so much division among those who claim to be Christian, what follows will likely seem like incredible minutia that will be difficult to wade through. I fully understand that a major reason many people don’t want anything to do with the Bible is because of the people who call themselves Christians. If you are a practicing Jew, it must seem very odd the way the Christians do violence to the Tanakh (Old Testament) in the name of Jesus and then wonder why you don’t accept Him as Messiah.  If you are an atheist who “knows” that there is no God and that all religion is false, you will find what follows to be silly or boring, so why waste your time?  Admittedly, this topic is actually for those who claim to believe in Jesus Christ, but sadly do not truly believe His Word, except where it seems to agree with what they want to believe.

For over twenty years, I studied and taught on Biblical apologetics.  That means that I defended the truth of the Bible, revealing the volumes of evidence that demonstrate that the earth and the universe, and real science do not contradict the Bible, but on the contrary, they confirm it.  I was sharing with others the evidence that showed that the Bible could not have been “authored” by mere men.  That through prophecy and other miraculous evidence, the Bible had to have been dictated by an intelligent being far beyond our understanding.

In order for most of what I have to say to make sense and be of the most benefit, you would have to be someone who believes that the Bible in it’s original manuscripts is fully inspired by God.  By that I mean that He actually dictated the words to those who initially penned it.  My apologetics work shows up in other posts and there will be more to come as needed.  That’s not the subject of this post.  Here we proceed from the idea that God Himself wrote the Bible.
The modern western version of Christianity is full of traditions and beliefs based on assumptions, isolated texts, and traditions that crept in over the centuries. Some denominations actually operate on the idea that anything prior to Jesus can now be ignored and have no bearing on being a Christian.  This is bizarre considering a couple of things.

Christians love to cite the words of a certain Rabbi named Paul.  Paul said in his second letter to Timothy (2 Tim. 3:16): “All Scripture is God-breathed and is valuable for teaching the truth, convicting of sin, correcting faults and training in right living; . . .”   At the time Paul wrote that, the New Testament as we know it had not been canonized as Scripture.  So, what was Paul referring to?  The Tanakh.  What Christians today call the Old Testament.  This English name does not do it justice and gives the wrong impression, so I will not use it from here on out.  The “Old” Testament is not antiquated or out of date.  It still contains prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled (subjects for future posts).  From here I will refer to that section of Scripture as the Tanakh.  TaNaK is kind of an acronym for Torah, Neva’im, and Ketuvim.  Meaning the “Law” the Prophets and the Writings.

If you claim to follow Christ, then it would make sense to note that Jesus based everything He said and did on the Tanakh.  Here is what he said in Luke 24:25-27, after he had been resurrected: “. . . ‘Foolish people! So unwilling to put your trust in everything the prophets spoke! Didn’t the Messiah have to die like this before entering his glory?” Then starting with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them the things that can be found throughout the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Stop and consider the full import of this verse.  He was chastising his own followers for not taking seriously all of what the Tanakh had to say about his first coming to earth and the prophecies He had to fulfill. Pay close attention to the phrasing. “Starting with Moses” means he was citing Torah, the first five books of the Bible.  “The Prophets” means every book from Isaiah to Malachi.  How can one reconcile the idea that Jesus came to free us from being concerned with what the Tanakh has to teach in light of that verse?  Now add the quote from Paul that I cited above.

If you are familiar with many study Bibles, you can see that they put little notes in the New Testament to show you where to locate the references are in the Tanakh to what the Gospel or epistle writer is citing. If you have such a Bible, take some time to note how much of what is written in the New Testament is simply quoting from the Tanakh with the understanding that the reader is supposed to be fully knowledgeable about all of what the Tanakh says.

If it isn’t quite enough for you that Jesus (Yeshua ben Yosef) pretty much always cited the Tanakh for His authority on answering questions, how about if we look at His statements which are very direct about the Tanakh.

