The Gospel According To Constantine
By Yedidah, Revised May 2004.
List of articles by Yedidah
The first part of this mini-book will expose truth that we must know to be in good standing with our heavenly Father, but it is not a complete study by any means of this topic, or is it a complete study on the roots of the Christian Church. But, it is packed with information that you need to know so that you can be free from what is definitely not from the One, True, Ever-Living “Father-God” of Israel and His Son, our Savior. Of course it should inspire your own study.
Our Savior is restoring us to what He left us at His ascension. It is important to know what He left us and what He did not leave us. He did not come to start a new religion! As we will see later on, what came in the 4th century and onward was so different than what He left us that it was almost and is almost still unrecognizable.
Are you living in a deception? Most people in their lives get hooked into deceptions at some point. So, if you’ve lived in this world for very long, you’ve been deceived, lied to, manipulated, controlled, used and abused. Isn’t that the truth!!
Are you vulnerable to receiving deception? In other words, do you make it easy for deception to come into your mind and emotions? This article will give you clues as to your own vulnerability to being deceived. Have you opened doors in your life to receive deception? It all begins with basic questions, like: Where, specifically, and geographically, do you want to spend eternity? What is your desired eternal position in that place? What relationship do you hope to have with your God in that eternal state? Your answers are at the core of your faith and corresponding actions. Your answer will determine your lifestyle, your thoughts, your actions, your motives and motivations, your direction and your attitude toward yourself and the world around you. It will locate your identity. What we really believe is seen in our words and our actions.
(Note: I will be using the Hebrew names, titles and words for correct identification with the original and continuing purposes of our heavenly Father).
I know that I am most likely writing to mainly believers in the Machiach (Messiah) Yahushua (Jesus)--the final spotless Lamb of Elohim (God) who died (was impaled) on the stake (pole, tree) to take the punishment due us by a righteous Elohim for our transgressing of His Torah (Law, Word, commandments, statutes, judgments, precepts, governmental right-rulings), and who rose from the dead to secure our eternal life. Praise His Name!!!!
The Torah includes the first five books of the Tenach, or Genesis through Deuteronomy. The Tenach is what we call Genesis to Malachi. The term Tenach (spelled phonetically) is an acronym for Torah, Nebi’im (prophets) and Kethubim (writings). This was shortened to the one word “TaNaCh”. (Pronounced: “Ten-ah-k”)
The Torah is His basic pattern of culture and governmental rule—it is the Law of the Great King of heaven and earth. “For our citizenship is in heaven”. (Philippians 3:20) If we are citizens of His kingdom, by the new birth, then the Torah is the governmental constitution that deserves our allegiance. If we are born again, then we have duel citizenship. We are citizens of a country in this world and we are also citizens of His realm. His country will take over the whole world in the near future. In Acts 5:29, Peter says, “we ought to obey Elohim, rather than men”. So, our first allegiance is to our citizenship in His kingdom. If you disregard the Torah, calling it obsolete, you are disregarding the culture and government that Yahushua will establish as absolute iron-fisted Law in His coming kingdom, and in the eternal kingdom of the Father. In other words, if you are lawless against the laws of His kingdom now, how do you expect to be treated when that Law is enforced on this earth? He will rule with a “rod of iron”, and enforce Torah in its entirety. That’s what His Word tells us over and over!!
Yahushua is our Savior--Elohim in the flesh, who rose from the dead and “ever-lives to make intercession for us”. That is the core of the faith of the followers of Yahushua. His Father’s Name is
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Yahuweh (Exodus 3), which means: “I am the eternal, ever-existing One). Yahushua came in His Father’s Name. His correct Name means: “Yahuweh Saves”, and is Yahushua--pronounced like Joshua in Hebrew (Yehoshua), but containing the Hebrew letters in Yahuweh’s Name. The “J” in the English language is only about 400 years old--remember that when you use Hebrew words. The Hebrew pronunciation for Jerusalem is phonetically “Yerushalayim”.
Resuming our discussion: Of course the answers to my questions above about eternity, for most of you would be, “I want to go to heaven”, or “I want to go and be with Jesus”. Few have any concrete idea of what that really means. Most Christians have a general picture in their head of the eternal state, that they got from pictures on the Sunday school wall, or from a pastor painting a verbal picture, or from a book, or their own imagination.
But very few, from a passionate heart of love, will answer that they want to live in His presence, and eternally want to live in His city with Him as His Bride. Some will say they want to rule and reign with Him for 1,000 years before Father’s coming with His city. But, few realize the qualifications for such reigning. It is not automatic!!
In fact none of the Word is automatic just because you prayed a prayer at some point in your life. That’s man’s teaching. In fact, honestly, the “sinner’s prayer” was introduced by Dwight Moody, in his revivals in the 1800’s. So, we have to get back to 1st century requirements from the mouth of our Savior, Himself.
There are only two eventual eternal states: on the new earth or in the lake of fire. For hell is thrown into the lake of fire, and His heavenly city descends upon the new earth (Revelation 19-22). I just finished writing a rather lengthy article on “the intermediate state” between death and resurrection, showing different views as opposed to general Scriptural teachings throughout the Word. There is no verse in the Bible that says that when you pray a prayer to get saved, you get a free ticket to heaven when you die. That was part of rhetoric by evangelists in the 1800’s. It is not rhetoric from our Father. It talks about eternal or everlasting life in the Word, but that is at the resurrection of the dead, when He comes. Our intermediate state, and our eternal position is determined by much more than praying a prayer. In this article I go to the root of Truth, exposing the fact that much of what we have believed is based on some idea from an unsaved “church father” from the 4th century onward, or from some saved human later on. But, most of our Christianity and ”Churchianity” is man-made, a mixture, and pagan at its foundation from about 132 onward. By the end of the 1st century, the Jews who had been Hellenised by the Greeks—those who submitted to Greek culture, philosophy and religion under pressure from the Greek rulers (from about 162BCE)--and the Greeks and Greek-thinking pagans, were becoming interested in salvation through Yahoshua. They wanted to get out of hell, get their sins forgiven, but they hated the Torah, the kingdom Instructions and Teachings, of Yahuweh—Elohim of Israel. They didn’t want to be bound by any responsibility to Him, but they wanted to be able to have a belief-system by which they could go to Heaven, and yet still sin on earth as they willed. This Gnostic philosophy was creeping into the assemblies as early as 58CE, being addressed by Paul, and John later on. Gnosticism says that man is indeed a god, and that all revolves around him. Thus, these Hellenists wanted a free ticket to heaven, but they wanted to responsibility to the Elohim of Israel. Thus, this thinking later crystallized into what we know now as the modern gospel of the “grace message”. The Hellenising of the gospel, and of the thinking of Messianic believers, led to these believers exchanging the calendar of Yahuweh and His days of celebration and His day of worship (Shabbat/Sabbath), to the days of pagan celebration and the pagan day of worship—honoring the sun god, Sunday. Thus as early as the first part of the 2nd century, the pagans said of the believers in the Savior, “you are just like us”. This made Constantine’s job much easier in 325CE.
The Hellenists did not like the early believers being called “followers of the Way”, or “followers of the Nazarene”, so they named them, out of mockery, “Christians” after the god Christ, Christus (Hindu: Krishna), who was the “good god” of the Greeks. Thus they began using their god’s names and titles in the place of Hebrew names and titles. Yahushua (a very Hebrew name) became Iesous, the Greek god of healing (translated as “Jesus” in the KJV). Machiach became “Christ”, and on and on.
Thus the early Greek translations of the Brit Chadasha made many changes to the original Hebrew
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and/or Aramaic texts--substituting, adding, and mistranslating, and changing. It is impossible to translate Hebrew directly into any other language, because of its many idioms, plays on words, puns, and the fact that Hebrew is a picture language. From about the early 2nd century, “Christianity has been a Greek/Roman religion.
Yahushua did not come to start a new religion or make a new covenant as opposed to an old one, but to carry forward His covenant with Israel in His own blood, as the final Lamb of Elohim.
Most Christians, from the early 2nd century on, long before Constantine invented “the church”, selfishly take a “free” salvation--free ticket out of hell—which causes most Christians to have a selfish goal. We want eternal bliss. But, they want all they can get for themselves in “the nasty now and now”. But, so did the pagans, and so do all religious people from all times. Rome had their Elysian Fields, and the Muslims have their harem of virgin girls. Buddhists have their Nirvana. It is in the human heart to live in eternal bliss. Our heavenly Father placed a desire for eternal life in the spirit of man!
We all have a concept in our minds of what “heaven” is like. A weak, self-centered gospel is at the core of our deception regarding salvation. Yahushua, the Elohim of Israel, certainly did not preach an easy gospel!!! (See Luke 14:25-33)
What is the difference in the eternal goal of your faith and the eternal goal of a pagan’s faith? Is your concept of heaven a selfish one—a gorgeous mansion, golden streets, and eternal bliss with family and friends? Did Yahushua die so that you could have your own mansion? That’s not quite the Hebrew context of John 14:2. This world is tough, and we want to escape it. But, our Father has never backed easy escapism.
All religions have their road to salvation and heaven by different means. All religions have faith in what they believe, and they work in accordance with that faith. Most Christians don’t even work in accordance with their faith, but have a head belief-system that they think will get them through “the pearly gates”. You know I’m telling the truth. Most Christians don’t act out their faith, and have no intension of it messing up their lifestyle, other than church on Sunday morning. They feel sorry for those poor brothers and sisters who have “a call” to “full-time service”. I know what I am saying—I’ve been born again for 52 years, and in the ministry since age 9. I’ve seen it all and heard it all!!
Many Muslim’s believe their Koran to such an extent that it causes passionate action to honor their God, even if it means blowing themselves up with bombs to kill “the infidels”. Every religion’s faith calls them to action. Your heart’s desire for Him will tell you whether you are a candidate for deception or even eternal damnation, or whether you will not be deceived and stand firm and not deny Him in the face of persecution and pressure. For the strength of your relationship with your Elohim, personally, on a daily basis, your intimacy with Him, knowing Him and His Truth, and His Word, and His ways and thoughts is what will get you through these days to come. If you don’t know Him well, your faith will be challenged and may fail, because it is not grounded in the knowledge of His Word, or in Him as someone you know and trust totally. You will think He failed, if you don’t know Him. It takes a passionate, fiery heart of love for Him to ward off deception.
