Soil from Stone: Messianic

Showing posts with label Messianic. Show all posts

All the gods' birthdays?

Someone shared this meme with me this morning. (The red X is my own addition.) It claims that all of these ancient pagan deities were born on December 25th:

Horus (Egypt)
Osiris (Egypt)
Attis (Greece)
Krishna (India)
Zoroaster (Persia)
Mithra (Persia)
Prometheus (Greece)
Heracles (Greece)
Dionysius (Greece)
Tammuz (Babylon)
Adonis (Greece)
Hermes (Greece)

Problem 1: Neither Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, nor Babylon had a month named "December".

December means "10th month", but the Roman calendar had been divorced from lunar cycles some 5 centuries before Christ, and then months were added in the middle to make the 10th month into the 12th month. All of these cultures used multiple calendars simultaneously. There were solar/astrological months, lunar months, seasonal divisions, etc., but none of them had a month that corresponded precisely to the Roman December.

Problem 2: It's just plain wrong.

Horus' birthday was celebrated in late summer, as was Zoroaster's. Krishna's was celebrated in early summer. There is no historical record of a birthday celebration for Mithras among the ancient Iranians. Osiris' birthday (or rebirth day) was celebrated in the spring.

Evidently, whoever made this meme just made the entire thing up. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the images on the depicted coins have no connection at all to the names under them.

The Lesson: Stop believing everything you read or hear on the Internet no matter how true it sounds and no matter how badly you want it to be true.

Think for yourself. Do even a tiny bit of research before repeating things. Don't cause the world to blaspheme God's name by repeating lies and hysteria.

The Ancient Rabbis on the Messiah in Isaiah 53

In case anyone ever tries to tell you that Jewish rabbis have never understood Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah...

"The Rabbis said: His name is 'the leper scholar,' as it is written, Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted."

Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, Folio 98b

"Our righteous Messiah has turned away from us; we have acted foolishly and there is no one to justify us. Our iniquities and the yoke of our transgressions he bears, and he is pierced for our transgressions. He carries our sins on his shoulder, to find forgiveness for our iniquities."

R. Eliezer, Machzor Kol Bo

Maimonides wrote that '[The ancient Jews] believed that leprosy was one of the characteristics of the Messiah, for which they found an allusion to the verse: "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted", that is by leprosy.'

Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen

Objections to Keeping Torah

Torah

Torah is a Hebrew word that means "instruction" or "law", depending on the context. It refers to the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), also commonly known as the Pentateuch. When Yeshua (aka Jesus) spoke of "the Law and the Prophets", he was referring to the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament.

You might also hear of the "oral Torah", which refers to a semi-mythical tradition that was passed down to the ancient rabbis from Moses by word of mouth, as opposed to the written Torah referenced above. Those rabbis debated and discussed them, and the records of those discussions are recorded in the various Talmuds. I don't think there can be any doubt that Moses gave oral instructions that were never written down, because there is much in the written Torah that can't be fully understood otherwise. However, I don't think those instructions survived intact for the rabbis to discuss them. Clearly the religious leaders of Yeshua's day had a very confused understanding of the Torah, so it seems very unlikely that they had straightened it all out a few hundred years later. It's much more likely that they had gone even further astray.

That's not to say that the Talmud and rabbinic traditions are worthless. If you understand that it contains a record of debates, not just a straightforward recounting of oral tradition, then you can look past some of the more offensive and blasphemous contents to find some really profound and insightful bits. It's not divinely inspired Scripture, but it is useful for historical context and perspective.

The written Torah, however, most certainly is divinely inspired, parts of it originally written directly by the hand of God himself. It is the foundation for all later revelation. None of the books of history, poetry, and prophecy, the Gospels, and the Epistles can be understood without a solid foundation in the Torah.

The Torah Movement

At this very moment, there is a spontaneous, global movement of people who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to study the Torah and apply its instructions to their real lives. There is no leader, no central committee, no parent organization, and no headquarters of this movement. There isn't even a commonly accepted name. People in this movement call themselves Christians, Messianic Jews, Messianic Believers, Torah-Keepers, Hebrew Roots, Pronomians, Nazarene Israelites, and numerous other labels.

I don't particularly care for any of those labels, but I've used several of them for myself at times.

Regardless of the labels, they all have two things in common:

Yeshua is the Son of God, Messiah, and King of Israel.
The Torah still applies today to followers of Yeshua.

Beyond that, there is an almost infinite variation in their interpretations of Scripture.

There is also a lot of controversy within the rest of the Body of Christ as to what to do with these upstart Obeyers of God's Commandments. Some even deny that we are a part of the Body of Christ at all, claiming that we have rejected God's grace in favor of earning our salvation. (I'm sure they're right about a very small minority.) Some radicals say that any willful attempt to obey any of God's commandments is a rejection of grace. Fortunately, most Christians reject those people in turn.

The Controversy

Of course, all of this means I've put together quite a few words on the subject of whether a follower of Yeshua--or Jesus, if you prefer...it's the same man--ought to obey the full Law of God or not.

