Remember when that used to happen with old broadcast television? Back when there were just 2 or 3 channels on TV, and peoples lives didn't revolve around it? Back when the whole family watched maybe an hour or two at the most, somewhere between 7 to 9 local time. The only thing you would see on a black and white screen after midnight was a test pattern or "snow."
So, maybe it's a good thing for me not to be so concerned right now about checking the site meter and worrying about how many hits I'm getting, especially since I'm just trying to get a new life put back together in a totally new place.
I'm starting another blog because it needs to have an appropriate title and all the other amenities that go with the subject matter. It's called Sons of Abraham. The name comes from Luke 19:9
"Today salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham."
The blog is not up yet, because I have been away for almost two years and I need to re-learn how to do all the technical stuff about customizing the look and uploading stuff and I'm working in someone else's place, with their computer, until I get enough money to replace things. I don't know how much more or less better off I am than Ann Barnhardt.
I've lost everything of material value, yet I have become rich beyond measure through the process. I'm wearing someone else's clothes. Eating someone else's food. Depending on other's generosity for all worldly things, yet, I get constantly reminded that The Father is providing it all.
I may retain this blog only to have someplace to vent about worldly things and politics (redundant?). But my passion has moved full bore into helping others find the One and Only Creator of the Universe.
Perhaps I shouldn't even try to compartmentalize through two blogs. Obeying the Father is a 24/7 way of life that reaches into every nook and cranny of existence, or at least that's how it's SUPPOSED to work. But I do figure that, for at least a few months, I'll have to maintain two blogs until people who have enjoyed my writing can transition to the other one and I have too much important stuff in the archives here.
Imagine having all, I mean ALL you possessions; computer, thumbdrives, hardcopy files, books, clothes, all legal documents, destroyed or disposed of for no good reason. As though your whole past life never existed from that point on.
So, I have a lot, I mean a LOT of work to do. Probably won't be able to post every day. But as I recover, I hope that I will come back better and stronger than before, and that what you get from me from now on will be of more benefit than you ever thought possible, because it won't be really coming from me, but from the God of Abraham.
Shalom.
Showing posts with label Messianic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Messianic. Show all posts
Monday, November 25, 2013
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Not Wanting To Know
This is the third installment that started with Why I Am Not A Christian. Part Two is Making A Case. If you haven't read Knowing God, Parts 1 - 5 this probably won't make enough sense to you.
Something I’ve never heard preached from a pulpit, or taught in a Sunday School class, is a lesson on the nature of God. I once got a small taste of a lesson tucked in a teaching by the late Dr. Walter Martin. It came up because you can often run into people who get their kicks by trying to come up with nonsensical, stupid questions to trip up believers. If I had the power to enforce a rule in Christendom, it would be that new believers are not allowed to attempt evangelizing on their own unless they can pass a test on how to deal with most of these objections. I know that it’s not practical and will never happen, but this goes along with why the Church has so many things wrong today. I want to start building my case by starting with the nature of God, but I think I need to explain this problem first.
It is easy to see why a non-believer looks at the vast array of denominations; Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran, etc. and thinks, “Those stupid Christians can’t agree on anything.” Who can blame him? Then you look at the cults of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, etc., and if you really know some basics about the Bible you wonder how did those people get so screwed up? The extremes to come out of these outliers are people like Jim Jones of the Guyana massacre, and David Koresh of Waco, Texas.
All of these denominations, even though some of them are so mainstream and ineffectual in society, have one common thread. They lack a proper hermeneutic. This is a fancy word for the logical, methodical way of interpreting Scripture. In a nutshell, it’s the proper method for determining what the Author meant to say so that you thoroughly understand it. It is sorely lacking in just about all the churches I’ve ever been in. I readily admit that humans are imperfect, and the imperfection of all human institutions are multiplied by the interaction of humans. But I also have to ask, “How long would Microsoft last if only a few of its employees could agree on how the software is supposed to work?” How long would you last at your job if you ignored the instructions and just made up procedures? Not only some that didn’t have anything to do with your job, but some that actually contradicted the mission of your employer?
How did denominations like the Seventh Day Adventists create bizarre offshoots like William Russell who created the Jehovah’s Witnesses and David Koresh? How do you get a Fred Phelps spewing his vile, hateful garbage and casting a pall upon all who claim allegiance to Christ? How did we end up with Christmas, which no God-fearing Christians in America would have considered celebrating prior to the 19th century? How did Christians come to calling Sunday the Sabbath instead of the seventh day as it had been since Adam and Eve? No hermeneutic and virtually no discipleship.
