In a world where organized religion often finds itself entangled in corruption, political agendas, and moral contradictions, a growing movement is urging believers to break free from institutional dogma and seek a direct, personal connection with God.
Jesus' primary mission was to the Israelites as prophesied in the scriptures, to evidence that He was their promised Messiah & to offer them the kingdom. He repeatedly demonstrated that they both misrepresented the law, their inability to keep it (demonstrating by word & deed that they needed a Savior in the absence of being able to attain salvation through works, an impossibility). The famous "Sermon on the Mount" is not a set of "ideals," it is a contrast between the oral laws propounded as the keeping of the law, adopted & promulgated by the "leadership," & the actual (impossibly higher) standard that the law truly represented, one that was unattainable in the state of sin & rebellion that plagued humankind from the fall (& for the unsaved, still does). The rejection of Christ by the people whom He came for & should have recognized Him, but for their traditions, rituals, & mis-interpretation of the law & prophets & their true mission: His identity, mission & sacrifice for the sins of all humankind (a once-for-all act with eternal consequences) - other than a few thousand who came to saving faith following the outpouring of the Spirit as promised on the day of Pentecost - was then made available to those who were not invited to the banquet -- the non-Israelites ("Gentiles"). Paul the Apostle's commission directly from the risen LORD (the resurrection, not birth of Christ being the beginning of the new "testament" initiated by the shed blood, death resurrection AND ascension of Christ to God's right hand, to advocate for His own & to make intercession for them, while dispatching the Holy Spirit who had been "with" humankind to instead dwell within them as a permanent possession, after their own identification with His crucifixion & resurrection into new life - HIS eternal life - a life lived under grace, not law, for law was (and still is) unable to save anyone - it was only there to show us God's perfect standard for those set apart for Himself ("a schoolmaster to bring us to Jesus" - the "author & finisher of our faith"), but the substance of its fulfillment & the legacy of Christ's having met its righteous demands is that it is faith, belief & trust in the completed work of Jesus that apprehends salvation -
it is in His resurrection that we are made righteous & in His life lived through us that we are
partakers of the divine nature. We are COMPLETE in Him - there are only two NEW TESTAMENT
commandments (from Jesus who has the authority to name them) - Love God & Love Others AS HE LOVED US (see 1 John). Paul's gospel then is the one that pertains to all outside of physical Israel -& made of those who became His own by faith "spiritual Israel". For a number of years, the original
disciples/apostles taught the gospel that Jesus had given them because their audience were Israelites, but they eventually learned from Paul about the bigger picture, even through confrontation (Paul versus Peter for example, when Peter hesitated to accept Gentiles becoming saved or through meetings (in Jerusalem). The (physical "nation" or "people," not a political
country) Israelites still have a place in God's eternal kingdom, hopefully, by embracing Jesus as the
Christ, the Son of God, their Messiah, as the Gentiles have done - since a life of works & ethnicity are INSUFFICIENT. If not, there is a time of testing that will be visited on the entire world to reveal HIM, but is indeed the "Time of Jacob's Trouble" (specific to Israel, to provoke them to a state of
awakening)- to alert true Israel to God's desire for them & His perfect provision for them via their
Messiah, Jesus & many will come to Him during that time (Paul's desire for his brethren to be
saved will be at least partially realized). However, the modern nation state calling itself Israel (a
political movement under Zionism) populated by those claiming to be "Jews" & operating under
the assumed identity of the descendants of Jacob/Israel, are not acting in accordance with scripture
as attested to by the volumes of accounts about the biblical Israelites in the Old Testament of the fact that HE would gather them, give them land, fight for them, & protect them, when they kept their end of the covenant(s) - which as it turns out was/is impossible (as they proved repeatedly) &
hence the need for a Messiah & for personal salvation/new birth/the indwelling Holy Spirit to
guide, direct & enable the Spirit of God to become the outpouring of His will in & through them. I
