New Video: Hey You! Slow Down, Stop…Look Up—Wow!!
3
Category Archives: Scripture
The Garbage Can Lid Is Coming Off—Repent America!
YHVH Elohim is currently taking the garbage can lid off of many human institutions in the United States in which modern secular-minded people have put their faith and trust instead of in him. These, in part, are the false gods that the heathen and many deceived religious folks worship instead of the one true Elohim of Bible.
The Almighty Creator, who alone is worthy of all praise, worship and glory, is exposing these false societal gods of to the light of truth. Those wicked and hideous things that have been done under the cover of darkness and under the umbrella of societal acceptability are being revealed for what they really are: They are merely stinking, filthy gilded garbage cans filled with every kind of evil and demonic deed! Will men repent and turn to him or go back to their “drug” induced intoxicated sleep?
As a result of these revelations, some people will plunge deeper into that darkness while shaking their fists at Elohim. At the same time, others will awaken and begin returning to him. The vast majority of people, however, will look around in confused bewilderment wondering what is going on and then simply return to their mind-numbing daily secular routines and opiate-like pleasure inducing entertainments.
YHVH’s exposing judgments started falling some years back with the mainstream church (judgment begins first at the house of Elohim, 1 Pet 4:17). More recently, Elohim has been exposing those things going on in the darkness of major societal institutions, as well, for all the world to see.
Here are some of the gilded garbage cans whose lids are coming off for all to see the filth, wretchedness and ungodliness that lies within.
- Mainstream Christian Church Leaders: The greed, hypocrisy and licentious lifestyles of some televangelists and other big-name Christian leaders started being exposed in the 1980s and 1990s. This should have been a wake up call to all Christians to stop blindly following their leaders.
- Roman Catholic Church Leaders: Widespread pedophilia among some priests in the Roman Catholic Church, and the ecumenical and unbiblical globalistic, socialistic agendas of some past popes and the current one began to be exposed many years ago. This should be wake up call to all Catholics to stop blindly following their leaders.
- Political Leaders: In the past couple of years, YHVH has taken the lid off the garbage can of our political system by exposing to the light what goes on in the secret lives of many of our political leaders and behind the scenes in the government they oversee. Never in recent history has there been more exposure of scandals, criminality, traitorous actions, moral failings, lies, duplicity, hypocrisy than now. On a daily basis, the media is reporting multiple scandals all at the same time. The terms “the deep state,” the dark state,” and “the shadow government” are now common currency in our society as an expression of the hidden agendas going on behind the scenes that are contrary to the will and benefits of the people.
- International Banking Elite: The rapacious fraud and thievery of the international bankers and banking system has been exposed as never before. The exposure started in 2007 and continues to now.
- The New World Order: Back in 1990, President George H. W. Bush first mentioned publicly the term, “the New World Order.” Now people are openly taking about it as it applies to globalism and global governance. Additionally, terms like “the shadow government,” “the deep state,” and “the dark state” are commonly bandied about as many people are awaking to the fact that those they elect to political office aren’t really the ones who govern nations and the world. They are simply taking their orders, to one degree or another, from shadowy power and monied elites who really call the shots and whose political, economic and religious agendas are being imposed on the people they govern without their consent through schemes of social engineering that are shifting if not totally destroying the bedrock foundations and traditional biblical-based mores of society.
- The Mainstream Media: Now called “the Media Industrial Complex” by some who are awake, the major media is being exposed for the propagandists they largely have become as they promote a globalistic, progressive, anti-biblical agendas and the views of the monied elite who own them. The term “fake news” is now common currency from the president on down. The viewership and ratings of the mainstream media is plummeting as more distrusting people look to alternative sources for their news and information.
- Hollywood: The moral and spiritual cesspool that Hollywood has always been is being exposed. Movie viewership is plummeting.
- Professional Sports: The lid is being taken off the garbage can of football, which sits at the pinnacle of the idolatry of American sports. This all-American icon, which for many is treated like a religion, is now being politicized and riddled with scandal, the occult and unpatriotism such that Americans are abandoning football stadiums and their television sports by the droves.
