Chag sameach Yom haBikkurim kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah - a very blessed Late Day of Firstfruits to you all! As you know I preached seven sermons on the resurrection last month (which is what we mostly celebrate and talk about on this day) called The Resurrection Narratives in which we covered that topic extensively so we aren't going to duplicate that today. At the end of the week we will assemble for the final High Sabbath on the 7th and last day of Late Chag haMatzah (Unleavened Bread) for my final talk (14 May). The regular sabbath service will follow the day after (15 May 2020). For those of you who may be curious as to why Yahweh has ordained a double sabbath at this time of the year, please see the Late Chag haMatzah sermon of 2014 called, The Double Sabbath Explained.

Today's message is actually the one I prepared for Late Pesach (Passover) but which I was too ill to deliver then so I postponed it to Chag haMatzah yesterday only to be given an entirely different message by the Ruach (Spirit). I am not quite sure what to call this message but I think it will name itself once it has been delivered. This is going to be one of those 'big overview' talks which is both personal and general. So if that is the kind of thing you like, please stay with me and listen on!

There is so much going on in the world right now with so many conspiracy theories being bandied about that understandably people are befuddled. I totally sympathise with them. There is so much information to process that actually it is physically impossible, a reason the deep state has turned to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help it plan its next moves. As I mentioned either yesterday or the day before, when you're sifting through such a huge corpus of data and trying to listen to the Ruach (Spirit) whilst at the same time struggling to tune out the flesh with all its biases, fears, and whatnot, it's quite inevitable that there's going to be a lot of to'ing-and-fro'ing until all the pieces settled in place. Finally, for me at least, I am getting clarity, though there are always new surprises, a reason our experience in these matters must inform the last generation so they will understand how to tackle head-on everything the enemy is throwing at them whilst discerning the mind of Elohim (God) for their own time and space.

When the lastest assualt started - and actually it's been a continuous process both for us and the dark élites who, though they are informed by supernatural powers as well as by psychic guesswork (remote viewing, etc.), are themselves in the dark to a very large extent, because the demonic realm is not Elohim (God), even though it enjoys certain powers as we do. Nevertheless, we enjoy powers they do not too, at least those who have allowed themselves to be trained by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit).

Though Yahweh shows us prophetically in advance the general unfolding of events, we do not know all the details, so there have been a few surprises along the way. Indeed, the journey has been quite a rollercoaster from the personal to the global. Just look at the world two years on from 2018. Personally, my whole world has been upturned beginning with my heart surgery last year (which fixed one medical problem but made another one chronic), followed shortly afterwards by another devastating family tragedy, reminding us that people - even the ones you love and trust the most - can be fickle, unreliable and untrustworthy. Yah'shua (Jesus) warned us, did He not, that our worst enemies would often be those in our own families. Yet, as Paul said:

"We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed -- always carrying about in the body the dying of the Master Yah'shua (Lord Jesus), that the life of Yah'shua (Jesus) also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Yah'shua's (Jesus') sake, that the life of Yah'shua (Jesus) also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Cor.4:8-11, NKJV).

Now I understand why Yahweh wanted me to postpone this sermon until today as He led me to talk about these very things yesterday. There I was with two half completed sermons yesterday evening and now I know why. The first one I completed yesterday and that's what I am relaying to you now.

The devil never relents, so neither can we - we are on duty in our temples of flesh 24/7 as the Royal Priesthood of Melchizedek, just as the Aaronic Priesthood had to be fully awake in the Old Covenant Jerusalem Temple when it was their turn to serve. And if those cohenim (priests) fell asleep on duty, they were stripped naked and their clothes burned, forcing them to return home through the streets of Jerusalem in shame. We are on a similar kind of watch but now we are full-time in our temples of flesh. If we don't stay spiritually awake, we will be cdaught off guard and Yahweh will permit the devil to give us one hell of a thrashing, strip us down, and so bring us to a keen awareness of our folly and hopefully having learned a valuable lesson.

Brethren and sisters, the self-authorised permissive days of walking with one foot in the world and one in the Kingdom of Heaven are over unless you have a spiritual death-wish or were never too serious about your faith in the first place. Nothing in this life is permanent save it be in Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus) so don't get inordinately attached to the things of this world. Let them serve you, when needed, but don't you dare serve them. Our hope is in Yahweh the Father alone, our trust is in His Chief Executive and Plenipotentiary, Yah'shua (Jesus) the Divine Son. Build on any other foundation and the winds and storms of adversity will blow or wash it away.

Yahweh directed me to read Psalm 88 three days ago to remind me how even His friends go through much trial and tribulation. Poor David - he cried out, "For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol" (Ps.88:3, ESV). Ever the dramatist! Sound like us? Just like us...which is why we love and relate to David so easily. In fact we had a discussion about the necessities of pain and adversity in this life in our congregation yesterday after the first Chag haMatazah service. That's how our character is shaped, and how our love is perfected. If not at the time, then at elast afterwards, embrace them for their divinely sanctioned purpose.

It doesn't end there for me, at any rate, because, yet again, Yahweh has been tossing my theological and existential world up in the air like a salad, spiritually aerating it with chayim (life) and emet (truth), forcing me to make a total life review - not for a few weeks once every seven years, which I have been requiried to do to check and double check the restoration work I have been called to do (I've been doing that throughout my ministry), but this time for seven long years. This has been gruelling in the extreme and sometimes very scary at times as assumptions I had skipped over in the past now had to be seriously challenged, and I'm talking about fundamental doctrines, so-called, something that I would never have done before because I was too insecure in my relationship with Elohim (God), and it was therefore totally 'no, no', utterly taboo before.

