VIEWING OUR LIVES WITH AN

ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE

  YOUR DEATH NOTICE IN PRINT:

The Covenant will survive your grave.

Do you have it?

When Yahusha comes to us, He writes His Covenant upon our hearts.  We know when we have received Him:

Rom 8:6-14:   “For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.

Because the mind of the flesh is enmity towards Alahim, for it does not subject itself to the Torah of Alahim, neither indeed is it able,

and those who are in the flesh are unable to please Alahim.

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of Alahim dwells in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Messiah, this one is not His.

And if Messiah is in you, the body is truly dead on account of sin, but the Spirit is life on account of righteousness.

And if the Spirit of Him who raised יהושע from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Messiah from the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit dwelling in you.

So then, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of Alahim, these are sons of Alahim.”

1Jn 3:4-6  “Everyone doing sin also does lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.

Everyone staying in Him does not sin.

Everyone sinning has neither seen Him nor known Him.”

OUR MAIN PURPOSE IN LIFE involves a RESTORATION TO A RELATIONSHIP lost because of disobedience in Eden.

Our focus in life is to be in a relationship with the One Who created us  -  through His Covenant, mediated by Yahusha, the Messiah of Israel.

We are to be signposts for people, showing the way to Yahusha’s Covenant, so He can begin His work in them.

Christianity has been working to keep people away from His Covenant, and it has been very successful.

If we are hated, it’s because of His Covenant, the Word of Yahuah.  Our entry into the Covenant involves a circumcision of our heart by Messiah Yahusha, outwardly shown by the act of immersion in water, calling upon His Name for the forgiveness of our sins against His Covenant, the Name of DELIVERANCE:

YAHUSHA  (Yah  -  is our  -  deliverance).

“The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My Words shall by no means pass away.”  Luk 21:33

Green tree  -  living, producing leaves and fruit (TORAH)

Dry tree  -  dead, brittle, lifeless, without Torah

Misunderstanding Scripture, we lose the proper perspective.

A “RABBI” communication from the Internet:

chabad.org posted this statement:

“Circumcision is the first commandment given by God to Abraham, the first Jew, and is central to Judaism.” 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vidal Bekerman, Chabad.org [mailto:mail_co845003_254543@chabad.org]
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 10:38 PM
To: order@fossilizedcustoms.com
Subject: Chabad.org: Feedback { Ref. No. 706764 }

B"H

Shalom Lew,

When we refer to Abraham as the first Jew, we mean to say that he is a founding father of the Jewish people.  It's tru that not all his descendents were Jewish and the same goes for Issac, but nevertheless, they are consdiered Jews in a certain sense.

When we refer to Jews today, we are not only referring to members of the tribe of Judah, but to memebrs of all the triebs of Israel.  We are all called Jews because the root for the Hebrew word Jew is "yehudi" which means one who acknowledges G-d.

Technically, you are correct - we became halachic Jews according to Torah law only at Sinai when we received the Torah.  Hence, Moses and his generation were the first Jews committed to Torah and mitzvahs as we know them today. 

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the generations before Sinai were Jews in the sense that they contributed spiritually character traits to their Jewish descendents, who became fully realized Jews only with the giving of the Torah a few hudnred years after their patriarchs lived. 

Regarding your reference to the term G-d, you may be right about its origins, but I think the term has become a common English reference to the Monotheistic Deity that created the world.  I think it is in that capacity that most people use the term. 

As Jews, we often use the term Hashem, which in Hebrew means "the name" - a roundabout way of referring to you know Who.

I hope this helps and feel free to explore further at www.chabad.org.

Vidal Bekerman

for Ask the Rabbi

@ chabad.org

“you know Who?”

Shalom brother Vidal,

   Thank you for stretching your thoughts around my comments.  My intention was not to criticize or malign your approach, but to introduce ideas that may be outside of your normal encounters.  I certainly understand the reasoning behind many things that are done, and knew the normal response before you gave it (and I’m not a very intelligent guy).

A tactical flaw in the reasoning that Abraham (Abu Ramu) was the first  “Jew” (Yahudi, or worshipper/server of Yah) is that while he did serve and obey Yahuah, he was not of the seed of the man Yahudah, because then he would be his own great-grandfather.    I realize the loose interpretation of the term “Jew” used on your site applies to those who are in the Covenant;  it’s just that I refer to such people in a broader sense (as TaNaKh also), by the term “Yisrael” (or Yisharal), which includes all the tribes.  The idea that Abraham was the “first” worshipper of Yahuah (Yahudi – to use the term loosely) is the primary error in reasoning.  If we are to apply the label “Yahudi” to everyone that serves and obeys Yahuah, then Abu Ramu would not have been the “first” Yahudi by any means.   The dominant tribe of the 10 northern tribes of Samaria (during the 8^th century BCE) was “Afraim”, the tribe that received the blessing of the first-born directly from Yisharal (Ya’Aqob).   They and the other tribes scattered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE have become many nations (multitudes), which were generally termed “Samaritans” (of Samaria).   One of my chief functions is to call these lost seeds of Yisharal back to the Covenant, given at the first Shabuoth at Sinai.