Matthew’s gospel contains what is known as the “Sermon on the Mount” comprised of chapters 5, 6, and 7. The setting is important because Messiah was teaching before a very large audience, making it clear to as many as possible  what he was all about.  In that sermon we find this statement (Matt. 5:17-19): “Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah (Law) or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete (fulfill) Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yod (smallest Hebrew letter) or a stroke will pass from the Torah -- not until everything that must happen has happened. So whoever disobeys the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

That is a clear and didactic statement.  It’s not a parable. It’s not alluding to anything else. Because the Messiah knows the future as well as He knows the past, He wanted to get it on record in the clearest possible terms, what His disciples should understand about the Tanakh.  In order for Him to be the Messiah, he couldn’t possibly be a violator of Torah.  He was speaking to an audience almost exclusively of Torah observant Jews, who once a year, every year, heard it read in their synagogues, the following (Deuteronomy 13:1-6) “Everything I am commanding you, you are to take care to do. Do not add to it or subtract from it.  If a prophet or someone who gets messages while dreaming arises among you and he gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes about as he predicted when he said, ’Let’s follow other gods, which you have not known; and let us serve them,’ you are not to listen to what that prophet or dreamer says. For Adonai your God is testing you, in order to find out whether you really do love Adonai your God with all your heart and being.  You are to follow Adonai your God, fear him, obey his commandments, listen to what he says, serve him and cling to him; and that prophet or dreamer is to be put to death; because he urged rebellion against Adonai your God, . . .”

For those of you who don’t know, there is this cyclical reading of the Torah every year in synagogues all over the world. Each Sabbath in the synagogue, going back to the time of Moses, the faithful people would gather to hear a lesson, a Parashah section of the Torah read aloud.  The Torah was divided into sections so that in a year’s time the five books of Moses would be read through.  Besides that, in truly Torah observant communities, boys were expected to have memorized the Torah by the time of their Bar Mitzvah at 12 or 13.

There was no football, basketball, or soccer. No television, X-box, Wii, or any other of the myriad of distractions we have in the world today. Life was agrarian. You either farmed or fished or made things for those who did. People who tried to be faithful to Torah (not just Jews) held to the teaching of Deuteronomy 6, which contains the “Sh’mah,” the most well-known and often repeated pieces of Scripture known to all Jews around the world. Also, the verses immediately following that:   “These words, which I command you today, are to be on your heart, and you are to teach them carefully to your children, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-7)

From the time a child was weaned, boys spent the day with daddy, learning the family business and learning and discussing Torah. Girls did the same with the mother.  There were no government schools.  If a boy began showing promise as a Torah scholar, the family rejoiced, because there was no greater honor in a Jewish community. Torah scholarship was so revered that those recognized as being exceptional at it were excused from some or even much of the labor and other family members compensated the work load.  Everything centered around Torah, and the rest of the Holy Books.

This is the community that Yeshua son of Joseph was born into.  When you read in Luke that Mary (Miriam) and Joseph (Yosef) were righteous, it means that they obeyed the Torah. Because life was all about the Scriptures and heritage and family, they knew that they were of the line of David and that Messiah was due to come from their line, even before the angel showed up to announce it.

It can be hard for us, in this modern technological world, to grasp that towns were tiny, and everybody knew everybody.  Nazareth might have had several hundred families; maybe a thousand families tops.  They were nearly all related going back many generations.  When you weren’t talking about making your living or discussing Torah or the Roman occupation, you talked about family. Everybody knew who Yeshua was.  There are songs and jokes about living in small towns.  There are no secrets, even when you try to hide things. But a Torah observant community is even far more open.  Why is all of this important?

If Yeshua had not been a faithful adherent to Torah, the claims of His disciples and the gospels could have easily been refuted and He would have been proven to be like the other false Messiahs that had come before.  Had he said anything to indicate that He was going to do away with Torah, the community would have rightly stoned Him to death as a false prophet leading a rebellion against God Almighty.

