Keeping God's Commandments

This is a proposed guide for the newly emerging Branch of Jesse, the Jews who are coming to the knowledge and faith in the Jewish Messiah. He was among us, is here now with us, and is yet to return to us: Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus Christ. You are one of the promised signs of the last days, in both the reestablishing of the state of Israel and the emergence of your faith in Yeshua. May God's blessing and grace rest upon you, and guide you in your quest to define what it means to be a truly Jewish believer. I hope that the following suggestions may prove to be of value to you, and a guide for reconciliation between us. 

We recognize the Decalogue in the Torah:

Exodus 20 & Deuteronomy 5 

1. I am the Lord, your God, whom alone you shall worship. 

2. Don't set up any false gods to follow or to offer sacrifice. 

3. Respect, and don't misrepresent me, or use my name for your own purposes. 

4. I gave you a day off from work, enjoy it wisely and be grateful to remember Me. 

5. Love and respect your parents, and treat  your family right. 

6. Don't choose to kill any person, nor by malice wound their spirit. 

7. Love your spouse, and always respect the holy vows of marriage. 

8. Don't take what belongs to another, without their consent. 

9. Don't lie about other people, neither to shift blame nor for personal gain. 

10. Don't envy another person's bound relationships, nor desire anyone else's wealth or possessions. 

And the Commandments restated by the Master in the Gospels: 

A. Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all of your heart, mind, strength and soul. 

B. You must love your neighbor as yourself, including your enemies. 

And those He affirmed for those who wanted to follow Him in his own time: 

C. Luke 6:31, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." 

D. H. "Therefore, be merciful, even as your Father in Heaven is merciful." 

E. Mark 10:17-27 (21) "Go sell all you have, and give to the poor, so that you will have treasure in Heaven, then come, follow me." 

F. Luke 9:23, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily, and follow me."

G. Love all who belong to Christ, as He loves us, even to the point of sacrifice. "Love one another, as I have loved you."

H. Make the Jews jealous of the way kindness and compassion is shared among us, and share it also with them. "So even as you have done to one of these, the least of my brethren, so you have done to me."

According to the first Apostolic council, held in 50 AD in Jerusalem, a Gentile need not become a Jew in order to follow Christ, but he must abstain from: 

1. eating meats sacrificed to idols 

2. consuming blood 

3. eating any animal that was strangled 

4. fornication 

Although they may choose to follow the customs, and become as the circumcised Jews, if they wish to try to fulfill the Law as Jesus did. 

Further, one may assume, the Gentiles must at the very least continue to observe the Law of Noah, as found in Genesis, chapter 9: 

1. Do not have any idols before God.

2. Do not eat from a living animal.

3. Do not steal. 

4. Do not murder. 

5. Do not commit sexual immorality. 

6. Do not blaspheme. 

7. Set up courts of Law & Justice. 

But most importantly, we have the central Truth that God has given us through Moses, and which we obey by our faith in Yeshua: "I have set before you this day a choice: the Way of Death, or the Way of Life. Choose Life."

If you are a Jewish believer in Jesus as the Messiah, you may feel free to continue to observe whichever mitzvot and customs of the Torah as are meaningful to you. But at the same time, remember, just as old wine skins can not be expected to retain the new wine of the Spirit, nor does one pour a proven vintage into old jars, used for an earlier production, or the flavor of the wine will be spoiled. Rather, a fine wine must be decanted into new, clean bottles from which your guests may be served with confidence. 

You must not be whitewashed versions of the Pharisees and their leaven. Rather seek to be transformed by the renewing of your minds in accord with the Kingdom of Heaven. If you choose to sink your roots into the ancient milieu when our Lord was present on Earth, look to the beginnings of the early Church, and the resources and writings that were circulated among them. You can use those to formulate your own particular brand of practice and applications. There were several versions of Hebrew Christians trying to maintain their identity among the early believers, and the teachings from these may be recycled and adapted as bottles to fit our modern times. The Didache was nearly made a part of the permanent canon, and is still useful for comparison and study. 

