WEBVTT 00:37.090 --> 00:44.930 I've only given this teaching once in 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 00:44.930 --> 00:48.210 22, 23, 24, 14 years. 00:49.670 --> 00:52.950 And so I really want to get this up on YouTube. 00:54.350 --> 00:59.330 And since you haven't heard it before, I don't think anybody has, and then I've 00:59.330 --> 01:00.370 also added to it. 01:01.470 --> 01:07.530 And what I'm calling this is how the church became divorced from its Hebraic 01:07.530 --> 01:07.970 roots. 01:10.090 --> 01:15.370 And basically that process happened between A.D. 01:15.610 --> 01:23.550 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, which is called the First Jewish 01:23.550 --> 01:25.850 Revolt, and A.D. 01:26.610 --> 01:31.670 135, which was the culmination of the... 01:31.670 --> 01:35.370 Some call it the second... generally it's called the Second Jewish Revolt. 01:35.910 --> 01:39.990 Some historians will call it the Third Jewish Revolt, because there was another, 01:40.290 --> 01:42.050 a small one in there, in the interim. 01:42.430 --> 01:45.910 But it was a revolt that the Romans had to come in with their legions and put it 01:45.910 --> 01:54.450 down, where the Jews were trying to throw off the shackles of Roman domination over 01:54.450 --> 01:57.330 the land of Israel, which became known as Palestine. 01:58.010 --> 02:02.530 But at that time it was Judea and the other Roman provinces. 02:03.330 --> 02:06.970 And so today we're going to talk a lot... there's going to be a lot of history. 02:08.370 --> 02:15.950 I'm a history professor today, and I do have part of this up on the 02:15.950 --> 02:23.530 website, but I have been updating this teaching, because I haven't updated it in 02:23.530 --> 02:27.810 probably 10 years, and because I've been busy doing a lot of other things. 02:28.530 --> 02:32.930 And so what you find on the website may not... 02:32.930 --> 02:36.490 it's not going to be... it desperately needs to be updated. 02:36.870 --> 02:40.690 So anyway, sit back and enjoy, I hope. 02:41.210 --> 02:50.030 And I want to give you some history of how the church, the mainstream Christian 02:50.030 --> 02:56.590 church, got to where it is today, by looking at how it jumped the track and 02:56.590 --> 02:59.230 got off in other directions. 03:00.970 --> 03:06.770 So, again, how the church became divorced from its Hebraic roots. 03:07.910 --> 03:11.650 And I question or hesitate using the word church. 03:11.830 --> 03:17.610 I understand that it's a... that word is a word that's from the English, goes back to 03:17.610 --> 03:22.510 the German, Kirche, or Kirche, depending on how you... whether it's a 03:22.510 --> 03:25.470 hard or soft ch, and either way in German. 03:26.010 --> 03:32.090 And that goes back to Circe, which is the... one of the descendants of Zeus, 03:32.330 --> 03:34.150 or Apollo, the sun god. 03:34.810 --> 03:39.730 And that's where we get the word circle, which is the shape of the sun, 03:40.110 --> 03:41.730 and circumference, and circus. 03:41.970 --> 03:47.370 I understand the originations of these words. 03:47.430 --> 03:52.850 I'm a word guy, and I do my research, and I do study in linguistics. 03:54.190 --> 03:58.230 But I know... so I know some people might struggle over the word church. 03:58.330 --> 04:01.550 For those people, we can use the word kahal, which is the Hebrew word for 04:01.550 --> 04:04.270 congregation, or kahilot, which is the plural. 04:05.130 --> 04:10.670 But whatever you want to call it, please hear what I have to say without 04:10.670 --> 04:15.870 getting hung up over the terminologies, because we are... we're trying to 04:15.870 --> 04:17.830 communicate in ways that people understand. 04:18.370 --> 04:21.990 So I'd like to start out by saying, and I don't think this comes as much of a 04:21.990 --> 04:28.410 surprise to a lot of people, but what is called Christianity today, what I call 04:28.410 --> 04:36.190 mainstream Christianity, really is very dissimilar, if not outright antagonistic, 04:36.490 --> 04:43.110 to a very large degree, to the religion of the apostles of the first century. 04:43.990 --> 04:48.490 Now, it wouldn't be antagonistic with regard to the basic gospel message, 04:48.630 --> 04:52.230 the message of who Yeshua, Jesus Christ, is. 04:52.770 --> 04:57.670 But with regard to a lot of other things, it's really, on the surface at least, 04:57.830 --> 04:58.610 antagonistic. 04:58.710 --> 05:01.590 And I don't want to... I'm not going to turn this into a... this is not going to 05:01.590 --> 05:04.910 be a negative rant against the church, or any of that. 05:05.350 --> 05:10.790 So before you turn this video off, or start throwing things at your computer 05:10.790 --> 05:13.270 screen, or whatever, I'm not going to go there. 05:13.590 --> 05:16.950 There's plenty of other people that do that, and you can watch videos that talk 05:16.950 --> 05:17.490 about that. 05:17.750 --> 05:18.870 That's not the point of it. 05:18.870 --> 05:24.830 But I needed to mention this, because over the last 2,000... almost 2,000... 1,900 05:24.830 --> 05:26.690 years, things have evolved. 05:27.530 --> 05:33.830 And we could also say that Judaism, the rabbinic Judaism of the land of 05:33.830 --> 05:39.290 Israel, and of the synagogues around the world, is not the same Judaism of the 1st 05:39.290 --> 05:39.790 century. 05:40.310 --> 05:44.550 I mean, at that time, they had a temple, and a sacrificial system, and a 05:44.550 --> 05:45.050 priesthood. 05:45.110 --> 05:46.170 That was the Sadducees. 05:46.510 --> 05:49.470 And things... they don't have that anymore. 05:50.310 --> 05:56.890 So that religion has evolved, and changed into something that it is very different 05:56.890 --> 05:59.710 from today, than what it was in the 1st century. 05:59.750 --> 06:01.850 We'll talk about that a little bit. 06:03.030 --> 06:08.730 So, what the Church teaches today, and what the Church looks like, 06:09.030 --> 06:09.970 is very different. 06:10.090 --> 06:17.370 There are similarities, but it largely is very different than what the Apostolic 1st 06:17.370 --> 06:23.250 century, what we call primitive Christianity, was like in the 1st century, 06:23.590 --> 06:27.450 based on what we read in the Book of Acts, and in the Apostolic writings. 06:28.870 --> 06:33.850 Now, it's interesting that both Stephen and Paul... Stephen, the first martyr 06:33.850 --> 06:38.390 after Yeshua of that period, and then the Apostle Paul... 06:40.050 --> 06:44.930 in fact, most of the Book of Acts, about three-fourths of the... I think 06:44.930 --> 06:45.810 about three-fourths... 06:45.810 --> 06:49.370 there's 28 chapters in the Book of Acts, and I believe all but about seven chapters 06:49.370 --> 06:54.970 in that book, are dealing... so about 21 chapters are dealing with either the false 06:54.970 --> 07:01.890 accusation against the Apostle Paul, or 1st Stephen, and the false accusation 07:01.890 --> 07:09.750 against the Apostle Paul, that it was asserted that they were changing the 07:09.750 --> 07:12.710 Torah, and getting away from the Law of Moses. 07:13.210 --> 07:15.170 That's why Stephen was stoned. 07:15.790 --> 07:18.890 That's why Paul was arrested when he came back to Jerusalem. 07:21.330 --> 07:25.550 And then he stood up in courts of law and said, no, I haven't changed this. 07:26.070 --> 07:26.790 No, I haven't. 07:26.830 --> 07:28.530 And he tried to tell the people that. 07:28.870 --> 07:31.270 Not the believers, but the Jewish people. 07:31.710 --> 07:35.810 And that's why they... he was arrested, because he was about to cause a civil 07:35.810 --> 07:36.430 disturbance. 07:36.930 --> 07:40.890 Not him, but because of what people believed that he was teaching against the 07:40.890 --> 07:43.550 Temple, that is the Jews of Jerusalem. 07:44.050 --> 07:47.370 So he was arrested, and eventually gave his life for it. 07:47.850 --> 07:50.510 So the very thing that Paul was... 07:52.110 --> 07:59.790 and Stephen was slanderously... was reported about him, that he came to change 07:59.790 --> 08:07.930 the Temple, and change the laws, and the Torah, is the very thing that the 08:07.930 --> 08:13.550 church believes about... I'm the mainstream Christian church believes that 08:13.550 --> 08:14.730 Paul actually did. 08:15.730 --> 08:18.170 That he actually came to change the law. 08:18.750 --> 08:22.730 That he made... he, you know, it was nailed to the cross, and they caught a lot 08:22.730 --> 08:23.830 of passages from Paul. 08:24.170 --> 08:25.010 Nailed to the cross. 08:25.330 --> 08:26.310 We're not under the law. 08:26.690 --> 08:27.830 We're under grace now. 08:28.010 --> 08:28.870 Done away with. 08:28.990 --> 08:30.690 And all those passages that you've heard. 08:32.270 --> 08:36.650 So that's the first thing I want to... the point I want to make. 08:37.010 --> 08:44.270 So the Christian church has veered away, and literally gone off in an opposite 08:44.270 --> 08:52.010 direction, believing what Paul came to... actually Stephen and Paul gave them their 08:52.010 --> 08:52.630 lives for. 08:52.890 --> 08:54.450 They believe the opposite. 08:55.330 --> 08:57.010 And that's a whole other discussion. 08:57.690 --> 08:59.430 I'm not... I just want to bring that out. 08:59.550 --> 09:00.770 That happens to be the facts. 09:00.990 --> 09:07.070 It may not be received by some people who teach these things, it is the facts when 09:07.070 --> 09:07.850 you look at it. 09:08.610 --> 09:13.850 In fact, can you... Dr. Joe, can you bring my pack up here? 09:15.070 --> 09:17.230 I didn't... I thought I had all my stuff up here. 09:17.370 --> 09:18.030 No, my pack. 09:18.170 --> 09:18.970 It's underneath the chair. 09:20.330 --> 09:20.930 Thank you. 09:21.150 --> 09:22.050 There's something in here. 09:22.110 --> 09:23.150 I got a little show and tell. 09:24.950 --> 09:29.190 And I meant to... you know, this is how it... where is it? 09:29.430 --> 09:30.330 It's in here somewhere. 09:32.270 --> 09:35.490 I hope I put it in. 09:36.950 --> 09:38.490 I guess you're just going to have to imagine. 09:38.630 --> 09:40.390 I was certain I stuck those things in here. 09:41.530 --> 09:44.790 I had some glasses that I was going to put on. 09:45.130 --> 09:46.510 I got them at the drugstore. 09:47.150 --> 09:48.070 They're silly glasses. 09:49.190 --> 09:49.550 Oh well. 09:50.850 --> 09:56.010 They're kid glasses, and they're rose colored. 09:56.770 --> 10:00.930 They're like orange or pink, and then they have pink frames. 10:01.970 --> 10:05.070 And they're just obviously... they're just goofy things. 10:05.290 --> 10:06.830 And I was going to put those on. 10:07.610 --> 10:09.010 Just imagine I'm wearing them. 10:09.370 --> 10:11.430 I would say this is how a lot of people look at the Bible. 10:12.490 --> 10:13.350 To these glasses. 10:13.870 --> 10:16.870 These are the glasses of their church, the glasses of their denomination, 10:17.290 --> 10:20.610 the glasses of their religious tradition. 10:21.410 --> 10:23.590 And that's how they're viewing the Bible. 10:26.470 --> 10:30.570 We've all done that, and we all probably still do that to one degree or another. 10:30.770 --> 10:36.790 And we got to take these glasses off and read what the Bible really says. 10:38.810 --> 10:40.750 And read it in its context. 10:41.450 --> 10:47.370 Linguistic context, cultural context, and that means we got to learn what these 10:47.370 --> 10:47.930 things... 10:47.930 --> 10:53.430 historical context, and the context of... from the viewpoint of the writer, 10:53.530 --> 10:54.250 what they're writing. 10:54.310 --> 10:55.410 There's a lot to it. 10:57.730 --> 11:05.970 And try to get back into that mentality and that... and that means you've got to 11:05.970 --> 11:06.950 be a student of history. 11:07.330 --> 11:09.110 You need to be a student of linguistics. 11:09.270 --> 11:16.070 You can't just take a verse out and apply it in our 21st century, necessarily, 11:16.250 --> 11:17.950 and expect to come up with the truth. 11:19.010 --> 11:21.470 Okay, I'm making some broad statements there. 11:21.530 --> 11:23.670 I wish I could elucidate. 11:23.770 --> 11:24.390 I can't. 11:24.430 --> 11:26.230 Otherwise, we'll never get this teaching done. 11:26.810 --> 11:30.310 But we've got to go back. 11:30.470 --> 11:34.330 We've got to... I like it like historical archaeologists. 11:34.850 --> 11:39.150 We've got to, you know, in Israel or in the Middle East or a lot of places, 11:39.470 --> 11:45.430 there's... when you find this mound of rubble called a tell, especially if it's 11:45.430 --> 11:49.610 maybe a few thousand years old, and you've got one civilization on 11:49.610 --> 11:53.630 another, on another, on another, each one throwing their garbage out or 11:53.630 --> 11:57.910 being destroyed, and then they build another one, and on top of the ruins of 11:57.910 --> 11:58.870 that one, and it goes... 11:58.870 --> 12:04.630 and you dig down, and you might... you can go to Jerusalem, and you can dig down 12:04.630 --> 12:09.830 through certain things and... or see where there's... I remember one place I looked 12:09.830 --> 12:14.630 at, there was all these layers that went clear back to the time of Melchizedek and 12:14.630 --> 12:15.050 Abraham. 12:17.030 --> 12:22.750 And there are different walls that were built there in... it wasn't too far from 12:22.750 --> 12:34.710 the the Pool of Shalom, Shiliach in Hebrew, as you're walking around the south 12:34.710 --> 12:40.430 side of the Temple Mount there, between the Kidron, the Valley of Hinnom 12:40.430 --> 12:43.030 and over toward the City of David. 