People who have been “churched” in their beliefs via catechism or Protestantism don’t have the same idea of “sinless” as expressed in the Bible.  Torah is the standard for what is and is not sin.  Most Christians in the modern world have some amorphous, liquid, shape-shifting ideas about what is and isn’t sinful.  Somewhere along the line, people took this verse from Matthew 22:40 and twisted it out of shape:
“On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (NASB)  It is fitting that I quote my friend Rabbi Michael Bugg: “A real, kosher Torah scroll is the Word of God written on lambskin, impaled on two shafts of wood (the rollers) which are called the Aytz Chaim (Tree of Life), . . .” (footnote a)  Yeshua was making the point with the Torah teachers that the two commandments were like the most important parts of a tree.  The commandment to love Adonai with all the mind, soul, and strength is like the root, the foundation.  The root is needed to support the trunk which is the second commandment. Without those two parts, a tree cannot produce any fruit.

In the case of the Pharisees and scribes, they were always concerned with the fruit, the visible, tangible stuff that everybody wanted from the tree.  They had lost sight of the very thing, the most important thing that provided for that fruit.
Today Christianity seems to have an almost opposite problem.  The church wants to have a stump in the ground that produces nothing of value and pretend that it has everything.  Is it any wonder that the unsaved world looks at the vast majority of churches and says, “Where’s the fruit?”  Torah is the God-given standard by which we can know that we are in the right relationship with Him and with our neighbor.

This is just the beginning of explaining why I don't use the label "Christian" and instead call myself Messianic.

The next installment in this series is Making A Case.

Note a: see “When The Stars Fall” by Rabbi Michael Bugg, page 226.

Knowing God: Part 5

I was pondering whether or not to launch into Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS) codes that prove the Bible is of supernatural origin, but my guest, "tpmoney," brought up the issue about "which version."  This is worth covering here before I move on to ELS codes, because before we had the discovery of those codes -- made possible only with modern computers -- we have always had manuscript evidence.

One of the myths that critics of the Bible like to casually throw around or repeat is the idea that the Bible we have today can't possibly have survived until now without serious redactions, editing, or alteration.  This myth easily gets perpetuated because the vast majority of folks who call themselves Christians are too lazy or don't care to answer the false charge.  That is why in my last post I talked about Josh McDowell and Evidence That Demands A Verdict.  You see, I don't need to re-invent the wheel here.  That volume meticulously demonstrates that the manuscripts of the Old Testament have been faithfully copied down through the centuries with only the minutest of errors that don't even change any of the meaning of the texts. We also have many extant manuscripts that date very close to the first century CE, and the writings of the early disciples of the apostles to testify as to what should be considered Scripture and what is not.  If you are serious about knowing whether or not the Bible is true or not, you can go check out McDowell's work or Stroebel's work.  McDowell's work is heavily footnoted to all of the source material.  Let me deal with each of TPMONEY's points.

"So which version of the Bible contains the truth? While the original scribes may have been intent of preserving the history as it was, we've since had 2000 years of editing and cutting and politics interfering."

Over the years when I have heard someone make the claim of redacting or editing of the Bible, my question is always: "Give me an example."  To which I get nothing.  I keep asking and I keep getting nothing.  The reason is because you would have to have manuscript or archaeological evidence that at some point the text said one thing, and then later it was found to say something else.  Is everybody clear on that?  Upon questioning further, I find out that this is what they heard somebody else say with no evidence to back it up.  Once again, it's all about empirical evidence. Most critics of the Bible haven't got a clue about how the process of copying Holy Scripture is done.  Which is why they just assume that errors must have occurred as their imagination warrants.  So let me explain.

