Tag Archives: jewish

December 16, 2022 · 2:08 pm

Worship defined

This word has a plethora of misunderstandings.

I believe it needs to have more discussion within the assembly of believers.

There are some discrepancies in the the usage of the action. What are the issues of it are, I believe are the use of tradition and stealing of usage from the gentile gods. We will start with the ‘tradition’ issue first.

All throughout the old testament, the ‘worship’ was thought of as ‘where God was’, This concept was instituted only because of mankind’s banishment of the Garden of Eden where the heavenly reign of God was with man, walking and talking together. It was to be a ever expanding realm of God thru the multiplying of mankind. It was then that things changed to be one of a ‘pinpoint’ of a location for man to start again from a central location with God there also. This was the Temple. God was there. It also was the location where God’s chosen people to begin again to become the ‘image’ of God and to then ‘multiply’ to the whole world. It was a plan of re-commitment from God’s people to be who they were meant to be.

This ‘place’ where God was, was also the place of ‘sacrificing’ for the being of God’s people. It was a daily chore, a seasonal chore, and a yearly chore for being with God to ‘right the ship’ sorta way. This was an full blown production of the people’s lives with living for the sacrificing of an individual’s livestock,produce and time. It was also an investment for the people as a whole to sacrifice to the ‘temple’ as a nation of Israel. This ceremonial process was a never ending ritual. It was always to be giving God the first of everything that the person,family, or nation had, whether it be livestock,produce or themselves, to institute the meaning of God’s desire for himself to be first in their minds.

Another form of ‘Worshiping’ was by the pagan worshipers of the plethora of gods that they had in other nations. These rituals were similar to the forms of some sects of the jewish people. It was this that God chastised them for the ways of the world for being wrong.

It is then that the ‘Christianity’ movement was instituted at Pentecost and the formulation of ‘laws’,beliefs, everything to this ‘new’ religion was being made on the fly to keep it going. With the beginning of this movement coming from the perspective of the jewish religion, it was as a way to keep things rolling, would use those things of the jewish rituals. There was some alterations on what laws to keep from the Jewish sect tho. What is perceived as a would be normal transition to use the same things of the Jewish ‘worship’ of going to the temple, after all, that’s where ‘God’ was for the Jews, right. But I will take the hint from the scriptures, that this was not an option for the most part. It is said that ‘they’ christians would ‘meet’ in one another’s homes for the partaking of food and fellowship. This also was at times a struggle in the meeting at all with still the beginning of persecution of the ‘Jews’ and also from the Romans. It would eventually be able to use as a meeting place at ‘halls’ of publicly held meetings, thru the instituting of ‘christianity’ as an ‘association’.

The quote ‘practice of Worship’ was to be redefined by the ‘new sect’ of religion by it’s not ‘going to where God was’ to something else. This is where it gets tricky and messy, there are various convictions or beliefs that surrounded different camps of the newly formed people. First, there was different understandings of this subject, but the two main ones were from Paul and Peter. Let me just say that the one that we are using today is from Peter. The Hierarchical institutional one, with either a layered institution of Priests and the proclaimed ‘Universal’ church, with the much smaller hierarchy of just one leader with followers under him or her.

Let me quote scripture here to throw into the mix to see if maybe we are not seeing things right.

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Ac 2:1–4.

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day; 16 but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days
I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.

The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Ac 2:14–18.

As I read this I notice that there is a ‘hand off’ of authority from Jesus to the ‘Holy Spirit’. What I don’t see is the need for any other form of leadership or institution made by man. There was one such group in this time frame that was doing such as this, being led by the Holy Spirit in their individual lives and their life as a group. This in my opinion is the misstep that christianity has taken, in furthering God’s calling of his people.

It is the following of the ‘institutional’ paradigm that has gotten us into alot of trouble in both of the beliefs. I believe that Paul was not as direct in saying a ‘meeting place’ was necessary for the continuance of the faith. It was the understanding that Jesus’s Spirit would be the guiding light of his people. God’s people would be of a ‘New Being’ that would not be left alone in the world to fight the evil, but the Holy Spirit was a ‘light upon our feet’.

