Hello, and welcome to another teaching by 119 Ministries.
Our ministry teaches that the whole Bible is still true and directly relevant in our
lives.
If you would like to know more on what we believe and teach, please visit us at testeverything.net.
We hope that you enjoy studying and testing the following teaching.
Like our Messiah, every author of the Bible is Hebrew, and kept and practiced the Torah,
the law of God.
This daily walk in the Torah would include obedience to the dietary instructions, the
wearing of seat seats, the observing of the Sabbath, circumcision, and other commandments
long forgotten by mainstream Christianity, and as such observance has been labeled to
be Jewish and no longer a part of the faith.
This is not an attack on mainstream Christianity.
This is not a promotion of a new religion.
We are simply exposing the dichotomy between what those who wrote the Bible believed in
practice and many of those who claimed to follow the Bible believe in practice.
It wasn't long before Paul's letters began to be misunderstood.
His letters were used to teach that our Messiah changed the law of God by removing some of
the commandments that our Creator considered to be rather important.
Peter explains this well, 2 Peter 3, and count the patience of our Lord as salvation,
just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.
There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable
twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with
the air of lawless people and lose your own stability.
Faith is what we believe, and not just what we believe, but what we believe to such an
extent that it impacts our behavior.
What we believe regarding which parts of the Bible we believe to be true for his people
today will directly dictate how we observe our faith.
For example, for those that believe that the instructions found in Leviticus 11 are truth,
we'll practice the dietary instructions.
For those that believe Leviticus 11 has been abolished by our Messiah, or believe such
instructions are only for the Jews, then no evidence of observing Leviticus 11 would be
present in their walk.
So today, we see a sharp contrast between the faith believed by and consequently evidenced
in the lives of those who wrote the Bible and those who claimed to believe everything
written in the Bible.
When did this happen?
When did those in the faith start to look different than the way our Messiah practiced,
than the way the apostles practiced, and different than the way that Paul practiced?
As we just read, Peter seems to suggest that the initial phase of this separation began
very early.
He said that people began producing lawless ways based on their misunderstanding of Paul's
letters, thus causing him to issue this warning.
2 Peter 317.
You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with
the air of lawless people and lose your own stability.
The thing that is really interesting to point out is that early Christian leaders did not
hide this change.
They fully admitted that they began to distance themselves from what the authors of the New
Testament practiced.
They were distancing themselves from a very specific group.
Our Messiah, Paul, Stephen, and every author of the Bible were called Nazarenes, the sect
of the way, Acts chapter 24, verse 5.
For we have found this man, referring to Paul, a plague, one who stirs up riots among all
the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.
This group practiced and believed and taught everything in the Bible as truth and relevance
to everyone in the faith.
Paul defines what it means to be a ringleader of the Nazarenes a few verses later.
Acts 24.
But this I confess to you, that according to the way which they call a sect, I worship
the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the law and written in the prophets.
Ironically, Paul used to persecute those who claimed to be of the way, Acts chapter 9.
But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to
the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if
he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Many Christian leaders admit to separating themselves from the beliefs and ways of the
Nazarenes and instead created a new label with new beliefs.
They invented a concept that made Gentile Christians in one box that do not observe
the whole Torah, and the way of the Nazarenes that do observe the whole Torah.
Here is a short list of some of the examples of those in the Bible that would fall in the
bucket of being the way of Nazarenes in the first century.
Yeshua, our Messiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Peter, Paul, etc.
Here is the known list of the names in the New Testament that did not observe the whole
Torah and the faith.
None.
This idea or belief that those in the faith were no longer to observe the Torah as Moses
wrote as everyone else taught and practiced was the admitted invention of early Christian
leadership.
This means that the Bible did not teach that the law of God changed.
It means that men made it up so that they would not appear Jewish.
Don't believe us?
They even admit to it.
The fourth century church father Epiphanias gives a detailed description of this occurring.
But these sectarians did not call themselves Christians, but Nazarenes.
However, they are simply complete Jews.
They use not only the New Testament, but the Old Testament as well, as the Jews do.
They have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the law proclaims it
and in the Jewish fashion, except for their belief in the Messiah, if you please.
For they acknowledge both the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all
things and declare that God is one and that his son is Yeshua the Messiah.
They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew, for among them the entire law, the prophets and
the writings are read in Hebrew, as they surely are by the Jews.
They are different from the Jews and different from the Christians only in the following.
They disagree with Jews because they have come to faith in Messiah, but since they
are still fettered by the law, circumcision, the Sabbath and the rest, they are not in
accord with Christians.
They are nothing but Jews.
They have the good news according to Matthew and its entirety in Hebrew, for it is clear
that they still preserve this in the Hebrew alphabet as it was originally written.
We learn the following things.
Number one, the Nazarenes, like Paul, kept the whole Word of God.
They did not change the law of God.
And number two, the Nazarenes professed to believe and follow our Messiah Yeshua.
Take a moment and reflect on the significance of this.
The supposed Church Fathers made an admitted intentional departure from the faith walked
by those in the New Testament.
Paul was called the leader of the Nazarenes.
This means that not only Paul kept and practiced the Torah, but all who followed Paul and was
discipled by Paul studied and observed the Torah.
