Category Archives: Feasts

Is it the biblical new year? Yes!

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We are going to proclaim that the biblical new year has arrived based on reports of aviv (or abib) barley being found and the new moon sighting in the land of Israel (see https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=devorah%27s%20date%20tree and https://www.facebook.com/HaleviTeacher). Based on this report, Passover (Pesach) will occur on Sunday, March 28, 2021 with the first high holy day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread occurring on the following day (Monday, March 29, 2021). We will now discuss the reasons for our decision.

To be sure, some people may consider this to a borderline call this year, but the preponderance of evidence, in my opinion, is that this is the month of the aviv barley. (For more info on the biblical calendar and the biblical definition of “the month of the aviv/abib [barley]”, see my articles on the subject at https://www.hoshanarabbah.org/teaching.html#feast). Here are the reasons that we have chosen to call this new biblical month the first month of the new year:

  • As far as we know, Devorah Gordon and her team are the most experienced aviv barley searches currently operating in the land of Israel, and have been at this for some 20 years. We know and trust Devorah (along with her former husband, Nehemia Gordon), and were privileged to be part of their team in 2008. So we have a sense of how the barley search system works as well as the integrity of those involved.
  • Based on my extensive understanding of the Scriptures on the subject of the biblical calendar (see my articles on the subject at the link provided above), for the first month of the biblical calendar to be called the month of the aviv, aviv barley must be found in the land of Israel at the beginning of the month. According to the above referenced reports, aviv barley has been found. True, there is not a lot of it, but it is there. Moreover, by the time Wavesheaf Day occurs in about three weeks, it is highly probable that there will be much more aviv barley.
  • In the past, other people have proclaimed the new month based on the potential of aviv barley being found by Wavesheaf Day. We have rejected this notion for several reasons. First, it is our belief based on our study of the Scripture that for the month to be called “the month of the aviv” (a biblical term), aviv barley must already be present in the land of Israel by the first day of the first month. Second, if there is no aviv barley to be found by the first day of the first month, then there is no guarantee that it will be found in time for the Wavesheaf Day two or three weeks later. Maybe there will be enough aviv barley, may be there will not be. It is anyone’s guess. Why is this? Because the ripening of the barley depends on the weather, and no one can predict what the weather will do. If it is warm, then the barley will ripen; it it is cold, it will not ripen. This is why there needs to be aviv barley by the first day of the first month for it to be the month of the aviv barley. For example, in 2008 when we were in the land of Israel, we did not find aviv barley when we searched for it. Yet, there was a man who proclaimed that month to be the first month of the year based on the notion that the barley might be aviv by the middle of the month and in time for the Wavesheaf Day. As it happened that year, the barley was still not aviv when he thought it would be, and so his proclamation was false. For this reason, it is important that there be aviv barley by the first day of the first month for that month to be proclaimed the month of the aviv and, hence, the first month of the biblical new year.
  • Why is it important for there to be aviv barley by the first day of the first month of the new year? Simply this. In ancient biblical times and according to Scripture, the Israelites were commanded to go up to Jerusalem (or wherever YHVH chose to place his name) to celebrate the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread. They had to walk there. Depending on where they were coming from, this journey may have taken anywhere from several days to more than a week to make. If the new month was declared based on potential sighting, and not on the actual occurrence of barley at the beginning of the month, then there was the potential for a major problem for the Israelites. What if they prepared for the journey to Jerusalem, left their farms, made the journey only to find out that the barley still was not aviv? What then? They had to make the trek back home by foot, only to turn around a short time later and make the trip all over again when the barley was finally aviv. Such a situation is not an issue in our day of modern transportation, but in biblical times, this would have been a major economic inconvenience if not a debacle for many people. For this reason, the barley had to be aviv by the beginning of the first month.
  • In ancient Israel, the Mishnah records that there was a whole process that occurred to determine whether the barley was aviv or not. This process was officiated over by the religious and political leaders of Israel. It involved many people and important protocols were followed to insure accurate information. Today, we do not have such resources at our disposal. Most of us are not in the land of Israel. We have to trust those who are there for accurate information. That is my wife and I went to Israel in 2008 to experience this process ourselves and to meet the people involved.

