You and I are products of our cultures. We are witnessing a clash of cultures even now as Europe and the West are flooded by people, many of whom have radically different perceptions on how a culture should be. You may have heard the news of the mass assaults on women on New Year's Eve in Köln (Cologne), Germany, caused by the representatives of another culture who have no respect German culture. We are rightly indignant, horrified and hostile to their barbaric behaviour. Multi-culturalism has proven that it does not work, and never will. Yet are we in the West so innocent?

I am an immigrant, more than once, actually. I was born and raised in the Far East (Singapore and Malaysia) and lived amongst many cultures (Malay-Muslim, Chinese-Buddhist, Indian-Sikh, Indian-Hindu, European-Catholic/Protestant, etc.) in which mine (British-Anglican) was a tiny minority. Then I immigrated to the UK (nominally Anglican), then to Norway (nominally Lutheran) and finally to Sweden (nominally Lutheran). And though there are differences between the latter three, they are a lot more similar to the one in which I was raised in Asia and which at root I still call 'home'.

We mostly love what is familiar to us and to what we have become accustomed through years of exposure and immersion. Western culture has its roots in Christianity, Roman and Greek paganism. Over the last century, though, liberal humanists have systematically tweeked and changed it and created something different whilst still familiar. Many Christian values survive but they are now being outcompeted by a kind of neo-paganism as Europe returns to its heathen roots. Even America is returning to the roots of its Shamanistic natives. Each generation progressively loses more and more of its Christian culture. We live in a hedonistic, post-Christian culture.

What's going on in the West is shocking but necessary. It's necessary on many counts:

• First, because countries like Sweden and the United States, who have national covenants with Elohim (God), are being called to account;
• Second, Yahweh is bound by His own cosmic Torah (Law) to judge violations of that Torah once those who have violated it have been given every opportunity to repent;
• Third, Yahweh has foreordained the outcome of history, foretold it in Scripture, and will not be deflected from His task;
• Fourth, whatever cultures we have evolved in the past - and they have always been in flux - have fallen short of the culture that He has ordained for humanity and will impose when the current age comes to an end; and
• Fifth, He cas called His Remnant to seek after, love and live that culture.

Not to be confused with the Jewish socialistic and political philosophy called 'Zionism', which though making claims to having a biblical basis are quite the opposite, we call this way of life after the ancient name of Jerusalem, that is, Tsiyon (Zion). It's not a word I use too much because it is invariably confused with the counterfeit. So in order to avoid confusion, I am going to call it the millennial messianic culture or MMC for short.

I said we are products of our own culture. Even when believers are born again, spiritually regenerated and become new creations, they are still heavily influenced by cultural elements in their thinking and feeling, daily reinforced by social interactions and exposure to the media, that create a civil war within the soul. Where the secular culture contradicts the MMC, most believers yield to the secular for a variety of reasons that include social acceptance, job security and family cohesion.

That is why such MMC elements as the lunisolar Creation Calendar (which, relative to the Gregorian Calendar, means rotating sabbaths), the United Order of All Things in Common, living in non-dependency on the state (self-suffiency, off the grid), home education and patriarchal marriage (to cite just a few issues) cause such dificulties for culturally-enslaved believers. Indeed, living the perfect MMC way isn't realistically possible if you are 'in the system'. So many believers love the system so much that few will finally leave it without a collapse of the old order first.

This is why Yahweh has told me to tell the people to prepare in advance so that they can move over to the new ways without too much of a culture shock. It's going to be a shock whether you choose to enter it of your own free will or are forced into it by cataclysmic events - and cataclysmic events are coming and have already started to come. And I have warned you not to expect to leach off others who were obedient and are prepared. Yahweh won't allow this. What we are facing is so huge and will require such a radical change in attitudes and expectations that unfortunately the hearts of those who refuse to change will fail them when they discover they have no choice.

We live in an self-entitlement culture that will vanish overnight. Like cuckoo chicks demanding to be fed by those they have convinced in the past, they will suddenly find that the state will stop feeding them and they will be kicked out of the nest to fend for themselves. They will have to work - and work hard - in order to live. State welfare, as we have known it, will become a thing of the past. Only in the fenced cities, where dictatorship is the order of the day, will the inmates be 'fed' by the state as in any regular prison. But remember, the state is planning to wipe out about 95% of humanity first. Though the globalist élites will fail to accomplish this muderous goal, Scripture says that, along with 'natural' disasters, a third of humanity and nature will perish, which is a lot of people and living creatures.

A lot of artificial systems like feminism, that cannot survive without big government propping it up, will collapse. Either they will stop being feminists and genders will revert to the ones Yahweh created, or they will run to the FEMA camps and other government bodies for survival in the city-prisons. Out in the countryside the natural order will rapidly re-establish itself. This is one reason you don't want to be in the cities or anywhere near them.

For the past 30 years I have been trying to awaken believers to Yahweh's demand that we change our cultural perceptions and allegiances. For most of our Christianity and Messianism is, alas, Besorah (Gospel) with either a heafty chunk of 'Gentile' or 'Jewish' culture neither of which are true representations of the MMC. All false cultural systems have to be purged out of the Remnant for they will have no place whatsoever in the Millennial Tsiyon. The problem it, most believers have no idea what of their culture is kosher and what is not because they have rejected the full revelation of Torah.

