Developing Godly Character Pt 11: Showing Mercy to our Enemies

So, I had an attitude a couple of weeks ago against someone in the body who is just plain mean, and absolutely assured of her justification for every cruel thing she does. She hurts people without a sign of remorse. I know this because I have confronted her about it and she has a justification for everything, and not just a justification, but a pride in the things she does in the Name of God.

So I was brooding. And frankly I was feeling justified about brooding (funny how that works, eh?). Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, not His “outside voice” but the very insistent and unmistakable voice of correction.

“Feel pity for her in your heart and allow it to soften, because if she ever comes to repentance she is going to feel such terrible shame over what she has done.”

Wow. I was dumbstruck. It opened up a whole new realm of mercy for me. The importance of pitying my enemies and having a soft heart towards them, and not simply doing good towards them.

Notice what was not said:

“Make excuses for her.”

“Enable her.”

“Turn a blind eye to what she is doing.”

“Approve of what she is doing in dragging my Name and Word through the mud in sight of the world.”

What was involved wasn’t about her in any way shape or form, it was about the condition of my heart.

Pity.

I have done some terrible things in His Name, and I have been the victim of terrible things done in His Name. When I look back, it is with anguish and a very deep repentance that drives me to either do better and honor Him or die trying. Indeed, and I say this honestly, I would rather die than disgrace Him. It doesn’t mean that I won’t disgrace Him from time to time, but it does mean that His reputation in the eyes of the world is the most precious thing in my life during my sane moments – when I am not in the flesh or just being socially careless (which is why I hide behind a computer protecting you all from myself). Messiah didn’t die in order to give me an excuse for my actions, or so that I won’t have to feel grieved when I harm people, but in order to have mercy on me – mercy that would inspire me to change and become more like Him.

And I know the feeling of having my name unrighteously slandered, and I am not even perfect, I am not the Creator and Possessor of the Heavens and the Earth. I have not yet died for a single person. If my King and my Master have urged mercy, then that mercy must be flowing from the throne – not to excuse her but to transform me. My Sovereign is truly the one who looks bad when she does these things; He is the one who must send other messengers to those wounded lambs in order to bind the injuries slanderously inflicted in His Name.

If she repents, then I pity the depths of remorse she will feel just as I pity Paul over the memory of Stephen’s murder. If she does not repent, then I pity her even more because our transgressions against His character in the sight of His little ones will not go unanswered forever. He is patient and merciful, but He is no enabler.

Can I afford to extend less kindness, in my heart, in light of what lies in store for her one way or the other? I pity those who are not kind, for kindness will not be extended towards them. We will indeed be judged by the very God whom we inflict on others.

Psalm 18

²⁴So the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
    according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.

²⁵With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
    with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
²⁶with the purified you show yourself pure;
    and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
²⁷For you save a humble people,
    but the haughty eyes you bring down.

Protecting ourselves from scripture out of context and teachers who are out of line

I have people come to me every so often with “a verse” that someone has slapped them with in order to promote their own interpretations. And the person is very upset over “this verse” or maybe “a few verses” and I say, “Why are you upset about a few verses? What does the whole of scripture say?”

There are a bunch of loud people out there who are very concerned about getting everyone to agree with them, and anyone who doesn’t is a “pagan” or a “heretic” and there are generally insults tossed around, accusations of ignorance and even insinuations about the person’s character. I just don’t understand why that is necessary if someone is preaching the truth. If I am telling you the truth, do I really have to downgrade another believer (even someone whose beliefs may be 98% the same as mine) who understands things a bit differently than I do? Do I have to call them a false teacher, do I have to get up on my own high place and preach down at them, do I have to call them deceived or can I just say, “I think they are wrong and here’s why – you make up your own mind.” Do I have to say bad things about them, or make you feel bad if you agree with them, make you feel like less of a believer than I am because we see things differently? Do I have to dominate you spiritually?

I am not so nearly as concerned with the minutiae of what you believe as I am with whether or not you are making progress in your walk, if you are teachable, and if you are getting to the point where people can’t freak you out with a few verses anyone. I know a guy on his fourth calendar, and others on their third pronunciation of the Name, and with each new incarnation of belief they are bashing everyone who does it another way.