We realize that well-meaning people will have different opinions on some of the points mentioned above. This is where love and respect comes in. There is no need to criticize, slander or libel others who have different opinions. We are all doing the best that we can to live up to the light of truth that has been given to us. Truth is being restored to YHVH’s people in these last days (see Acts 3:21 and Mal 4:4–6) and this is a process that takes time involving one heart and mind at a time. As such, everyone is at a different place on the truth-restoration trajectory. So let us love and respect one another, even if someone has a different opinion than ours. At this point, I am reminded of Paul’s instructions in Romans 14,

Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things…Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for Elohim is able to make him stand.…But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Messiah.…Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way.…Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of Elohim is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Messiah in these things is acceptable to Elohim and approved by men. Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. (Rom 14:1, 4, 10, 13, 16–19)

 

How to Prepare YOURSELF for Passover

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Passover is just around the corner. It is the first step in YHVH Elohim’s plan of salvation or redemption of sinful humans to reconcile fallen man back to him. Did you ever wonder how this process really works?

There is never a better time to begin repenting of sin and getting under the blood of the Lamb of Elohim than just before Passover. As the children of Israel applied the lamb’s blood to the door posts and lintels of their house, so we must apply the sin-cleansing and Satan-defeating blood of Yeshua afresh to our lives (i.e. to our thoughts as represented by the door lintel and to our hands or actions as represented by the door posts). Cleansing of our sin occurs as we repent of our sins, and pray for and receive YHVH’s forgiveness. He will then cover our sins over or wash away our sins by Yeshua’s blood (1 John 1:9; Rev 1:5).

In Egypt at Passover time, YHVH judged all those who had failed to put the lamb’s blood on the door posts of their houses. In other words, they weren’t under the blood of the lamb, but were still under the penalty of sin, which is death (Ezek 18:4; Rom 6:23). Any unrepented of sin in our lives brings the curse of death on us. To the degree that we have sin in our lives is the degree to which the spirit of death has a legal claim on us. Now is the time to repent of sin by confessing it and seeking Elohim’s forgiveness under the blood of Yeshua and then forsaking that sin through YHVH’s grace (1 John 1:9). 

Let us now discover the miraculous process of how to overcome sin in more detail through a spiritual magnifying glass. How do we go from being a lost sinner—the walking damned or the living dead—to becoming the glorified and immortalized children of Elohim?

It works like this: When we confess and repent of our sins, Yeshua will pass over or forgive us of our past sins (Rom 3:25; Ps 103:8–12). From this point forward, it is up to us to embrace a new mindset and a new spiritual identity and reality; that is, we must reckon our old sinful man as having been crucified with Yeshua, in that we are now dead to sin, no longer slaves to sin, freed from the power of sin, and alive to Elohim in Yeshua our Lord (Rom 6:7–11). Yeshua is the one who victoriously defeated the power or sting of sin, which is death, hell and the grave at the cross and through his resurrection (1 Cor 15:56–57; Col 2:13–15). Through our faith in him and our legal identification with his death, burial and resurrection through the symbolic ritual of baptism for the remission of sine, his victory is legally applied to us by the courts of heaven, which is how he has made us more than conquerors over sin and death (Rom 8:37; 6:1–14) such that the power of sin and death will no longer have dominion over us (Rom 6:12–14).  He now gives us strength through his enabling and empowering grace to resist and overcome sin, that is, to not let sin control us any longer (Rom 6:12). He promises to give us a new, circumcised heart as he writes his laws or commandments on our hearts, so that we will be supernaturally inclined to love him by keeping his commandments (Jer 31:33; 24:7; Heb 8:10; 10:16; Ezek 36:25–27; Isa 51:7; Ps 40:8; 37:31; Deut 30:6; John 14:12 cp. Rom 7:22). What is that supernatural power that works in us to help keep us from sinning? It the Spirit of Elohim or the Comforter that Yeshua promised would come along side of us to aid us in the process of overcoming sin (John 14:16–18, 25–26; 15:26–27; 16:7–14). 

