The Spiritual Ark of the Covenant

What made the Tent or Mishkan that the Hebrews had in the desert a sacred place? The answer is obviously the Ark of the Covenant. It was believed that the Ark was the Footstool of G-d and that the Stone Tablets, which represent his treaty or covenant with the Hebrews was under his feet. The true Ark holds the Stone Tablets, the Pot of Manna, the Rod of Aaron and at one point, Nehushtan, the Brazen Serpent. Likewise, when Solomon built a wonderious building, he built it to hold the Ark of the Covenant. Each successive Temple had an Ark. The rebuilt Temple after the Babylonian Exile had a new perfect copy of the Ark, but without the sacred objects inside. Likewise after Onias IV took the Ark to Egypt, Herod's Temple had another perfect copy of the Ark.

The Nasorean sect of Judaism along with our Enochian forbears and our Essenian teachers rejected the Temple of Herod as a true Temple. We awaited a perfect Temple that would come down from heaven just as promised by the Prophecy of Ezekiel. Instead the Nasoreans believed that a spiritual building existed consisting of the believers of Yisrael. They were living stones in this new Temple. Now the Nasoreans passed this idea on to the Christians and Peter and Paul both speak of this spiritual building and it has become the central focus of the Masonic Order.

However, just like the physical buildings, the spiritual Temple must have a spiritual Ark of the Covenant. We are told by the Early Church that the Apostles and Prophets are the foundation of the spiritual Temple. Ephesians 2:20. So we can assume with reasonable certainty that they are not the Spiritual Ark of the Covenant. Likewise, the Early Church believed that Yeshua was the Capstone, i.e., the Stone from which Sabbath was proclaimed high on top of the Temple. Ephesians 2:21. We can therefore state that he is not the Ark of the Covenant. So then we must ask, if this is a temple not made with hands and if a Jewish temple is not a Temple without an Ark, who or what is the Ark of the Covenant in this spiritual Temple?

There have been really good books written to explicate the character of the Ark of the Covenant and its place in the economy of spirituality within Ancient Judaism. I will not attempt in a short statement to replicate those excellent monographs. Instead I will note some relevant points about the Ark of the Covenant so that we might look closer for an institution or person who might embody those characteristics. First, this box was made of Acacia wood. Acacia is a symbol of eternal life and the symbol was no doubt received from the the Egyptians whose myth of Isis and Osiris mentions the nature of Acacia as a symbol of resurrection. Next, the box had the symbol of divine revelation, the Word made physical, the Stone Tablets. It held the Pot of Manna, a symbol of divine providence and promise of personal protection, for G-d gave the Manna to the children as bread in the desert. It held the Rod of Aaron which G-d used to prove that Aaron was appointed to the High Priesthood and is therefore a symbol of divine governance. Lastly, it held, until the time of King Hezekiah and his murderous repression of authentic Hebrew religion, the Brazen Serpent, Nehushtan. Nehushtan represented the willingness of G-d to constantly maintain peace between Himself and His People and to heal them not only of physical illness, but also of spiritual illnesses. Lastly, on top of the box was placed the Mercy Seat, or Ha Kapporet protected by the Archangels spreading their wings over the Bowl for the Blood. The HaKapporet is not only the symbol of sacrifice, but also forgiveness and mercy.

What, if anything, embodies all these elements into one concept? First, let us look at the concept of immortality and resurrection. As we can eliminate Yeshua as the Ark, as stated before, we must look to an institution to provide the eternal quality. I would propose that the Institution of the Three Pillars comprising a True Prophet, a True High Priest, and a True King is the only institution that can vie for this eternal quality. If we see the Three Pillars as the box itself, then we must look into the character of the offices that comprise the Three Pillars for the remainder of symbols. The Office of the Prophet represents G-d's continual Voice within the spiritual Temple. However, that office must be subject to Messianic Offices of the High Priest and King. They alone are given the final authority to validate the Voice that speaks through the Prophet. Together, the Three comprise the Embodying of the Word into Flesh. It is the certainty that Yeshua and the Holy Spirit will be with the Spiritual Temple until the end of the age that makes us certain that that Word will Be True when Embodied in this way. The King represents the symbol of Divine Providence. It devolves upon Him to make the Word effective in the World by doing what the Word requires. This Spiritual Temple, like the Jewish faith, is place of orthopraxy, right practice. Lastly, the High Priest, by his acts of Intercession and Sacrifice, in the form of the Kiddush ritual of bread and wine, exercises the Divine Governance with the King over the Spiritual Temple. The Fourth Pillar, unseen but always present, is the Holy Spirit, which filled the Temple and sanctified the Ark. It is the Holy Spirit that represents the Divine Intervention in the form of Healing, both of physical ailments and sin. Lastly, because of their willing discharge of their duties and the selfless acts of the True Officers of G-d, they become the repositories of the Blood of the Lamb which truly will bring reconciliation between G-d and Man. The influence then of the Spiritual Ark is felt throughout this spiritual building when people act in Prophetic, Kingly, and Priestly ways.

Tracing the Emanations

TRACING THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATION

EMANATIONS

There once was a man named Zarathustra. He was a priest of the indigenous religion of the high plains of the area of the world now known as Iran. He lived in a cave and spent much of his time contemplating. Now, his native religion like most religions of his time had a multitude of gods, all in charge of one or another of the various events, objects, and needs of his people. Zarathustra was an unusual indigenous priest because Zarathustra heard a Voice. That Voice and Zarathustra began to talk about the nature of good and evil. The result was the first great and revolutionary spirituality.

For Zarathustra, there were two G-ds, not many. He rejected the idea that there were gods of trees, water, rain, wind, etc. He said there was a Good G-d called Ahura Mazda and Bad G-d called Ahriman. He said that the Good G-d had six manifestations of His being and a Divine Spirit that came forth from His Being. The six manifestations were the active presence of the Good G-d in the various animal and vegetable kingdoms, but the Divine Spirit was in mankind and caused mankind to be capable of assisting the Good G-d.

Likewise, the Bad G-d had manifestations and helpers. These were called Daimons. They infused things and took possession of people.

In Zarathustra’s view, it was the duty of mankind to aid the Good G-d in his war with the Bad G-d to make sure that the Good G-d won. Mankind accomplished this task by right actions towards each other, right eating, right contemplation, right worship, and right living. The principal manifestation of this Good G-d was the purifying fire. Thus Zarathustra wanted Temples where the Sacred Fire was eternal. He believed that by contemplating the Divine in these sacred places one could understand how to live correctly. This concept of divine contemplation of the divine manifestations is the earliest spirituality in the Western Tradition and forms the basis of the Kabbalah. The Seven Manifestations approximate to the Seven Divine Emanations of the Little Face of G-d in the Tree of Life or Chaim Etz which are Mercy, Strength or Judgment, Beauty or Love, Victory, Glory, Foundation and Kingdom.

This well developed religion, Zoroastrianism, broke forth from the tiny kingdom of Zarathustra’s birth to become the unifying force that unified the Medes and Persians and in the sixth century before the common era; that force took Babylon and established the first great Persian Empire. The exiles from the tiny state of Yehudah (Judah) ran into this developed theology and began to contemplate how it fit into their understandings of life. One particular priest of Aaron, named Ezekiel, was sitting by a River called the Chebar one day and as he was contemplating there appeared a vision of a Divine Chariot holding a Throne upon which sat a Divine Being. Now this Divine Being seemed to Ezekiel to be very much like the Ancient of Days, the Good God Ahura Mazda, and he adopted the meditation practices of the Fire Worshippers. His goal was to recreate that Divine Communion that he felt when he saw his Vision of the Chariot or Merkabah.

The earliest stratum of Western Tradition, the contemplation of the Sephiroth or Manifestations of G-d now received an additional strata involving the contemplation of the Divine Being of G-d and his Holy Throne. When the Priesthood returned to Yisrael to rebuild the Temple, they took with them a commitment to right actions based upon the Torah, right eating based upon the kosher law, right contemplation based upon the contemplation of the Emanations of G-d and His Holy Throne, right worship which was now directed to the importance of the intent of the giver, and right living based upon the Torah’s ethical laws. They were certain that there was just one G-d, not even two, and they had become aware of three Dark Angels, one who was Evil, one who ruled the Daimons or Demons, and one who ruled the Evil Spirits. They even took on Persian and Babylonian names: Ahriman was the Shaitan, the Devil; Ba’al Zebul was the Lord of Flies or Demons; and Ashmodai or Ruler of the High Fire was the Lord of Evil Spirits.

The basic concepts of right action; right eating; right devotion, the private face of religion; right worship, the public face of religion; and right living, the correct way of treating the world became the basis of all Jewish spirituality. The principles of meditation and contemplation learned in Babylon became the necessary tool for all future spiritual growth. The concept of the ongoing war between Good and Evil became the raison d’etre for all future religion. No longer was righteousness limited to hospitality to strangers, widows and orphans. It had expanded to an entire philosophy of a good life.

TWO JUDAISMS

Margaret Barker in her book The Great Angel: The Study of Israel’s Second G-d puts forth a well developed theory on the nature of the pre-Josiah religion of Israel. She argues persuasively that the reason that the Decalogue is phrased -- You shalt not have any other gods beside me – is to denote that there were other g-ds, but that the national god of Israel was to be YHVH. The Yahwist recognized that El Shaddai, the G-d of the Mountain, the War G-d of the Cana’anites was the same G-d as YHVH. Now the Yahwist also recognized that there was a High G-d, El Elyon, which means G-d the Most High, who was the Father of the G-ds. He realized that El Shaddai was one of nine children of this G-d, including Ba’al Moloch, Astarte, and others. The Hebrew faith believed that this High G-d worked entirely through their G-d YHVH.

This idea of a Great G-d and a lesser G-d is further confused by the appearance in Exodus 23:20 of an Angel who took the form of fire and smoke and who could forgive sins. The second G-d was now seen as this Archangel and the first G-d was seen as the distant YHVH, the father of the G-ds. Slowly, but surely, the simple people called “ha am ha eretz” in Hebrew and meaning the rural or as the Romans would say, paganus, developed a rich theology based upon worshipping El Shaddai on mountains and worshipping Astarte as a pillar in the Temple yard.

