Last week we looked at the Mosaic ordinance of circumcision which was an ordinance commanded by Yahweh bringing a family into a covenant with Him - a family that would eventually be renamed Israel. He created that family, which became a nation, to be a light to all the nations. And then He sent His Son Yah'shua, ripped down that national wall of partition (Eph.2:14-16), and admitted people from all nations into the Covenant Nation of Israel, abolishing the ordinance of circumcision (which had been compulsory, only for males, and usually shortly after birth) and replacing it with the ordinance of baptism by full immersion into water for those who old enough to believe and make a reasoned choice, which admitted both Jews and gentiles and women. Paul said to the Galatians:

In Yah'shua the Messiah, Yahweh pays no attention whatsoever to your national or ethnic origin as far as qualifying to be a part of the Israelite national covenant. He just isn't interested in such distinctives. He is not interested in your racial origin. And whilst once a special seed was set-apart or made holy by covenant (Ezra 9:2) He has now cut off that race which refused to accept the King of Israel and His Kingdom and grafted on all the races of the world into Israel. Indeed, Yahweh has always been doing this. He has, throughout Israelite history, been grafting in Egyptians, Arameans, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrians, Canaanites, Moabites - anyone who is willing to follow Him. Over the course of time, this spiritual process of assimilation of different nations and races into the National Covenant assumed nationalistic proportions and it was this nationalism that created an artificial wall of partition. Yahweh detests all Herrenvolk doctrines whether it is Nazism, Zionism or any other kind of -ism that would artificially divide human beings on the basis of genetics or skin colour. There is only one race, the race of Adam, to which we all belong. Scripture says:

Admission to New Covenant Israel is not on the basis of a genetic or blood relationship to Abraham, Jacob or Judah but on the basis of our relationship to the Messiah who creates and sustains New Covenant or Messianic Israel and by this our relationship to Abraham is defined. We can come in as natural branches (in direct descent from Abraham) or as wild branches (not in direct genetic descent from Abraham). Is there an advantage to being a natural branch? Definitely - Paul says so - because they are the inheritors of the generational blessings of Abraham when they choose Messiah and the more naturally 'fit in' to Messianic Israel - that's why they are called "natural branches" (Rom.12:24). Nevertheless we are all 'one blood'. The only separation between men that Yahweh permits is separation on the basis of covenant and set-apartness. He draws out those who love Him from those who do not, sets them apart (making them holy) and gives them a unique lifestyle, to which they naturally, joyfully and spontaneously react in positive affirmation, which mark them out as being His. Thus it is written:

This ministry and assembly does not recognise the pre-eminence of any race, be it Jewish, white Protestant, black Rastafarian or anything like that. We don't care what colour you are or what Yah'shua was. We don't care if you were born Jewish or Greek, American Caucasian or South African black. We don't care what your social background or status is or was, whether you are educated or not, whether you have certain spiritual gifts or not, whether you are rich or poor, from happy or dysfunctional backgrounds. All we care about is whether you love Yahweh with your whole might, mind and strength, whether you accept Yah'shua as your Master and Deliver and surrender fully to Him, whether you love His commandments and desire to obey New Covenant Torah with your whole heart, and whether you love All Truth, and will actively strive to overcome error and sin. Above all we welcome those who are real, honest, genuine, and aren't playing games. If these things are your heart's desire, then you are welcome to this Mishpachah because that is what we are about in our totality.

Before we say farewell to Hanukkah this year we do need to address the important and thorny subject of racial bigotry which is infecting Messianism and some parts of Protestantism. We need to again take a look at the historical roots of Hanukkah and discern some dark seeds latent within it that must be firmly and totally removed. We can't allow them to remain and possibly sprout up in the future. So what I have to say today is by way of an official statement for this Mishpachah as well.

Over the years we have liberally referred to Antiochus Epiphanes as an 'antichrist'. We have done this not only because of what he did to the covenant remnant of Judah and to its people but also because of the name he gave himself, namely 'Epiphanes'. Those of you from traditional Protestant or Catholic backgrounds will, I am sure, be aware that in the orthodox calendar there is a time of the year which is designated 'Epiphany'. This is taken from a Greek word and literally means 'elohim manifest' or 'god manifest'. Antiochus IV called himself 'Epiphanes' because he claimed to be 'god manifest' - he claimed to be an incarnated deity! He claimed to be what only Yah'shua the Messiah is, namely 'Elohim manifest' or 'Elohim in the flesh'. His blasphemy in the temple at Jerusalem, setting up a statue to Zeus (the father-god of the pagan Greeks, known also as Jupiter by the Romans, but more accurately known as Satan) and then offering an unkosher pig in sacrifice to it, sparked a revolt in 167 BC which led to the liberation of Judea from the Greek Syrians by force of arms.