That is why He says: “You shall love Yahuweh your Elohim with all of your heart, with all of your soul and all of your strength.”
For more clarification: In the Scriptures, the word “Lord” is used 6,823 times (both in the Tenach and the Brit Chadashah—Messianic Scriptures), and except for a few hundred times when it means “Master” and then “Adonai” is used, His Name Yahuweh should be used in place of “Lord”. But, there is even suspicion that the word “Adonai” is related to the god Adonis. This superstition regarding His Name came about after the Jews returned from Babylon, where they picked up quite a few superstitions, that are still in effect today, even among Messianic believers. This superstition regarding Father’s Name is based on the fear of breaking the third commandment of not taking His Name in vain, or commonly. So, in the Greek translation of the Tenach, the word “Lord” took the
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place of His real Name for the most part. God was also used, and that word is also a god of the pagan world. Perhaps our Father used this to protect His Name for all these generations, because His Name was blasphemed worldwide because of the idolatry and whoring of all of His people, including Christians. The title “Lord” is “Ba’al” in Hebrew. Ba’al was and continues to be a nasty pagan sun god of the most ancient world, worshipped by phallic symbols, and receiving human sacrifice. His worship under other names is still with us today. More later on that.
This god, Ba’al, or “Baal” was worshipped on “the Lord’s day”, the day of the sun god—or Sun-day, since his name means “Lord”, and he, under all sorts of names, represented the sun god. The church adopted the pagan’s day of worship after the 1st century, and especially in the 4th century when it was “formalized” as general rule. Let us not call our Elohim by such a horrible title!! We are to keep His Name set-apart and reverence it with fear.
Calling our Father by His correct name, which is His identification, is part of having an intimate love relationship with Him, rather than having a religion!! If you don’t have an intimate relationship with Him now, it will be hard to trust Him in the days to come with your eternal life. Your faith will be tested and challenged. It will be shaken terribly at the core, and only those who cannot be shaken will remain strong.
Deception is easy to fall into unless you have a passionate hunger for Truth. “His Word is Truth” and He is Truth! “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. Yahushua warned us in Matthew 24: “Be not deceived”. He warned us of a time when even the “elect” would be vulnerable to deception. We are in that time period. We must find the foundations of deception
If your desire is for heaven, to escape hell for some place in the sky, and your idea of heaven is like the Roman’s “Elysian Fields”--a euphoria of bliss and peace--then you are wide open for deception. You have no solid reality to your faith.
If a desire to be in His presence--to intimately know Him, to be by His side to see His face because He is your beloved, your Bridegroom, your reason for living on this earth is what motivates you, then most likely that strong faith will keep you from deception and preserve you as one of those overcoming ones who stand strong through tribulation until He comes.
If you are now preparing as a Bride would, to receive her Bridegroom, then your desired position is Revelation 22:3-5—to see His face and live in His presence eternally. Only those obedient to His commands have the right to live in His presence. I’m not saying that—He says that in many Scripture passages!! We’ll investigate that further in this article.
If you have little interest in knowing Him--and are content in going to church, reading a Psalm once in a while, throwing up a few prayers when your child is sick, or you need money, focusing your life on this world and a pragmatic relationship to it, wanting all you can get for yourself--then your heart, which is on this earth, can never be content to live in the physical presence of Someone you don’t know--not forever and forever.
There is no “sugar bear” coating as you float up to heaven that will change you into wanting something you never wanted on earth. Remember the Sugar Bear commercials of Sugar Bear cereal? Sugar Bear floated up into the sky, and little sugar crystals came down all over him. That was back in the 50’s.
Our Father does not violate our will. Let’s get lollypop sugar religion out of our thinking once and for all!! Lollypop’s melt in the heat, and if our religion is sugar coated but not real, we will melt in the fires of purging to come!
If your heart is earthbound, then your eternal destiny, your eternal positioning is also earthbound—on the new earth.
There will be a new earth for the “nations of the saved”. But, if your obedience, love and passion for Him is to be in His presence here and forever then your eternal destiny will be different. Even your position in the kingdom on this earth for 1,000 years under Yahushua’s rule will be entirely different. But, when Father creates the new heaven and the new earth, and moves His eternal city, the New
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Jerusalem (which we call “heaven”) down here to hover over this planet, then the eternal positioning will take place. (See clearly Revelation 21:22-22:6)
There are three eternal positions. But, the Bride is in the 3rd position only. She is purified by her active fiery passion for Him in this life. She is the “Doulos”--the bond slave of Yahushua. (“Doulos” is Greek for bond slave) She lives where all Brides/wives live--in the presence of her Husband. (Look at the wording in Revelation 22:3-5.) She is marked. In Part II of this discussion, article II, we will discuss the marking of the “overcomers”—the Bridal remnant. The Bridal heart is so different from the “normal” and average Christian’s attitude that it is radical and revolutionary, and even fanatical to the average church-going person. Those who live their lives for themselves and other people are already deceived.
To be racially, supernaturally born again (born from above by the Ruach ha Kodesh—the Holy Spirit), we must “forsake all”--all that we are in total, to follow Him.
We no longer belong to ourselves, but we are “bought”. Only slaves are bought! We were purchased at the price of His blood. It is part of the Hebrew marriage contract—for the Bridegroom to pay a price for His Bride. Our Bridegroom paid the ultimate price for us. Acts 20:28, speaking to pastors Paul says “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, among which the Set-apart Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of Elohim, which He has purchased with His own blood”.
If you follow Yahushua you can’t live for yourself or hang on to the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of this world.
James 4:4, “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with Elohim? Whoever therefore intends to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of Elohim”. Strong words!!!
You have to “come out” of those kingdoms of Satan to enter the “kingdom of His dear Son” and to be received by the Father. II Corinthians 6:16-18, “And what union has the Dwelling Place of Elohim with idols? For you are the Dwelling place of the living Elohim, as Elohim has said, `I shall dwell in them and walk among them, and I shall be their Elohim, and they shall be My people.’ Therefore `Come out from among them and be separate’, saying Yahuweh, ‘and do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you, and be a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me’, says Yahuweh the Almighty”. He says we must be “set apart as He is set apart”. The word “holy” means to be “set-apart”.
Therefore, to be born-again, we must first Repent! Repentance is the first step in becoming set-apart unto Him, and then we must proceed to not touch what is unclean. That is what His instructions in the Torah are all about—separating the clean from the unclean so that we know how to please Him and how to approach His Throne. Nothing unclean can enter His presence. How do we know what is unclean? His Torah tells us in detail. Torah is His loving teaching, His governmental Law, His marriage contract made with Israel at Sinai. It is Yahuweh’s culture. It is all for our good, to separate us unto Him. He only has one people and one covenant with one people. We will see that progression in this article. Torah is His government in His kingdom, and will be His governmental system in the coming kingdom of Yahushua. It is His standard of righteousness, right-rulings, and salvation. It lays out the backbone of the whole plan of salvation, and traces it from beginning to end. We will be judged by His eternal Word, His right rulings. His governmental laws are eternal, not “obsolete”.
“Sin is the transgression of the Torah”. (I John 3:4) Sin is lawlessness—or Torah-less-ness--since Torah. The word “Torah” means “teachings”—“to shoot out the finger in teaching”. The Greek word for “Law” means to “graze the sheep”. This is what Peter and Paul call “feeding the flock”. It was Rome, who hated the Jews so much, that they mocked His Law and changed doctrines to despise and reject it.
After repentance and belief in receiving Yahushua as Savior 26 things happen to us instantly by the power of the Ruach ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit) to transform us into a “new creation”. I have a teaching
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article on those 26 things that happen, and there are probably more that can be added to the list. We become a radically new creation with a re-born, perfected spirit, a new nature of righteousness, and a heart that delights to keep His Torah with joy, a heart to know Him—a heart that wants to be with Him now and forever. If we don’t crave His presence now—what will eternity be like for us?
We get a new nature at our new birth--His righteous nature of love, joy, peace, faith. (Galatians 5:22-24) But, we must take off that old life like a coat, and put on the new nature in our mind, emotions and our will.
Our spirit is born again and instantly perfected and set-apart unto Him, the Word says. But, the soul (mind, will, emotions) must conform to what is in our re-born spirit. The Word is our road map to pleasing Him. Without it we are left to our own opinions, or some other man’s opinion.
“Great peace have those who love Your Torah, and nothing shall offend them”. (Psalm 119:165) The renewed covenant is so that we can have Torah written on our heart. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
It is not a matter of accepting a belief-system or becoming members of a church for salvation. It is a supernatural “birth from above”. If we are not born from above by the Ruach ha Kodesh then we are not going to “heaven” nor will we spend eternity with Him at all. John 3 is quite clear.
The first foundation of deception is the lie of the Roman Catholic Church and all of her denominational offspring—that salvation can happen outside of the supernatural intervention of the Ruach ha Kodesh. Even our desire for the new birth has to come from the Father, for Yahushua says in John 6:44, “No one is able to come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” If we possess within ourselves His life, then we can be confident that He will raise us up to live with Him. ”He who has the Son has life, and he who has not the Son of Elohim has not life”. (I John 5:12) Simple!! You can’t “have” Him by any other way than by faith.
So, right off, the foundation of deception, regarding salvation itself, is based on lies and the twisting of truth by a man-made religious system called “the Church”—initially based on Roman gods, ways and hierarchy and the invention of doctrines by men. Yahushua never made a covenant with something called a “church”. He made the eternal covenant with Israel, and extended it to everyone who wanted to get into that covenant with Israel, by shedding His own blood. We will investigate some bottom-line facts that show that the religion of Christianity is pagan to the core, and is the whore church of Revelation 17 and is under His judgment. He is now separating out a remnant that will know Him as He really is!!
The whole “church system” as most people know it, was originally created by one man (the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great), in 325CE at the Council of Nicaea (in ancient Nicaea, Turkey) and lives today as a man-made institution with man-made laws, rules, theology, paganism, and a little truth mixed in--now fragmented into hundreds of sections, with man’s opinions continuing to divide it.