All of this popular religion came into conflict with King Josiah who began what is known as the Josiac reform, which culminated in the Deuteronomic additions to the Scriptures. Josiah set out to eradicate the influences of the popular religion from the official religion of Israel. For two centuries or more, a war waged between the popular religion and the official religion resulting finally in Hezekiah’s suppression of all places of worship other than the Temple in Jerusalem and his destruction of Nehustan, the Brazen Serpent, because it was being worshipped. The war was not over until the Captivity.

The official religion went with the High Priest and the Heads of the Courses to Babylon and there the religion was changed by the orthodox leaders and by association with another rational religion, Zoroastrianism. The popular religion now was being organized by the country priests into a somewhat formal religion that included new alternative places of worship in the countryside.

When the Ezra the Scribe and Zerubbabel the Prince returned to Yehudah, the brought with them this new Priestly Judaism. They found that their influence was limited to just Jerusalem and it environs. Another Judaism was strong in what had been Israel and in the countryside. The tension continued for over two centuries between these two Judaisms until in the period around 300 BCE a book was written – 1 Enoch. Its impact upon the popular religion was dramatic. Enoch made no mention of the Temple or the Torah. It rather referred to 24 golden tablets in heaven upon which all truth was written. This book put forth a powerful eschatology and appealed directly to a more ancient, more perfect time. Enochian Judaism took over and reformed the popular religion and from it came forth two new Judaisms, Farsiism and Nasoreanism.

Farsiism took what was known from Enochian Judaism and added to it the rich spirituality obtained from Zoroastrianism during the captivity. Farsiism contributed a love for the Torah as its guiding principle. Farsiism (known also as Phariseeism) created the office of Rabbi, or spiritual guide. Farsiism while not rejecting the Temple wanted to reform the Official Religion so that it had a much more practical and pervasive effect on the worshipper.

Nasoreanism really was started when a High Priest, his name is unknown, was cast out of office by the Maccabeans under Jonathan. Antiochus V Epiphanes was defeated by the Maccabean revolt in 168 BCE and a new High Priest was installed. His name has not survived and is believed to have been erased purposefully by his opponents. He ruled from 168 BCE until 152 BCE when he was deposed by the Maccabeans. This High Priest took a number of scholars with him into the desert and there they established a holy life of contemplation and strict observance. They were scholars and priests and they loved books. From them was formed an academy of like minded men called the Essenes. They were the remnant of the Hasidim who had aided the Maccabeans in throwing out the Syrians.

The Essenes believed that a strict obedience to the Torah was necessary and so they kept themselves separated from those that did not maintain a strict observance. They taught that the Temple in Jerusalem governed by the Hasmonean High Priests of the family of Maccabi was a corrupt place. They believed that the true Temple would be one that descended from Heaven like the Temple described in Ezekiel. Until that time, they believed that they constituted the Temple on Earth, a living building, composed of true believers. Those that because of their circumstances could not join in this strict life lived instead in closed communities, in the cities and in the countryside. They looked to the Essenes for spiritual direction and authority. Because they were separated from the surrounding peoples, they were called Nasori or separated ones. It is from them that the name Nasorean comes.

There were some of the Essenes and many Nasoreans with them who believed that it was not sufficient to merely be separated from the surrounding people, but in addition they must free the Holy Land from the scourge of the Romans occupiers. From 37 BCE until 135 CE, these people called the Zealotes, formed an army allied with the Nasoreans that controlled the countryside and had significant power in the cities. They were financed by collections for protection and by marauding the caravans that came along the Via Maris and on the road to Jerusalem from the sea. A particularly violent branch of the Zealotes were the Sicarii, named for their knives, who practiced the art of assassination.

The theologians of the Essene Order believed in a form of government that involved Three Pillars and 12 Elders and a Mebakker. It was believed that ultimately the Meshiach would appear together with a Priest and a King and a Prophet. One family, the Davidic family would be the source of these three Meshiachot. A particular Priest, the son of the Onian High Priest, Zechariah, became known for his strict observance of the Torah. He was said to have had miraculous events surround his birth and his mother and he had fled to the desert community of Qumran after his father, the High Priest, was murdered in the Temple by Herod the King. This child, Yochannan, was believed by many to be the High Priestly Meshiach that would fulfill that part of the prophecy. The Essenes began looking at two other young men, a Yeshua ben David and a Yakov ben David, as possibly the other two Pillars that they expected.

In 26 CE, Yochannan was murdered by Herod Antipas. Yeshua ben David went into the desert and when he returned he declared that he was the long awaited Meshiach of Melchizedek, the Priest-King of Salem, who had returned to his people. Nasoreanism quickly began to reorganize around those who supported Yeshua and those who did not. Finally, in 28 CE, Yeshua and the Zealotes decided to attack the Temple. They cast out the money changers and the official priests and levites and took control of the Temple. They held it for two weeks and then the Romans came in with battering rams and destroyed one of the Towers of the wall around the Temple and charged in. After they finished, ten thousand priests and worshippers were dead and Yeshua and his twelve disciples had escaped. Others were not so lucky, such as Judas Barabbas and Dismas. Seven days later, Yeshua was arrested for blasphemy in the Garden of Gethsemane and taken before the High Priest Annas. Unsuccessful in his charge of blasphemy, Annas took Yeshua to Pilate and charged him with treason and sedition. Pilate found him guilty and sentenced him to crucifixion. We know what happened next.

The risen Yeshua met first with Ya'akov, his half brother. Then with Peter and the Twelve. Then with the 500 members who attested to his resurrection. Because of this appearance to Ya'akov, the 120 members of the community that received the anointment of the Holy Spirit elected Ya'akov to be the Mebakker of Jerusalem, the head of the revised Nasorean movement, in 28 C.E. In the next 34 years, Ya’akov transformed the Essene-Nasorean movement into the most powerful force in Judaism and successfully challenged the Farsi for supremacy. In addition, Ya’akov began to formulate with the help of Essene scholars the most important of the philosophical concepts of Nasoreanism, Sefer Yetzirah, Bahir, and Zohar. These ideas were not yet sufficiently gelled nor in a proper form for writing but they were increasingly well known in the more learned circles of Nasoreanism.

In 62 CE, Ya’akov was executed by the High Priest during an interregnum period between procurators. Simon, the half brother of Yeshua, by Clopas his uncle and Mary his mother, became High Priest and Mebakker or Bishop of the Nasorean movement. Six years later, Simon fled the city of Jerusalem and moved the center of the faith to Pella in the Decapolis. The country was ravaged by the first Jewish Revolt and Jerusalem was destroyed. During the years that followed, Simon wrote the Didache, formulated the Sefer Yetzirah, organized the writing of the Bahir and Zohar, evangelized the countryside and turned Nasoreanism into a powerful religious force of over one million people. He was executed just before the Second Jewish Revolt. He was succeeded by an extremely aged Judas Thomas, another half brother of Yeshua by his uncle Clopas and his mother Mary. At the end of the second Jewish Revolt, the Romans were incited to believe that the Nasoreans had inspired the revolt by Rabbi Akiva. An estimated 980,000 Nasoreans were massacred by the Romans. The twenty thousand who escaped went further into Syria and many migrated to Cteisiphon-Seleucis and to Babylon.

One Judaism went under ground. Another collaborated with the Romans and became the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.

PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS

In the second century BCE, there was a great Jewish philosopher named Philo. Margaret Barker in her Great Angel, before cited, says, that contrary to popular opinion Philo was not trying to bring Platonic thought into Judaism, but rather, was trying to present Jewish thought in a way that could be understood by Platonists. His works talked at considerable length about the First Principle, the True G-d. The idea of a true G-d, an Ain Sof, or Endless Being, was not unique to Philo. The Platonists had talked about it, but so had the Zoroastrians. He was not convinced that the Demiurge of the Platonists was bad. He saw the Demiurge as the Emanation to Mankind from the Zoroastrian point of view. He understood the underpinnings of Kabbalistic thought and recognized in the Demiurge, the First Adam, the Creator. He knew that the Light continued to descend but he was not clear on how that happened, but he called it the Holy Spirit.

Likewise, the Nasoreans believed in this Demiurge. They picked up the term that Philo used to describe it – Logos – Word or Idea. The Nasoreans had a similar concept called Dabir – Word or Idea. When Ya’akov began to contemplate all that had happened from 20 C.E. until 28 C.E., he began to understand the Jewish scriptures in a new way. Ya’akov was striving to answer the ultimate question of the believers, “Who do you say that I am?” Yochannan the Prophet begins to formulate the answer and as Ya’akov’s close associate they began to theologize their thoughts. 1 John 1:5 gives the most important theological clue; it says: God is Light. The Nasoreans already understood that to mean Ain Sof is G-d. The ancient hymn attached to Yochannan’s Gospel expresses the theology of Ya’akov and Yochannan:

In the beginning was the Dabir, and the Dabir was with G-d.

For them it was self-evident that the Idea pre-existed with the Ain Sof and within Ain Sof just as the Zohar states.

And the Dabir was G-d.

Here Ya’akov and Yochannan contemplate the meaning of the Sefer Yetzirah when it says:

Mishnah Tet: Ten Sefiroth of nothing, one Spirit, living angels, blessed from blessed is the Name of He, for all worlds. Voice, Spirit, and Speech, this is the Holy Spirit.