It is also worth remembering that Antiochus IV was not himself a Greek but a Jew who adopted pagan Greek culture and appointed other Hellenised Jews as his political cronies such as the High Priest and his army. Three years later after the 'abomination of desolation' had been set up in Yahweh's House, Judah Maccabee and his Judahite warriors overthrew the Syrian régime and recaptured the Temple.

I want you to note something very important about this man and his partisans. For though the revolt was undoubtedly justified in terms of overthrowing a murderous evil, it was not actually the best solution, because the origin of the problem was the apostasy of the people and their compromise with the truth. These Maccabee warriors - these heroes of Orthodox Judaism and of most contemporary Messianics, became the inspiration for the zealots in Yah'shua's day.

As I told you last Sabbath, the first Hanukkah didn't last, neither did the new state of Judea, because it was founded on two principles that are entirely alien to the Gospel: fury and murder. Nations that are formed on the foundation of military revolution do not last and do not produce the fruits of righteousness. When Yah'shua came, Israel was looking for another political liberator like Judah Maccabee. The Jews wanted to repeat the revolt which led to their brief independence as the Judean nation. These Maccabees or Hasmoneans, as they were called, may have been very zealous - just as the zealots were in Yah'shua's day - but they lacked spirituality. Within 65 years they were so drunk with power that one of their leaders, Alexander Janneus (note the un-Hebrew name), cruelly put down a revolt by the Pharisees who challenged his corruption, and ordered his Jewish soldiers to crucify 800 Pharisees. But his bloodlust was not satiated because while these Pharisees were hanging on crosses, dying the same agonising death that Yah'shua was to a century and a half later, Alexander Janneus ordered his troops to slit the throats of the wives and children of these men right in front of their very eyes (Josephus, Antiquities, 13:14:2). The spirit of Satan has no self-restraint - it wants to utterly devastate, humiliate and trample down, and can't stop until there is nothing left to defile.

Now I mention this piece of gruesome history to remind you just how easy it is for nationalism, power-lust and evil to supplant true spirituality and theocracy. And as I told you last week, the bloodthirsty Hasmoneans were quite happy to forcibly convert and circumcise non-Jews such as the Idumeans. The descendants of these forced converts, who intermarried with the Judahites, rule the modern Israeli Republic today as Illuminists and are the power behind Zionism. This Khazar-Edomite Republic is literally another Maccabeean Judea in our time. It looks, in some respects, like the 'genuine article - at least on the surface - but the reality beneath the surface is very different.

The Maccabees Revolt produced no liberty for anyone. Neither did the revolts that took place in Yah'shua's day or in the generation after Him. The last one led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Tenth Roman Legion, as Yah'shua had prophesied, and to the destruction of Masada after all its inhabitants had committed suicide, leading to the scattering of the Judeans throughout the world and the end of their nation. And there they mostly remain today because the vast majority of 'Jews' living in the Israeli Republic - probably over 90% of them - are not descendants of Abraham, Jacob or Judah.

That, brethren and sisters, is the legacy of violent revolution. Was the insurrection inevitable? Could Judea have been liberated from Antiochus IV by prayer and spiritual reformation? Of course! Look at the history of Israel and Judah! Read through Kings and Chronicles. Didn't Yahweh do mighty miracles for such as King Hezekiah when their monarchs trusted and obeyed Yahweh? The problem with the Maccabeean revolt was that it was the 'second best thing' and was a worldly solution that could not produce lasting fruits. Judas Iscariot, himself a Zealot, belonged to a political party identical to that of the Maccabees, wanted Yah'shua to be a revolutionary Judah Maccabee, aided with some supernatural power, and ended up selling Him for a few coins to a murderous gang of imposters claiming to represent Yahweh in the most infamous act of betrayal in all history.