This action would be our ‘Worship’ of being in Christ, and Christ in Us. This is the ‘action’ of ‘Worshiping’ our God.

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July 5, 2021 · 2:54 pm

Two shall become one

You probably have heard this phrase a million times over your life in various ways.

If you are married, you probably heard it in your ceremony of nuptials. This is the allegoric phrase that is used to say that two married will come together as one in union to live as one. It is, as always a phrase that is used to point out a union, a mixing of things to become one in whatever instance it is used.

This “Two shall become one” is again used in the story of God and His people. But two people would you be talking about? For those people that are familiar with the story of God and Gospel of the New Testament, their is a distinction of two people that defined as God’s people and ‘Gentiles'( those that weren’t God’s people), it was that simple. The story of ‘God’s people tho is a long and drug out story of the ups and downs of a people that were supposed to committed to a covenant with their God. It is this story that I would like to tell a side that has not been really told or understood in our storyline of the Gospel.

The storyline that has been really emphasized is the one of the gentiles and their struggle to leave their idols and gods behind them and to know the God of Abraham. This story has been told and retold and summarized, pulpit beating, Hell threatened, God is coming, Satan is after us to who all else knows! But I think that we may have missed something that might be key to our understanding to our side of the equation of the two becoming the one. It is what the other side is told to give up, for they were given a “new and better way of doing the thing of worship”.

I would like to point out here that this is probably true coming from the other side from the Jewish to the ‘gentile’ issues. But I think maybe on both sides we have a bigger issue that also needs to be addressed, and that is lack of digging deeper into what Paul was saying in the scriptures, about the reason that God sent his son and what that meant to ‘God’s people’ and also to the gentiles. But we will dig deep into just the one side of it. The Jewish side of it.

For the Israelite’s it was a stay the same for them scenario, Jesus’ arrival onto the scene, didn’t change anything for them(Religious authorities),they were looking for the proverbial ‘Knight on the white horse’ to save them from the bondage that they were facing in the Roman world. But whether they believed it or not, it was so. It was a different story with the ranks below them that some believed the God of Abraham had sent his Son to dwell with them to bring them out of slavery.

It was the ones that believed within the Israelite’s(also the gentiles,but just talking about the Israelite’s) that were told that their ‘ way’ of being marked as a God image was changed. It would not be the sacraments that they were used to. No longer would they be ‘officially’ God’s people by the circumcision of the men, the mandatory food laws to be strictly enforced, the Temple would not be the building that they where used to by their Kings of their forefathers, no, it was to be ‘Christ in Us’, and as a bonus togetherness, we would be ‘in Christ’! This would be so wonderful for God’s people(also for the Gentiles). But the problem for the people of God this was so irrational, and goes against what God has told them over and over again thru their forefathers. This was also a very humanistic solution for man’s problem. It was a solution for whole world, that would say that it would only take the right man to put in power to solve the problem.

God’s solution was better, It was Him.

Let’s go back to the solution for the Israelite’s and what the Gentiles and I mean mainly the christians that have heard the gospel, that it seems that we have took up the ways of old, and are working withing the system of the Israelite’s, we have gone back into slavery, which Paul was telling the believers of Jewish background that they kept going back into, but why?

It is this problematic scenario of the christian believers now that have fallen back into the ways of old, that we can’t go back into the old covenant. We are in the ‘New Covenant’! Jesus’ death and resurrection has brought us into the New Covenant!! It is New!

Let’s look at the three thing that I believe that ‘We’ as christians have been ‘working within the parameters of the old covenant and trying to work as tho we were in the New Covenant! You can’t. It’s stupid to think that we could. I believe we either didn’t realize we were doing this or we ‘really didn’t know we were doing it’.