Our confidence in our everlasting life is promised to those who repent and come out of Satan’s kingdom to Him. No membership in a church or good works impresses the Father at any time. We must have our sin removed—cancelled—and pardoned because of the payment of Yahushua for our sin, by His willing death on the stake—the final, spotless Lamb of Elohim. “For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin”. (Hebrews 9:22) “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul”. (Leviticus 17:11)
From the time that Elohim--our loving, gracious, merciful, compassionate heavenly Father--killed the first animal in the Garden of Eden to provide bloody clothes for Adam and Eve to cover their sinfulness (Genesis 3), His mercy, grace and forgiveness has been through the payment for sin by blood sacrifice. Adam and Eve tried to make a covering for themselves by their own works—fig leaves—but that didn’t pay for their sin. Cain tired to bring an offering of his own works, the fruit of his garden, to Yahuweh as an offering for his sin, and was rejected--so works alone do not save us. As
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the writer of Hebrews tells us, works must be “mixed” with faith. Faith never can stand alone—we must act out what we believe, or it is worthless belief. (James—Ja’acob—2)
The foundation of the Roman church is pagan, which we’ll see—and the approach to salvation is by human effort, by keeping the sacraments of the man-instituted and controlled Church. Protestantism, while having the walls and rooms somewhat re-arranged and a few truths restored, is still on the Roman foundation. So deception went rampant as it branched out into hundreds of factions in the Reformation. For though Evangelicals preach salvation by faith, the church system still in its fragmented form, in each little entity called “a church”. Many of the doctrines are still based on Greek philosophy and the opinions of priests and monks, called “church fathers” throughout the last 1700 years. Even recently, in the last 150 years, much Evangelical thinking has been formed around ideas from evangelists and pastors, which are not in the Word and actually not-Scriptural. The rules of each church are established by the Denominational founders, its current leaders, the current church’s Pastor and oftentimes a Board of Elders, or by some “spiritual guru of the day” who has a big ministry and a big name. To be a member in good standing, you must conform to that church’s teachings, or that evangelical organization’s teaching and list of rules. Each individual group has its own standards of how to please it, or not be accepted by “the group”.
Only Abel’s sacrifice of an animal for his sin pleased Yahuweh. Notice Cain killed Abel. Those who are religious and proud of it are often murderous toward the ones who humbly bow in obedience to Truth!! Take note: Yahuweh rejected Cain’s offering, and received Abel’s. Cain presumed he was OK with Yahuweh, but Yahuweh demands absolute obedience.
Did you ever get mad, like King David did, at Yahuweh for striking Uzza dead because he tried to steady the ark, which was falling off the new cart? It is time to get to know the Elohim that we profess to believe in!!! What was His logic in doing that? Why did He burn up two of Aaron’s in Leviticus 10:1-3? What did they do wrong to deserve such instant punishment? It has to do with being “set apart” as He is “set apart”—that’s what “holy” is all about. The Torah tells us what He expects from us in being set-apart. “The fear of Yahuweh is the beginning of wisdom!” We have been baptized since childhood into false tolerance of evil. Why do most Christians distance themselves from Him now, and yet expect to live with Him forever? Good question!!!
John says, “Sin is the transgression of the Law”. What Law? The Torah, the Law, was written by the “finger of Yahuweh” on Mt. Sinai—the marriage covenant with His Bridal people. Sin is to transgress His Law, so we’d better find out if we are pleasing Him or not. His law is not obsolete! Neither was it nailed to the cross—only those things that were against us were nailed to the cross. The commands of Yahuweh our Father are not against us!! Our sin, and the punishment for our sin, was nailed to the cross!!! Hallelujah!!!!!!!
Salvation has always been by faith. Habakkuk said, “The just shall live by faith”. His Book of Life was always known, and His coming to earth was known from the beginning of time. His people knew from the beginning that salvation was by faith and not works, though some turned it into a religion of works. Moses prophesies of the second coming of Yahushua, and in Exodus 32:32-33, Moses is so upset by the disobedience of the people that he asks Yahuweh to erase his name from His Book. But, Yahuweh answers, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I blot him out of My book”. (Revelation 3:5 and 22:19) So we either humbly accept Yahushua’s sacrifice of Himself for our sin, or we must pay for our sin ourselves in the eternal lake of fire.
Point number one: salvation is by faith alone in His sacrifice for us and in His resurrection from the dead. “By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves--it is the gift of Elohim, lest any man should boast”. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Pride says, “Look what I did”. Father must have all honor and esteem from this earth given to Him. He won’t share His glory with anyone else. “I am Yahuweh: that is My Name: and My glory I will not give to another, neither My praise to graven images”. (Isaiah 42:8) He does not give His backing to another name either in substitution for His Name. There are NO translations for His Name—man has made substitutions but He calls them names of “Ba’al”. (Hosea 2)
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At the core of deception is the false and defective gospel message watered down by man’s reasoning. It is based on a false grace without absolute repentance (turning totally away from sin and the kingdom of darkness), without suffering, without persecution, without self-denial, without death to the flesh (our old sin nature), without taking up our stake (“cross”) in death to our own will, without altering our lifestyles, without the love of the Truth (the Word), without absolutes to set us apart from the world, without anything presented to us other than a free escape from hell. And unless the gospel we preach lets people know about our entrance into the covenant of the Elohim of Israel, and into the “commonwealth of Israel, through the Jewish Messiah Yahushua, it is also a deceptive gospel.
“To you it has been given as a favor, on behalf of the Messiah, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake”. (Philippians 1:29) Read that again, slowly. “It is through much tribulation that we enter into the kingdom of heaven”. (Acts 14:22) “And indeed, all those wishing to live reverently in Messiah Yahushua, shall be persecuted”. (II Timothy 3:12) “Therefore, since Messiah suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so that he no longer lives the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but according to the desire of Elohim”. “You will be hated by all men for My Name’s sake”, Yahushua said. Why? Satan hates Israel, and hates the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the root of David” (Revelation 5:5). In Matthew 25, the words “My brethren” refers to the Jewish people. To identify with Him, is to identify with no religion, but to identify with a crucified Jewish Rabbi of the 1st century, who was Torah observant, and who “ever-lives” to enforce that Torah.
We trade masters at the new birth—Yahushua becomes our Master, whereas once we obeyed Satan as our master, through our flesh-life. We own Him everything! Let us find out what real salvation is all about—see Luke 14:25-33 for starters. He didn’t preach an easy gospel. It was the “gospel of the kingdom” of heaven.
When the new “church” and its religion was literally invented by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 325CE to unite his fragmented Roman empire, he, of course, immediately stopped the persecution of Christians, and so believers stopped looking toward the world to come—their eternal home and began concentrating on what they could get out of the world here and now. A man who worked among the persecuted Christians in a “third world” country, brought out the verse in I Corinthians 15:19: “If in this life only we have expectation in Messiah, we are of all men the most miserable”. Most believers don’t even think about spending eternity with Him--they are too engrossed in thinking and working toward heaping up all they can get for their own selfish, self-centered ambitions.
That attitude of self-seeking, self-gratification, selfish ambition, greed and lust for the things of this world is still so embedded in the church’s mind-set that the true gospel of “come and die” with Yahushua is repugnant--something to be loathed, despised and heartily fought against. “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through”, as the song goes. Hebrews 13:14: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one coming”. We think “Jesus paid it all” and we get a free ride. But, that is not what that song says. It says, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe”.
Evangelists are not giving out the Luke 14:25-33-type gospel which says that to follow Him means to deny right to our own lives, our own will, our own desires in order to pick up our own stake and crucify our own will, dying with Him daily on our own “accursed tree”, looking for His appearing as our “blessed hope”, and forsaking all (all that we are and have) to follow Him--the Lamb of Elohim!!! In order to rack up numbers for their supporters, many times their messages are shallow—as in “come to Jesus and get your free ticket to heaven”. Then they can report that 10,000 souls were saved in their crusade. But, search out that word “crusade” in history—for to a Jew or to a true believer in
Yahushua it meant to be tortured, murdered, mocked, despised and rejected as not even worthy of the right to breath, to be burned alive and have to have your children splattered all over the ground. That’s the history of the church and still is in some places. The evangelist of the 1st century worked
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to purge the people of Elohim like “fuller’s soap”—calling for repentance from sin. He moved in signs and wonders, and made “disciples”. We’re called to make disciples, not converts. Conversion by fear, or by pressure, or by an easy road out of trouble, is only a head-thing, not the true new birth!!! That’s why people in these days will deny Him by the millions, as the Word tells us, because they were only converted, not really born again.
The easy-belief church system began in 325CE and was for the first time ever called The Roman Catholic (universal) Church. The “universal” church, from day one, wanted power over the souls of all men in the world. Its basis is Nimrod’s desire in Genesis 11 at the tower of Babel—world control. Constantine used his new religion and its new creed, and the sword to back it up, in order to unite his fragmented empire. This Roman-based church splinted into Protestant denominations and organizations, but still retains the false foundation of easy-belief that came with the denial of the Hebrew roots--the dividing away of the Tenach--dividing the “Old” Testament from a “New” Testament. It included the separating of the Elohim of Israel from a newly created non-Jewish style God of the “Christians”, the separating of the covenant of Elohim with His people into two sections, a rejection of His marriage contract with Israel for a 5th century invention of easy grace, a separating of faith from obedience to His Torah, and the acceptance into the Church by membership through baptism and the keeping of the rituals and traditions of men. Even the order of service is Roman pagan to the core. Words that were Hebrew were substituted for the names of Greek and Roman gods. More later….
In Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll, c.2001, page 171 says: “When the empire became joined to the ideology of the Church, the empire was immediately recast and reenergized, and the Church became an entity so different from what had precede it as to almost unrecognizable”.
Yahushua did not come to start a new religion!! From page 101: “What if Jesus was really a Jew from beginning to end? Would `the foundation of Christianity as a distinctive and unparalleled religion be shattered?’ The answer is a resounding “YES!!!”
