The Fruit of the Spirit Pt 5 – Patience

patiencePeople ask me this all the time – (video format here)

“But if the people who ‘aren’t getting it’ aren’t rebellious then what is the problem? Why do so many people just ‘refuse’ to get it?”

And I would always remind them that they ‘didn’t get it’ until their blinders were removed by God Himself, and ask them if rebellion and contempt for the Laws of God was on their minds. They agree that they didn’t hate God, even though they were not walking in full obedience (and frankly we still aren’t) and yet, when it comes to looking at the other guy, we aren’t as generous with our opinions and don’t cut them nearly as much slack. But I did get a better answer this weekend at Revive 2015 in Dallas.

I had been trying to find a way to explain the spiritual fruit of patience for two weeks but wasn’t really coming up with a way to do it and then all of a sudden it occurred to me while sitting through an unrelated breakout session:

What if the people we are worried about, the people we are judging and agonizing over and questioning and even pestering – what if their blinders haven’t been removed because our fruit is being judged, and they are simply the tools.

Now let me make this abundantly clear – I am not saying that God is writing them off, or toying with their lives. What if, what if God isn’t worried about them because He knows who they are, and He knows that when He removes their blinders they will be so zealous that they will be just fine despite the delays that drive us to distraction.

How we react to their inability, yes inability, to get it speaks volumes about the quality of our own fruit. Do we write them off? Do we treat them with contempt, even just in our minds? Do we slander their intelligence and their heart to serve God? Do we call them fools? Do we tell them not to pray for us? Do we take scripture out of context in order judge them? Do we treat them like rebels, as though they had been raised knowing that the Law is good and turned their ears from it? Or do we recognize that they were trained from childhood that the Law is bad and never had their ears inclined to it in the first place, making it impossible for them to turn their ears away?

Do we credit ourselves with undeserved virtues? Do we pretend like we are smarter, or wiser, or more godly? Do we elevate the ones that we keep that they don’t while ignoring the ones they may keep better than we do?

When we think of our relatives and friends who do not love as much of Torah as we do, what bad fruit of ours is revealed? We need to check that out because He isn’t going to keep their blinders on forever just for our sake – interpersonal tests are a gift, but after a while, He is going to have mercy on those He has used to test us and if we did not allow that test to change us, we will have squandered a golden opportunity.

So let’s talk about patience. How old were you when you found the truth – I mean, if you weren’t raised that way? I was saved when I was 29 after living a revoltingly awful excuse of a life. People had written me off. Then I went gung ho in the church, and then I was gung ho in the out of church movement and then when I was 41 I came into a knowledge of Torah as the constitution of the Kingdom of God and my obligations as a good citizen to obey the laws.

41 years old – 41 years it took me. Until I have waited 41 years on someone I guess I kinda need to sit down and shut up about it and trust God because He literally opened my eyes in a spiritual sense. I haven’t waited 41 years for anyone to get it since that day – but God was faithful to reveal it to me, and incredibly generous. Wasn’t like I had earned it. Just one day – BAM. There it was.

And there I was on Saturday night, at Revive in Dallas, teaching people first century context alongside Rico Cortes and Diana Dye, after talking with Joseph Good, my Temple teacher, about helping me write my next book – and I didn’t feel like I belonged there and I still don’t. And if anyone looks at it in terms of years and in terms of every human measure of deservedness, I didn’t belong there. But what if – what if, the people who we judge and worry about and have contempt for “get it” tomorrow, and what if, in four years they were writing books and speaking at a Hebrew Roots conference? Our impatience reveals an utter lack of respect for what God, and not men, can accomplish in a very short amount of time. Who He can raise up, and how miraculously He can do it, and how he is no respecter of persons. He knows every evil, contemptible thing I have ever done, and He knows that my fruit still needs a lot of work, and yet He can and sometimes does do a quick work.

