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Paul commenced his longest and most inclusive letter, Romans, saying categorically that the gospel he was preaching had been promised by God "through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who, as to his human nature, was a descendant of' David" (Rom. 1:2-3).
Answer for yourself: Is the above statement by Paul the truth? Had the Jewish Prophets really spoke of the "gospel" that Paul was preaching or is Paul lying?
This statement needs investigating and the answer might surprise you!
Answer for yourself: How well are you acquainted with the message of Moses and the Prophets in the Old Testament, and do you realize that if you are not well acquainted with them thoroughly then you don’t have the tools necessary to evaluate Paul’s above comment as to its truthfulness?
I am sad to say that it is my experience as a Pastor over a ten year period where I pastored full-time that I found that the vast majority of Christians today are lacking the necessary familiarity with the Old Testament that would enable them to recognize at first sight a perversion of truth when reading the New Testament.
Over the last several months I have made available to those who wish to look and further their spiritual maturity, overwhelming evidence of the above fact. We have together examined quotations of the prophets in great detail, priests, kings, and psalmist, and other leaders in Israel in relation to what they are recorded to have said in the Jewish Scriptures and their corresponding misrepresentation in the New Testament.
Without a doubt as we scrutinized we found the quotations of the prophets, priests, kings, and psalmists to always be relevant to happenings in their lives and to contemporary historical events. Nowhere were they speaking of events of the first century. None, I repeat, none of their statements offered evidence of Paul’s assertion about his unique gospel emanating from them. No citation, when seen within its context and correctly translated, could be used to validate much of what Paul says in the New Testament. Without a doubt nowhere in the Old Testament do we find evidence that can corroborate what Paul said in Romans 1:2-3; namely, that the gospel he preached could be traced back to origins emanating with Moses or the Prophets.
Someone is lying.
If you are familiar with the Jewish Old Testament as taken from the Jewish Masoretic text and not the corrupted version that exists in the Christian's Old Testament and what it teaches then you know that no where does the Jewish Masoretic Old Testament promote many of the doctrines which Paul teaches.
What bothers me and promotes me to warn others is not just the false teachings in the New Testament, but the accrediting of them to holy men of old moved by the Holy Spirit, when in fact, they said nothing of the sort! I cannot let that pass unchallenged because I and others have seen such deception and deplore it. This is done to give a false "prophetic authority" to such misapplication of the Jewish Scriptures.
Nowhere does Moses or the Prophets:
This means that much which we have learned and trusted, as written in the New Testament, is less than truthful. I know you find this hard to believe, but we beg of you to request our series of articles entitled “Evaluating The New Testament For Truth”, and as you study them over weeks and months, you will see for yourself of what we speak. We can prove what we say. You will see how the New Testament has taken the religion of Jesus and literally destroyed it and created a false religion about his identity. This is Rome’s gift to you and once you see it you should be angry at what has been taken from you by a bunch of anti-Semites thousands of years ago. It is not our intent at Bet Emet to argue with anyone, for we believe if you read the facts and evidence for yourself then the truth is self evident. But you must read to learn.
Without a background in the Pagan Mystery Religions, Gnosticism, and Second Temple Judaism, and the religion of Yeshua, you will do as I did for years….read the New Testament and not question anything. Lacking such a knowledge and background into these three areas you are relegated to reading the account of the New Testament concerning Jesus where all three of these religious ideologies have been woven in a unique manner into the life of Jesus. Not knowing which is which we assume by default that the whole picture is a truthful express of Jesus the Jew. Nothing could be further from the truth! We have been brainwashed to not think for ourselves but accept the New Testament as infallible and inerrant. Couple that with our lack of knowledge in these three religious areas and the result is spiritual blindness and we will never know...that is until someone instructs us and warns us. Thus the need for Bet Emet and ministries like it. Seldom do we question anything. Only after years of study was I able to see how this New Testament document was constructed, debated, disagreed on, tempered with, and constantly edited in a consecutive and chronological sequence in order to align with the latest Catholic Councils and their continuing evolution of Gentile theology. After having examined for myself the hundred of misquotation, mistranslations (done on purpose by the way) was I forced to admit to myself that I had believed a lie. Repentance in my religious belief system was the order of the day. It may be for you too. Thus my warning to you who read our ministry materials
Paul can say that Moses, the Prophets, and the Jewish Masoretic Old Testament was the origin for his gospel, but those who know the Jewish Masoretic Old Testament know different. That is one major reason why the Jewish people, who again know their Scriptures better than non-Jews, cannot accept the Gospel attributed to Yeshua by Paul and which was taught by Paul.