To summarize, this whole supernatural and miraculous process of being victorious over sin is activated when we first acknowledge our sin, confess our sin, repent of our sin and then place our faith in Yeshua’s death and burial. This occurs when we appropriate or reckon, by faith, our old sinful man to have been crucified with Yeshua, and then been resurrected in the newness of spiritual life with him. We now embrace the new identity that he has given us—a spiritual reality that he has imparted to us and has been legally recorded in heaven (Col 2:14)—that we are a new creation and are victorious over sin (Gal 2:20; 2 Cor 5:17), and have become Spirit-begotten children of Elohim. This whole process is summarized from beginning to end in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chapters six through eight. The end result, if we continue in a right spiritual relationship with Yeshua the Messiah for the rest of our lives, is that our names will be recorded in Elohim’s Book of Life, and our physical bodies will be glorified—we will be given immortality—at the resurrection of the righteous dead, which occurs at the second coming of Yeshua. 

This whole process or chain of events that transforms sinful humans into glorified and immortal children of Elohim begins at Passover which symbolizes the first steps a person takes when he comes to faith in Yeshua the Messiah.

Here are some things of which to repent: 

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Why study and celebrate the biblical feasts?

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YHVH’s seven biblical give us a glimpse into past and future…

The spring biblical feasts are just around the corner. Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are the first of seven biblical celebrations or festivals that lay out YHVH Elohim’s plan of salvation or redemption for humankind. Not only that, the Creator commands his people to observe them. Moreover, Yeshua and the New Testament disciples did, so why shouldn’t we?

The mainstream church has lied to us in several ways about YHVH’s feasts. First, they ARE NOT the Jewish feasts. The Jews did not invent them. Read your Bible! They came from the Creator, and he commanded all of his people to celebrate them—NOT just the Jews.

Second, they were not done away with at the cross. That is another lie that the church has brainwashed you to believe. The article below clearly proves this from Scripture.

Third, the church has pulled the wool over your eyes about YHVH’s feasts when it replaced them with its own invented Christo-pagan holidays. These are traditions of men that Yeshua warned us against by which YHVH’s Word has been made of none effect.

Folks, when are we going to wake up to the cold hard facts? The article below will help to unveil the hidden truth of the Scriptures and to expose the lies that we have inherited from our forefathers.

An Introduction to the Biblical Feasts

If you had to sum up the entire message of the Bible in one word what would it be? Probably words such as love, hope, salvation, eternal life or heaven are coming to your mind. But I challenge you to find a better word than the following: r-e-c-o-n-c-i-l-i-a-t-i-o-n. The dictionary defines reconciliation as “to restore to friendship or harmony, to settle or resolve a quarrel, to make consistent or congruous.”

When the first humans chose to listen to the lies of the serpent and to rebel against YHVH by giving in to sin at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil at the very beginning, our first parents chose the path of separation from their Heavenly Father. Sin causes man to be separated from our totally holy, righteous, sinless and loving Creator.

Since that time YHVH has been endeavoring to reconcile man to himself. He has laid out the criteria for this to occur—for man to once again have a loving and intimate relationship with his Heavenly Father as did Adam and Eve before they sinned.

The seven biblical feasts of YHVH (please note, the Bible calls them YHVH’s feasts, not men’s feasts, Lev 23:2, 4; Exod 31:13) prophetically represent the steps man must take to be reconciled to his Heavenly Father. They are the complete plan of salvation or redemption rolled up into an easy-to-understand ­seven-step plan. Though a child can understand these steps, the truths contained therein can, at the same time, be expanded and unfolded until one literally has rolled out before oneself the entire message of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation—a message that to the human comprehension is staggering, deep and rich beyond understanding. The biblical feasts are literally the skeletal structure upon which the truths of the entire Bible hang. The message of redemption, sanctification, salvation, the atonement, glorification, end-times eschatology, the history of Israel, the entire gospel message, the covenants, the marriage of the Lamb of Elohim, the truth about the bride of Messiah, and Yeshua the Messiah are all prefigured within the glorious spiritual container of YHVH’s feasts contained in seven steps. Seven is the biblical number of divine perfection and completion, thus revealing to us that his plan of salvation is complete in that it will bring man back into an eternal and spiritual relationship with Elohim.