Today's Hanukkah, celebrated by Jews and Messianics alike, has become a commercial festival not at all unlike Christmas and is, as we have already seen, saturated with paganism and Talmudism. Worse, in my view, is that it, like Purim, has become a focus for Jewish nationalism and Zionism, the very forces that created the Maccabeean revolt, the very forces that left no true spiritual foundation, the very forces that tried to revolt against the Romans and failed, the very forces that Yah'shua resolutely opposed! He gave the zealots of His day no grounds for satisfaction - indeed, many of them viewed Him with contempt as a reactionary Roman ally when He taught that we should "give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" (Lk.20:25) and refused all association with armed revolt. Yah'shua's Kingdom, like Yah'shua Himself, was not of this world - it was not of this world's political system, did not employ its methods, and could never ever be established by the sword.

Today I want us to ask ourselves this very important question: was Yah'shua's teaching on the Feast of Dedication, as recorded in John 10:22-23, an endorsement of Hanukkah? We have usually assumed that it was (and we really can't do much more than assume since we don't actually know). If He had been here in our time and the scene was Christmas outside St.Paul's Cathedral in London or the Vatican in Rome - a pagan festival that has lots of lights too - would Yah'shua have given essentially the same message as we find in the Gospel of John?

John does not tell us that Yah'shua was celebrating Hanukkah, only walking in the temple grounds. There is actually more compelling evidence to suppose that He was not observing Hanukkah than that He was. How can we know that? Because of the wider context of Chapter 10 in that Gospel. Paul Sumner summarises what this teaching was:

That was His bold teaching around Hanukkah. The place was swarming with people whose minds were filled with the Maccabee story and it was to that mindframe that He spoke. And in that atmosphere, His words were viewed as an outrage! Paul Sumner imagines what these people were thinking:

The result was a division - do you remember what they said?

Well, if that wasn't enough, Yah'shua continued to say things that hit at the very nerve of nationalism. The "final outrage", as Paul Sumner calls it, was announcing that He and Yahweh were echad or one. They accused Yah'shua of blasphemy and went into a self-righteous and murderous rage. Here was a Judahite telling His own people that He was Yahweh's Shepherd, which meant Israel's King, and that no one could get into the flock - into the Kingdom of Israel - except through Him! And then He had the audacity to declare that He was going to bring non-Jews into the House of Yahweh! And that He and Yahweh were of one mind concerning all the good works He had done.

Here was Yah'shua telling the Hanukkah celebrants that Elohim was manifesting Himself in an epiphany in His Shepherd, as His Messiah, as His Son - but as a humble suffering-Servant and not as a Hasmonean-type warrior in the image of Judah Maccabee! Imagine the people who have come in this fervent nationalistic spirit, at a time when the Roman garrisons must have been on full alert waiting for a riot any time, and said the very opposite of what they were expecting their Messiah to do and be during this 'Golden Calf' ceremony of theirs!

Nearly two centuries before, Maccabeean zealots contended with a Greek Syrian whose name meant 'Elohim manifest', the very title that belonged exclusively to Yah'shua! And here was a fellow Judahite who was seemingly saying the same thing as Antiochus Epiphanes by claiming to uniquely speak in Elohim's Name and Power!! Can you imagine the rage that that must have provoked! Later they said that He deserved to die for making Himself out to be the Son of Elohim (John 19:7).

Well, Yah'shua went and defended Himself and quoted Scripture to show that He wasn't being blasphemous (Jn.10:31-39) - He showed how Israel's righteous judges were called elohim too - but they would not listen. They would not accept Him as the Shepherd-King over their flock. They wanted a new Judah Maccabee! They wanted a revolutionary warrior who would spill blood as the Hasmoneans done and violently drive the heathen Romans out of the Holy Land! They wanted clashing swords, high drama, the rush of blood that comes with a fight, so that they could celebrate another nationalist triumph and build a powerful military state as Solomon, who turned his people into slaves, had once done.

Now does it sound to you, in the light of what actually happened on that Hanukkah, that Yah'shua endorsed the Hanukkah celebrations? How could He have done?! And the prime reason He could not have done was because the historical essence of the festival was that it endorsed liberty through war and self-effort, and not the life-redeeming, intervening power of Yahweh! What about the miracle of the cruse of oil? As we discussed last year, there is no evidence that this actually happened and that it was likely an invention of the Talmudic Rabbis to support their view of salvation and redemption - by the sword - through military conquest, by means of one of the temptations of Satan to Yah'shua when He was out in the wilderness!