From The Dead Sea Scrolls by Stephen Hodge, c. 2001, in his introduction on page 6, this Jewish man says, “Whatever his later followers may have made of him, Jesus himself was above all else a pious Jew and would have been more at home in the intellectual world that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls that in anything produced in his name by his later Gentile followers. For this reason—without any disrespect to Christians—to make readers look afresh at the man in the context of his times, I have used the original form of his name, Yeshua”.
(“Yeshua” is a shortened version of His name and means “salvation” in its fullness). Seculars are beginning to acknowledge that He was a real man—a Jew who was fully Jewish. He was “not ashamed to call them brothers”. (Hebrews 2:11-12) In Matthew 25, He calls His Jewish people, His brothers.
From Joshua’s Altar by Milt Machlin, c. 1991, page 127: “Joshua’s original name in Hebrew was Hoshea. It was changed to Yehoshua—Joshua in English—by Moses. Yehoshua is the Hebrew name of Jesus also. In Hebrew it means `Yah is Salvation’. Jesus is from the Greek Iesous.” Milt is another Jewish secular, writer and archeologist. Combining Yah’s name and the word for salvation brings us to the real name of our Savior. Vowels are not used in writing Hebrew, so the sound of His Name is Yahu or Yaho shua. The “e” sound is an “ah” sound in Hebrew. Thus, I use Yahushua. But, it sounds like Hebrew like Joshua’s name.
We thank Elohim for the “Reformation” which restored to us salvation by faith and gave us the Word in our own language!! They also restored to us the realization that we can have a personal relationship with our Elohim. To that we say a resounding “Hallelujah”!! But we will see that Rome’s
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anti-Semitic roots came through strongly and unchanged. Replacement theology is the foundation of the Roman church system. Its core is pagan and anti-Semitic.
Demonic religious spirits were poured out in 325CE (actually this began in the 1st century) at the first church “ecumenical council” (Nicaea) led by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, to set for us attitudes and beliefs that today have created a “golden calf” religion. It is at best a mixture of some truth with a lot of ancient paganism. In Rome, as in all the ancient world powers, to be religiously different became defined as treason--a political crime.
From Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll, pages 188-190: “For the first time in history, the universal Christian Church was seen to need a defined orthodoxy, a word derived from the Greek for `right thinking’. This resulted from what might be called the first law of exclusion: `You can’t say who is out unless you can say what it is to be in’. Thus, the now absolute and sole Caesar, demonstrating an authority no one had ever exercised before, summoned the bishops of the Church to a meeting over which he himself would preside: `Wherefore I signify to you, my beloved brethren, that all of you promptly assemble at the said city, that is at Nicaea’. Two hundred and fifty of them came. He would not let them leave until they had begun to do for the Church what he had doing for the empire. This meeting was the Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council of the Church. It took place in 325CE. Constantine exiled all dissenters. Christians still recite this formula as the Nicene Creed. As we stand solemnly at the midpoint of a Sunday liturgy--letting the familiar words roll off our tongues--we think of the creed as a religious necessity, perhaps treasuring it as such, as I do. We give not a thought to its first function as a kind of loyalty oath, fulfilling a political necessity as much as a religious one.”
The Nicene creed and Constantine’s “cross”, which he made into his sword, and the hatred of the Jews which he created in the minds of Christians, became the foundation of the new Church, along with the mixing of Greek and Roman paganism with the basic belief of His true followers. At this council, many new doctrines were established--days were changed to unite pagans and Christians into one universal church that united the Roman Empire. It was a mixture of the worship of the sun god under the name of Mithras and some truths regarding Yahushua—but not His Jewishness.
In 313CE the Edict of Milan was enacted, ending persecution for Christians. Yet even though Constantine had told about his “conversion” to Christianity, yet he killed his wife and son after that, and continued until his death to worship the sun god Sol Invictus under the name Mithra--the Unconquerable Sun.
From Constantine’s Sword, pages 182-185: “Fierce Christian devotion to a conqueror whose miraculous conversion proved the truth of their faith would have made Christians powerful allies. Within a year of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine controlled the entire Western empire. Consistent with his new friendliness toward Christianity, Constantine proposed an end to the persecution of the Church, which he, like his father, had never carried out in any case. His one remaining rival Licinius, agreed. They met at Milan in 313CE and jointly issued the Edict of Milan, granting universal religious freedom to pagans, Christians and Jews. Again, we think of the words `pagan`, `Christian` and `Jew` as defining distinct groups, but the fluid interchange among them in that period of massive social mutation is striking. As seen in Constantine’s originating piety, that supreme Deity would have been associated with the sun, and pagans would have recognized with reason, their own solar cult in such Christian practices as orienting churches to the east, worshipping on “sun day” and celebrating the birth of the deity at the winter solstice. The cross of Christ as the standard to march behind would have evoked the ancestral totem of the sacred tree. Thus while he was ordaining tolerance among religions, he was preparing to abolish tolerance within Christianity. In 315CE Constantine issued the edict, referred to earlier, singling out Jews, making it illegal for them to proselytize. It therefore marked the decisive shift of weight in a balance that would now forever tilt against the Jews”.
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At the Milvian Bridge Constantine supposedly saw a vision of either the “cross” of the Greek “chi rho” in the sun and a voice saying, “in this sign conquer”. He proceeded to create a sword in the shape of the cross he supposedly saw, and he used it to defeat this enemies. The cross was a pagan symbol of fertility throughout all ancient pagan cultures around the world. The Christians never used it before as a symbol, since Yahushua was crucified on a stake-pole, the “accursed tree” as prophesied in the Torah, Psalms and Prophets. (Examples: Deuteronomy 21:22-23; Psalm 22; Isaiah 53))
The foundation of the Church system still rejects the Hebrew roots of our Savior and the set-apart covenant of our Elohim—who is the Elohim of Israel. The Church system is anti-Semitic to the core, having tortured and murdered millions of Jews and true believers in Yahushua for almost 1,700 years to the present day, and so is pictured in the Revelation as the Great Whore—Revelation 17.
From its beginning the new religion was “spread by the sword” and destroyed everything that opposed its power by purposed and methodical murder. For examples, it started the Crusades, the Inquisition (300 years of torture and murder of Jews and true believers in the Messiah Yahushua) and backed the Communists and Hitler in their murder of Jews and true believers in Yahushua Messiah in this last century. The cross was the “sacramental object” that inspired all of the murder of His true believers, and his Jewish people as a whole.
Constantine’s Sword, page 300, “Constantine changed history, and the very meaning of Jesus Christ, by turning the cross into a sword”. He went on to say that Popes, with great political power, would change history again, into the “violence of the church”, and “the one sword of Constantine would become the two swords of the Inquisition”.
According to the “church”, a “heretic” was anyone who opposed the control, the power and the rulership of the Roman Church. Their political and economic control has ruled the world system since its inception in 325CE. It is “drunk with the blood of the saints”, as Revelation 17 describes this Church, and her offspring.
Page 346, James Carroll’s book, Constantine’s Sword: “Judaizing, the mingling of Christian and Jewish elements of faith, cult and calendar, was defined as heresy.” It led to madness of killing anyone who believed in both Jesus and practiced anything Jewish.
Much is explained -- From Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs, c. 2000, pages 327-328, 354: “To counter Arianism, (Arianism, named after the Alexandrian priest Arius, taught that God created everything including Jesus and therefore, Jesus was not himself God, but rather a heavenly teacher, a messiah) the Roman Emperor Constantine had convened the Council of Nicaea in CE 325. The council, under firm control of the Roman Church, declared that God was a Trinity—Father, son and spirit—Arius and his followers were banished. `There were now only two official objects of worship’ commended Gardened, `the Holy Trinity of God and the Emperor himself—the newly designated Savior of the world. Anyone who disputed this in any way was at once declared a heretic. Christians who attempted to retain loyalty to Jesus as the Messianic Christ were discounted by the Imperial Church as heathens’…”The conflicts both within and without Christianity were settled by the Roman emperor Constantine in what Gardener described as `a strange buy-out by the enemy’. `Apart from various cultic beliefs, the Romans had worshipped the Emperors in the capacity as gods descended from others like Neptune and Jupiter’, he said.”
“At the Council of Aries in 314CE, Constantine retained his own divine status by introducing the omnipotent God of the Christians as his personal sponsor. He then dealt with the anomalies of doctrine by replacing certain aspects of Christian ritual with the familiar pagan traditions of sun worship, together with other teachings of Syrian and Persian origins. In short the new religion of the Roman Church was constructed as a hybrid to appease all influential factions. By this means Constantine looked toward a common and unified world religion—Catholic,
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meaning universal—with himself as its head. This attempt to co-opt Christianity was sealed at the Council of Nicaea in CE 325. One year later, Constantine ordered the confiscation and destruction of all works, which questioned the newly constructed orthodoxy and opened the Lateran Palace to the bishop of Rome, creating an early Vatican of sorts. In CE 331, the emperor ordered new copies made of Christian texts most of which had been lost or destroyed during the previous persecutions. It was at this point that most of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were probably made.”
Regarding the eradication of “heretics” by the Church, which began from its inception, we read here about the infamous Spanish Inquisition (which began in the mid-1400’s). On page 355, James Carroll says: ”The Inquisition had been active against heresy in France, Germany and elsewhere”. Then it came to Spain, where as an institution it lasted 300 years. The Inquisition began issuing its findings “that the Christians were generally involved in Jewish rituals and obeying the Jewish religion, and that their heretical behavior should not be tolerated. In towns and cities, the tribunal sessions involved open-air processions, elaborate liturgy…in which heretics either recanted or were put to death”. Pages 357 and 358: “The cross, as we saw, featured as a sacramental object at the beginning of the inquisitorial procedures, the friar holding up the crucifix for the swearing of the informant’s oath. Repentant heretics were reconciled to the church by being signed with the cross on the forehead. As the friar intoned, `receive the sign of the cross which you denied and lost through being deceived’”. (Does this sound like something out of Revelation 13?)