I want to tell you my honest opinion of people who get other folks upset about “verses” – and that is they generally don’t know context. They pick and choose. They don’t pour agonizingly over the multitude of verses covering a theme, but will generally chose the ones that support what they want to say, often using them out of context and relying on the fact that most folks won’t want to read the entire chapter, or better yet, the entire book it is from, study the ancient near eastern context, study the word usage throughout scripture and see if there are opposing viewpoints in scripture to what they are saying. The best teachers will say, “This is my understanding and this is why.” Anyone who says, “You will think exactly as I do,” and who is not Messiah, is not a teacher and is simply exerting gentile-like leadership, lording authority over the minds of others.

If no one ever taught you to think for yourself, and study for yourself, then you have never been taught. There are an over-abundance of teachers out there, both good and bad – from Kindergarten-level writers like me to University teachers like Rico Cortes, as well as a whole lot of others who don’t have much to say but who say it very loudly and forcefully. But where is the fruit? Do you know my fruit? Or the fruit of any of the people teaching you? And especially the fruit of the anonymous folks on social media, where you might not even know their real name? I don’t care how much of a following a person has, you can’t put your faith in any one of us, especially when you do not know us or our fruit. You cannot allow us to upset you – challenge you yes, but upset you with a few verses? No. And certainly not overturn your faith!

Learn the context of the scriptures, learn the thematic elements that flow from beginning to end. Become established in what is and is not written, and when someone comes to you with a few verses, never get upset. Study it out in a reasoned manner. Oftentimes, simply reading the entire chapter the verse is in will show you the ridiculousness of a person’s claims (sorry Biblegateway.com, the verse before and after does not constitute “context”). It takes time to develop a good working knowledge of the scriptures and to study out the context of the times, but it is the only way to safeguard yourself against being swept to and fro by every wind of doctrine. Don’t allow yourself to be at the mercy of others who claim to know the scriptures but may indeed know very little. Don’t go rushing after teachers when you haven’t read the Word for yourself from beginning to end! Understanding the Word for yourself is an investment in your relationship with God.

The Bible wasn’t written to us, even though it was written for us; it was written to Hebrews from the 3rd Millennium BC to the first century AD, in a way that would make sense to them in their individual eras, and some of it was written in such a way as to make sense to converted Gentiles in the last half of the first century AD. What made perfect sense to them, often doesn’t remotely make sense to us, and so folks who are ignorant of context will twist it however they want, assuming that the Bible is easy to understand outside of the historical context it was written in. And there are a lot of these folks on facebook, who will tell you that they understand everything and you had better agree with them or you are a liar and a false teacher and an anti-Messiah. I am frankly exhausted with dealing with the fallout from these people, and keep asking myself the same question over and over again, “Why do so many people listen to them?” I have seen the fruit of their “ministries” and that fruit is division, and really mean and intolerant followers, concerned over every insignificant gnat. No love, no joy, no peace or patience, no kindness, goodness, faithfulness or self-control – just a lot of finger pointing and draining the life out of the people who keep reading, listening and watching. It’s your choice who you listen to, and it’s also your responsibility. If the teachings aren’t growing you in good fruit, then they are bad teachings, no matter how accurate you think they are.

Spanish version here

Practical Dream Interpretation Pt 2: Don’t get emotional

So this one woke me up sobbing.

I had been recruited and commanded to run some sort of a gauntlet – it was a strange situation and hard to describe. It wasn’t the normal sort of gauntlet where punishment is being meted out, but instead more of a gladiatorial situation. I was informed that an unseen enemy was running “our people” through this trial and I had been chosen by “our side” to do this even though I had no experience. A more experienced woman was going with me – I was given the easier weapon to use and she had the weapon that actually needed the skill and experience. The rules of the gauntlet were simple, we were to pass between two rows of people who were armed with knives, and who were not permitted to approach us unless we came within a certain proximity of them. The people along the way were a strange mix – people in garbage bags who were intermixed with people in wheelchairs. So, the strategy (if I had been thinking in those terms) would be to only engage the people we actually had to engage (the people who attacked us), clearing them out slowly (and by clearing them out I mean killing them). The gap down the middle of the two rows was very wide.