However, your theology must need to agree and align itself to the established creeds of the Christian Church, or at least strive to avoid contradictions and schism. You may ignore the few exceptional precepts that forbid you to practice your Jewish ethnicity. And we shall assume that you will accept and acknowledge your salvation by grace through faith, and your commitment to Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the Living God. Such is the Truth which has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, and given as the essential core of the faith. It is for all of us to seek to build the Kingdom of God upon that certainty as a steady rock and foundation. 

We are not saved by our works, but we do works because we love God and want to please Him by our obedience. For you, as God's chosen people, your works remain as a sign of your commitment to cleave unto God alone, and to love Him with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength. And in continuing to observe the Law, you do so proclaiming that this is the obedience that the Lord has asked of you, for his pleasure. And yet, the grace and loving forgiveness of Jesus are the only source of salvation for any of us, because no one but Jesus has ever kept the Law perfectly. 

After that, we must try to always be in unity by our faith in Yeshua, whether we are members of the Church as Christians or be Jews transformed by his call to grace. It doesn't matter whether you call yourself "Messianic Jews" or "Jewish Christians," so long as you recognize the creeds. You can keep your traditional point of view, and claim the promises that were made to the Patriarchs, even maintaining your own ideas regarding original sin, or the meaning of salvation, etc. Where the Church admits a variety of valid answers to theological questions, you are of course entitled to your own. 

In this way, God is still keeping his promise that the Jews shall become a kingdom of priests. And many gentiles may come to you to learn from your wisdom, and find their atonement with the Lord. Perhaps, in the absence of Temple sacrifices, you may preach the efficacy of daily self examination and teshuva offered with a contrite heart, especially in light of your long delayed recognition of your calling from the Lord. 

We are still waiting for the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God in history, and for the renewal of the Heavens and the Earth. No one yet is entirely certain of what that shall mean, but perhaps it may refer to the soon to come age in which our observable Heavens may become homes for humanity to live and work in space. If so, it may be our job to restore our Earth to as pristine a condition as we can make of it. We have done so much harm to the cradle of our origins, it would only be proper to try to replenish it and clean up the results of our wasteful disregard. We might even be able to redesign and restore the Garden of Eden if we want to try. 

Answering objections: 

The New Testament, and the people who truly know Yeshua are not antisemitic. Christians are not a replacement for Jews, and Jesus wants all of his people to follow him. From the very beginning, the Kingdom of God was a Jewish renewal movement, not a program to start a new religion. Even though He knew He would be rejected, He gave us the chance to accept Him and be the catalyst to change the world. 

It is time for the brothers and sisters of Jesus to arise: 1) believe in your own Mashiach, and 2) create your own Jewish style of liturgy, and 3) follow all of the Law of Moses. The problem lies in the leaven of Pharisaical rituals and the minutiae in the Mishna and Talmud. Those distract us from seeking a personal relationship with our awesome God, and lead us to think that we can be good enough by our own efforts. Salvation is a free gift to those who choose to believe. We still fail to be truly righteous, and Jesus knows that, but He still tells us to "Go, and sin no more," so that we will really try to stand up and walk. Some of might be able to hobble slowly  and unsteadily all the way home, so long as we are not burdened unnecessarily. 

We need to recognize that God came to save us, and to lead us in the Kingdom, in person as a man, so that we could relate to Him. He chose to make Himself the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and thus be able to unconditionally forgive all who would believe. He did this to show how much He loves us, and to give us the sign that would prove how God approves and gave Him the authority to teach as He did. That proof was given when Jesus did the uniquely impossible, to rise again from the dead on the third day. The empty tomb is the sign of Jonah.

The crucified Christ is the faith equivalent of the serpent on a pole that Moses raised in the desert. All who keep their eyes on the cross and Jesus are protected from the serpents, the demons of Satan who wish to poison and corrupt and enslave us.

He came to save us from a much worse oppressor than any foreign army or political occupying Empire. We were waiting for the wrong thing; the wrong expectations of what HaMashiach would do. He saves us from being claimed by Satan and dragged into Hell. 

The wheat appears to be ripe and the yield is bountiful, but there is a need for many harvesters. The time is near for the last great Reaping, and the division of wheat from the weeds sown among us by the enemy. It is our own commission to go out and call as many of our people as we can. They must Wake up and Believe! The Prince is coming!

Are We Living in the Matrix?