How many times has it happened to you, where you had to explain to someone, “Not only is that not what I meant, that’s not even what I said!” I sometimes wonder if God just has a recording in heaven that just plays that sound bite over and over.
Something I’ve never heard preached from a pulpit, or taught in a Sunday School class, is a lesson on the nature of God. I once got a small taste of a lesson tucked in a teaching by the late Dr. Walter Martin. It came up because you can often run into people who get their kicks by trying to come up with nonsensical, stupid questions to trip up believers. If I had the power to enforce a rule in Christendom, it would be that new believers are not allowed to attempt evangelizing on their own unless they can pass a test on how to deal with most of these objections. I know that it’s not practical and will never happen, but this goes along with why the Church has so many things wrong today. I want to start building my case by starting with the nature of God, but I think I need to explain this problem first.
It is easy to see why a non-believer looks at the vast array of denominations; Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran, etc. and thinks, “Those stupid Christians can’t agree on anything.” Who can blame him? Then you look at the cults of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, etc., and if you really know some basics about the Bible you wonder how did those people get so screwed up? The extremes to come out of these outliers are people like Jim Jones of the Guyana massacre, and David Koresh of Waco, Texas.
All of these denominations, even though some of them are so mainstream and ineffectual in society, have one common thread. They lack a proper hermeneutic. This is a fancy word for the logical, methodical way of interpreting Scripture. In a nutshell, it’s the proper method for determining what the Author meant to say so that you thoroughly understand it. It is sorely lacking in just about all the churches I’ve ever been in. I readily admit that humans are imperfect, and the imperfection of all human institutions are multiplied by the interaction of humans. But I also have to ask, “How long would Microsoft last if only a few of its employees could agree on how the software is supposed to work?” How long would you last at your job if you ignored the instructions and just made up procedures? Not only some that didn’t have anything to do with your job, but some that actually contradicted the mission of your employer?
How did denominations like the Seventh Day Adventists create bizarre offshoots like William Russell who created the Jehovah’s Witnesses and David Koresh? How do you get a Fred Phelps spewing his vile, hateful garbage and casting a pall upon all who claim allegiance to Christ? How did we end up with Christmas, which no God-fearing Christians in America would have considered celebrating prior to the 19th century? How did Christians come to calling Sunday the Sabbath instead of the seventh day as it had been since Adam and Eve? No hermeneutic and virtually no discipleship.
How many times has it happened to you, where you had to explain to someone, “Not only is that not what I meant, that’s not even what I said!” I sometimes wonder if God just has a recording in heaven that just plays that sound bite over and over.
America is filled with unaccountable, independent churches. Baptists can be very big on this concept. In such a church, you can just raise your hand and tell the congregation that you feel led by the Holy Spirit to start a ministry and preach the gospel, shortly after having become a convert. Chances are, everyone will be enamored with your gusto and zeal and will encourage you. It is unlikely that the elders will take you aside and thoroughly question you to find out how much you know. To see if you actually understand correct doctrine and are ready to take on the schemes of the enemy. The reasons the elders don’t do that is because not only are they unconcerned about what error you might fall into and then pass on, but they don’t know the answers either. Remember what I said about my story when it came to searching for answers. (See: Knowing God) Most church leaders ignore Paul’s instructions on ordaining leaders in the congregations. It is important to note that the only reason Paul had to write these instructions to the churches in the gentile areas, was because it was simply understood and a way of life for the Jewish believers who had been practicing Torah for centuries.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses began because William Russell took the basics from Ellen B. White and the Seventh Day Adventists, but decided that he alone knew better how to interpret the Bible and set the standards for doctrine. David Koresh did basically the same thing but was far less concerned with decorum. In both cases, their followers succumbed to the cult of personality and the gift of charisma.
Why am I spending so much time and space on this background? So as to contrast it with the Master Himself. Let’s carefully consider the facts. Based on Scripture, Yeshua was clearly of miraculous conception and the Spirit of God was upon him from that time on. The event of his being in the Temple asking questions, most likely following His Bar-Mitzvah coinciding with Passover, demonstrates that He knew His identity even then. See Luke 2:41-52. Why did he wait until age thirty to begin his ministry, keeping His identity as Messiah a secret? The timing of fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel is not a sufficient answer.