What of other reasons that Yah'shua could not have endorsed the festival? It was rabidly anti-gentile and Yah'shua was pro-gentile because He was pro-all people. Moreover, as we know elsewhere in the Gospels, Yah'shua refused to promote a Maccabeean-type rebellion against Caesar - Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, knew this and acquitted Him of all guilt in this area. Also, Hanukkah is not a biblically mandated festival of Yahweh. And finally, the spirit of the temple leaders was unreceptive to a man who came as Yahweh's Son to liberate people from sin. Political power was far more important to them just as it had been to the Hasmoneans.

There can be no doubt that the Maccabees were courageous, but then so was King Saul. I can think of a lot of courageous people - Alexander the Great was a courageous warrior, Adolf Hitler was a brave front line soldier in the First World War. Courage is a virtue but it is not enough to create righteousness. The Maccabees were not the heroes of the historical faith given through Moses - the faith that pointed to Yah'shua which gives lasting salvation. They were not like Joshua, who was a type of Yah'shua, at all. Judah Maccabee was a warrior-prince who slaughtered gentile and apostate Judahites in the Name of Yahweh and Torah. He was not a Good Shepherd and did not love people the way Yah'shua did. And yet he is the hero of non-Messianic and Messianic Jews alike who are united by the common cause of Jewish nationalism just as the Maccabees and Zealots were. Judah Maccabee did not have the Abraham vision of blessing the nations (Gen.12) and was willing to kill anyone who threatened his religion. Yah'shua wasn't. He wanted to gather everyone into One True Faith and treated everyone alike. Yah'shua did not ignite a revolt against the Romans, and neither did the apostles after Him, even though they were defiling the City of Yahweh. Instead He taught His disciples to pray for their enemies and to "be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36, NIV) because only by winning your enemy for Yahweh will you ever bring about lasting peace, because this alone is the true spirit of repentance. This alone is the foundation of His Kingdom.

As Yah'shua was wandering around the Outer Court of the Temple in Jerusalem He must surely have sensed 'another spirit' - a dark, foreboding and murderous spirit - that was ready to accuse Him to death - a spirit that totally and utterly clashed with His mission to redeem. His own zeal burned for Yahweh's House - to cleanse it of chauvinistic defilement and commercialism, and make it "a house of prayer for all nations" (Isa.56:7, NIV; Mt.21:13) - a welcome to all the foreigners and outcasts who desired to unite with Yahweh and the Covenant Nation (Isa.56:6):

That is the ancient prophetic vision and it must uncompromisingly be ours too. We adamantly refuse to be caught up in contemporary Zionism or Jewish nationalism. It has nothing to do with Yahweh, Yah'shua, the Gospel, or true believers any more than the Zionist's enemies in the Middle East have. Zionism has nothing to do with true Messianism and those who flirt with it and court it might just as well be getting into bed with the Maccabees and Zealots of old. Hanukkah did not then, and still does not today, promote the true vision of our Heavenly Father and so must be rejected. We can, and should, remember it as an historical lesson with a spiritual message to us, and as a reminder of what we should be doing, but we absolutely cannot enter into it as a celebration any more. We don't need a second Sukkot, however nice that may sound, because we already have one and Yahweh evidently thought it was enough for the centuries that preceded Hanukkah. The only reason they celebrated a second Sukkot was because they didn't have the possibility of celebrating it at the right time. 'Better late than never' doesn't justify two celebrations subsequently. They were perfectly right to celebrate a late Sukkot then but that should have been the end of it.

We therefore find ourselves in quite an interesting position. This would not be the first time we have tried to purify something and found that what is left is just a lifeless skeleton, or at worse, a rotting carcass that poisons the redemptive work we are engaged in. In the past, Yahweh has revealed things directly to us and told us to make sudden changes, but also in the past He has led us through a process of gradual discovery so that we might fully understand why He does not want us to do or believe in certain things, and so as to be a witness to others asking similar questions as they seek their way out of the quagmire of false religion. For the work of the Ruach haQodesh is both reformatory and restorative. We have always claimed to be both a Reformation (much as the Protestants were, but taking the work of Martin Luther much farther) and a Restoration (as Yah'shua was) and have understood these two processes to be working side-by-side in our spiritual life. Some things changed dramatically and some gradually in our history.