Quite assuredly, without a deep, walking-it-out comprehension of YHVH’s feasts, no matter how learned one may be in biblical knowledge, one will miss key elemental truths pertaining to YHVH’s plan of salvation. For example, there is no way to correctly or fully understand end-time events such as the second coming of Yeshua, the great tribulation, the wrath of Elohim, the resurrection of the righteous, the marriage of the Lamb, the Millennium, or the New Jerusalem unless one understands the feasts from a deep Hebraic perspective. Spiritual pride may not allow one to handle this fact, but it is the truth none the less! It’s illogical to think that one can throw out the foundation of a building and expect it to stand, or to eliminate the skeleton from a human body and expect a person to stand upright. Similarly, the feasts are both the foundation and the skeletal framework upon which is built or hangs the whole corpus of biblical truth.

What’s more, at Mount Sinai, YHVH gave to his people Israel the Ten Commandments. These words from the mouth of the Creator himself literally formed the foundation and cornerstone to the rest of the Torah’s (the 5 books of Moses) 613 commandments, which YHVH gave to man through Moses. The Jewish sages have understood this for thousands of years. From the Ten Commandments, all the rest of the commandments can be extrapolated. For example, the prohibition against adultery includes not only marital infidelity, but all manner of sexual sin, for the cornerstone of sexual holiness is a righteous and undefiled marital union. The same can be said of all the other commands. Similarly, from the Sabbath command springs forth all the biblical feasts, for they too are sabbaths. From the fourth commandment also comes the land sabbath and jubilee years. These sabbaths were so vital in YHVH’s eyes and so fundamental to his relationship with his people that he said that they would be a token of his wedding agreement with Israel, even as a ring is a symbol of a modern marriage covenant. About the Sabbath, we read the following in Exodus 31:13,

Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am YHVH that doth sanctify you.

Please note that the word Sabbaths is plural. This refers not only to the weekly or seventh day Sabbath, but to all the Sabbaths of YHVH, including the biblical feasts. These days are so important that they would actually form the basis for his reconciliatory relationship with his people throughout their generations, which means ­forever!

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Only ignorant or irreverent humans invalidate YHVH’s Sabbaths!

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Exodus 31:13–17, My Sabbaths you shall keep. Note that Sabbaths is plural. This is a reference not only to the weekly Sabbath, but to the feast day Sabbaths as well. However, the seventh day Sabbath remains central to YHVH’s spiritual economy for his people. In fact, it was so central to the spiritual life and YHVH’s people that he designated it to be a visible and outward sign of the special relationship between him and his people. Let’s explore this idea.

Why did YHVH designate it as a sign (“signal, distinguishing mark, banner,” Exod 31:12) between him and Israel? As YHVH’s set-apart people, Israel was distinguishing itself from the surrounding nations who did not keep the Sabbath. What distinguishes the saints today as YHVH’s set-apart people from the non-believing heathen around them? Certainly our love for one another is a distinguishing mark, according to Yeshua (John 13:35). Yeshua also said that if we love him we will keep his Torah commandments (of which the Sabbath is the fourth of the ten commandments, John 14:15; Exod 20:8). John was inspired to write that those who say they know Elohim and don’t keep his Torah-commandments (of which the Sabbath is a foundation stone) are liars and the truth is not in them (1 John 2:3–6). And finally, Yeshua told those who were Torahless (i.e. workers of iniquity or lawlessness) to depart from him, that he didn’t know them even though they claimed to be his followers and had done many religious works in his name (Matt 7:21–23). Although the Sabbath and the biblical feasts may not be the exact sign of the Renewed Covenant, Elohim’s Sabbaths are foundation stones of the Torah, and the keeping of them remains to this day for the saints of Elohim (Heb 4:9).