12:43.650 --> 12:47.690 Anyway, and there's all these layers, and we want to get down to the bottom 12:47.690 --> 12:53.230 layer, back to the Book of Acts, but the Church has just gotten way off of 12:53.230 --> 12:53.470 that. 12:54.130 --> 12:59.030 So, this is what we want to talk about, and the period of time between AD 70 and 12:59.030 --> 13:04.310 35, as I'm about to show you, and again, this is not a comprehensive study. 13:05.090 --> 13:09.550 We could... there are multiple volumes and many things that could be said and 13:09.550 --> 13:09.670 written. 13:09.790 --> 13:16.170 I'm giving you kind of an overview, a summary, just a short history lesson of 13:16.170 --> 13:19.890 what happened during this period of time, because it was during this period of time 13:19.890 --> 13:27.650 is when the Church pretty much emerged, toward the middle of the second century, 13:30.610 --> 13:34.450 a very Gentile, non-Torah situation. 13:34.590 --> 13:35.930 And again, I'm speaking broadly. 13:36.410 --> 13:40.370 There were many that still followed the Torah, but this is not where most of the 13:40.370 --> 13:43.030 Church Fathers were at, if you read their writings. 13:44.270 --> 13:47.090 So, let me just disclose this first. 13:47.450 --> 13:55.170 We are starting from the premise that the Apostles were following Yeshua, 13:55.350 --> 13:57.370 and they were all Torah obedient. 13:59.910 --> 14:01.750 And so, this is our premise. 14:01.850 --> 14:04.450 You have to understand that that's where I'm coming from. 14:05.550 --> 14:10.470 The primitive Church, the New Testament Church, the Apostolic Church, was 14:10.470 --> 14:13.310 primarily Jewish, at least initially. 14:14.350 --> 14:22.050 And the Apostles, the Shelechim, the sent ones, were all adhered to the 14:22.050 --> 14:23.230 Torah law of Moses. 14:24.870 --> 14:31.170 But as the Church expanded throughout the missionary efforts of Paul and the other 14:31.170 --> 14:35.690 Apostles, more and more Goyim, or Gentiles, or non-Jews, or Greeks, 14:35.690 --> 14:37.970 were brought into the Church. 14:38.990 --> 14:45.110 And little by little, as the Apostles died off, most of them were dead. 14:45.330 --> 14:46.510 Well, we don't know when all of them died. 14:46.570 --> 14:48.290 Some of them went to India and Africa. 14:48.830 --> 14:52.410 But many of them were dead by the 60s or the 70s. 14:52.810 --> 14:57.350 John, the Revelator, was the last one that we know of who died. 14:57.850 --> 15:03.310 And most historians believe he died in the middle, early to mid 90s. 15:03.370 --> 15:05.130 He was a very old man when he died. 15:06.590 --> 15:10.110 And things were already beginning to go askew by that time. 15:10.190 --> 15:16.630 But by the time he was dead, things really started to go down the hill quickly. 15:18.230 --> 15:20.430 And we'll talk about that. 15:21.190 --> 15:28.730 But we assume, we're going to take the position that the Apostles were all Torah 15:28.730 --> 15:29.090 obedient. 15:29.250 --> 15:32.510 There are numerous scriptures that talk about that. 15:33.050 --> 15:37.510 And we'll talk about why some people don't believe that to be the case. 15:37.690 --> 15:39.750 We'll touch that, tag that base very briefly. 15:40.390 --> 15:45.830 But little by little, as the Gentiles came into the Church, they brought their pagan 15:45.830 --> 15:48.170 traditions, and they brought their Greek philosophies. 15:48.630 --> 15:55.130 And little by little, they brought what we might call anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish 15:55.130 --> 16:05.170 philosophies, which then literally turned into anti-Gnomenism, or a dislike, 16:05.550 --> 16:09.670 if not hatred, eventually, for anything Jewish, including the Torah. 16:10.850 --> 16:15.910 Well, it's kind of interesting, because along with that came the idea of 16:15.910 --> 16:17.490 salvation by grace. 16:18.650 --> 16:20.630 That is not salvation by grace. 16:20.630 --> 16:21.710 That is a true concept. 16:21.890 --> 16:26.690 I mean, Ephesians 2, 6th grade, salvation is by grace through faith. 16:27.070 --> 16:30.270 But they came up with the idea of salvation versus grace. 16:31.330 --> 16:34.270 I mean, law versus grace. 16:34.670 --> 16:39.670 Salvation is by grace, and grace is antithetical to the concept of law. 16:41.450 --> 16:48.170 And that was a concept that was championed by a church heretic by the name of 16:48.170 --> 16:48.890 Marcian. 16:50.070 --> 16:57.910 And he was very influential in the middle, first, third, and middle of the second 16:57.910 --> 16:58.570 century. 16:59.650 --> 17:04.950 Marcian of Sinope, a city up in Asia Minor, up in modern-day Turkey. 17:05.410 --> 17:06.930 And he spread his ideas. 17:07.050 --> 17:10.910 He was wealthy, and he spread his ideas all over the world, or all over that area. 17:11.290 --> 17:15.410 And eventually, he was excommunicated from the church as a heretic. 17:15.850 --> 17:17.670 But his ideas continued to live on. 17:17.970 --> 17:24.050 And we don't have his writings, but we can read what the church fathers 17:24.050 --> 17:25.130 wrote against him. 17:25.230 --> 17:31.810 Irenaeus, I believe it was Irenaeus, has a lot to say against... he wrote a 17:31.810 --> 17:37.050 whole series of writings against Marcian. 17:37.110 --> 17:38.930 Now, I read a bunch of Irenaeus. 17:38.970 --> 17:40.550 I have all those writings in my library. 17:40.990 --> 17:45.670 And interestingly, they were not primarily... and this is just kind of an 17:45.670 --> 17:45.990 aside. 17:47.410 --> 17:56.450 Marcian, though he championed the idea of grace versus law, he is not the one that 17:56.450 --> 17:59.450 originated it, and he's not the one that championed it. 17:59.850 --> 18:04.950 Look, some of the other church fathers who are considered to be orthodox, 18:05.270 --> 18:07.210 they championed that concept. 18:07.730 --> 18:09.090 It wasn't just Marcian. 18:09.170 --> 18:12.230 Marcian's been given a bad rap by some in that regard. 18:12.310 --> 18:18.090 If you go read what was written about him, the main problem that the church fathers 18:18.090 --> 18:22.010 had with Marcian is that he had some weird ideas, and I'm not going to get into it, 18:22.030 --> 18:27.050 but he had some weird ideas about the deity of Yeshua, and he rejected the 18:27.050 --> 18:33.070 concept of the Godhead, and he rejected the Old Testament, and he rejected most of 18:33.070 --> 18:37.190 the New Testament, except the writings of Paul, and I think it was the Gospel of 18:37.190 --> 18:37.450 Luke. 18:39.050 --> 18:42.290 I mean, he accepted simply all the writings of Paul, and I believe it was the 18:42.290 --> 18:43.030 Gospel of Luke. 18:45.110 --> 18:48.930 He didn't just come up with that idea. 18:49.010 --> 18:53.810 He took it and ran with it as far as grace versus law. 18:54.210 --> 18:56.710 But the other, and I have their quotes. 18:57.290 --> 18:58.370 I'm not going to get into this. 18:58.430 --> 19:00.010 I'm going to do another teaching on that one. 19:00.250 --> 19:07.510 But many of the other ones taught that you cannot have grace and also be following 19:07.510 --> 19:08.050 the Torah. 19:08.730 --> 19:10.630 And that's not what the Bible teaches. 19:10.930 --> 19:13.390 In fact, now let's get back to our talk. 19:13.490 --> 19:14.870 That was just a little aside there. 19:15.510 --> 19:19.290 Paul teaches this in the Book of Romans. 19:19.630 --> 19:23.130 He says, does we, in fact, several, about three times, he says, do we make, 19:23.690 --> 19:24.490 doesn't teach that. 19:24.570 --> 19:29.270 He counters that concept, which was already beginning to raise its head in 19:29.270 --> 19:36.070 Paul's time when he wrote the Book of Romans in the mid, around 56 AD or so. 19:37.170 --> 19:42.470 He says, do we make the Torah, the law, void by grace? 19:43.770 --> 19:46.750 God forbid, he says, about three different times. 19:47.370 --> 19:54.330 So he is trying to come against or combat that idea that law and grace are mutually 19:54.330 --> 19:54.890 exclusive. 19:55.250 --> 19:59.650 And yet this is exactly what the church began to teach in the second century. 19:59.990 --> 20:02.970 And Marcion really championed and pushed that forward. 20:03.170 --> 20:06.750 And it has remained down to our day. 20:07.550 --> 20:11.570 The heresy of Marcion, as well as the heresy of the early, of the church 20:11.570 --> 20:15.450 followers that believe that, has come down to the day, to this day. 20:15.730 --> 20:20.910 And so let me ask you this, and to prove my point, how many of you heard people 20:20.910 --> 20:24.130 say, we're under grace, we're not under the law anymore? 20:24.730 --> 20:26.230 Okay, a bunch of hands went up. 20:26.510 --> 20:30.150 How many of you, how many of you, when you began to explore the Hebrew roots 20:30.830 --> 20:35.710 and the Torah, and people say, you're going, you've fallen from grace, 20:35.950 --> 20:40.250 and you're going under the Torah, and they're like, you know, these two 20:40.250 --> 20:41.550 things are mutually exclusive. 20:41.650 --> 20:43.090 How many of you encountered that? 20:43.150 --> 20:44.470 Again, a bunch of hands go up. 20:45.090 --> 20:49.630 So this idea, which is a heresy, which Marcion got kicked out of church 20:49.630 --> 20:54.370 for, but he wasn't kicked out of the church primarily for that heresy, 20:55.010 --> 20:57.770 because the church fathers taught that. 20:58.810 --> 21:04.230 He got kicked out because he did not believe in the incarnation of Yeshua. 21:04.790 --> 21:09.210 He did not believe in the God of the Old Testament, as we understand it, 21:09.410 --> 21:10.390 the God of the Tanakh. 21:10.650 --> 21:13.370 He had some weird quasi-gnostic beliefs. 21:13.770 --> 21:18.930 That's why he was excommunicated, if you read from, based on my research. 21:21.730 --> 21:25.530 You gotta go back and read the primary, don't just read what people write about. 21:25.670 --> 21:30.550 I have the 10 volume set of the anti-Nicene church fathers in my library. 21:30.870 --> 21:34.550 I read what they wrote directly, translated from the Greek, not what 21:34.550 --> 21:36.750 somebody says that they, you know, wrote. 21:36.830 --> 21:40.910 I like to go back to the original sources, as a good researcher should do. 21:42.590 --> 21:51.370 Okay, so Paul was disputing that idea, and so I wanted to lay that, and so 21:51.370 --> 22:01.230 unfortunately, we must, as we go back and try to understand what Paul was teaching, 22:01.350 --> 22:05.510 and what was happening in the, between, you know, in the first century 22:05.510 --> 22:10.530 and into the second century, we have to understand several things. 22:10.690 --> 22:14.750 We have to understand the cultural context of the times, like I said before, 22:14.870 --> 22:19.390 to understand the rise of antinomianism, or anti-Semitic, or anti-Jewish, 22:19.470 --> 22:25.090 or anti-Torah theologies in the early, let's just say the second century church. 22:25.990 --> 22:29.330 Now you have to understand, again, to understand the culture. 22:30.690 --> 22:33.330 Very few people owned Bibles in those days. 22:34.290 --> 22:36.830 I mean, in this room alone, there's probably a few hundred Bibles. 22:36.990 --> 22:41.590 I mean, there's one under every chair, and you all have your own copies, 22:41.810 --> 22:45.570 and some of you have them on your, you know, your iPads, and on your 22:45.570 --> 22:49.950 computers, and you know, I don't know how many versions I have just on my smartphone 22:49.950 --> 22:50.430 alone. 22:50.730 --> 22:55.870 We got Bibles coming out of our ears, but in those days, very few people read. 22:56.950 --> 23:00.950 Illiteracy was very high, and it was very expensive to have a Bible. 23:01.090 --> 23:04.630 This is, you know, 1500 years before the printing press was invented. 23:05.270 --> 23:09.390 They had to be hand copied, and you had to have Torah scrolls. 23:09.570 --> 23:12.870 A Torah scroll today, a new one cost about 80 grand. 23:13.590 --> 23:18.170 A used one, it's in relatively good condition, might be eight to twelve 23:18.170 --> 23:19.090 thousand dollars. 23:19.790 --> 23:21.150 I can't afford that. 23:21.390 --> 23:24.970 Do you think people in those days could afford that, when they were mostly 23:24.970 --> 23:25.850 peasants? 23:26.970 --> 23:30.670 Okay, so people didn't have Bibles that they could go and read. 23:30.910 --> 23:34.630 They relied on their teachers, Bible teachers, to teach them. 23:34.890 --> 23:39.670 And how many of the Bible teachers had, you know, Torah, the complete Torah 23:39.670 --> 23:40.070 scroll? 23:40.450 --> 23:41.110 All of them. 23:41.390 --> 23:44.830 I mean, they had a whole room full of Torah scrolls for the Tanakh, the Old 23:44.830 --> 23:45.110 Testament. 23:45.470 --> 23:54.690 And then they had to have all the papyri, the codexes in book form of the written 23:54.690 --> 23:57.810 papyrus of the New Testament, of the testimony of Yeshua. 23:58.090 --> 24:00.530 That was probably something that wasn't real common. 24:01.490 --> 24:05.810 So you had teachers teaching about things that they maybe didn't have access to the 24:05.810 --> 24:06.610 original sources. 24:06.950 --> 24:09.650 And then you had people believing that they couldn't go check it out. 24:10.230 --> 24:12.490 Or if they did have it, they couldn't read. 24:13.270 --> 24:16.430 So do you see it would be very easy for heresies to be spread? 