What if, what if, the people who you are so frustrated with right now could be speaking at Revive 2019 – I am the proof that it isn’t impossible. I am the proof that you need to have faith in God that the time is not too short, that you can have peace and you can have patience about their situation – and that you might just need to get down on your knees and repent for all that worry, all that contempt, disgust, judgment, etc. that you feel when you think about them.

Maybe the reason their blinders aren’t removed – is you. Maybe God isn’t nearly as worried about where they will be in four years as He is with where you will be in four years. It’s time to get humble, to get repentant, and time to get patient.




Setting the Record Straight About Christianity

Reality-Check2How many times am I going to continue to be running in to this?

The notion that Christians serve Satan is grounded in elitism and ignorance –

Christians keep the overwhelming majority of Torah that can be kept, did you know that? 58% cannot be kept without a standing temple, they keep 28% (out of the remaining 42%–so that puts mainstream Christians keeping 67% of what can be kept today) of the Law, and even your most die-hard Messianics ONLY KEEP 8% MORE (and no Messianic or Jew keeps quite the sizable portion of what could conceivably still be kept). They believe that the Bible is true. They believe that YHVH created the world and all that is in it. They believe that the Word of God (regardless of what name they use) became flesh, through a divine birth, lived a perfect life, died, was resurrected, and ascended to the Father. They take care of the weightier matters of Torah that many Messianics completely neglect while they are straining at gnats and clapping themselves on the back for keeping whatever “one true calendar” and “one true pronunciation” they have adopted. Christians care for the widows, orphans, poor, oppressed, sick. They build hospitals, orphanages, adopt special needs and abandoned children, picket abortion clinics, work to change corrupt laws, feed the homeless, work to end the sex trade, spread the gospel, and a whole bunch of other things while their detractors sit on Facebook doing nothing but slandering them for eating pork, not keeping Sabbath and the feasts–conducting their own “ministry” of posting internet memes and insulting remarks for the amusement of people who already agree with them. Well frankly, the overwhelming majority of Christians do what they do out of ignorance because they have been taught since childhood to equate the keeping of the law with falling from grace and not loving Messiah–and that should evoke our compassion and prayers and not our contempt. But what too many Messianics and Hebrew Roots do, as they sit at home and argue and bicker and insult while neglecting the weightier matters of righteousness and justice (which historically were always tied with caring for the “least of these”), just boils down to bad fruit. And I speak as a person who used to do just that but I praise YHVH that He slapped me down hard and changed my heart.

If Torah does not make us more compassionate, less prideful, less divisive and condemning, then we are not “keeping” it–we are looking at it as though it is a mirror and turning our faces away so as to forget what we look like (James 1:23). Like it or not, Christians are our brothers and sisters, in Covenant with YHVH through the blood of Yeshua/Jesus–no different than the Israelites of old. They may be wrong in some areas, but from what I have seen, there is plenty of self-deception and self-righteousness to go around and we are all in the thick of it. Torah didn’t change my heart sixteen years ago–my heavenly Father did, and then He compassionately opened my eyes to Torah when I wasn’t even looking for it. I am no better than any pork and shellfish-eating, Sunday-keeping, Christmas and Easter-observing person, and in fact, I am far worse than many of them. What I am is blessed with the revelation of Torah, which was delivered to me out of pure mercy and compassion when I wasn’t doing anything to deserve it–quite the contrary. I don’t accept Torah because I am more faithful or obedient, I accept it because it was revealed to me. And because of that, I am unable to wag a finger at anyone. It wasn’t my excellence that moved YHVH to bless me with a love of the constitution of His Kingdom, it was the attribute of His mercy poured out into my undeserving mess of a life. But I don’t serve a different God than I did as a Christian, I simply know better how to serve the God I already knew. But if I don’t put it into practice alongside the weightier matters of serving the poor, vulnerable, widowed, orphaned, oppressed, etc–then I am just fooling myself because I have allowed the greatest commandments to fall by the wayside while I just strive to go to all the right parties, stay home from work on the right days, and eat the right things. Yeah, not really all that impressive in comparison, right?

