“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55: 6-7

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel (Part 5)

Try this experiment. Read the gospels and pay particular attention to the things the Messiah said about the religious leaders in Judea. Re-read them several times to make sure that you get everything.

Don’t speedread. Slow down and take notes.

As an aside, I wish preachers would stop telling people to read the Bible through in a year. Your goal should be to understand what Yahweh is saying through the Scriptures. You can’t understand the Bible unless you take your time and think about what He is saying. Sometimes, I read only one verse and start doing research to help me really get it. It may take me days to understand that verse, but I don’t mind. I am not trying to see how fast I can read the Bible from cover-to-cover.

If you conduct this experiment properly, you will discover that one of the Messiah’s missions while He was with us in Person was to tell everyone that Jewish religious leaders had hijacked the faith of Abraham (see The Trilogy) and turned it into a man-made religion that Yahweh does not endorse. He was brutally honest. Matthew 23 is probably the best example of this in the New Testament and John 8 is a close second, but they are not the only examples.

The religious leaders of the Messiah’s day hated Him, because He stood against everything that made them wealthy and powerful. Their standing in the community was based on their ability to control the masses of Jewish people in Judea, and the masses were turning to the Messiah in great numbers. He was healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons.

The religious leaders in Judea were no match for the Messiah. They saw Him as a serious threat to their social, political, and economic well-being, and they wanted Him dead.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews and rabbis today like to call themselves “Torah scholars”, but are not Torah scholars. They are Talmud, Mishnah, and Gemara scholars. Those extra-biblical documents contain information about the Messiah that is false and misleading, because the people writing about Him were trying to wipe out any memory of Him. That is not hyperbole.

Consider This

The Messiah’s name at birth was Yeshua, not Jesus. Yeshua is an Aramaic name. It means “Yahweh is salvation” or “Yahweh saves”. It was 1 of the 3 most common names for boys in Israel when the Messiah was born. Thus, it did not set Him apart, but it did point to who He is.

The Messiah is Yahweh. That is not a New Testament concept or a Christian spin on Judaism. It’s written all over the Tanach. Read His Name is Yahweh: Revised Edition. It provides mountains of evidence from the Tanach to prove that point.

The Messiah told everyone including the religious leaders in Judea that He is Yahweh. All of the miracles He performed (healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons) were evidence that He is who He claimed to be. And He performed lots of miracles, not just a few of them, in front of thousands of people. On a couple of occasions, the Messiah took a few fish and a few loaves of bread, fed thousands of people with them, and there were baskets full of leftovers. The Jewish masses in Judea had never seen anything like it. They were flabbergasted. Those miracles were dramatic, undeniable, and unforgettable.

No ordinary human being could have done those things. The religious leaders could not get away with saying that the miracles didn’t happen, because there were too many miracles and too many eyewitnesses for that lie to work. Thus, they told the Jewish people that the Messiah was demon possessed, and that’s what they wrote about the Messiah in the Talmud, the Mishnah, and the Gemara.

In effect, the religious leaders attributed acts of Yahweh to Satan. That is the unpardonable sin. (Matthew 12: 31-32) And they wrote their lies in those extra-biblical documents. Those are the same documents that rabbis and ultra-Orthodox Jews study today, and that’s what rabbis preach in synagogues today, too, if and when they talk about the Messiah. Of course, that’s not the only thing included in those documents, but as Paul said, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.” (Galatians 5: 9)

Paul was an ultra-Orthodox Jew before he had a One-on-one encounter with the Messiah. He was a protégé of Gamaliel who was probably the most respected Jewish Bible scholar of the 1^st century AD and a leader in the Sanhedrin. Studying under Gamaliel, Paul became an expert on the Talmud, the Mishnah, and the Gemara. He was absolutely right. Those extra-biblical documents are indelibly tainted.

In those extra-biblical documents, rabbis and sages occasionally referred to Yeshua as “Yeshu”. To non-Hebrew speaking people reading those names in English, the difference seems slight, but to people who understand Hebrew and the meanings of Hebrew names, the difference is huge.

As I said, Yeshua means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation”. Yeshu is a Hebrew acronym that means “may his name and memory be obliterated”. The difference is a lot more than the letter “a” at the end of the name.

In essence, the rabbis and sages who wrote about the Messiah in the Talmud, the Mishnah, and the Gemara called for blotting out Yahweh’s Name and His memory. That is the epitome of hate-filled propaganda aimed directly at Yahweh by ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious leaders. I can’t stress enough how serious that offense is.

In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel today, the Talmud, the Mishnah, and the Gemara still reign supreme. That is a problem of the highest magnitude, but thankfully, the vast majority of Jewish people in Israel are not ultra-Orthodox. That means I can talk about Yahweh openly in Israel most of the time, and people listen carefully and respectfully to what I have to say. If I talked about Yahweh openly in Mea She’arim, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, I would probably be stoned or beaten to a pulp.

If this interests you, read the SnyderTalk editorials below:

A Final Point

Please watch the video below. I took it in The Wohl Museum in the Jewish Quarter of Old City of Jerusalem. It shows the excavated remains of priestly dwellings from the 1^st century AD. They were destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

You can’t appreciate how wealthy and powerful the religious leaders in Jerusalem were during the Messiah’s day unless you see how they lived. They had a lot to lose if they allowed Him to continue. That’s why they wanted Him dead. They did not realize that by killing the Messiah, they helped Him achieve His primary mission which was to become our atoning sacrifice.

The Messiah is our Passover Lamb. That’s something today’s ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel still don’t understand.

By the way, the Messiah is not our Easter Bunny. That is a backhanded way of saying to Christian leaders, “Tell the truth and get your facts straight, or find another line of work.” Many of them have a lot in common with ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious leaders. They have a lot to say, and a lot of what they have to say is not truthful. I would say that a lot of what they have to day is “pure garbage”, but I’m too diplomatic to do that.

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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”

John 10: 14-18