24:16.810 --> 24:18.150 You got to understand the culture. 24:18.510 --> 24:21.790 You can't, we can't look at it from our culture, where everybody can read and 24:21.790 --> 24:22.730 everybody has a Bible. 24:24.130 --> 24:29.210 Okay, this is very, very, so it would be very easy for false concepts to gain 24:29.210 --> 24:34.130 traction in the minds of men through unscrupulous ignorant or misguided 24:34.130 --> 24:37.510 teachers who had a great influence over many people. 24:38.050 --> 24:40.970 So keep all these concepts in your mind as we go forward. 24:41.290 --> 24:45.950 And I'm getting ready to explore what happened between 70 AD and 135. 24:46.510 --> 24:48.750 Now let me throw another concept at you. 24:49.050 --> 24:51.850 How many of you have heard the term Judaizer or Judaizing? 24:52.530 --> 24:55.510 How many of you have been accused of Judaizing? 24:59.940 --> 25:06.420 Yeah, the moment you look at, you even talk about the Sabbath or talk about not 25:06.420 --> 25:08.460 eating swine, well you're Judaizing. 25:08.900 --> 25:13.120 Do you realize that most people don't even know what that concept means and have no 25:13.120 --> 25:13.960 clue about it? 25:14.200 --> 25:19.480 And I'm giving you this information so A, you can lovingly instruct your people that 25:19.480 --> 25:23.560 you come into contact with, and B, you can have a better understanding of it 25:23.560 --> 25:31.080 yourself and not feel less because somebody throws this, shoots this bullet 25:31.080 --> 25:31.600 at you. 25:32.060 --> 25:32.560 You know this... 25:34.000 --> 25:38.400 Look, I mean, most people in the Christian, mainstream Christian church 25:38.400 --> 25:42.380 have a gun with about two bullets in it, maybe three. 25:43.140 --> 25:45.840 They have the bullet of, you're going under the law. 25:46.420 --> 25:49.700 The bullet of, you're, you are a Judaizer. 25:49.820 --> 25:51.000 That's bullet number two. 25:51.480 --> 25:56.420 Bullet number three is, well, Jesus fulfilled the law. 25:57.100 --> 26:01.260 Bullet number four is, you know, we're not under grace, salvation, 26:01.500 --> 26:03.960 under law, or under works, we're under grace. 26:04.820 --> 26:09.460 Most of them only have one or two bullets, but they, but they'll shoot this verbal 26:09.460 --> 26:16.180 bullet at you as if that's supposed to stop every argument that this one bullet 26:16.180 --> 26:20.320 is supposed to just, you're supposed to shut your brain down, and, and it's 26:20.320 --> 26:23.700 supposed to end the argument, stop the discretion, and they've just trumped you 26:23.700 --> 26:27.640 with this one bullet that can literally just, just stop everything. 26:28.480 --> 26:29.680 It's like the magic bullet. 26:29.980 --> 26:31.760 You remember the magic bullet theory? 26:32.300 --> 26:35.780 Anyway, okay, that's another thing altogether. 26:36.240 --> 26:41.200 Anyway, it's kind of, this is the magic bullet theory in Christianity. 26:43.240 --> 26:46.900 And, and yet, these people that use these, they're like drive-by shooters. 26:47.140 --> 26:50.800 You, you know, they drive by and they fire their gun at you, and then they drive off, 26:51.080 --> 26:54.240 and that's, that's just supposed to leave you just like speechless. 26:54.740 --> 26:58.100 The problem is, they don't know what the words mean. 26:58.500 --> 26:59.820 They don't know who said them. 27:00.040 --> 27:03.360 They don't know where the scriptures are that even use these words. 27:03.640 --> 27:05.860 They don't know what the context is. 27:06.480 --> 27:10.100 But they've picked up these, these mantras, these jargons, these, 27:10.340 --> 27:14.260 these, these words in the church they've been in, and that's all they know. 27:15.100 --> 27:16.500 It's really very sad. 27:17.520 --> 27:21.260 So we expect you to be good Bereans, to see if these things are so, 27:21.560 --> 27:25.860 and to prove all things and hold fast to that which is good, and then lovingly 27:26.360 --> 27:31.200 instruct your, your people that you, that use these things, and maybe at least 27:31.200 --> 27:34.680 give them some, some things to think about in a loving way. 27:35.920 --> 27:39.360 So let's take a look at this one magic bullet that people use. 27:39.480 --> 27:40.340 It's called Judaizing. 27:41.660 --> 27:47.220 This is a term in the mainstream church, and as, as the mainstream church 27:47.220 --> 27:52.760 understands it today, it isn't found anywhere in the Bible, okay? 27:53.300 --> 27:58.160 However, however, church historians and Bible teachers have applied this term 27:58.160 --> 28:02.940 retrospectively to those in the primitive Christian church, as well as to modern 28:02.940 --> 28:06.040 saints who advocated adherence to the Torah. 28:07.700 --> 28:14.060 So even though that term specifically was not used in the New Testament, 28:14.540 --> 28:20.000 but now that term has taken on a meaning at applying to people, including the 28:20.000 --> 28:24.020 Apostle Paul, who said, I have been obedient to the Torah in the state court 28:24.020 --> 28:27.260 of law, and I haven't violated one, a point of it. 28:27.320 --> 28:31.580 He said that in two courts of law there when he was on trial toward the end of the 28:31.580 --> 28:32.240 book of Acts. 28:33.140 --> 28:39.240 And so this is, like I said, this, this is ironic that the, that the people 28:39.240 --> 28:42.600 nowadays look at Judaizing as obeying the Torah. 28:42.740 --> 28:48.980 When Paul advocated Torah obedience to the believers in Rome, you read the book of 28:48.980 --> 28:50.380 Romans, he's advocating it. 28:50.620 --> 28:52.600 Do we make the law void? 28:53.460 --> 28:56.260 By grace, God forbid, no, we establish the law. 28:56.340 --> 28:57.320 It is holy, just and good. 28:57.360 --> 28:58.100 It is spiritual. 29:00.240 --> 29:03.740 I would not have known what sin was except it were for the Torah. 29:05.840 --> 29:08.500 We can pull lots of quotes from Romans alone. 29:09.480 --> 29:14.500 So it's ironic that they would apply Judaizing, the modern believers in 29:14.500 --> 29:19.700 mainstream Christianity, would apply the concept of Judaizing to people who want to 29:19.700 --> 29:29.880 keep the Sabbath or whatever, when Paul taught himself that to the, to both Jews 29:29.880 --> 29:33.060 and Gentiles, the Torah was a good thing. 29:33.640 --> 29:38.140 Now this has led many, this has led to many, much confusion about the Apostle 29:38.140 --> 29:38.500 Paul. 29:40.380 --> 29:45.240 And, and some Bible teachers believe that he was conflicted in his beliefs, 29:45.940 --> 29:52.960 that he was both advocating the Torah and also dissing the Torah, trying to throw it 29:52.960 --> 29:53.560 under the bus. 29:54.400 --> 29:55.840 Well, that doesn't make sense. 29:55.960 --> 30:00.900 I mean, if Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Ruach HaKodesh, how could this 30:00.900 --> 30:05.440 be that this Apostle who was taught by Yeshua himself could be speaking out of 30:05.440 --> 30:07.980 his mouth, two sides of his mouth at the same time? 30:08.540 --> 30:12.500 I've heard some theologians say, well, Paul, you know, started out being, 30:12.760 --> 30:16.500 you know, a Pharisee kind of a person, and it gradually moved away from it. 30:16.980 --> 30:21.820 Well, that's very interesting, because in the book of Romans, 30:22.320 --> 30:23.760 he advocates the Torah. 30:23.820 --> 30:29.240 And many people will then use the book of Galatians and pull quotes out of there, 30:29.380 --> 30:35.080 and collages and some of these, as proof that Paul was, was, you know, 30:35.100 --> 30:38.040 it's nailed to the cross and done away with and under the law. 30:38.680 --> 30:43.800 And, and he'll use those passages in, for example, in Galatians and in collages, 30:44.140 --> 30:48.980 mostly Galatians, to try to prove that Paul was, was advocating the nullification 30:48.980 --> 30:50.280 of the abrogation of the Torah. 30:51.000 --> 30:55.000 But what's amazing is both of those books were written in the same year, 30:55.600 --> 30:57.400 55, 56 AD. 30:58.680 --> 31:02.400 So this does not represent a progression in Paul's thinking. 31:03.140 --> 31:09.200 So if we have a problem with the Apostle Paul and think that he was schizophrenic 31:09.200 --> 31:15.160 theologically in the same year, I ask the question, is the problem with 31:15.160 --> 31:19.060 Paul or is the problem with our understanding of what Paul said? 31:21.000 --> 31:24.880 You know, we always like to blame other people for our misunderstandings. 31:25.040 --> 31:26.060 We're like little children. 31:26.320 --> 31:27.260 Well, he did it. 31:27.380 --> 31:28.220 Well, he did it. 31:28.540 --> 31:29.180 Now, I didn't do it. 31:29.180 --> 31:32.080 He'll, you know, point their finger at their brother or their sister. 31:35.040 --> 31:36.560 We were the children of Israel, all right? 31:36.600 --> 31:37.820 We act like a bunch of children. 31:38.880 --> 31:40.740 No, Paul was not schizophrenic. 31:42.680 --> 31:45.640 Our understanding of Paul is what's amiss. 31:45.940 --> 31:48.680 In fact, as most of you know, Peter says that. 31:49.740 --> 31:50.620 Peter says that. 31:50.660 --> 31:54.400 He says Paul was hard to, Paul was, it was difficult to understand. 31:54.600 --> 31:58.940 He says that in 2 Peter 3, starting, I think, 15 and 16. 31:59.340 --> 32:03.580 Paul was difficult to, you know, Paul was a legal genius. 32:04.220 --> 32:07.320 He sat at the feet of Gamaliel for, you know, for pity's sake. 32:07.480 --> 32:10.000 You had to memorize the Bible to do that. 32:10.160 --> 32:15.140 You, you, you were the, you were the brightest of the bright to sit under the 32:15.140 --> 32:23.040 grandson of Hillel, the founder of the school of Hillel. 32:23.500 --> 32:26.960 It was two branches of the school, Shemai school of Hillel, the two branches 32:26.960 --> 32:27.920 of pharisaism. 32:29.320 --> 32:34.100 And Hillel is considered by, in by, in rabbinic circles, but some rabbinic 32:34.100 --> 32:37.940 circles to be the greatest teacher of all, of all time. 32:38.400 --> 32:43.820 The modern of, the father of modern day rabbinic Judaism or pharisaism to one 32:43.820 --> 32:44.320 degree or another. 32:45.020 --> 32:50.200 So, so, you know, Paul, even, even Peter said Paul was difficult to understand and 32:50.200 --> 32:55.700 some have twisted his scriptures or twisted his writings to, to, you know, 32:55.700 --> 32:58.040 twisted them to come up with kind of bad doctrines. 32:58.300 --> 33:04.180 Now I will, I told you the term Judaizer is not found in the Bible, but there are 33:04.180 --> 33:11.100 two, two terms, two words, two places where the, the, the Greek word Judaize is 33:11.100 --> 33:11.760 found. 33:12.660 --> 33:15.260 First, the first place is in Esther 8, 19. 33:15.420 --> 33:19.920 You find this in the, in the Septuagint, which is the Greek, the Greek New 33:19.920 --> 33:27.080 Testament, which was written between about 250 and 150 AD in Alexandria, Egypt. 33:27.500 --> 33:35.300 And there you find Hebrew, Esther 8, 17, after Esther was, was, was spared and 33:35.300 --> 33:37.320 Mordecai and all the rest of them. 33:37.440 --> 33:44.300 And the Jews were, were allowed to seek vengeance of their enemies who wanted to 33:44.300 --> 33:44.760 destroy them. 33:44.820 --> 33:47.780 And there were a lot of Persians that converted to Judaism. 33:48.860 --> 33:52.120 And the word there is Yechad, it literally means to become a Jew. 33:53.720 --> 33:55.360 And then we see it again. 33:58.300 --> 33:59.500 That's the Hebrew word. 33:59.740 --> 34:04.100 And then the, the, the, I don't have the Greek word in front of me, but it'd be, 34:04.940 --> 34:11.740 anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's the, it's the, the Greek equivalent of that 34:11.740 --> 34:12.040 word. 34:12.960 --> 34:18.600 And then in, in, in Paul, and Paul uses the term in Galatians 2.14, the, 34:18.600 --> 34:21.800 the Greek, the Koine Greek form of that. 34:22.020 --> 34:26.680 And then remember that's when Peter, Paul, Paul accused Peter of not being, 34:27.360 --> 34:28.680 well, let's put it this way. 34:28.880 --> 34:33.440 Most people read, remember when, when Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles. 34:34.360 --> 34:40.480 And Paul says, are you become like, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, let's see. 34:40.740 --> 34:43.560 He says, you, you'd be, I don't have that verse in front of me either, but he says, 34:43.560 --> 34:47.160 you're becoming like the Jews and you won't eat with the Gentiles. 34:47.180 --> 34:49.180 I think that's a paraphrase of it. 34:49.340 --> 34:55.280 And what it was is, look, there is no, and what most people believe today is that 34:55.280 --> 35:01.340 Peter was, was, I mean, what's taught is Paul was telling Peter, you don't have to 35:01.340 --> 35:02.040 follow the Torah. 35:03.460 --> 35:04.760 That's what most people believe. 35:05.100 --> 35:06.340 Peter was Judaizing. 35:07.340 --> 35:14.040 And so therefore he was, he was adhering to the Torah and not, um, and, 35:14.040 --> 35:19.560 and, and instead of condescending to the, to the, to the non-Jews by, by, 35:19.700 --> 35:21.340 by turning away from Torah. 35:21.340 --> 35:23.280 But that's not the issue here. 35:24.160 --> 35:25.320 That's not the issue. 35:26.420 --> 35:33.140 What Paul is taking Peter to task with is that the Jews would not eat with Gentiles 35:33.140 --> 35:37.980 because of ritual impurity or ritual uncleanness. 