- Educational Institutions: Every day in the news we read about teachers sex scandals involving their students. Now add to this the lie that a college education guarantees one a higher paying career, which is no longer true. The garbage can lid of education is now being removed as more people are losing faith in traditional educational institutions and are looking for alternatives such as home schooling. Most who go to college are graduating with massive financial debts that are putting young people into bondage without delivering on the promise of better paying jobs as a result of a college degree.
- Law Enforcement Institutions: Police brutality and illegality and corruption in the FBI, CIA is being exposed like never before such that people are losing faith in those in their law enforcement agencies who are supposedly there to protect them and maintain the rule of law.
- The United Nations: The last ditch hope of mankind to bring peace and order to a chaotic world is being exposed for its graft, misuse of funds and its lack of general effectiveness. This is something that those with their eyes open have seen for decades, but now notable figures such as the president of the U.S. are now publicly calling them out on it.
What’s coming next? A total financial collapse? Civil war? Foreign military attack? Collapse of our electrical grid? Watch and pray!
America, it is time to repent of idolatry and to stop mindlessly giving your trust, time allegiance to any these institution of man including Christian church leaders and their religious institutions, and to seek YHVH Elohim with all your heart by giving him alone the trust, time and devotion that he deserves. Now is the time to rearrange the priorities of your life around him and in service to him like never before. This involves spending more time seeking him in Bible study and prayer, and in learning how to obey him by walking in his pure ways of light and truth by loving him with our all and our neighbors as ourselves as his word, the Bible, instructs.
YHVH Elohim is taking the garbage can lid off of many of the sacred icons of our modern society, so that we can see how truly evil and ungodly they are in hopes that we will turn back to him. He is graciously bringing judgment unto repentance first, and then will come his judgments unto death. Now is the time to repent of sin before he pours out his wrath!
“Remember Lot’s Wife!”
A Man Called Lot: What We Can Learn from His Life
In Luke 17 32, Yeshua warns end times believers to “Remember Lot’s wife.” What did he mean by this pointed warning? Is Lot not a picture of the typical Western saint whether Christian or Messianic? I believe so. In saying this, as a pastor and having been a watchman on the spiritual wall for many years, I see very little if any differentiation (broadly speaking) between Christians and most Messianics, for the spiritual condition of both groups is fundamentally the same.
Primarily what differentiates the two groups is the religious jargons and nomenclatures each group uses in addition to the outward religious trapping or externals each uses to identify itself. What about Torah, you may ask? Don’t Messianics obey the Torah and Christians do not? My response is that there is not a huge difference between the two—at least not from the Creator’s perspective. YHVH looks at hearts, and not merely the superficiality of outward appearances and the religious trappings by which people identify themselves.
In reality, both born-again Christians and born-again Messianics follow Torah principles to one degree or another. The only difference is that the former group does not claim to follow Torah, but teaches that it was “done away with.” In reality, to a certain degree, many serious Christians do follow the “moral” principles of the Torah along with tithing. On the other hand, a majority of Messianics profess loudly and proudly their Torah-obedience, but largely, in practice (except for an often half-hearted adherence to the observance of the Sabbath, the biblical feasts and the biblical dietary laws) they don’t. If so, they do so only in a way that is copacetic and convenient to the secular, post-Christian society and lifestyle Continue reading
Yeshua Straightens Out the Rich Young Ruler
Matthew 19:16, What good thing. Yeshua’s answer to the rich young ruler when he asks him what he must do to have eternal life might, in a cursory reading, appear that Yeshua is promoting a works based salvation. However this is not the case. Yeshua cleverly shows the young man that he is incapable of obtaining eternal life through good works, for man isn’t capable of perfectly following the Torah. In the case of the young man, he thought himself to be perfectly righteous, when in reality, Yeshua showed him that he was covetous, and therefore still an unrighteous sinner thus disqualifying himself from reward of eternal life. Yeshua, on the contrary, instead of promoting a works-based salvation model, instructs the young man to deal with his sin by selling his possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor, and then becoming a follower of him. The lesson here is that salvation and eternal life can come only as we turn from our sin and become a follower of Yeshua.