Mishnah Yodh: Two, Spirit from Spirit. He engraved and hewed in her twenty-two letters of foundation, three mothers, seven doubles, twelve singles, and Spirit is one of them.
The Two Pillars understand the Nothing as Ain Sof. They understand the One Spirit as the Archangel of the Presence, the Demiurge or Dabir. When it says Blessed from Blessed is the Name of He, they think that means that the Dabir, the Voice, emanated from the Nothing, Ain Soph. They are struggling with the cosmology of the beginning.
He was in the beginning with G-d. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.
Here Ya’akov and Yochannan see the truth. The Dabir emanates from G-d and the Dabir creates all things. The Colossian author reiterates this truth at Col. 1:15 et seq.
These ideas did not die when the Nasoreans went underground. Others were still in contact with them. One man about 65 years later begins to hear about these things from his Hebrew teacher and from secret Nasoreans he met. Origen, the great church father finally sets forth the ideas again and formulates the idea of a Trinity. But this Trinity is not like the triangle of the Nicenes. It is like the Trinity of Kabbalah. The Light is G-d. He emanates the Son who emanates the Holy Spirit. Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar say that Ain Sof sent forth the First Ray, the Dabir, if you please, and it created the Universe. Then from the Dabir as Kether, the Crown descends Chochmah or in Greek Sancta Sophia. Sancta Sophia has been long associated with the Holy Spirit. For Origen, Yeshua is not divine; the Logos is divine. Only when Yeshua is resurrected does he put on Divinity. Likewise, the Nasoreans say that the Archangel is the King of the Angels, YHVH. Only when Yeshua arises does he put on the Kingship and High Priesthood that allows him to be the Only Intercessor between G-d and Man.
ARIUS
St. Lucian of Antioch was a student of Origen and the headmaster of an Academy in Antioch, the ancient center of Christianity in the early third century. One of his students was Arius. Lucian taught faithfully the teachings of his teacher Origen and Arius listened well.
Arius was a brilliant student but without any particular flair for original thought. He took refuge in the particularization of theories. Arius was not able to find a way out of the conundrum that was created by Origenian thought and the Western Church’s insistence upon the consubstantial character of the being of Jesus. Arius taught that G-d the Father and the Son were not co-eternal because the pre-existent Jesus was a divine being but nonetheless had a beginning. The Father had no such beginning but was forever. Therefore the Father was by nature superior to the Son and the Son was subordinated to the Father. Now this idea was well supported by all of Eastern Christian tradition as has been shown. But those who were in Alexandria for political reasons took exception with these ideas and the rift between Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and Arius became increasingly tied up with the general fight between the Bishops of the West and the Bishops of the East. The Eastern Church supported tradition. The Western Church knew nothing of tradition.
By the end of this controversy, emanationism was dead among the Christians. It still lived on in the secret doctrine of the Kabbalah and reasserted itself in 16th century England among those of the Royal Academy including Sir Isaac Newton.
What I have tried to do in this essay is trace the history of the doctrine of emanations from its ancient roots in Iran to its modern presence in the Kabbalah and the renewed Arianism of the Nasoreans and the Arian Catholics.

Homosexuality In Scripture

The easiest statement about homosexuality in scripture is it does not mention it. However, because homophobic peoples have read into scripture what they wanted for more than twenty centuries, it would be disingenuous to ignore the homophobic view without comment. There is nothing described in scripture which deals with the habit of 31 species including man to revert to same-sex sexual expression when there is overpopulation. Such an event did not happen in scriptural times and therefore was never commented on. That said, let us look at several passages first in the Hebrew scriptures and then in the Pauline writings.

THE NOACH STORY

Genesis 9:22 records these words: “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness, and he told his two brothers outside about it.” According to the Torah, the reason that Hamite people were eternally to be slaves was because of this act. The act was more than just a casual glance, it was a lust for one’s father. Hebrew theology considered incest a serious sexual sin. Such an opinion was not supported among the Egyptians and the Ethiopians who practiced marriage of a father with his daughter and sexual activity between brothers as in the case of Amenhotep IV and his two brothers, Semekharah and Tutankhamen. This statement therefore is seen as a political one on the third level of scripture called Dresh because this statement was part of an ongoing story justifying the separation of the Hebrew people from the Egyptians.

SODOM

Genesis 19:4-9 tells the story of the accosting of the angels sent to observe the wickedness of the town. Lot makes a point of arguing that hospitality forbids the misuse of strangers; he says, “But don’t do anything to these men, for you know that they have come under the shelter of my roof.” He claims that these men are guests and that to harm them is to violate the law of hospitality. Lot is willing to let the men of Sodom rape his daughters, but not to violate his hospitality. This is not a story of homosexuality. It is a story of the breach of the law of hospitality. When Jesus sent out disciples to the surrounding towns in Judea, he said that the disciples were to seek hospitality and if they were not given hospitality, it would go worse for those towns than on Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment. Thus, we see that Jesus thought the story was about hospitality.

LEVITICUS 18

Leviticus 18: 21-22 are part of the holiness code. It can be argued that the holiness code is an ideal, not an actual law in practice. It goes from Chapter 16 through 20 and sets forth a number of laws that are recognized in the failure to do them more than in doing them. Leviticus 18:21 talks about a particularly odious act; it says, “You shall not offer your seed to be immolated to Molech, thus profaning the name of your G-d. I am the Lord.” While scholars are not absolutely certain as to what this act refers to, it most likely refers to the offering of a new-born child as a sacrifice to the g-d Molech. It was a detestable attack on name of YHVH because up until circumcision and the repurchase of the first born, the child belongs to YHVH and to offer it to another g-d profanes the Name. Interestingly enough, it says nothing about offering a human sacrifice to YHVH. But we assume that issue was dealt with in the Akeda story during the sacrifice of Yitzak.
Immediately following this law is another which says: “You shall not lie with a zakar as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.” The word “zakar” means male, but it normally means a very young male. Genesis says that G-d created man, young male and young female. Leviticus 12:2 speaks of the child before circumcision as zakar. Scripture calls the sacrificial animal a zakar. The word for man is “ish” and for mankind is “adam” and for the male sex is “enosh”. So why did the divine writer use the word “zakar” here. When read in context, the passage forbids pederasty. It goes along with detestable acts to small children mentioned in the previous passage. Even Strong’s makes a point of saying that zakar means a male child. Only prejudice would allow the translation to be as it is. For the correct translation should be, “You shall not lie with a small male child as you would with a woman.”
The Didache, the earliest document of the followers of Jesus, echoes this interpretation. It outlaws a number of things mentioned in the Holiness Code and specifically outlaws pederasty. There is no mention of homosexuality in Didache.

I Corinthians 6

Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 sets forth in verse 9 a group of people who are damned by nature. He says: “Be not led astray. Not fornicators (pornoi), nor idolators (eidololatrai) nor adulterers (moichoi) nor abusers (malakoi) nor homosexuals (arsenokoitai) nor thieves (kleptai) nor covetous ones (pleonektai) nor drunkards (methusoi) nor revilers (loidoroi) nor plunderers (arpages) shall inherit the kingdom of g-d.” Besides the obvious fact that most people in the world are not going to inherit the kingdom of g-d because they are people who are pornoi (worshippers through sex of foreign g-ds, namely, the god lust), idolators who worship statues, thieves, alcoholics, and covetous ones and no one believes that is true, let us look at what is said. Normally malakoi has been translated as catamites. Here it is translated as abusers. The word means soft in the sense of clothing is soft or the persons character is weak. It has nothing to do with sex. Arsenokoites literally means bed man, male prostitute. In translating it as homosexual, it completely misses the boat. However, 2000 years of prejudice and politics have led to this translation. It is false. In fact in his book, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, Professor Boswell demolishes the claim that the church has always been opposed to homosexuality. The passage does condemn alcoholics, sorry AA, and those who keep up with the Jones. But it does not condemn homosexuality.

Romans 1

Paul argues in Romans that because G-d’s power is manifest in nature, people who do not believe “became vain in their reasoning and their senseless minds were darkened.” He says that this led to idolatry. He then says that they exchanged the truth of G-d for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. It seems as if Paul is arguing that idol worship and narcissism lead inevitable to a certain lifestyle. Then Paul shows his prejudice and makes medical and psychological statements which we know now are false. He says, “Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.” Romans 26-27. While I do not accord this passage as being even canonical as I reject all of Paul as relevant to godliness, he seems to say that homosexual acts are unnatural. Such a statement is contrary to fact. Thirty one species have their males turn toward each other when the species becomes overpopulated. It is a serious problem in America with sheep and ducks as their overpopulation is now causing widespread same-sex activity and farmers do not want same-sex loving ducks and sheep. It is not unnatural for men to have sex with men or to have lustful thoughts for each other. Sex between males can be as beautiful as sex between a man and a woman. Only the misguided and sexually stunted character of the author of these words is represented in these statements and do not accurately represent G-d’s opinion. Homosexuals are as spiritually faithful and as committed to true religion as heterosexuals and to claim that it is false belief that causes homosexuality is silly if not openly slanderous. These slanderous and false words not withstanding, Paul then accuses all of the Church of Rome of these same acts. Romans 2:1.

In this discussion of homosexuality in Scripture, we need to turn to positive passages which seem to accept homosexuality.

RUTH AND NAOMI

Ruth is a story about two women: a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law who fell in love with each other and yet wanted to have children for the dead son and husband of the two. Ruth loves Naomi so much that she makes a statement which I have heard in many marriage vows:

“Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you!” says Ruth. Ruth 1:16, “for wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your G-d my G-d. Wherever you die I will die, and there be buried.” 1:16-17.

If a woman said these words to me, I would know that I am married. But in this case, two women were taking these vows. G-d blessed this union so much that he sent Boaz to take both of the women in and from Ruth came a grandson who was David Bar Jesse, King of Israel.

DAVID AND JONATHAN

I doubt that there is any more beautiful love story than the two bisexuals, David and Jonathan. David was Jonathan’s brother-in-law. 1 Samuel 18:1 says, “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” We often speak of marriage in the terms of the two becoming one. Here it says that David and Jonathan souls were enrapped so that they were knit together and Jonathan loved David as much as himself. Again when David flees from the Court of Saul, Jonathan comes to him and David says this to Jonathan: “Therefore thou shalt deal kindly with thy servant; for thou hast brought thy servant into a covenant of the LORD with thee….” 1 Samuel 20:8. This covenant or compact is called in Hebrew, a ketubah, or marriage contract. Lastly, we know the depth of that love when David says of Jonathan, “More precious have I held love for you than love for women.” 2 Samuel 1:26. It is significant that the word for love here is feminine and implies a love that is sexual with one party, Jonathan, playing the feminine part. Yet, it is this love, not the illicit love with Bathsheba, that is remembered as so beautiful throughout history.