It's a kind of running joke. Take the red pill. "Are We Living in the Matrix?"

But don't laugh. I'm not talking about being a merely digital person inside a computer simulation. But I am questioning whether the reality we perceive is actually a correct assessment of the way things truly are. Can science and human reason actually figure out what kind of Cosmos we live in? Maybe, but it isn't the kind that we usually take for granted. There's more to it than that. Perhaps the explanation for the presumption that human intelligence is capable to understand the Universe, our world and our place in it, stems from the perfectly hidden fact that our "cosmos of perception" has been crafted to appear amenable to our reasoning and curiosity. And it is designed to give us a certain set of answers to whatever questions we ask. 

Maybe we do really live in a created world, just big enough to contain us, with certain limits which we are not meant to pass. It could easily be that it closely resembles a particular scenario in the greater "eternal reality" so that we can quickly adapt to the immersive experience, and suspend our disbelief. Are we allowing ourselves to live through a simulation of a purposively chosen historical milieu. If so, the deeper purpose is both hidden, and revealed to us as we seek to discover the true nature of reality, if we keep an open mind. There are some clues left behind, so that we can find our way back to the "eternal reality" of the Creator. This may all be a test, to see if we can pass the required level of discernment, and yes, faith, in order to "graduate" into the next world. If this is true, then all of our daily experience is being manipulated in order to observe our responses. 

I could begin in any number of places, but let me start with a description of our usual assumptions about ordinary reality:

At the very surface of our perception, what we see is what we get. Our intelligence and reasoning, plus our ability to create tools and technology, are all we have, and so far, all we have needed to reach our current level of "progress" in civilization. We have developed a technique for exploring the natural world and building a more or less coherent world view: the "scientific method," which includes the application of mathematics as a means of describing how the phenomena work. Science has pretty well defined our modern world view. 

From the scientific perspective, we live in a material universe governed by natural laws. There are various atomic particles, made up of quarks, plus, the four physical forces that dictate how things work together ... and that is all there is. Everything started itself with a Big Bang, and self-assembled according to the way the particles and forces interacted with each other. It was all random, even the way that life happened upon the scene. It doesn't matter how complicated or improbable, it all came about by accident. 

According to Science, there is no way to investigate anything immaterial. If there is anything called "Spirit," beyond our plain, ordinary natural world, it must be "super-natural," and such ideas have been shoved aside as childish, "superstitious" and unscientific. As a result, all that we can know must be investigated and explained by purely empirical and logical means. Individual scientists may cringe to hear it said, but they don't have anything to add that others won't try to test and refute in the name of Science. Nor does it matter that many major mysteries remain, as they have the confidence that we will eventually figure it all out using the scientific method. 

In our daily lives, all of us pretty much assume that this perspective is an adequate way to perceive reality, and we rely upon it in making all of our ordinary decisions. And in most cases, it's a safe bet that we haven't neglected anything critical by doing so, in our small, ordinary choices and activities of daily living. It's like the Apollo moon program, when the astronauts said that Sir Isaac Newton was flying the space ship. The older laws of physics were adequate to the job, even though we knew that Einstein had a newer, more comprehensive version to better explain the universe. It's usually good enough. 

But what about our higher level issues?This is where we begin to run into major problems with purely scientific methods, because we are asking a different kind of question. When we consider metaphysical questions, purely rational empiricism is inadequate to explain all of the immaterial phenomena of creation that we experience in our lives. These things of Spirit are common knowledge, even if their content may still be debatable. 

What am I referring to as the "things of Spirit" that are common knowledge? They are the basic, foundational "Big Questions" that we need to know the answers to. And we need those answers because they would shape the orientation of our lives. Yet these answers continue to elude our best scientific thinkers, because they refuse to consider the possibility that a "supernatural" reality might actually exist. 

There are at least eight different questions that we need the answers to, so that we can securely establish for ourselves what is truly of primary importance. From there we can find our orientation, and determine what kind of purpose we want to pursue. 