What Yeshua is really saying when he answers the young man’s question in verse 21 is this: “If you want to be perfect [Gr. teleios meaning “brought to its end, finished; wanting nothing necessary to completeness”],” turn from sin by obeying the Torah more completely, but also follow the Messiah by becoming his disciple. Remember, to hear and to obey (Heb. shema) the Messiah was a command of the Torah as well (Deut 18:15), and to not believe in him is sin (John 16:9 cp. 3:18). So according to the Bible, to be spiritually perfect or complete one must, as Yeshua said, love him by keeping his (Torah) commandments (John 14:15). It is the Torah that shows us how to love Elohim (and our fellow man as well).
Yeshua makes a similar point in his exchange with a scribe in Mark 12:28–34. While extolling the virtues of Torah-obedience, and commending the scribe for his understanding of the deeper heart issues of Torah-obedience, Yeshua makes an interesting concluding statement. He tells the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of Elohim (v. 34) as if to tell him, “You’re on the right spiritual track with regard to your Torah-obedience, and you’re heading for the kingdom, but that alone won’t get you into the kingdom. You must also become a disciple of Yeshua.
On the Origin of Demons
Matthew 17:21, This kind [of demon]. There are different kinds of demons that influence humans. The Testimony of Yeshua speaks of being “possessed with a demon” or “demons,” “vexed with a demon,” or “severely possessed with a demon” (Matt 4:24; 8:16, 28, 33; 9:32; 12:22; 15:22; Mark 1:32; 5:15, 16, 18; Luke 8:36; John 10:21).
All these ideas are expressed by the Greek word daimonizomai meaning “to be under the power of or possessed by a demon, or demonized.”
There are levels of demonization. The Bible reveals that demons can influence humans (e.g. from fiery darts of Satan shot at the saints by which he attempts to influence them [Eph 6:16], by lying to humans [1 Kgs 22:22–23], through unclean spirits [e.g. Matt 12:43; Mark 1:23, 26; 3:30] and by literally living in or possessing a person. The latter is the most extreme form of demonization.
In this passage, a demon lived inside of a child (v. 18), and when Yeshua rebuked the demon, it came out of the child. When a person is possessed with a demon, prayer and fasting may be necessary on the part of the deliverer to cast out the demon. This is because the deliverer has, to one degree or another, himself been weakened spiritually by faithlessness and perverseness and therefore lacks the spiritual power and faith to cast out the demon (vv. 17, 22), or because he has been negatively influenced by those around him who are this way (v. 17), and thus has been weakened by his spiritual environment. This is why Yeshua, at times, had to put the spiritually weak and faithless people out of the room before healing a sick person (Mark 5:40).
Prayer and fasting energizes a person spiritually by afflicting the soul (the mind, will and emotions) and forcing it into conformity with the word, will and Spirit of Elohim through which one gains the spiritual power to accomplish supernatural feats such as casting out demons.
When Yeshua speaks of “this kind” of demon (v. 18). What did he mean? What kind of demon? The Bible reveals that there are various levels and types of evil, satanic spirits (e.g. Eph 6:12). The Book of 1 Enoch teaches and second temple Jewish sages based on this that demons were the disembodied spirits of the nephilim (see Gen 6:2–4), who after their human bodies died continued to live (as ghost-like figures) roaming in search of a body (human or animal) or object to possess (1 Enoch 15:8–10). This may be what Yeshua is referring to here.
With regard to the origin of demons, the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia under the articles entitles “Demonology” states,
The speculation regarding the nature and origin of these demons and their leaders led as early as the second pre-Christian century, in those fragments preserved under the name of the Book of Enoch, to the story of the fall of the angels (Enoch, vii.-viii.; lxix.). Like Beelzebub, or Lucifer (Isa. xiv. 12; compare Slavonic Enoch, xxix. 4), two hundred ‘Irin or “watchers” fell, attracted by the beauty of the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 4); only tradition obviously differed as to the leader of the rebellious host, whether it was Azazel or Shamazai. At any rate, they acknowledged the supremacy of Satan (liii. 3, liv. 6), though occasionally many satans are mentioned (xl. 7 et al.), and these fallen angels became “the evil spirits” (xv. 8, xix. 19) who taught mankind all the arts of deception, witchcraft, and sin (vii.-viii., lxix.). But their children, the offspring of this mixture of an earthly and a celestial race, became, when slain, the hybrid race of disembodiedspirits or demons doing the work of destruction until the Day of Judgment (xvi. 1).
The Gates of Hell—Victorious Over in Yeshua!