If you are really serious about discipleship you have got to be prepared to have your beliefs corralled through the furnace to see what is pure and true, and what is not! Again Paul taught:

"Now if anyone builds on this [Christ-]foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Cor.3:12-15, NKJV).

Whatever you build on your foundation of Messiah must be tested, and that testing is by fire alone. It will burn out of you any false doctrines or beliefs you have constructed your life around. Please note this burning is for believers, not unbelievers, for in the verse before he said:

"For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw..." (1 Cor.3:11-12, NKJV).

You see, the purifying fire isn't just for the wicked, but for us too, so if you are being tossed about and scorched, it's probably this testing you're going through, so that you can present a life that is ultimately rewardable and not void. Yes, this upsets a lot of denominational doctrines about salvation but faced this must be.

So when I talk about the doctrines you believe that must be tested, I am not talking about 'little' doctrines like the creation calendar, the gender of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), or even 'biggies' (for most Westerners) like the restoration of the original biblical marriage practices in an age of feminism and gender confusion. I'm talking about the major assumptions upon which our whole emunah (faith) rests, particularly those of us raised originally in Protestantism or Catholicism, as I was originally in Anglicanism. I'm talking here about the nature of Scripture and its relationship to us and our relationship with Yahweh.

I have spent most of my ministerial life scouring the Scriptures for doctrinal emet (truth), as I believe is right. Christians/Messianics have always been 'people of the Book'. However, there is always a very real danger of committing idolatry by supplanting the Ruach (Spirit) with the 'letter' if we're not very careful. Like all conservative Protestants and Messianics, I have marvelled that the Creator of this universe would actually want to communicate with creatures who, on a cosmic scale, are little more than ants, maybe even bacteria. Like it or not, and whether you can understand why we're here or not, we are creatures of a material, physical world to which we relate through our five senses. Yahweh-Elohim is a spiritual being:

"Elohim (God) is Spirit[ual], and those who worship Him must worship in ruach (spirit) and emet (truth)" (John 4:24, NKJV).

He's not a giant, cosmic-sized, incorporeal 'Ghost'. We don't know what He looks like other than Yah'shua (Jesus) closely resembles Him and we, as we are sanctified, come to resemble Yah'shua (Jesus).

He is spiritual in nature and it is in that spirit and in truth that we must worship Him - the emet (truth) of who He really is, His true character which we are supposed to be coming to resemble by degrees as we shed our worldly ways and allow Him to burn off the rest. We in our physical state cannot see Him, hear Him, or touch Him. We cannot behold the Cosmic Artist, though the first talmidim (disciples) saw His physical representation in His Son Yah'shua the Messiah, Jesus Christ - now we can only see the Cosmic Art or the Cosmic Artist around us. So how can He communicate with us? The answer, we are usually given, is 'through the Bible'.

The Protestant - and in a wider sense, the Christian/Messianic - narrative goes something like this. Over several centuries, Elohim (God) inspired a select number of people to write down what He felt we needed to know about Him and how He expects us to live. These writings have been collected and assembled into a single volume called the 'Holy Bible' - 'holy' because is contains the sacred words of Almighty Elohim (God). And in a miraculous way, the Bible speaks to each of us, its truths apply across every generation, across every culture, and across all life experience.

It's not actually that big a book - if you were a studious pupil, you probably read far more words and pages of textbooks when you were at school. I know that at university over a four year period I read probably 10 to 20 times the equivalent volume of the Bible, maybe a lot more. But to be fair, I was studying full-time and unless you are a Bible scholar paid to read and research the Scriptures full-time, or you're retired with a secure pension and have little else to do, you probably don't spend more than an hour a day reading it. And in truth, if you were to survey Christians, you'd probably find that a large majority don't read it at all, and even the most diligent ones don't spend more than about 5-10 minutes a day in its pages on average. That's not a lot.

The ancients - large numbers of them - had the Scriptures memorised because hardly anyone was rich enough to own a copy to read, and the vast majority could not read or write. For them, it was a question of hearing, memorising, and internalising. Another advantage the ancients had was that culturally the Bible stories were more closely aligned to what they were familiar with than with what we are. That gave them a huge advantage, particularly if they were Middle Easterners, in understanding it. At that rate, it'll take you about three years to read it through, let alone studying it carefully.

Our technology-based lifestyle would be incomprehensible to the ancients as their simple agrarian lifestyle is incomprehensible to us, unless you are of the blessed few who work the land and are trying to be self-sufficient in daily fellowship with others doing the same. Some of the cultural nonsense we take for normal would be wiped out if someone like King David ever assumed power here. We could never live the biblical lifestyle without making enormous sacrifices, being ostracised and cut-off. We talk glibly about living the biblical 'lifestyle' but don't know what we're talking about. We think we're so advanced - and we are, in some things - but in others we are very backward indeed. We barely know how to hold a simple marriage together, let alone a complex one, for example. In the West, the extended family is all but dead or so tenuous as to be meaningless. We have lost nearly all sense of clan, tribe and nation in our politically-correct, multicultural mishmash of a world.