   I am a researcher of TaNaK, and a brother in the same faith you have, minus the Talmud (the human source of many misunderstandings).  Purifying and purging the dross of human perceptions from the Torah observances frees a person to see many things with much clarity, and it is from that clarity that I often ask penetrating questions.   We learn many things through questioning and seeking-out the foundations of our understanding.

Again, thank you for responding and thinking upon what I had to say.

May Yahuah baruch you and keep you, and have a joyous Shabuoth, our wedding anniversary (Yahuah, Husband;  Yisrael, wife),

Lew

PRAYER

Prayer is communication with our Creator.  No other entity may be called upon (YashaYahu 8).

Isa 8:19-20: “And when they say to you, ‘Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,’ should not a people seek their Alahim?

Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?

To the Torah and to the witness!  If they do not speak according to this Word, it is because they have no light of dawn.”

The “prayer book” idea involves prepared prayers that don’t come from our hearts when we communicate with Yahuah, because someone else wrote them down.

When Yahusha commented on how to pray (the model), He was directing our minds to the key ideas that our REAL communication ought to embody.

His feeling toward “repetitive” prayer was also addressed, and He told us not to do this  -  it reminds Yahuah of how the Pagans pray.

Our communication with Yahuah ought to be spontaneous, self-composed, and filled with the same intimacy that we would have if we were with our very best friend, and speaking (and listening) to them.  If we follow human traditions, eventually we will find ourselves doing all sorts of imitative, empty behavior, one example being the donning of “prayer shawls”.  We are clay vessels, and yet we are indwelled by the most set-apart Being imaginable.  We have Yahusha within us, and He probably would rather that we speak simply from our hearts, without ceasing.  Contrived prayer is hardly any different from taking a letter that someone else wrote and giving it to our best friend. 

Think of it from Yahuah’s point-of-view, and you’ll see how impersonal and cold prepared prayer really is.

From my own personal experience with prayer, prayer is including Yahusha in everything I think and do.  He is with me all the time, and only waits to be included. 

He's personal, like an invisible Friend, and I believe He wants us to be natural and informal with Him. 

We can be this honest with Him, since He knows us so intimately.  We're the ones who usually puts the 'veil' over
our minds, blocking out the knowledge that He's really there.  

He's benevolent, but we mustn't try to force Him to act.  What we do, our aspirations, goals, and daily efforts will succeed simply by making Him a part of them.  More accurately, we submit to His will so much in our lives,
that everything we do is His work in our lives, so it automatically succeeds. 

When we fail, it is because He is not in it, nor was it something He ever wanted us to do.   We've mostly overlooked His wishes, and wasted our time.   When we try to accomplish our designs, not His, we waste our time and effort. This is why we get the feeling He is "looking away".

ALEF-TAU   (Greek, “Alpha & Omega”)

IDENTIFICATION MARKER IN VERSE 1 OF BERESHITH:

Rev 1:7  “See, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth shall mourn because of Him. Yes, Amĕn.

Rev 1:8 ‘I am the Alef and the Tau, Beginning and End,’ says יהוה  ‘Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty.”   (Almighty = SHADDAI)

Rev 1:9  I, Yoḥanan, both your brother and co-sharer in pressure, and in the reign and endurance of Yahusha Mashiak, came to be on the island that is called Patmos for the Word of Alahim and for the witness of Yahusha Mashiak.

Rev 1:10  I came to be in the Spirit on the Day of Yahuah, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet,

Rev 1:11 saying, ‘I am the Alef and the Tau, the First and the Last,’ and, ‘Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven assemblies of Asia – to Ephesos, and to Smurna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodikeia.’”

Rev 1:12 And I turned to see the voice which spoke with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands,

Rev 1:13 and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Adam, dressed in a robe down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.”

Zec 12:10 “And I shall pour on the house of Da’ud and on the inhabitants of Yerushalayim a spirit of favour and prayers. And they shall look on Me whom they pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son. And they shall be in bitterness over Him as a bitterness over the first-born.”