Matthew 16:13, 18, Caesarea Philippi…gates of hell. This Roman city (also known as Caesarea Paneas) was located at the southwest base of Mount Hermon. After the death of Herod, and during the rule of the Roman procurators and up to the time of the Jewish revolt, Caesera became the capital and residence of the rulers (Golden Jerusalem, by Menashe Har-El, p. 52). It was here that the ancients built temples to various deities. The heathens typically built altars and temples on high places, which they considered to be gateways or portals to heaven, and Mount Hermon was the highest high place in the entire region with an elevation of 9,232 feet above sea level. At this place, the Greeks worshipped their god Pan. In the same area at the base of Hermon, the Canaanites worshipped Baalgad (Josh 13:5; cp. Josh 11:17).
It is interesting to note that according to the modern Book of Enoch touting to be the one referred to in the Bible, purportedly 200 fallen angels descended upon Mount Hermon and there made a pact to seduce the beautiful daughters of men the result of which, allegedly, were the nephilim or giants (Enoch 7:1–11), thus corrupting the genetics of the human race. These hybrids were destroyed in the flood. These demons apparently taught their offspring sorcery and incantations (v. 10).
It is at Caesarea Philippi that Yeshua proclaimed his messiahship, as a prophetic declaration of war or a form of spiritual warfare against Satan and his demons at the very spot the heathen demon worshippers venerated as their highest high place.
Moreover, some biblical scholars believe that Yeshua’s transfiguration occurred on Mount Hermon, since the account of this event occurs immediately afterwards in Matt 17. At that event, the three disciples with Yeshua received a vision of his glorious appearance, which was another finger in the eye of the devil. HIs second coming is when Yeshua will destroy the devil’s kingdom and and capture him and confine him in chains to the abyss.
The tribe of Dan settled at the foot of Mount Hermon in the area of Tel Dan where they erected a pagan temple dedicated to golden calf worship. Jacob in his final prophecy to his sons connects Dan to a serpent (a biblical metaphor for Satan). Additionally, Moses prophesies that Dan would be a lions whelp or offspring who would inhabit Bashan, which is an area to Mount Hermon in the north (Deut 33:22; see notes on this verse). Some Bible researchers speculate that when these two prophecies are combined, it is revealed that Dan will be the serpents seed and from him will come the false, demon-inspired antichrist who claims to be the lion of Judah. Perhaps this is why the tribe of Dan isn’t mentioned in Rev 7, since this tribe has defected to Satan.
It is also interesting to note that at this spot Yeshua proclaimed that the gates of hell would not prevail against his saints (v. 18). If Caesarea Philippi was or is a portal to the demonic underworld, as some believe, then this could be a portal through which the end time demons will emerge from the bottomless pit in the last days to torment men as part of YHVH’s end time judgments as John writes about in Rev 9:1–11. Whatever the case may be, it is encouraging to have Yeshua’s assurance that the end times saints will have nothing to fear from the hellish demonic spirits that will be roaming the earth seeking to kill, steel and destroy just before his second coming. Moreover, YHVH promises in Rev 9:4 that his saints who have his seal on their foreheads will be protected from the unleased demonic hordes that will torment the earth in the end times.
Blog Scripture Reading for 10-29 Through 11-4-17
Aside
THIS WEEK’S SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION:
Parashat Vayera — Genesis 18:1 – 22:24
Haftarah — 2 Kings 4:1-37
Prophets — Joshua 22:1 – 24:33; Judges 1:1 – 4:24
Writings — Psalms 26:1 – 33:22
Testimony — Matthew 16:1 – 21:22
Our new Scripture Reading Schedule for 2017-2018 is available to download and print.
Most of this week’s blog discussion points will be on these passages. If you have general comments or questions on the weekly Scripture readings not addressed in a blog post, here’s a place for you to post those. Just use the “leave a reply” link below.
The full “Read Through The Scriptures In A Year” schedule, broken down by each day, can be found on the right sidebar under “Helpful Links.” There are 4 sections of scripture to read each day: one each from the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, and from the Testimony of Yeshua. Each week, the Torah and haftarah readings will follow the traditional one-year reading cycle.
Weekly Blog Scripture Readings for 10/29/17 through 11/4/17.