A point of clarification on "the Law of God"... Some people make a distinction between the Law of God and the Law of Moses. The distinction is mostly artificial. The instructions that God gave through Moses at Sinai are a written expression of the Law of God. The Law of Moses is the Law of God as it was conveyed in a specific time and space, to a specific people as part of a specific covenant.

Below, I have attempted to catalog all of my online teachings on Torah-keeping, organized by sub-topic, but not in any other kind of order. There's a lot of overlap, and I'm sure to forget some articles or videos, so please search American Torah, Soil from Stone, Rumble, YouTube, and other sites for more from myself and many other fine teachers.

A caveat if you do search for other defenses or refutations of Torah-keeping, though: There is a vast spectrum of quality in the content you will find. Unless you are very thoroughly versed in the Scriptures and confident in your beliefs, I recommend that you set aside the teachings of anyone who denies the divinity of Yeshua or who denies that God has any objective standards of morality for his people.

Salvation by Faith

New Covenant vs Old Covenant

Does the Law Apply to Christians?

Under the Law

The Weekly Sabbath

Other Appointed Times

Food and Not Food

Is Revelation 20-22 a Later Addition?

Someone recently told me that he believes that the last three chapters of Revelation are in direct contradiction to the last eleven chapters of Ezekiel because of the timing of the resurrection of the dead (Ezekiel 37 and Revelation 20) and other details about the New Jerusalem. He couldn't see any way to reconcile these two passages, so he concluded that Revelation 20-22 must have been added after the early church had been heavily corrupted by Greek influence.

After reading the relevant chapter of his book twice, here was my response:

After reading chapter 9 of your book, Ezekiel 37-48, and Revelation 20-22 once again, here are my final thoughts on the matter:
Ezekiel 37 isn't a literal resurrection of the dead, but a restoration of the nation of Israel that happens immediately before or after the onset of the Millennial Era. Ezekiel 40-48 are mostly metaphor about an idealized people of Israel, their repentance and restoration, a righteous remnant of the priesthood, and the adoption of righteous Torah-keepers from the nations. The temple and city described in much detail aren't a literal temple and city, but a pattern to which God desires Israel to conform. I believe for at least two reasons that even the later description of the division of the land is almost certainly a metaphor: 1) The apportioned land is only a fraction of what God promised to Israel, 2) the tribal allocations are parallel strips of land with no regard to terrain, natural boundaries, or sizes of the tribes.
In Revelation 20, only vs 1-10 are about the Millennial Era, what you refer to as the Kingdom age. V11 begins the final resurrection and judgment and chapter 21 represents the onset of a recreated universe populated only by the resurrected righteous. It's possible that the new earth is metaphor, but since this follows the 1000 year reign, resurrection of all the dead, and the final judgment, it is clearly a different kind of world than what existed during the Millennial Era. During the Millennium, the nations still exist, sin and death are still present. Yeshua's rule will be absolute within the fully realized land of Israel, but the nations will be mostly autonomous. After the final judgment, all of those things have been abolished.
At first, Isaiah 65 seems to support the idea that the new heaven and earth of Revelation 21 is metaphor, but the new heaven and earth of Isaiah 65 still has death and sin, so I don't think they are talking about the same thing.
As for the validity of Revelation 20-22, the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers quoted from all three chapters.
Ireneaus (130-202 AD) quoted numerous passages from Revelation 20-21 in Against Heresies.
Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) made a direct reference to Revelation 20:4-5 in Dialogue with Trypho.
Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD) quoted from Rev 21:6 in an address on plagiarisms.
Tertullian (155-220 AD) quoted and referenced numerous passages from Revelation 20-22 in Against Marcion.
Hypolytus (170-235 AD) quoted from Rev 20:6 and 22:15 in his Treatise on Christ and Antichrist.
Cyprian (210-258 AD) quoted Rev 22:10-12 in his Treatise on the Advantage of Patience and Rev 22:4-5 in his Exhortation to Martyrdom.
There are more. If it were only a couple of quotes from one or two authors, it would at least be possible that Revelation 20-22 were added in a later century and then a few quotes inserted into those extrabiblical writers to add support. However, there are dozens of quotes from numerous authors throughout the second and third centuries. This shows that the final 3 chapters of Revelation were present by 165 AD at the latest and so it seems very unlikely that they were not original with John.

I should add that I do not believe any of those church fathers are reliable theologians and some of them were heretics of the worst kind, but that's beside the point. They all quoted from the last three chapters of Revelation. Whatever one might think of the men and their theologies, the textual witness is very strong evidence that Revelation 20-22 is legitimate.

Whenever anyone asserts that some part of the Bible should be removed because he doesn't agree with the content, you need to be immediately on your guard. Don't take anything at face value. Test everything. Verify every claim. Look for alternative explanations.

What Is Hebrew Roots?

"Hebrew Roots" is a term that some people apply to anyone who uses Hebrew-ish terminology and believes (or entertains) a set of ideas they don't like. They use it as an insult in the same way that some antisemites use the term "Jew" to apply only to those Jews who act or believe a certain way. Personally, I find the term to have only two useful definitions:

1) A pronomian of non-Jewish heritage who accepts Yeshua (Jesus, Yahusha, etc.) as the Messiah and believes he has been grafted (adopted, joined, etc.) into the chosen nation of Israel.
2) All of definition #1 with the addition of the adoption of Jewish-like traditions, such as tallit-wearing and using Hebrew terms for religious concepts, like Shabbat instead of Sabbath, mashiach instead of messiah, etc.