And those Big Questions are:

1. How did the Universe begin, and how could anything come from nothing? 

2. Why is the Universe so finely tuned, apparently to allow for and support life? 

3. How did the complexity of life originate from non-living matter? 

4. Why does the evolution of life appear to follow a design and a plan? 

5. How does the phenomenon of mind emerge from the mechanics of a brain? 

6. Why did we evolve the intelligence to learn technology? 

7. How do we know that some events and actions are evil, and by what standard? 

8. Why do we have a sense of compassion and morality? 

The scientists try to answer these kinds of questions, but their answers don't agree, and they don't stick together in any kind of coherent whole. There is no scientifically "elegant" solution that explains everything. But there is a Spiritual answer. The reason why the scientists can't answer is because they want to insist that the whole Universe is impersonal. They want to exclude God from their reasoning. They ridicule the obvious answer, saying that it is the "god of the gaps theory." But this is just their own arrogance and hubris. God explains everything precisely because He created everything. 

God designed and "wrote the program" for our world, and made it so completely immersive that human beings would be directed to seek a spiritual solution to their intellectual inquiries. Yes, there are some things we can learn by reason, using the scientific method. Progress is a part of the program, because it includes time as a factor of continuous change. But in every age, we are encouraged to find the best answers to heartfelt questions, and to seek to encounter and know God. 

And when we finally realize that this world is more than the material scientists would have you believe, then you see that God can intervene at any level He chooses. He can influence even the minutia of our daily lives, and He can act to reveal Himself in unique events that seem to break the laws of nature. 

Our God is a personal God. He wants us to desire to know Him personally, to have a relationship with Him. He wants us to trust Him and have faith in Him, so He reveals his spiritual nature to us, and promises to care for us. And when we misunderstand and mess up our lives, He forgives us and helps us to work through the problems we have created. He has given us a Book in which we have recorded how He has revealed Himself. 

And as impossible as it may seem, for how can a God possibly be contained in the world, much less become a human being,  He came into this world to save us from getting lost in the nearly infinite complexity of this simulation that He created to train us for his eternal Heaven. And He paid the penalty we had earned for disobedience and our failure to trust and believe in Him. God chose to experience the horror of dying, in the worst way possible, so that He could give us a new perspective and reorient us toward Himself. And just to prove his point, He arose from the grave in his transformed human body, showing how its corruption can be overcome by the gift of  divinity. 

And all we have to do is believe in Him, as Jesus the Messiah of the Jews, the Son of the Living God and Saviour of the World. Pray to Him for a personal relationship, and follow Him through the teachings that He gave us. If you will do this, He will show you all of his Love and accept you into his Kingdom. Don't delay. Do it now. We have no guarantee to be here tomorrow.

Is Anyone Out There?

The ultimate humbling experience: We discover that life spawns easily at every opportunity, and even intelligence and technology are common. Plus, everyone is happy, peaceful and willing to share and cooperate with each other. 

But they see us as too primitive to bother with because we are undisciplined and too foolish to put aside our competitive rivalries. Moreover, they assume that having bicameral brains makes any species prone to developing contagious schizophrenic delusions, such as belief in gods, and this makes them unstable, and potentially dangerous. 

Our emergence onto the interstellar scene is a cause of concern about whether we should be given full citizenship in their fraternal pact. Most want to extend our period of quarantine for another 1,000 years, to observe whether we will destroy our own worlds and ourselves. 

In other words, we are the new kid at school, and nobody wants to talk to us. Now, that's a bummer....  

Second possible scenario: The moment that we develop a practical way to build colonies away from Earth, establishing a peaceful mode of coexistence, a first contact delegation arrives. "Welcome to Heaven! We've all been wondering if you would make it. Pull up a seat. The party is about to begin. We will schedule your audience with the Emperor soon." Hopeful and happy, but also humbling. 

Third scenario: There are good guys and bad guys, and at first, we are not sure which is which. But they are at war, and we have to choose which side we are on. Meanwhile, both sides view us with suspicion, and tentatively offer us the opportunity to discuss alliance. We don't know if either side is being fully honest. May Heaven help us. This is scary. 

Scenario #4: But if it turns out that we are alone, and life is actually pretty rare, then we are at least a little bit special. And maybe God has a plan for us. We become the gardeners, spreading life through our galaxy. We can experiment with new ways to build peaceful and prosperous societies, explore for new knowledge and seek bold adventures. Are we up to the challenge? 

Which one do you hope is the most likely?