Next year we will not be celebrating Hanukkah with all the ritual candle lighting and prayers. I know that the children will probably initially miss all the lights just as children converting from Christmas initially miss all the decorations and illuminated Christmas trees. We will memorialise it in the same way as we do Purim, another violent and nationalistic Judahite festival that really is completely contrary to the mission of the Messiah. We will have discussions and teach the lessons that we have been learning over the years about how not to bring in the Kingdom of Yahweh and how to prepare for the days ahead.

Our watchword is 'all truth' but to live by that we must swallow all pride and be prepared to be corrected. Hanukkah is not what it seems to be. We should remember the wise words of Jewish Rabbi Daniel Kohn who said:

"Over the next 100 years, the Maccabees used their military might to expand the Jewish kingdom, forcibly converting the Idumeans to Judaism... They epitomised the worst in military dictatorship... The more successful the Maccabees became, the wealthier and more Hellenistic they became!... they ended up becoming the single most successful Hellenising force in Jewish society!...the Maccabean Kingdom was conquered by the Romans, and by the time the Rabbis, heirs of the Perushim and Hasidim, edited the Talmud, the land of Israel had known tremendous loss of life and destruction due to vainglorious military resistance and rebellion against Roman might. The martial memories of the Maccabees were no longer seen as reminders of a glorious past but dangerous, seditious influences which must be suppressed at all costs ... The rabbis feared glorifying a martial past while still occupied and oppressed... The myth of the cruse of oil masked the truth about Hanukkah for centuries. The rabbis may have deliberately lied about the military origins and Hellenistic causes of Hanukkah in order to maintain the holiday but shifted its focus to God and more religious themes out of a greater need for survival!..." (http://jewish.com/askarabbi/askarabbi/askr622.htm)

And so we see Hanukkah serving the self-interests, first, of the Maccabees and, second, the Pharisees who were prepare to lie in order to stub their enemies and save their own skins. Hanukkah is a story of worldly political intrigue, or devious priestcraft and is of a spirit we should be repulsed by.

In the light of these truths we have absolutely no choice but to reject Hanukkah celebration and to declare that it was Hanukkah's satanic elements that ultimately nailed Yah'shua to a cross! By celebrating Hanukkah we have, unknowingly, been honouring antichrist - the very type in the person of Aniochus Epiphanes whom supposedly the festival is dishonouring. We have, in Hanukkah, a good cop/bad cop set-up, and Messianic Jews and Israelites everywhere have been falling for it, including ourselves until we knew better. Therefore we are repenting of our involvement in this festival and are setting it aside - for good. It can no longer be viewed as 'permissive' or an 'option' - it is a snare to our souls.

There will be no more 9-armed candlesticks - Yahweh never authorised them - He only ever authorised the seven-armed Menorah. Where in the Bible is there a divine symbolism for the number 9 anyway? There isn't. We can make deductions from the combinations of other biblical numbers but as a number 9 has no direct meaning in Torah. It does, however, have important occultic significance and was especially sacred to the ancient pagan Greeks because to them it symbolised the 9 muses or sister-goddesses, the daughters of Zeus (Satan) and Mnenosyne who were believed to preside over man's activities on the earth. The number 9 was also sacred to the Etruscans and Romans. The Romans honoured the goddess Nundina by holding a purification ceremony for male infants on their ninth day of life. In addition, every ninth year the Romans held a feast in memory of the dead. Nine is also a sacred number amongst Freemasons. Satanists particularly revere the number 9 because it is 6 in reverse which as 666 makes up the number of the beast (Rev.13:18). The famous occultist and palmist Cheiro said of the number 9:

Am I imagining things, or am I seeing 'strange coincidences' with this 9-armed candelabra of the Talmudists, occultism, and the revolutionary spirit of the Maccabees? Cheiro's description fits the nature of Maccabee rulers to a tick. It is also the sum of the Illuminati number, 333 (3+3+3=9), which translates in their occult language as 'total control' as well as being the number of the demon Choronzon.