The Centurion and His Servant

We are told in Matthew 8:5 about a centurion who approaches Jesus and says that his servant has a palsy and is very ill at home. Jesus says he will come to aid the servant and the centurion says he has faith that Jesus can heal him from afar as the Centurion is not worthy to have Jesus under his roof. In Matthew, the servant is called a “pais”, that is a common servant that one beats and uses for ones purposes. It is truly strange that the Centurion would ask Jesus to heal a common servant and debase himself by begging it of Jews. However, when Luke speaks of the event we learn more. Luke says, “A certain Centurion’s servant, who was dear to him, was sick and ready to die.” Luke 7:2. The word that is used for dear is “entimos” and is the word from which we get intimate. It means that there was a sexual relationship between the Centurion and the slave and that he loved his slave. Jesus certainly understood the fact that we had a forced master-servant relationship which had become one of love and affection. It was between two men and yet he did not care about that. He healed the slave from afar. Would he have done that if the slave was to continue in a drudgery? Probably not. But the slave was loved, he felt the Centurion’s love and approved of it, healing his lover.

It would not be right to finish this discussion of relationships without talking about Jesus and Lazarus.

JESUS AND LAZARUS

The gospels tell us that Jesus loved three people in a special way. They were Mary of Bethany, probably his wife, Martha, her sister, and Lazarus, their brother. When Lazarus died, the scripture says, “Jesus wept.” There was much to weep about in that time, but Jesus only weeps about Lazarus’ death. In order to understand this relationship better though, we have to look at a document now widely accepted as truthful and authentic, called the Secret Gospel of Mark. The words of Mark in the Secret Gospel were ordered excised from the Gospel of Mark by Clement of Alexandria at the end of the second century. The story is included in John 11. However, we know how it would have looked. At the end of the story, the Secret Gospel says:

“And they come into Bethany, and a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’ But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of G-d.”

This passage was excised because the Carpocratians were saying that it showed that Jesus had a homosexual relationship with the boy. Clement of Alexandria, unwilling to consider such an event, orders the passage excised and it was forever. The fact remains that Jesus probably had a sexual relationship with a boy that he loved. The question might arise why John Mark would include such an overt statement in his gospel. The answer may lie elsewhere.

PAUL AND MARK

John Mark is an interesting person in the Christian writings. He was a Nasorean. His mother was a prominent Nasorean and it was in her home that the Jerusalem Qahal met for a while. Acts 12:12. Her brother, who was also wealthy, was Joseph Barnabas and was John Mark’s uncle. Mark’s gospel includes a curious statement that many scholars think is his autograph; he says that a certain young man was in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus wearing nothing but a linen cloth. It sounds amazingly like Lazarus in the story above, but most scholars think the young man was John Mark himself because no one else mentions the event. The Jerusalem Qahal sent Barnabas and John Mark to be with Paul, while he was preaching, concerned that he was getting out of hand and preaching ideas contrary to the true teaching of Jesus.

Paul had some infirmity that was upsetting to many people. He constantly speaks of this infirmity but never identifies it. John Mark must have been quite a handsome young man, because Paul chooses him as his secretary. They get along for some time and things proceed on Paul’s mission. However, for some reason John Mark leaves Paul and Barnabas at Pamphylia. Acts 13:13. The separation of Mark and Paul must not have been a harmonious act because in Acts 15:37-38, Barnabas wants to go and get John Mark to go with them on a return trip to the churches that they had originally visited, but Paul still upset with John Mark refused and Barnabas and Paul also split up. What ever the reason of the separation, it does not affect Mark’s standing in the church because tradition tells us that Mark went with Peter to Alexandria in Egypt and acted as Peter’s secretary there. When Peter left Alexandria for Rome, Mark was left in Alexandria as the Bishop. After the separation of Paul and John Mark, Paul takes up with another young man named Timothy. Acts 16:3. While there is no direct evidence of Paul’s proclivities, in the gay world, there are many like him who while practicing homosexuality speak viciously against any one like themselves. The Jim Bakkers and Ted Haggards of the world are numerous. The evidence seems to support the idea that both Jesus and Paul might have had a sexual relationship with John Mark and Paul’s homosexuality was the infirmity that people had to put up with as he was seducing their sons. Certainly, if we remove the names and tell the story today, most people would have no difficulty in saying something was going on.

In conclusion, just as today there are many homosexuals, bisexuals, and pederasts in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, so there were throughout scriptural history. Far from condemning the activities of homosexuals, up until some 1,000 years ago, those activities were celebrated as normal and natural forms of love. There is nothing in scripture that can be quoted that definitively proves that homosexual love is forbidden and there is much in scripture to support the idea that G-d loves homosexuals.

Clothes of Skin

There are two major theories on the nature of the body-mind-spirit which we call human. One of those theories argues that the body, mind, and spirit are all part of the same organism and cannot be separated into pieces. Those of a religious bent argue that the body when it dies remains united in the grave to the mind and spirit. The more extreme argue that existence is terminated with death and there is nothing beyond. To these people, of course, the anecdotal evidence presented by those who were clinically dead and yet arose are the results of synaptical and chemical events in the brain. Of course, these people do not explain how a brain with no activity measurable can have synaptical or chemical reactions. The other difficulty with their position is the almost universal belief in ghosts that goes back many thousands years, much farther than civilization itself. They argue that there are no ghosts and so they simply refuse to deal with these phenomena.

The other main theory suggests that the spirit is pre-existing and is put into the body which holds it like a container and from the interaction of the spirit with the body a mind arises with thoughts and ideas and goals. This theory presupposes death to be a release of the spirit from the body and suggests that the spirit waits somewhere for final disposition. These people believe in ghosts. These people sometimes believe that the spirit is reincarnated in another body and lives again, at least so is the belief of 1/3 of the world or more.

I want to discuss two scriptural passages very early in the scriptural history. Both come from the earliest portions of Bereshit (Genesis). In order to understand them, one must understand some words that will appear. First, we have the word "nephesh" which mean soul in Hebrew. Next, we have the word "ruach" which can mean wind or spirit in Hebrew. Lastly, we have the word "neshamah" which breath in Hebrew.

The first passage says: "And YHVH of the G-ds moulded Adam, the man, from the clay of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the neshamah (breath) of life, and Adam became a living soul (nephesh)." Gen. 2:7.

This passage says that the body is completely separated from the soul and that that separation can only become united when a neshamah enters into the body.

The second passage says: "Unto Adam also unto his wife did YHVH of the G-ds make garments of skin and clothed them." Gen. 3:21.

This passage implies that before this time Adam and his wife were spirits without bodies and that it was only after the sinfulness in the garden that YHVH gave them bodies.

The position then of scripture seems to be that the spirit, the mind, and the body are all separate portions of what makes a man a man. A third passage puts it well.

"Then shall the mud return to the earth as it was and the spirit (ruach) shall return unto the G-ds whom gave it." Eccl. 12:7.

This passage clearly separates the body and spirit and says clearly the spirit was placed in the body by the G-ds. So we are left with a truth so profound that it changes our entire understanding of life.

First, we can conclude that the body is an Ark which holds the Neshamah, the Ruach, and the Nephesh. Each of these entities is unique. The Zohar suggests that the body is completely separated from the mind and spirit, but it goes further and suggests that the relationship between these three entites is like a candle's flame. A candles flame has a blue color at the base. That color represents the nephesh the living soul. All animals have this base. Resting as if on a throne on top of the color blue is a white color. The white color is like the Ruach, the spirit which rests on the nephesh and is the repository of the mind. At the top of the flame is a golden yellow. This color is like the Neshamah which was breathed into man, came from G-d and returns to G-d with the Ruach at the end of life.

As a further clarification, consciousness scientists are beginning to suspect that the mind is not so much a part of the body as attached to the body. Scripture adds some interesting words to that question as well, for its says: "Or ever the silver cord be loosed ..." Eccl. 12:6 The scripture suggests that there is a silver cord of energy that keeps the ruach attached to the body and this nephesh-ruach-neshamah connection. The ruach can go out from the body, when we sleep or meditate or pray. It remains attached to the body so long as the silver cord, that energy tether, is not broken. So that explains the idea of bilocation, of spirit travel, of remote viewing etc. One must remember that silver is very maleable and can be stretched to unimaginable lengths. Likewise, one can stretch this cord for as much as 12,500 miles and may be further.

Having shown you the position of Scripture on this subject, I can say to you that the Pharisee position that sees the body-mind-spirit as one is not supported by scripture, as usual, and in fact, the opposing view of the Kabbalists is correct.

Nasorean Orthodox Qahal Belief Statement

We believe in One G-d who was before all things and is the Endless Light. 1 John 1:5. The ancients called him simply El or El Elyon or El Shaddai. He was the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Exodus 6:2.

We believe in One Lord, the Divine Logos, formed from the First Ray, before the beginning in a perfect vacuum. We believe that He Created first the Elohim, the Archangels of the Presence, who are seven in number and who ruled over 63 other Elohim, who with the original seven were the Sons of G-d assigned to the Seventy Nations. Deuteronomy 32:8.We believe that He with all the Elohim created the Heavens and the Earth. Gen. 1:1We believe that one of His names is YHVH.

We believe that the One Lord allowed his Ruach to be incarnated into seven men so that he could show to mankind how to be perfected. These men were Enoch, Noach, Melchizedek, Yoshua bar Nun, Shlomoh ha Melech, Yeshua ha Cohen, and Yeshua bar Maryam. These men were purely human, with a Divine Ruach, a human Nephesh, and a human Neshamah.

We believe that the First Ray was so intense and perfect that it exists even today and continues to descend from G-d to mankind through the intercession of the One Lord, YHVH, and is the Presence of the Divine on Earth. She is called Holy Wisdom and Holy Spirit.