personally believe that the FAILURE of the nation state calling itself Israel to attain what it wants
through its genocidal activities & multi-facted wars, its conquests & its desire to rebuild a third
temple (& eventually produce a False Messiah some call AntiChrist but who is basically satan
incarnate -- the "lawless one") will end in despair & it will signal TRUE ISRAELITES who can trace
their ancestry back to Jacob, who will recognize Jesus & embrace Him - which is what this period is
specifically predicted to be for....we were created, designed & animated by God for HIS purposes,
to partake in the eternal community of shared, mutual exchange, love & fidelity of care that The
Father, Son & Holy Spirit have had since before creation, in eternity. Our ancestors forfeited that chance in the garden, choosing KNOWLEDGE above faith, trust, belief & love - we, their ancestors, (who inherited their flawed nature) have that opportunity in Jesus to realize what God originally
intended, except that now instead of walking WITH Him in the cool of the day, we become the
living stones of the temple in which HE DWELLS, eternally (He does not dwell in buildings made with hands). We are those who have put on Jesus Christ & are living out His love, mercy, compassion, & sharing the news that we must give up our sad efforts to "be good" & instead
affirm our INABILITY to do so without Him - & to (through new birth following co-crucifixion with
Christ) be enabled supernaturally by His giving us a new heart, His righteousness, & the power of
His Spirit living in us to transform us as our minds are renewed & changed to conform with His.
The gospel is not about "what would Jesus do" It's about what Jesus already did & is now doing
through those who are His own, who by faith apprehend Him & who look forward to His physical
return to reclaim/redeem the earth & to "upgrade" their physical bodies & instead to give them
eternal ones to match the eternal life (Jesus' life) that ALREADY dwells within them. The good news
is not, "try harder" -- it is recognize your sinful nature. Recognize your inability to change on your
own. Recognize the purpose, intention & accomplishments of Jesus on your behalf (& as a Gentile,
BECAUSE the Israelites living at that appointed time failed en masse to recognize & embrace their
Messiah at their day of visitation by Him) - that His perfect sinless life as the God/Man & His shed
blood (the fulfillment of all the Old Testament sacrifices that foretold of His eventual final one) -
His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into the heavens, & His ongoing advocacy & intercession for us, His having sent His Holy Spirit as a pledge to evidence to us that He is returning
to replace our mortal bodies & to take us to be with Him... & that the earth will one day be burned
with fire - the elements melting, & a new heavens & earth will replace it. But we will get to witness
the 1000 year reign of Christ on the earth with it being restored to Edenic conditions for a time
before that - a judgement of those rejecting Jesus & the coming glory of a kingdom that is so far
beyond what we can imagine that we will spend eternity learning about Him/Them (the Godhead)
& the wonders of His having chosen to extend to us His love & inclusion/participation in that
sacred circle of fellowship, grace & eternal community.
Our future, when we are "in Christ", living by faith and the power of His Spirit, is guaranteed. There
are no further conditions to be met, because His Work Was SUFFICIENT in every way, because it
was GOD reconciling the World to HIMSELF, through Christ's selfless sacrifice, and triumph over
death (the spiritual separation from God that our ancient ancestors in the garden caused by their
choice to follow satan and not God). God is today seeking what He sought "in the beginning" - a people who have believed, who have trusted, who have devoted themselves to Him and to the purposes & intentions for which He created us - where we find true fulfillment & real life...and He has provided us with all that is necessary to do so, in Christ (and Christ alone).
EXACTLY article as usual mike I have talked to my wife about how I should start a Christian warrior community and start outside cuz that’s how Jesus Christ taught his flock! I think that’s a start that I thought about when sitting in church at school I always thought it should be outside and always be taught from the Bible not the same sit stand kneel. God Bless You Mike!
From a lot of my reading (years ago) I understand that there were lots of tales about Jesus all over Israel/ Middle East centuries ago. Like our tales of Paul Bunyan. I can’t remember the name of the council that compiled the books of the Bible…what was included and what was left out.