So for the last few years I have been letting historians like N.T.Wright unpack the Bible for me, a brilliant scholar with such deep understanding. If you look behind me you can see some of his works - I have more in my library and many others I have not yet acquired. Thanks to two generous brethren, I acquired his complete New Testament Commentaries which are on top of the pile. I have been immersed in these for several years now and they're not light reading! Indeed, because the scope is so enormous - vast in its breadth, vast in its depth - I have needed his latest nearly 1,000 page-long book, The New Testament in Its World (2019), that summarises his entire life's work, to keep everything in perspective. At the same time, I have had to keep Yahweh's revelation to me personally alongside all of this. And Wright isn't the only author I have been led to study. For me and the work I and my brethren have been called to do, it isn't simply bits of new truth here and there that matter, but the whole, vast perspective, a task that at times has virtually caused my head to explode, and indeed for several months I took a break from this genius' work to let everything settle. You see, Yahweh has called this former Anglican bishop and scholar at the University of St.Andrews to ground us in historical reality and to challenge the assumptions of the ages, and this has enabled me to get handles on mysteries I couldn't make sense of before because I was still partly living in the wrong 20th and 21st century mindset. And in particular I am am now, finally, understanding Paul and his world which Protestantism has so terribly distorted. This study is still on-going and sometimes I wonder if I will ever finish it. There is so much to learn and understand, so much more to straighten out for the final generation of the Last Exodus to save them having to slog it out.

And yet consider this contrast. I now tell the true story of a prisoner in a Scottish jail, totally unlearned, completely uninformed about the background of the Scriptures, who accidentally came across a little copy of the New Testament without footnotes, cross-references or explanations, who read it from cover to cover on his own and, without human aid, usually on his knees or face-down on the floor, become convicted of his sins, trusted totally in the Messiah of that tiny volume (and the New Testament is not large, about 500-600 pages long, the size of a short novel), and become utterlly transformed inside - spiritually regenerated, born-again, Spirit-filled, call it what you will.

That prisoner, without any tutors of any kind except Elohim (God) Himself, totally turned that prison inside out, casuing a revival that lead to masses of converts. He experienced extraordinary miracles including transmaterialisation, not just of himself but of lots of other prisoners too. What do I mean? These prisoners would be locked up securely in their cells at night, as is normal practice to prevent mischief of escape attempts, and yet these self-same Christians would be found, night after night, gathered together in one locked cell, praying, studying and praising in song. How did they get there? Supernaturally! In the end the authorities just gave up trying to put a stop to it because they knew something supernatural was happening over which they had no control. This man had no commentaries, he was no intellect, just a simple man of faith, he had no vast library of books as I do, and no gigantic database of knowledge like the N.T.Wright's of this world. He just believed and obeyed using whatever version of the Bible he had at hand.

I know I have told you this story before but it constantly bears repeating. Don't ask me how, but somehow Yahweh enables this little volume to transcend time, culture and expertise. How come British New Testament scholar C.H.Dodd (1884-1973), who memorised the entire New Testament in Greek, experienced nothing like the kind of spiritual life that that Scottish prisoner and his brethren did? How come other brilliant Greek New Testament scholars, like contemporary Reformed Baptist and Calvinist James R.Wight, who have the text memorised too, arrive at different conclusions - false conclusions, even - yet do not experience anything remotely like that felon? Is it because - and this is the favourite excuse we often make - is it because we have different callings? Or is that just pride talking?

Well, yes, certainly we have different callings - the members of the Body of Messiah have different giftings so that we can minister in different areas and meet the different needs of fellow believers. Yet Paul speaks of those who "have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and ... have a faith that can move mountains" (1 Cor 13:2, NIV) - so, yes, the apostle acknowledges the places of scholars, mystics, prophets and the like BUT, he says, if they are lacking in the one essential Gospel ingredient, then all these giftings are useless, all this learning is useless, and he describes them then as being like "a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor.13:1, NIV) - noisy and after a while exceedingly irritating. And you all know what that one essential thing is, right? Love - ahavah, chesed, agapé. The transformation of the heart is always the main thing, what counts the most.

One of the things that drew me to N.T.Wright was that he is such a kindly man, unpretentious, and humble - a rare thing in scholars - whereas there are other scholars - liberal and conservative - who just turn me off completely because they are so full of themselves and look down so contemptuously on those who disagree with them. I use the works of such with great caution, and seldom, because if my soul is not ministered to, what's the point? Yes, N.T.Wright has his 'moments', as we all do, when he gets off onto one of his pet subjects, and then he can get tedious. He's also off the mark when it comes to evolution, the place of the Torah in the New Covenant, and gender rôles in the ministry, to name but three. But on the whole, overall, his keen mind has flushed out a lot of junk from my own and forced me to deal with the kind of reality that I often preach about. He makes the first century New Testament world come alive. I appreciate that. I value the correction, I value the background canvass he has given me to the Scriptures, helping me bring things together. The fact that he has a good heart and uncompromisingly affirms the resurrection, when his denomination now nearly totally repuduiates it, makes me even keener to listen because he's also a man of courage, exciting the ire of many big Evangelicals who have sought to discredit him, often misrepresenting him. And that I can easily relate to!