What was the church’s idea of a heretic through its history? On page 356 in Carroll’s book we read: “When the inquisitors began operations in a district”—this summary is from Henry Kamen’s Inquisition and Society in Spain—“they would first present their credentials to the local Church and secular authorities, and announce a Sunday or a feast day when all residents would have to go to high mass, together with their children and servants, and hear the `edict’ read. At the end of the sermon or the creed, the inquisitor of his representative would hold a crucifix in front of the congregation and ask everybody to raise their right hand, cross themselves and repeat after him a solemn oath to support the Inquisition and its ministers. He would proceed to read the `edict’. The edict typically included a demand that all present denounce any Christian who `keeps the Sabbath according to the Law of Moses--using no lights from Friday evenings onward or has eaten meat in Lent, or any parents placing their hands on the heads of their children without making the sign of the cross, or if they recite the Psalms without the Gloria Patri , or if anyone on his deathbed turns to the wall to die’”. “Torture was commonly used in criminal procedures in that era, and it was a method of the Inquisition applied as a way of forcing confessions. Careful records were kept of the proceedings. Here again from Kaman, is the partial transcript of the interrogation of one woman accused, in 1568, of refusing to eat the flesh of pigs and of refusing to do housework on Saturdays”… To summarize the transcript: She was severely tortured almost to death.
From Michael Brown’s book, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, he clarifies a point regarding the Spanish Inquisition. On page 77-78, he says, “How many of us know that there was one particular `heresy’ the Spanish Inquisition sought to uncover and destroy? There was a witch-hunt against baptized Jews who maintained any vestige of Jewishness! These Catholic Jews (called `Marranos’, `Conversos’ or `New Christians’), violently forced to covert in the first place, were carefully watched to see if they were practicing `heresy’. Heretical practices included failure to eat pork, failure to work on Saturday, failure to wear one’s best clothing on Sunday, keeping the biblical feasts, observing any Jewish customs of any kind, saying any Jewish prayers, preparing food according to the Jewish law, associating with non-baptized Jews; and intermarriage of children of Marrano families with children of other Marrano families. Violators, or frequently those merely accused of being violators, would have their property confiscated. They would be subjected to harsh confinement and horrible torture, leading to mock trials, degradation and often death at the stake. If those sentenced to die would
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renounce their `heresies’ and publicly confess the Faith, then the church would show them mercy: They would be strangled and then put in the flame, burned dead instead of alive”.
In the times to come, the Inquisition, the Crusades and all forms of purging from pogroms to another holocaust will come upon this world for those who are Torah-observant Jews and those believers in Messiah Yahushua would also keep the Torah.
David Rausch’s book Legacy of Hatred, page 27, provides a vivid account of the taking of Jerusalem by the Pope’s Crusaders in the middle ages: “They burned the Jews alive in the chief synagogue of Jerusalem, circling the screaming, flame-tortured humanity sing `Christ We Adore Thee’, with their Crusader crosses held high. As described by Robert Payne `The massacre at Jerusalem was carried out deliberately; it was the result of settled policy. Jerusalem was to become a Christian city. The Jews, too, must be destroyed. They had all rushed to the chief synagogue, where they hoped to receive shelter and protection. The Crusaders, hungry for simple solutions, burned down the synagogue with the Jews inside. Earlier that day, while the Crusaders ran over the mutilated bodies of those they had killed, as though they were a carpet spread for them, one of the leaders, Raymond of Aguilers, quoted Psalm 118:222 with approval: `This is the day the Lord has made. We shall rejoice and be glad in it”.
Study diligently the history of the Crusades and the Inquisition. These things will return on a worldwide basis. Is this the church you want to identify with, who is still killing true believers and will continue to kill millions under the Great Whore church’s false prophet? The Great Whore church of Revelation 17 is “drunk with the blood of the set-apart ones”. Its pagan base is sexually oriented in the gods of Greece and Rome and Persia (Mithra), and the history of the church is one of filth, whoredom, prostitution, and sexual perversion, which has led its members to violate the marriage contract which the Elohim of Israel cut with His people on Mt. Sinai. Dave Hunt’s The Woman Rides The Beast is a good book to start with for information on this whore church--why it is called a “whore”.
Today, these people like myself, have found the truth of what Yahushua, Son of David, left us at His ascension. The Church my friend is not what Yahushua left us!!!
The word “church” comes from the West Germanic “kirche” (Kirk), and was first introduced into the English Bible in the King James Version. The old English word comes from Cirice, and you will see it spelled CHIRCHE written above many old “church’ entrances throughout England. It is a word based on the Greek god Circe. Circe was famous among pagans for turning men into pigs or other animals using drugs. The original English translation from the Greek text by John Wycliffe (about 1380) used the word “congregation” for the Greek “ecclesia”—the called out body of believers, who kept His Torah and believed in Messiah Yahushua. He left us an ecclesia, a congregation, an assembly of His set-apart ones, who were in covenant with Israel, through the blood of the Lamb. He left His Body as a set-apart group, which was never to mix with the world system, but remain clean unto Him.
More on the Inquisition from page 361 of Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll: “We have been informed by the Inquisitors that the mingling of Jews with Christians leads to the worst of evils. In consequence, our holy Catholic faith is debased and humbled. We have thus arrived at the conclusion that the only efficacious means to put an end to these evils consists in the definitive breaking of all relations between Jews and Christians, and this can only be obtained by their expulsion from our kingdom”.
In 1492, on the 9th of Av—(Hebrew calendar-July/August)—the day when the 2 temples in Jerusalem were destroyed in history, Spain told the Jews if they were not out by midnight, they’d be killed. Christopher Columbus (not his real name) went to the King and Queen asking for ships to find a new world—and it was granted to him. This Jew, with his Jewish crew, sailed on that night and founded the Americas. He landed in the Americas on the 1st day of the Feast of Tabernacles—October 12,
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1492, dedicating the new world to Israel. Yes, we are enemies of Satan’s whore!! (Revelation 17) But, His remnant is mighty in Him, and Satan cannot stamp it out!!!
However, in Protestantism, a “heretic” or an undesirable, is someone who opposes the doctrine of the denomination, the organization or the individual pastor or church leader, though that severe word is not usually used. It is still a Roman-based spirit—superiority, exclusiveness, pride, haughtiness and self-righteousness, and controlling. You hear people saying: come to my church”, or “come hear my pastor”, or “my church says” or “my pastor says” or “my pastor thinks”. It is common rhetoric in the church system. Very few people hear from Him!!! Most people have an opinion or give out of what they hear another man say, or what they read in a book. I receive fresh revelation on His Word every single day. Why? Because as His minister, I do what ministers are supposed to do—Acts 6:4: give yourself to the study of the Word and prayer. He teaches us personally with His revelation knowledge if we let Him. I have trained ministers, church leadership and pastors especially. Most are great about doing things, as visiting, and preaching and sharing the gospel, but I have only found in many years a hand-full who know how to hear Him. That is a tragedy!!
We will investigate these things in detail and see the foundation of all deception to be selfishness, self-preservation, selfish ambition, self-centeredness, selfish desires, greed, lusts of the flesh, and the protection of our earthly life and lifestyles, as well as ignorance of truth, or willful rejection of the Truth for personal advantage.
In this prevailing attitude of the general church-system across board, is an adulterous and idolatrous spirit, which refuses to submit to the governmental law/teachings/commandments of the Kingdom of the Elohim of Israel. The rebellious and willful breaking of His marriage contract which He gave His set-apart people at Sinai is at the core of why people accept the pagan church but won’t submit to His Truth. The marriage contract was made with His only people—natural, biological Israel. Biological Israel (all 12 tribes) gets in on it by faith, and so does everyone who accepts it through Yahushua. It is deception to spiritualize what He has made to be natural. He is coming to set up a real 1,000-year reign on this earth. Father is coming to set up an eternal reign on this earth. Those things are natural and reality.
A spirit of rebellion has been at work in the human heart against submission to Elohim since Adam’s willful disobedience to His one simple command. Rebellion, disobedience and unbelief are at the core of human nature. Our nature is at war with His right-rulings and judgments, and unless we submit to His requirements for acceptance into His kingdom, we will be escorted in our eternal judgment to “outer darkness, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth”.
Yahushua did not remove the Law of His kingdom. It remains intact. He simply fulfilled the offerings of blood sacrifice for sin, guilt, and our peace. He fulfilled the “ceremonial law” or blood sacrifice in Himself. Yahushua says, “Truly, truly I say to you, till the heaven and the earth pass away, one jot or one tittle (the two smallest marks in the Hebrew letters) shall by no means pass from the Torah till all be done. Whoever, then, breaks one of the least of these commands, and teaches men to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of the heavens; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the reign of the heavens.”
There are 10 summarizing commandments, which are further summarized into 1) love Elohim and 2) love your fellow man in the same way as you care for yourself. If we break one, we’ve broken all, James says.
Yahushua is the Word, the living Word. He is the embodiment of the Torah in Himself. He guarded and kept it and taught His disciples to do as He did. It is our joy! The Torah speaks of Yahushua’s second coming, so it is certainly is not fulfilled. In His kingdom on earth for 1,000 years this eternal covenant will be enacted by force forever and ever. To rebel
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against it now won’t put us in a favorable position with the coming King, now will it? Like in all courts of law, a person is judged for breaking the law.
Grace and mercy are for the repentant ones who go out and stop sinning, not those who come to an easy-going Jesus for “confession” each week, either before the priest in the Catholic Church or before Him in prayer. He can’t bless willful disobedience any more than any parent can bless it in their child. Read carefully I John chapter 3. It clearly speaks in details the words of Yahuweh to Ezekiel, “the soul that sins, it shall die”. We can’t claim exemption and an excuse for continuing to sin because we prayed a “sinner’s prayer”. The sign of a truly born again one is a new nature, and no desire to live in sin anymore!! (Romans 6) Hebrew 12 tells us that those He loves, He disciplines and corrects. Otherwise we are illegitimate.
The man-made religion of Christianity did a fine job of selling us out!! Constantine’s religion of easy grace did away with what it means to be truly born again, and out of the kingdom of darkness, because Constantine’s church is an extension of the kingdom of darkness using Nimrod’s religion and all his successors!!
Yahushua did not come to make a covenant with this pagan church—but with His people Israel. Much of our embedded thinking comes from the ensuing years after the Council of Nicaea when monks, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes added their opinions, ideas, suggestions and demands to the list of what was to be believed to be a good member of the Church.