A Torah scroll is considered a very, very sacred object. The standards for how the Hebrew Scriptures must be written was established by Moses and has been carried down ever since. It must be written on kosher animal skin (most likely lamb).  It must be written with a certified kosher quill that meets very demanding standards.  In order to be a scribe who is going to create a faithful, kosher (perfect) copy of a Torah scroll, you not only must have been educated and bar mitzvahed and considered a righteous man, you then must spend five years learning the most intricate details of forming the sacred letters of a scroll. The picture to the right is of the letter "tsade" (pronounced tsah-dee). You can see that this isn't like gouging cuniform into clay tablets. This isn't like taking dictation or mass producing books to sell to the general public.  The act of writing the letters was considered creating holy art.  The characters in a Torah scroll are not like the common Hebrew you see every day or in other writings. There are special quirks all throughout a Torah scroll that seem to have hidden meaning, but that must be faithfully reproduced to look exactly like the original. This is why even the least expensive kosher Torah scrolls can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Strange things like oddly larger than normal or smaller than normal characters in certain spots, some letters that are stretched way out on the page.  Places where gaps of a certain length must be kept.  Some words have special little strokes placed a certain way above each letter.  After each segment is copied by a scribe with the special attention to all of this detail, it must be inspected by at least three and possibly five other more experienced scribes to make sure that each detail has been faithfully executed.  One of the inspectors even counts the characters backward on the scroll to make sure the numbers match.  If a scribe makes an error while writing any regular word on a segment, he may carefully scrape off the layer of ink and make the correction as long as it is not visible to the naked eye, but if he makes any mistake in copying the tetragrammaton, the Holy Name of God (Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey) that entire segment becomes unredeemable and must be set aside for burial.  It cannot be used under any circumstances. If a segment is found to contain an error after the whole segment was completed, it also is set aside for burial.  It cannot be used.  There was no editing.  Creating a new scroll of Holy Scripture as a copy is not like copying your friend's history essay in high school.  It's more like creating a forgery of the Mona Lisa that you'd like to sell.

When the first copies were starting to be written, it was still fresh in the minds of the Jews that they were dealing with the One and Only God who wiped out the Egyptians and struck fear in the hearts of every inhabitant of the middle east from as far south as Ethiopia to as far north as what is now Lebanon.  When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cave in Qumran, their discovery was monumental because they proved that the modern day copies of the book of Isaiah, the most complete examples found there, were essentially identical, meaning that a thousand years of faithful transmission by copying had preserved the text.

Political interfering?  What would that be?  Israel didn't have a king for the first 400 years of their history after Moses.  If there was to be political interference, where would it come from and why?  Regardless of that, where is there any evidence of that?  Asking me, "What about political interference?" is like asking me, "What about the influence of the Australian Aborigines?"  I made the statement before that the Bible records about the kings of Israel (both kingdoms) just as they are, warts and all.  If someone had political reasons to edit Scripture, who were they, what were their reasons, and what is the evidence for it?

I'm one of those people who get's fairly peeved by that silly bumper sticker saying, "If it ain't King James, it ain't Bible"  The King James Version has some good things going for it, but as a translation from the original language it can't be perfect.  Sorry if this is the first you are hearing this, and it upsets your sensitivities, but that's the way it is.  Some poor, undereducated folks have seen that word "Authorized" in the KJV and thought somehow it got there by the hand of God Himself.  Sorry, not so.  What that "authorized" means is that it was finally authorized by King James of England after centuries of it being illegal, on pain of death, to translate the Scriptures from the Latin into English so the laity could read it for themselves. [UPDATE: see comment below, somebody did some serious research to correct a misperception of mine. Apparently not all of Europe had problems with the Bible being translated into local languages. Congrats to good research.]  Some of the KJVs were so fraught with errors that they had to be recalled.  Gutenberg's invention had made printing so easy in comparison to hand copying that it made it easy to get careless.

The vast majority of "Christians" know little to nothing about their own church's history, let alone the history of translations from the Greek Septuagint to the Latin Vulgate.  Most Christians in America don't know that the KJV wasn't even accepted by most of the puritans who fled to these shores precisely because it was King Jame's Bible.  They were mostly all using something called the Geneva Bible.  Many of the most educated of our founding fathers and others in Europe, such as Sir Isaac Newton, studied Hebrew and Greek in order to study the Bible in it's original language.  Newton spent most of his life trying to discover the hidden codes that he was sure existed in the Bible.  Alas, he was ahead of his time.