We believe that the Torah was given on Mount Horeb to Moshe by YHVH. We believe that YHVH inscribed the Mitzvoth of the Torah on the tablets, front and back, with His own finger, and that every word of the Mitzvoth of the Torah is divinely inspired. These Mitzvoth alone are altogether Divinely inspired having been written by the finger of YHVH.

We believe that the Holy Scriptures consists of those books in the Septuagint translation of the Bible, Enoch 1, 2, and 3, Jubilees, the book that has been called the Coming of Melchizedek, the book that has been called the Messianic Apocryphon, the Didache, the Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Thomas, the Book called the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letter of James, the three letters of John, and Jude. We believe that these books have four levels of meaning, Peshat, Remez, Dresh, and Sod, and that when one considers all four levels of meaning they are True, but no single meaning is true on its face.

We believe that all writings are inspired by the Holy Spirit, but not all of the same value for reproof, correction and training in holiness.

We believe that Yeshua bar Maryam had the same Ruach as the previous six Meshiachot and that this Divine Soul descended upon him at his mikveh in the River Jordan by Yochannan. We believe that He was Melchizedek returned and was truly the High Priest of G-d in the Order of Melchizedek and the King of Jerusalem. We believe that He came to declare once and for all that the Bloody Sacrifice was ended and the Sacrifice of Melchizedek was restored. We believe that He reinstituted the Sacrifice of Melchizedek at the Seder Meal celebrated in accordance with the Nasorean laws and at the critical moments in the Seder in which the bread is broken and also when the wine blessed for the third cup, the Cup of Redemption, He declared the Bloody Sacrifice ended by saying: “This is my Body and this is the Cup of My Blood which will be shed in Anamnesin of Me” signifying that he rejected the Bloody Sacrifice completely and restored the Sacrifice of Melchizedek. Yeshua, being the most perfect of the incarnations of YHVH, knew that His blood would be sufficient to change the sacrifice and restore the True Sacrifice to the world. When his hands and feet were pierced during his crucifixion, the payment was made for the restoration of the Melchizedekan Sacrifice. At his death, the Veil of the False Temple was torn in half and the Spirit of G-d left the False Temple forever.

We believe that upon Yeshua’s ascent to heaven he again presided as High Priest and King of the Heavens and brought his own blood as the Sacrifice sufficient to restore nature to the true sacrifice of Bread and Wine.

We believe that Yeshua sends down his Body and Blood for our Kiddush on Friday Night and at the other services of the Sabbaths and that it is sufficient to cleanse the repentant soul of any sin not unto death. 1 John 5:16. We further believe that after one has been mikvehed into the community, baptized in the holy spirit, made aware of the gracious gifts, become a full member of the community and then sins a sin unto death, that one is damned forever and has no hope. There is no second forgiveness. Hebrews 6:4-6.

We believe that in order to join with the Yahad a man must be circumcised and we reject the so-called compromise of Jerusalem as an invention of Luke and Paul.

We believe that the laws governing what we are to eat are still fully in effect.

We believe that all the Mitzvoth of Torah are binding on the community.

We believe that the little ones new to the faith must be allowed to carry as much of the burden as they can, but that the stronger must carry all the burden.

We believe that the Holy Spirit has instituted certain gifts on mankind from the beginning and that all those gifts are fully functional today. We believe that some are called to gifts of offices as set forth in the Didache. We believe that no one should be made a full member of the community until they demonstrate at least one of those gifts that were normative in the early community that followed Yeshua and which are included in the longer ending of the so-called Gospel of Mark. We believe that no person should be made an elder in the community until they have walked through the Gate of Righteousness, taken the cross of Yeshua upon their back, climbed Jacob’s Ladder to the fifth rung, and demonstrated all the elementary gifts of speaking in tongues, healing, exorcism, drinking poison, and picking up serpents when sent in front of them by G-d. It is clear that G-d may call both men and women to leadership in a community and any other office, but as Deborah says, a woman will only be called when there is no man to do the work.

We believe that at some time the Meshiach of David will come and establish a glorious kingdom on earth. We believe that no one knows the time or place that such an event will occur. We deny that Yeshua was that person or that He will return and declare that the claim that he would return was an invention of Paul and Luke.

We believe in the physical resurrection of the dead at the end of time. We believe that each of us will be reincarnated six or seven times depending on whether we come from the line of YHVH or the line of the Holy Spirit. We believe that we will be impelled to greater holiness at each reincarnation. We believe that some will be admitted into the Kingdom of Heaven but that others will choose the darkness, heat and absence from G-d in Hell for all eternity.

We believe that the Nephesh dies at the death of its host; that the Ruach rises from the dead body and ascends to the third heaven where it is purified and placed in the well of souls for reuse; and that the Neshamah returns to the Divine Presence from which it came.

We believe as is taught by the Prophet Yirmayahu in Chapters 16 and 23 that all the descendants of the House of Jacob will return to the true faith and to the land that G-d has given them before the Meshiach of David comes. We teach that it is wrong to proselytize any person, but that the truth should be shared with all so that the Holy Spirit may inspire them to choose for G-d. We specifically reject the so-called great commission as being absent from the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. We teach that even a drop of the blood of Jacob will impel a person to want to know more about the Torah and the Truth of Yeshua.

We teach that there is an overriding duty to show the gerim hospitality when requested for we do not know when we will serve the Eliyahu at his return or Angels in disguise. We deny that there is any duty to preach the good news to any one except the lost sheep of the House of Jacob and only they will hear our voice.

We specifically teach that there is a Divine Voice as is spoken of throughout Scripture and that only the Called will hear that Voice. That Voice will lead us toward the Truth and some will be Chosen who follow it.

We teach any one who rejects the Truth when presented must be left to their own lives until the request more. We are to kick the dust from our shoes and leave them alone.

Beings That Possess Us

There are four kinds of beings that can infest a human body or its nephesh or breath of life. They are demons, spirits, ghosts, and other souls. I give you my understanding from 38 years as an exorcist.

Demons are the disembodied souls of intelligent beings who have previously been embodied somewhere at some time. It is not clear from my encounters when these beings were embodied and why they are not now. There is a substantial theory that argues that prior to this world there was another civilization. That theory is supported by Ecclesiastes 1:9-11. It is additionally supported by the early Christian fathers. It says that G-d made the world perfect in every way. Then a war broke out between the forces of order and the forces of chaos. The forces of chaos destroyed the Earth and all that were in it. Then G-d moved on the face of the chaos and brought order to the chaos and created the world we now live in. The theory says that in this previous world there were bad people. They were consigned to the realm of the Archangel Ba’alzebul, the Lord of Demons. They desire more than anything else to be able to feel, taste, touch, hear, and smell again. They cannot on their own. So they inhabit a human body or that of a higher animal so that they can regain the senses that they have lost.

Demons can bedevil a person, can obsess a person, or can possess a person. Any person may be bedeviled. The demons will constantly act like flies trying to lead a person astray, but for the most part the person will resist and not be misled by them. The person will gain greatly in character from these encounters and will become saintly. However, if the demons can persuade the person even once it opens a door to let them in.

Obsession is the act of demons actually surrounding a person’s soul and constantly presenting evil possibilities to them. The obsession will make the person feel he or she is being spoken to and the voices will suggest a pattern or practice contrary to what that person knows to be righteous and good. The person is being attacked. They will give in some times. But they will feel guilty and take actions, which will fend off the demon and stop it from taking full control of their life. These demons do live inside of us. As the demons gain more and more sway in a person’s life, the situation moves from obsession to possession.

A person who is possessed by demons is always possessed by more than one. There is always at least one root demon whose area of sinfulness is something that the person cannot or will not give up. The root demons slowly move in more demons that take up residence and control larger areas of a person’s life. The ultimate goal of the demons in a possession case is to get the person to commit suicide, which will damn the soul to the same situation as that of the demons themselves.

Because the Western Tradition no longer looks with favor on people who believe in demons, there is little done to protect the person in industrialized societies from the influence of demons and as a result ninety per cent of all persons in industrialized societies are obsessed or possessed. The ancient practices that kept demons out of the home and away from the person are no longer practiced because they have been condemned as superstitious. Demons have strongly supported the growth of rationalism because it has allowed them to be transformed into mental illnesses that can be treated and never cured. It guarantees that the demons can cause the maximum amount of pain and suffering with minimal concern for discovery.

Spirits are considerably stronger than demons. They are immortal beings that have from the beginning taken an alignment in the continuing war for or against chaos. Those aligned to chaos and evil are commandoes in the war. They do not bedevil or obsess a person. If they got into a person, they take full control of the senses, the body and the mind. Such a possession is powerful and often leaves the person a willing co-participant in massive acts of evil. These spirits can only be exorcised at great cost to the exorcist and require a holy man or woman to battle them for control.

Ghosts that go into a body are generally confused and feel trapped. They are trying to escape this plane and do not know how. They are often ancient beings, not modern ghosts and have been stuck here on this plane for a long time. Exorcism of these ghosts should be done with the utmost kindness and respect and the ghost should always be encouraged to go to the Light. These possessions are very serious because the same confusion that encompasses the ghosts will also encompass the host. Ghosts do not mean to harm the host.

The last category of possession is soul-melding. This occurs when an ancient soul is forced or requested by the Divine to intervene in the modern world. They generally feel a strong affinity to the soul that they meld with and their purpose is to create a powerful force against evil and for the good. This kind of possession may well characterize some of the most noteworthy cases of channeling that have occurred including Edgar Cayce and Ras.

Does G-d Love Gentiles?

As I have written in my last blog, the House of Jacob (Ya’akov) was the peculiar inheritance of YHVH. I have earlier said that Yeshua (Jesus) was the seventh and most perfect of the incarnations of the Archangel YHVH, the Archangel of the Presence. The promises made in the Hebrew writings were for the Hebrew people and no one else, because the House of Jacob was YHVH’s peculiar possession.