When the start was signaled, I rushed forward in my fear and inexperience. I left too many enemies for my more experienced partner and even though she fought valiantly, she died. I didn’t die, I made my way through and by the end of the first round, people were marveling at my skill on the battlefield. Everyone was impressed. But I was devastated. I had been thrown into a battle that I did not really want to fight, assuming that it was important and that there was no choice, and I had killed my own ally, someone who was more skilled and experienced than I was. And the people that I killed with my own weapon – I felt the knife go in every single time as though it happened in real life. Why didn’t I ask her what I should do? Why didn’t I let her go first? Why didn’t I lean on her experience instead of acting as though I was in the fight alone. And why was I placed into a fight without any training whatsoever and expected to survive? Who were these people I killed?

This was a difficult dream to come to terms with because my emotions were running so high afterwards. I had to calm down and get a grip. One of the biggest mistakes people make in dream interpretation is trying to interpret while they are still upset. Some dreams from God are incredibly upsetting, but so are normal run of the mill nightmares. If we have allowed ourselves to fall prey to our emotions, we might mistake a simple nightmare for a warning from God and this can spell disaster for ourselves and others. So the first thing I did was to sit on this dream until I could think straight and sometimes that can take quite a while. Be patient – I have never had an upsetting warning dream happen the night before I needed to act on it. If a warning puts you into a state of panic, leaving you unable to act wisely in response to a threat, then it wasn’t a very effective warning. I had a dream three years ago while on my way to a vacation that made it very clear that if we kept driving there would be terrible consequences (an explosion). I was very unhappy, but was able to calmly go to my husband with the warning and we turned around – only to find out when we got home that our blown tire on the popup camper had ruptured the propane line and if we had tried to light the grill in the RV park at our destination, we could have killed ourselves and potentially a lot of other people. The dream was a bad one, but was delivered in such a way that I was able to calmly make a rational decision. The point of the warning was to get me to turn around, not to confuse me – the dream was meant to be clear so that I could act immediately on the warning.

In this case, I simply said to myself, “Okay, I am too emotional right now to really look at this so I will write it all down and pray and come back to it in a bit. Until then, I am not going to allow myself to be dragged into any fights against my will. No matter how much someone “needs me.”” Really, until I stopped crying and feeling like a murderer, I was in no condition to really think straight anyway.

It took about a day to start being able to process through everything I saw, even though I got my emotions completely under control after a couple of hours. At this point, I could look at the dream without emotion and without judgment – this is one of the really good reasons why it is important to cultivate the fruit of self-control. Self-control isn’t just about how we conduct ourselves at the pot luck or about how we treat people; self-control is also about not allowing our emotions to have dominion over us. If we are running high (or low) on emotions, we will almost always mistake our feelings for the leading of the Holy Spirit and we will not be able to tell the difference – no matter how mature we tell ourselves we are. My initial gut reactions about this dream were not the best and I missed a lot of the really important questions.

Was the person I was fighting alongside really my ally? Was it really my fault that she died? Was she recruited or was she there because she wanted to be there? And who were these people who recruited me? Why did I assume they were the good guys? Why did I assume that the people on the sidelines would attack me – after all, until I rushed out towards them no one budged. Why did I assume that everyone had to be killed? What was this about, really? And who was in charge? Why were my “enemies” curled up in the fetal position and wrapped in garbage bags, while others were in wheelchairs? Why didn’t any of them even get a blow in against me, and why don’t I remember even seeing any weapons, but only suspected or assumed their presence? And how did my ally die without my seeing it happen?