In either of these definitions, the only difference between "Messianic Judaism" and "Hebrew Roots" is ethnic heritage, although a Messianic Jew is not necessarily pronomian.

Ironically, most of the people who use "Hebrew Roots" as an insult *ARE* Hebrew Roots themselves. Of course, nobody else is obligated to accept my definitions of anything.

I have waffled over the years about whether or not I am "Hebrew Roots", but clearly by this definition I am. Labels are of limited value, though. Being "Hebrew Roots" is a little like being "Christian". It covers a lot of territory.

The Hebrew Roots Movement is a spontaneous, worldwide movement of Christians drawn to the Hebrew Bible, to keep God's commandments as he intended, and to live as Yeshua lived.

Because this movement is spontaneous and counter-cultural, it can be a little chaotic and attracts a lot of people who have an affinity for the fringes. There is no organization or central leadership, so there is a lot of opportunity for charismatic and just plain loud people to claim the stage.

When some people realize they have been taught some lies about the Scriptures, they react very badly, suspecting everything and everyone of trying to deceive them. Ironically, because they are emotionally driven, these people are easy targets for other deceivers. They can become bitter, angry, and even paranoid, making them easily sucked into the absurdities of Sacred Name and Flat Earth. They need true leadership, but they're too afraid to trust anyone. I don't know what to do to help them other than to keep trying to be a calm voice of sanity.

Fortunately, the vast majority of people in the HRM are not bitter and angry. They aren't Sacred Namers or Flat Earthers. They haven't rejected Jesus. They haven't rejected salvation by faith. They haven't rejected Paul. They don't demand that everyone spell God's name exactly like they do. They're good people who are just trying to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, the angry and bitter voices, the prideful and hateful voices are so much louder that they're the only ones that most people remember, and so the entire movement gets painted with that craziness.

Don't be the one holding that brush. Don't be a slanderer of God's people. Don't assume that every disciple of Jesus who has decided to take God's Law (aka Torah) seriously is a lunatic Torah terrorist. Don't violate the two greatest commandments as well as the 3rd, 6th, and 9th of the Ten just because you had a bad experience with a few people who do NOT represent the hundreds of thousands that didn't stick in your memory.

[Apparently, I didn't realize that I had written another article on the same topic with the same title just a month earlier. The question comes up a lot. lol]

Making Idols of Ideas

I posted this image (below) yesterday on multiple social media platforms. When I created the image, I was specifically thinking of some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories that people fiercely hold onto despite almost universal opposition, despite all physical evidence, despite all reason. Within minutes, somebody--not Hebrew Roots, by his own assertion--replied with a long list of ideas that he believes other people make into idols. It just went on and on, point after outlandish, bizarre point. This guy took my generic admonish not to hold so tightly to an idea that you become incapable of rational thought, to vomit this morass of paranoid delusions onto my readers.

My immediate reaction was incredulousness. How could anyone read this image and think *that* is the appropriate response? But as I read on, I could tell that he was perfectly serious. Not only was he serious, but he was angry, bitter at a world that refused to acknowledge a truth that was plain as day to him. By the time I got to the end...I was angry and disgusted that there are people lost in such hopeless fear and intent on pulling other people down with them.

I deleted his comment, hopefully before anyone else saw it. Despite the obvious absurdity of his assertions, clearly a lot of people are eager to believe. My sincere hope is that I can intercept some of those people before they get lost in fear and confusion, help lead them back to solid ground in reality.

I felt sorry for this commenter and sorrier that experience tells me there is probably nothing I can do to help him. His beliefs are religious in nature, not rational. He didn't arrive at any of them by objectively analyzing evidence or Scripture. He is so thoroughly convinced of so much patent nonsense that he's far more likely to be helped by a psychiatrist-exorcist tag team than by a conversation with anyone on the Internet. I'm sure some time in prayer and Scripture reading--a pious-sounding solution, to be sure--would help, but I suspect he's already got that covered in spades.

But what he really, really needs more than anything else, is to get off the Internet and connect with a meatspace community of people who care about him enough to love him in spite of his insanity.

What Is Hebrew Roots?

When I began writing this article a few weeks ago, I would have defined "Hebrew Roots" as a spontaneous, worldwide movement of people from mostly Christian backgrounds drawn to return to the Hebraic roots of Christianity and to discover and apply the original intent of the writings in the Bible. Now I'm not sure that's accurate or even helpful, but I'll keep it for the next few paragraphs and backtrack at the end.

Sue me.

People place the origins of the Hebrew Roots Movement anywhere from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century, but the nature of such movements make their precise origins very difficult to pin down. It is not a denomination or cult by any useful definition because it has no central leadership and no unified doctrinal statement or creed. It truly appears to be a spontaneous movement of people all over the world responding to God's Spirit calling them back to the "Old Paths" of Jeremiah 6:16. It did not begin with Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God, nor with Messianic Judaism, nor any other specific religious organization or event, although many of those things might be manifestations of that response to some extent.