I try to do my best to juxtapose myself between men and women of deep faith and men and women of sound learning, and they're not easy to find. So much of the teaching out there is junk, the product of a poor understanding of Scripture. I don't care what denomination they're from. I am, of course, wary of the doctinal errors they believe in and steer clear of those, but if they have that authentic ahavah or love, then I know Yahweh is with them, and in them, and that it would be a stupid act of shooting oneself in ones own foot not to acknowledge them as brethren. If Yahweh accepts them, who am I to place any sort of wall of fellowship between myself and them? We're all broken in one way or another. We're all ignorant of so many truths still but we must not use that as an excuse to be lazy and not study. How foolish it would be for one set of items on a scrap metal heap to judge other items in the same scrap metal heap when the Scrap Metal Merchant intends to melt us all down and meld us as one? Let's just melt together in His love and watch the doctrinal dross float away. Of course, we do need to understand something of the nature of the smelting fire that does that, and that fire is intellectual, emotional, and physical. And, yes, Yahweh uses human agents as bearers of that fire! Isn't that kind of Him?!

Here's the problem we all face. Christianity, and even Messianism, is a tradition - a very, very long tradition spanning 2,000 years. There are layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of assumptions that have accumulated to create quite an edifice or, if you prefer a different analogy, a giant pot pourri of doctrines and practices laid out on one huge Pot Luck table from which you can take your pick according to your denominational, spiritual and carnal preferences and personal biases. Some eat from plates with sophistication, others eat out of troughs like pigs, and then there are all the others inbetween. Some are picky others will consume any old muck. This tradition - or to be more accruate, dozens of traditions and thousands of sub-traditions stitched together like a giant jumbled up patchwork quilt - is full of the interpretations, speculations and personal subjective experiences of thousands of men and women over the centuries. It's a bit like a giant tree onto which hundreds of branches and thousands of sub-branches have been grafted from a mutitude of varieties of the same species called 'believers', both wild and cultivated. The amazing thing is that the trunk still feeds them all, and has done so for two millennia. So we have to be careful how we judge...if at all.

I look at my own children and how very different they all are from each other. I have tried to raise them as best I could and have noticed how each picks up and takes onboard different behaviours and teachings, even if we all share a common phronema or general sense of what's true and what isn't. We're all of us selecting - picking and choosing - all the time. It's part of the frustration, mystery and glory of free agency which determinists like Moslems and Calvinists just don't get and don't want to get because it means growing up, taking responsibility for their own actions, and putting ultra-fundamentalism to one side. Then you have the opposite extreme of the non-determinists who think everything is just random and purposeless. Yet choosing is something we're always doing, and we do it all the time, every day, every hour, and every minute of wakefulness...and even in our sleep where we are presented with choices too! Our character is the sum-total of all those responses to situations, the choices we make, all those we have ever made including, of course, corrections we have made a long the way. Even after salvation, we're having to make numerous course corrections on a daily basis, some large, most small. That's how it works. At any one moment of time we have a personal 'tradition' or 'custom' in which we are walking. And no two people alive are in exactly the same place.

Societal tradition (culture) and religious tradition are just the same, only it's agency operating in a collective or corporate way. We agree amongst ourselves to do things in a certain way and to believe in a certain way. That way the traditions and customs become reinforced and slowly transform into laws and taboos. Experience plays a big part in shaping that collective belief. If you have been an occultist all your life, you will be shaped to a large extent by the supernatural occult experiences you have had. I have had lots of African students over the years and they have told me amazing stories some of which sceptical Westerners will dismiss without a second thought. And to be sure, some of what they believe - as is true of us too - is just wild fantasy. To me, determining objective reality is the greatest challenge because every day I meet representatives of the 'God told me' folks many of whom are from the luantic fringe living in cloud-cuckooland. And they think it is the 'Spirit' telling them the nonsense they spout.

Over the years I have grown very suspicious of existential or subjective Christianity because, like Jeremiah, I don't much trust the heart when it gets into 'God-told-me-so' mode. For some denominations it's a way of life. They live for their supernatural highs irrespective of the actual spiritual source. It's like a drug to them. It's why they meet together, like junkies meeting in dark alleyways. How many hundreds or thousands of people have you heard claim, 'God told me this' or 'God told me that' in a dream, vision, impression, feeling or voice in the head? How do you deal with such claims? Should you believe them uncritically, especially if they're from your own group? Lots do. Or should you be sceptical of everything that cannot be scientifically tested? You see, there's an unresolvable dilemma here. If your husband or wife tells you that he or she loves you, do you subject him to a lie detector to objectify that claim? Or do you just trust them knowing that they, like you, will on occasion fail to love, and sometimes fail spectacularly? Do you trust anyone who tells you that they love you?

Sometimes it's just air, of course, and you don't take it seriously, like one comedian who used to tell her audience at the end of every show, 'I love you all!' even though she'd probably not met any of the people there and couldn't have cared less anyway. What she loved was a figment of her imagination, an idealisation of the perfect, adoring audience, a 'church' to worship here. Of course, they were her bread-and-butter, so she certainly loved them for filling her coffers. But you know what I mean. People can sometimes love a 'God' of their own invention too, a Sugar-Daddy who grants them their every wish so long as they 'name it, and claim it'. I get people all the time IMing me commanding 'God' or the elements to do this or that but it doesn't ever seem to phase them that 99.999999 per cent of the time nothing actually happens. At least, there's next to zero evidence that anything does. But they're feeding their fantasy, that gives them a kick, makes them feel good, and they conclude that feeling is Yahweh's 'Spirit' and therefore approbation. You can understand why atheists are so sceptical of much of Christianity, so-called, a reason I was initially driven off. That's why I do not call myself a 'charismatic' even though I absolutely believe in contemporary revelation, miracles, and all the spiritual gifts. I just don't think they're very much in evidence these days and that the majority of the claims are fraudulent. There is self-deception and willful, premeditated deception, everywhere,

What do you do with Christians who claim 'God' told them this or that when their claims frequently contradict one another, as they do? I have to say that I go right into a default sceptic's box and let it wash over me like water off a duck's back. Sometimes, because I know what they're saying is a lie, I have to rebuke them, and I gain another enemy because I have upset their world of false assumptions. People love to speak of being 'filled with the Spirit' but never consider the possibility that they may be filled with unclean, lying spirits too. Don't believe for one moment gullible and ïve Christians and Messianics can't invite them in because they can, and do, all the time.