The commands of the nation's law-giver, Moses, and the prophet may not always have been heeded but they were certainly understood by the people to whom they were addressed. What the Christian needs to remind himself is that the language and idiom, the metaphors and references in the Jewish Scriptures, were all familiar to the Jewish people. The Israelites and their descendants, called Jews, were neither blind, nor deaf, nor stupid in not perceiving in the words of their prophets a call to accept and worship a new manifestation of God or to repudiate and replace the Torah. Christians have fallen prey to such chiefly because of their ignorance of the Old Testament.
25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. (KJV)
And I guess I should tell you now that if you try to appeal to Romans 11:25 above that the Jews are blinded to the truth then you need to know that the vast majority of the passages in Romans chapter 9, 10, and 11 were not in the first New Testament and it's collection of Pauline writings and the above passage only appears after Irenaeus doctoring of the texts around 200 A.D. so to hold to the false idea that the Jews are blinded to the truth is somewhat ridiculous.
All Christians will admit that the New Testament is built off the validity of the Old Testament. So far so good, and it is easily understood that since the above being correct, then the authority and validity of the Old Testament is without question. In other words, the Old Testament, being true and attested to by Christianity, cannot be wrong or else its sister faith birthed from her also must be false. So it is impossible for the Old Testament to be wrong and the New Testament true, but it is possible for the New Testament to be false and the Old Testament true. Such can only occur when the New Testament contradicts the Old Testament. Our unfamiliarity with the Old Testament clouds our minds and we are not able to recognize when the New Testament is distorting the truth. So after we study the Old Testament precept upon precept, line upon line as instructed by Isaiah, then when we read the New Testament and find something that distorts or changes previous eternal truths then we have no recourse but to reject such as false. This takes not only courage but knowledge to do so. That is one reason why Bet Emet endeavors to teach the strong meat of the word to those who continually receive pabulum in their churches.
Christians fail to understand, because of effective New Testament brain-washing. We must never forget that these Charismatic spokesmen for God in the Old Testament were clear and emphatic in their messages: Israel must maintain a pure and exclusive belief in one incorporeal God Whose Law, combining ethics and ritual practices, must he observed. Far from heralding another faith or a radical interpretation of the Law on which their faith was based, the prophets exhorted the nation to show reverence for the Torah and loyalty to their common heritage.
Just as Paul communicated his wishes and expectations distinctly to his Gentile audiences so did the prophets clearly convey their messages to their listeners. It would be dishonest and invalid to second-guess Paul and read into his letters thoughts alien to those he constantly reiterated. It is just as unfair and unsound to take verses from books of the prophets out of their context and attribute meanings to the words which are contrary to the ideas repeatedly expressed by their authors. Paul's Gentile respondents understood his religious ideas as they were integrated with pagan ideas filtered through Judaism. He spoke in their tongue and in terms of their cultural background. What many of Paul’s Gentile converts did not know, as many Christians today, was that Paul's gospel did not emanate "through God's prophets in the Holy Scriptures" as he attests and that "the Son" was not a product of those Scriptures but a new construct of later ones to which Paul richly contributed.
Paul presented his doctrines within the framework of denigrating Jewish principles and values of the Jews themselves. While Jews saw the Law as divine and eternal, Paul saw it as limitedly divine and cancelable due to his heavy involvement into Gnosticism. We find in Paul and his gospel a rather unique synthesis of Pagan Mystery Religions, Gnosticism, and Judaism.
He denounced the Law due to his Gnostic leanings in general along with specific laws in particular such as circumcision and dietary prescriptions and proscriptions.
Acts 21:21 21 And they are informed of thee (Paul), that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. (KJV)
He sometimes engaged in direct personal vendettas against Jews, attributing offensive behavior or characteristics to them based on his perception of Biblical concepts such as the Chosen People idea. For [Paul and the religion he created] Christianity, anti-Judaism was not merely a defense against attack but an intrinsic need of Christian self-affirmation. Anti-Judaism is a part of Christian exegesis. Anti-Christianity is not properly a part of Jewish exegesis.
In the articles which follow I will attempt to present for your evaluation exegesis or explanation of Judaism and the depiction of Jews in terms of certain topics which occur and recur in Paul's letters. His epistles had the dual purpose of presenting his religious philosophy of faith and of fighting off the competition of Judaism for converts. One might describe this as an early "marketing" battle for the hearts and minds of people. The legacy lives on today in the millions of good Christians who follow Paul believing he represents Yeshua and his faith when in-depth study of all the Bible reveal differently; in fact such study will reveal that Paul taught a completely different gospel from the gospel that Yeshua taught. Shalom.