The organic character of the movement is both good and bad. It's good in that people everywhere are responding to a movement of God's Holy Spirit. It's bad in that the lack of leadership and unity has created some definite chaos, just as God was behind the conquest of Canaan before King David, but "every man did what was right in his own eyes." The Hebrew Roots Movement is a mix of ugly and beautiful right now. I believe this is a period of refining and that God is going to bring something much better out of it.

Since it is so chaotic, everybody seems to have a different idea of what "Hebrew Roots" is, even among HR people. Some people lump Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots together as a monolithic conspiracy to corrupt The Church (an actual, extreme view I read just this morning from someone I won't hesitate to label an anti-Christ liar). Others view Messianic Judaism as distinctly Jewish and Hebrew Roots as distinctly Christian or as a spectrum with no clear distinction. My experience has been somewhere in the middle and also very different than that of others in the movement.

In an effort go get a little more objective idea of what HR people really believe, I posted a series of polls at The Torah Network. This exercise was far from scientific and truly objective. For one thing, there weren't enough responses. For another, TTN isn't explicitly Hebrew Roots as opposed to Messianic Jewish, but its users believe that Yeshua (aka Jesus) is the Messiah and that all believers in Yeshua should be keeping God's Law (aka Torah). That's about the best "lowest common denominator" definition of Hebrew Roots you're going to find.

2023-02-10 Update: I asked these questions again in one of the larger Hebrew Roots groups on Facebook. Polls on social media will always produce "fuzzy" results, but I got mostly the same responses on both sites. Facebook has the added complication that I couldn't find a way to expire my polls, so the numbers below are a snapshot, not a final result.

In the end, though, what I really learned isn't what I expected. I think it actually tells me a lot more about the people who talk about Hebrew Roots people than it does about Hebrew Roots people themselves.

The Questions and Answers:

Do you believe that understanding the pictographic meanings of the Hebrew letters that make up a word are an important aspect of understanding the Tanakh (the Old Testament)? (30 votes)

50% Definitely.
30% Somewhat. (God and the Biblical authors understood the pictographic origins of the letters and could have used that understanding to add another layer of meaning to the text.)
20% Not at all.

Do you believe that a person can only be saved if he correctly pronounces the name of God (aka the Tetragrammaton) and/or of the Messiah? (31 votes)

96% Pronunciation is important for accuracy and meaning, but it's irrelevant to salvation.
4% It doesn't matter what you call God or the Messiah.
0% You must pronounce both names correctly.
0% You must pronounce one or the other correctly.

Do you believe the earth is flat or ovoid? (91 votes)

74% The earth is ovoid/spherical.
20% The earth is flat.
6% I don't know.

Do you believe that Paul (aka Saul of Tarsus) was a false prophet and/or a false teacher? (140 votes)

97% Paul was a legitimate Apostle.
2% Paul was a false teacher/prophet.
1% Undecided

Do you believe the Bible is missing some books? (87 votes)

48% The Bible is fine as it is.
34% Anything that was in any ancient edition of the Septuagint should be in the Bible.
17% The Bible is missing a few books, like Enoch, Jubilees, and Sirach.

Do you believe that Yeshua is God? (82 votes)

66% Yeshua is God.
28% Yeshua is the only begotten Son of God, but not God.
6% Yeshua was a normal man, who was elevated by God to the role of Messiah.

Do you believe in "Two House" Theology?

For this question, I presented multiple, nuanced varieties of "Two House" theology that I have encountered over the last three decades. Apparently, there is so little agreement about what this term means that almost nobody was even able to answer the question.

When do you observe the weekly Sabbath? (172 votes)

85% Sunset Friday to sunset Saturday
7% According to the phases of the moon
5% Some other time
3% Sunday
2% Sunrise to sunset on Saturday

Which label do you most closely identify with? (90 votes)

61% Something else
19% Hebrew Roots
15% Christian
5% Messianic Jew

What do you believe about the Jewish Talmuds? (69 votes)

50% Useful
30% Evil
15% Irrelevant
5% Inspired/Authoritative

Although all of these people would probably be labeled "Hebrew Roots" by those who label themselves "Messianic Jews" or some variety of mainstream Christian, that's not how they identify themselves. In the comments to that question, people specified Natsarim, Messianic Gentile, and Hebrew Christian as their preferred labels. With the one exception of "pictographic meanings", most Hebrew Roots people don't believe any of the things that the rest of the world ascribes to them.

Understanding that the natures of both polls and social media make any conclusions somewhat dubious, the best conclusion I can make is that "Hebrew Roots" seems to be a label that is most commonly used as a catchall pejorative applied to anyone who 1) believes that Yeshua (aka Jesus) is the Messiah and Son of God, 2) is pronomian (in favor of keeping God's Law), 3) practices some religious traditions that Christians associate with Judaism or has adopted more Hebrew or Hebrew-ish vocabulary, and 4) holds any belief that the speaker/writer finds offensive or embarrassing.

Most people whom the rest of the religious world would label as "Hebrew Roots" don't even call themselves that. It's very similar to how the term "racist" is used by most people on the political left to mean "someone who doesn't agree with me", which makes the term nearly useless. No wonder so few people want to identify themselves as Hebrew Roots.