Circumcision, let’s face it this is an outside ‘marker’ of God’s people, but it was ‘hidden’ within the world. This is in itself not a ‘saving gesture’ of God.

Food laws, is in reality a very life changing thing for anyone, let alone for the Jewish sect of God’s people. This commandment was a ‘gesture’ of putting them in the world as ‘different’, it was at first a good thing, to ‘see’ you God’s people were. But in itself was not going to be a ‘saving gesture’ of God’s plan. It was the plan of the Israelite’s eating with others, because now it would not be an issue of what was ‘clean’ of God. It was now considered ‘all clean’ for everyone.

Now we come to the issue that I think is our biggest stumbling block of all. It is the ‘Temple’. Do you ‘see’ from what I have very briefly said about what happened with Christ’s death and resurrection changed things for both sides. For which neither side has done a very good job of adhering too. But it is gentiles that we are working on now, that we need them to see that what the Israelite’s were giving up, they must also.(the physical temple of God, God changed this thru his Son) We are ‘in Christ, and ‘He is in Us’, this the same action as what the Temple and the High Priest were doing every time they went into the ‘Holy of Holies’ room.

This action is what is needed, along side the other two things that the Jewish people needed to believe that God was not only in them but in everyone in the world, after all everyone is God’s image and likeness!!

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January 21, 2020 · 4:33 pm

Does Kingdom theology answer the theology of the Jews?

There is a difference of opinion of the jewish world and of the christian world in the eschatology of both. It has a few reasons why the jewish world has denied the christian eschatology, one has been the notion of dieing in this world and proceed to heaven for all the good people, and the bad, well, you know,hell.

The Kingdom of God theology, that is being now preached in various forms of avenues to christians has a different scenario for all of us. It is the storyline of God creating a world, for his creation’s, to work along side of everything He created, with God walking with us. It was when mankind, saw that He could run it by himself, without the creator in any shape or form. It was a ‘make the world and just leave it to us’ kind of scenario for mankind.

But God had a twist to this storyline, He being the God that He was, was not leaving totally to the story, He was to be involved in various things to maybe show the bad, and good things of the ‘mankind experiment’ until God’s involvement in bringing His people back around to Him. Abraham was the beginning of Gods retaking his world from mankind.

God showing the world that his only son, was the model of God’s ‘New World’ of his Kingdom is born when Jesus conquered the ‘Death’ of Mankind, that was holding it back from achieving the ultimate goal of God’s perfect example of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

God’s Kingdom is alive! It is being lived out in yours and my life that is progressing to the ultimate reality that is described in Revelation 20-21 of the New Testament.

Heaven(God’s government) is now with the world of his people, He is now all in all!

This is a very, very short storyline of what I could actually describe to you but if you desire more explained or just a question of something, I will return a answer, I hope.

Something to think about, it does connect some puzzle pieces tho!

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December 14, 2019 · 12:38 pm

Is it time?

Do we need to go back in time to see if there is anything that has or is tainting our belief’s? Are we on the right track, is christianity being authentic thru our journey of God’s design?

Pagan influence

God’s separate people,different,Holy,uninfluenced. Have we been changed into something that we were not designed to be, is it because of being conformed to our surroundings, our friends, our own ways,to pagan ideas? Is this what God said us to be?

We are to be different!

Let’s get to maybe a issue that maybe is affecting our path to God and his eternal purpose. Our pagan ways! I will tackle a big one first, then to some others.

This is, I believe is the most decisive and the most relevant one in the christian community that has steered us in the wrong direction. It is the ‘church building’!

To tackle this one, we must go back to the old testament and to see what the ‘building’ actually stood for. Who was it for, what to do there, and why.

I’m afraid that we actually have to go back to genesis 1 to get the whole picture, but this is good in a alot of ways. We might even see somethings that we have never seen before.