35:38.060 --> 35:44.760 Remember when Yeshua in John 4 got water from the Samaritan woman at the well, 35:44.820 --> 35:49.060 and she was shocked that a Jew would even talk to her, much less let him grab, 35:49.540 --> 35:51.300 you know, let her hand him a cup of water. 35:51.460 --> 35:54.080 They didn't even touch them because they felt that they were impure. 35:55.400 --> 36:00.320 And so the Jews, this, there's no place in the Bible that says in the Torah or 36:00.320 --> 36:05.180 anywhere in the Bible says you can't eat a meal with Gentiles or you can't touch 36:05.180 --> 36:05.460 them. 36:05.760 --> 36:10.260 But the Pharisees wouldn't even touch Gentiles because they didn't want to get 36:10.260 --> 36:12.400 impure, ritually impure. 36:12.540 --> 36:18.620 And this is what, this is what Paul was accusing him of following the traditions 36:18.620 --> 36:25.520 of the Jews, the non-biblical traditions that said you cannot eat with Gentiles. 36:25.740 --> 36:28.920 So this was not Paul saying don't follow Torah. 36:29.020 --> 36:34.920 He says you don't need to follow those non-biblical halakhic traditions. 36:35.380 --> 36:45.120 And remember Yeshua took the Jews of his day to task in Matthew 15 and Mark 7 where 36:45.120 --> 36:49.840 he says you have made of none effect the Word of God by your traditions. 36:50.120 --> 36:55.520 Not, he's not talking about the Torah, he's talking about extra-biblical man-made 36:55.520 --> 37:01.640 halakha or man-made dogma that are extra-biblical, not biblical. 37:01.640 --> 37:08.860 So here again, Judaize was not a reference to Torah obedience, it was a reference to 37:08.860 --> 37:10.880 traditions of men. 37:11.580 --> 37:15.040 And that's what Paul was taking Peter to task for, for. 37:16.640 --> 37:24.460 And yet, again, this is so simple and yet this has been missed and not properly 37:24.460 --> 37:28.400 taught by Christian teachers down through the ages. 37:28.840 --> 37:36.440 And so most of you, when you hear the term Judaize, it's made, you have been led to 37:36.440 --> 37:40.960 believe that that term applies to anybody that comes, that follows the Torah. 37:41.340 --> 37:43.580 And that's never what it meant. 37:44.160 --> 37:46.200 And that's not how it's used in the Bible. 37:50.200 --> 37:54.840 Now, we have to ask ourselves, what are the factors causing the church to 37:54.840 --> 37:56.400 turn away from its Hebraic roots? 37:57.040 --> 38:02.620 I mean, the apostles died, John dies, the apostle John dies toward the end of 38:02.620 --> 38:05.840 the second century, or end of the first century, and by the second century, 38:07.340 --> 38:11.840 and I'm going to quote to you some readings of some things from the church 38:11.840 --> 38:15.460 fathers in a little bit, but how could they turn away so quickly? 38:17.360 --> 38:19.400 I'm not saying they all turned away. 38:19.800 --> 38:25.060 It was a gradual process up until the really the fourth century, up until the 38:25.060 --> 38:33.080 Council of Nicaea, and even the Council of Laodicea in the 360s, when some of these 38:33.080 --> 38:39.020 things were these, you know, some of these pagan traditions that like Sunday and 38:39.020 --> 38:45.100 Easter and some of these things became dogma, became the official law within the 38:45.100 --> 38:46.360 Proto-Catholic Church. 38:48.260 --> 38:50.640 But this was a process. 38:51.440 --> 38:54.960 So not everybody turned away from these things, but little by little the church 38:54.960 --> 39:01.800 did, the Proto-Catholic Church did, and so how is this possible? 39:02.360 --> 39:07.240 You know, this may be rather puzzling and perplexing and seem like an incredulous 39:07.240 --> 39:12.140 thing that how could they, you know, here the apostles were Jewish and they 39:12.140 --> 39:19.600 followed the law, and how could the early church fathers, many of them, so quickly 39:19.600 --> 39:26.240 turn by 120, 130, certainly by the middle A.D., the middle of the second century. 39:26.380 --> 39:27.580 How is this possible? 39:29.060 --> 39:30.800 Well, let me ask you some questions. 39:32.400 --> 39:38.220 How quickly did Adam and Eve turn away from Elohim's simple instruction, 39:38.820 --> 39:42.860 thou shalt not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? 39:46.260 --> 39:53.680 How quickly did the children of Israel, after getting delivered out of Egypt and 39:53.680 --> 39:59.860 going to the Red Sea and being led by the pillar of fire and Elohim thundering from 39:59.860 --> 40:06.080 Mount Sinai and all that, and how quickly did they turn to golden calf worship? 40:06.680 --> 40:08.340 Within 40 days. 40:12.870 --> 40:19.650 How quickly, after Joshua's death and the book of Judges, how quickly did the 40:19.650 --> 40:24.670 Israelites turn away from what they had known to be the truth and turn to 40:24.670 --> 40:25.490 idolatry? 40:26.750 --> 40:34.110 Until Elohim raised up judges and how, as long as there was a judge leading them, 40:34.410 --> 40:37.770 they repented and came back to one degree or another. 40:38.150 --> 40:42.530 But when the judge died, how quickly did every man return to doing that which was 40:42.530 --> 40:43.630 right in his own eyes? 40:45.970 --> 40:51.130 How quickly did the northern, when the northern kingdom, the ten northern tribes 40:51.130 --> 40:56.470 broke off from Rehoboam and Jeroboam became the king of the north, king of the 40:56.470 --> 41:04.450 northern tribes, how quickly did the northern kingdom turn to idolatry and set 41:04.450 --> 41:05.850 up golden calf worship? 41:06.450 --> 41:11.230 Never again to return to the true worship of Jehovah Elohim and the following of the 41:11.230 --> 41:11.490 Torah. 41:12.810 --> 41:13.650 That was overnight. 41:14.970 --> 41:19.210 Look at the sad history of the southern kingdom of Yehudah. 41:21.710 --> 41:27.270 Most of them, most of the time it was an apostasy and there would be a revival and 41:27.270 --> 41:29.310 then they would turn back to idolatry again. 41:29.450 --> 41:36.390 So eventually in 586 BC Elohim, they were, they were, Jerusalem and the 41:36.390 --> 41:39.710 temple was destroyed and a large number of Judah was taken into captivity. 41:41.890 --> 41:47.250 Seldom did the people of Elohim during the long history remain faithful to Yehovah 41:47.250 --> 41:49.450 for more than 40 years. 41:52.690 --> 41:56.270 Now do you see how easy it is for people to turn away from the truth? 41:57.390 --> 42:00.170 It should not be considered a strange thing. 42:00.750 --> 42:01.770 And consider this, 42:06.200 --> 42:11.220 how many young people remain faithful to what their parents have taught them? 42:14.190 --> 42:21.950 How many children walk in the spiritual footsteps of their parents? 42:22.990 --> 42:26.490 Look at your family, look at people that you know. 42:27.650 --> 42:32.350 The second generation generally is rebellious, doesn't think the older 42:32.350 --> 42:36.810 generation knows anything, and doesn't want to hear what they have to say. 42:37.450 --> 42:38.530 Any of you have teenagers? 42:41.230 --> 42:43.570 And Dr. Joe's gone through it in his family. 42:44.150 --> 42:45.310 It's, it breaks your heart. 42:45.690 --> 42:50.870 Look, expand that out to societally. 42:52.010 --> 43:01.010 The apostolic fathers, and then you have rebellious Gentile kids coming along with 43:01.010 --> 43:03.330 the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil. 43:05.130 --> 43:06.810 Do you see how easy it would be? 43:07.610 --> 43:11.890 And remember people didn't have their own Bibles, and, and they couldn't read if 43:11.890 --> 43:12.930 they did, or most of them. 43:13.610 --> 43:18.550 It would be very easy to go after other gods and fall away. 43:22.590 --> 43:26.150 Not only that, people are always looking for new and novel ideas. 43:27.690 --> 43:34.730 I mean in the Messianic movement alone, my family's been Sabbath keepers since the 43:34.730 --> 43:35.890 early 1950s. 43:37.810 --> 43:44.930 I never knew that there were so many permutations of the Sabbath. 43:45.030 --> 43:48.910 I always believed in the Seventh Day Sabbath, until I came into the Messianic 43:48.910 --> 43:49.210 movement. 43:50.290 --> 43:54.270 And you got this kind of designer Sabbath, and that kind of designer Sabbath, 43:54.450 --> 43:57.370 and this kind of designer calendar, and this kind of designer calendar, 43:57.710 --> 44:00.870 and this kind of designer new moon, and this kind of that kind of designer new 44:00.870 --> 44:03.810 moon, and this and that, and there's new ones coming up all the time. 44:03.870 --> 44:05.970 I heard about a new one just the other day. 44:07.290 --> 44:10.190 It goes on, and on, and on. 44:10.310 --> 44:12.830 People like new and novel things. 44:14.190 --> 44:15.250 New and improved. 44:16.310 --> 44:19.090 They don't want to be like this guy over here. 44:19.190 --> 44:20.430 They want to be special. 44:21.310 --> 44:22.850 So they'll invent something. 44:22.930 --> 44:25.330 If they have to be special, they'll invent it. 44:25.670 --> 44:27.230 They'll fabricate in their own minds. 44:28.270 --> 44:32.790 No, let's keep the truth of our fathers, and only if it doesn't line up with the 44:32.790 --> 44:35.690 Word, toss it out and search out the truth. 44:35.890 --> 44:38.910 But don't just come up with stuff just to be different and novel. 44:38.990 --> 44:40.570 Of course, they think they're they're following the Bible. 44:43.530 --> 44:46.090 Just ask them, and then ask them to show them. 44:46.250 --> 44:49.790 Show you in the Bible where it is, and they can't show you. 44:49.850 --> 44:55.310 Or they'll pull one verse out of the whole Bible out of context, some obscure verse, 44:55.590 --> 44:59.330 and they'll throw out 20 other verses that are as clear as a bell. 45:00.550 --> 45:02.570 We've seen it happen again, and again, and again. 45:02.990 --> 45:03.850 It's very sad. 45:04.250 --> 45:06.170 So people want new and novel things. 45:07.970 --> 45:13.490 And additionally, again, why are the reasons that the early church went away 45:13.490 --> 45:14.830 from its Hebrew roots? 45:15.410 --> 45:19.910 Look, the culture around them is very strong. 45:20.070 --> 45:22.050 We want to be like the culture. 45:22.390 --> 45:23.850 We don't want to be rejected. 45:23.990 --> 45:25.230 We don't want to be persecuted. 45:25.410 --> 45:26.170 Nobody likes that. 45:26.210 --> 45:27.630 Everybody wants to have friends. 45:28.270 --> 45:32.390 It's easier to go along and get along. 45:33.610 --> 45:35.270 If you can't beat them, join them. 45:35.770 --> 45:38.670 It's an uphill battle, and you get tired of the uphill battle. 45:39.810 --> 45:41.930 And who wants to be radically different? 45:43.810 --> 45:45.610 Ostracization, persecution. 45:46.350 --> 45:49.650 So that's a very powerful factor to lead people away, too. 45:50.610 --> 45:52.550 There's the Roman H7 factor. 45:53.230 --> 45:57.630 That's the internal thing within man, the natural rebellion. 45:58.210 --> 45:59.410 What's Roman's H7? 45:59.510 --> 46:01.390 I had that drilled into me when I was a kid. 46:01.550 --> 46:02.430 I can quote it from memory. 46:02.830 --> 46:08.070 For the carnal mind is at enmity against the laws of God, is not subject to it, 46:08.350 --> 46:09.870 neither indeed can be. 46:10.910 --> 46:12.850 That's why Adam and Eve went astray. 46:13.110 --> 46:14.850 That's why the children of Israel went astray. 46:15.150 --> 46:18.730 That's why the northern kingdom went astray, and the Jews went astray, 46:18.930 --> 46:20.750 and the early church fathers went astray. 46:21.070 --> 46:25.890 They got this natural rebellious carnal nature in them that doesn't want to obey 46:25.890 --> 46:26.310 Elohim. 46:26.570 --> 46:30.530 That's why parents' children disobey and rebel against their parents. 46:30.590 --> 46:33.830 You can see it from little... many times from when they're little children. 46:35.110 --> 46:36.510 They got this thing in them. 46:36.570 --> 46:39.290 It's called the Yetzirah, the evil inclination. 46:39.650 --> 46:43.470 You love them dearly, but they go... and they get in a tantrum, and they want... 46:43.470 --> 46:44.530 where did that come from? 46:44.550 --> 46:45.510 They want their own way. 46:46.710 --> 46:51.370 That's the evil inclination, as our Jewish brothers talk about, the Yetzirah. 46:52.710 --> 46:57.170 And it fights against the Yetzirah, the good inclination. 46:57.310 --> 47:01.290 That's the little dueling battle between the little good angel and the little bad 47:01.290 --> 47:02.630 angel in the cartoon strip. 47:05.210 --> 47:10.250 Another reason that caused, like I alluded to earlier, another reason that caused the 47:10.250 --> 47:21.530 church to veer away from the Torah and its Hebrew roots was a misunderstanding of the 47:21.530 --> 47:24.450 Apostle Paul's writings, which were very difficult. 47:27.630 --> 47:31.430 Look, if you struggle over the Apostle Paul, don't feel bad. 47:33.850 --> 47:37.770 Especially in our translations of our English Bibles. 47:38.410 --> 47:41.570 The translators, I'm sure, have done the best that they can, but they're putting on 47:41.570 --> 47:47.230 their glasses, and they're putting it through their translation bias. 47:47.370 --> 47:51.230 Listen, I don't know how many of you have translated from another language. 