The ArtScroll Stone Edition Tanach translates verse 15 as follows:

For six days work may be done and the seventh day is a day of complete rest, it is sacred to [YHVH]…(emphasis added)

What is complete rest? What is the connection between “complete rest” and the idea of sacredness or being set-apartness or kadosh? The people of YHVH are called to separate the kodesh from the common or profane:

Her priests have violated my Torah, and have profaned my set-apart/kodesh things: they have put no difference between the kodesh and profane [common, polluted] neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. (Ezek 22:26)

And [the priests] shall teach my people the difference between the kodesh and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean. (Ezek 44:23)

What is common or profane is that which is commonly done on the other six days of the week.

Exodus 31:14, Sabbath…profanes it. Profaning or polluting the Sabbath with secular activities is a sin. Sabbath desecration is as much a capital offence in YHVH’s eyes now as it was then. The wages of sin is still death (Ezek 18:4; Rom 6:23). 

Exodus 31:18, Written with the finger. The Sabbath was ordained by Elohim and written by his finger. How dare men subsequently declare that the Sabbath was changed and that what YHVH wrote with his finger in tablets of stone is now irrelevant or passé! What hubris and arrogance on men’s part to counter the will and laws of Elohim with silly, specious and vacuous justifications for man-made and unbiblical teachings that deign to nullify the validity of YHVH’s Sabbath. Such edicts of men will not stand, but will blow away like lowly dust in the wind, will be burned to ashes in the fiery judgment of Elohim, and will fall by the wayside like all the other traditions of men, which have dared to make the word of Elohim of no effect!

 

Happy End of Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret 2020!

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As we close out this year’s Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles) and Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth Day), our family would like to wish you and glorious rest of the year as we enter into the dark winter season in preparation for a new feast season next biblical year starting with Passover.

By the way, please feel free to share with us your praise reports and testimonies of how you were blessed this year at Sukkot. You can do this in the comments section of this post.

The Nathan and Sandi Lawrence family gathered together on the Shemini Atzeret after a Bible study.
Sunset of Sukkot on the Deschutes River a couple of blocks from temporary home.
Shemini Atzeret morning on the Deschutes River with a gentle rain falling to wash the dust off of everything, to water the land, and to clear the forest fire smoke out of the air. This coming year, may the gentle rain of the Holy Spirit and the water of YHVH’s Torah-Word clean and refresh us and water the ground of our hearts, so that we can bring forth a bountiful spiritual harvest for our Heavenly Father. Amein.
 

Lawrence Family Fun at Sukkot

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Moses overlooking the Promised Land? Well not quite, but a happy thought nevertheless. It is Nathan overlooking the high mountain desert of Central Oregon atop Smith Rocks—Oregon’s “Mount Sinai”—where he and his family are celebrating Sukkot/the Feast of Tabernacles 2020.

Hello everyone. Hope you’re having a great Sukkot wherever you may be.

My first Sukkot was in 1960, and I’ve been privileged to celebrate Sukkots in various places in the U.S., in Canada and in France. I’ve been apart of Sukkot gatherings with thousands of attendees, and in many with only small groups of hundreds, tens or just my family as is the case this year.

For our family and since I was a little child, the Feast of Tabernacles has always been the highpoint of our year. And it well should be because of what this biblical feast represents in Bible prophecy—a coming time called the Millennium when Yeshua has returned, and has destroyed the New World Order which the Bible refers to as Mystery Babylon the Great with all of its Satan-worshiping and Elohim-hating cast of character. During this time, which some forward-thinking people have referred to as “the world tomorrow”, Yeshua will establish his world-ruling kingdom and rule with his resurrected and glorified king and priest saints teaching the physical humans on this earth the ways and Truth of YHVH Elohim. At this time, Satan will have been bound and placed in the abyss for 1000 years and the world will be at peace as the glory of YHVH covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. It is this paradisiacal time that Sukkot prophetically portrays.

Each year at Sukkot, traditionally my family and I have vacated the city where we live (our “Babylon”) for some beautiful and idyllic place on earth where we can enjoy a small foretaste of Yeshua’s millennial kingdom. This is also why we colloquial refer to Sukkot simply as “the Feast,” for it is a time to rejoice in YHVH Elohim and the blessing he has lovingly and graciously bestowed on us during the past year. Sukkot also represents and points to the marriage feast of the Lamb of Elohim.