I cited this excellent study by Rabbi Doug Friedman in my book The Bridge, it should cause us all to take down our pride a few notches.  <—-click to read

The sequel that just says no to the idea of the law being done away with–>Setting the Record Straight about the Spirit of the Law




Confronting Pseudo-Archaeological Memes Pt 3: Was Dagon of the Philistines a Fish God?

So, I saw this meme once – containing an image of a stone carving purported to be of the priests of the Philistine Dagon, mentioned three times in Scripture. They were supposedly men dressed as fish, and alongside was a painting of a merman who was also supposed to be Dagon, and then a picture of some Catholic priests with their hats and the argument was that Catholicism was just Dagon worship revamped and the pictures proved it.

Just for the record, I am not going to cover how the Catholic officials got those hats. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. I am not a Catholic, and I have never been a Catholic. What I am concerned with is the accurate portrayal of Biblical context, and so I want to analyze the archaeology and show whether it is valid or not. First, let’s talk about Dagon – was he a fish god? This artwork from the Louvre, which is often used to prove that Dagon was a merman, would certainly suggest that he is – but do we have an evidence tying him to this? And doesn’t anyone think it is strange that someone is using a rather modern colored engraving to prove something from antiquity? The original bas relief from Sumeria is to the right, and to the left is the “conjecture” that folks attribute to Dagon.

Louvre-merman

Louvre-Museum-sumerian-carving-of-a-merman

(credit for the bas relief goes to a href=”http://public-domain.zorger.com” title=”public domain images”>public-domain.zorger.com</a)

 

 

Now, let’s look at the actual word Dagon, or dgn, in Semitic languages – in Ugaritic, this word dgn can be translated as grain, and in Hebrew dagon/dagan is also an archaic word meaning grain. This meaning lines up with his association with Ba’al, the Canaanite storm god who also has ties with fertility and the harvest. In Ugaritic literature, Dagon is the father of Ba’al, just as El is the father of Ba’al in Canaanite records. Sanchuniathon, who was a Phoenician author circa 1200 BC (a contemporary of Semiramis, Queen of the Assyrians, according to Porphyry), said, “And Dagon after he discovered grain and the plough, was called Zeus Arotrios.” Arotrios was the designation of Zeus as the ploughman.

Evidently, in the 4th century AD, a tradition popped up that Dagon was a fish god based upon the Hebrew word “dag” which means fish, and this was picked up on in the Middle Ages and even swallowed hook, line and sinker by some of the noted theologians of the day. Artwork was produced, depicting Dagon as a merman, which is now on display at the Louvre. Jewish commentators Rashi and David Kimhi both perpetuated this myth in their writings, which was, in turn, picked up by John Milton in Paradise Lost, who called Dagon a “sea-monster, upward man, and downward fish.”

Now, we see Dagon mentioned three times in Scripture (Jud 16, I Sam 5, I Chron 10), and once in I Maccabees 10, depicting the destruction of the Temple of Dagon, which was surprisingly still in commission at so late a date. Josephus and Philo, as well as Jerome, mention Dagon but no one mentions him as a fish god! Clearly, the “fish-god” myth is late in origin and was sadly picked up by a very popular 17th Century Author and since passed off as archaeological fact. But the preponderance of the evidence of antiquity clearly show Dagon not to be a fish god at all.

Were there fish gods? Yes, of course. Take Oannes for instance, written about in the third century BCE by Babylonian author Berosos, who just happened to be a priest of Bel. Oannes was purported to be the one who gave wisdom to men. This is a depiction of Him in an ancient Mesopotamian Cylinder Seal – clearly meeting Berrosus’ description of him as a god whose whole body was a fish, and under the fish’s head was a man’s head and under the fish’s tail were a man’s feet. And to the right, I have included another colored engraving, depicting a very altered version – looking more like a man in a fish costume and less like a fish god. Creative license, I suppose.

