PERVERSION IN BOTH CAMPS
by Avram Yehoshua
Some people think I am trying to combine two religions, Judaism and Christianity. How silly. Everyone knows that can't be done. I would be meshuga if that was what I was trying to do.
First, some questions for my Christian friends. Do you know that 1900 years of Christian anti-Semitism has stripped the Jewish Messiah of His Jewishness? He is not a Gentile. Jesus was born a Jew and is still a Jew. (Rev. 22:16; has the Messiah of Israel saying, 'I, Jesus, sent my angel to you with this testimony for the chosen ones. I am the Root and the Seed of David...')
How can we expect my Jewish People to recognize their own King, Messiah Jesus, if He looks and acts like a Gentile instead of a Jew? Think about it. Try presenting Jesus to the Jewish People and they look at you with that, 'Jesus is for the Gentiles' look. But where does Jesus ever abolish the 7th Day Sabbath for Sunday assembly? Rather, in the Great News told by Mark (2:27-28) Jesus... THE PERVERSE CHRISTIAN CAMP
'said, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."'Notice Sabbath, not Sunday. You who follow the Jewish Messiah; why do you break the Word of Jesus? Why do you desecrate His Holy Sabbath Day? He never did that. Don't you want to walk as He walked? I know that you have been taught this by many in the Church, but it's time to stop following the traditions of man that make null and void the Will (Commandments) of God for your life.
Nowhere in the New Covenant that Yeshua (the Hebrew Name for the Jewish Messiah), came to bring, is the Sabbath or any biblical Holy Day of God (Leviticus 23), ever done away with.
Christian anti-Semitism has abolished what God has ordained, replacing it with pagan holy days straight from the pit of Babylon.
The Sabbath was not changed to Sunday by Yeshua, or the Apostles or the New Covenant.
It was first changed by what would become the Roman Catholic Church around 100 CE (AD). But it was practiced by pagans the world over for 2,000 years before Jesus. When you assemble on Sunday instead of God's Sabbath, you are following the Catholic Church, which took it from Babylon, not your Jewish Savior.
If you say it really doesn't matter what day we assemble on, then you are not using God's Word as the authoritative guide for your life, that Yeshua intends for it to be. For God has spoken on the subject, and saying that it doesn't matter, negates God's Will and blessing for your life. You are breaking God's Word. And that is sin. (See: Genesis 1:31-2:1-3; Leviticus 23:3; Isaiah 56:1-7; 66:23; Acts 13:42f; 16:13; 17:2; 18:4)
I seek to worship the Jewish Messiah Yeshua, who kept the Sabbath, Passover, and dietary laws. He never ate ham (and neither did any of the Apostles), for if He did, He would not have been a sinless Sacrifice. Yeshua declared:'I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them. Till Heaven and Earth pass away, not one yod or embellishment shall depart from the Law until its purpose is achieved.The words of Yeshua our Messiah. Yeshua observed all of the Law that applied to Him. The Apostle Yohanan (John), tells us that without the Law we would not know what sin is. So how do you know when you are breaking God's Word and sinning? 1st Yohanan 3:4 states:
Therefore, the man who breaks even one of the least of these laws and teaches others to do the same, will be considered the least in the Kingdom of Heaven;
but the man who keeps them and teaches them, will be considered great in the Kingdom of Heaven.' (Matthew 5:17-19)'Anyone who sins at all breaks the Law, because to sin is to break the Law.'And the New Covenant does not make a distinction between the Sabbath law and moral law. That is an invention of the Church. The Church states that all the moral laws of Moses we should keep but 'ceremonial laws' Christians don't have to. Catholic and Protestant tradition that nullifies Sabbath, Passover, dietary laws, etc.
Yeshua kept all God's Commandments (that applied to Him, i.e. the laws of a woman's menstrual cycle did not apply to Him; or consecrating His firstborn son to God, for He had no children, etc.). He desires for us to keep them also, by the Power of the Spirit of the Holy One, just as He kept them. 'Impossible?!' to keep the Sabbath and the Commandments of Moses? How much more to love God with all your heart?, and your neighbor as yourself. For the Law has always been presented as being 'impossible to keep!' but who is able to turn the other cheek in the manner of forgiveness every time? Then shouldn't we throw that out too?