Wiser believers, when faced with revelatory claims, will usually answer the 'God-told-me-so'ers', and those who have heard them, saying, 'Go back to the Scriptures' and reject anything that contradicts what is revealed by the Bible'. It's good, frontline advice. When groups of believers assemble, fellowship, or communicate, you have to impose some sort of order on your spiritual environment, and people will, quite naturally, turn to authorities such as pastors and elders, because that's one of their jobs - to protect the flock from predatory spirits and their human agents. That's the Protestant solution, at any rate. Everything is to be judged out of the Scriptures, the Sola Scriptura doctrine, as they call it, even if the forced acceptance of man-made creeds somewhat contradicts that position.

Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Copts and others say that that's not enough and that you have to include some sort of authoritative tradition too - the collective wisdom of their leaders. But what do you do when these contradict one another, as they do? Even the earliest church fathers disagreed with one another on a number of things but - and this is important - they disagreed on far, far less than we do, at least for the first five centuries. From about Augustine onwards, the whole nature amd character of Elohim (God) and the Gospel were redefined and reshaped along Latin lines, though the seeds of this bad influence had been present even before Augustine. Five centuries later the Church split down the middle, and five centuries after that, it split again, and is not in 30,000 or more pieces.

Lot's of people, though, recognising that, have tried to go back to - and restore in their time - so-called 'primitive Christianity'. I'm sure you can think of many groups with a whole slew of them arising out of 19th century American revivalism. They not only disagreed with each other but evolved and eventually fossilised into very different creatures over time. Did you know the first Mormons and Seventh-Day Adventists were highly charismatic? They were a wild bunch back in the 1830's and 1840's and then, by the end of the 19th century, they shed all of that embarrassing stuff and went though a transformation, if you can picture it, like a Pentecostal turning into a Baptist or an Episcopalian. The transformation of their groups (and others like them) reminds me a bit of the transformation that takes place when young carnal people go through a 'partying phase' and then settle down into responsible family as adults, only these days fewer and fewer people seem to mature anymore. Charismatic Christianity is, in my view, wild party-timing, whereas the more sober denominations reflect middle age and old age parts of the human cycle, frequently fossilised and dead. Little of it, in my view, is remotely transcendent as the Christian/Messianic life is supposed to be. Yes, we must all grow up, but the Gospel is the same, is it not, yesterday, today, and forever (Heb.13:8)?

Let's be clear what 'tradition' is first, shall we? Tradition may be said to be the information, doctrines or practices that have been handed down from parents to children or that have become the established way of thinking or acting. The idea of paradosis in the Greek, at least, is a 'giving over' or 'giving up' in the sense of 'giving over that which is done by word or mouth or in writing'. When Scripture uses the word, it means the proper or acceptable aspects of true worship, as well as those which are in error or were followed or viewed in a way that made them harmful or objectionable.

We know that by the time Yah'shua (Jesus) started His ministry, as recorded in the four Gospels, the Hebrews had acquired many traditions over the centuries which included ways of dress and handling social matters such as weddings and burials (Jn.2:1; 19:14). Also, some aspects of Yehudi (Judahite, 'Jewish') worship in the first century AD were customary or traditional, like using wine in the Passover meal, celebrating the rededication of the temple (Hanukkah - Lk.22:14-18; Jn.10:22) and observing Purim.

Yah'shua (Jesus) objected to some of these traditions more strongly than others though it should be clearly pointed out that neither Yah'shua (Jesus) nor His talmidim (disciples) ever quoted or endorsed the oral traditions of Judaism. I've been asked many times, given that in some cases there were multiple traditions, depending on which religious party held sway, whether Yah'shua (Jesus) ever observed any of them, even if only passively in order to 'mingle' with a view to witnessing and teaching. 'Observation' is a difficult word here. What is the difference between actively participating and passively looking on? We know Yah'shua (Jesus) attended the elaborate Talmudic version of Sukkot (Tabernacles) but was he participating (and therefore endorsing) or just using the occasion to witness? Some messianics say He observed, others like us say He did not. Certainly He used man-made traditions as illustrations of eternal truths, picking His moments for either correcting (like rebuking hypocrisy) or teaching. Going into a bar with an unbeliving friend to talk with him is one thing, but to join him in drinking alcohol and eating a ham sandwich is something entirely differen - the difference between 'passing through' and active involvement. Liberals tend to draw the line in the direction of involvement and ultra-conservatives won't attend at all. I guess it depends what sort of a place it is and it is in discerning that that is the basis of our freedom in Christ, not the freedom to break the mitzvot (commandments).