Over and over Yahuweh talks about our exalting His Name. His name means “I am the eternal existing One” and it is Yahuweh, the Elohim of Israel. Yahushua means “Yahuweh Saves”. What’s in a name? IDENTIFICATION!!! It identifies who you are and carries with it your reputation and everything you are. It says in Proverbs: “A good name is preferable to great riches”. If you love Him, don’t call your Elohim by pagan names and titles. Exodus 23:13: “And in all that I have said to you take heed. And make no mention of the name of other gods, let it not be heard from your mouth”. We don’t realize how pagan our language is. Even the months and days of the week are the names of pagan gods. In Hebrew, they number from day one to day 6, the seventh day being Shabbat (Sabbath). Pagan names, titles and words were incorporated into the Greek text of the Messianic Scriptures, in an attempt to destroy His Jewish heritage, and ours. It was translated into other pagan languages, which use pagan names and words. It was originally written in His language—Hebrew. In the first century BCE and into the 1st century CE, the rabbis said that they would rather eat swine’s flesh than speak Greek. The Greek language, like all the languages of the pagans, was filled with the names of their gods.
Matthew 1:21, “And she shall give birth to a Son, and shall call His Name Yahushua, for He shall save His people from their sins”. What people? Israel…! The Scriptures are written to a biological family. All people have the privilege of coming into that family’s inheritance though the blood, as always. Now, it is through the blood of Yahushua. From Exodus 12:48-49 and Isaiah 56:6-8 and Ezekiel 47:22-23 forward, entrance into His family has always been through repentance, faith, and active participation in His covenant!! The gates of the eternal cities are named for the 12 tribes of Israel. He is the Elohim of Israel.
The covenant in His blood, from Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jeremiah 31:31-34) to the sacrifice of Himself, was called a renewed covenant with Israel, His people. When we come to the Jewish Savior, He brings us into fellowship with the Elohim of Israel, Yahuweh--the Father. As Ephesians 2 tells us, we enter into Israel’s covenants.
Yahuweh has a Name, a reputation and He says, “I am Yahuweh. That is my Name. And my esteem I will not give to another, neither My praise to graven images”. His name is not the name of a Greek or Roman god. His name is set-apart. So to use another name for Him is to rob Him of who and what He is!! When it all comes down to finalities, the Word tells us, “he who calls on the name of Yahuweh shall be saved”. He says
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in Isaiah 45:21-22: “There is no god besides Me, a righteous El and a Savior, there is none besides Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am El, and there is none else”.
The foundation of deception in Yahushua’s day is the same today in 2003CE. It is the rebellion of defiled human nature against the only true Elohim and His rule over man, and the exaltation of man as god. It is Satan-based worship hidden in man-based worship. In the Garden of Eden Satan wanted worship. He deceived Eve into thinking that what Yahuweh wanted was a deception. She thought Yahuweh was cheating her. He thought He was demanding something of her for her harm. It is time to get back to the truth of Yahuweh. Satan found a friend in Nimrod who began the basic form of worship and beliefs that not only controlled and dominated pagan civilization through out the world but was infused into the new Roman Catholic Church and has come down to us in the Protestant and Evangelical/Charismatic church. It is hidden, but it is there. To continue to belong to and identify with the pagan-based church system as well as the demonic-led world system, is to also identify with their sins and their judgments that are coming soon. (Revelation 18:4) “Come out of her My people, lest you share in her sins and lest you receive of her plagues”.
Revelation 18:4 has become my watchman’s cry! Constantine, to placate the pagans, mixed paganism with the truth that Yahushua left us, but took out all references to His Jewish identity and the Hebrew covenant. He condemned anything Hebrew, to start a totally new religion around Greek and Roman sun gods.
When, to be a “Christian”, a member of the new Roman Catholic Church, became popular and comfortable and the in-thing to do in 325CE (if you didn’t want to be killed for rejecting this great honor), then the looking to the “blessed hope” stopped and the attitude of looking to man, the world, tradition, and what we could get out of it began.
The attitude that brings deception is “what’s in it for me?” The attitude that opens the door to deception is: “how can I rule my own life and maintain the lifestyle that I want, without anyone or anything telling me what to do?” It is the attitude of: “how can I get the free gift of eternal life, and not have any responsibility to maintain it?” This is what Satan presented Yahushua with in Matthew 4--“All these things I give you if you fall down and worship me”. Then Yahushua said, “Go, Satan! For it has been written, `you shall worship Yahuweh your Elohim, and Him alone you shall serve’. And the devil left Him”. It’s easy to give in to Satan and escape the hard road, but deception hides the entrance to the lake of fire.
Satan appears as an angel of light. He doesn’t appear in a red suit, with horns and pitchfork. He makes his religion-- Nimrod’s original tower of Babel adaptable religion--the right thing to do. But, the worship of the Elohim of Israel, he makes repugnant to our flesh. Obedience is not something that our flesh likes. Rebellion is at the core of our vulnerability to deception.
Anti-Messiah will bring down most of the world’s people by “flattery’, Daniel 11 tells us. Flattery is Satan’s most usual approach. He makes his way so nice, easy, right and good-looking. Deception is rampant in our day!! And because it is, people by the millions will embrace anti-messiah’s flattery!! He appeals to our pride. Watch out for flattery—it is the opening to the lake of fire. It comes with beguiling and seducing spirits, and you find yourself trapped in a web of your own making.
In other words, deception is most of the time all about the preservation of our lives, and that is directly against the gospel that Yahushua came to give to us!!!! “He that loses his life for My sake will save it”, Yahushua said. To preserve our own lives, we will deny Him when the going gets rough!! Yahushua said, “He that tries to save his life will loose it”. To preserve our own lives, or the lives of our family, we will disobey Him, deny Him and reject Him. It is called “the great falling away” that started at the end of the first century and has come to its fullness in our day.
There is nothing in the Word about an end-time revival with a worldwide harvest of souls. The “gospel of the kingdom” is about repentance and coming under the authority of the King of the kingdom, which is Torah-observance. But, there is much in the Word about an end-time falling away and a time of tribulation, shaking and purging. The easy-time church has lied to you. Prepare to
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receive His Truth!! But, I warn you: If you are tightly in the grip of deception already then truth will sound like a lie and even blasphemy!!
The word “tribulation” comes from the word “tribulum” which is a mechanical threshing instrument that separates wheat from chaff. That’s the purpose of the tribulation (3 ½ years according to Scripture)—to purge out of His kingdom all that offends Him. Hebrews 12:25-29: “Take heed not to refuse the One speaking. For if those did not escape who refused the warning on earth, much less we who turn away from Him from heaven, whose voice shook the earth them, but now He has promised saying `Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also the heaven’. And this `Yet once more’ makes clear the removal of what is shaken—as having been made—so that the unshaken matters might remain. Therefore, receiving an unshakeable reign, let us hold the favor, through which we serve Elohim pleasingly with reverence and awe, for indeed, our Elohim is a consuming fire”. Those things that are “made” will be removed. The whore-pagan man-made system will be burned with fire. It’s time we got out of it totally!
A great deception is that we no longer “fear” Yahuweh, because He doesn’t strike us with lightening if break His Law. So, we’ve gotten very loose with Him—familiar and shallow.
The chaff is like the tare, and is burned first—then the wheat is gathered. According to Isaiah 5:24 and other passages, the “chaff” are those reject the Torah and despise His Word. If we reject His culture, His governmental law, His right-rulings, His commandments (which is His Word), then we are “chaff” to be blown away for burning at His coming. Matthew 13—that’s the “harvest” of souls. The “tare” or “darnel” looks like wheat and so is very deceptive until the time of the harvest, when the weed--which looks so much like wheat that it is undetectable until the harvest—sprouts quickly higher than the wheat. Then the harvesters can spot it easily, and pluck it up for burning. But Yahushua says for us not to pluck up the tare early, because some of the wheat might be yanked up too. But, in those 3 ½ years, the Word tells us that Father gives permission to the anti-messiah to wear out the set-apart ones, and overcome them if possible, so that the true wheat will be seen clearly from the pretending tares.
Peter, to preserve his own life, denied knowing Yahushua, even though he thought he’d be faithful to death. When death was in his face, he chose the easy way out. Deception is all about choosing the easy way to preserve our lives. Revelation 12:11 speaks of those today, who are dying at a rate of 20 per hour for their faith, and those in the future who will be slaughtered because they believe in Yahushua. It says, speaking of their triumph over the one world leader who is coming, who will be empowered by Satan: “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death”.
I recently got an e-mail from a friend who said that her pastor preached on Revelation 12:11. But, he did not mention that last phrase. Afterwards, she asked him about why he left that out. He said, “I purposely left that out because it would scare too many of my parishioners”. The easy-going church has no idea of what is coming, and will not be prepared!!!!
I tried to get the Voice of the Martyrs materials into my church a few years ago, and I was told that it was too frightening for the people to see. But, in over 40 countries, our brothers and sisters are dying for their faith, being put in prison, tortured, and denied basic human rights. Millions of our brothers and sisters in southern Sudan and in Indonesia were being slaughtered while in America the top news story for a year was the O.J. Simpson trial. Tragic! I have met 15 brothers who escaped into Jordan who saw their families killed as they fled their villages in Sudan. The reason for the slaughter?--Oil. Their problem was those millions of Christians living in mud huts on oil-rich land. And the government of Sudan was kidnapping the boys and forcing these Christian children to memorize the Koran or die, and the girls became sex slaves--some just little girls. I saw these boys with whipped backs and chains on their ankles for being “disobedient” in not wanting to learn the Koran. Satan’s on the rampage out in the world, and we can’t expect for him to leave us alone, unless we are already in his pocket.
Most Americans are tired out from their rat-wheel day, so they don’t take the time to study out what is
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true and what is not. They just receive what they hear from man as truth—and some of it is blatant lie, manipulation and mind-control programming. The same is true of listening to Christian teachers. Never forget this rule: Luke 16:15: “You are those who declare yourselves righteous before men, but Elohim knows your heart, because what is highly thought of among men is an abomination in the sight of Elohim”. Now apply that to what the world pushes, and you will learn a lot of truth.