In preparation for this “vacation,” we save our feast tithe (or a biblically mandated “vacation fund”) as Scripture commands to help finance our time “away from it all.” During this time, we follow Scripture and use our money to bless others, and to buy whatever our hearts desire and to feast joyfully including with “wine and strong drink.” As we read,

You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. And you shall eat before the LORD your God, in the place where He chooses to make His name abide, the tithe of your grain and your new wine and your oil, of the firstborn of your herds and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. But if the journey is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, or if the place where the LORD your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, when the LORD your God has blessed you, then you shall exchange it for money, take the money in your hand, and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses.  And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household. You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. And you shall eat before the LORD your God, in the place where He chooses to make His name abide, the tithe of your grain and your new wine and your oil, of the firstborn of your herds and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. But if the journey is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, or if the place where the LORD your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, when the LORD your God has blessed you, then you shall exchange it for money, take the money in your hand, and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses. And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household. You shall not forsake the Levite who is within your gates, for he has no part nor inheritance with you. (Deuteronomy 14:23–27)

Now some more Hebraic-minded saints declare that it’s impossible to keep the biblical feasts including Sukkot exactly how the Torah commands, and so they take the minimalist approach to scriptural obedience and use this as a justification for not doing the feasts at all. Over the years I have directly confronted this mindset and shown from Scripture how YHVH favors and desires a heart that is inclined to serve him “the best we can” regardless of our location or circumstances. Instead of finding reasons and excuses why we can’t obey him by keeping his feasts, I prefer to look for every reason why we can obey him. This shows him that our hearts are inclined toward obedience and we are endeavoring to love him in so doing. If we fall short in our obedience, his grace covers us. This is a better approach and heart and mind orientation than that of looking for any excuse not to obey him. And truthfully, YHVH has blessed our family immensely both physically and spiritually as he have endeavored to obey him the best we can as imperfect as it may be.

So some of you may be wondering what we do during Sukkot. For the 18 years Sandi and I pastored a local congregation, we sponsored regional Sukkot gatherings where dozens up to a couple of hundred feast-goers came and celebrated. During this time, we scheduled daily meetings, teachings, praise and worship gatherings, family events and activities, group meals and much more. Needless to say, this kept Sandi and I busy organizing, setting up, tearing down, and overseeing and leading. It has been a couple of years since we “retired” from that, and after we did, it all died since no one was willing pick up that mantle and carry on that work. It was a lot of hard work that few were willing to help us with. Since then, because we have no congregation or group to meet with, we simply gather together as a family, which is our own personal tribe where I am the “patriarch.” During Sukkot, on the high holy day Shabbats, I lead my family in prayer, Bible study and music as we endeavor to rest and keep the sanctity of the day. During the rest of the week, we do our best to keep our hearts and minds on the meaning of Sukkot while, at the same time, building family relationships by engaging in fun activities.

So why am I sharing all of this with you? Simply for this reason. Perhaps our example of how we celebrate Sukkot will inspire you and yours to do the same and to find the blessing therein even as we have. We have found that whenever we obey YHVH, there is always a blessing to be found including temporally vacating spiritual Babylon, meeting with Elohim at his appointed times, building relationships with family and friends, and inspiring ourselves to look upwards toward him and toward a future better world that is coming soon where Yeshua the Messiah will be the King of kings.

HalleluYah! Maranatha!! Yeshua come quickly. The grace of our Master Yeshua the Messiah be with you all. Amein

Nathan at Lava Cast Forest standing in a hole made as lava flowed around trees thousands of years ago.
Our daughter Lucy, Sandi and Charlie the dog out for a hike in the mountains.
Nathan playing stick with Charlie our grand-dog.
Jared, Lucy with Charlie.
Smith Rocks State Park—Oregon’s Mount Sinai. Jared and I started a the bottom and did the Moses thing and hiked to the top.
Nathan at the top of Smith Rock, our local “Mount Sinai.”
Natana and his sons doing a very guy and American thing at a local shooting range.
Nathan trying out Aaron’s AR-15.
Aaron and Jared at the shooting range being politically correct with their Covid-masks. Although they may look like Antifa terrorists, they’re very anti-Antifa and all the wickednesss that it represents.
 