Yeshua said in his teachings: “But go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Matthew 10:6. and also “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Matthew 15:24. There is no similar passage in the gospels affected by Paul or in the Johannine tradition. The message of Yeshua was directed to the House of Israel and the House of Jacob which at that time was the same, as the Jewish people kept up with the farflung travelings of their people.

Paul on the other hand starts talking about grafting Gentiles onto the Jewish tree of life in the book of Romans. However, his method of grafting the Gentiles on was not to convert them as required by Jewish law, but rather just to make them god-fearers bound by the most minimal of the Mosaic laws. We reject this idea completely as not supported by Jesus teaching or scripture.

Someone said in recent New York Times article that when you strip all the other things away, G-d is a g-d of love. There is no doubt that G-d loves his peculiar inheritance, but there is not one word to extend that love to those not in that inheritance. When he says love thy neighbor as thyself he is quoting Leviticus 19:18 out of context. That passage is part of the Holiness Code and is binding only on the descendants of the House of Jacob and Israel. It is true that 1 John 4:8 says that G-d is love, but 1 John was written to the Nasoreans and not to the Pauline Church and G-d teaches love and is love to that sect of Judaism.

In conclusion, there is not one word of support for the idea that G-d loves Gentiles. G-d loves his peculiar inheritance and those who are converted to it.

On the Truth About El, YHVH, and Jesus

The people of Canaan worshiped a multitude of entities which they called gods. By the standards of today, these entities were not gods because they were not omniscient, omnipotent and omni-benevolent which are the three qualities that modern philosophers put on the concept of godhood. These entities were very powerful and seemed very godlike to their worshipers. They are real; they are called elementals and have existed since the very beginning. They are like angels in that they are eternal, but they are like man in that they do not have to obey the spiritual rules. They can be killed, but killing them is merely absorbing their energy into the one conquering them or into the divine light that surrounds us.

We know from archaeology that the people of Canaan and Lebanon believed in one supreme being, the father of all. He neither had a name nor was he addressed by some name. He was called El, which means G-d. There were two titles that were used to describe this being, Elyon and Shaddai. Elyon means Most High and Shaddai means Almighty. Exodus 6:2-3 says: “And the Archangel spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am YHVH and I appeared unto Abraham, Yitzak, and Ya’akov by the name El Shaddai, but by my name, YHVH, I was not known to them.” The problem with this statement from a purely logical and didactic point of view is we are required to believe that YHVH dissembled and claimed to be someone other than who He was. As difficult as that idea is to accept, we have proof of the contrary included in the scriptures.

Scholars believe that much of the Torah was written in parts. They generally say that there was a school of theologians who called G-d El or Elohim; they are called the Elohists. There is another school of theologians who called G-d YHVH; they are called the Yahwists. There is a third group called the Priestly source and was interested in supporting the theology of the Priesthood. The fourth group was a later group who redacted the first four books of the Torah and wrote their own book, called Deuteronomy. I believe that there is a fifth source; that source is the Archangel of the Presence and He wrote all the Mitzvoth or Ordinances and the Ten Sayings or Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.

If we are to believe that YHVH did not reveal himself to Abraham as YHVH but rather as El and that in reality YHVH was the being that Abraham believed in, then there is a problem for in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 we have a smoking gun that harkens back to a time before Moses. For some reason, it came through to the Deuteronomist source and was not excised. What it says challenges significantly the statement in Exodus 6:2-3.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9 says in the Dead Sea Scrolls these words found at 4QDeut LXX:

“When Elyon gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated mankind, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the Sons of G-d for YHVH’s portion is his people; Ya’akov is the lot of His inheritance.”

It was believed in Canaan and Lebanon at the time of Abraham that El had 70 sons and one daughter, Asherah. According to Jewish tradition expanding on Genesis 10, there are 70 nations and according to their belief each nation had its own elemental or god that would rule over it. The smoking gun says in effect that there is a Great G-d, a true G-d, named El Elyon and that he has 70 Sons which are the g-ds of the 70 nations. If that be true, then Abraham worshipped the true G-d El and Moses served the Archangel YHVH, but not the true G-d and the Archangel lied to Moses. I do believe that there was any such lie. I think the Yahwists changed things to meet their needs, but the more correct position is that there is a Great G-d El and a lesser G-d, YHVH, who is King of the G-ds.

The efforts made to hide this truth from mankind are interesting. When this passage was translated into Greek from the same text above quoted, this is what the translation said:

“When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the Angels of G-d. And his people Jacob became the portion of YHVH, Israel was the line of his inheritance.”

The Septuagint Scholars did not want to carry on the idea that there were 70 lesser gods. So they changed the tradition to make the gods into Angels, Archangels and declared that Israel was the portion of the Archangel YHVH. So now we have the book that Jesus quoted from, that Philo read, saying that there was a Great G-d and an Archangel YHVH, who is the King of the Angels.

When the passage was translated by the Masoretes, it came out this way:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel, for the portion of YHVH is His people, Ya’akov, the lot of His inheritance.

The occultation of the passage has now become complete. No longer do we see what Jesus saw, what Paul saw, what James saw, what Peter saw. We see instead the opinions of the Rabbim at Yavneh which was made some 60 years after Jesus and 25 years after Paul, James, and Peter.

Why am I making such a big deal of this? Simply because the Nasoreans and many of those followers of Jesus that lived in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Parthia, and Arabia, in fact all of the Middle East, believed that there was a Great and True G-d, El, memorialized by the Nasoreans in the Zohar as Ain Soph Aur, the Endless Light. They believed that Jesus was a lesser G-d, who cooperated with G-d as the Word of G-d to create the world and everything in it, but he was not always and did not know everything and was not almighty. The teacher Arius understanding Philo and the Neo Platonists took up the scriptural battle in the early years of the third century and taught these truths, supported by scripture and believed by those who knew Jesus personally.

The scam that has been made on the persons who believe in the Book is perhaps the greatest scam in history. The world is not like the Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and other westerners say. The world is much more like what the Mormons say with their three g-ds. Arius was right. He was suppressed by a pagan emperor to maintain his power and the peace of his empire, but Arius was right. Eusebius makes it clear that the Bishops of the Middle East for the most part agreed with Arius. Some were excommunicated and exiled; some gave in and kept their peace. The question that must be asked is do you want to believe what Jesus believed or the lies of the Council of Yavneh and the Council of Nicaea. If you choose Jesus, only the Nasorean sect of Judaism is the true faith of scripture and you should investigate it.

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Tu B'shvat

The Feast of Tu B'shvat is another new year, this time the new year of the trees. This is the day when we determine the final tithes on the crops that were grown. All crops grown and harvested prior to this day are in one year and those harvested after this day are in another year. In modern times, increasingly, this day has become a Jewish arbor day, a day to remember growing plants and even animals.

In the Middle Ages, Tu Bishvat was celebrated with a feast of fruits in keeping with the Mishnaic description of the holiday as a "New Year." In the 1600s, the kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria of Safed and his disciples instituted a Tu Bishvat seder in which the fruits and trees of the Land of Israel were given symbolic meaning. The main idea was that eating ten specific fruits and drinking four cups of wine in a specific order while reciting the appropriate blessings would bring human beings, and the world, closer to spiritual perfection. [6]

In Israel, the kabbalistic Tu Bishvat seder has been revived, and is now celebrated by many Jews, religious and secular. Special haggadot have been written for this purpose.

Nasoreans join in this honoring of nature and remembering the tithes on plants. This is a day upon which we should be careful to give to the poor a fair share of what we have grown. This is a day to remember living things and remember our stewardship over those living things. This is a day upon which a Nasorean Jew will become conscious for one more year of our need to conserve and recycle.

The feast for Nasoreans will be tomorrow. Join with us in this celebration.

Abortion and Scott Roeder

It took jurors 37 minutes on Friday to convict Scott Roeder, an abortion opponent, of first-degree murder in the death of George R. Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country to perform late-term abortions.

The Didache, our Constitution, and the oldest document of the original followers of Yeshua forbids abortion absolutely. Modern Jewish rulings tend to posit a somewhat lessened requirement which allows the mother to claim that the child is attacking her and that aborting the child will protect her life. The Nasoreans position on abortion is abortion should only be allowed when three doctors concur that the child's continued presence in the womb will cause death to the mother. One is not allowed to kill merely on the supposition that an event might occur. While self-defense against an attacker is allowed under the Torah law, the response must be no greater than the threat. Thus, abortion can only occur when the threat is certain death if the pregnancy is not ended.

George Tiller was a murderer of the worst sort. He murdered babies in the womb long after they became viable. He did it for the most base of reasons, money and the continued immorality of the woman. Scott Roeder made it clear that mass murder must be stopped. He took the only action that a brave man could take, one whose purpose was to protect life of the weakest in our society, and he did it only after careful thought. George Tiller was no normal abortionist. He was Mengele whose acts were impassionate and calculated. It is lawful for a person to kill when protecting others from death.

The fact that Scott Roeder chose to commit the act of self-defense in the setting of an apostate church speaks highly of his understanding of divine justice. The fact that apostate Kansas has a law allowing the murder of children in the womb makes no difference. Hitler's Germany allowed him to murder Jews, Polish, Russians, Gypsies, Masons, gays, and anyone else he hated. The execution of Hitler and his lieutenants was always allowed under scriptural law. Scott Roeder likewise is protected by G-d's law.

The 12 Jurors are damned and will go to hell for their acts. Further, their damnation will be remembered against their descendants unto the fourth generation.

Let us pray that the scourge of abortion which has threatened civilization for the past 2300 years will stop soon and let us hope that doctors will cease doing business with abortionists under any conditions. Let us pray for the life and continued blessing of Scott Roeder, who acts like a Prophet of G-d in taking his vengeance against an righteous monster.

Freedom: Religious and Speech

This blog is called "Reflections From a High Mountain" because like Jesus standing on the high mountain, I hope to see the world in perspective. Having been to Mt. Tabor which is generally thought to have been the mount of transfiguration, I could see why it would have been thought to be a High Mountain. Well, I want to speak a bit about a trend that I see developing in Europe that greatly troubles me.

