Wondering Why?

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, no one who came to Jesus with a particular need was sent away empty handed. Today, within the established religion of church tradition, the exact opposite is true. The established church institution sends almost everyone away empty handed but with the vacant promise of something great when they are dead, so long as they believe in the efficacy of the creeds, ceremonies or sacraments of the religion of church tradition. Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered why the Jesus of the church establishment doesn’t seem to be the same Jesus that is found in the Bible? Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t seem to keep his promises any more or why the Triune Godhead or Holy Trinity so beloved within the religion of hand-me-down church tradition is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is not in the Bible? The answer is simple: tradition. Actually, church culture and tradition. In linguistics, a false friend is a word shared by two different languages that sounds the same but has different meanings. This can lead to confusion in translation. The same could be said about words shared between different ages, people groups, cultures or traditions. In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul explains that God declared the original gospel, or good news of God, to Abraham the Hebrew. Abraham was born more than 4,000 years ago into an altogether different culture than modern western culture, and the ancient Hebrews understood life in a completely different way than people do today. Different people groups from different ages all have their own understanding of good news that fits in with their culture and tradition. The word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem meaning a handing down from former times. The good news that was experienced by Abraham, Issac, Jacob, David and indeed all of God’s people found in the Bible had almost nothing to do with the culturally Greek life after death gospel of the religion of church hand-me-down tradition taught by the church establishment. For instance, the word save is probably one of the most important words in the Bible. Indeed, even the name Jesus, which is a transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua, and a shortened version of the Hebrew Yehovah-Yasha contains the word for save, but modern church religion defines the word save to mean being saved from hell when people are dead and not much more. Within the ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible, to be saved meant to healed, delivered or saved from the oppressive hand of any enemies, misfortune or any form of curse, including broken heartedness, sickness, poverty, disease of any kind, and premature death. For the Hebrews, salvation was something that happened in life and for those who were saved in life, death looked after itself. In Philippians 3:5 the Apostle Paul described himself as a Hebrew of the Hebrews and he declared in 2 Corinthians 6:2 that today is the day of salvation. The day of salvation had absolutely nothing to do with the day that people pray the sinner’s prayer. For Paul the Hebrew, today was the day when Yeshua (or Jesus), whose name means I AM your salvation, would save you by making you safe or secure, to deliver you, protect you, heal you, preserve or make you well or whole. The Hebrews did not have to wait until they were dead before they were properly saved. For them life was precious, and to be saved after they were dead would have made no sense to them at all. As such, so much of what is taught by the church establishment is simply religious tradition that cannot be found in the Bible, and that is why in so many churches, miracles never happen. Those that truly understand in their hearts the truth of what salvation really meant within the ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible are freed from the culturally Greek binding shackles of the religion of church tradition. For them life becomes just one big miracle. It was Jesus who spoke in Hebrew from heaven to Paul the Hebrew on the Damascus Road and who told Paul what it meant to be truly saved. Jesus said in Acts 26:18 that he would open people’s eyes, turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, and for them to receive an inheritance amongst God’s holy ones within Him. Jesus did not mention heaven, hell or life after death. A life after death, heaven or hell gospel belongs to a different age, people group, culture and tradition. It came from those who were culturally Greek and not culturally Hebrew. The gospel or good news that God promised to Abraham was the promise of Pentecost, having a heart redeemed from pride that is filled with the eternal life’s breath or Holy Spirit of the paradise of God’s fatherhood. Those that receive the same Pentecostal blessing that Abraham received live in the presence of Holy Spirit power where the true salvation of overcoming victory is guaranteed in all aspects of life. When this happens, miracles become commonplace and Mark 16:17-20 becomes a living reality; the Lord working with those that believe and confirming his word with signs following. Despite the sincerity of seriously misguided beliefs, the established tradition of church religion taught in modern churches is tradition not truth. God will always confirm the truth of his living word with signs following. God will always keep the promises that he has made for those who keep the conditions required for their fulfilment. Tradition is man-made religion, it is not truth, and when God does nothing, he is confirming that what is being taught is not the living word of God. Tradition comes from elsewhere. It is man-made, it achieves nothing, receives nothing, counts for nothing. That is why Jesus said in John 6:63 that the Spirit gives life, but the flesh counts for nothing. Nothing, except of course the pride of religious tradition, is the operative word within the church establishment.  