I'm still learning Hebrew, but I know enough to read it in the original language and compare it to the interlinear versions and cross reference to the concordances and lexicons.  Some of the greatest difficulty stems from the fact that Hebrew has a very small vocabulary compared to English.  Where we may have twenty different words with various shades or connotations of meaning, there is just one word in Hebrew and the context determines the meaning.  For the most part, it is pretty straight forward, especially in the historical sections.  The only places I run into problems, along with scholars far beyond my ability is when it comes to prophetic passages that have yet to be fulfilled.  I'm still stunned by people who can be shown all the stuff that has been fulfilled and still don't believe, but then I covered that in a previous post.

TPMONEY also said: "what about things like the gnostic gospels?"

The gnostic gospels are called that because they apparently were written by men who had their own mystical ideas about Christ and what it took to be saved.  The term "gnostic" comes from the Greek word "gnosis" meaning knowledge, and in this case, arcane or mystical knowledge that had nothing to do with the historical and factual Jesus.  They are an extreme contrast to the canonical gospels since the gnostic "versions" were not discovered until many centuries later.  Far removed from any eyewitnesses, let alone tertiary or more separation from anybody who knew the apostles.  They are no more important than 17th century novels about Jesus.  The canonical gospels were already circulating within 30 to 70 years of Yeshua's resurrection. Matthew's possibly earlier, having started out in Hebrew.  We know from the impeccable historian Luke that the body of believers was growing rapidly due to the appeal of eyewitness testimony of those who had seen and heard all that had happened with Yeshua. Luke compiled his gospel in a chronological fashion and interviewed many eyewitnesses, friends and family members of the Messiah and His followers. Had there been any significant mistakes in the accounts of the gospels, there would have been plenty of people who could have stepped up and said, "Hey, wait a minute; that's not how it happened at all."  And before I move on, let me make this point: because the apostles and all the initial disciples of the Messiah were Jewish, they would have regarded the recordings of the sayings and actions of the Messiah as on par with Torah.  Therefore, when it came to making copies of those writings for distribution to the congregations throughout Israel and beyond, they would have taken the same great care with the transmission of copies, and this is borne out in the extant manuscripts that scholars know of today.

TPMONEY continued:  "If the included gospels can have such differing interpretations of the same even  [sic](IIRC, of the 4 gospels, only 2 mention that the crucifixion had two other prisoners, and only 1 mentions that one was repentant, while the other say s they were both mocking) how can we be sure whichever version we have is "correct"? Or perhaps a better question is how did you decide which version to accept?

The mistake that my guest makes here would be well known to any law enforcement officer.  If you get just two, let alone four "witnesses" apart for questioning, and each of their stories are identical in every detail, you immediately know that something is wrong.  It's a concocted story.  Don't take my word, go ask a detective or google investigative techniques.

As for the differences, each of the gospel writers had slightly different perspectives on the events.After the arrest of Jesus, the disciples scattered.  Even after the resurrection, there were times when the disciples weren't all together all the time.  The gospel accounts weren't given as testimony in a court where there was a prosecutor cross examining and asking why one writer didn't mention something that another one did.  Missing details don't make a story false.  Conflicting details can.  Some things that were important to one guy weren't important to note for the other.  The important thing is that none of the four gospel accounts disagree with each other on any substantive issues.  One writer didn't say Jesus said one thing, and another writer said he said something just the opposite.  The four writers also had reasons for emphasizing different aspects of Yeshua's ministry, which obviated the need to tell of some things and not others, and finally, the gospels are all incredibly short, considering they spanned three years of the Messiah's life.  But a much more in depth study of the question of the four gospels and their qualities comes from a distinguished professor of law.

