Messiah in the Torah

We western oriented Christians with our default anti-semetic culture have a somewhat different understanding to that of Messianic Jews when it comes to what our Saviour Yahoshua haMachiach taught His disciples. What was it that got them so excited about scripture. He wasn’t teaching them from the new testament. We gullibly accept new-covenant-only, dispensationalist teaching handed down through the ages as gospel. The original Hebrew ‘Christians’ were definitely not praying to Mary, pumping up tithing or confusing the 1st day of the week with the 7th day of the week. Neither would they have dreamed of reducing YHWH’s totally unique name (Yod Hey Wav Hey in the original Hebrew means “the nailed hand will open two doors”) to ‘God’ in line with Roman deity classification, or of changing the name of our Messiah Y’shua to “Jesus” (*). “But!!, they protest, we aren’t Hebrew!!!”. That may be true from a language perspective, but surely, when it comes to our religion we would prefer to relate to our Saviour’s culture than pagan culture. A little leaven (culture) leavens the whole lump. ‘Jesus’ was and still is Hebrew. He said He came primarily for the lost sheep of Israel didn’t He? With the amazing accuracy of modern technology at our disposal surely we should be using it to find out whether our religion actually really does provide what the original scriptures demand it should, and whether interpretations and translations handed down to us are as accurate as befits the most important work ever undertaken. We seem very reluctant to even consider that the original Hebrew Torah might contain anything that sheds light on the problems Christianity is experiencing today (eg prosperity gospel), preferring rather to simply write it off as legalism, done away with, along with the everlasting OT covenants, in our new-covenant-only theology. Well I propose that we be a little more suspicious of the motives of those who upgraded a rather tatty, pagan, pre-catholic religion inspired by Nimrod the sun god, to include the obviously far more marketable perspective of those inextinguishable, zealous, committed disciples of our Messiah. Constantine wasn’t exactly in it to get saved. It was power he was after. We certainly learned a lot from him and his papal successors about how to enslave, manipulate and control for the sake of capitalism and the church’s bottom line. Bit short on the loving community side though. Now please note that I’m not saying that all is doom and gloom or that our majestic, set apart, AbaFather YHWH [I am that I am] is not gracious enough to know our hearts and extend His great mercy to those who earnestly seek His face and the redemption He offers through the blood of His precious Son, irrespective of fossilized customs and traditions. There is little doubt that our Bible contains what’s necessary for us to receive salvation. Even just a single page of it goes a long way in places starved of God’s truth. What about true deliverance though? (The 2nd Hey door in Yod Hey Wav Hey -YHWH) Perhaps we could be more sure of not being part of the great “falling away” prophesied in 2nd Thessalonians if we started weeding fossilized customs (like christmas trees, easter, birthdays, materialism, etc) out of Christianity and restoring what’s missing (like Torah and life enhancing festivals handed to us by YHWH himself via Moses. Perhaps stuff like real healing, true deliverance and agape loving community such as described in Acts 2 would again start manifesting if we started becoming as excited as the Hebrew disciples were in living out the scriptures, instead of using them to justify our favourite brand of capitalist materialism. Salvation is useless without the deliverance it is designed to inspire. Our religion (Church Pty Ltd) has become largely just that -religion. Some branches still actually promote salvation but very few seem to push through to deliverance. Religion weighs us down like an overfull hard drive in need of a good spring-clean and defrag. Revitalizing Torah interest, such as displayed by the Messianic movement springing up all over the world (as prophesied) provides a wholesome new challenge and proper answers for those who question the integrity of our Bible. It may even re-focus the attention of our ailing, increasingly atheist religion back onto life-breathing scripture. The disciples and Paul for that matter were so excited about scripture because Jesus was making everything in the Torah come alive for them. Jesus was their Rabbi and He started revealing for them in the acceptable year of the Lord (the sabbatical year of the 7 year Torah cycle) what fulfilling the law was all about. He never said to them “hang on a few years guys, till the new testament comes out and teach from that only” did He? Lets start the ball rolling by pondering on why Jesus would have said in Matthews gospel, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled”, in Luke “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail” and in Matthew again ” except your righteousness shall exceed, the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Did you know that tittles and jots are what the scribes used to ensure continued integrity of the Torah scrolls. For me these scriptures at least point to a need for some understanding of the law. Jesus himself never advocated blind reliance on the grace of God that seems so commonly preached these days. He said “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees you shall in no wise enter heaven”.

