And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ...
#ephesians 4:11-12
Paul didn't mean this as a comprehensive catalog of all roles and offices in the Kingdom. There are also healers, accountants, administrators, musicians, artists, editors, lawyers, and more. If you think the human body is a complex system of interworking parts, the full body of Messiah is a hundred times greater.
(No one is beating you up for your beliefs so don't act like it after reading this. Study the matter or ignore it and carry on. The choice is yours. We just share the info and challenge everyone to question everything. If you'd rather not question anything, so be it and be blessed.)
We never bother mentioning outside our own areas of authority how abominable it is to call the Elohim of the Bible by the old heathen British epithet of “God”.
We simply scroll on by if it’s on social or ignore it if it’s in live conversation.
…But when it’s one of those posts about how we desperately need to get the man-made tradition out of our religion and it’s posted in the name of “God” which is arguably one of the most deeply rooted of those man-made traditions, then the irony is just too much to ignore.
True that we do need to be strategic and to know our audience and meet people where they are, but is there not a difference between meeting people where they are and adopting their position?
Sure it’s easier to use their terminology, it’s more comfortable for them, more recognizable, and creates a more inclusive environment for dialogue, but to what end?
Are we not moving them from one room of a burning house into another room of the same house?
When we are trying to make a point about Torah it’s important not to muddy the waters with other subject matters. Very true.
Yet do we not muddy the waters anyway by teach them the Torah of the Biblical YHWH Elohim is the Torah of the British LORD God?
We will be giving them an accurate understanding of the requirements and an inaccurate understanding of the One requiring them.
Are we advocating shoving the Sacred Name in their faces when they won’t yet possess the framework for why it’s important? No.
And beating anyone up over things they don’t know and can’t comprehend yet is hardly fair.
But the questions still must be asked. If we are going to call out the imperative need to leave behind our man-made traditions, especially those adopted into Christianity from previous heathenism, we can’t do so with full integrity if we do so selectively. Can we?
We are obligated to remove all our pagan tradition, not just some. Not merely the ones that matter to us. Not just the ones we judge to be important. And not only the ones we notice.
We owe it to the Truth itself and to those desperately dying for it, to get out all the lies from our lives as we notice them.
Our Christian cousins know YHWH by the terms, Father, Heavenly Father, Most High, Creator, Sovereign, King, and Mighty One which are all truisms of Him, contrary to the irrelevant pagan moniker of “God”.
And we’ve found that by glossing over the term “God” when they say it and calling Him by these decent titles instead, they are familiar enough for carrying on conversation, they keep the people comfortable, and they don't fill up the minds of our audience with an adjusted inaccuracy.
Furthermore, in the 20 year test, the data is in on the Messianic movement as a whole, how dramatically our long-standing approach to ministry has failed.
Sure we win people over to our particular brand of Torah Observance for a time. But in years and decades we lose them back to churchianity, to deconversion into foreign religions such as Asatru and Islam, full conversion over into Judaism, or degeneration into atheism and agnosticism.
And what’s the one commonality all these people seem to have? They all say that the more they studied, the more they found out they were still being lied to.
They left whatever religion they were part of initially, usually Christianity or Judaism, because they saw the holes in their theology. And the Hebrew Roots Movement filled up many of those gaps their own religions couldn’t manage to do.
And if that’s as far as these people were going to go then maybe it would be enough…but so many are hungry for the truth in all its fullness, with none of the lies attached, even those they currently hold to dearly.
They want to believe the truth of Scripture but when they later find out we mixed truth with lies to make it easier for them to receive it, most within 20 years reject it entirely as all lies.
We’d urge you all to please consider this matter very carefully.
For the sake of intellectual integrity and for the sake of your audience, please do a deep dive into the etymology of the term “God” so you can see for yourself how important this issue is.
What does the word mean?
Where does it come from?
How did we get it?
Why do we still use it?
Is it really a translation of Elohim?
How do we justify calling our Elohim by the moniker of “God” when the idol “Gad” was His rival in the Bible and his name sounds exactly the same as our title for our Elohim?
So many questions need answering.
Wherever you land on it, be blessed and shalom
Question Everything
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Oh! We're half way there! Just a couple more days til shabbat. We can do this!
Morning y'all ?
Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
Ephesians 4:8-10
The ascension referenced here is #yeshua's ascension to heaven ("on high"), so the descent probably isn't talking about going to Hell or Hades or Sheol, but coming to earth. It doesn't say "to the lower regions *of* the earth", but "to the lower regions, *which are* the earth". The captives he set free are all of us who were eternally condemned by our sins. See John 13:3.
That is not to say that Yeshua didn't descend to Sheol, the Hebrew word for the place where the spirits of the dead await resurrection, often called "the grave". I just don't think that's what this verse is about.
Question: Did Elohiym create Adam outside of Eden or inside Eden?
Look at this verses in Genesis 2:7 "And YHVH Elohiym formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8 And YHVH Elohiym planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed."
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