Dr. Simon Greenleaf specialized in law and was responsible for writing the standards for documentary evidence and examination of testimony of witnesses.  He was challenged by his students regarding the truth of the four gospel accounts. Dr. Simon Greenleaf, one of the principle founders of the Harvard Law School, originally set out to disprove the biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was certain that a careful examination of the internal witness of the Gospels would dispel all the myths at the heart of Christianity. But this legal scholar came to the conclusion that the witnesses were reliable, and that the resurrection did in fact happen.  The result of his research and his conclusions is in the book, The Testimony of the Four Evangelists.  It completely puts to rest any idea that there is a problem or any conflict between the gospels.

Once again, I'm barely scratching the surface here when it comes to the overwhelming evidence that the Bible of the Hebrews is a book that defies explanation as an invention of mere men.  I can't take 25+ years of just my learning and stuff it all into this blog.  I wish I could take everything I've learned and download it to your brain like a few JPEG files, but it doesn't work that way.  If nobody raises any more questions for me to answer in the next day or so, I'll move on to ELS codes.

Knowing God: Part 4

Before you continue reading this fourth part, you should have already read parts 1, 2, and 3, and you especially need to read my answers to Paul in the comments sections of part 2.  One of my great pet peeves is people who claim to be disciples of God, Yeshua, Jesus, yet ignore the directive that we are to be prepared to give to any man an answer for the hope that lies within us.  I dealt with his responses in brief, but if you need more clarification or additional information or would like to add something to the mix, jump in.  I may want to bring it up in the next segment.

To say, "You just gotta have faith." doesn't cut it.  First of all, it's not necessary, and secondly, it's contrary to what is expected by the Bible itself.  Thirdly, it reveals a complete misunderstanding of what real faith is.

All of this is important, because as I alluded to earlier, believing in any god just to believe in something would be silly.  That's right; I'm calling BS on the idea that all paths ultimately lead to God. Which is why the question of whether or not the Bible speaks the truth about every aspect of this world and it's history is vitally important.  It's why prophecy is so important.  No other "holy" book repeatedly makes the claim to put it to the test the way the Bible does. Please notice the incredible contrast between the Bible and all other religious books when it comes to authorship.

Other ancient texts do not claim any single persons as authoring them on behalf of God. For example, the Hindu Vedas are compilations of oral tradition prior to the first century CE. They don't contain prophecy and they don't claim transcendent authority.  Islam claims authority on the idea that God handed one, lone illiterate Arab an entire written text.  Same kind of story with Joseph Smith.

In contrast, the Tanakh, or Old Testament, has only the first five books penned by one man, giving great historical detail that can and has been scrutinized for thousands of years. [We will revisit this scrutiny later.] Then the rest of the collection is written by multiple authors all claiming inspiration by the one and only Creator.  We are talking about more than 30 authors, some separated by hundreds of years, contributing to an unfolding revelation. The Hebrew prophets were big on recording history just as it was, in drastic contrast to the scribes of kings of other societies. The "histories" of other societies are most often stories according to how the king wanted it told.  Hebrew scribes described their kings warts and all.  The Bible itself puts an enormous burden on the Bible to be proven as having a divine source.  Think carefully about that.  I can't count the number of people I've encountered who say they would like to see some evidence that God exists, but when I start giving them examples of clearly fulfilled prophecy, then history doesn't exist for them anymore.  History written by secular historians about Egypt or Greece or Rome is never questioned, but then those histories don't require you to think about your own mortality.  God took the hardest route, not trusting His story to just one man to deliver it to the world.  He chose many authors, separated by time and geography to record His message so that no mere human could take credit for it, or mess it up, for that matter.

If you've ever tried to write a story, let alone a novel, you would know that one of the most difficult things about writing fiction is keeping track of all the details about which you wrote and not making a mistake that will make you look stupid.  This is hard enough if you are the only one doing the writing.  Now imagine that you are being told to write things that make absolutely no sense to you about future events, or about things that you should have no reason to know about.  Then, over hundreds of years, all the writings of yourself and a dozen other men have to never conflict with each other.  Let's say that, each of you contributes, not just a few, but many predictions concerning the identity and activities of one man, along with many other predictions about future events, but let's just concentrate on that one man.