The Weightier Matters: Love Your Neighbor

Over the past two decades I have spent a lot of time discovering what it means to follow Torah. We all know that the essence of the Law is love: Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself. I have tried to learn how that applies to waking up in the morning, to eating lunch, to watching television, and to building relationships.

I can follow the right calendar, keep all the biblical feasts, not keep any "pagan" feasts, and avoid all the wrong foods and still not really live Torah. I know people who have never given a thought to whether or not they should eat a seafood salad, but who follow Torah much more closely than I do. The couple who give all their time to the spiritual redemption of murderers and thieves, the man who volunteers day after day to serve hot meals at the Rescue Mission, the woman who spends her afternoons teaching art to neglected and hard-to-teach children, the child who saves his allowance all year to buy Christmas presents for everyone but himself.

For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man studying his natural face in a mirror. For he studied himself and went his way, and immediately he forgot what he was like. But whoever looks into the perfect Law of liberty and continues in it, he is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work. This one shall be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks to be religious among you, yet does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their afflictions, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world….If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and if one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them those things which are needful to the body, what good is it?

-James, the Just

Two Linguistic Traps That Can Make You Look Ridiculous

There are two quirks of language that can trick you into saying some pretty silly things if you aren't aware of them, especially in regard to translation and ancient languages like Hebrew and Greek.

1. False Cognates. A false cognate is a word that sounds or looks so much like another word that you assume they must have the same origin (aka "etymology") and probably mean the same thing at some level. Don't fall for it! Many, many words sound or look like completely unrelated words. Before you say "This word in English (or Greek, Latin, German, etc.) is derived from that word in Hebrew (or Greek, Latin, Egyptian, etc.)" because they resemble each other, make sure that it's actually true. Languages all over the world have very similar sounding words that don't actually have any connection to each other at all. A few minutes of searching the Web can save you hours of fighting over a hill you never should have climbed in the first place.

2. False Friends. A false friend is very similar to a false cognate, but can involve words that really do have the same origins. However, words evolve over time and the exact same word (or closely related words) might have totally different meanings in different contexts. One of the most obvious examples in modern English is the word "gay". The word once meant one thing, but was coopted to mean something else entirely. When a person uses that word, you need to know the context before you can know what meaning they intend.

A Biblical Day Is from Sunset to Sunset

The traditional Hebrew method of counting days is from sunset to sunset. As far as I know, this has been true throughout recorded history, while most other cultures count days beginning either at sunrise or at midnight. There are multiple scriptural bases for beginning the calendar day at sunset, but the most significant one is from Genesis 1: "It was evening and it was morning, the first day..." etc.

People who take the books of Enoch too seriously tend to get caught up in all kinds of calendar controversies. They say that the day is only from sunrise to sunset and the nighttime doesn't count as part of a calendar day at all, so the Sabbath is really only about 12 hours. They also say that the Sabbath must be counted each month beginning with the new moon, so that the Sabbath is always on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th of the lunar month. (There are some variations on that.) I have read Enoch a couple of times, but haven't studied it--mostly because of the foul fruit I see in the lives of those who do--so I can't comment on exactly what Enoch says about days and months, etc.

These ideas create several contradictions in calculating feast days and Sabbaths, and puts their adherents at odds with the rest of the world. In the minds of most "Enochians", though, being at odds with all other believers is a feature, not a bug, of the Enochian calendar. True believers who accept the *whole* word of God know the *true* calendar. The rest of us are deceived....or so they want to believe.

I talk about the Sabbath idea a little more here: All About the Weekly Sabbath.

My Favorite Messianic & Hebrew Roots YouTube Channels

There are a lot of great YouTube channels created by Yeshua-believing, Torah-keeping folks. Unfortunately, there are a lot of really bad ones too. I subscribe to a long list of channels, but these are the ones that I watch most frequently and can recommend (almost) without reservation:

In no particular order.

And, of course, my own American Torah channel.

There are also a few non-Messianic, non-Torah Observant teachers whom I really appreciate. Just be aware that their perspective is skewed because of that false premise.

And even a few Jewish channels that are pretty good. Again, be aware of a skewed perspective because they haven't yet realized that the Messiah's identity has been hidden from them by centuries of false teachings about him.

Is "Holy Ghost" a Bad Translation of the Hebrew Ruach haKodesh?

Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is translated from the Greek πνευματος αγιου (pnuematos agiou) and Hebrew רוח קדשׁ (ruach kadosh).

Many people feel like "Holy Ghost" is a bizarre and even sacrilegious way to translate this term, but this feeling is based more on poor education than on any actual problem with the translation.

The word "ghost" comes from the Old English word gast, which meant breath, wind, spirit, angel, demon, etc.

The word "spirit" comes from the Latin word spiritus, which meant breath, wind, spirit, angel, demon, etc.

At the time that the KJV was translated from Greek and Hebrew into English, if someone wanted to talk about the spirit of God, they were just as likely (maybe even more likely, since the common people were more familiar with Germanic-rooted words) to use the word ghost as the word spirit. They were perfect synonyms. The two words were interchangeable.