Striving to keep an 'impossible Commandment' and failing is one thing. Not striving because it is 'impossible' is perversion of God's Word. For it is only by Him that we can walk in His Kingdom, not our own righteousness or assessment of what we can or cannot do.
The literal half brother of Yeshua, Yakov (Jacob; or the name the Church gave him to strip him of his Jewishness; James), kept the Law (by the power of the Blood and the Spirit):'...as soon as you make distinctions between classes of people, you are committing sin, and under condemnation for breaking the Law.' And,Around 45 CE this same man, Yakov, was the Nasi or President (Prince), of all the Jews in Jerusalem that believed in Yeshua (and these Jews numbered in the tens of thousands). They all kept the Law. Acts 21:20 states:
'...Anyone who slanders a brother, or condemns him, is speaking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you condemn the Law, you have stopped keeping it and become a judge over it.' (Yakov 2:9 & 4:11)'...Then they said to him (Paul), "You see brother, how many thousands of Jewish believers there are, and they are all zealous for the Law."'Yakov commanded all the Gentiles who came to believe in the Jewish Messiah to assemble on God's Sabbath Day and listen to the Law of Moses, that they might begin to understand who the God of Israel was and what He required of them:'For Moses has always had his preachers in every town, and is read aloud in the synagogues every Sabbath.' (Acts 15:21)Shaul (Saul: the Apostle Paul), is credited by the Church with breaking away from God's Holy Days, but I do not see this anywhere in the New Covenant. On the contrary, Paul admonishes the Corinthian Christians for sinning (always going to the Law of Moses), and then instructs them to celebrate the Passover (1st Corinthians 5:6-8):'The pride that you take in yourselves is hardly to your credit. You must know how even a small amount of yeast is enough to leaven all the dough, so get rid of all the old yeast, and make yourselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be.Please note that Christian pride over Judaism, instead of Christian humility, has murdered and decimated just about every Jewish community in Christian Europe over the last 1900 years. (If you aren't familiar with this part of the Christian Family Tree, you might want to pick up any history of the Jewish People in paperback and begin reading from the time of Jesus onward to Nazi Germany.) In the Name of Jesus, more Jews have been murdered, tortured, small Jewish children forcibly taken from their parents 'to save them' than all others names combined. That's why the Name of Jesus is a curse in the Jewish Community; because of what Christians have done to them. But most Christians are unaware of this and distance themselves from this dark reality, instead of seeing that they are part of it.
The Messiah, our Passover, has been sacrificed; let us celebrate the Feast then, by getting rid of all the old yeast of evil and wickedness, having only the unleavened bread (matza), of sincerity and truth.'
How are you part of this? Through identification. Even if you believe that all the Christians who murdered the Jews were 'not really Christians,' the murderers claimed to be Christians and they did it in the Name of Christ. To the Jew, they weren't Moslems, or Buddhists. You might say that their evil exempted them from being Christians, but this is not reality either. When a Jew is wicked, we Jews don't say that they are no longer Jewish, but that they are a wicked Jew. What we see in Christianity over the centuries is that many of the leaders and people were very wicked Christians who hated the Jews, formulated theology against the Jewish people that still pervades the Church today, and they murdered literally millions of Jewish People since the time of the death of the Apostles who would not put up with that kind of perversion of the Good News.
Returning to Paul, the Apostle makes the point that the Messiah was sacrificed (past tense), as the Passover (Lamb), and then proceeds to speak in the present tense: 'let us celebrate the Feast then...' to the Gentile Corinthians. The 'Feast' has to be the Passover (verses those who would cry for Easter), because he uses the metaphor of the Passover: yeast, unleavened bread. I've never heard of unleavened bread given in an Easter message. And the Corinthians could have only understood Paul, if they too were familiar with the picture symbolism and celebration of Passover. If not, then his words to them about making themselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened, as you are meant to be,' would have absolutely no meaning to them, as perhaps they might seem to you now.