I believe He did so out of respect for the traditions of the elders. Do not be bamboozled into thinking that all traditions were held in contempt by Yeshua, but only those that were used to negate Torah. He didn’t start His ministry until age 30 because he would have seen as an arrogant upstart otherwise. A Jewish boy was expected to memorize Torah by the age of 13 and his Bar Mitzvah into adulthood. There was no concept of adolescence in most of history. From that point, a young man is expected to keep his mouth shut and keep learning by listening to the debates of all the men over age 30. Only after all of this intense, thorough, and yet informal “schooling,” and having reached the age of 30, he could start offering his opinion on the Tanakh as being authoritative, and yet opinions were almost always given “in the name of” (authority) of a much greater sage.
Back to my original issue about understanding the nature of God. This is important because it would seem that most of Christianity seems to endorse the idea that God changed everything when Messiah came. Where is the evidence for this? Most all of the Torah and the Prophets is about giving us a picture of who the Messiah is and what he would do. In both His first advent and then His second, in which the misunderstandings of the roles of Meshiach ben Yosef and Meshiach ben David has served to prevent most of the Jews from accepting the one Christianity calls Jesus of Nazareth.
When you think of Scripture as the autobiography of God and see the amazing supernatural evidence to that effect, you have to take seriously that He means what He says and He is careful about choosing the words. Yeshua even made a point about the tense of the words when questioned by the Pharisees. Also it should be logical that an omnipotent God can see to it that most of His word gets passed down through the ages accurately (see: Knowing God, Part 5).
My point is to ask the logical question, “Would the God of the Bible give mankind His Torah, His instruction book, repeat over and over that these instructions and commandments were forever and everlasting, and then send His Son to say, “Hey everybody, all that stuff that Daddy told Moses? Y’all can just ignore that stuff now.” As I’ve already shown, Yeshua didn’t say that. In fact, He said just the opposite.
To say that the God of the Bible would have one system of rules for one set of people and then another almost non-existent set of rules, or rather just two completely indefinable rules for some other people, would mean that He is a capricious god like what the Romans and Greeks believed in. I can’t seem to come up with any other word for that kind of thinking other than blasphemy. If that seems to harsh, maybe you can suggest another idea? And please don’t think I’m just trying to be mean. If this is the first time you are being challenged to think about this, I’m sure it’s uncomfortable. Let me assure you that God does not hold us accountable for what we don’t know, or for being deceived and unaware of the deception. However, once you’ve been confronted with the facts and you still insist on going your merry way, you’ll have to discuss it with your Creator.
I was at a church where a woman interjected herself while I was answering a question about Torah, saying that we didn’t need to worry about Torah, to which I asked her how she dealt with Matthew 5:17-19, quoting it to her, but before I could finish, she said, “I’m not going to listen to that, and I’m not going to read it.” Even after all the encounters I’ve had over the years, I was still a bit stunned.
The next installment is "Getting The Big Picture."
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Making A Case
This is the next installment on "Why I Am Not A Christian"
Early in my studying and teaching of apologetics, I was very awestruck at the amount and quality of evidence that demonstrates that the Bible is a supernatural book. If you want more background on this, see my post, Knowing God: Part 1. The discovery of such evidence ended up making me angry. Not at the evidence, but at the suppression of it.
Oh, it wasn’t suppressed deliberately by the church. This was a suppression of apathy. It is not isolated to the church, either. This suppression is what has resulted in liberal, or reformed Judaism. In fact, I would include all the sects of Judaism short of the Haredi, or what is known as the Ultra-orthodox Jews, and then apologetics as it is known in Christendom doesn’t really apply to them because to such orthodox types, they feel no need whatsoever to engage in apologetics. They are as connected to Abraham and Moses as you are to your grandpa. History is not some abstract thing that bores the snot out of college kids and seems utterly disconnected to anything meaningful in their lives. To orthodox Jews, history is just as solid and real as the stones that make up the Western wall of the Temple Mount.
One might be asking, “If the evidence for the Bible is so strong, why don’t we hear more about it? Why don’t Christians and Jews defend it? Many people are not going to like the answer. The secret to this problem is hidden in plain sight. The perfect example of this is Joel Osteen’s church. In case you don’t follow him, Joel Osteen is the guru of positive thinking disguised as a Christian church. Years ago, I listened to five or six sermons on TV and understood why he could fill an arena. His message had nothing to do with discipleship, dying to oneself, living for eternity instead of this world. I have a very hard time thinking that Christians in Darfur would recognize his gospel, let alone try to live by it.