I am not defending Paul because I agree we need to follow Yeshua but I want to say Paul was referring to following Jewish traditions like talmud versus the following the Torah.
Mike; As with some others, I'd love to have a discussion with you. You have trouble resolving God's motivation towards us (love) and His 'hate' motivation towards those who destroy the product of that love. Having created someone in your own image to love, would you not hate someone who hates you and destroys your family, and will not turn from it?
Brave of you to speak out on the topic of Paul. Believers who question the false apostle Paul, like you did here, are confronted with a similar negative response from their friends and family as those speaking out against the jabs.
I covered similar ground in my substack article "Pauline christianty" in November.
Works as a form of paying dues to earn a place in heaven is dead works. We cannot do more than Jesus did and to try is a form a self-aggrandizement and diminishes the sacrifice of Jesus. True works is obedience to God’s law and loving your brother as yourself, avoiding all forms of idolatry (worshipping wealth, fame, etc.). Wanting the approval of others over the approval of God is a form of idolatry. Following the Ten Commandments is a way of life.
When God's word is rightly divide by believers who are lead and truly let the H. S. guide them, they will see that the apostle Paul was and is a man of God and nothing he said contradicts what was given him to say when he first started out in the ministry given him by God Almighty of the Acts period. What a lot of Christians do not realize is there were different periods as God deal with people, There was a 33 year period when the Lord Jesus started His ministry as He reveal the Kingdom and after that it was a period where the Lord Jesus choose the 12 disciples that became apostles to go out to reveal the LJC to all Jews first before going to the Nations or Gentiles and that was a 33 year period, then after the nation of Israel rejected Him, but the common people of the Jews didn't, the message moved to all nations as the apostle Paul revealed who the LJC was and is and during this time it went from the Acts period to the new dispensation of what we are still in call the dispensation of the grace of God. Eph.3:2. One must rightly divide the scriptures from Genesis to Revelations to determine who, what when, where, and why certain things are said.
https://doctrine.org/jesus-vs-paul
Jesus' primary mission was to the Israelites as prophesied in the scriptures, to evidence that He was their promised Messiah & to offer them the kingdom. He repeatedly demonstrated that they both misrepresented the law, their inability to keep it (demonstrating by word & deed that they needed a Savior in the absence of being able to attain salvation through works, an impossibility). The famous "Sermon on the Mount" is not a set of "ideals," it is a contrast between the oral laws propounded as the keeping of the law, adopted & promulgated by the "leadership," & the actual (impossibly higher) standard that the law truly represented, one that was unattainable in the state of sin & rebellion that plagued humankind from the fall (& for the unsaved, still does). The rejection of Christ by the people whom He came for & should have recognized Him, but for their traditions, rituals, & mis-interpretation of the law & prophets & their true mission: His identity, mission & sacrifice for the sins of all humankind (a once-for-all act with eternal consequences) - other than a few thousand who came to saving faith following the outpouring of the Spirit as promised on the day of Pentecost - was then made available to those who were not invited to the banquet -- the non-Israelites ("Gentiles"). Paul the Apostle's commission directly from the risen LORD (the resurrection, not birth of Christ being the beginning of the new "testament" initiated by the shed blood, death resurrection AND ascension of Christ to God's right hand, to advocate for His own & to make intercession for them, while dispatching the Holy Spirit who had been "with" humankind to instead dwell within them as a permanent possession, after their own identification with His crucifixion & resurrection into new life - HIS eternal life - a life lived under grace, not law, for law was (and still is) unable to save anyone - it was only there to show us God's perfect standard for those set apart for Himself ("a schoolmaster to bring us to Jesus" - the "author & finisher of our faith"), but the substance of its fulfillment & the legacy of Christ's having met its righteous demands is that it is faith, belief & trust in the completed work of Jesus that apprehends salvation -
it is in His resurrection that we are made righteous & in His life lived through us that we are
partakers of the divine nature. We are COMPLETE in Him - there are only two NEW TESTAMENT
commandments (from Jesus who has the authority to name them) - Love God & Love Others AS HE LOVED US (see 1 John). Paul's gospel then is the one that pertains to all outside of physical Israel -& made of those who became His own by faith "spiritual Israel". For a number of years, the original
