Sunday, May 11, 2014

Following

                                             by Jim Shirley

The Torah is the same Path that Yeshua followed. It is the same path that Yeshua led his original followers. I have said this over and over ... Yeshua was a Torah observant, tallit wearing, synagogue attending, Sabbath and feast-keeping, kosher Jew who observed the seven commanded holy days. Most will agree with me on that. Fact is Most of the Christian Church teach that The Torah is NOT for them. In doing so they have disenfranchised their members and have led them down the broad path instead of the narrow path. Matthew 7:13 "Enter through the narrow gate." The Narrow and Wide Gates - “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction". We all need to return to Our Biblical Roots, we need the Truth of a purer understanding of Our faith. His Word is Truth, Man has distorted and destroyed His Truth. Many are still asleep, now is the time to wake up. Everyone is walking some road to some destination, even if you seem to be sitting still. You may not be moving in space, but you are nonetheless moving in time, and you will one day reach an inevitable destination, the grave. The only question in that case is whether you will arrive with anything to show for it. Everyone choose either the wide path or the narrow path. Which do you choose? Some think the journey is just for sight-seeing, so it doesn't much matter where they may ultimately be headed. Some just simply have no clue and follow the masses. Why does it matter? Yeshua says in His own words that you are going to find out one day, and then it will be too late. The straight and narrow path is the path of every Torah Believer. It is not a burden another has laid upon you. It is the burden of your own greatness and giftedness that you may sometimes feel like shirking. And that always remains an option. You can always slough off your destiny and join the mediocre crowd heedlessly careening down the path of least resistance. There are also those who want to be on both paths ... no matter how many times they hear the truth they continue to play on both roads. Even though it may seem like you have all the time in the world to change direction, as indeed you may, the way things go, it will become much too difficult to disentangle yourself from all the associations and commitments you will accumulate along the way you have chosen. You just can't realistically go back and start over, much less walk both paths at the same time. There's not enough of you to go around. You have to choose one path to be able to go on any path at all.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

No Old, No New Testament

I saw this on a Brother's wall, and found it deeply profound.  As we all know, the origin of some articles and notes on social media are difficult to trace to the original author.  This is valuable information, but at this time the author is unknown.  The Goshen Gazette claims no right of authorship nor is there any intent of copyright infringement.
                                                
>>>Most Bibles have a page that says "New Testament" between Malachi and Matthew. Mine doesn't because I ripped it out because it's heresy!!! No where does the Bible itself call the books of Genesis to Malachi the "Old Testament". And nowhere does it call the books of Matthew to Revelation the "New Testament."

I think this is a big deal because it's a lie and it's messed up a lot of Christians. Any time believers dismiss stuff from the Hebrew Scriptures with the mantra "oh that's the Old Testament", you see that lie at work. It has contributed to replacement theology. It's one of the reasons the first four-fifths of many Bibles are collecting dust.

When people say and do stuff like this, it's because they've believed the lie of the "Old Testament". They don't realize that Genesis to Malachi is actually a series of covenants, i.e. testaments, all building on each other. They don't understand that according to Paul in Ephesians 2, they're members of at least one of them - he says non-Jewish believers have become members of the covenants of promise. Notice the plural there! They don't read these stories as their own stories - as the stories of the people they have been grafted into. They're just the *Old* Testament.

Calling the writings of Yeshua's apostles the "New Testament" is a lie, too. The new covenant, which was described in detail by the prophets of Israel and involves the Torah being written on your heart, isn't the books of Matthew to Revelation. The new covenant is a person! Isaiah 42:6 and 49:8 actually say that Yeshua IS the covenant. And he said the new covenant is in his blood which was shed for you and me.

As an aside if you're curious where these misleading terms came from, you can thank Marcion - who was kicked out of the church and branded a heretic in the mid-100s, but whose ghost lives on in pop theology today - for your Old and New Testament pages. You might have fun reading about him.

So what can we do about this? Well, for one thing, quit calling them the Old and New Testaments all the time. Learn to call the Old Testament the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Tanach as they're called by the Jewish people. You could also call the New Testament the Apostolic Writings, or something similar. You could also go a little crazy like me and tear those two pages out of your Bible. Symbolically, of course. And, most importantly, you can help correct people's misunderstandings on the issue. Because those two pages aren't really the problem, they're a symptom of something deeper. And now you know the rest of the story.......