In Switzerland, the people by popular vote outlawed new minarets, the buildings from which muzzeins tell Muslims to come for prayer. Granted their loud calls might be distracting, but so are church bells. It is apparent that the real reason for outlawing the minarets was religious discrimination against Muslims, Muslims who in Switzerland are Bosnian and not Arabs. This detestable act is only one of a series of attacks on religious freedom that are occurring in this supposedly enlightened Europe which sees fit to talk about how every where else does things.

In the United Kingdom, the vegans are pushing to outlaw kosher killing which will have the effect of causing all meat purchased by Muslims and Jews to be purchased outside of Britain. Kosher killing is the most humane form of slaughter and is required by the Torah and the Koran. The real purpose is obviously anti-Semitic, discrimination against both Jews and Muslims.

In France and the United Kingdom, there are strong moves to outlaw burqas on women. This religious dress is required by many Muslim sects. Such acts are obviously anti-Muslim.

In all these countries, the law is built upon precedent and code. If the precedent starts out forbidding minarets, it will not be long before the government will decide if new mosques and synagogues should be built. If it is illegal to wear a burqa, it may soon be illegal to wear a yarmulke or even a cross. If it is illegal to kill animals in a humane way, it is not long before the state will outlaw kosher food and force swine down the throats of Muslims and Jews.

The growth of anti-Semitic activity throughout Europe is serious. Rabbis are attacked on the way to synagogue, imams are attacked for fostering dialogue, girls are dismissed from school for refusing to wear immodest dress, and the situation is getting worse.

If we do not stand up for Muslims now, it will be Nasorean Jews who are again rounded up and executed for our beliefs as we were in Torquemada's Spain and Roman Israel. How many people must die before we see that religious freedom is everyone's right.

The Voice of the Lord

The Voice of the Lord spoke to mankind throughout history. Scripture records at least 500 instances of the Voice speaking to man. Many people do not believe that the Voice still speaks. Many more believe that the Lord never spoke to regular people like you and me; they believe that the Voice only spoke to special people. In fact, my unscientific polling has indicated to me that 40% of all the people I have asked about hearing the Voice admit to hearing a Voice in their head. Yeshua said that many are called. I believe that the 40% of the people who hear the Voice of the Lord are those that are called.

Many of you will ask what I mean by hearing the Voice of the Lord. Let me start with the most normal event. Paul says that faith comes through hearing and hearing by the Word of G-d. The word he uses is rematos in Greek which means an inner word. Romans 10:17. The normal Voice is one that speaks within. It can be a single word, a concept, an idea, or a whole conversation. I saw something yesterday that described how that word helps us to do G-d's will. It allows us who follow obediently to do things we know nothing in advance about doing. It allows us to answer prayers of others when we act as messengers or angelou of G-d. Another way that the Voice speaks to us is through other people and random acts who will raise our conscience to do certain things or to understand what is happening around us. The third, and by far most rare hearing of the Voice is called in Hebrew Bath Kol. Literally, it means daughter of the Voice. I have heard it twice. One cannot resist it. The Voice speaks audibly to the person and because it is the Voice of G-d it sometimes is preceded by a shaking, a wind, or some other event. I became a believer because the Voice spoke to me and said I had no faith.

How does one get the Voice? What is really meant by that question is who is chosen. However, it is hard to think about the fact that only 40% of the people in the world are even called and a much smaller percentage is chosen. It is from this concept of only a few being chosen and there being no way to tell them that we get the concept in Judaism of the Israel of G-d and in Catholicism of the Mystical Body of Christ. While Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor, tells us that if we do not hear the Voice we should go to a church and patiently wait until we hear it, I cannot concur. Many will never hear that Voice. For me, I received the Voice after praying that G-d would speak to me. I firmly believe that G-d inspired me to reverse the agreement that he made with the rest of Israel when they promised to listen to the prophets if G-d would not speak to them again. But for Gentiles, there never was a guarantee of being called and all of Jacob is called.

The Voice is a specific gift that when strong is called the gift of knowledge. That gift allows us to know things in advance of their occurrence, to do things that will save us from harm, to be able to help the Lord as messengers, and finally to have the consolation that comes with having a trusted friend who will tell us the truth.

The Gospel of John goes so far as to talk about our ultimate goal in relationship to the Voice: "But whoever enters through the Gate (Yeshua, John 1:51) is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper (Peter) opens it for him, and the sheep HEAR HIS VOICE, as he CALLS his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize HIS VOICE." 10:2-4. The Voice therefore is an extremely important part of the true believer's life. He comes to rely upon it rather than books and teachers alone. The Voice will certify which teachers to listen to for it says in John 10: "But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the VOICE of strangers." 10:5. When the Voice certifies a teacher, one must be willing to re-examine those teachings and accretions of trauma that make our lives rich and see what should be thrown out and what saved.

The Archangel told us that we should have no other G-ds before Him. Sometimes we make g-ds out of books. Only the mitzvoth in the Torah were written by the hand of G-d and everything else should be seen through a prism, the prism of faith that comes through hearing the rematos of G-d.

Life After Life and Whose Side is G-d On?

The Nasoreans and the Pharisees believed in reincarnation. They do not believe that people could be reborn as people, because they believed that only the soul called Ruach could be reborn. An animal according to first century Jews had no Ruach or Spirit, only Breath of Life, Nephesh. These two sects, from which Christians and Jews descend, believed that all persons would be reborn six or seven times depending on which line they were in. The lines were the line of Metatron and the line of the Holy Spirit.

When one believes in reincarnation, the importance of life and of the body decrease because we are guaranteed another chance to perfect the Ruach. However, the persona that is you will never be reborn; it will be recorded in on the fourth soul and be remembered forever. With that understanding, the individual death of a human being is not important in the scheme of things. On the other hand, the force of karma, the accumulated negative effects and positive effects of our lives is manifested in the new life.

When 200,000 people die, we are sad. But the more important reality is that the divine balance of giving and taking is thrown into chaos. By taking these lives in an earthquake, the Archangel Ariel must compensate by doing some major event that is a blessing not only to the world but to a people. A giving is required; a giving is required that helps more than 200,000 people dramatically.

There are those that would claim G-d is against the Haitians or G-d is for someone else. In reality, G-d favors the balance of giving and taking and is not on anyone's side. Whether people kill themselves as suicide bombers in Kabul or do extraordinary acts of kindness in Port-au-Prince, the only concern that G-d has is the balance of giving and taking. He must give back hugely to right the balance with the huge taking that has been done in Haiti and the Indian Ocean. The very blood of the 420,000 people who have lost their lives demands that the Archangel Ariel balance the evil that he has done with an extraordinary good.

It is clear therefore that G-d is not on the side of either the forces against the Taliban and al-Qaeda or the forces of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It does not favor death, whoever does it, for it is a taking of life and he opposes humans taking that which he has given. It is not on any side in this war, but he allows for great opportunities to show forth charity.

Scholars Wrong Again

Up until January, 2010, the august scholars all said that the Hebrew written language only went back to 600 BCE. It was therefore impossible, said they, for the Bible to have been written in the time of David, who might or might not exist. What was sure was that the little village of Salem was not the important capital of a kingdom in the area controlled by Egypt.

All that changed. Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa deciphered a shard brought to him from excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, near Israel's Elah Valley. It contained written words with clearly Hebrew themes and some words that only meant something in Hebrew rather than one of the other Semitic languages. The text proves that there was a Kingdom of Israel in the 10th Century before the Common Era. It proves that there was a consistent religious opinion about the treatment of slaves, widows, and orphans at this early time, almost certainly because of the people's previous acquaintance with slavery. It proves that the Torah could have been written in the time of David and Solomon. It also proves that Hebrew is oldest script that was not pictographic.

Why is this so important? Simply, Bible one, scholars zero. The Bible has proven correct once more.

There is a new religion, a powerful religion, with much state funding. It is called Science. What is conjectured, considered, hypothesized, becomes dogma and then truth. What is really Theory is elevated to fact. And how evil those who dare to say that there is insufficient information. I love science, but I am not a devotee of Science. I do not worship it nor do I bow down to it. I have faith in G-d, not Science.

Who Wrote the Torah?

Often when we think of the Torah we mean the first five books of the Bible. However, there is a more restrictive meaning to the word. It means Teaching and the Teaching that it refers to are the Mitzvoth or Ordinances given to Moses on the Mountain. Scholarship makes it clear that there were four schools that wrote the Pentateuch, or first five books. They were the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Priestly source, and the Deuteronomist. The Yahwist source is said to have written first in the time of Solomon. The Elohist source wrote a hundred years later.

I would suggest to you that there is one other writer that is ignored. Exodus 20:1 says that Elohim spoke the Ten Commandments. But Exodus 24:12 says: "And YHVH said to Moses, Come up to Me to the Mountain and be there, And I will give you the tablets of stone and the Teaching (Torah) and the Ordinances which I have written, to teach them." By the time of Yeshua, the tradition had arisen that an Angel had spoken to Moses on the Mountain and delivered living words to deliver to us. Acts 7:38. All of these passages suggest that someone delivered to Moses on the Mountain utterances that were transmitted to the people. The scholars would argue that Exodus 20 was written by the Yahwists and Exodus 24 by the Elohists. There are two traditions that constantly are fighting for recognition in the first five books: the tradition of the Priests and the tradition of the HaAm haEretz, or common people. The tradition of the Priests is represented by the Yahwist and tries to conflate and explain the tradition of the Elohist, the common people in Exodus 6:2-3 where it says: "I am YHVH; I appeared to Avraham, Yitzak, and Ya'akov as El Shaddai and my Name YHVH I did not reveal to them." This passage tells us that a portion of the Hebrew people believed in the pantheon of Canaan which called its true G-d, El, with epithets like Shaddai and Elyon. YHVH was one of the seventy Sons of El. El apportioned the leadership of Israel to YHVH in the view of the common people which was maintained well into the Deuteronomic period. In 4QDeut the word says: "When El Elyon divided the nations as the inheritance of the Sons of El, when He separated the sons of Adam; he set up the bounds of the peoples, according to the Sons of El and YHVH's portion is His People Yaakov who are his inheritance." The Septuagint called YHVH and the other sons of El, Angels. There we have it. YHVH is the Son of El, the True G-d, and he is an Angel.