disciples/apostles taught the gospel that Jesus had given them because their audience were Israelites, but they eventually learned from Paul about the bigger picture, even through confrontation (Paul versus Peter for example, when Peter hesitated to accept Gentiles becoming saved or through meetings (in Jerusalem). The (physical "nation" or "people," not a political
country) Israelites still have a place in God's eternal kingdom, hopefully, by embracing Jesus as the
Christ, the Son of God, their Messiah, as the Gentiles have done - since a life of works & ethnicity are INSUFFICIENT. If not, there is a time of testing that will be visited on the entire world to reveal HIM, but is indeed the "Time of Jacob's Trouble" (specific to Israel, to provoke them to a state of
awakening)- to alert true Israel to God's desire for them & His perfect provision for them via their
Messiah, Jesus & many will come to Him during that time (Paul's desire for his brethren to be
saved will be at least partially realized). However, the modern nation state calling itself Israel (a
political movement under Zionism) populated by those claiming to be "Jews" & operating under
the assumed identity of the descendants of Jacob/Israel, are not acting in accordance with scripture
as attested to by the volumes of accounts about the biblical Israelites in the Old Testament of the fact that HE would gather them, give them land, fight for them, & protect them, when they kept their end of the covenant(s) - which as it turns out was/is impossible (as they proved repeatedly) &
hence the need for a Messiah & for personal salvation/new birth/the indwelling Holy Spirit to
guide, direct & enable the Spirit of God to become the outpouring of His will in & through them. I
personally believe that the FAILURE of the nation state calling itself Israel to attain what it wants
through its genocidal activities & multi-facted wars, its conquests & its desire to rebuild a third
temple (& eventually produce a False Messiah some call AntiChrist but who is basically satan
incarnate -- the "lawless one") will end in despair & it will signal TRUE ISRAELITES who can trace
their ancestry back to Jacob, who will recognize Jesus & embrace Him - which is what this period is
specifically predicted to be for....we were created, designed & animated by God for HIS purposes,
to partake in the eternal community of shared, mutual exchange, love & fidelity of care that The
Father, Son & Holy Spirit have had since before creation, in eternity. Our ancestors forfeited that chance in the garden, choosing KNOWLEDGE above faith, trust, belief & love - we, their ancestors, (who inherited their flawed nature) have that opportunity in Jesus to realize what God originally
intended, except that now instead of walking WITH Him in the cool of the day, we become the
living stones of the temple in which HE DWELLS, eternally (He does not dwell in buildings made with hands). We are those who have put on Jesus Christ & are living out His love, mercy, compassion, & sharing the news that we must give up our sad efforts to "be good" & instead
affirm our INABILITY to do so without Him - & to (through new birth following co-crucifixion with
Christ) be enabled supernaturally by His giving us a new heart, His righteousness, & the power of
His Spirit living in us to transform us as our minds are renewed & changed to conform with His.
The gospel is not about "what would Jesus do" It's about what Jesus already did & is now doing
through those who are His own, who by faith apprehend Him & who look forward to His physical
return to reclaim/redeem the earth & to "upgrade" their physical bodies & instead to give them
eternal ones to match the eternal life (Jesus' life) that ALREADY dwells within them. The good news
is not, "try harder" -- it is recognize your sinful nature. Recognize your inability to change on your
own. Recognize the purpose, intention & accomplishments of Jesus on your behalf (& as a Gentile,
BECAUSE the Israelites living at that appointed time failed en masse to recognize & embrace their
Messiah at their day of visitation by Him) - that His perfect sinless life as the God/Man & His shed
blood (the fulfillment of all the Old Testament sacrifices that foretold of His eventual final one) -
His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into the heavens, & His ongoing advocacy & intercession for us, His having sent His Holy Spirit as a pledge to evidence to us that He is returning
to replace our mortal bodies & to take us to be with Him... & that the earth will one day be burned
with fire - the elements melting, & a new heavens & earth will replace it. But we will get to witness
the 1000 year reign of Christ on the earth with it being restored to Edenic conditions for a time
before that - a judgement of those rejecting Jesus & the coming glory of a kingdom that is so far
beyond what we can imagine that we will spend eternity learning about Him/Them (the Godhead)
& the wonders of His having chosen to extend to us His love & inclusion/participation in that
sacred circle of fellowship, grace & eternal community.