What Is the Kingdom of God & What Will the Millennium Be Like?

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The Preaching of the Kingdom of Elohim Was Fundamental to the Ministry of Yeshua

During Yeshua’s earthly ministry as recorded in the Gospels, which subjects did he teach about the most? Curiously, sadly and for the most part, it wasn’t what most churches in maintstream Christianity are preaching from their pulpits and media platforms today.

So what did Yeshua preach mostly about? The facts speak for themselves. In an analysis I made a few years ago of the Gospels books of Matthew and John I categorized and referenced all the words and actions of Yeshua. The subject Yeshua devoted the most time to was himself and his mission (316 references), followed by revealing his Heavenly Father to his followers (184), followed by his commentary and denunciation of the hypocritical religionists of his day (177 references). The fourth subject to which he devoted the most amount of time was the kingdom of Elohim (144 references). After that, in numerical order was his death, burial and resurrection, followed by YHVH’s judgment, obedience and faithfulness to YHVH’s commandments, spiritual rewards, healing, worldliness, persecution and trials, faith and belief, followed by faithlessness and unbelief. As we can see, the preaching and revelation of the kingdom of Elohim received a high priority in Yeshua’s ministry. This reality is consistent with how the gospel writers distill down the main message of Yeshua’s ministry in the following phrase: “Repent, for the kingdom of Elohim is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17, 23; 10:7). 

During Yeshua’s earthly ministry as recorded in the Gospels, which subjects did he teach about the most? Curiously, sadly and for the most part, it wasn’t what most churches in maintstream Christianity are preaching from their pulpits and media platforms today.

On the focus of Yeshua’s preaching ministry, Hebraic Christian scholar, Marvin Wilson, notes an important facrt. “[Yeshua] came to this earth on a rescue mission, but not to help people escape this world. Instead, he came to free them from the clutches of sin, self, sickness, and oppression that they might be prepared for the olam ha-ba, the “age to come” (Our Father Abraham—the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, p. 182).

The gospel message involves repentance from sin (i.e. lawlessness or Torahlessness), so that one can enter into the kingdom of Elohim, which is from heaven (Matt 3:2; 4:17). In the modern mainstream church, neither of these subjects is preached much about. Instead, Christianity tells us that the law of Moses (i.e. the Torah), has been done away with, and we are also told that when you die you go to heaven and that’s that. Since the church hardly speaks about repentance from Torahlessness or about the kingdom of Elohim—things that according to the apostolic writers—formed the basis for the gospel message, one can’t help but wonder how many people even know what the true gospel message is. In this teaching, we want to discuss the kingdom of Elohim aspect of the gospel message as it relates to the millennial reign of Yeshua after his return. This is the ultimate hope of the redeemed believer, and thus it is something that we need to understand.

Brad Young, another Hebraic Christian scholar, in his book,Jesus the Jewish Theologian,describes the first century view of the concept of the kingdom of Elohim as follows: “The twin parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven [Matt. 13:31-33; Luke 13:18-21; Mark 4:30-32] illustrate the basis for [Yeshua’s] teaching concerning the kingdom of heaven. They illustrate the progressive growth of the kingdom.… From the start, the supernatural aspect of this parable should not be overlooked. That a tiny seed can progressively grow into a tree was viewed as nothing less than miraculous. The same must have been true for the action of the leaven in the dough. Growth — this amazing, steady, continuous process — would have been viewed as a true wonder in the eyes of the people. The major theme of these illustrations is this miraculous growth. The idea of a sudden, total reversal of the present situation is not congruous with these parables of progressive growth” (ibid. pp. 77–78). That is to say, the kingdom of Elohim would not suddenly appear upon the scene with sudden transformation of the surrounding world, but that it would start small and slowly, gradually, yet powerfully, increase until it was of great consequence.

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