Lets take a look at a typical scenario that was always a mystery for me until a helpful Messianic Jew pointed me in the right direction. The question is: Why would Jesus have spoken in Greek when addressing John on Patmos? Did He really say He was the ‘Alpha and Omega’ in Revelations? Wouldn’t it be more likely that He would have referred to Himself as the Aleph-Tav to a fellow Jew? And if He did, is it at all significant? Well the answer is rather exciting. It points to the Word (Yahoshua Machiach or ‘Christ’ in Greek) right there in Genesis1. Turns out in fact that our Messiah is all over the place in Genesis and the rest of the Torah if one uses the “remez” (Messianic) level of torah teaching, but we’re so busy keeping our distance from all things Hebrew that we conveniently forgot to ask the saved Torah teachers about it. Did you know that Hebrew was the language before the dramatic tower of Babel language downgrade? Another saying of Jesus “Therefore, every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old”. I never realised what this meant till I was shown that the scribe being referred to by Jesus is a ‘saved’ Torah teacher. Scribes taught Torah. He’s saying that we ought to check out what Messianic Torah teachers have up their sleeves when it comes to scripture. Lets face it, the original scriptures were designed by Father YHWH and our Messiah (The Word) in the original language. They are multi-dimensional in nature – just as He is. Moses just wrote them down for us. Thank you Father for making such awe-inspiring creativity available to us. Help us to embrace all of it and get rid of our anti-semetic hangover. Yes anti-semetic. A little example? Did you ever wonder where the ‘hip hip hoorah’ chant originated that we encourage our children to sing at birthday parties, etc? Brewer’s Dictionary of Fable and Verse contains the answer. Hip is actual spelled HEP and its an acronym for Hierosolyma Est Perditum or in English Jerusalem is destroyed. Hurrah is derived from the slavonic ‘hu-raj’ or ‘to paradise with us’. Interesting? OK back to the aleph-tav example. If one checks the original Hebrew, we find that there seven words in Genesis 1:1. The first four are of interest right now ie