47:51.690 --> 47:52.450 I have. 47:53.690 --> 47:54.650 I have. 47:55.050 --> 48:01.570 I studied French for 15 years, including a year in Switzerland at the 48:01.570 --> 48:05.590 School of Modern French, l'Ecole de Francais Moderne, Université de Lausanne 48:05.590 --> 48:07.170 in Switzerland. 48:07.770 --> 48:11.490 I was, for a year, I studied, a school year, I studied French. 48:11.730 --> 48:16.490 All in French, everything in French, so toward a bachelor's degree in French. 48:16.790 --> 48:21.850 And we had a class where that's all we did was translating, taught by a translator. 48:23.330 --> 48:27.030 You know, when you're sitting down, you're translating from a foreign language 48:27.030 --> 48:32.310 into your own language, and you come up with a way, and you could translate this 48:32.310 --> 48:38.630 one way or the other, and you got several words, which one are you going to pick? 48:38.690 --> 48:42.110 Probably the one that agrees with your understanding. 48:43.150 --> 48:46.890 And if you have an anti-Torah bias, you're probably going to pick a word that 48:46.890 --> 48:47.610 agrees with that. 48:47.990 --> 48:49.430 It's the same thing as a journalist. 48:49.910 --> 48:52.410 I also was trained as a journalist. 48:52.570 --> 48:54.270 I almost have a bachelor's degree in journalism. 48:54.390 --> 48:58.490 I studied journalism in a couple universities, and was a writer for a 48:58.490 --> 49:01.710 number of newspapers, including the Portland Oregonian for a period of time, 49:02.770 --> 49:04.050 Oregon's largest daily newspaper. 49:04.790 --> 49:10.850 And we were taught in journalism school about being objective. 49:11.210 --> 49:13.090 Objectivity, we had that drilled into us. 49:13.110 --> 49:16.090 I don't think that's taught now, and I don't think journalists do that. 49:17.650 --> 49:21.390 But we were taught, you keep your own opinion out of it when you're reporting 49:21.390 --> 49:23.010 the news, unless you're editorializing. 49:24.050 --> 49:29.630 But even then, the words that you choose, you can you can slam things as different, 49:29.810 --> 49:31.630 it's a certain way, even while being objective. 49:31.630 --> 49:32.670 It's very easy to do. 49:35.030 --> 49:39.110 When you know the rules and the mechanics, you see how easy it is to do. 49:39.330 --> 49:43.490 This is the problem we have in our English translations, and it's difficult. 49:45.090 --> 49:50.250 So Paul is easily misunderstood, like we talked about before. 49:50.750 --> 49:55.510 And it's taken me years to understand, fully understand, some of Paul's writings. 49:55.970 --> 49:59.710 Because the explanations I heard when I was growing up, and in the church, 49:59.810 --> 50:02.350 and so forth, just did not fit. 50:03.510 --> 50:05.890 And so it's taken a while. 50:06.610 --> 50:12.370 But I finally understand, like I never have before, and I'm sure I'll learn more. 50:12.870 --> 50:17.930 Now another factor that caused the church to leave, or pull away from its Hebrew 50:17.930 --> 50:24.150 roots, was the gentilization of the church, and what I would call weak 50:24.150 --> 50:28.770 spiritual leadership, to come back to pagan influences and anti-semitism within 50:28.770 --> 50:30.090 the Roman Empire. 50:30.770 --> 50:37.450 So as the church became more gentilized, and moved away from Jerusalem, 50:39.030 --> 50:46.090 which was the mother church, and as persecution against the Jews rose up in 50:46.090 --> 50:50.850 the Roman Empire, it became less popular to become, be Jewish, or even look Jewish, 50:51.010 --> 50:52.330 or have anything to do with Jewish. 50:52.430 --> 50:53.710 We'll talk about that in a minute. 50:53.970 --> 50:55.590 So people just moved away. 50:56.830 --> 50:57.750 The church moved away. 50:58.450 --> 51:02.650 And then there are also other external factors that caused social and economic 51:02.650 --> 51:09.370 factors, or influences, that caused the early church in the second century to move 51:09.370 --> 51:10.310 away from its Hebrew roots. 51:10.630 --> 51:18.550 Roman persecution, the Roman Jewish tax, social pressures from the heathen 51:18.550 --> 51:22.370 cultures, because everything was so heathen and pagan. 51:22.530 --> 51:28.970 Everything you did was, there was a temple in every city, and every social custom, 51:29.070 --> 51:33.010 everything was wrapped up in heathen pagan worship. 51:33.990 --> 51:37.970 And if you did not, you know, your business dealings, everything, 51:38.150 --> 51:42.270 and if you did not involve yourself in those things, you probably didn't have 51:42.270 --> 51:43.050 much of a business. 51:43.210 --> 51:45.490 You couldn't have any involvement with the community. 51:45.830 --> 51:46.770 You were looked upon. 51:46.890 --> 51:47.610 You were shunned. 51:47.910 --> 51:49.210 It was very cultic. 51:49.990 --> 51:54.970 And so there was a lot of pressure on the part of people, believers, to conform, 51:55.270 --> 51:56.270 just to survive. 51:58.670 --> 52:06.410 Now, let's quickly review some events that happened between 70 AD and 135. 52:07.930 --> 52:10.770 I don't take credit for listing these things. 52:11.250 --> 52:13.550 These are found in Marvin Wilson's book. 52:13.810 --> 52:19.750 Dr. Marvin Wilson is a professor and a Christian Hebraic scholar. 52:20.170 --> 52:24.750 And he wrote a book in 1989 called Our Father Abraham, Jewish Roots of the 52:24.750 --> 52:25.270 Christian Faith. 52:25.410 --> 52:26.710 It's a book that I recommend. 52:26.810 --> 52:27.790 It's a very good book. 52:28.590 --> 52:31.590 It really gives you some good background. 52:31.990 --> 52:37.010 He, like David Stern, and David Stern's complete Jewish Bible, and his 52:37.010 --> 52:43.530 accompanying commentary on that, the Jewish New Testament commentary, 52:43.930 --> 52:45.690 they come up with the wrong conclusion. 52:46.130 --> 52:50.470 They defend the Torah, but they come up with wrong conclusions that the Torah is 52:50.470 --> 52:51.650 not for Gentiles. 52:52.170 --> 52:55.910 They make the Jew-Gentile distinction, which the Bible does not make, 52:56.010 --> 52:58.070 either in the Torah or in the New Testament. 52:58.350 --> 53:02.630 But again, these guys are pandering to the Christian church. 53:03.270 --> 53:07.430 And, you know, unfortunately, they're wrong. 53:08.530 --> 53:12.190 But other than that, it's really good information, good background. 53:12.310 --> 53:18.570 And he talks about what were the wedges or the things that drove a wedge between the 53:18.570 --> 53:23.730 church and eventually caused a separation between Christianity and Judaism. 53:24.030 --> 53:27.050 Obviously, the big one is rejection of Messiah Yeshua. 53:27.450 --> 53:31.090 But there are a lot of other things that took place that eventually drive the 53:31.090 --> 53:37.190 church not only away from its Jewishness or the synagogue, but away from the Torah 53:37.190 --> 53:39.390 and its Hebrew roots. 53:40.450 --> 53:42.390 Okay, a little bit of history overview. 53:43.450 --> 53:51.910 Remember in 63 B.C., so roughly about 60 some years before the birth of Yeshua, 53:52.170 --> 53:57.570 the Romans took over Jerusalem and established a Roman rule over the land of 53:57.570 --> 53:57.930 Israel. 53:58.670 --> 53:59.370 In A.D. 53:59.470 --> 54:05.770 49, so this is during the time of the early church, maybe 19 or so years after 54:05.770 --> 54:11.770 the death of Yeshua, a dispute broke out between the Jews and the Messianic 54:11.770 --> 54:12.770 believers in Rome. 54:13.610 --> 54:20.190 And as a result, at that time, the Romans made no distinctions between 54:20.190 --> 54:25.550 the Jews and the Messianics, those that were Hebrew Christians but believed in 54:25.550 --> 54:26.370 Yeshua the Messiah. 54:27.250 --> 54:31.610 And they expelled both groups from the city of Rome in A.D. 54:31.690 --> 54:31.930 49. 54:32.670 --> 54:34.250 And then in A.D. 54:34.450 --> 54:46.450 64, Nero was the emperor at the time, and he did not distinguish Jews from 54:46.450 --> 54:47.290 Christians either. 54:47.690 --> 54:52.630 So even though Christians believed in Yeshua, or you want to call them 54:52.630 --> 54:56.910 Nazarenes, or whatever term you want to call, but if they kept the Sabbath, 54:57.210 --> 55:03.370 and wore beards, and had tzitzitz, and kept kosher, and did the biblical 55:03.370 --> 55:06.810 feasts, in the minds of the Romans, they were still Jews. 55:07.390 --> 55:12.850 And so this is, you maybe heard of the persecutions of Nero. 55:13.670 --> 55:15.170 He was very, very evil. 55:15.970 --> 55:22.770 He would apparently light Christians on fire, and use them as torches in his 55:22.770 --> 55:23.170 gardens. 55:23.930 --> 55:28.970 I can't even imagine, but it's believed that the Apostle Paul and Peter both were 55:28.970 --> 55:30.170 killed during this time. 55:31.350 --> 55:38.510 And by the time of Paul's death in Rome, in the mid-60s A.D., in Jerusalem, 55:38.670 --> 55:43.750 the Zealots, the Zealots were a political party that wanted to see the Roman rule 55:43.750 --> 55:46.610 over Israel overthrown. 55:46.870 --> 55:51.030 And they were looking for just any excuse to accomplish this, if they thought they 55:51.030 --> 55:51.930 could achieve it. 55:52.550 --> 56:00.910 And so they rose up in around 66 A.D., and began to try to fight Rome. 56:01.330 --> 56:08.110 Rome came in with its legions, and it was a war that lasted for several 56:08.110 --> 56:08.570 years. 56:10.530 --> 56:15.270 And Rome didn't quite defeat Jerusalem. 56:15.610 --> 56:16.910 It was a very fortified city. 56:17.090 --> 56:24.970 And Rome, the general over the armies, around 66 A.D., there was a revolt up in 56:24.970 --> 56:25.310 Britain. 56:25.730 --> 56:32.490 He was called out, and his armies went up to, I believe, Britain, to put down a 56:32.490 --> 56:34.570 rebellion, uprising over there in Britain. 56:36.190 --> 56:42.130 And at that time, in 66 A.D., the Jews experienced freedom from Rome for four 56:42.130 --> 56:45.130 years, until roughly four years, until 70 A.D. 56:45.410 --> 56:52.130 And during this time, the Messianic believers, the Nazarene believers, 56:52.390 --> 56:59.350 the ones who followed Yeshua, who were Jewish, fled Jerusalem, possibly because 56:59.350 --> 57:06.090 of Yeshua's prophecy in the Olivet Discourse, there in Matthew 24, 57:06.250 --> 57:10.970 that when you see armies accompanying, surrounding Jerusalem, flee to the hills. 57:11.930 --> 57:13.650 So it's possible because of that. 57:13.890 --> 57:17.330 And they fled to Pella, which is about 60 miles north and east. 57:17.390 --> 57:22.050 It's just across the Jordan River in modern day, I guess that would be Jordan. 57:22.730 --> 57:23.330 Is that correct? 57:23.510 --> 57:24.110 I think so, yeah. 57:25.450 --> 57:27.610 And that's where they lived. 57:28.410 --> 57:29.290 They fled there. 57:29.750 --> 57:35.850 And now this, and then in 70 A.D., the Romans came back under General Titus, 57:36.210 --> 57:40.330 and they very quickly, within several months, destroyed the city of Jerusalem, 57:40.630 --> 57:43.990 destroyed and burned the temple, and killed like a million Jews or 57:43.990 --> 57:44.330 something. 57:44.450 --> 57:48.670 I mean, they just literally just ransacked and destroyed the place. 57:50.750 --> 57:56.310 And they continued to do mopping up operations for the next three years, 57:56.610 --> 58:01.690 and just literally subdued the land under the iron boot of Rome. 58:02.490 --> 58:12.830 And this, the believers all were in Pella, and the Jews that were left there in 58:12.830 --> 58:21.370 Jerusalem, the few that survived and weren't taken as slaves, had a great great 58:21.370 --> 58:26.890 anger against the Christians, because they felt that the believers, the followers of 58:26.890 --> 58:30.810 Yeshua, abandoned them and were traitors. 58:31.830 --> 58:36.810 And instead of staying there and taking a stand and fighting, and possibly with 58:36.810 --> 58:39.470 their help, because there might have been hundreds of thousands of believers, 58:40.050 --> 58:46.770 based on what reference we see in the book of Acts, it mentions tens of thousands, 58:47.330 --> 58:48.510 there might have been more than that. 58:48.570 --> 58:53.210 There were a lot of believers in Jerusalem and in at that time. 58:53.850 --> 58:58.590 And so it was believed that if they had stayed, they might have been able, 58:58.990 --> 59:01.430 with that added manpower, to defeat the Romans. 59:01.610 --> 59:11.530 And so this caused angst and division and animosity by the Jews, non-believing Jews 59:11.530 --> 59:12.710 against the believing Jews. 59:13.030 --> 59:22.270 So this began to drive a wedge between the Jews and the non-believing Jews, 59:22.310 --> 59:24.110 or the traditional Jews, and the Messianics. 59:26.650 --> 59:35.090 And then about the same time, I think it was Yochanan Ben Zaki, the Jewish scholar, 59:35.650 --> 59:38.110 he was kind of the head Jewish leader at the time. 59:38.650 --> 59:43.090 When Jerusalem was destroyed, they had no more temple. 59:43.470 --> 59:51.770 So he got permission from the Romans to move their headquarters, the headquarters 59:51.770 --> 59:56.130 of Rabbinic Judaism, or what became Rabbinic Judaism, the Pharisee branch of 59:56.130 --> 59:59.490 it, over to Yavna, which was over toward the coast. 59:59.790 --> 01:00:03.810 And they established the academy there in Yavna. 01:00:05.450 --> 01:00:10.670 And there they reinvented Judaism, because now we had a Judaism that did not 01:00:10.670 --> 01:00:14.090 have the temple, did not have a sacrificial system, did not have a priest 01:00:14.090 --> 01:00:14.610 system. 