How many types of sabbath were observed anciently, for example? At least three main religious calendars were in operation, of which only one was the genuine one. But just as you and I, when we are away from home, attend the 'sabbath' gatherings of those who meet on Saturdays, Sundays or Creation Calendar Sabbaths, because that's when people gathered (whether that was the correct biblical sabbath or not), so Yah'shua (Jesus) attented Pharisee 'synagogue' on 'Saturdays' because that's where and when the majority congregated, and that was the only way to meet them as local communities. The Pharisee denomination of Judaism was largely in control, just as Sunday worshippers are largely in control in Europe and America today, and Saturday worshippers are largely in control in the Israeli Republic, Ethiopia or some Seventh-day Adventist controlled areas in Polynesia or parts of Africa today too. Yah'shua (Jesus) turned up wherever large groups of people assembled, whether they were observing bona fide festivals or not, whether they were observing them on the correct days or not.

Lots of 'customs' or 'traditions' (Gk. ethizo) are mentioned in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) - the customs of the Roman Procurator (Mt.27:15; Mk.15:6; Jn.18:39), Yah'shua's (Jesus') own custom of teaching crowds (Mk.10:1) or attending the synagogue (Lk.4:16) (which Paul did too - Ac.17:2) to win converts, the customs of the Torah (Lk.2:27) and of the Priesthood (Lk.1:9), burial customs (Jn.19:40), and so on. Not one of the aforementioned customs had remained constant over the ages because that's what a 'tradition' is - something that evolves and which may ultimately 'fossilise', becoming chizzled in stone, as it were.

One of the more interesting things that psychologists have discovered, which is particularly important in legal matters, is that the more often someone recalls and retells an event of the past, the more likely he is liable to subconsciously change it. That is why the testimonies of eye-witnesses can be so unreliable unless they are fresh and not repeated too often. I don't doubt that were you to go back and read the many testimonies I have given of my own conversion experience that you will find that small details may have changed, not because there is any conspiracy on my part to deceive, but in the very act or retelling, we tend to blurr or confuse the details. People often wonder why there are small discrepancies between the Gospel accounts of events and that is because the stories of the life of Yah'shua (Jesus) were in circulation at least 20 years before they were written down, being told and retold, not just by the original witnesses, but by those who heard the original witnesses, creating second-, third-, and fourth-hand accounts. That's one of the reasons so many people in the legal profession who have seriously investigated the Gospels believe them to be authentic for the simple reason that they show all the typical features of eye-witnesses. They conform to the expectations of forenstic testing.

Now I realise that this is very upsetting to those who believe the Bible, like the Moslems and Mormons, who believe that their Quran and Book of Mormon were, respectively, were dictated and are therefore word-for-word accurate. That does not remotely stand up to scientific scrutiny and when Christians and Messianics try to persuade thinking people of what which is not realitic or true, this understandably turns them away. They forget that the Bible is the product of an alliance between Elohim (God) and man. It wasn't dictated to the authors word for word while they were in a trance, nor was it written complete and handed on a platter, as it were, from heaven. The assembly of the Bible was the result of a long and complex process. This does not mean that the Bible is isn't true, or that its teachings aren't true, it means that it wasn't necessarily assembled in the way that some people think it was. It means that some Christians' ideas or traditions about the Bible are incorrect. That does not, moreover, mean that the Bible didn't come into existence in a different way, and that that way was not according to divine providence. It just means it was a little more involved and complicated than most lay-believers think.

Indeed, it is a complex as the way man's free agency is integrated seemingly seamlessly into the divine intention and plan. Yahweh knows all the choices we're going to make in advance, and He engineers and weaves all of that together so that His ultimate goals and aims are fulfilled, so that whatever choices we make - the right and the wrong - stay ultimately under His control. This explanation is called Molinism, named after the man who formulated it. And what that does is to juxtapose two seemingly contradictory realities - the reality of Yahweh's sovereignty and the reality of the freedom of human will.

If we believe that Calvinism is false, as we absolutely do in this ministry, and that human beings are indeed free agents able to make their own choices, then we must likewise believe that the same agencies involved not only in the writing of the individual books of the Bible but in the assembly of the Canon of the Bible as a whole - though the latter was a collective effort and not the work of a single man, the decision of many in various councils - and if we look at the evidence honestly, we know this must be so because the Bible, as we have it, is open-ended, in spite of the Book of Revelation being tacked on to the end out of chronological sequence (remember the three letters of John were written last of all). The reason the Book of Revelation was put at the end was to conclude a grand narrative chiasmus, with Genesis at the beginning and the 'things of the end-times' at the end.

As we have discussed on numerous occasions several Bible books are unfinished, most notably the Books of Jonah, Ezra, James, Mark and Acts. They simply stop without a proper ending, not withstanding the three fake endings to Mark's Gospel that are to be found in many manuscripts and were, beyond a shadow of a doubt, inserted later by other writers. I am speaking of what follows after Mark 16:8. Someone - well, several someone's - decided that Mark's work needed rounding off. The longer of these three endings is doctrinally important to Pentecostals and Charismatics, yet they should not be leaning on them or quoting them because Mark did not write them. We have no idea how verses 9-20 got there but what we do know is that Mark didn't write them. He was the named, accountable witness, so we can't really be sure that they're authentic even though most of what's written there doesn't contradict what was written by the other Gospel writers. At best we can only view them as commentary like any modern Bible commentary.

We also know that the Book of Esther was not part of the Tanakh (Old Testament) collection of books that Yah'shua (Jesus) endorsed. That Acts is unfinished is important because it means that there are yet more 'acts' of the apostels to be recorded, as we would expect of the ongoing work of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) in the Messianic Community (Church), both from the apostolic time and in the post-apostolic times. 19 centuries of history remain untold in any authoritative sort of way (since they tend to be biased by the traditions of the men who have written them, often many centuries after the events).