Oannes

Oannes

 

 

 

 

 

 

While researching, it has come to my attention that some are equating Oannes with Dagon – but archaeology has completely discounted any chance of that. Oannes was associated with wisdom and the arts, Dagon with grain and sometimes with death – as these two gods are functionally unrelated, the ancient people would never have equated them. Remember that polytheism is all about functional gods – gods who took care of cosmic functions and kept the world from spinning into chaos. Similar gods sometimes merged between cultures, sometimes, but those gods had to share functionalities and Oannes and Dagon shared none. That they were both still worshiped independently at late dates is attested by the existence of the Temple of Dagon in the time of the Maccabees as well as in the mention of Oannes by Berosos in the 3rd century BCE, so there is no reason to even presume a merger.

So who was Dagon? Looks like he was the chief god of the Philistine pantheon, a god associated with grain and with the underworld – not unlike Osiris of Egypt. Be sure to catch part 2 HERE. But he was definitely not a fish god.  Here are some of the more accessible resources that I used.

Feliu, Luis The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria, Brill (2000) – this is the definitive scholarly work on Dagan, it was an AMAZING read which taught me a lot about how ancient gods were worshiped in general.

Van der Toorn, Karel Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible pgs 216-219. This is the must-have book for anyone who wants to speak with authority on the deities that show up in the Bible – over 900 pages of scholarly delight. Like a high-class buffet of polytheism.

Singer, I. (1992). “Towards an Image of Dagan, the God of the Philistines.” Syria 69: 431-450.Itamar Singer – Romanian-Israeli author and historian married to a Ph.D. Egyptologist. Hebrew University of Jerusalem – double bachelor’s degrees in archaeology and geography; Tel Aviv University – Masters, and University of Marburg – Ph.D. with an emphasis in Hittite studies. He was a professor at Tel Aviv University and his focus of interest was the Ancient Near East in the 13th century BC (he had a particular interest in the “sea peoples” who many believe became the ancient Philistines). He was awarded the EMET Prize two years before his death

Stone, Adam, 2013 Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses: Dagan  – Archaeologist, Ph.D. from Cambridge University, Associate lecturer at Birkbeck College at the University of London where he teaches Sumerian and Akkadian

Berosos and Oannes

Leick, Gwendolyn 1991, A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology – Leick has a Ph.D. in Assyriology

So, what I never do is check out Wikipedia first but I have to admit that I went later after studying and whoever wrote up their page didn’t do a bad job! Pretty solid resources 🙂




Will the Holy Spirit Really Teach Us Everything?

holy spiritThere are a great number of promises made in the Bible and many are quick to co-opt them when they want to make claims, prove a point, or supplement their own pet doctrines – but Biblical promises mean nothing out of context. A promise to one individual is not necessarily universal in nature or in other words, we can’t just go and steal someone else’s promises.

Abraham was given some directives that applied specifically to himself, as well as promises that applied only to specific lines of his offspring, either natural or grafted in (adopted). David and Aaron likewise received promises reserved for their lines only! Yet other promises in scripture are between specific individuals – for instance, from Yeshua to the Twelve, or from Paul to Timothy! Sadly, co-opted and removed out of time and context, there are many who use them to bolster their individual desires for blessing, to claim blessed status or to name and claim whatever it is they think they deserve – promises meant for other people or groups of people collectively!

Take for instance the promises of God towards the Nation of Israel that as long as it (the Nation as a whole) was faithful, they would suffer none of the diseases of the Egyptians, or experience barrenness, or poverty, etc. Well despite individual faithfulness, we see good people suffering because of the unrighteousness of the Nation as a whole – there was barrenness, disease, famine and poverty that impacted both the righteous and the unrighteous. The faithful Israelites couldn’t just name and claim the promise – because the promise was conditional based upon their national faithfulness.