The natural inclination of the human species is self gratification. We want what we want. Because of that, we believe what we want to believe. It takes courage and a willingness to suffer a lot of discomfort to question one’s self. To ask, “Is this really true? How do I know this is true?” Name any “sin” that you can think of; something that you, personally, think is a sin. How does it begin. It starts because you desire something. It grows closer to becoming reality as you dwell on it and then think of ways to justify it. As you think about it more and more, your thought patterns will center more and more on why you deserve to do that thing, and less and less about how it might hurt someone else.
This is how a man like Charles Darwin could grow up in a family in 19th century England, when most of the country and the modern world believed in the God of the Bible and His Word, and end up writing to convince others on the theory of evolution. He was seeking ways to eliminate God from his life. With each new discovery of fact in science, his theories become more and more ridiculous and untenable, but the people who continue to push them, have the same motivation he did. It can best be summed up by the grandson of Thomas H. Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog,” and the author of Brave New World:
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” -- Aldous Huxley
There you have it. I still believe that apologetics is the handmaiden of evangelism; that true believers should answer the objections, on all levels, to the skeptics of the Bible. We have nothing to be afraid of, and the evidence is on our side. But I have no illusions that you can convince someone of the truth intellectually when they have personal and emotional reasons to fight it at all costs. Being a member of a church can be no more demanding than being a member of Rotary or the Elks club. Recognizing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of the Creator of the Universe demands radical re-ordering and prioritizing of one’s life.
This relates to even the most dedicated Christians in a different way, but in just as dramatic a way nonetheless. It can be extremely shocking and uncomfortable to suddenly realize that many things you had been raised to believe were just wrong. You’d been told things as if they were just fact, based on nothing more than tradition. You had never really checked into it yourself, because, after all, that’s the job of the pastor or priest. You don’t have time for that. He’s the one with the seminary degree. What does a pastor do all week, anyway? He’s got all that time to sit in his office and research all this stuff. Right?
Therefore, it is no wonder that when Christians start asking me why I follow Torah, they would accuse me of being like the “Judaizers” that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Galatians. They put me in the same camp as someone who believes in legalistic adherence to the Law as the means to salvation. In short, they don’t understand Paul’s argument, because for centuries, the clergy has taken selected verses out of the context of everything that Paul wrote and created a false doctrine. This is why Peter wrote regarding Paul’s teaching in his letters, “ . . . as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16)
I can prove from the Scriptures that Paul never made the case that we no longer have to follow Torah and that this is in keeping with what the Messiah taught. I will demonstrate that what Paul was teaching was that you cannot expect adherence to the Torah to save you. Paul was indeed teaching that to make adherence to Torah a condition for salvation was to do violence to the finished work of the Messiah. But this in no way invalidates the fact that all the apostles and the other disciples of Messiah kept and continued to teach the keeping of all the Torah in accordance with the Master’s words in Matthew 5:17-19 and Luke 16:17 “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law (Torah) to fail.”
In the next installment, we will do something that seldom gets done in the church. We are going to look at the entire Bible as a coherent whole. If the Bible really is the Word of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator, it shouldn’t contradict itself, and I’m convinced that it does not. Where I’ve heard contradictions about the Bible, they’ve come from the ideas and doctrines of men.
We are going to go step by step to logically and systematically examine the question of whether or not Yeshua ben Yosef, this Jesus from Nazareth, came to start a whole new religion, or whether he was simply fulfilling and continuing an existing revelation about the nature of God and His Kingdom. We are going to do something that is almost unheard of in the Christian world; we are going to let the text speak for itself.
You can click here to go to the next installment: Not Wanting To Know.
Early in my studying and teaching of apologetics, I was very awestruck at the amount and quality of evidence that demonstrates that the Bible is a supernatural book. If you want more background on this, see my post, Knowing God: Part 1. The discovery of such evidence ended up making me angry. Not at the evidence, but at the suppression of it.
Oh, it wasn’t suppressed deliberately by the church. This was a suppression of apathy. It is not isolated to the church, either. This suppression is what has resulted in liberal, or reformed Judaism. In fact, I would include all the sects of Judaism short of the Haredi, or what is known as the Ultra-orthodox Jews, and then apologetics as it is known in Christendom doesn’t really apply to them because to such orthodox types, they feel no need whatsoever to engage in apologetics. They are as connected to Abraham and Moses as you are to your grandpa. History is not some abstract thing that bores the snot out of college kids and seems utterly disconnected to anything meaningful in their lives. To orthodox Jews, history is just as solid and real as the stones that make up the Western wall of the Temple Mount.