And given how important the Last or Second Exodus will be, to the point that the miraculous events that are yet to happen will be spoken of with such excitement and energy during the Millennium that they will come to supercede in importance those accounts of the First Exodus that we yet remember and celebrate each Passover.

We're told that in the Tanakh (Old Testament). We know that more is to come and that attempts to make Revelation 22:18-19 refer to all 66 books of the Protestant Bible is plan dishonesty and do not hold up under scrutiny. The Bible nowhere prophesies uniquivocally of a 'Bible' coming into existence which shall not be added to in the future. Indeed the New Testament did not even exist when John wrote Revelation 22:18-19 and Christians would debate for at least another century as to what the authorised collection of apostolic writings (the New Testament Canon) should include and exclude. The claim that the Bible 'ends' at Revelation 22:21 and those who add or subtract from it are accursed is simply one of those traditions made up by men (it's only speaking of the Book of Revelation), albeit it with sincere and noble intentions to preserve the text from the corruptions of unscrupulous men with their false writings, and in order to present to the world a self-contained, holy book.

What this means is that we must be ready to receive old and new Ruach (Spirit)-inspired, complimentary Scripture some day in the future, in the same way that the Messianic Scriptures or the New Testament were received, and added to, the Tanakh or Old Testament. However - and I want to underscore this - no one should be led to conclude that I am keen to add to the Protestant canon as we have it, not now, at any rate, not while the Body is in such disunity. Far from it. Too many people have appointed themselves with the authority to do that with disasterous consequences, starting with the Mormons in the 1830's and 40's and in recent times with a number of rogue messianic groups adding various unreliable Pseuepigrapha and Apocrypha that were long ago judged doctrinally and historically inaccurate and therefore unreliable. One of those groups has even slipped in a reworked version of the Book of Mormon and given it a new name!

And one of the problems we have with the newer ecumenical Bibles like the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is that it contains not only the Catholic Apocrypha but also but the apocryphal works of some of the other older denominations like the Eastern Orthodox Church, swelling the Bible by 19 books! And whilst this is a great help to scholars and historians it definitely entails risks for lay believers. Consider, for example, the unhealthy interest by many Messianics and Evangelicals alike in the Books of Enoch and Jasher which are riddled with errors and internal contradictions both theological and historical. And there are many other books too like the Book of Jubilees, another popular one with Messianics.

As we saw earlier, "Elohim is spirit[ual], and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and emet (truth)", therefore we must be very strict in sticking with the undefiled truth, something we cannot easily if we admit dicey 'scriptures'. Therefore we must have an easily available and testable canon that is altogether reliable, internally consistent, and therefore authoritative which we have with the Protestant Canon (minus the Book of Esther). What Yah'shua (Jesus) had to say on the matter of the Scriptures, various scriptural books, and quotations from the Scriptures, then becomes critically important. In fact, it must be decisive for any- and everyone calling themselves a believer in, or talmid (disciple) of, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). He ensdorsed the Tanakh or Old Testament of His day, that is to say, 38 of the 39 books of the Protestant Tanakh (Old Testament)...without the highly redacted Book of Esther (which he never mentions of cites), the form we have, which is of Pharisee origin, with the Catholic additions even more suspicious. So if we accept the authority of Yah'shua's (Jesus') devarim (words), then three-quarters of the Bible canon is clearly established and there is no room for debate on that.

Remember, the Tanakh (Old Testament) Yah'shua (Jesus) endorsed existed long before the anti-Christ Jewish Masoretes began mutilating the text with questionable pointing (adding vowels), thus forcing us, if we are going to be rigorous, to turn to the Tanakh's (Old Testaments) which we know were around in Christ's day, namely, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Greek Septuagint (LXX). Obviously if more Old Testaments from that time turn up, and preferably, older ones than those too, these will be of great interest and importance to us. That is why we have got to be careful with the Old Testaments of most of the Bibles which are around today (Catholic, Protestant and even Messianic) because key messianic passages have been mutilated (like those speaking of the Virgin Birth). You can read about these mutilations on our Masoretes website, mutilations to prevent Jews in particular from receiving the true Messiah. And as I have already said, Yah'shua (Jesus) and His talmidim (disciples) never quoted the so-called 'Oral Law' whose early contents the Master severely criticised.

This leaves us with the canon of the Messianic Scriptures or New Testament which I am yet to publish a detailed study on because I haven't had the time. However, by the early AD 50's it is clear that an authorised apostolic tradition had come into existence already, and thus Paul could urge the Thessalonians in around AD 51, less than 20 years after Messiah's death and resurrection, when he said in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, "But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Lord Jesus Christ), that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the paradosis - tradition - which he received from us". And as we have seen, eyewitness accounts repeated by the eyewitness too many times over time get distorted, so we must assume these were written down in various collections which were in circulation even before the AD 50's, that the Gospel writers like Mark and Luke, who were not apostles, would have consulted, Mark being the first to write a Gospel. And before the apostles were martyred, there would have been 12 witnesses to verify the material that would come to be assembled and incorporated into the four Gospel accounts written for various audiences (that's 6 to 4 times the minimum number of witnesses required by Torah to establish the truth of a matter - Dt.19:15).