When I was new to “online religion” on facebook, I allowed myself to be recruited into fights by people who seemed like my allies. They loved being on walls that more resembled gladiatorial arenas than assemblies of faith. I would charge forward and start some trouble with people I didn’t even know. I would see them as garbage and hopelessly crippled by their “ignorance,” instead of looking at them as the “babes” in Messiah that they were, obscured by a bunch of “garbage,” or as people who had problems with their “walk.” The things I said — I brought much shame to my King and Master in the eyes of the world through my contempt for people who didn’t see things my way. I didn’t care how far in I drove the knife, or if I wounded them badly enough to cripple them more than I already thought they were. They weren’t people to me, even though they were my brothers and sisters in belief (separated only by denominational dogma), and I assumed they were my enemy so I preemptively jumped into the fray and drew first blood. No time to reason, no time to make sure who was who and what was what. I got recruited into it by people who either enjoyed it or invited it and got themselves in over their head. I was obsessed with winning back then and so I went, even though I hated conflict. I wasn’t contending for the faith; once my blood began boiling I was a conqueror bent on destruction. I am no longer ashamed of the things I did before I was saved, because when I look at that it is like I am looking at someone else’s life who is dead now. I look at her and weep because she was so lost and without hope. I am deeply repentant, but no longer ashamed. But it’s the things I have done as a believer that bring me to feel shame because I am aware that there are people out there who I can never reach with an apology who carry the memory of my pointless cruelty. If I had the guts to actually look my victims in the face I might, at one time, have been an effective Inquisitor. But now, looking back at the gauntlet and focusing on the people waiting along the sidelines, I see that my initial sin wasn’t the murders, my initial sin was my failure to question the situation in the first place.

So the interpretation of the dream involved symbolism, puns and experience:

1. Recruitment into a battle by people I assumed were fighting a needed battle on behalf of God, but the people who they were fighting against were not worthy opponents and it was in no way a fair fight. I was inexperienced because I was still very immature.

2. Men wrapped in garbage bags in the fetal position = babes in faith obscured by garbage. Men in wheelchairs = those in Messiah who still do not know how to walk according to God’s laws.

3. The weapon I was given – a chainsaw. Not a sword, but a man-made device with a bunch of tiny blades designed to rip, not to divide between bone and marrow. My ally’s weapon, a cross between a bludgeon and a knife, good for beating people over the head with something.

4. I killed 19 people. I am assuming that is 19 people I drove away from the faith, or at least away from the laws of God. And people were so impressed with that.

5. I assumed that the people standing along the sidelines were the aggressors, but the truth is that we were the villains. Just because we are right doesn’t mean we are right.

6. What purpose did the emotion serve in my dream? It wasn’t there for no reason. The emotion showed me how entirely wrong we can be about a situation when we are not fully in control of ourselves.

So now that the dream was broken down, when asked to join a fight I had to ask things like, “Why are you even on that thread involved with this?” “Why do you have these divisive, argumentative people on your friend list anyway?” “What do you hope to accomplish when everyone simply desires to win and no one wants to weigh the evidence?” “Why are you recruiting me into this situation, honestly; is it to persuade people of the truth or to be proven right?” “I see you have already recruited others to the thread, why do you need me?” “If you need to recruit people, why not admit that you have decided to get involved with something that you cannot handle yourself and delete the thing? If this was of God, then He would have given you the words to fight His battle or He would recruit people personally.”

But the biggest thing I had to do once the dream was broken down was to repent, because like Paul, I am a murderer. Paul just held the coats and approved while others threw the stones. I was throwing the stones, and evidently 19 of them hit the mark. Like Paul, I have to spend the rest of my life trying to get those lives back.

The gauntlet is a place for barbarism, it is not a place for love or teaching. No one who comes to a gauntlet is there in order to truly represent Messiah, because He cannot be represented in such a place. Tell me, if you know, when was Yeshua (Jesus) ever part of a gauntlet? On the day He died, when the group of elders and chief priests beat Him and abused Him. There is no honor to be had for our Master when a bunch of believers gang up on someone, seeing them as trash instead of as babes, or ignoring the fact that they are badly disabled by their walk. That’s the problem with online religious debates and why I see them largely as evil. I despise any debate when I cannot face my opponent, when I cannot know anything about them and I am encouraged not to give a damn. If I don’t care about the humanity of the person I am talking to, then I will not talk to them and I certainly will not argue with them. If I don’t love them, then how can I correct them? Nor am I inclined to get into any conversation with someone who does not value me as a human being. It is the antithesis of Kingdom life to place no value in the life of another, to boil them down to mere opponents.

A classic military gauntlet where people endure pain and punishment and cannot strike back.

The importance of restoring honor (especially when we unrighteously stole it)

I had a dream a few nights ago that puzzled me deeply. In it, I was in a schoolyard and I became aware that I was a carrier of Tay-Sachs, a rare, tragic genetic disease that begins at 3 to 6 months and slowly takes the life of a child by their 4th birthday. To develop it, a child must have two parents that are recessive genetic carriers (meaning that the parents have no symptoms whatsoever, the affected allele being effectively hidden by the dominant allele and therefore dormant), and the odds of these parents producing such a child is 1 in 4. It is almost entirely limited to the Ashkenazi Jewish population and is one of the most horrific things I can imagine a child or their parent having to endure.