01:00:15.110 --> 01:00:20.550 And that's when the Siddur and a lot of these things came into being. 01:00:20.750 --> 01:00:24.950 They had to reinvent the Jewish religion, so that it's more or less what we have 01:00:24.950 --> 01:00:28.150 today, to one degree or another, plus a lot of additional traditions. 01:00:28.790 --> 01:00:36.210 And in the process, because of this angst against Christian believers, or Messianic 01:00:36.210 --> 01:00:41.930 believers, they included... because at this time there were many believers that 01:00:41.930 --> 01:00:43.110 still went to the synagogue. 01:00:43.730 --> 01:00:45.750 And we see this happening in Paul's day. 01:00:46.190 --> 01:00:52.010 There are probably 20, 30 references in the New Testament to Messianic believers 01:00:52.010 --> 01:00:54.230 going to the synagogue, into the temple. 01:00:54.690 --> 01:01:00.110 And the Messianics were looked at as just a branch or a sect of normative Judaism. 01:01:01.610 --> 01:01:11.450 But because of this division between the Messianics, because of what happened in AD 01:01:11.450 --> 01:01:19.070 70, and them fleeing to Pella, the folks at Yavna came up with what's 01:01:19.070 --> 01:01:27.210 called the birkat ha-menim, the curse of the heretics. 01:01:27.690 --> 01:01:33.770 And they incorporated this blessing or curse, and it's really a malediction, 01:01:33.930 --> 01:01:40.770 not a benediction, into the daily... I think it was the morning, I think it's in 01:01:40.770 --> 01:01:44.190 the morning, I haven't done my... I haven't looked at that in a while, 01:01:44.190 --> 01:01:45.890 but in the morning prayers. 01:01:46.570 --> 01:01:49.170 So it basically put a curse on anybody that said it. 01:01:49.830 --> 01:01:53.210 So if you went to the synagogue, and it put a curse on the heretics, 01:01:53.730 --> 01:01:55.910 and basically the Messianics. 01:01:56.310 --> 01:01:59.450 So if you went, if you were a Messianic, and you went into the synagogue, 01:02:00.350 --> 01:02:04.450 and you got your prayer book open, or by then you would have had it 01:02:04.450 --> 01:02:04.830 memorized. 01:02:05.150 --> 01:02:08.410 I don't think they had prayer books, but they had it memorized, just like we 01:02:08.410 --> 01:02:11.630 know a lot of liturgy, and we can say it by memory, those of you that have been 01:02:11.630 --> 01:02:12.870 around this movement for a while. 01:02:13.710 --> 01:02:19.090 And like a Shaman, and a lot of things, they came across this statement. 01:02:19.930 --> 01:02:23.450 And if you were a believer in Yeshua, and you said it, you'd be putting, 01:02:23.610 --> 01:02:25.670 you'd be cursing yourself for believing in Yeshua. 01:02:25.930 --> 01:02:32.310 And this was a way for the rabbinic Jews to weed out the followers of Yeshua. 01:02:32.710 --> 01:02:36.470 Because the followers of Yeshua would stop, would be silent at that moment, 01:02:36.470 --> 01:02:37.710 and not say that. 01:02:38.110 --> 01:02:42.250 And people would know that they were a, that they were a follower of Yeshua, 01:02:42.390 --> 01:02:43.910 and they would be kicked out. 01:02:44.830 --> 01:02:52.370 So this drove a further wedge between, separating between Messianic believers, 01:02:53.430 --> 01:02:58.930 and the, and the, and the normative Judaism. 01:02:59.910 --> 01:03:07.250 And then, as the gospel was preached, more and more, and more and more Gentiles 01:03:07.250 --> 01:03:12.290 were converted, the balance and power of influence within the early church began to 01:03:12.290 --> 01:03:16.770 shift from a Jewish epicenter to a more Gentile epicenter. 01:03:17.010 --> 01:03:18.070 Let me give you an example. 01:03:18.490 --> 01:03:23.190 You can read Eusebius, who wrote, well, he was a historian up at, 01:03:24.430 --> 01:03:28.270 there on the coast of Israel, the northern city, what, what, Caesarea, no, 01:03:28.710 --> 01:03:33.090 that wouldn't have been it, whatever, whatever city that was, there was a big 01:03:33.090 --> 01:03:33.630 library there. 01:03:33.650 --> 01:03:38.570 He was a librarian, and he wrote his famous book called Ecclesiastical History. 01:03:39.170 --> 01:03:41.850 And he wrote, he lived in the time of Constantine. 01:03:42.170 --> 01:03:48.270 He was born about 260 AD, and lived up into the 330s, or something like, 01:03:48.330 --> 01:03:51.150 or 320s, I don't know when he died, but in that era. 01:03:51.430 --> 01:03:57.170 And in his Ecclesiastical History, he mentions that the first, I believe, 01:03:57.290 --> 01:04:04.790 15 bishops of Rome were, I mean of Jerusalem, were Jewish and followed the 01:04:04.790 --> 01:04:05.070 Torah. 01:04:05.330 --> 01:04:07.890 So that was all the way up to 135 AD. 01:04:09.030 --> 01:04:10.890 They were Jewish and followed the Torah. 01:04:11.270 --> 01:04:15.510 So Jerusalem was like, the Jerusalem church remained faithful and firm, 01:04:15.770 --> 01:04:22.590 all the way up to the second Jewish revolt of 133 to 135 AD, the Bar Kokhba revolt. 01:04:24.230 --> 01:04:31.370 Now, what happened at the Bar Kokhba, Bar Kokhba was a Jewish, very charismatic 01:04:31.370 --> 01:04:39.350 individual that rose up, and he was claimed by Akiba, a Jewish sage, 01:04:39.530 --> 01:04:40.630 to be the Messiah. 01:04:43.150 --> 01:04:48.030 And they went against the Romans, tried to defeat the Romans, and of course 01:04:48.030 --> 01:04:51.850 the Romans came in and just literally obliterated them, killed them all. 01:04:52.810 --> 01:04:57.870 And of course, the Nazarene, or the Christians, couldn't join up with them, 01:04:58.010 --> 01:05:01.150 because they would be advocating a false Messiah. 01:05:02.270 --> 01:05:08.590 And so, it forced the believers to take a stand against Bar Kokhba and normative 01:05:08.590 --> 01:05:11.950 Judaism, because he wasn't the Messiah. 01:05:12.070 --> 01:05:14.130 And he died, which proved he wasn't the Messiah. 01:05:14.630 --> 01:05:22.370 And so, anyway, after the Romans defeated Bar Kokhba, Akiba, and all those guys, 01:05:22.650 --> 01:05:28.290 they literally came in and leveled Jerusalem, even more than they had in 70 01:05:28.290 --> 01:05:28.590 AD. 01:05:28.990 --> 01:05:31.270 Literally leveled the walls, leveled everything. 01:05:32.150 --> 01:05:38.510 They built a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, and they also forbade the 01:05:38.510 --> 01:05:44.230 Jews from coming anywhere near, within only 10 or 15 miles of Jerusalem, 01:05:44.230 --> 01:05:45.710 or they would be killed. 01:05:46.630 --> 01:05:51.210 And then they put Gentiles in there, in Jerusalem, and renamed it Aelia 01:05:51.210 --> 01:06:00.590 Capitolina, and renamed the area around that area, known as Judea and that area as 01:06:00.590 --> 01:06:01.170 Palestine. 01:06:01.650 --> 01:06:03.730 That's where the term Palestine came from. 01:06:04.090 --> 01:06:05.750 That is a term of derision. 01:06:05.890 --> 01:06:12.490 It was a term of mockery that the Romans imposed on the Jews by naming Palestine 01:06:12.490 --> 01:06:20.050 after their ancient and perennial enemy, the Philistines. 01:06:21.350 --> 01:06:23.950 That's where the term Palestine comes from. 01:06:24.250 --> 01:06:26.530 It comes from the Philistines. 01:06:27.710 --> 01:06:27.810 Okay? 01:06:28.490 --> 01:06:31.510 And so, that's why I don't like to use the term Palestine. 01:06:33.090 --> 01:06:41.190 And so, the people up in Pella, the Christians, were not a part of the 01:06:41.190 --> 01:06:45.710 book Bar Kokhba Revolt, or whatever, but because they appeared to be Jewish, 01:06:46.490 --> 01:06:48.210 could not come into Jerusalem. 01:06:49.450 --> 01:06:56.390 So they named over them a bishop by the name of Marcus, who was a Gentile. 01:06:56.830 --> 01:07:01.170 Let's put it this way, one branch, there was a branch of the Pella believers 01:07:01.170 --> 01:07:02.330 that did that. 01:07:02.430 --> 01:07:04.430 Another branch didn't believe that. 01:07:04.590 --> 01:07:09.950 And they became, well some, according to Edward Gibbon in his Rise and Fall of the 01:07:09.950 --> 01:07:13.310 Roman, or Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire, he says that they became the 01:07:13.310 --> 01:07:13.890 Ebionites. 01:07:13.970 --> 01:07:14.530 I don't know. 01:07:14.790 --> 01:07:17.070 There's a lot of discussion about who the Ebionites were. 01:07:17.150 --> 01:07:18.370 That's a whole other discussion. 01:07:18.810 --> 01:07:20.130 And there was different groups of the Ebionites. 01:07:20.210 --> 01:07:21.270 Some of them were more Gnostic. 01:07:21.390 --> 01:07:23.730 Some of them might have been more Nazarene. 01:07:24.350 --> 01:07:24.710 Who knows? 01:07:24.750 --> 01:07:25.250 I don't know. 01:07:25.370 --> 01:07:25.870 I mean, there's different... 01:07:26.890 --> 01:07:28.710 Eusebius talks about those guys too. 01:07:29.110 --> 01:07:30.130 So, who knows? 01:07:30.330 --> 01:07:31.070 I wasn't there. 01:07:31.510 --> 01:07:36.750 But what I'm trying to say is that even this group of people in Pella that fled 01:07:36.750 --> 01:07:44.610 Rome 60 or so years earlier, some of them Gentilized, named a Gentile bishop, 01:07:44.750 --> 01:07:48.010 who then was able to get them into Rome, because... 01:07:48.010 --> 01:07:54.030 if they would forsake some of their Hebraic Torah ways, and the Romans then 01:07:54.030 --> 01:07:57.170 saw that they weren't Jewish, and they were allowed to come into Jerusalem. 01:07:57.710 --> 01:08:03.510 Okay, what I'm trying to say is there were all kinds of influences going on to drive 01:08:03.510 --> 01:08:09.430 a wedge and to separate... cause a separation of the church from its 01:08:09.430 --> 01:08:12.450 pro-Torah Hebrew roots. 01:08:14.730 --> 01:08:19.290 And then if we take a quick look at between the 2nd and the 4th centuries, 01:08:19.870 --> 01:08:28.790 so moving now past the Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 AD, we see that the Romans 01:08:28.790 --> 01:08:31.530 continued their persecutions of Jews throughout the empire. 01:08:32.390 --> 01:08:41.730 And this, out of expediency, expedient self-preservation, this forced the 01:08:41.730 --> 01:08:48.090 Christians to distance themselves from the Jews, so they would not look like Jews, 01:08:48.430 --> 01:08:52.150 they wouldn't eat the same things as Jews, worship on the same days as Jews, 01:08:52.290 --> 01:08:57.350 so they wouldn't be persecuted and killed and taxed. 01:08:57.390 --> 01:08:58.570 There was a Jewish tax. 01:09:00.670 --> 01:09:04.250 The Jewish tax, where if you were Jewish, you were taxed extra. 01:09:05.470 --> 01:09:12.450 So there was a lot of factors going on that only the very strongest, the most 01:09:12.450 --> 01:09:21.010 faithful, could remain faithful to the Sabbath and the feasts and the dietary 01:09:21.010 --> 01:09:25.110 laws and these things that were overly Jewish. 01:09:26.390 --> 01:09:38.320 Now, in conclusion, I want to take a quick review of some of the writings of the 01:09:38.320 --> 01:09:39.960 anti-Nicene Church Fathers. 01:09:40.080 --> 01:09:44.000 Now, anti, it's not A-N-T-I, it's anti, A-N-T-E, as in before. 01:09:44.560 --> 01:09:45.900 The Council of Nicaea. 01:09:45.980 --> 01:09:50.740 The Council of Nicaea was the first, I think it was the first church council 01:09:50.740 --> 01:09:59.540 that Constantine called together after he became a so-called Christian. 01:09:59.780 --> 01:10:07.220 He was still a pagan, but he was maybe the first ecumenist. 01:10:07.820 --> 01:10:12.600 And anyway, he called this council in roughly 325 AD. 01:10:13.940 --> 01:10:17.580 And so this is the writings of the Church Fathers before that time. 01:10:17.940 --> 01:10:26.260 So that would be the 200s and up into the first part of the fourth century into up 01:10:26.260 --> 01:10:29.440 to about 325 or before the Council of Nicaea. 01:10:30.000 --> 01:10:33.280 So I'm just going to kind of go through a couple things here. 01:10:34.920 --> 01:10:43.640 In AD 130, okay, these are some doctrines that began to creep into the Christian 01:10:43.640 --> 01:10:51.060 Church that were not in, that are not in the Bible and were not part of the Jewish 01:10:51.060 --> 01:10:51.760 background. 01:10:52.400 --> 01:10:55.420 Number one, the idea that the human soul is immortal. 01:10:56.860 --> 01:11:03.420 We find this in the Epistle of Methodist to Dionysius in AD 130. 01:11:03.880 --> 01:11:08.060 Around AD 155, the first apology of just and martyr. 01:11:10.420 --> 01:11:16.100 And in Aerenas against Heresies in 180, he mentions it a couple times in Book 2 01:11:16.100 --> 01:11:17.020 and Book 5. 01:11:17.400 --> 01:11:24.360 Now there were, at the same time, there were some Irenaeus who wrote earlier 01:11:24.360 --> 01:11:28.520 than this in about 120, 130, as well as I believe Polycarp. 01:11:29.900 --> 01:11:34.240 They called that a doctrine from hell or a false doctrine. 01:11:34.580 --> 01:11:38.100 So there was differences of opinion on this among the early Church Fathers. 01:11:39.000 --> 01:11:40.940 But anyway, that's an idea that came in. 01:11:41.500 --> 01:11:45.810 Teachings against the Sabbath and the Biblical Feasts in AD 130. 01:11:46.050 --> 01:11:51.090 Remember, this is like, what, not even 40 years after the death of John the Apostle. 01:11:51.550 --> 01:11:56.790 Again, in the Epistle of Methodist to Dionysius, the author calls the Sabbath 01:11:56.790 --> 01:12:01.390 and Biblical Feasts utterly ridiculous and unworthy of notice, end quote. 