The Church Father, Jerome in the 4th century, described these Nazarenes as those who accept
Messiah in such a way that they do not cease to observe the old law.
In a letter to Augustine, Jerome makes an amazing admission concerning the Nazarenes.
The matter and debate, therefore, or I should rather say, your opinion regarding it is summed
up in this, that since the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, the believing Jews do well
in observing the precepts of the law, i.e. in offering sacrifices as Paul did in their
circumcising their children, as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and keeping the Jewish
Sabbath as all the Jews have been accustomed to do.
If this be true, we fall into the heresy of those who though believing in Christ were
anathematized by the fathers for this one error, that they mixed up the ceremonies of
the law with the Gospel of Christ and professed their faith in that which was new, without
letting go what was old.
In our own day, there exists a sect among the Jews throughout the synagogues of the
East, which is called a sect of the Minians, and is now condemned by the Pharisees.
The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes.
They believe in Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, and they say that he
who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again is the same as one in whom we believe,
but while they desire to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither one nor the other.
I therefore beseech you, who think that you are called upon to heal my slight wound, which
is no more, so to speak, than a prick or scratch from a needle, to devote your skill and the
healing art to this grievous wound, which has been opened by a spear driven home with
impetus of a javelin.
For there is surely no proportion between the culpability of him who exhibits the various
opinions held by the fathers and a commentary on Scripture, and the guilt of him who reintroduces
within the Church a most pestilential heresy.
If however, there is for us no alternative but to receive the Jews into the Church, along
with the usages prescribed by their law, if, in short, it shall be declared lawful for
them to continue in the Churches of Christ, what they have been accustomed to practice
in the synagogues of Satan.
I will tell you my opinion of the matter.
They will not become Christians, but they will make us Jews.
Jerome repeats Augustine saying of the Nazarenes, since the preaching of the Gospel of Christ,
the believing Jews do well in observing the precepts of the law, i.e., in offering sacrifices
as Paul did, in circumcising their children as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and keeping
the Jewish Sabbath as all the Jews have been accustomed to do.
Jerome responds saying of the Nazarenes, though believing in Christ, they were thematized
by the Church Fathers for this one error, that they mixed up the ceremonies of the law with
the Gospel of Christ, and professed their faith in which was new, without letting go
what was old.
In other words, Augustine and Jerome tell us that the Nazarene doctrine that the Torah
should still be observed began with the preaching of Christ, and this was a doctrine kept by
Paul, but that of the Church Fathers of Christianity declared this to be an error and a heresy.
In other words, Augustine and Jerome tell us that the Nazarene doctrine that the Torah
should still be observed began with the preaching of Christ, and was the doctrine kept by Paul,
but the Church Fathers of Christianity declared this to be an error and a heresy, yes a heresy
despite the fact that this is what Yeshua practiced and taught, as well as Paul and
every other author of the Bible.
So according to the Church Fathers, Nazarene Judaism began with the Messiah and Paul,
and Gentile Christianity began when the Nazarene faith was rejected as an error by the Church
Fathers.
Thus, there are two options presented before us, two possible paths.
We can believe the doctrine of the supposed Church Fathers that labeled what Paul taught
and practiced as well as our Messiah as heresy, or we can simply believe what the authors
of the Bible practiced, taught and wrote as part of our faith.
The new religious inventions of men are the eternal, unchanging word, example by our Messiah.
We hope that this teaching has blessed you, and remember, continue to test everything.
Shalom.
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Christmas and Easter, two days esteemed above most others and are observed by nearly one
third of the human population.
Students of believers worldwide celebrate these holidays to honor the birth, death and resurrection
of the Messiah.
These festivals take many cultural forms and shapes around the world.
But would you be alarmed to discover that these two seemingly innocent holidays are
historically rooted in ancient occult practices which can be traced back to Babylon?
Babylonian sun god worship has evolved throughout the centuries and has branched out into several
major religions.
Early professing believers have also adopted several of these pagan customs unaware.
Even today, all throughout Catholicism and daughter denominations, there are still dozens
of popular monuments and symbols that were at one time dedicated to various sun gods.
What became this very same organization also instituted Christmas and Easter.
Scholar and Christian scholars alike all record that the Christmas tree, wreaths, boughs of
holly and mistletoe were all objects used in pagan sun god fertility fights.
This of course begs the question, what are they doing in the homes of believers today?
Discover how Mithra and the Norse Odin evolved into the imaginary Saint we know today as
Nicholas and how he became the key figure in the celebration of Christmas.
In ancient folklore, Saint Nicholas was accompanied by a dark counterpart known as the Krampus
and had a striking resemblance to other false deities.
The Easter Bunny and the dying of Easter eggs are also symbols of fertility connected
to Ishtar, biblically referenced as the Queen of Heaven.
Long before the birth of our Messiah, December 25th was a day used to celebrate the rebirth
of the sun god.
All of this and more has all been justified by man for hundreds of years, but when was
the last time we considered what our Creator had to say regarding all of this, do we care?
Should we care?
We reveal an opportunity and faith center challenge to worship and practice the faith
as he stated he desires for all his people, not according to us, not according to men,
but instead according to his way, according to his word.
That is, if you are ready to test everything.
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