God designed the whole universe! Genesis chapter 1 God put all the participants in the picture of his creation. Exactly in the right place, at the right time, the right objects, the right people to portray his creation. It was perfect! It was actually God putting himself into his own creation, his desires, his wants, his world was surrounding himself with himself. This is key to the way that we understand God’s creation. He was designing his essence, his being into a outward brilliance of himself. After all, it was to be where he laid his head. (Mat 8.20) To walk among his creation(Gen 3.8)

So if we can see this actually in our mind of what was going on, we can see that God created a place for him and his creation to be, to walk, to sleep together in a world together.

Let me interject here that a fact needs major clarification to understand, this world was designed,made and designed for man(mankind), This fact is key to the scriptures in so many ways, using the hebrew language as who or what God’s ‘people’ were is in the understanding who ‘Adam’ was, Mankind. All of eternity of his kind, this was or never was supposed to individualize God’s creation.

Now, let’s fast forward to many years later after his creation has went a separate way from his creator, but the creator is still connected to the creation and cares for it, and that his desire is to be apart of him, but it won’t be in the same way as before, man has not the same love for it’s creator. So God has instituted his partial connection to man by although not fully as before, but in someway still connected to him he institutes a connection by creating a spot on his creation where God is still God of his creation, The Holy of Hollies. This place is just not anything or anywhere, it is special to his people. But it is with conditions, it will have to be with sacrifices to his people, it will be a ritually rough life of sacrificing to God for the life that they chose to go. It will be them coming to him in a remorseful way of knowing that they were wrong.

This is describing the Temple in Jerusalem. It was the ‘only place God was in all his creation’! Wow, how the storyline changed. From all of creation to just little room 20 cubits by 20 cubits by 20 cubits, a perfect cube. That’s not big at all! Where they went once a year.

This continues today with the jewish world today, the protestants have copied this scenerio for the most part by confining God to a building with a room that is usually bigger(some places believe bigger is better) It is where God is, he lives in there, this is when and where we feel him, see him, and hear him. This is the allusion that we see when compared to the days of the ages. We have and are not giving God Glory for bringing us back to his Glory of His Creation.

By God’s giving over his son Jesus the Messiah(Lord)(King) that he may be the example of the image of God that his creation was meant to be, he is now a NEW CREATION, not like the one before, a new,different one, a holy one, One that was created in the beginning to be God’s walking mate, talking mate, and living mate. just walking in a garden.

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October 26, 2015 · 8:32 pm

Starting from a clean slate

I have hinted in a few  blogs in the past that I have written about our views or our perspectives of the scriptures. It is not just of late that it is being mis-viewed, it has been skewed from the 1700’s on with layered with more layers of mis-aliagned  perspective.

The angle that which we(christianity) have come from is the one from the New Testament.

This makes our view  tainted.

It is when we realize that the story started from the old testament and continued thru the new testament to complete the story. The testament’s or my preference is ‘the covenant’s’ are a continuance not separated storlines. All elements of the scenario’s are inter-related, they build  on each other as the story goes on, all the way to the end.

All that to say, the biblical story, is a Jewish story, a Jewish story about people, a Jewish story about people and their God.

Our slate must begin with the Jewish people and their God.

We must read the story in it’s completion only from the standpoint of the jewish story.

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October 9, 2015 · 2:46 pm

Backstory!

Do you ever come across something in your bible study that goes against your belief that you have now?

This is happening to me in a lot of studying that I have been doing in the last seven years. I am not on purpose looking for things that are obviously different, but I am looking at the foundation of the christian faith and how it started. It is different from what we see now in our ‘christian’  life.

I know that statement comes out of left field, for some, but you must stop and think and relook at the scriptures, and also the back story of christianity, to get the actual meaning of the scriptures. Back story is very,very important, do not take it lightly, no matter what somebody tells you. You see, only now when someone tells you a story today, and they tell you about something happened to them and what it made them do,say, or react can you totally understand how they would tell the story, you know the background of it all.