בראשׁית7225 ברא1254 אלהים430 את853

Directly translated the first three hebrew words above read (left to right) ‘In the beginning … created …. God’. No translation is offered for the 4th word (Strong’s ref: 853). This word is made of two Hebrew letters, an aleph and a tav. Pronounced as in our ‘ate’. Our English equivalent would be AZ. In the above context as we tend to understand it without a Messianic mindset, AZ is relating to the rest of the text only as a punctuation assistant whose purpose is to get one to realise that the word next to it (Elohim) is doing the creating. Thus one automatically assumes that no translation to English is necessary because in English one automatically understands how the verb is functioning. No real mystery here, it could just be coincidence right? Except that if one takes a quick peek at Zecharia 12:10 “And I will pour^{8210 upon5921 the house1004 of David,1732 and upon5921 the inhabitants3427 of Jerusalem,3389 the spirit7307 of grace2580 and of supplications:8469 and they shall look5027 upon413 me (853) whom834 they have pierced,1856} Notice the Strong’s 853 reference next to the word ‘me’ above sometimes translated as ‘him’ but with the same Hebrew root – Aleph Tav. In other words “they will look upon AZ whom they have pierced” This has been a mystery to Jewish sages through the centuries. Who on Earth is the Aleph-Tav? … The AZ??? Do you see that if Jews for Jesus was answering this question, they would be far more effective at ‘saving Jews’ ? Why did Jeremiah put the word aleph tav in place of the normal word for ‘me’ or ‘him’ in his prophecy? Could this be why Jesus said ‘I am the aleph tav’ to John? Yes it also does mean that He is the beginning and the end but isn’t it a lot more meaningful when beginning and end also means Genesis1 to Revelation22? Add to this the remez understanding that the number four always represents the birth of Messiah (as in 40 weeks/years of childbirth/temptation/desert, 4000 years from Adam till His birth, etc) and then how He (AZ) appears right next to the word Elohim -at His right hand in fact – (from the word Elohim’s perspective) in Genesis1 and you end up with a QED that YHWH himself designed the first sentence in the Bible. I mean Moses couldn’t have known that Jesus was going to refer to Himself as the AZ could He?. Is it just me or do you also get the urge to take this further? Do you think maybe we’ve been missing something very important in Genesis? All the Christian sermons I’ve heard on the subject, insist that the first clue about Messiah in Genesis is where the serpent’s head gets bruised. The experts don’t seem to know that the AlephTav next to Elohim is Jesus our Messiah. How about the rest of the books written by Moses? Surely this calls for some serious reconsideration of the motives for our patronizing attitude towards Torah and things Hebrew. Further incentive to start taking this matter seriously: Consider the verses: Rev 13:16 “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: Rev 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” The way our materialistic society is headed, its not difficult to see that a major crisis is in the making for those addicted to capitalism when the above scenario unfolds. How it happens is not as important as what we are doing to ensure that we and our children are part of a community that isn’t tied to the apron strings of materialism when the bank calls one morning to check whether we’ve made the decision whether to take the mark or suffer the consequences. That will be our great and final defining moment as followers of Messiah to prove where our first loyalty lies. Would we prefer to go through ‘cold turkey’ when the bank invites us to choose or should we rather start breaking down the barriers to entry of true community. Incidently a Microsoft white paper exists which details exactly why the right-hand and the forehead are the only places where enough electricity can be harvested in the human body to drive a device capable of sending and receiving enough data to cataer for a banking application. How did John know that? We don’t know how long Exodus II is likely to endure -hopefully far fewer years than Exodus I, but we do know that it will end at that year’s festival of trumpets just after Sukot (living in tents), when Yahoshua returns in triumphant splendour to open the gates of the promised land. ‘Huh? they wondered, scratching their heads. What’s Sukot?’ Check it out family. Jesus is Hebrew. His real name is Yahoshua. He will lead us into the promised land … just like Joshua (the other Yahoshua) did. He came on a donkey just like Moses did in order to show the Hebrews that He was fulfilling what Moses prophesied in the Torah. He’s still after the lost sheep of Israel. The twelve tribes are to be reassembled if you can believe Revelations 7. Let’s become more Hebrew compatible and clean up Christianity. We may even make some new friends.

(*) The name Jesus is also used by dark realm to deceive … A Course in Miracles as promoted by Oprah, is allegedly “new revelation” from “Jesus” to help humanity work through these troubled times. This “Jesus”—who bears no doctrinal resemblance to the Bible’s Jesus Christ—began delivering his channelled teachings in 1965 to a Columbia University Professor of Medical Psychology by the name of Helen Schucman. One day Schucman heard an “inner voice” stating, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.” For seven years she diligently took spiritual dictation from this inner voice that described himself as “Jesus.” A Course in Miracles was quietly published in 1975 by the Foundation for Inner Peace. For many years “the Course” was an underground cult classic for New Age seekers who studied “the Course” individually, with friends, or in small study groups. Here are some quotes from the “Jesus” of A Course in Miracles:

* “There is no sin. . . “
* A “slain Christ has no meaning.”
* “The journey to the cross should be the last ‘useless journey.”
* “Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’”
* “The Name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol… It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray.”
* “God is in everything I see.”
* “The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.”
* “The oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power.”
* “The Atonement is the final lesson he [man] need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.”