The modern English alphabet is phonetic, meaning that the letters of the alphabet refer to sounds, and the sounds are put together to form words. In English the words convey meaning from the speaker to the listener, but the words themselves contain no actual concrete meaning. So, the letter A comes from the Greek alpha and represents the sound AAA, or AYE. The ancient Hebrew alphabet is pictographic, meaning that the letters of the alphabet are pictures of things, and the things are put together to form words. The words themselves contain the meaning of the word. In English the word god has a rather vague origin, it may have originally meant a divine entity summoned by sacrifice, but that meaning cannot be found within the word itself. In Hebrew, the word god is EL. It is made up of two letters, alef which is the head of a bull, and lamed which is a staff or yoke of stability or authority. In Hebrew the word EL means literally first or strong authority or controller and can mean god or other things with strong authority depending on the context. The plural of EL is ELOHIM meaning super strong authority or judges, magistrates, strong god or gods, depending on the context. In Hebrew, the meaning of the word is in the word itself. Why is this important? It is important because the Hebrew pictographs of words such as father, son, house, name, spirit, blood and many others had a very specific and undeniable practical meaning in the Bible. Words did not mean anything conceptual, philosophical, theoretical or abstract. Take for instance the word house. In Hebrew, this is bayith. It is made up of bet, a house or tent, and tav, two crossed sticks. It means the mark of the house or household. It says in Luke 1:27 that Joseph was of the house of David. Does this mean that Joseph literally lived in the same house that David used to live in, David’s house? Of course not, it meant that Joseph himself was the house of David. In Genesis 12, Abraham was called by God to leave his father’s house. Does this mean that Abraham lived in the same house as his father Terah, and that God was calling Abraham to leave home? Of course not. God was calling Abraham out from being a natural son of Adam or man into becoming a supernatural Son of God, becoming part of God’s house or household. It says in Luke 1:33 that Jesus, as the Son of David would rule over the house of Jacob forever. Was this Jacob’s literal house? Of course not. Why is this important? Because Jesus said in John 14 that in his father’s house are many rooms, and that he was going to prepare a place for his disciples. The culturally Greek religion of hand-me-down church tradition teaches that Jesus went to prepare a place in the father’s house, a house in heaven, so that people can die and go and live happily ever after in the father’s house together with Jesus. This is clearly a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus meant. The words the father’s house is a false friend. As we have seen, in linguistics, a false friend is a word shared between two languages that sounds the same but means something completely different. An understanding of the absolute and concrete meaning of these Hebrew words clearly reveals that so much of what is taught within the culturally Greek religion of church tradition is based upon false friends and as such just cannot be true. The result is confusion, false friend confusion. We will discuss this much more later in this book. The hope of the Hebrews, like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, Joseph, David and indeed the Apostle Paul was resurrection from the dead with Abraham’s blessing of the new covenant Pentecostal paradise of the eternal life’s breath or Holy Spirit of God’s fatherhood eternally filling their redeemed and heavenly hearts. Something has gone drastically wrong. What was it? As the good news of Jesus spread across the Roman Empire after the death of the last of Jesus’s Apostles, those that were culturally Greek did not understand the ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible. They did not understand the Passover or the purposes of God. They did not understand who Jesus really was, and how important the Hebrews, like Abraham and Paul were in accomplishing the purposes of God. They had no interest in the great and precious Pentecostal promises that God made to these men of God. In fact, they imagined that the Hebrews, people like Abraham and David, were primitive, backward, ignorant and uncultured people that knew nothing of the far more advanced wisdom and philosophies of those that were culturally Greek. They imagined that they were superior to the Hebrews in every way. So, they made up their own jigsaw Jesus, taking a few parts from the Bible but filling in any gaps in their woefully inadequate understanding of the real Jesus with a collage of images and ideas taken from their own essentially Greek pagan cultural worldview. They believed in a place called Hades, the realm of the conscious dead that existed under the Earth and that was ruled over by the gods of the underworld. This is where they believed that people went when they died. When they heard about Jesus’s teaching on the fire and worms of God’s judgement, they misunderstood what Jesus had said. They did not realise that Jesus was talking about the local rubbish dump in Jerusalem and associating this with people with prideful garbage in their hearts; fallen hellish hearts full of worms of resentment and raging fires of hate that came from the Fall. Instead of hell being primarily a state of heart, they imagined that hell was a place under the Earth, the underworld, hades gone bad, full of fire and worms. They imagined that their jigsaw Jesus died on the cross to prepare a place in heaven, in the father’s house. They imagined that people who believed in their jigsaw Jesus could be saved from hell and go and live happily ever after in the pie in the sky fathers house in heaven together with Jesus. Heaven is a blessed hope for the true followers of Jesus, but having a heavenly heart redeemed from pride and eternally filled with the paradise of Pentecost is the at heart of the real gospel, not where people go when they die. The Roman Empire is long gone, but the church religion of the Christianized Roman Empire established by the Emperor Constantine and his successors, the church councils they convened and the creeds they concocted lives on.