We must get involved with our persecuted brothers and sisters and do all we can for them, because it is coming to our front door, and unless we really know Him, we will fall because of all the deception that we’ve been fed. A lot of our ignorance is because we don’t study the Word that we have in our homes, or go to easily available resource material.
We can quote Hosea 4:6 all we want, but most Americans are not in the first part of the verse. We are not perishing for lack of knowledge. But we are perishing for parts two and three of that verse, which say, 1) “Because you have rejected knowledge, I have rejected you. 2) Since you have forgotten the Torah of your Elohim, I also forget your children”. Constantine threw out the Torah and replaced it with His own creed. What are you obeying? It is against the very nature of our Father. But with the Tenach as a basis of knowing His personality, we can’t know His real nature. The book of Daniel gives us two excellent examples of His nature, in chapter 3 and chapter 6. But, our flesh doesn’t want to hear it!
It requires no faith or personal relationship with our Father to escape from the wrath of man or devil. Father uses the wrath of man and devil to purge out who really belongs to Him and who doesn’t. Escapism requires no preparation for anything. We can just live the good life and get out of everything bad—at least that’s our fairytale mentality. It is against everything in the Word from Genesis to Revelation. But, it is a doctrine of ease and comfort, and based on our fears of “losing” what we hold dear. In Acts 4 and 5, the Jewish Apostles counted themselves worthy to suffer for Him. That is certainly not appealing to the flesh!
And at the core of our escapist mentality is a very strong anti-Semitic message. It’s subtle, but it is there. It is the message of Constantine. His message says that there is a church and there are Jews--the former to be blessed abundantly, and the latter to be cursed, judged and punished, since they deserve it for killing Jesus. I know--I used to teach dispensational eschatology for years. The doctrine of escaping a pre-7-year tribulation by rapture leaves the Jews to suffer, while the good church banquets in heaven. Yet there is not one verse in the entire Word that says there is a 7-year tribulation. There are 4 verses that say there is a 3 ½-year tribulation. But, I never thought it was an anti-Semitic teaching until I stopped and examined the core root of it. This teaching says that before any suffering comes, the whole church gets supernaturally snatched out of this world and will spend 7 years in heaven, while the world goes through hell, especially the Jews who deserve His wrath for rejecting “Christ”. It is based on one verse with one Latin word “rapturo” in I Thessalonians 4:17. Yet this Scripture and all the Messianic Scriptures were written to Torah observant believers in the Jewish Messiah Yahushua. Even non-Israelite believers were grafted into Israel, and became partakers of His covenant with Israel, as Ephesians 2 and other Scriptures clearly show.
Paul says that we can know the timing of His return because we know His “seasons”—the 7 Feasts of Israel, which are His divine appointments. (I Thessalonians 5:4-5) He returns on the Feast of Trumpets—sometime between Tishe 1 and Tishre 2 (September/October), depending where on the earth you are. He doesn’t just come whenever. He does not come “as a thief” to those who know the Feasts. Those feasts are eternal celebrations for all of His people. It’s time we re-read the Word from start to finish without the intervention of man’s opinions, and let the Ruach ha Kodesh teach us (I John 2:27). These feasts are the backbone of our salvation, and 4 of them have been fulfilled—3 have not yet been fulfilled.
Thus, the disciples of Yahushua, being Jewish, knew that He was referring to the Feast of Trumpets (called today, Rosh ha Shanah) because the buzzword is “no man knows the day or the hour”. It was referring to when the “last trumpet” or shofar would be blown announcing the opening of the gates of heaven. (That’s in I Corinthians 15:51-53 and Revelation 11:15-19). The Jews didn’t need any
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explanations, since that phrase also was what a Jewish son would say to people asking when he was coming for his bride. They knew it was the time of the appearance of the Bridegroom, the Messiah.
Many things Yahushua said refer to the Bride, Bridegroom, and the wedding. But, you must have Hebrew roots to understand that. Without Hebrew roots, we come up with all kinds of ideas about what He said that are not right.
His culture is not like any other culture, and His thoughts are not like ours. His Tenach reveals His culture and His personality!!
Yes, at His coming we rapture—are caught up to be with Him, changed into our glorified bodies! It is our “blessed hope”. But, from the Torah through to Revelation, His coming has to do with the signs to Israel, and His dealings are with Israel. Those 3 ½ years are the time of “Jacob’s troubles”--not Jew’s troubles—and He delivers them out gloriously--all 12 tribes! He deals with Israel. He vows to keep His covenantal promises with Israel. There is no covenant or promise to anything called a “gentile church”. He had and had no concept of a church system in His mind. He has a gathered out, set-apart people who adhere to His commands and have faith in Him alone for their salvation, through Yahushua. This set-apart people--assembly, congregation of believers--is an organism, not an institution. We are one in the Ruach Yahuweh.
We all give mental assent to that, but we remain segregated into our little church compartments of man-made design. Before the 4th century, the Body was an assembly of believers, or a congregation, which met in homes for the most part. Church buildings were introduced in design from Roman pagan-temples. By whom? You guessed it—Constantine and his mother Helena.
The true “rapture” has to do with His changing our bodies into a spiritual body like His own. That is clear in Scripture—as in Philippians 3:20-21, and I John 3:1-3; and I Corinthians chapter 15. And since there is only one covenant, and not two then His people are taken up and out at His second coming as all Scriptures show clearly! There is only one resurrection of the justified at the beginning of the 1000-year reign of Messiah, and one resurrection of the damned, at the end of the1000-years, when Father comes to earth. (John 5:25-29; Daniel 12:1-3; and Revelation 20:6 for starters) And, there are about 300 verses in the Tenach about the resurrection of the dead.
His Bride keeps the Torah from her heart, and is obedient to Him totally. She has the 1st century truths down pat, and is working within that framework. What Yahushua left us is quite simple—the Tenak (the governmental teachings of His kingdom, the rules and regulations for belonging to Him) and the fulfillment of the blood sacrifices in Himself. And, of course He had to rise from the dead, being Elohim fully, to enforce that renewed covenant!! Israel is His “ecclesia”--His assembly, His congregation, and His family. And this family continues through from Revelation 1 to chapter 22. His wrath is against those who disobey His Torah. That is all through the Word!!! “Sin the transgressing of the Torah”! (I John 3) As I Peter 1:19-21 and II Timothy 3:16-17 tell us—His Word is His Breath—it is spoken by Him and enforced by Him. It is of no “private interpretation”. We can’t just think in our heads what we think it means. We have to have it interpreted to us by the Author—the Ruach Yahuweh.
We are never promised, nor has anyone ever been promised in the Word that we escape the wrath of man or the wrath of Satan. The wrath of Father is quick and direct, and comes just before Yahushua returns, and comes with Him. He descends to receive His one and only people—those who belong to Him by faith and action in obedience to His Word. He is not coming for the lawless ones who have rejected His Torah!! He comes with His robe splattered in blood, and He “treads out the winepress of the wrath of Elohim”. His return path is so clearly marked out in Scripture (Isaiah 63; Habakkuk 3, Revelation 19; Zechariah 14; Deuteronomy 33 and others). “Come Yahushua!”
When Constantine severed us from our Hebrew roots, he destroyed for us our understanding of the real plan of salvation and the knowledge of our true Messiah and Savior. To make a thorough study of the Seven Hebrew feasts is to study the backbone of the plan of salvation from His death to His ruling and reigning on the earth. It should be a priority to you!
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The new moon is to be celebrated because it begins His months. His calendar is certainly different that Rome’s sun god calendar. His celebrations are eternal commands!! You are probably saying, “What, new moon what”?? I did that when I first heard it. But, understand it or not, you’ll be celebrating it, and all the feasts and every Shabbat for a 1,000 years, and then—for eternity. (See Isaiah 66:22-23 for starters)
Here’s the scenario for His coming and it is all according to Torah: The two witnesses of Revelation 11:3-13 (compare with Zechariah 4:11-14) are killed in the streets of Jerusalem, and ascend before the world into the presence of the High Priest Yahushua in heaven. Then the very next thing that happens is that the doors of heaven are opened and He comes. Every month, since Yahuweh established his calendar from Sinai on, (Exodus 12:2, putting the first day of the new year as Abib 1, Rome’s March/April) two witnesses would go before the High Priest at the first sight of the new moon, and upon their witness the High Priest would declare that the new month had begun. This is how all of His feasts and His days were calculated. In their re-enactment of this ancient practice, these two witnesses of Revelation 11, upon seeing the first sliver of the new moon are “caught up” to the High Priest Yahushua, and Yahushua declares that the new moon starts the new month—but this time the month is Tishre. The Feast of Trumpets begins the new month of Tishre. The three final feasts of Yahuweh picture the second coming of Yahushua, the judgment on the nations who came against Jerusalem, and His 1,000-year kingdom reign on this earth. His second coming is on a Shabbat and a new moon, Ezekiel 46:1-3 tells us. Without understanding His commands to Israel Yahushua cannot be properly understood. That is why so many hungry believers are studying His Torah today. His ways of thinking are so different than man’s. We can’t understand the Revelation without understanding our Hebrew roots.
One day (a Shabbat) I spent 15 hours looking up every verse on Shabbat. Did you know that the Word had so much to say about it? I have a teaching on that, showing each verse, and how important it is to guard it with our lives, because it is the number one sign of our set-apartness to Him in this world. It is eternal!!! The sun-god worshippers went to service on Sunday. The Muslims worship on Friday. But, His set-apart day is the Bride’s day with her Bridegroom and very, very precious!!! Man added many laws to make it a burden in the Talmud and rabbinical traditions. That is what Yahushua was against—the traditions of men that killed the beauty of His Word.
To most Evangelicals and Charismatic believers, Sunday is the busiest day of the week that wears them totally.
Just getting to the church can mean a fight with your spouse, yelling at the kids, frustration with being late, no time for breakfast, hoping for a donut and coffee in Sunday School, frustration with your hair and those uncomfortable clothes. And by the time you get there, you put on a smile and say everything’s wonderful. You’re children are in tears, you have bills that you can’t pay, your head hurts, and your husband is angry and frustrated because he lost his job on Friday, and you have to answer the question as to how you are with a lying “fine”. You know I’m telling the truth. It is a phony show from start to finish. Yes, we perhaps get some peace while we’re there, but the truth comes out after we get home—who really cares about our soul?