In today's English we tend to associate the word ghost only with the spirits of the dead and the word spirit with the spirits of supernatural beings. But that doesn't change the actual meanings of the words. Notice that I said "spirits of..." in both cases. That's because the words mean essentially the same thing, and it is still perfectly acceptable in modern English to refer to the "ghost" of a dead person as a "spirit".

The only two real differences between the words "ghost" and "spirit".

The two words came from different ancestral languages, Proto-German (via Old English) and Latin (via Old French).
We are in the habit of using one word in some contexts and the other word in other contexts.

The definitions of the words haven't really changed. It's only our informal usage of the words that have changed somewhat since the KJV was translated.

Having said all that, a modern English translation of the Scriptures shouldn't use the word "ghost" to refer to the Holy Spirit because it does confuse people who are only used to hearing that word in the context of the spirits of dead people.

Is "God" the Name of a Pagan Deity?

The quotes below are from a comment on a Facebook post in the Common Sense Bible Study group.

The name גד has ancient origins as a false deity in many places around the world, and it is mentioned in Isaiah 65:11 specifically. You cannot deny this. It was used in Europe when the first printing presses rolled out the first bibles and it was a name of one of their foremost deities before the catholic church invaded their land. These are facts and there are many more like them.

Yes, Gad is used in Isaiah 65:11 to refer to the god of fortune that was commonly worshiped in ancient Semitic cultures. However, the word itself just means "fortune" and was applied to the corresponding god more as a nickname than anything else. If someone today decided that there was a god that governed how much light is put out by light bulbs, but didn't know its name, he might call it "the god of lumens". If he started a religion to worship this god, eventually his followers would probably just start calling their god "Lumen" because it's easier. Same thing here. "Gad" was not really the name of the god, but of the god's area of responsibility.

This is almost exactly the same way that ba'al was first a common Hebrew word that simply meant master or husband, but was later used like a proper name for a particular false master. It was a perfectly good word coopted for nefarious purposes. Interestingly enough, YHVH uses the word "ba'al" to refer to himself more than once in Scripture.

The rest of this claim is historical fiction as far as I can tell. I haven't found a single source for the existence of a deity named Gad or God anywhere outside of the Ancient Near East. The English word, god, descends from an old Germanic word that meant almost exactly what it means in English today: a supernatural being. It was never the proper name of any deity. Someone probably made that up because they wanted to impress their friends with their arcane knowledge, what Ryan (IIRC) refers to as more-special-than-thou syndrome.

In the ancient Semitic languages, including Hebrew, gad means fortune or troop, depending on the language and context. This has absolutely no connection to the ancient Germanic word. The German languages, including English, are part of the Indoeuropean family of languages. English and Hebrew share one major element in common: they are both spoken by humans. But that's about it. If a word in Biblical Hebrew sounds similar to a word in Old English or German, there is next to zero chance that the words are actually related in any historical way.

In Exodus 23:13, YHWH specifically says we are not to have the names of other deities even found in our mouths...

And yet the Bible, all of which is clearly meant to be read aloud, contains many names of pagan deities. God commanded the prophets to speak the names of pagan deities on many occasions, for example in Jeremiah 46:25 which contains the name "Amon of No" (strangely translated as "multitude of No" in the KJV).

The same pagans (and Israelites!) who worshiped Ba'al also used the name YHVH to refer to multiple pagan deities. They were only following the example of the Hebrews with the golden calf at Mt Sinai. Since YHVH became the name of one or more pagan gods, does that mean we can't use that name for the original YHVH anymore?

Clearly Exodus 23:13 can't mean that we absolutely must never speak the name of a pagan deity under any circumstances, or else God commanded the prophets to sin. Rather, it means that we must never pray to them, call on them, speak or act in their names, or swear by them. In other words, don't speak of or to them as you should to YHVH.

...yet you would teach as many people as you can in your warped desire to break this command wantonly and to justify your own wrongdoing.

To which I can only respond with Exodus 20:16, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

Why not just drop your pride and be wrong for once? Why not just let go of you and say to Him, "Okay, Father." Why not just use the name HE told you was His instead of fighting so hard against Him and everyone who would oppose you, instead of insisting on using what YOU want to call Him.

Like adonai, baal, and elohim, "god" and "father" are both titles, not names. They are both titles applied to countless false deities as well as to the one true Creator (also a title and not a name). YHVH also said to call him Adonai, Elohim, El Shaddai, Father, Yeshua, Emmanuel...and even Ba'al.

I am perfectly willing to admit when I'm wrong. I have done so many times, and I'm sure I will make and correct many more mistakes if God (YHVH, if you prefer) allows me the time.

But you're going to have to use some actual evidence of error--as opposed to historical fantasy--before I'll take you seriously.

Does the Bible Say that the Earth Doesn't Move?

Does the Bible say that the Earth never moves?

Tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
1 Chronicles 16:30

The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
Psalms 93:1

He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.
Psalms 104:5

I have heard some people quote these verses in support of the idea that the earth can't possibly be spinning through space, orbiting around the sun. "God says the earth doesn't move and God doesn't lie!"

If you read these verses in isolation without looking at the context or the underlying Hebrew, and if you squint just right, I can see why a person might think that, but if you take just a few minutes to understand what the authors were trying to communicate, you'll quickly see that it doesn't hold up.