The Apostle Paul always upholds the Torah (Law), of Moses; but not as a means of Eternal Life. I don't think that I can emphasize this enough.
For it is in contrasting the Law, with Eternal Life, that gives rise to the misunderstanding that Paul was 'throwing out the Law.'
The Law was never given by God for Eternal Life. But, as far as it can be used as a guide to holy and righteous understanding of how God desires for us to walk, its place is foundational. In his most profound letter, the Apostle Paul states:'...(for not the hearers of the Law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the Law will be justified...' (Romans 2:13)All from Paul's most theological work: the Letter to the Romans. If the Apostle had come to believe that the Law was to be 'thrown out', 'done away with', 'not practiced', as many Christians believe today, he certainly doesn't give any indication of it from Romans. And as the New King James says in its forward to Romans, this letter is '...Paul's greatest work...' It also goes on to declare that it is '...the most systematic presentation of doctrine in the Bible.' Hmm... (The New King James, by Broadman and Holman, Ultrathin Reference Bible, page 989.)
'Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the Law. Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
'Do we make void the Law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the Law.' (Romans 3:28-31)
'The Law is Holy, and what it commands is holy, just and good.' (Romans 7:12)
'The Law, of course, as we all know, is spiritual...' (when was the last time you heard a message on that?) (Romans 7:14)
'In my inmost self I dearly love God's Law...' (Romans 7:22)
No, it is not Paul that 'does away with the Law', anymore than many of the Pharisees in the days of Yeshua could rely on Moses, to not believe in Yeshua. In their eyes they were 'believing in Moses'. But Yeshua rightly asserts that it won't be Him that condemns them, but Moses in whom they think they are following. So it will be with the Christians who contend with Yeshua that it was Paul that they were following in breaking God's Torah. And it'll be the Apostle Paul in Heaven, shaking his head from side to side, saying they weren't following him.
If the point of Paul's attitude toward the Law of Moses (which is really the Law of God, for all Moses did was record it), needs greater clarification, listen to what he says before Governor Felix. He was on trial for proclaiming the Great News, that Yeshua was the Messiah (Acts 24:14):'What I do admit to you is this: it is according to the Way which they describe as a sect that I worship the God of my Fathers, retaining my belief in all points of the Law and in what is written in the Prophets...'To the Christian camp God says, 'Why do you allow the traditions of men to rule your life, when they break My Law?' and also, 'Where is your heart toward My Jewish People?'
No, I'm not trying to combine Judaism and Christianity. Christianity has perverse, pagan practices. This is anti-God. God never gives authority to the Church to institute pagan 'holy days' (Sunday, Easter and Christmas). Or to eat foods that are unclean. This violates His Will (Leviticus 11). Violating His Will is sin. I'm looking to walk in the Way that God desires for me...biblical truth for every Jew and Gentile. It is not Christianity and it is not Judaism, even though both have great things in them. They are also both contaminated, mixing things of God with the things of man and Satan.
Please don't tell me about Acts 10; Peter's vision. It doesn't allow Christians to eat pig. Peter is being sent by God to 'an unclean Gentile'. (Did you ever wonder why the sheets with the unclean animals was let down three times? How many Gentiles did Cornelius send? Acts 10:7.) Nowhere do they or anyone else in the New Covenant eat pig, or say that you can. It violates the Law. It is sin. You cannot 'bless' something (the pig), that goes against God's Will (Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14).