With that said, we see that Exodus 20 and Exodus 24 say the same thing. YHVH, the Archangel of the Presence, spoke the Ten Commandments, and they appeared on two tablets of Stone. Thereafter, His Finger traced the 603 additional Ordinances on the Table. He gave them to Moses who took them down to the people.

The writer therefore of the most important portion of Pentateuch was YHVH, the Archangel of the Presence, who is "our god". "Hear O Yisrael, YHVH, our g-d, YHVH is one." Deut. 6:4. He wrote the Ten Commandments and the 603 Ordinances Himself. All the rest of the Scripture was mediated by men. The Holy Spirit would inspire but not dictate the words written. Only these 613 Laws were written by the command of G-d and the hand of YHVH.

So, what is significance of this discovery? We cannot take the Bible literally in any place except these 613 Laws and we must search to understand each of these laws so that we know YHVH's meaning. I am not denigrating the Holy Book. I am explaining that the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Writings including the writings called the New Testament are inspired but not necessarily literally true. They must bend the knee to the 613 Laws for they were mediated by man whereas the Laws were given by G-d and His Representative in this Multiverse. If read that the Torah is no longer in effect, we have only to look at the Torah to see that it is. Paul never received anything from the Archangel in writing. Moses did. It is true that the Laws on Sinai were never meant for the Gentiles and therefore, the promises in the Scripture are not meant for them other. Gentiles can become Jews by conversion and become grafted into the Tree of Life, but without going through conversion, which requires among other things, circumcision, Gentiles are not heirs to any promise.

That being said, I urge those who use the book to prove things to stop. Spirituality is an individual relationship between the believer and the event. Religion declares how we relate properly to G-d who may not agree.

News

Today I want to express my deepest sadness over the earthquake in Haiti. Certainly, there is no more spiritual nation in the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, they are so syncretic that it is not clear what they believe.

I believe that they Archangel Ariel was angry at them for some set of acts they had done and punished them for their continuing sinfulness. To balance the taking of human life in Haiti, we will see some great blessing on another people. The balance must be maintained.

I consider Haiti an opportunity for all those right-minded to give to a people who really need to receive. Here is your opportunity to move ahead on the spiritual path. Give until it hurts.

To all those people in Kansas City who are ready this blog, I want to tell you that you can e-mail me at netseri@kc.rr.com and I will give you directions to the service on Friday evenings. As we provide oneg shabbat, it is necessary to rsvp before attending. Come and see what a Nasorean service looks like and join in our prayers for all those in need, especially Haiti.

Orthodoxy vs. Orthopraxy

Orthodoxy means right thinking. The Christian sects of this era are orthodoxic. Each and everyone has a particular religious point of view which it expects the adherents of its sect to believe and espouse. Any deviation from the norm of the sect is considered heresy and dealt with by expulsion from the sect.

Orthopraxy means right acting. Judaism and the early followers of Jesus were orthopractic. These groups did not care what one believed, but expected careful adherence to the actions required of members. Thus the variations in interpretation of how to do the Torah would result in excommunication.

The Essene/Nasorean sect called their members among other things, the Doers of the Torah, to emphasize that they were the right acting group. The followers of Jesus were a group within the sect of Nasoreans and Jesus was called a Nasorean, both in Matthew and by the Romans who wrote Yeshua the Nazorean, King of the Jews on the tablet put over his head on the cross. The Gospel of Matthew makes clear the position of Jesus on doing the Torah; he says,

“Because not everyone who says unto me, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven but the one who DOES the will of my Father who is in Heaven will enter the Kingdom of Heaven….Again he said to them: Everyone who hears these words and DOES them is like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rain came down against it and the winds beat it and it did not fall because its foundation was a rock. Everyone who hears these my words and DOES NOT DO them is like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. The rains came down, the floods came and fell against it, and it fell with a great fall.” 7:21,24-26.

Jesus clearly said his position on the Torah: “Truly I say to you that until heaven and earth depart not one letter or dot shall be abolished from the Torah or the Prophets, because all will be fulfilled. He who shall transgress one word of these mitzvoth and shall teach others, shall be called a vain person in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever upholds and teaches them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” 5:18-19.

Christians are so busy trying to decide who Jesus is that they miss His message. His message is that you must become Tzaddikkim, righteous, and to become righteous one must keep the Torah. Matthew 5:20.

The minimum requirement for the seed of the House of Jacob is the entire Torah. The minimum requirement for the Gentiles is set forth in the Didache. What is more important, doing the good things from faith in the Torah or talking about the writers and interpreters of the Torah.

The House of Jacob and the House of Israel

All of us know that Ya'akov was the younger son of Yitzak and grandson of Avraham. Most of us remember that when he returned with his wives from his sojourn with Laban, Ya'akov wrestled with the Archangel of the Presence, in the form of Enoch, and was injured. The Archangel gave him a new name after the fight, Israel. There is a house of Jacob, that is, there are descendants of Jacob who are not Jews today and who have chosen other religious persuasions. They are people who descend from the lost tribes and from those who have left Judaism over the centuries. The House of Jacob, we believe, numbers about 140,000,000 people. In addition, there are those like the Nasoreans, the Samaritans, the Karaites, and the Jews who are descendants of the House of Israel and believe that they are true Jews today. Their numbers are about 14,000,000. Thus the vast majority of the descendants of Jacob are not followers of the Torah.

The House of Jacob, however, carries on the bloodline of Jacob. It has been my observation that even a single drop of Jacobian blood makes the person more open to what the Torah says. Jesus told his disciples not to go to the Gentiles, but rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. Matthew 10:6. The ministry of Paul to the Gentiles is now and always has been an error and a violation of the halakah of Yeshua (Jesus). But a ministry to the 140,000,000 lost sheep is not only valid but necessary. These people are open to hearing the truth about the Torah.

The Prophet Yirmayahu (Jeremiah) makes two cryptic statements about the House of Israel in his prophecies. One is at 16:14 in which he promises to bring the House of Israel from the lands of the North, literally, Russia, Europe, North America, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. The other passage is even more interesting for here it says at 23:8 that the Lord will bring the seed of the House of Israel from the lands of the North. There are literally millions of Jews from Russia in Israel today, but there are millions of persons who are the seed of the House of Israel, not only in Russia, but throughout the northern countries. All of them will be called home. That call will be internal and will be felt as a call to return to the Torah.

Yeshua (Jesus) was the prophet of the Return. He sent out his followers to find them and teach them the truth. His message has been waylaided by the false teachers who followed the liar Paul, but now their very blood is calling them back to the Torah. The Nasorean Sect of Judaism is the sect of Yeshua and the Apostles. Those misled people who try to become Messianic Jews seek to follow the lies of the Pharisees and are worse off than when they started. True Judaism does not believe in a Trinity of any Godhead. It believes that G-d is One, that his Archangel is One, and that the Holy Spirit is One. The True G-d is not YHVH. The True G-d is El Shaddai v'et Elyon. YHVH is the Archangel of the Presence and as Yeshua says, they are the same. This Archangel created the other Archangels and they together, the Elohim, created the Heavens and the Earth. O, House of Jacob, make Teshuvah to the Torah and the Nasorean faith.

New Year Day?

The Scriptures establish three new year days, but one of them is not on the first of January. January 1 was celebrated by the Romans as the first day of the new year, so our celebration is merely a continuation of their peculiarity. However, the three days set forth by Scripture have a better claim to being the true beginning of the year.

The first of these days is Tu B'shvat. In the times of the Hebrew Monarchy, there had to be a day upon which to cut off the previous year from the coming year so that taxes could be collected on the crops and cattle traded, grown or born during the year. The scripture sets forth the 15th day of the month of Shevat as that day. It is known as the New Year of the Trees. In modern times, this day has become a combination Earth Day and Arbor Day.

The second of these days is the first day of the Jewish month of Nisim. This is the month in which spring begins, a logical and reasonable time to begin the new year. The month of Nisim begins when the new moon appears around the spring equinox. This year it will begin on the 15th of March. This day was the secular new year in Davidic times and throughout the long history of the Jewish people which is now in its 5770th year. This date was the first day of the new year for most people other than the Romans in the ancient times.

The third and last of these days is the first day of the Jewish month of Tishri and is called Rosh Hashanah or Head of the Year, New Year Day. It is also called Yom Terumah or Day of the Trumpet because it is believed by the Jewish people that the world was created on this day 5770 years ago, more or less, give or take a few billion years, by the blowing of a divine trumpet. This day occurs on the new moon closest to the autumnal equinox. On this day, Jewish people blow trumpets, wish each other happy new year, make resolutions to do better, and try to be good for at least 10 days until G-d makes up his mind whether to punish us or not. Also on this day Jewish people eat lots of carrots because the word for carrot and the word for plenty are the same in Hebrew and hopefully if we eat lots of carrots G-d will think we are wanting lots of money.

It seems strange to me that the people of Earth except Israel have adopted this pagan New Year rather than the Scriptural New Year and date their era from a mythical birth in 1 A.D. even though no reputable scholar believes that Jesus was born in 1 A.D. The reason for this certainty is that Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.E. and if he was killing all the boys under two before 4 B.C.E. it would mean that Jesus was probably born in 6 B.C.E. We are still following the mistakes of a seventh century monk.

On this new secular year, I resolve to remember that it is the 5770th year of the Jewish dispensation; that in 230 years the Messiah will appear; that we will have a 1000 year Sabbath rest; and that on Rosh Hashanah of 6,000 this 1000 years of peace will begin. I resolve to bring more light into the world through this blog. I resolve to be present for the Lord to work through me in re-establishing the Nasorean Orthodox Qahal to its former glory. I resolve to live a life in constant harmony with my Creator.