For example, 1 Chronicles 16:30 is part of a prayer that David spoke after bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. It's poetic and demonstrative, and--like almost all poetry--uses some very picturesque language that wasn't meant to be understood literally. Other lines in this same prayer describe the land (Hebrew eretz, which can be translated "land", "ground", or "earth") singing to God and speaking to the nations and peoples. If verse 30 literally means that the world (Hebrew tebel) cannot physically move, then verses 23, 24, and 31 must literally mean that the land speaks in an audible, comprehensible voice. We all know that it doesn't.

The Hebrew word translated as "moved" in these three verses is mot, which literally means to shake. It does not mean to move something from one place to another, as the earth orbiting the sun or a person moving from one room to another. It's used in Job 41:23 to describe the scales of the leviathan. I don't think anyone would seriously propose that the leviathan was in immobile statue, so it obviously doesn't mean that its scales can't move from one place to another. It's also used in Isaiah 41:7 to describe an idol that has been nailed to a base or other type of mount. Again, that doesn't mean the idol can't be moved. It only means that the idol won't wobble and fall over.

Clearly saying that the world or the earth can't be moved, does not have to mean that it is fixed in a static location within the universe or else we would have to say the same thing about finished idols and the leviathan.

"The world shall never be moved" doesn't even mean that it won't be moved in the literal sense of being shaken. Earthquakes happen all the time, even in the Bible. More than that, the Bible says that entire mountain ranges and oceans have been rearranged over time and will be again.

Even if you believe, despite the overwhelmingly massive evidence all around you, that the earth is a plane, standing on literal pillars, Job 9:5 says that God moves mountains and 9:6 says that he shakes the whole earth out of its place. Psalm 104:5 says the earth's foundations mean it can't be moved, but Psalm 82:5 says all the foundations of the earth are shaken. The selectively hyper-literal reading of flat-earthers requires that the earth cannot be moved and that it moves. It is inherently contradictory. It is physically, literally, and logically absurd.

So if "never moved" doesn't mean that the earth's location is permanently fixed in the universe, and it doesn't mean that the earth never trembles or moves around in any way, what does it mean?

"The world shall never be moved" is just a poetic way of saying "This stuff sure is dependable compared to you and me." And that's all it means. It's an idiomatic expression (Dictionary definition of idiom), never meant to be taken literally. Neither David nor Job believed that the earth could never be moved, and I'm sure they would be dumbfounded if they learned that anyone had taken their words to mean that.

If any "teacher" says otherwise, you should immediately stop listening to him. He is not qualified to be a teacher of anything at all that requires a basic understanding of human language.

Reconsidering Organized Religion

These things do NOT represent Hebrew Roots any more than Westboro Baptist represents all Baptists.

Sacred Name (Jesus comes from Hail Zeus & if you don't spell it right, you're a heretic, etc.)
Made up Hebrew words & names.
British Israelism & other branches of Christian Identity.
Real Israelites are black. Everyone else is a wannabe.
The earth is flat and if you don't get it, you're just a dupe of UN satanists
Everything is pagan, including the Pope's hat & your mom's apple pie .
Jews are Khazari-demon hybrids.
Calculating the Sabbath according to the phases of the moon because that's the way pagan Babylonians did it.
Refusing to use the traditional Jewish month names because they're of Babylonian origin.

The people who believe these things aren't necessarily bad people. Everyone believes things that are wrong. Everyone has hatred, deception, and ignorance in their hearts.

I just want to point out that these beliefs have NOTHING to do with the Hebrew Roots movement and everything to do with fallen human nature. All of these beliefs can be found in every other religious group and even among atheists, and most Torah-observant Hebrew Roots people don't believe any of those things.

What a repulsive mess. As much as I hate to admit it, this is the kind of thing that highlights the value of organized religion. When everyone does what's right in his own eyes, God turns away and the rest of the world looks on in horror.

A final word of caution to my Torah-observant brothers: You can be the most knowledgeable person in the world on any given subject, but once you begin conflating opinion and emotion with fact, all of your knowledge becomes a noose of confusion, and the more knowledge you add, the tighter it is drawn about your neck.

A Little More on the Name of God

Accents & pronunciations change over time. Even if you know exactly how a word was spelled three hundred years ago, you cannot know exactly how it was pronounced. For example, Americans, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, and Brits, who were once a single people and still speak the same language, all pronounce the same letters differently. If you picked up an English text written by a 17th century Virginia planter you could not pronounce the written words exactly as he did, even though you could read and understand them plainly.

Now consider the tetragrammaton, YHVH. If a little time and geography make it impossible for English speakers today to know exactly how a familiar English word was pronounced just three centuries ago, how much more is it impossible for English speakers today to know how a Hebrew word was spoken two or three thousand years ago? It's not just a different language separated by millennia. It's an entirely different alphabet with no vowels! Even if we could be 100% confident about what vowels should go between the consonants, nobody alive can know exactly how to pronounce the consonants, let alone the assumed vowels.

There are only two ways to know how to pronounce YHVH for certain: 1) Go back in time and hear it pronounced by Yeshua or one of the prophets; 2) Get a direct revelation from YHVH himself.