But I have seen incredibly fertile couples who are not financially independent mocking wealthy barren couples – saying that the barrenness is a sign of “unrepentant sin.” But wait – the people with a bunch of kids are borrowers and not lenders, so why did they assume that they were the blessed when borrowing is also a sign of being cursed for unfaithfulness? Hypocrisy? Maybe, or maybe just ignorance and blindness towards the legitimacy of the blessings of others. Truth is, here in exile, as a part of an unfaithful Body of believers – we all suffer the effects of the Biblical curses, but sometimes we get the blessings – and that is a wonderful display of mercy, but in a world where even the evil get those same blessings we need to proceed with caution before attributing them to our “excellent” characters or faithful walks.

One of the most egregiously stolen promises is found in John 14 – during a private conversation between Yeshua (Jesus) and the eleven remaining disciples. It is not spoken to the world, but to his select students:

25 “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

We see a few very specific things tied together.

1. Yeshua reminds them of things spoken personally, to them, the eleven.

2. Yeshua promises that the Spirit will teach them personally all things (that the Spirit will do away with their confusion in the wake of what is about to happen, preparing them to go forth with the Gospel).

3. Yeshua promises that the Spirit will cause them to remember what Yeshua spoke personally to them, as a way of bringing about #2.

This is not a promise to the world and yet we hear people loudly claiming that the Holy Spirit will teach them all things whatsoever. And what is the fruit of that misappropriated promise? A Body of Believers who often attributed every flash of “inspiration” to be Holy Spirit inspired – resulting in doctrines based on nothing more than opinion and often flying directly in the face of what is written. I have encountered people who tell me that they know the true pronunciation of the Name because they heard it in a dream, but I know many people who have heard many pronunciations in dreams. I chalk it up not to a massive deception in everyone who hears the name spoken every way except “my way,” but instead to YHVH approaching us according to our understanding – resulting in our hearing, in the midst of the dream, the Name we expect to hear. I don’t discount the dream, but I do discount the hearing of a pronunciation in the dream to be authoritative or a sign of being particularly anointed.

So this is a short song I wrote about this phenomenon: “Holy Spirit, gonna teach me EVERYTHING, so I am right about EVERYTHING, and you don’t got the Spirit, because we DISAGREE.”

Yes, that was sort of rude, but when we claim that our understanding is according to the Spirit, and someone else claims the same thing while believing something else – well we are both using the “Holy Spirit Seal of Approval” to bolster our doctrines, and both cannot be right. I don’t know about you, but I have been pretty darned sure in the past that the “Spirit” was teaching me some stuff that ended up being vain imagination. I am hoping that it didn’t amount to blaspheming the Spirit – and nowadays I just don’t do that anymore. It isn’t the job of the Spirit to back me up in arguments.

So let’s go to I John 2

26 These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. 27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

28 Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. 29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.

People like to use this one to say that no one needs any teachers and that the anointing really will teach us all things. If that was John’s meaning, then why write at all? Why not send a letter saying, “Well, you know, just wanted to say hi because you already know everything.”

Look at verse 27 because here is the often overlooked point, “just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

I John is all about living together as a Body in love and respect and unity, and about not being drawn away after deceivers. It is about loving in the face of hatred and remaining faithful to the commandments and to the testimony of Messiah. Those are indeed the things that the Spirit endeavors to teach everyone whose heart is not hardened with pride.

It is not the job of the Holy Spirit to reveal the Scriptures to people who don’t read them, nor context to the people who don’t study it. It won’t teach Hebrew and Greek to people who aren’t taking classes (believe me, I’ve tried). The Holy Spirit teaches us how to develop the fruit of the Spirit which is to be had in learning to humbly abide in Him, with each other.