John H. Walton illustrates the problem in this way:

"We do not borrow the idea of consumerism, nor are we influenced by it. We are consumers because we live in a capitalist society that is built on consumerism. We don't have to think about it or read about it. Even if we wanted to reject its principles we would find it difficult to identify all its different aspects and devise different ways of thinking. One could make similar observations about Aristotelian, Cartesian or Baconisn forms of thought. We could speak of capitalism and the value of liberty. We could consider self-determinism and individualism. We could analyze our sense of personal rights and the nature of democracy. These are ideas and ways of thinking that make us who we are in the United States. Where did we learn the principles of naturalism or the nature of the universe? They are simply absorbed through the culure in which we live. One can find all of this in the literature, but we didn't learn it from our literature - it is simply part of our culture that we absorb, often with no alternatives even considered" [1].

Over the last 30 years of my ministry Yahweh has been systematically revealing the nature of the MMC, planting it in my mind and heart, sharing new revelation. For the last 30 years I have been teaching it to whomsoever would listen. Overall it has been a failure because people don't want to be uprooted from their culture. Their culture is like soil from which thay have obtained nourishment, stability and their reference points for self-meaning. Few ever question their culture and assume it is 'best'. Some have understood and desired the Millannial Messianic Culture but even those who have been drawn to it and started to live it have, in most instances, rejected it and returned to the culture that nurtured them. Why? Because it required sacrifice, struggle and a good deal of not being understood and rejected by others. And I can say, quite frankly, that I have been misunderstood both by the congregations I have planted and even by most of my believing family. It is a vision and a ruach (spirit) that I have had to patiently carry alone.

Part of this MMC "restoration of all things" (Acts 3:21, NKJV) is the restoration of 'things' and 'observances' like the true sabbath, new moons, annual festivals, kashrut laws, the patriarchal order, and many other Torah principles. However, it is not as simple as that. Many messianics, in returning to Hebrew roots, have simply substituted one form of culture for another - 'gentile' for 'Jewish' - not realising that both are immersed in each other to a large degree. Though Jewish culture is rather unique it is also very like the general Western culture which it has both absorbed and shaped. Though Messianics have not liked me for saying it, Jewish culture is neither the culture of the ancients nor is it the MMC to come. It's an evolved species of its own that has absorbed a lot of Babylonian, Roman and Greek paganism.

The 'messianic elements' like observing the moedim or appointments are, I would like to suggest, the easy part. People all over the world observe the festivals, from Europe to America, South Africa, Kenya, India and Australia but all of them essentially embed these in the prevailing secular and religious culture around them. They still retain the attutudes and habits of the cultures that birthed them. And this was also true of the ancient Israelites who were birthed in Egyptian culture, had it burned out of them for 40 years in the wilderness, and then slowly started absorbing Canaanite and other neighbouring cultures. The Judean culture of Yah'shua's (Jesus') day was heavily influenced by Babylonian, Roman and Greek culture, even in the religious practices. The Messianic Millennial Culture is therefore NOT the culture of the Bible which never attained to the fullness, though it came close at times. It has many elements of it but it is much purer and more developped. The basic elements of the MCC are in the Bible - the basic foundations and infrastructure - and we must absolutely learn from. This we call divine tavnith or pattern without which attempts at 'restoration' are bound to fail because they do not involve either a proper separation from the surrounding hedonictic culture and lack the inclusion of the heavenly paradigm.

Unfortunately, the MMC cannot be fully learned from a book or a teacher. It has to be experienced. It requires organic change and one of the reasons Yahweh is permitteing the West and other cultures to be overthrown is to force the Remnant to cut their apron-strings to the cultures that birthed them and be instructed anew, over the next 30-40 years of immense global upheaval and change, for what the returning King, Yah'shua (Jesus), expects. That is a major function of the Final Gathering. It's a major part of the calling of this ministry. Traditional Christianity and Messianism cannot do it because their cultural soils are contaminated.

There are so many things going on in the world right now that the head swims trying to take it all in. Most people try to shut it out and pretend as though nothing is happening. However, the economic and social collapse will not go away nor, do I hasten to add, to roving cosmic bodies likely to start bombarding us and setting off earthquakes and volcanoes in the spring (if the latest calculations are accurate - see The Advent of Nibiru). A time of frightening upheaval is just starting and we have to be saturated in the Ruach (Spirit), living right, walking in tavnith (pattern) being fully submitted, to walk this victoriously. All pet sins must die because the spirits behind them exclude the Ruach (Spirit) in important areas of our lives.

There's still too much pretending, too much acting, too much wishful thinking and too much vain confidence going on in the Body - Christian and Messianic alike. We have got to get flat on our faces and stop trying to do Yahweh's job for Him. It's time to release untruth, surrender self, and receive whatever he wants to give. Every day must be given to Him with the intent of 'Have your way today, Yahweh.

Our job in this mishpachah is to stand ready to help those who refused to believe before who, confronted by reality, have had partial or total collapses of their faith. We are here to help people back into all emet (truth) and into the emunah (faith). We don't expect to be believed now but increasingly we will be. We are not receiving anyone until next spring and then only as Yahweh directs. Our only ministry for now is online and that will likely be scaled down after the end of this last count. All need to stand in prayerful readiness. All eyes must be on Yah'shua (Jesus). Amen.

Endnotes

[1] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins of Debate (IVP Academic, Downer's Grove, Illinois: 2009), p.12

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