Paul witnesses to this in 1st Timothy 4:4-5 but most Christians don't see it and take it just the opposite way that Paul intended:'For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving, God's Word and prayer sanctify it.'It is not just prayer but also God's Word that sanctifies our food. I ask you, wasn't the Law God's word? Wasn't Leviticus 11 God's Word? Doesn't Paul write in 2nd Timothy 3:16, which is after 1st Timothy, that:'All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness...'Doesn't seem to me that Paul authorizes the eating of pig or that he thought the Law was done away with. The ancient Church made the Jewish Messiah into their own image, a Gentile, because the Church was so diabolically anti-semitic. This is perverse of the highest order. For it presents just the opposite of what God wants for us. And it presents a false picture of the Jewish Messiah Yeshua. It presents Him as a pig eating, Christmas and Easter celebrating Savior. A Savior that no Jew could ever believe was the Jewish Messiah. For the Messiah of the Jews would no more break the Law of Moses, than you or I would want to break the Words of Jesus.
To my Jewish People I have a question. Where does the God of Israel ever say that we will have Eternal Life because we keep His Torah (the Law of Moses)? (And are you keeping the Torah of God?) THE PERVERSE JEWISH CAMP
Let me tell you something my People. It is nowhere to be found. That's right. Nowhere in God's Holy Word do we see Him saying that you will have Eternal Life by keeping Torah, as Holy as Torah is. The Torah was given after we were saved from Egypt, so we could know what God required of us to remain in covenant. There is nothing that speaks of Eternal Life. (We were not saved by the keeping of the Torah. We were delivered from Egypt by the blood of the lamb.)
God created you to be holy. God is not looking for 'good people.' Being 'good' is not why He delivered us from Egypt. 'You must be holy, for I Yahveh your God am holy' (Leviticus 19:2). Being holy means to be one with God. Anything short of this is sin (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
The Judaism that is practiced today (and there are so many diverse, splinter off-shoots; Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, etc.), as we all know, is not directly ordained by God. It comes to us by default. That's right. This is not God's original design for His People Israel. The main ingredient is missing.
The Temple where sacrifice was made, was destroyed in 70 CE. Sacrifice stopped. Sacrifice is at the heart of our relationship with the Holy God of Israel. Without sacrifice, God states there is no forgiveness of sin. Leviticus 17:11 reads:'For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes expiation.'Expiation means to extinguish the guilt incurred. By sacrifice, God forgave us. In Leviticus 16, we see the ceremony cleansing the entire nation of sin. It must be performed with sacrifice. Leviticus 16:15 speaks of the High Priest Aaron slaying 'the goat for the sacrifice for the sin of the people.' And Leviticus 16:30 reads, 'For on this day, atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you of all your sins; you must be clean before the Yahveh.'
There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood. No matter what the Rabbis say, they cannot change the Torah of God. The Rabbis themselves will tell you that they do not have the authority from God to forgive your sin. Only the priests, the sons of Aaron, had authority to forgive sin, when the appropriate sacrifice was brought. Observing the Day of Atonement, without the High Priest sacrificing the goat, will not relieve anyone of their sin. There is no biblical authority for this.
Present day Judaism is without God's authority to forgive sin. This is why you don't know for certain if you are forgiven. The Orthodox tell us that reciting daily the section of the Sidur that has to do with the sacrifices, will be as if we had actually done them. '...that the prayer of our lips be worthy, acceptable and favorable before You, as if we had brought the continual offering at its set time...' (prayer said after some biblical passages on sacrifice read, page 43, Artscroll Sidur)
The Rabbis realize the biblical need for sacrifice but are helpless to carry out the Commandment. So they, not God, institute 'the next best thing' (the reading of some biblical passages on sacrifice), and ask God to accept the reading in place of the actual sacrifice. Picture this...
An Israeli man comes into the store of an Orthodox Jew. He selects many items from the shelves, brings them to the counter and asks the owner for an itemized bill. After receiving it, he reads the bill out loud, picks up the items and proceeds to leave the store. The Orthodox owner calls after him about payment. The Israeli replies, 'Isn't reading the bill the same as paying for it?!'
Reading about the sacrifices is not what God commanded for the Jewish People to be cleansed of their sin. God says, there must be sacrifice. Your sin remains my friend. That's what the God of Israel says. Only through God's ordained sacrifice is sin forgiven.