(Edit: A facebook friend brought up John 16 – is it about the Holy Spirit teaching us to obey the commandments – so let me cover that as well –

13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

Here is my response: Okay, so He is specifically speaking to eleven Torah observant Jews about the Spirit telling them what is to come, in context, and along with the next verse, will glorify Yeshua. In the previous verse, Yeshua declares that it will be things they could not bear to hear yet, and since we know that Yeshua taught Torah and preached the commandments, that this is going to be specifically limited to instructions to those disciples – teaching them things they cannot yet understand, things that are to come, and the glorification of Yeshua.)




Confronting Pseudo-Archaeological Memes Pt 2 – Are obelisks really… well, you know….

heliopolis obeliskDo I need to say it? Have you seen the memes linking ancient obelisks with fertility gods? That they are really phallic symbols and that the reason we have one in Washington D.C is because the Washington Monument represents the “Father” of our country?

Is there any truth to this at all?  Well, let’s look at the archaeological data and see.

First – let’s get the definition

Obelisk – a shaft of stone (usually granite) with a pointed top; word comes from Greek obeliskoi: which means little spits or meat skewers

Now what was the purpose of the obelisk? According to Egyptologist Barbara Watterson:

“Obelisks were cult symbols of the sun god (referring to Re), and date back to predynastic times when they were worshipped as models of the miraculous shaft of stone upon which the sun was to place itself upon first rising.” (The Gods of Ancient Egypt, 1984, pg 68)

Richard H. Wilkinson offers the following interesting tidbit about obelisks: Baboons, who were thought to greet the rising of the sun (hence their noisiness in the morning), are often featured on the pedestals of obelisks (Reading Egyptian Art, 1992, pg 73)

Re, better known to the western world as Ra, was probably the least sexually oriented god in the Egyptian pantheon. Whereas many others were incestuous, marrying their brothers and sisters, Re was a creator god who created both gods and people without any indication of fertility apart from his words, his sweat (used to create the other gods) and his tears (used to create humans). This is decidedly UNLIKE other Egyptian mythologies about the creation of humans – but we cannot take those stories into consideration in our discussion of obelisks, which were associated with the worship of Re, centered in Heliopolis.

There are currently twenty-eight surviving Egyptian Obelisks worldwide, and only eight of them are still in Egypt. None are associated in any way, shape or form, with any sort of fertility worship. Re was the sun god – he spent his days sailing across the sky in his sun barque and his nights sailing through the Netherworld in his night barque – no time or need for fertility.

I have a stack of books dealing with fertility gods and goddesses written by serious scholars, people with credentials who are subject to per review, and archaeologists and not one, not even one, mentions obelisks in reference to them.

Now, we do see obelisks in other ancient Near Eastern cultures in the form of historical monuments where histories and great victories were recorded – but still, they are not associated with any sort of fertility, they are just monuments. For example, the Black Obelisk of Shalmanesser III, an important witness to the Biblical King Jehu.

Black-obelisk

Look, I used to believe this one because it seems obvious and it was kind of funny. But the archaeology is clear – the obelisk is a sun needle, a resting place for the sun, and we cannot read more into it than that without sacrificing the truth. No real archaeologists are even debating these facts – despite many armchair theorists wanting to connect unconnected concepts for their own religious purposes. Not everything that is heathen is sexual in nature, and the obvious is quite often the product of our modern over-sexualized imagination and wishful thinking.

Always remember that anyone can make up an amusing meme or post something on the internet but that doesn’t make it true. Not only doesn’t it make it true, but like posting urban legends and spoof stories, it severely damages our witness as believers. It makes us laughing stocks – and when that happens, it causes the Name of our King YHVH to be brought to shame. If we can’t prove it, then we shouldn’t post it. The information is either there, or it isn’t – let’s do our homework.

(Note: Before anyone brings up the Asherah “pole” I would challenge them to (1) find a reference linking them to obelisks and (2) find any proof that an Asherah was actually a pole (they are merely called Asherah in scripture and we have no solid proof of what an Asherah was among archaeologists, only theories))