Corrective spectacles are prescribed by opticians to people with eye defects to help them see. They are not prescribed to people who do not have defective eyesight. For those who can see, wearing other people’s prescribed spectacles distorts their vision and can even cause side effects such as headache or stumbling and falling. The culturally Greek religion of established church tradition prescribes the theoretical spectacles of highly defective theological orthodoxy to its adherents and people are generally forced to wear them to see the things of their essentially pagan jigsaw god in a prescribed and particularly religious way. Generation upon generation of culturally Greek church councils added more and more lenses to the traditional spectacles resulting in a view of what is considered true and yet becomes more and more defective, distorted and further from the truth. What is important for us to understand is not what people have been brainwashed into thinking by submitting to the power and authority of Constantine’s clergy and the established church religion of the Christianized but fallen Roman Empire, but what Abraham and the people of the Bible understood and how and why they experienced the miracle working power of God within their own culture, the ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible. And so, in Luke 4:18 Jesus declared that he had been anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to preach good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to bring recovery of sight to the blind, to preach deliverance to the captives and set free those that were bruised. The question is, what did this mean within the culture into which Jesus was born? What did this mean to those that experienced this miracle working power of Jesus first hand? It says in Hebrews 13:8 that the real Jesus is just the same, yesterday, today and forever. The Jesus of the fallen Roman Empire is a different Jesus, a jigsaw Jesus that those who were culturally Greek made up and put together as they went along. The real Jesus is just as able and willing to save as he ever was, and the God of the Bible is just as willing to confirm the living word of his truth with signs following. There is absolutely no reason why the real Jesus cannot or would not do for you that which he does and has done for others as revealed in the Bible. But you do need to be freed from the controlling influence of the culturally Greek religion of church tradition established by the fallen Roman Empire’s church councils and their clergy. And you do need the eyes of your heart to be enlightened to see clearly the real Jesus that was crucified by the pride of those he came to save, so that you are supernaturally enabled to understand the blessing or sovereign grace or unmerited favour of God in all its fulness. When that happens, the true salvation of overcoming victory, that Jesus won for you on the cross, will practically be yours forever. That is what this book is all about. It won’t happen overnight. It is a journey; it’s not a quick fix, but an all-encompassing lifestyle. Both Abraham and David were anointed by God and walked with God through many difficulties and problems before they eventually reached the place of overcoming victory. However, they were on the right road, and they eventually overcame. There is a chapter on each of these men of God later in this book.  Each chapter in this book deals with a particular topic and explains the things of God from within the ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible. Each is designed to stand on its own, and as such does contain a certain amount of repetition. Remember, the really good news of God is about the heart; those who live humbly with heaven in their hearts today will be like that, forever.

So, what about you? Someone once sang, in the beginning I misunderstood, now I’ve got it the word is good. People communicate using words, the written word and the spoken word. Natural words are spoken by natural man using natural breath; the sounds produced are carried from the mouth of the speaker to the ears of the listener. The religion of established church tradition is full of the natural words of natural man, many of which are quotes taken from the Bible. These words change heads in terms of how people think. People can quote scriptural words and fine sounding sentences concocted by Constantine’s church councils and clergy until the cows come home but they never will. Why not? Because the cows are sheltering from the inevitable problems and difficulties of life under Abraham’s umbrella. Jesus (Yeshua) said that man does not live by bread alone but upon every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. God speaks his living word by his eternal life’s breath or Holy Spirit. These supernatural words change hearts and bring people under the corporate covenant-covering or umbrella of Abraham’s promised blessing. The greatest word that God has ever spoken and ever will speak is the word, Son. Why? Because God Himself dwells within that word. That is the living word that God spoke to Abraham when he called Abraham out of his natural father’s house, and it is that word that God wants to speak into your heart today. Are you ready? What for? To be filled with all of the fulness of God. Are you ready? What for? For God to fulfil his covenant promises within your life’s experience. Are you ready? What for? To say the word. It is the word God is thinking of. It is the word SON, the Son of God. Yes, it is Jesus, but it could also be you! That is why Jesus came. To restore Sonship for the Sons of God.

Prayer: Dear God, if you are real, if you can be known, if you were born as the man Jesus to die on the cross for my sins and rise from the dead to bring paradise into my heart, then I want to know and follow you. I am willing to turn away from everything that is wrong in my life and instead seek first your kingdom and your righteousness so that everything that you have promised will become mine together with Jesus, forever. Please give me the gift of yourself, the Holy Spirit, and adopt me into your family so that through the covenant of adoption, the testimony of my old life written on my soul can be washed away by the blood of Jesus, and I can call you Father, and you will be my true Father, forever.

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