One might be asking, “If the evidence for the Bible is so strong, why don’t we hear more about it? Why don’t Christians and Jews defend it? Many people are not going to like the answer. The secret to this problem is hidden in plain sight. The perfect example of this is Joel Osteen’s church. In case you don’t follow him, Joel Osteen is the guru of positive thinking disguised as a Christian church. Years ago, I listened to five or six sermons on TV and understood why he could fill an arena. His message had nothing to do with discipleship, dying to oneself, living for eternity instead of this world. I have a very hard time thinking that Christians in Darfur would recognize his gospel, let alone try to live by it.
The natural inclination of the human species is self gratification. We want what we want. Because of that, we believe what we want to believe. It takes courage and a willingness to suffer a lot of discomfort to question one’s self. To ask, “Is this really true? How do I know this is true?” Name any “sin” that you can think of; something that you, personally, think is a sin. How does it begin. It starts because you desire something. It grows closer to becoming reality as you dwell on it and then think of ways to justify it. As you think about it more and more, your thought patterns will center more and more on why you deserve to do that thing, and less and less about how it might hurt someone else.
This is how a man like Charles Darwin could grow up in a family in 19th century England, when most of the country and the modern world believed in the God of the Bible and His Word, and end up writing to convince others on the theory of evolution. He was seeking ways to eliminate God from his life. With each new discovery of fact in science, his theories become more and more ridiculous and untenable, but the people who continue to push them, have the same motivation he did. It can best be summed up by the grandson of Thomas H. Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog,” and the author of Brave New World:
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” -- Aldous Huxley
There you have it. I still believe that apologetics is the handmaiden of evangelism; that true believers should answer the objections, on all levels, to the skeptics of the Bible. We have nothing to be afraid of, and the evidence is on our side. But I have no illusions that you can convince someone of the truth intellectually when they have personal and emotional reasons to fight it at all costs. Being a member of a church can be no more demanding than being a member of Rotary or the Elks club. Recognizing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of the Creator of the Universe demands radical re-ordering and prioritizing of one’s life.
This relates to even the most dedicated Christians in a different way, but in just as dramatic a way nonetheless. It can be extremely shocking and uncomfortable to suddenly realize that many things you had been raised to believe were just wrong. You’d been told things as if they were just fact, based on nothing more than tradition. You had never really checked into it yourself, because, after all, that’s the job of the pastor or priest. You don’t have time for that. He’s the one with the seminary degree. What does a pastor do all week, anyway? He’s got all that time to sit in his office and research all this stuff. Right?
Therefore, it is no wonder that when Christians start asking me why I follow Torah, they would accuse me of being like the “Judaizers” that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Galatians. They put me in the same camp as someone who believes in legalistic adherence to the Law as the means to salvation. In short, they don’t understand Paul’s argument, because for centuries, the clergy has taken selected verses out of the context of everything that Paul wrote and created a false doctrine. This is why Peter wrote regarding Paul’s teaching in his letters, “ . . . as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16)
I can prove from the Scriptures that Paul never made the case that we no longer have to follow Torah and that this is in keeping with what the Messiah taught. I will demonstrate that what Paul was teaching was that you cannot expect adherence to the Torah to save you. Paul was indeed teaching that to make adherence to Torah a condition for salvation was to do violence to the finished work of the Messiah. But this in no way invalidates the fact that all the apostles and the other disciples of Messiah kept and continued to teach the keeping of all the Torah in accordance with the Master’s words in Matthew 5:17-19 and Luke 16:17 “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law (Torah) to fail.”
In the next installment, we will do something that seldom gets done in the church. We are going to look at the entire Bible as a coherent whole. If the Bible really is the Word of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator, it shouldn’t contradict itself, and I’m convinced that it does not. Where I’ve heard contradictions about the Bible, they’ve come from the ideas and doctrines of men.
We are going to go step by step to logically and systematically examine the question of whether or not Yeshua ben Yosef, this Jesus from Nazareth, came to start a whole new religion, or whether he was simply fulfilling and continuing an existing revelation about the nature of God and His Kingdom. We are going to do something that is almost unheard of in the Christian world; we are going to let the text speak for itself.
You can click here to go to the next installment: Not Wanting To Know.
Monday, February 7, 2011
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)