I awoke entirely puzzled. Despite any appearances from my last name, I do not have a drop of Jewish blood in my ancestry. On top of that, I am barren. Not only can I not have the Tay-Sachs mutation, but even if I did it would not matter because I cannot have children and my husband is not of Jewish descent either. So I knew that the Tay-Sachs represented something else, something hidden, something I would have in common with someone who is Jewish – something hiding in them as well but potentially devastating. And it was something I was about to learn about, hence my presence in the schoolyard.

I prayed about it for two days and mulled over different possibilities, knowing they were wrong. Sometimes the dream is there to get us curious enough to really listen to what God has been saying for a long time, but in this case, it was waiting for a trigger to help me understand what it was about. I will be brief in explaining the trigger because I want to emphasize our duties towards one another and how we can more effectively love each other. I honestly think this is one of the most important things God has ever revealed to me.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a letter to someone who viciously betrayed me 10 1/2 years ago. I did what I could not do at the time as a new believer; I confronted this church pastor about his lies, about the gossip and about his misrepresentation of me to the entire congregation over the phone and behind the pulpit even though he never once came to me with his accusations. It went on for months before I quietly left, very confused. Well, his response was that he didn’t even remember who I was (which, if I revealed the entire situation, you would see was quite impossible) and that he “wasn’t accusing me of lying BUT” the elders at the church were “too nice” to have ever allowed him to do such a thing (even though one couple came to me later deeply ashamed). So, long story short, he is still a liar and had no intention of owning up to his sins (which he said were covered by Jesus’ blood anyway so he wasn’t worried about it).

So last night I was praying for justice. I was ruined in that community, and over the years I have prayed for a resolution whenever the feelings of hurt would surface. I asked God to judge and rule between him and myself. This proclamation from the Amidah (the prayers Jews make three times daily) came to mind, “And let us not feel inner shame forever.” And I finally got an answer, “You are praying for the wrong thing. You are willing to settle for revenge, for Me judging him, because you still don’t know what the problem is. The problem is that he unrighteously shamed you in front of the entire community and your honor has never been restored. Revenge can’t restore the honor that was taken from you and can’t remove your shame. All you want is to not feel ashamed anymore and you want your honor back. It is a good thing to want. He wasn’t willing to give it back so ask Me for that.”

I was dumbfounded. All that time it wasn’t hurt, or bitterness, or unforgiveness, but a very deep feeling of inflicted shame and a profound sense of powerlessness to do anything about it. I stopped to think about my past and all the horrible things I did before I was a believer and I feel no shame over them. After all, the shame I once had over those things was a righteous shame, and when I repented I had no more need of it. I was no longer Karine who wrote internet porn but Tyler who helps believers learn about the character of God. The shame I earned could be taken away through repentance and restoration through the blood of Messiah and learning to live as a new creation in righteousness – but the shame that was forced on me as an unwanted violation was not a shame I had the power to remove from myself. I could not change the lies people believed about me and I could not make the liar retract them. So I prayed.

“Father, please remove my shame and if it be Your will, restore my honor.” And my shame was gone, like it had never even existed, but it left open roads all through my awareness and I could see everything that shame had touched and influenced.

Once it was gone, I realized why my dream had compared it to the evil Tay-Sachs mutation. It was there, invisible and even I wasn’t aware of it – but it was always ready to taint anything that came from me. I have lived my life doing everything possible to avoid being shamed anymore; I was living defensively, desperately needing constant validation, looking to be honored by others, seeking for ways to overcome that deep sense of shame that was brutally and cruelly inflicted onto me by someone I loved dearly and trusted in my naivete. And I am not alone in this. This world is filled with people who are deeply ashamed – oftentimes because their parents used it as a control factor, or because someone wanted to destroy them personally, or for whatever reason. Because the shame did not result from personal sin, but came externally, they cannot simply repent and live with honor and have that shame just vanish. The shame was inflicted by others, and must either be removed by those who inflicted it (if they are merciful), by those who can make a public legal ruling of vindication, or by God (Who is indeed merciful). The honor was stolen, and must be restored.