STRONGHOLD (fortress of reasoning):  TRINITY

Proof from Scripture:  Baal is three, but not Yahuah

   In “overcoming”, we all have to wrestle with what we have been taught and how those teachings often contradict what the Word of Yahuah really teaches.  Part of the control over information concerning the Scriptures was maintained by the idea of “apostolic succession”, which was sold to the masses by the Nicolaitane, self-appointed “priesthood” of Catholicism, dividing the body of believers into the “priesthood” and the “laity” (common people).  Having succeeded at this, the groundwork was laid to make everyone believe that the Scriptures were far too difficult for the average person to comprehend, so there were “councils” held to determine what was to be taught.  One of those details was the teaching of the “trinity”, which began as a part of the rite of baptism (Hebrew “tevila”, the time one enters into the Covenant and becomes an Israelite).  The inherited ideas or reasonings we have from men’s traditions have often been entangled and rationalized from a Pagan source of one sort or another, but re-packaged to lead us to believe “all is well” in spite of the true origin of the ideas.  If left to learn strictly from Scripture, without hearing any of the embellished commentaries, there would be no one that would be led to think that the Being that created the heavens and earth was consulting with His multiple personages at any time.  Something often overlooked is that there is a “triune” deity mentioned in Scripture, but it is a Pagan deity named “Baal-shalisha”, Hebrew for “Baal is three”  (2 Ki 4:42).     This is one of many delusions (false reasonings) that are referred to in Scripture as “strongholds”.   We are captive to them (imprisoned in a “fortress of thought”) as long as we allow ourselves to entertain them.  When we finally decide to let one of these “strongholds” go, our immediate problem then becomes the sources from which we received our information, which is often those who have been “ordained” to teach from one or another “denomination”.  The men we allow to teach us possess two kinds of “seed” (teachings):  good seed (wheat, or Truth), and bad seed (tares, weeds, sown by the enemy).  They are graduates of what they call a “seminary”, a word that literally means “seed plot”  -  where the good and bad seed are mixed together so the “ordained” men may become even more deceived than the average person, and then go forth to plant the things they have become entrapped in. 

   When one of these “ordained” men awakens to the Truth and is set free from one or several “strongholds”, their livelihood is endangered, and they have to either compromise with the Truth (rationalize to excuse their teaching error), or lose their position.  They are “defrocked” or “let go” of their “pastorate”.  Even in this they were deceived, because they should never have been working for their denomination, they should have been working for Yahusha haMashiach, the High Priest of a completely different religion than the one they have been involved with!

   Whether we’re talking about the “trinity”, or other strongholds like Easter, Christmas, Sun-day, tithing, eating pigs, steeples, haloes, crosses, statues, or “transubstantiation”, men have stumbled far from the true path, the Covenant.  The “Torah” has stumbled in the streets.  Former “Gentiles” in the flesh have no hope outside the Covenant,  but upon entering it they become “fellow citizens” of ISRAEL  -  not a denomination of Christianity of any kind.  As an example, the Amish are bound-up in all sorts of strongholds they believe help them to remain pure, but when piled-up together none of their hang-ups are going to mean anything in the eternal perspective.  The Covenant is the only thing we can hope to put our confidence in, because Yahusha will not break His side of the agreement.  It’s the only thing we’ll take with us into the world-to-come.  If we are found to not be in it, living in sin as a result, our belief in a “trinity” will certainly not help us in any way.   We must not allow ourselves to get off-task by debating the details of false teachings, but rather utilize the majority of our time for promoting the Covenant, of which Yahusha is the Mediator (because He’s the One that writes it upon our hearts).   Hunting-down texts to prove our beliefs (proof-texting) is called “eisegesis”, and means we are taught something and then try to find what we believe in the text.  The opposite of this is “exegesis”, where outside beliefs are set aside and only what Scripture actually teaches and means is accepted.  Most say they are the latter, but are really the former.

Here’s the Covenant:

The Covenant    (BRITH)  Ex 20:1-17

“And Alahim spoke all these words:

1.  ‘I am Yahuah your Alahim, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You shall have no other Alahim before My face.

2. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the Earth beneath or in the waters below.   You shall not bow down to them or worship them;  for I, Yahuah your Alahim, am a jealous Alahim, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand [ generations] of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

3. You shall not lay-waste the Name of Yahuah your Alahim, for Yahuah will not hold anyone guiltless who lays-waste His Name.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it qodesh. 

Six days you shall labor and do all your work,  but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahuah your Alahim.

On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.  For in six days Yahuah made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day.

Therefore Yahuah blessed the Sabbath day and made it qodesh.

5. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land Yahuah your Alahim is giving you.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not adulterate.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

 “The secret of Yahuah is with those who fear Him, And He makes His Covenant known to them.”   Psa 25:14

We are to write these on the doorposts of our houses and on our gates  -  (Dt./Dabarim 6)  - surely Yahuah has not changed His mind about this!

TEACHING THE COVENANT TO THE NATIONS

 “Therefore, go and make taught ones of all the nations, immersing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Set-apart Spirit,

teaching them to guard all that I have commanded you. And see, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  MattithYahu 28:19,20