But if I was to tell you, a story, from the early 1800’s, you would need to know some background of the story to fully understand on why,where,how, when,and what was going on in my story, or else you would come to some different perspective of the story than I  wanted you to get.  So it is with the same argument that we must use to understand the story of the scriptures. I believe this with all of my heart that this is why we have come with some different messages throughout our reading of the word.

Reading of a back story in a time period and of a society, does not infringe on anything of the bible’s authoritative premise, but it enhances the story to let us be fully aware of what was going on and why. “……and you were there!” is an appropriate phrase to use if we were to put ourselves in the ‘biblical narrative’  in real-time. It would just blow our socks off, if we were to be tele-ported into the scenes of biblical times. I am also convinced that we would come away from the biblical story with a lot of different belief’s and understandings.

It is sometimes frowned upon in some christian circles to not look at or use any ‘outside material’ to further ourselves in biblical knowledge. But what is not understood with biblical studies is that we have taken everything for face value, or the black and white of it. This will just not do!! We need to just go back 200 yrs to see that things changed on the way we perceived things and the reformation parted ways with Catholicism. It is with Martin Luther and John Calvin, that led the way with a different belief system in the scriptures.

This is even more reason to  further ‘your’ study, not anyone’s, or anyone’s group but your’s to make it concrete in your belief. This method of searching the scriptures about the people,land,leaders,societies,gods,kingdoms,kings,rulers, and beliefs will ultimately make God’s story come alive!!

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March 26, 2015 · 11:45 am

The Church is…………………..

Christians, We have a problem!

Our identity is in disarray? And it’s our fault.

The looseness of our use of the word “church”and our actions,rituals, has and is not defining who we are as Christians. I see to some extent that maybe we have put the cart before the horse. We as christians have assumed that we are exemplifying the attributes of a christ like life, when in fact we are just a very weak example of a concept of a christ like ideal.

First, the realization of what God’s intention of his creations and their purpose from God’s chosen people,the jews, and then to spread the love for all to be included in his purpose. It is where we need to see the real meaning of what God was telling  and showing the children of Israel  that it was all about Him, in everything for everyone. This understanding  for the children was the practice of the details to comply with God’s identity. It was their manual to be “God’s people”, and their was no other way to this identity. This has in some respects bled thru in the christian life.

God gave them the law and it was written in stone!, so it could not and would not change,no additions or subtractions.This is the method that God speaks for his intentions for his people.

Put ourselves in the mindset of a jewish sect in the various kingdoms that they were a subset in that will bring us to the understanding  of their mindset of what God was going to free them from tyrant kingdoms that kept them in slavery. It was to become a flesh issue in their lives, but not an eternal one.

Secondly, with the inclusion of gentiles it was the dissolving of everything that jewish life was all about as to the rituals that ‘God’s people were and what they were. It couldn’t  include the gentiles, unless they succumbed to the rituals of the jews. This is what the issue with Paul and Peter was in the book of Acts. This united group was just not kosher with the jewish elite. It just couldn’t work in so many ways. This pronouncement that the old way of knowing of who God’s select people were, was not by the written and systematic ways of his people, but by who they were in God, and later to be thru Jesus,the messiah.

It is this second realization that we need to see that, we too need to drop our rituals and ways of becoming ‘God’s people’ as did the jewish community had to realize with the addition of the gentiles in the purpose of God. We have become stuck in the ways of our thinking of ‘creating the kingdom’ that we have missed the fact that we are the kingdom because of our belief in Jesus and his messianic life that, He is the new king of the new kingdom that has given us a new life in not the world but of God’s Life!

Christians need to be the ‘light on the hill’ to be reckonized as ‘God’s people’. This will be who Chirst is. Nothing more,nothing less.

The definition of ‘the Church’ is ‘God’s people’. and nothing else.

God’s desire for Adam in the garden was not slavery, but life. Adam chose slavery, God rectified Adam to bring us to life in Christ, which he shows us in Revelation 21-22.

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