Because we do not live in an honor/shame culture, but an innocence/guilt culture, people often feel misplaced guilt because they do not realize that what they are really experiencing is shame. They feel condemned, and this can often grow so overpowering that it becomes full blown depression or even results in suicidal thoughts and actions. This is why, when we realize that we ourselves have wrongfully or even needlessly shamed someone either privately or in public, we must work towards the restoration of their honor if we indeed desire to live out the commandment to love our neighbors. If we shame privately, then we restore them privately (or publicly if the damage we did was bad enough and will not cause them more embarassment) and if we shame publicly then we must seek to restore publicly. It is never “no big deal” when we erroneously damage someone’s honor either carelessly or with intent – but our current culture considers it to be somewhat of a hobby, as well as a first amendment right. Even believers who claim to follow the commandments are quick to shame people on social media without feeling even a twinge of remorse (or actual evidence). Shaming people is fun, but it is also deadly and it is oftentimes unjust and presumptuous. No one has the right to shame someone if they have not sinned, and especially if they have not sought out private correction first. And if the whole world is already shaming someone, we have no righteous need to add to it. But we don’t generally want to restore, because restoring those we hurt is embarassing. We have to lose face by admitting that we were unrighteous in our actions.

When I was 27 years old and not a believer, I did something very callous and uncalled for to one of my employees and shamed her publicly. When I found out that I was wrong, I restored her publicly. I didn’t have the option of making my sin go away, but I was able to sacrifice some of my public honor in order to give hers back. I owed it to her. We all owe it to each other. When we refuse to restore honor to those we unjustly have shamed, we are choosing to allow our personal egos to hold their souls in slavery. I have no doubt that everyone who reads this can remember having their honor stripped from them and never restored – and from my reading of scripture, it is a basic human drive and need to have honor in the eyes of one’s peers. We don’t have the right to deprive someone of that honor lightly. Torah says that when we steal, we must pay back four fold, and I think we would do well to apply it to the concept of stolen honor.

What did Peter have to say about ex-Messianic anti-missionaries?

While researching some material for a new book on Wednesday, I came upon a section of scripture that honestly made me laugh out loud, truly. I was pouring over 1 and 2 Peter after going over the Pauline epistles with a fine toothed comb and I noticed that both of Peter’s letters were written to former Gentile converts to “the Way” as it was called. I usually quote from the KJV, but I will quote from ISR The Scriptures this time.

2 Peter 1:1 Shim’on Kepha, a servant and emissary of Yeshua Messiah, to those who have obtained a belief as precious as ours by the righteousness of our Elohim and Savior Yeshua Messiah.

Now why do I say this is written to converted Gentiles? Because Peter is referring to a belief as “precious as ours” – referring to himself and the other Jews. The former pagan Gentiles were now brought in to the faith in God through Yeshua, as were the Jews before them.

1:4 Through these there have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, so that through these you might become partakers of the Mighty-like nature, having escaped from the corruption of the world caused by lust.

What are the exceedingly great and precious promises? Throughout the prophets, a gathering in of the Gentile nations into Israel was promised (Isaiah 14:1 being a prime example).

Because YHVH has compassion on Ya’aqob (Jacob), and shall again choose Yisra’el (Israel), and give them rest in their own land. And the strangers shall join them, and they shall cling to the house of Ya’aqob.

So, as Messiah also promised, the strangers (Gentiles) would join Jacob (the literal, eternal nation of Israel) and cling to him. This is what we see happening after the events of Acts 10, when Peter receives the wisdom that men are not common or unclean if they are keeping God’s commandments, no matter what their ethnicity may be. I only shared that to establish the audience, and now we get to the fun part.

2:1 But there also came to be false prophets among the people, as also among you there shall be false teachers, who shall secretly bring in destructive heresies and deny the Master who brought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves.