Our future, when we are "in Christ", living by faith and the power of His Spirit, is guaranteed. There
are no further conditions to be met, because His Work Was SUFFICIENT in every way, because it
was GOD reconciling the World to HIMSELF, through Christ's selfless sacrifice, and triumph over
death (the spiritual separation from God that our ancient ancestors in the garden caused by their
choice to follow satan and not God). God is today seeking what He sought "in the beginning" - a people who have believed, who have trusted, who have devoted themselves to Him and to the purposes & intentions for which He created us - where we find true fulfillment & real life...and He has provided us with all that is necessary to do so, in Christ (and Christ alone).
EXACTLY article as usual mike I have talked to my wife about how I should start a Christian warrior community and start outside cuz that’s how Jesus Christ taught his flock! I think that’s a start that I thought about when sitting in church at school I always thought it should be outside and always be taught from the Bible not the same sit stand kneel. God Bless You Mike!
From a lot of my reading (years ago) I understand that there were lots of tales about Jesus all over Israel/ Middle East centuries ago. Like our tales of Paul Bunyan. I can’t remember the name of the council that compiled the books of the Bible…what was included and what was left out.
I think it was the Roman emporer who convened the council.
I would love to pick your brain on how to start that type of Christian community that helps and protects the flock
I am not defending Paul because I agree we need to follow Yeshua but I want to say Paul was referring to following Jewish traditions like talmud versus the following the Torah.
Mike; As with some others, I'd love to have a discussion with you. You have trouble resolving God's motivation towards us (love) and His 'hate' motivation towards those who destroy the product of that love. Having created someone in your own image to love, would you not hate someone who hates you and destroys your family, and will not turn from it?
Brave of you to speak out on the topic of Paul. Believers who question the false apostle Paul, like you did here, are confronted with a similar negative response from their friends and family as those speaking out against the jabs.
I covered similar ground in my substack article "Pauline christianty" in November.
Works as a form of paying dues to earn a place in heaven is dead works. We cannot do more than Jesus did and to try is a form a self-aggrandizement and diminishes the sacrifice of Jesus. True works is obedience to God’s law and loving your brother as yourself, avoiding all forms of idolatry (worshipping wealth, fame, etc.). Wanting the approval of others over the approval of God is a form of idolatry. Following the Ten Commandments is a way of life.
Read the Old Testament
When God's word is rightly divide by believers who are lead and truly let the H. S. guide them, they will see that the apostle Paul was and is a man of God and nothing he said contradicts what was given him to say when he first started out in the ministry given him by God Almighty of the Acts period. What a lot of Christians do not realize is there were different periods as God deal with people, There was a 33 year period when the Lord Jesus started His ministry as He reveal the Kingdom and after that it was a period where the Lord Jesus choose the 12 disciples that became apostles to go out to reveal the LJC to all Jews first before going to the Nations or Gentiles and that was a 33 year period, then after the nation of Israel rejected Him, but the common people of the Jews didn't, the message moved to all nations as the apostle Paul revealed who the LJC was and is and during this time it went from the Acts period to the new dispensation of what we are still in call the dispensation of the grace of God. Eph.3:2. One must rightly divide the scriptures from Genesis to Revelations to determine who, what when, where, and why certain things are said.
Excellent article ‼️