The Sunday church routine is similar to the pagan’s day of worship in which they dressed up to impress others, and to honor the gods, to go to their basilicas, to perform their religious duties. Did you ever wonder about the routine of Sunday church, and all the things you have to do to do it right? It is all, and I mean all, pagan at the roots, and at best man-invented. Yahushua did not instigate any of it--none of it--at all!!! Even the pastor’s sermon as the central focus of the service is not Scriptural.
I sit here on Friday mornings, at my computer, and I have observed something very interesting. The local mosque is located two streets from my apartment. Five times a day the call for prayer goes forth over the loud speaker. But, on Friday, here is their routine: 1) I hear the call for prayer, like a bell ringing for parishioners to come to church. 2) I see streams of cars and men walking in their good dress-up clothes going to the mosque. 3) I hear an opening “hymn”, sung by a single cantor of course, in eastern musical style. 4) I hear a loud, bombastic sermon, sometimes very angry, going on
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and on for about 30-40 minutes. 5) I hear a closing hymn by the same cantor. 6) I hear a “benediction”--a closing prayer. 7) Lastly, I see the streams of cars and those walking back home, people’s heads bowed, no smiles, no joy. These devoted men also say their “rosary” –their prayer beads, as they walk or sit during the week, or at the mosque.
It is so much like the Sunday routine--it is amazing--because the foundation for that routine is pagan.
The Greek and Romans followed the exact same routine in the worship of their gods. The platforms in their sanctuaries were the same—high above the people. The seats were the same-in rows so that the worshippers could see the priest and the choir. The priest’s sermon was the center of the “worship” and consumed the most time. Tired and mind-wandering people, at Sunday services, take into their belief system what their pastor or priest tells them, because he is considered an exalted minister of God, so what he says must be the truth. In most cultures, the priest is honored above other people. In Matthew 23, Yahushua tells them how they love to be honored by men. It is an abomination in all religions.
People are no different than in Moses’ day, when they told Moses to go hear from God for them, and they’d stay safe at the bottom of the mountain. Instead of a personal relationship with Him, all religions seek out a priest, pastor, medicine man, shaman, or someone who is “spiritual” to be the go-between for them with God. Rome’s pagan religion, the worship of the sun god, like all religions was, in the worship service--a spectator sport. Our Yahushua did not leave us with a spectator sport. Nor was the pastor to be an exalted center of performance and controller of the sheep. The “pastor’s sermon”, the entertainment in music, the choir, the worship team, the control of the service by certain chosen people, is all pagan-based and manipulative. I know, I was the Music Director in several churches. The idea is to get the audience into a spiritual framework so that they will receive what the pastor tells them. But, much of the time, what the pastor tells them is not totally the truth. Most people would rather have someone go to God for them, and spoon-feed us once a week, or twice a week (even Wednesday night service is pagan based), than to get to know Him for ourselves. We are lazy, and that laziness will cost us everything!!
A major foundation of deception is our desire for ease and comfort opens the door for demonic activity. We are passive when it comes to knowing and worshipping Him. But, He requires passionate, active interaction with Him.
Matthew 16:24-25: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his stake, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it”. That’s the gospel—“take up your stake and follow Me”.
Yahushua said that His sheep knew His voice and they would follow Him!! He said that the sheep would not follow the “voice of the stranger”. How many sheep today are following the voice of the stranger?--millions. That’s because millions are not sheep of the right Shepherd! Do you know His voice well enough and clearly enough to follow Him step by step in obedience? Crucifixion was a horrible death—slow and torturous. It ended in smothering to death. Read about it, because if you are born-again, then you are in the process of the crucifixion of your own self-life. If not, question your salvation!! A mind-set of escapism is totally against everything that He is!!
A major foundational example of the fakery of this whore system of Constantine’s is this multi-billion dollar business to promote this escapist rapture teaching. It abounds with books, tapes, seminars, conferences, magazines, TV appearances--deceptions are growing upon deceptions. The money just flows. The people who propagate this doctrine, and it is almost an exclusively American doctrine which has spread to other countries, are not preparing people for the horrific tribulation that is coming upon the whole world. It is a foundation upon which major deceptions being built that are leading believers into deeper and deeper idolatry. It is the Roman philosophy--no persecution for Christians. So therefore, enjoy the world all you can!!
A really thorough book to read for truthful on-site reporting is The Incredible Cover-Up by Dave MacPherson, c. 1975. This book explores the roots of the pre-tribulation rapture teaching, which is in Port Glasgow, Scotland in 1830. It is a documented and scholarly report that every Christian needs
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to read. Millions upon millions of so-called “good Christians” will deny Him when they find out they are not going to get out of here. They will take the “mark” of the anti-messiah, because of an insane
fear of torture and death and of seeing their children die. I’ve heard people say, including pastors, who believe in the “rapture”, that if they don’t get out before the tribulation, they will deny Jesus “because He’s not the God they thought He was”. Confession time: I said that myself back in the 1980’s.
In Nigeria, a man wrote a simple letter to the Voice of the Martyrs telling them that some Muslims had murdered his wife and his 5 children. As he watched them die, and his wife burned alive before him, he reported that he still could not denied his faith in Jesus. His one request to the western believers was that he might be strong and not deny Jesus. Does that make your “blood run cold”? It should. That choice is coming to you and your family--if you don’t die by gunshot, bomb, missile, chemicals, pestilence, natural disaster, rabid beasts, accidental or natural death. Because if your faith is not tested, what good is it?
Let me bottom line the core of this escapism doctrine, which MacPherson’s book traces so well. (This basic information can be found also in encyclopedias and other reference books on Christian history.) In 1830, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, a 17 year-old girl named Margaret McDonald was a member of a church who had “millennial fever”. Many ecstatic manifestations were going on there, including many prophecies about His coming. Today we’d call that “revival”. However, His revivals change whole areas and nations, and when He takes over whole societies are changed. Margaret had a vision. But, its contents didn’t get much further than Port Glasgow. In fact this “revival” didn’t get much outside of Port Glasgow, or outside of the church that the “revival’ was in. Not much came of it, until a couple of very clever men came along, one named Kenneth Darby, and interviewed shy Margaret. Whether he was trapped by being fascinated at the sensational vision at the first or not, he saw it as a real chance for self-promotion and personal gain, and so did many others. Today it is billion dollar business in the church-system and in the world, playing of people’s fears and propagating an easy gospel of belief to escape the a 7 year tribulation that doesn’t exist. It has developed into movies too, which are garbled truth at the very least. I’ve heard TV preachers telling their audiences to repeat a prayer after them to “receive Jesus” and they would be assured of being raptured before the tribulation. That is a pure lie by a false prophet! But, then these “evangelists” publish in their newsletters that so many thousands “received Jesus”.
In the true ecclesia of China, it is public confession of their faith by open baptism in the face of Communist spies that causes them to make a clean break with anything past. That’s the Scriptural way of confessing Him unto salvation—confessing with the mouth what is believed in the heart, and openly demonstrating it in baptism. A cruel death is a part of receiving His life to many believers. Their life is on the line. These people are truth-oriented. They live what they know. His grace abounds to them!! Deception is rampant among those who want to escape to save their lives!! Persecution of His true remnant didn’t change with the Protestant Reformation, it hasn’t changed now, nor will it change until He comes to stop it.
Exposing more of our pagan roots, here is some more information regarding our predominant Reformation “father” in Constantine’s Sword, page 366-368. “Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on he door of a Wittenberg church in 1517. In 1543, he published an anti-Semitic text `On the Jews and Their Lies,’ and Hitler himself would appeal to anti-Jewish slanders that began with the great reformer himself. The tragic character of Luther’s impact on the fate of Jews in Germany is only fully apparent when `On the Jews and Their Lies’ is read against an earlier treatise, `That Jesus Christ was born a Jew,’ written twenty years earlier in 1523. During those twenty years, Luther had been seared in the fires of ferocious Catholic rejection His bitterness poisoned much that began as good, including his attitude toward Jews. In his text `On the Jews and Their Lies’, Luther advocated the burning of synagogues. Luther lumped the Jews and the pope together as his mortal enemies”.
The Catholics figured because in his earlier writings he was a stout defender of the Jews, that he
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must be a “heretic”. Luther distinguished between the ancient Israelites and the Jews of the Christian era. Much deception has come from doing that in several Christian groups.
Luther said (page 368): “`Know my dear Christian and do not doubt that next to the devil you have no enemy more cruel, more venomous and virulent, than the true Jew.’” Luther also said, “`They are for us a heavy burden, the calamity of our being; they are a pest in the midst of our lands.’”
But, Reformation groups like the Calvinist Huguenots regarded the Jews in a much better light. Thus we see that anti-Semitism not just for religion but also for race (which began in the mid 1400’s in Spain) came through the Reformation with flying colors. Blaming everything on the Jew has its origin in Trier, Germany, where hating the Jews actually began, with the “cross” of Constantine and his mother, Helena. Karl Marx was an x-Christian Jew-hater. He was born in Trier. This “heritage” of the church must be quickly abandoned. Of course Jews and those Christians who kept Torah were all lumped together as worthy of death.
In my estimation, the great church “father” Augustine must have been Jewish. In James Carroll’s book, Constantine’s Sword, pages 215-217, we learn that among the Church “fathers”, he was remarkable sensitive to the “Jewish character of Christian faith, which derived from his close reading of Paul”. “Augustine argued `against Jerome that both Jesus and the first generation of Jewish apostles, Paul emphatically included, were, as Christians, also Torah-observant Jews.’” “Against those arguing that Jews were the enemies of Jesus, Augustine would insist, in effect, on considering the question in the light of Jesus’ own Jewishness. And even if such enmity was to be established, he could ask `Where in Jesus does one find an execution order?’” In Augustine’s famous writing The City of God the cry of Augustine is: “Do not slay them!”
Satan hates Jews and Christians who believe in the Savior of the world, but who guard and keep the Word of Yahuweh, Elohim of Israel. It’s OK with