What are you going to do when you stand before the Holy One of Israel? Where is your sacrifice? And please don't tell me that 'we Jews have advanced far beyond that barbaric understanding.' For then you mock God who set up the sacrificial system to cleanse ancient Israel, and to point to the One who would 'bring Yakov back to Him' and be 'the Light of the Goyim.' (Isaiah 49:5-6)
God has provided His Sacrifice for you (Genesis 22:1-14). His Name is Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah. Many Jewish people have come to know Yeshua as their Sacrifice, the One who cleanses them of their sin. They have found the Shalom (Peace), of Papa God in Yeshua. And believing in Yeshua does not make a Jew into a Gentile! This is the Church's perversion, all too adamantly taken up by the Jewish Community. But perversion does not destroy the Truth. GOD'S HOLY SACRIFICE
How can belief in the Jewish Messiah make a Jew into a Gentile?
In all the false messiahs that we Jews have seen in the last 2,000 years, have any of their followers ever been labeled, 'not Jewish anymore?' Look at Rabbi Akiva. Proclaimer of bar Kohba as the Messiah. Very unfortunate. It cost us our nation. But no one ever says that the followers of Rabbi Akiva, who fought for bar Kohba, were not Jewish anymore. Or that Rabbi Akiva is not Jewish anymore? Yes, he made a great mistake, but even in the mistake he retains his Jewish identity.
I am a Jew who has been forgiven of my sin nature by God. I live as a biblical Jew, seeing that God's Messiah has authority over Rabbinic Judaism when the two clash. And clash they do, for Rabbinic Judaism has taken many things of Babylon into itself. Things that pervert and come against the Torah.
You say Torah forbids human sacrifice and you are right. But where does it say that God cannot sacrifice His Messiah for His People? (Isaiah 53) You think that Yeshua could not be God in the flesh? Why not? Do you know the awesome mystery that is the God of Israel? Do you know how He created the Heavens and the Earth? Failure to understand a mystery does not negate its reality. One day you will stand before Him and have to answer for your sin with no blood sacrifice ordained by God to cover you. Are you ready?
After Yeshua's Sacrifice, His Father raised Him from the dead. Never to die again. Yeshua is Glorified, the First-Fruits of the Resurrection from the dead (and He promises that we shall be like Him on Judgment Day). In appearing to His Followers after His Death, Yeshua said:'Shalom Alayhem (Peace be with you). As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.' After saying this He breathed on them and said: 'Receive the Spirit of the Holy One. For those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.' (Yohanan 20:21-23)Every one who truly believes in Yeshua is forgiven of their sin. My sins have been forgiven. I know what it is to cry out to God with sin, and think that He would never forgive me. But He has sent His Son to take upon Himself, the sins of us all. The Prophet Isaiah said,'He was pierced through for our rebellion, crushed for our perversions. On Him lies a punishment that brings us Shalom' (Peace with Papa God) andI know what it feels like to be forgiven by God. To feel His cleansing Spirit free me from my guilt and bondage, a burden I could not carry. There is nothing that can compare with our God.
'Yahveh has been pleased to crush Him with suffering. If He offers His life in atonement...through Him what Yahveh desires will be done.' (Isaiah 53:5,10)
Am I trying to combine Judaism and Christianity? No. They are both perverse and come short of what the God of Israel demands of His People.
I am proclaiming the reality of the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. This is our authoritative guide for what we believe, and therefore what we should practice. Yeshua said in Yohanan 8:23-24:'...I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. I have told you already: You will die in your sins. Yes, if you do not believe that I am He (the Messiah), you will die in your sins.'To the Jewish camp God cries,'I have dispelled your rebellions like a cloud, your sins like a mist. Come back to Me, for I have redeemed you.' (Isaiah 44:22)Contact me my People. I love you.
Avram
(Suggested readings: From Sabbath to Sunday by S. Bacchiocchi. The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop. God, Jews and History by Max Dimont.)
Email Avram — avramyeh@gmail.com
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