There are numerous theories as to how this assembling took place, the main ones being:

• (a) The Augustinian and
• (b) Griesbach views;
• (c) The 3- and
• (d) 4-source theories;
• (e) The Farrer and
• (f) Matthew Posteriority views -

That brings me full circle to our Scottish prisoner and the revival that he started. I don't know how that revival ended but in my experience most revivals eventually peter out. And the reason for that is that the heart cannot bear the burden of the salvation message alone. It may start there - the awakening, the ecstasy, the joyful proclamation, and for some it may just last and last. I look on Pentecostal preachers like Dan Mohler with astonishment and admiration that he has this seemingly constant aliveness. Actually, he's wonderful until he starts getting too theological because then he starts going off the rails. He is a man with a huge heart for Yahweh but when I look at his prodigy, who is deep into Kenneth Copeland and the fraudulent 'Prosperity Movement' and is way off track, then my alarm bells go off, because he has never corrected him, as he must if he loves the truth.

The ministry - and I am speaking for all believers because we're all called to minister in our several giftings - has to encompass the whole man, the whole person, and the whole life experience. We can't all be evangelists on the road having a more-or-less spiritual 'high' all the time (assuming they're not being persecuted, of course), because life makes other demands of us too: leading people is a fantastic and exhilarating experience (like the work done by Ray Comfort and his team, for example) but it's not all the Body of Messiah is called to do. We have to disciple people as well, we have to establish them not just in saving truth but in all truth (Jn.16:13), including Kingdom truth, because we need emet - truth - in every facet of life. And much of life can be, and is, dreary and challenging whether we're walking in Christ or not (though there are different challenges on those mutually opposite and exclusive paths - the narrow path and the broad way). We can live for the Western drug of a constant string of 'high's' as charismatics do in the extreme but know that Western culture is dying just as the early Christian Greco-Roman one died because it progressively abandoned the truth.

The Gospel of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is a curious marriage between the heart, faith, and compassion of men like that Scottish prisoner, and the brains of theologians like another Scotsman, N.T.Wright, which is why I have called this talk The Story of Two Scotsmen. And there's every shade inbetween. I think of Ravi Zacharias who is battling for his life right now with a very aggressive cancer (please pray for him because he may be dying) - a brilliant Indian (non-Calvinist) Baptist Philosopher with a gentle Christ-like heart who has won the trust of many influential people around the world, and I can think of so many others. Remember this (because Western Christians tend to forget it), we're not only supposed to be witnesses like the repentant Scottish felon, through whom Yahweh did incredible things, through largely faith alone, but we're called to build a sound doctrinally-based Kingdom too, a society, eventually a theocracy that requires an awful lot of different giftings to function.

We may not all be like the Wesley brothers, Leonard Ravenhills, Smith Wigglesworths, Francis Chans, Ravi Zacharias' or Tom Wrights of this world, but each of us has a unique and priceless mixture of giftings and expertises that has a unique place in the Body of Christ in our particular time and space. You fit somewhere and nowhere else. You may not think you fit because of your background but if you have been called to a place and a time, I guarantee you'll fit, once you've found where you're supposed to be, so long as you allow Yahweh to reshape you to fit into that little niche which He has prepared. John the Baptist fitted, Elijah fitted, Jeremiah fitted, the mother of Yah'shua fitted. Do we ever misfit? Well, if we don't surrender fully the resulting misfit can seem 'wrong' and feel uncomfortable at times - very uncomfortable - and lead us to falsely suppose we're in the wrong time and space. Carrying a big ego is a bit like wearing thick winter socks and wondering why you don't fit into your shoes comfortably. Take the winter socks off. Wear what you're supposed to wear, be who you're supposed to be in Christ, then you'll fit smoothly. Jonah didn't 'fit' into his situation because he had personal issues, which is why he grumbled and complained and why, I suspect, his book is unfinished. If he hadn't misbehaved, there would have been more to his story. Yahweh was waiting for him to get his heart right but, as far as we know, we never did. (An alternative explanation is something happened to him prevrnting him from finishing his account).

That's one thing we can all be certain of - Yah'shua (Jesus) isn't finished with us yet, He's waiting for us to yield to the callings He's given us. Do we want to quit sometimes? Well, more often than we care to admit, and some people do quit and go to a time and place they were not designed for and then wonder why they're so miserable, even as believers. Jeremiah was tired, thoroughly worn out. Look who he was surrounded by, all those reprobates. But covenant-love caused him to stay true to his calling and he has been deservedly rewarded in the heavenlies for that. He complained a lot, just like David - he wrestled with lots of 'why?'s'. We do that to. Yahweh's people don't quit though, do they? Why don't they? Because they know they're not here for themselves.

We started this teaching with the complexity and perplexity of this world and we end with it to. Has anything got simpler over time? Yes and no. The world remains complex but our focus should be very simple: Yah'shua (Jesus). Self makes things more complex. It is good to have the mind and heart freed just that little bit more every day - freed to live our lives a little more productively. Today I have dipped my theological and existential finger into this puddle and that pool, and this river and that lake, into this sea and that ocean, and given you - I hope - a small taste of the many waters of life. I hope you don't pretend that it's fully coherent because we would need several years of continuous, intensive study to do that, a reason we have our large website. I'm like the assistant in the supermarket offering free samples from my own life to encourage you to purchase the real thing by directly going to Divine Source.

Yom haBikkurim...yes, there is a slight connection to it with what I've been saying - is only the third in a sequence of seven annual festivals/a>. It corresponds to baptism and therefore to commitment before witnesses, like the taking of marriage vows. That covenant dipping is the first of many immersions spiritually-speaking. The journey goes on, we will continue to exercise faith and study the Word diligently, like the two Scotsmen....