The promise of a Messiah came as soon as the fall took place. From then on out, Torah would gradually keep revealing different aspects of who that Messiah was supposed to be. Then later, more prophets would arise and give more details, furthermore, the Psalms, mostly written by King David, add details.  Most of it alluded to the details, and some of it was direct and clear, but all of it designed to be a mosaic that would become an almost impossible I.D. card for the One to come.  The Vedas don't do that.  The Quran doesn't do that.  There's no other writing in the history of the world that sets itself up to predict that the Creator Himself is going to come and set things straight and provides this huge volume of coded text that says, "Many will come and go, but the real Anointed One has to meet all these criteria in order to be real."  The reason I don't go into a long list of the examples is because it would take pages and pages, and for the purpose of making my ultimate point with this long essay, you just need to stipulate to the possibility.  If you think you can debunk any of the above, knock yourself out, the list of intellects that have tried and failed before you is long and distinguished.

Which brings me to just one good example that makes the point.  A man named Josh McDowell.  Like myself, Josh grew up hating religion and Christianity specifically.  In college, he set out to put an end to this stupid mythology about God and the Bible once and for all.  Man plans and God laughs.  What was produced from all of the thousands of hours of research was a two volume tome called Evidence That Demands A Verdict.  It was a magnum opus of exactly the opposite of what McDowell set out to do.  It systematically goes over objection after objection, evidence after evidence, laying it all out like a trial in a court of law.  It is a far more in depth and scholarly work, involving much more evidence than Lee Stroebel's, The Case For Christ.  Stroebel was also a militant atheist who wanted to put an end to the God myth.  Let this serve as a warning to atheists, agnostics, adherents to other false religions: If you like your beliefs as they are, you best not go digging for the truth lest it rock your world.

Of course, McDowell didn't stop there, because once you've been confronted with the overwhelming truth, you can't just sit there and remain neutral about it.  He went on to produce more writing and do his best to evangelize. One of his great little books is called More Than A Carpenter, and it focuses only on the identity of Jesus of Nazareth (Yeshua Netsri) as the Messiah.  He took just 200 of the prophecies that the promised Messiah would have to fulfill in order to be deemed the Messiah, but McDowell chose those that Yeshua would not have had direct control over; place of birth, parentage, the things others would do to him, etc.  Then McDowell let an independent actuarial firm do the math for him.  The result?  The odds of one man meeting the requirements of the 200 prophecies came to 1 in 10 to the 17th power.  If you're not a math or science geek, that's a 1 with 17 zeros behind it. 100,000,000,000,000,000.  One hundred thousand times one trillion.  McDowell understood that the average person can't really wrap their head around that figure, so he needed a visual.

Take the entire state of Texas. I remember how big it is because I moved from Florida to California and then back again in a Ryder truck on Interstate 10.  Driving about nine hours a day, it took about three days to cross.  They put governors on those trucks and that was back during the national 55 mph limit.  Texas is so big you could put the entire population of the planet in the state with each person having a little less than a square yard.  Crowded, I know, but it makes my point.  Now fill the state of Texas with enough silver dollars to cover it to a depth of two feet, but before you do that, you get to wrap one silver dollar with some red duct tape and mix it in, then they all get poured out over the state.  Now we put you on a C-130 and take you up to about 30,000 feet and you can direct the pilot to take you over any given area of the state, and when you are ready, you can do your HALO jump, then you have to open your parachute at the right altitude and land in the right spot so you can reach down and pick up that one red-taped silver dollar out of the sea of dollars.