01:12:01.850 --> 01:12:05.750 That is in Chapter 4 of that short book. 01:12:06.090 --> 01:12:12.070 And then in AD 130, the Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter 2, also in Chapter 14, 01:12:12.070 --> 01:12:16.070 the author says that the Sabbath and weekly Sabbath and Biblical Feasts are 01:12:16.070 --> 01:12:16.870 abolished. 01:12:18.890 --> 01:12:26.070 Also, we see in early part of the 2nd century, in the Epistle of Ignatius to the 01:12:26.070 --> 01:12:28.290 Philippians, Chapter 14. 01:12:29.290 --> 01:12:31.210 Now the observance of the Sabbath. 01:12:31.910 --> 01:12:34.430 The people didn't, and changing, that changing to Sunday. 01:12:34.630 --> 01:12:40.090 If you read Bacchiacchi's book, Samuel Bacchiacchi's from Sabbath to 01:12:40.090 --> 01:12:43.050 Sunday, and there's others that have written about that, but he's probably the 01:12:43.050 --> 01:12:45.150 best known scholar on that subject. 01:12:45.430 --> 01:12:48.810 And you'll see that Sabbath, getting changed from Sabbath to Sunday, 01:12:48.950 --> 01:12:51.670 seventh day Sabbath to Sunday, was a gradual process. 01:12:51.670 --> 01:12:52.990 It took several hundred years. 01:12:53.410 --> 01:12:58.230 They didn't, the church didn't just all change over to it overtly. 01:12:58.530 --> 01:13:05.290 I believe, I think Bacchiacchi makes a statement, or actually he's quoting a 01:13:05.290 --> 01:13:09.490 Christian historian, who I think was named Socrates, it's not the Greek philosopher, 01:13:09.590 --> 01:13:13.790 but one from the 3rd or 4th century, that says that it started in Rome and 01:13:13.790 --> 01:13:17.570 Alexandria, which happened to be the two most liberal cities, if you know anything 01:13:17.570 --> 01:13:18.670 about Alexandria, in Rome. 01:13:19.090 --> 01:13:21.510 It started there and it began, and they were very influential. 01:13:21.670 --> 01:13:22.470 They were a place of learning. 01:13:22.790 --> 01:13:25.390 And it spread from there, little by little. 01:13:25.650 --> 01:13:31.910 And again, because of Jewish persecution, that, you know, it became less favorable 01:13:31.910 --> 01:13:37.730 to meet on the Sabbath, on the seventh day Sabbath, and to meet on the day that 01:13:37.730 --> 01:13:39.630 Jehovah, or that Yeshua resurrected. 01:13:39.770 --> 01:13:43.030 He actually didn't resurrect on the daylight portion of Sunday. 01:13:43.170 --> 01:13:46.890 It would have been at sundown, maybe going into, I mean, at the very 01:13:46.890 --> 01:13:49.690 first part of the day, if our understanding is correct. 01:13:50.270 --> 01:13:55.370 But anyway, that's when they chose to worship, and it was convenient to do so, 01:13:55.790 --> 01:13:59.790 because to avoid Roman persecution, and they had a good reason. 01:14:00.450 --> 01:14:03.830 Well, it's not a good biblical reason, but in their own minds, they had a reason. 01:14:04.390 --> 01:14:08.210 So here we see the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians. 01:14:09.250 --> 01:14:13.510 The author says to keep the Sabbath on Sunday, chapter 9. 01:14:15.210 --> 01:14:19.510 The epistle of Ignatius to the Turalians, about the same time, chapter 9, 01:14:19.590 --> 01:14:20.090 he says that. 01:14:20.150 --> 01:14:23.650 Epistle of Barnabas, 130 AD, chapter 14, he says that. 01:14:25.350 --> 01:14:31.510 And then around circa AD 155, the first apology of Justin Martyr, chapter 67. 01:14:31.830 --> 01:14:37.130 And I've looked, these are all references that I have found and checked myself, 01:14:37.370 --> 01:14:38.210 in my own. 01:14:38.390 --> 01:14:41.710 These aren't, I don't just quote other people off the internet. 01:14:41.930 --> 01:14:45.390 I go and check them for myself, to make sure they're good references. 01:14:45.830 --> 01:14:49.310 Because many times, things you read on the internet, they're bad references, 01:14:49.790 --> 01:14:53.070 or they're erroneous, or they're misquotes. 01:14:53.490 --> 01:14:58.350 I think reputation and proper attribution, and getting your footnotes right, 01:14:58.410 --> 01:14:59.310 is very important. 01:14:59.390 --> 01:15:01.070 Because otherwise, it makes you look like a fool. 01:15:01.330 --> 01:15:02.150 You don't know what you're doing. 01:15:02.250 --> 01:15:03.910 So I've checked all these out myself. 01:15:04.250 --> 01:15:06.090 This is all based on my own primary research. 01:15:06.630 --> 01:15:08.550 Okay, teachings against the Torah. 01:15:11.090 --> 01:15:15.450 Epistle of Ignatius, this would again be about 120, 130 AD. 01:15:16.510 --> 01:15:20.250 The author declares, if anyone preached the Jewish law, listen not to him. 01:15:23.210 --> 01:15:27.770 Again, also he says similar things in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, 01:15:27.830 --> 01:15:28.590 in chapter 10. 01:15:29.230 --> 01:15:34.570 And then in circa AD 155, the first apology of Justin Martyr, chapter 47. 01:15:34.970 --> 01:15:39.050 The author states that out of weak-mindedness, he uses that term, 01:15:39.510 --> 01:15:41.450 some Christians observe the mosaic law. 01:15:41.910 --> 01:15:45.550 Sabbath and feast days observance are optional, but not encouraged. 01:15:46.810 --> 01:15:49.090 Okay, that's my summation of what he wrote. 01:15:50.110 --> 01:15:58.790 And then, we see the rise of anti-Torah, anti-Semitic theology. 01:15:59.610 --> 01:16:05.130 There was at first the rise of what we might call the de-Judaization of the 01:16:05.130 --> 01:16:09.970 church, and eventually that led into replacement theology, and eventually into 01:16:09.970 --> 01:16:12.530 outright anti-Semitism. 01:16:14.250 --> 01:16:19.450 In Irenaeus and against heresies, book four, chapter 16.4, the author 01:16:19.450 --> 01:16:23.930 declares that the Decalogue was not cancelled by the new covenant, 01:16:24.150 --> 01:16:27.230 but the statutes and judgments of Torah were a bondage to the Israelites, 01:16:27.650 --> 01:16:29.530 and are no longer binding on Christians. 01:16:29.890 --> 01:16:33.490 Now, I don't know how he can... so they believed in the Decalogue, or the Ten 01:16:33.490 --> 01:16:38.470 Commandments, of course not the Sabbath, but... so this was the idea. 01:16:38.890 --> 01:16:42.170 Here's the idea that, well, we follow the Ten Commandments, but not the rest of the 01:16:42.170 --> 01:16:42.390 Torah. 01:16:43.010 --> 01:16:46.430 And they don't even realize that the Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of the 01:16:46.430 --> 01:16:52.230 Torah, the foundation of the Torah, and all the other laws, all the other 603 01:16:52.230 --> 01:16:55.070 laws or so, branch out of the Ten Commandments. 01:16:55.210 --> 01:17:02.690 Every one of them, you can bring them back back to a fundamental principle in the 01:17:02.690 --> 01:17:03.250 Decalogue. 01:17:04.570 --> 01:17:08.070 Now, teachings against the biblical dietary laws and unclean meats. 01:17:08.570 --> 01:17:13.770 Again, the first part of the 2nd century AD, the Epistle of Ignatius to the 01:17:13.770 --> 01:17:18.030 Philadelphians, chapter 6, the author states that one who adheres to the 01:17:18.030 --> 01:17:23.630 biblical dietary laws quote, has the apostate dragon dwelling within him, 01:17:23.970 --> 01:17:24.410 end quote. 01:17:27.230 --> 01:17:33.070 That's how they felt about... that's how this guy, at least, felt about the Torah. 01:17:33.790 --> 01:17:37.290 It was a doctrine of a demon, because it was Jewish. 01:17:37.430 --> 01:17:38.170 It's very sad. 01:17:39.150 --> 01:17:41.710 Easter celebration established as a Christian holiday. 01:17:42.730 --> 01:17:44.210 That was in 150 AD. 01:17:46.610 --> 01:17:47.830 And I have references. 01:17:48.570 --> 01:17:50.350 The date of Easter was then established. 01:17:50.930 --> 01:17:54.310 That idea, that was called the Court of Discipline Controversy, and that was 01:17:54.310 --> 01:17:59.470 established in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and made official, where we would 01:17:59.470 --> 01:18:01.230 not do Passover or Passover anymore. 01:18:01.310 --> 01:18:04.430 We're going to do Easter the first, whatever it is, Sunday after the Spring 01:18:04.430 --> 01:18:05.650 Equinox or whatever it was. 01:18:17.010 --> 01:18:24.690 And then by the 4th century, Sunday became officially the day of worship in place of 01:18:24.690 --> 01:18:29.310 the Sabbath by legal enactment of emperor concentrating. 01:18:29.910 --> 01:18:35.050 And we find that in the History of the Christian Church, volume 3, page 378 by 01:18:35.050 --> 01:18:35.810 Philip Schaff. 01:18:35.810 --> 01:18:37.210 That's about an eight volume set. 01:18:37.470 --> 01:18:40.670 And also Kenneth Scott Lauderet, in his History of Christianity, 01:18:40.750 --> 01:18:42.830 volume 1, page 93, says the same thing. 01:18:44.370 --> 01:18:48.790 Christmas was not established as a Christian holiday until 354 AD, 01:18:48.950 --> 01:18:50.130 after the death of Constantine. 01:18:50.370 --> 01:18:52.150 So you can't lay that one on Constantine. 01:18:52.850 --> 01:18:55.970 He gets a lot of, probably his son, I think his son ruled after him. 01:18:56.010 --> 01:18:57.390 He had several sons that ruled after him. 01:18:57.970 --> 01:19:02.890 Now, in conclusion, in conclusion, and this really is in conclusion, 01:19:03.450 --> 01:19:04.070 it'll take about... 01:19:04.910 --> 01:19:08.190 Listen, look, look, I can do it like I heard one preacher do. 01:19:09.930 --> 01:19:10.770 This is a good one. 01:19:10.830 --> 01:19:11.430 I heard him do it. 01:19:12.910 --> 01:19:15.230 Can you guys give me five more minutes? 01:19:16.410 --> 01:19:18.210 Please, anybody, give me five more minutes. 01:19:19.070 --> 01:19:23.090 If you want me to be done, give me five more minutes, raise your hands. 01:19:23.950 --> 01:19:26.950 Okay, 5, 10, 15, 20, okay, great. 01:19:27.790 --> 01:19:29.550 About 30 minutes, we'll go. 01:19:29.550 --> 01:19:33.570 And you go on for another 30 minutes. 01:19:35.510 --> 01:19:38.350 I've never pulled that one on you guys before, I'm afraid to. 01:19:38.490 --> 01:19:41.730 You already know that I probably don't keep my promises when I say I'm almost 01:19:41.730 --> 01:19:41.990 done. 01:19:42.410 --> 01:19:44.190 But that's okay, I am almost done here. 01:19:44.870 --> 01:19:50.830 So the de-Judaizing of the early church fathers, you know, this is heavy, 01:19:50.970 --> 01:19:52.090 this is heavy stuff. 01:19:52.510 --> 01:19:57.110 We gotta, you know, I'm not really a stand-up, I'm a real stand-up guy. 01:19:57.530 --> 01:20:00.090 I mean, anybody knows me, I'm really serious, because we're like, we're living 01:20:00.090 --> 01:20:05.570 in the end times, and Yeshua's coming back, and I really feel like we've got to 01:20:05.570 --> 01:20:06.790 get ourselves ready. 01:20:08.090 --> 01:20:11.770 But you know, at the same time, and I mean, that really is my heart 01:20:11.770 --> 01:20:17.130 passion, but at the same time, we gotta laugh along the way. 01:20:17.630 --> 01:20:19.550 And I have to remind myself of this. 01:20:19.810 --> 01:20:25.290 We have to laugh, we have to smile, we have to not take ourselves too 01:20:25.290 --> 01:20:31.330 seriously, we have to have a little bit of comic relief, and I'm not a really a good 01:20:31.330 --> 01:20:31.870 comedian. 01:20:33.490 --> 01:20:37.010 But I find that when I get in the under the anointing and in the flow of the Holy 01:20:37.010 --> 01:20:41.570 Spirit, sometimes funny things just come out, and I can't tell a joke to make it 01:20:41.570 --> 01:20:44.910 funny, but sometimes if I just do it in the flow of things, I get people to laugh, 01:20:45.250 --> 01:20:47.910 you know, once in a while, and so it's good to do that. 01:20:48.230 --> 01:20:51.250 So hallelujah, I'm glad I made you laugh. 01:20:51.490 --> 01:20:52.530 So let's wrap this up. 01:20:52.770 --> 01:20:59.770 Now we talked about the de-Judaizing influences, or the de-Judaizing of, 01:21:00.350 --> 01:21:07.050 by many of the early church fathers, and that de-Judaizing eventually led into 01:21:07.050 --> 01:21:10.450 rank anti-Semitism. 01:21:10.650 --> 01:21:11.370 It's very sad. 01:21:12.330 --> 01:21:13.850 Let me quote you a few quotes here. 01:21:16.370 --> 01:21:23.030 Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, from 98 to 117 AD, and then in about 130 01:21:23.030 --> 01:21:28.110 or so, he wrote in the Epistle to the Magnesians, chapter 8, "...if we still 01:21:28.110 --> 01:21:31.290 live according," and I'm quoting here, "...if we still live according to Jewish 01:21:31.290 --> 01:21:36.310 law and the circumstances of the flesh, we deny that we have received grace." So 01:21:36.310 --> 01:21:44.430 here we see the grace versus law juxtaposition, or thesis and antithesis. 01:21:45.250 --> 01:21:49.970 Another quote, "...let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish 01:21:49.970 --> 01:21:54.650 manner, but let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner. 01:21:54.890 --> 01:21:59.550 After the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord's 01:21:59.550 --> 01:22:03.430 Day," that's Sunday, "...as a festival, the Resurrection Day, the Queen and the 01:22:03.430 --> 01:22:06.190 Chief of all days of the week." Chapter 9. 01:22:07.470 --> 01:22:12.210 Chapter 10, again, this is the Epistle to the Magnesians, "...it is absurd to speak 01:22:12.210 --> 01:22:16.770 of Jesus Christ with the tongue, and to cherish in the mind a Judaism which 01:22:16.770 --> 01:22:18.810 has now come to an end. 01:22:18.810 --> 01:22:24.190 For where there is Christianity, there cannot be Judaism." So he's talking 01:22:24.190 --> 01:22:27.790 about the Torah and all the things that they did. 01:22:29.610 --> 01:22:34.090 The laws of Moses, or the Torah that came from Yehovah. 