Let’s break this down and explain it

But there also came to be false prophets among the people (what people? The Hebrews)

as also among you (the Gentile converts to Israel)

there shall be false teachers, who shall **secretly** bring in destructive heresies (they will not be inclined to do this out in the open)

and deny the Master who **brought them** (brought them to what? To righteousness, to the way of God)

bringing swift destruction on themselves (I think that is pretty definitive right there)

Over the past year I have seen quite a few people go this path, people unlearned in the ancient near eastern context of the scriptures, people who believe that if something isn’t readily apparent to their 21st century mindsets in a shallow reading of the word, that it cannot be so. And because they insist on everything being easy for them, they fall away. They were Christians, oftentimes ones who came to hate Christianity and refused to see the good in it, and they followed the knowledge trail into Hebrew Roots, and there was nothing wrong with coming into the roots of our faith. Getting here, however, a few of them learned just enough to give them doubts and stopped learning. The crazy thing was, they claim the Torah is the way, and it certainly is because Yeshua is the living Torah, the Word of God; by their own testimony, they only got to Torah by studying about the man they knew as Jesus. Jesus led them to Torah and then introduced Himself as Yeshua. Yeshua drove them to the dance, and then they got itchy for other partners when they found out that Yeshua is not a popular guy and all of a sudden they had no place to rest their head. The Christians didn’t want them (oftentimes because of their behavior but also because of doctrinal misunderstandings), and neither did the Jews. This was unexpected. They really thought that the Jews would embrace them and throw open the doors of the Kingdom. But by and large, it didn’t happen and they met with a lot of resistance and sometimes with outright racism, even from within the movement between Jew and former Gentile.

Unfortunately that made them easy targets for the disreputable anti-missionaries out there who have made a life’s work not in preaching God (like genuine Jews do), but instead preaching against Jesus (they refuse to call Him Yeshua, they don’t want to deal with Yeshua the faithful, Torah keeping Messiah, so even when they know His Name and His way of life, they would rather deceptively deal in terms of Jesus). Wanting to belong, and not seeing any legitimate cultural status being awarded to followers of Yeshua, halfway between Christianity and Judaism, they went to the people promising legitimacy – the anti-missionaries. “Deny Jesus, become a Jew and then you can keep Torah and be in right standing with us.” Some even go as far as to say that if “Jesus” is really as forgiving as we say He is, that He will forgive them for denying Him, blatantly ignoring the scriptures that say that we cannot deny Him and change our minds, crucifying Him again and putting him to shame.

Once they deny privately, they are generally in no hurry to announce it but secretly start bringing in destructive heresies. They just ask questions, never stating what they believe or their intent. They lurk in half truths and shadows, unwilling to be honest and open. They post videos online to their friends who still think they are believers, along with verses entirely out of context, and slowly but surely start weaning people away from salvation. These same people who proclaimed Torah from the rooftops when they became whole-bible believers are now not as open with what they believe? Why the change? Why aren’t they bold, proud and convicted this time around? Why the secrecy? Surely fear of rejection can’t be the reason – as that didn’t stop them from proclaiming the commandments! No, Peter nailed the reason – they have become false teachers and must operate in secret. Surely if we are deceived and they love us they would openly plead with us for our very lives!

They act like a harlot who can’t remember that the only way she got to the dance in the first place was that her devoted fiance drove her there. Messiah led them to Torah, just as the scriptures said He would. But these people pretend like they came to Torah without Him, in spite of Him, that somehow God decided to reward what they themselves call their “idolatry” by using it to lead them into the truth. I am honestly trying to remember when idolatry ever led anyone to the truth and I can’t think of any examples. Yeshua brought me to the Torah, no question, no question whatsoever. It was because I knew the voice of my Master when He spoke to me that drove me to my knees in repentance and to my feet in obedience. I wasn’t looking for the Torah, quite the contrary, I thought I was happy and free without it. Jesus brought me to Torah, and then Torah showed me who Yeshua is.

So these people, they have brought swift destruction upon themselves. I am not the only one who sees the personality changes before they publicly come forward. So no, I don’t think there is any hope for them, and if there is it will not come from me. They are little more than zombies – they were alive, now they are dead, and they want to devour the living. They are people that these anti-missionaries never cared one bit about – until they started obeying the commandments of God. Anti-missionaries do not go after Christians. I want you to consider that, they don’t try to convert anyone until they believe in Yeshua and in keeping the commandments. They sound an awful lot like this chap.

Rev 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Yeshua Messiah.