Still not impressed by the math?  Scientists regard pretty much anything beyond the odds of one in 50 million as being impossible.  So that means Yeshua exceeded the realm of possibility by 20 billion times.  If that doesn't grab your attention, you are probably wasting your time here.  And you should be making the very most of what time you have in this life, because, to paraphrase the great mathematician Blaise Paschal; if you skeptics are right and I'm wrong, then eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die and that's the end.  I will have gained nothing more than to have led a better life for morality's sake. But if the Bible is right and you're wrong - boy, does it ever suck to be you!

In my case, after all of my research, my logical mind pretty much convinced me that it doesn't really matter a lot how I "feel" about the Bible or religion.  I didn't have a Damascus road experience, but I didn't need one.  No mystical vision, no audible thundering voice.  Facts are facts, and facts are stubborn things.  Facts are assembled to come to conclusions, and a group of conclusions results in other conclusions.  Let me walk you through the main points in a logical fashion

This Jesus guy stepped into history and lived like no one else before, and no one else since. The fact that millions have chosen peaceful martyrdom* rather than recant their belief for over 2,000 years is one thing.  But the testimony of those who didn't even believe in Him is even more compelling.  Flavius Josephus is a prime example.  The testimonies of those who actually walked with the Rabbi of Nazereth constantly appealed to eyewitness accounts.

What I think is ingenious about how God worked all this out (as if I'm qualified to judge - HA!) is how he had  different people with completely different experiences testifying to what He did.  Thomas was even invited to stick his hand in the spear wound of a resurrected man, even though he should have remembered about Lazarus.  Thomas makes me feel better about all the times I still have doubts because I tend to forget what has happened in the past.  Rabbi Paul needed to be struck blind for three days to think about the events that had taken place in Jerusalem and gain a new understanding of all the stuff he'd studied under Gamaliel.

I think about all this in depth.  Here was a man who fulfilled prophecies that were hundreds or thousands of years old. He did miracles, and even though the religious leaders didn't want to accept Him as Messiah, they couldn't deny the miracles.  They couldn't explain away Lazarus.  Then the man rises from the dead and leaves the tomb, even though there was a heavy guard.  Nobody can produce a body to prove the disciples wrong, but more than that, Rabbi Paul, who used to jail the very followers of the guy, is now saying that if you don't believe him about Yeshua having risen from the dead, go ask any or all of the 500 or so people who have seen and talked to Him since then.  The silence from those who wished to see the whole matter die was deafening.  You would think that if all the events of Jesus' life was just a big hoax, the Jewish Talmud would have laid out all the evidence, explained how he was just another false prophet and been done with it.  Instead the best they could say was that he was the bastard son of a Roman soldier and that Jewish girl, Miriam.

In the "normal" world of megalomaniacs, someone who claimed essential oneness with the Creator of the universe would be expected to do all kinds of crazy stuff and demand slavish obeisance.  Instead we get the most altruistic form of a human being beyond our fallen comprehension, in the form of a humble carpenter from the Galilean hillside.  So, let me see . . .   What are my choices here?  What should I do?

Somehow it just seems like a no-brainer to take seriously the words of a man who did all of that.  When Yeshua basically said that He had come to fulfill Scripture, and that all of it was still in effect and would remain so until heaven and earth passed away and beyond, I think it wise to obey and keep studying to see if there is something I might be missing.  That doesn't just mean studying Scripture and ignoring the natural world and all of its evidence.  That's the coolest thing about real science for me.  There isn't a single established fact of science that differs with the Bible.  I love taking on the challenges because with each iteration my faith only grows stronger.  I will admit that some of the same old arguments that have been refuted can get tiresome, but I am reminded of the faces I've seen when I have shared this information and the many thanks I've gotten from people who wallowed in doubt because they didn't know and didn't know who to ask.

Don't take anything for granted.  Don't just take anybody's word; not even mine.  Search for yourself, but really search and be honest about it.  Test everything.

Next I hope to delve into problem of trying to have a Messiah apart from the Bible.  Or maybe I'll deal with Equidistant Letter Sequencing code embedded in the Torah.  We'll see.

Knowing God: Part 5 continues here.