Anything else is just academic speculation and anyone who tells you otherwise is just blowing hot air.

My Favorite Fairy Tales

These are a few of my favorite things not to believe in:

Anthropogenic climate change
Democracy
Technocracy
Feminism
Flatearth
Sacred-namism
Imaginary Hebrew (Yahusha, Yahawashi, Yahuah, Yashraal, etc.)
KJV-onlyism
Equality
Homeopathy
Medical ex cathedra
Vegetarianism
Chemtrails
Lizard people
Aliens
The Religion of Peace™
The next election is the most importantest election ever
Transgenderism
Big Foot
Every mass shooting is a false flag event
Russians/Jews/Nazis/Masons/Illuminati are controlling everything
Darwinian Evolution
British Israelism
African Israelism
And its corollary, the Black Jesus
Khazars converted to Judaism
Dispensationalism
Hypercalvinism
Progressivism
Socialism
Globalism
Papism
Noahide Laws
Egalitarianism
Teetotalism
Astrology
Spiders are your friends
Pharmacosoteriology
Serpent Seed/Seed of Cain
DidIMissAnIsm

I'm probably wrong about one or two of these. I mean, I can't be right about everything all the time, right? But I could be wrong.

A Differently Spelled Gospel

"Our father died in the wilderness; but he was not in the company of those who gathered together against the Lord, in company with Korah, but he died in his own sin; and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be removed from among his family because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father's brothers." (Numbers 27:3-4)

A man's name is more than the label on his birth certificate. It is who-he-is, the sum total of his character, his legacy, the whole crater he makes in this world. So, too, God's Name isn't just a collection of sounds & letters.

Yeshua said to "preach the gospel & make disciples of all men". He didn't say "preach paleo-Hebrew & make all men transliterate the Father's name thusly".

People who fight over the correct English(!?) spelling & pronunciation of YHVH have completely missed the point. If they believe that such things are the same gospel proclaimed to the nations by Peter & Paul, then they are the subjects of Paul's warning to the Galatians against those who teach "a different gospel...who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ."

They have elevated trivia above truth.

Judeo-Christian Is Christian

For 1500 years Christian political & religious leaders tried to excise the "Jew" from Christianity. Gutenberg, with the assistance of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Luther, Lefèvre d'Étaples, and others, put an end to that by putting the Jewish scriptures--from Genesis to Revelation--into the hands of the people so they could read it for themselves.

The only way to take the "Judeo" out of "Judeo-Christian" is to take the Bible away from the people. Well, the cat's out of the bag, and there's no way to put her back in. Jesus was, is, and will always be a Jew, and "Christian" without "Judeo" is a half-pagan, clay-and-iron monstrosity that needs to be crushed.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with modern Judaism or the Talmud. It has everything to do with a Jewish Savior and a collection of divinely inspired writings penned almost exclusively by Jews. Any "Christian" system that denies its Jewish roots cuts itself off from its own nominative founder and messiah.

Words Are Just Labels

Sometimes when people start getting back into Scripture, they discover things they never knew were there, they get convicted, they get excited... And sometimes they get a little carried away by things they read or hear without considering the greater context. For example, in Exodus 23:13, God said "Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips."

Years ago, when I was first getting really serious about trying to obey God, I thought this meant we needed to stop using "Tuesday" and "January" because they were named for pagan gods.

Some people take that even further and say we shouldn't use words like "lord" and "god" because the True God shouldn't be made to share his titles with false gods.

But then there's this:

For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. Isaiah 54:5

We all know this is talking about YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (The all-caps LORD always means that the original Hebrew read "YHWH".) There's absolutely no question about it. Isaiah is relaying a message from God about Himself to the people of Israel. Did you also know that the Hebrew word God used to describe himself as a "husband" is ba'al, the exact same word used as to refer to the chief Canaanite god? It can be translated as husband, master, lord, etc.
In other places, God YHWH calls himself El and Adonai, which translate almost exactly to god and lord, respectively.

All words and sounds are abused and co-opted at times for sinful purposes, but there is no such thing as a "pagan" word or sound any more than there can be a pagan hammer or a pagan screwdriver. Words are just tools used to convey information, and, just like hammers, they can be misused.

Some nouns carry more information than others, but in the end they're just labels. God, lord, ba'al... these are generic nouns that are sometimes used as proper nouns, just like Father, Doctor, or President. The chief Canaanite god was often called Ba'al, but YHWH also called himself ba'al.

If pagans worship a god of the trees and they call it Tree, are we then forbidden to use the word "tree" ever again? Of course not. Even if there was a real being masquerading as the god of the trees, that word doesn't belong to him, and it's not really his name.

When God said "Don't let the names of false gods pass your lips" in Exodus 23:13, he didn't mean, "Don't speak the phonetic equivalents of their names and don't ever use those nouns again." No. What he meant was, "Don't call on false gods. Don't swear by their names, don't honor them by talking about them in a favorable manner, don't pray to them, don't act in their names, and don't speak for them."

Words are just tools to represent information through speech and writing. Don't confuse the labels for the realities, and don't let the world dictate your speech.