01:22:35.730 --> 01:22:42.390 The Epistle of Matthates to Dionysus, Chapter 4, written about AD 130, 01:22:42.710 --> 01:22:44.590 and I quote, "...but as to their 01:22:51.430 --> 01:22:55.690 scrupulosity concerning meats, and their superstition as respects the 01:22:55.690 --> 01:22:59.410 Sabbath, and their boasting about circumcision, and their fancies about 01:22:59.410 --> 01:23:03.490 fasting, and the new moons, which are utterly ridiculous and unworthy of 01:23:03.490 --> 01:23:05.790 notice." Chapter 4. 01:23:07.050 --> 01:23:11.610 Another quote by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch. 01:23:13.970 --> 01:23:15.610 Maybe I already quoted this one. 01:23:17.250 --> 01:23:18.610 It's the Epistle to the Philadelphians. 01:23:18.690 --> 01:23:19.430 No, I don't think I did. 01:23:19.710 --> 01:23:25.550 "...but anyone preach the Jewish law unto you, listen not unto him." Chapter 6. 01:23:25.970 --> 01:23:31.950 Another one by Bishop Ignatius, Epistle to the Philippians, written around 01:23:31.950 --> 01:23:33.630 AD 130 or so. 01:23:33.690 --> 01:23:38.410 "...if anyone celebrate the Passover along with the Jews, or receives the emblems of 01:23:38.410 --> 01:23:44.550 their feasts, he is a partaker of those that killed the Lord and his apostles." I 01:23:44.550 --> 01:23:50.050 guess he never heard of the idea that by our sins we all killed him. 01:23:52.450 --> 01:23:59.190 Anyway, and then Justin Martyr wrote this between AD 130 and AD 161. 01:23:59.730 --> 01:24:03.890 Justin claims that the scriptures no longer belong to the Jews, but to the 01:24:03.890 --> 01:24:08.530 Christians, thus asserting anti-Semitic replacement theology. 01:24:09.130 --> 01:24:10.210 Chapter 29. 01:24:10.970 --> 01:24:14.730 I'm sure we could pull out many, many more quotes, but I'm going to leave 01:24:14.730 --> 01:24:16.850 you with this one from Constantine. 01:24:17.310 --> 01:24:20.950 Now, Constantine is the one that made... he lived in the 4th century. 01:24:21.290 --> 01:24:23.410 He's the one that convened the Council of Nicaea. 01:24:23.510 --> 01:24:28.530 He's the big bad guy that everybody likes to... all the Hebrew roots people like to 01:24:28.530 --> 01:24:33.610 say he is the guy that put in all these anti-Torah laws. 01:24:33.910 --> 01:24:34.990 No, he isn't. 01:24:36.090 --> 01:24:42.910 This stuff was cooking in the simmering... simmering in the pot 150 years or 200 01:24:42.910 --> 01:24:44.630 years before the time of Constantine. 01:24:44.930 --> 01:24:47.290 He was just a good ecumenical politician. 01:24:48.730 --> 01:24:52.570 Look, he hated the Jews because they cost him money, because they were constantly 01:24:52.570 --> 01:24:53.410 revolting. 01:24:54.750 --> 01:24:56.230 And he hated the Jews. 01:24:56.950 --> 01:25:01.210 And he saw, you know, the Christians were already moving away from the Jews, 01:25:01.310 --> 01:25:04.910 so he just helped the process out by saying, we're not going to do anything 01:25:04.910 --> 01:25:05.410 Jewish. 01:25:08.210 --> 01:25:12.330 So, you know, get that out of your mind. 01:25:12.810 --> 01:25:14.170 And we're going to formulate laws. 01:25:14.330 --> 01:25:15.330 We're going to put in... 01:25:15.330 --> 01:25:19.050 we're going to legalize the things you are guys are already doing. 01:25:20.290 --> 01:25:22.670 And we're going to make it the law of the Roman Empire. 01:25:23.810 --> 01:25:24.810 And that's what he did. 01:25:25.130 --> 01:25:27.430 He said, and he said, we're going to have nothing to do with the Jews. 01:25:27.750 --> 01:25:31.870 And you guys are going to help me to enforce this because that would be 01:25:31.870 --> 01:25:34.570 politically expedient for him. 01:25:35.690 --> 01:25:37.350 He didn't care about the truth. 01:25:37.770 --> 01:25:39.410 He was a sun god worshiper. 01:25:41.370 --> 01:25:43.090 But this is... he wrote a letter. 01:25:43.250 --> 01:25:46.250 We find this in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History. 01:25:46.370 --> 01:25:51.670 There's a letter in the appendix of the book I have, where Constantine writes a 01:25:51.670 --> 01:25:52.510 letter to the bishops. 01:25:53.730 --> 01:25:57.850 And in this letter, he calls the Jews polluted wretches. 01:26:00.230 --> 01:26:04.470 Let us have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews. 01:26:05.230 --> 01:26:10.370 Let us withdraw ourselves from that most odious fellowship. 01:26:11.570 --> 01:26:15.010 Have no fellowship with the lies of the Jews. 01:26:16.050 --> 01:26:19.370 He called them the vilest of mankind. 01:26:25.020 --> 01:26:29.260 So this is where this all led to. 01:26:29.460 --> 01:26:35.540 And eventually you come down to the Catholic Church's inquisitions, 01:26:36.360 --> 01:26:42.280 the persecution of the Jews, to Martin Luther calling them swine, and you know, 01:26:42.380 --> 01:26:43.240 all of this. 01:26:44.180 --> 01:26:45.620 That was in the 1500s. 01:26:47.940 --> 01:26:49.340 It's very sad. 01:26:50.180 --> 01:26:57.200 And I hate to leave this on a sour note, but that's the facts of history. 01:26:58.480 --> 01:27:03.220 We reject these anti-Semitic theologies. 01:27:04.380 --> 01:27:11.400 We summarily reject the anti-Torah beliefs of the Christian Church. 01:27:12.280 --> 01:27:17.140 We reject the anti-Torah concepts of the early church fathers. 01:27:18.520 --> 01:27:20.320 Look, I'm not here to judge them. 01:27:20.360 --> 01:27:21.920 I'm just reading you what they said. 01:27:22.560 --> 01:27:24.460 They will answer for what they have done. 01:27:25.020 --> 01:27:27.020 Look, they did good things too. 01:27:27.200 --> 01:27:29.320 They kept the message of the gospel. 01:27:31.100 --> 01:27:32.600 They kept the Bible. 01:27:33.060 --> 01:27:34.020 That is the New Testament. 01:27:35.180 --> 01:27:39.960 Despite all of its translation issues, they kept these things for us. 01:27:40.040 --> 01:27:43.480 And they spread the basic message of the gospel over the world. 01:27:44.320 --> 01:27:46.140 And I will, well, actually we'll leave this on an up note. 01:27:46.580 --> 01:27:54.580 And the Christian Church, even though, even though they say that the law was done 01:27:54.580 --> 01:28:00.240 away with, and mark this carefully, and I stand in opposition to other 01:28:00.240 --> 01:28:07.140 messianic Hebrew roots Torah teachers who are out there, who are bashing the 01:28:07.140 --> 01:28:10.920 Christian Church, who say that they are anti-Torah. 01:28:11.560 --> 01:28:13.220 I'd like to qualify that. 01:28:14.880 --> 01:28:15.800 You are wrong. 01:28:16.580 --> 01:28:21.340 Yes, I understand that they say that the law was done away with. 01:28:22.100 --> 01:28:25.520 The law was nailed to the cross, and they're wrong. 01:28:25.900 --> 01:28:32.480 And then Paul had these teachings that separate us from the Torah. 01:28:33.840 --> 01:28:41.380 But when you go through all 613 commandments of the Torah between the 01:28:41.380 --> 01:28:46.280 books of Genesis and Deuteronomy, and with a little counter, and you count 01:28:46.280 --> 01:28:51.260 each one that the Christians are still doing. 01:28:53.760 --> 01:28:59.420 Even though they say, I'm talking about a good, Bible-believing, solid Christian, 01:28:59.820 --> 01:29:01.640 who's really trying to follow the Bible. 01:29:02.000 --> 01:29:05.740 Look, they don't worship idols. 01:29:05.860 --> 01:29:07.020 They worship the God of the Bible. 01:29:07.680 --> 01:29:09.360 They don't take His name in vain. 01:29:10.600 --> 01:29:13.400 They don't, they honor their parents. 01:29:14.440 --> 01:29:15.740 They don't lie. 01:29:16.220 --> 01:29:17.340 They don't steal. 01:29:17.600 --> 01:29:19.140 They don't commit adultery. 01:29:19.940 --> 01:29:20.840 They don't covet. 01:29:22.800 --> 01:29:26.040 They do 9 of the 10 commandments. 01:29:26.160 --> 01:29:27.540 They just have a problem with the Sabbath. 01:29:28.580 --> 01:29:34.680 If you do the math, and I have, I've done the statistics myself, 01:29:35.540 --> 01:29:40.720 of the 613, a good, I'm not talking about a nominal Christian, I'm talking about a 01:29:40.720 --> 01:29:41.980 good, solid Christian. 01:29:42.400 --> 01:29:46.500 They are doing 66, well no, what is it? 01:29:46.680 --> 01:29:54.560 They are doing 25% of the Torah, of the 613 Torah commandments. 01:29:55.420 --> 01:30:02.720 And the very best Torah-observant messianic Hebrew roots, Nazarene, 01:30:02.760 --> 01:30:06.160 whatever label you want to, is only doing 66%. 01:30:06.160 --> 01:30:09.500 Because there are a bunch of them we can't do. 01:30:09.700 --> 01:30:13.660 Because they apply to the tabernacle of Moses, the Levitical priesthood, 01:30:13.960 --> 01:30:17.740 the sacrificial system, and things that have been fulfilled in Yeshua. 01:30:19.360 --> 01:30:27.960 So if you remove that roughly one-third that we can't do, or some of them men 01:30:27.960 --> 01:30:31.560 can't do because they apply to women, women can't do because they apply to men, 01:30:31.600 --> 01:30:34.720 or if you're a farmer you can't do, or if you're not a farmer, you know, 01:30:34.720 --> 01:30:35.580 it doesn't apply to you. 01:30:35.800 --> 01:30:40.080 But anyway, of those ones, if you, you know, your family, you were a farmer, 01:30:40.340 --> 01:30:44.540 and you were a husband, you had a man, a woman in your family, and you were doing 01:30:44.540 --> 01:30:49.100 everything you possibly could, and you remove those ones that apply to 01:30:49.100 --> 01:30:52.820 the temple, or sacrificial system, the priesthood, all of that, the 01:30:52.820 --> 01:30:57.140 sacrificial, all the rites and ceremonies that we can't do, and we don't have to do, 01:30:57.220 --> 01:31:02.760 because we read the book of Hebrews, then that means that, let's say, 01:31:02.760 --> 01:31:07.060 the very best messianic Hebrew roots, Torah-obedient person is doing 100%, 01:31:07.060 --> 01:31:08.200 guess what? 01:31:08.700 --> 01:31:11.860 Your average Christian out there, I'm not average, but you're really solid 01:31:11.860 --> 01:31:15.540 Christian, and I don't, I don't remember the exact statistics. 01:31:15.640 --> 01:31:17.640 I have them written down somewhere, I think, in one of my Bibles. 01:31:17.900 --> 01:31:19.640 They're doing about two-thirds of the Torah. 01:31:22.570 --> 01:31:28.650 The main ones that they have a problem with is what they eat, what their holidays 01:31:28.650 --> 01:31:32.450 are, and what day they worship on and rest. 01:31:32.810 --> 01:31:37.350 Those are the three biggies, and there's some little ones too, but those are the 01:31:37.350 --> 01:31:37.710 biggies. 01:31:38.010 --> 01:31:42.630 So what I want to tell you, people, those of you that have come back to your 01:31:42.630 --> 01:31:48.610 Hebrew roots, and are trying to follow Torah, be merciful and gracious to the 01:31:48.610 --> 01:31:49.090 Christians. 01:31:49.990 --> 01:31:53.010 Those are really trying to live up to the light of the truth that they have, 01:31:53.030 --> 01:31:57.170 and are trying to work their way out of doctrines of men, just like you had to 01:31:57.170 --> 01:32:00.350 when you came out of these doctrines of men, by which the Word of God has been 01:32:00.350 --> 01:32:02.830 made of none effect, and you didn't come out overnight. 01:32:03.110 --> 01:32:04.490 It took you a little bit of time. 01:32:07.130 --> 01:32:08.690 So be gracious to them. 01:32:09.710 --> 01:32:14.070 And to those who are watching this video, who are still in the Christian church, 01:32:14.150 --> 01:32:20.690 and aren't sure about being Torah obedient, you're already 66 percent there. 01:32:21.910 --> 01:32:26.470 Just, or roughly, I don't remember the exact, just go to the next level, 01:32:27.070 --> 01:32:32.050 and come out of false teachings and doctrines of men, and just start keeping 01:32:32.050 --> 01:32:34.310 the Sabbath, the biblical feasts, the dietary. 01:32:35.450 --> 01:32:39.910 If you're a man, put on a beard, put on some tzitzitz, and a few other 01:32:39.910 --> 01:32:43.210 things, and just come to the next level in your spiritual walk. 01:32:43.270 --> 01:32:47.490 And let's all proceed and go hand in hand into the kingdom of Elohim together, 01:32:47.670 --> 01:32:53.310 as followers of our great Rabbi, Yeshua, Jesus, the Messiah. 01:32:54.020 --> 01:32:54.650 Amen. 01:32:55.030 --> 01:32:55.610 Hallelujah. 01:32:59.160 --> 01:33:04.070 Seek the Lord while He may be found. 01:33:04.490 --> 01:33:08.210 Call upon His name. 01:33:08.850 --> 01:33:14.690 He is near, He is near, He is near. 01:33:15.370 --> 01:33:31.430 Yeshua Hashem be'ir matzoh, kerabu, yotoh, karoh, karoh. 01:33:33.410 --> 01:33:45.030 Yasuv rashad dar'oh, yishavei machshevotav, yashavei lat'mshev, 01:33:45.210 --> 01:33:51.490 ki'ar be'iz la'ot. 01:33:51.810 --> 01:34:05.070 Yeshua Hashem be'ir matzoh, kerabu, yotoh, karoh, karoh. 01:34:36.170 --> 01:34:41.450 Seek the Lord while He may be found. 01:34:41.810 --> 01:34:45.450 Call upon His name. 01:34:45.870 --> 01:34:51.030 He is near, He is near, He is near. 01:34:52.310 --> 01:35:02.290 Yeshua Hashem be'ir matzoh, kerabu, yotoh, karoh, karoh. 01:35:02.290 --> 01:35:02.910 Yashavei machshev, ki'ar be'iz lat'mshev, ki'ar be'iz lat'mshev. 01:35:02.910 --> 01:35:04.030 Yeshua Hashem be 'ir matzoh, kerabu, yotoh, karoh, karoh.