There is something 'odd' about Hanukkah (or Chanukah - it is spelled in many different ways). Like Christmas it is the Talmudic festival amongst non-Messianic Jews, having grown in importance and significance over the years to the Jewish community. And whilst that may in part be a reaction to Christmas and a conscious attempt to 'counter' it, I sense that there is some occultic trickery in this festival too that goes back two millennia. It may be my imagination but for now I feel increasingly uneasy the more I research this topic. Hanukkah is not all what it appears to be and is a subtle mix of truth and lies designed to promote a nationalistic antichrist spirit which spelled the ruin of Israel and Judah so many times in the past. For nationalism is always the last retreat of a scoundrel.

Nine is the number of death. Yah'shua died on the ninth hour. And whilst 9 is just 'another number' to us and to those of us who are not superstitious, it has absolutely nothing to do with Yahweh's moedim or important biblical symbolism.

Last Yom Rishon as I sat down at my desk the Ruach haRishon opened my eyes to this Talmudic festival. I felt a deep remorse that I had even been involved in it. But I did so in ignorance, not fully knowing what it was. We have all done so. It is, however, my responsibility as a teacher for teaching it to you and so I want to publicly apologise about that now and officially retract all I have said supporting it in the past.

Therefore I have to state that Hanukkah is no longer a part of this fellowship's liturgical calendar.

I do feel a sense of relief - it is like a burden lifting. Last Sabbath was such an experience, as we knelt in front of the altar and repented of wrong choices in our lives. I believe that we shall experience this more and more as we renounce untruth in our lives and adhere solely to the truth which is in Yah'shua our Redeemer. I am beginning to see why Yahweh has told me to delay building the new web site -- it still isn't started. But it will come. We must get our own house fully in order before we go out to the world with our great message.

"What are we going to do during the darkest and coldest time of the year?" some of you may ask. We shall fill our homes with love and truth as we should be doing all the year round. If we feel a loss it will not be real because it won't be based on a genuine need. It may, in the end, simply have answered to fleshy desires to have 'an alternative to Christmas' as both festivals fall at roughly the same time.

Funnily enough - as an illustration of this - I was reading a magazine produced by a friend in Norway - who is a Protestant minister whom I have often challenged about Christmas celebration - who wrote an article justifying the retention of pagan syncretism. His excuse for returning to Christmas celebration was entirely emotional ... because he felt 'empty'. Well, I can understand that in a way. My own family abandoned Christmas and Easter years before we repented and started observing Yahweh's appointments and I do recall that whilst I felt a relief at having got rid of a pagan burden there was an 'emptiness' of sorts. We were made creatures of natural cycles and Yahweh, knowing that, gave us the festivals of Israel - all seven of them, plus the monthly New Moon and the weekly Sabbath. Think about it - we are a truly celebrating people! Every Yom Shabbat - every Friday evening - we have a celebration that last 24 hours! During the rest of the week we eat simply and frugally and then when the Sabbath begins we have a sumptuous feast to give thanks to Yahweh for His weekly providence for us. We by no means every feel empty, deprived or bored. It's the day the children get lots of extras as we have a great family get-together with Yahweh.

No, we're not going to miss Hanukkah - actually it was an extra burden that brought in a false spirit however much we tried to purify and reform it. It deflected us from what we should have been doing just as Christmas once did. And you know what? When Yahweh showed me last Yom Rishon that Hanukkah was wrong, my wife was busily trying to make a movie with the children about Hanukkah. Without knowing what was happening to me, a great heaviness came over her and she could not make the movie. By the time I shared the news with the family she had already abandoned the movie.

In conclusion, I feel led to share you a passage from Genesis that speaks of the time right before the Great Flood. Let me read it to you:

Noah was abandoning the world system so completely that once he had completed the tasks Yahweh had assigned to him in gathering the animals in two's and seven's into the ark, Yahweh SHUT HIM IN. There was no way that that door could be reopened without the entire project coming to grief and the world being lost. The door to the deliverance to the whole of humankind was a wooden door on a boat. Now if someone had come to you before Noah built the ark and said: "To be saved, you must enter a door on a giant ship lying on the ground inland" you probably would have laughed at Him. And yet all those who refused to go through that door perished - all of them. They had their opportunity to choose - to believe - but when they refused, the time had passed for them and the door of deliverance was SHUT BEHIND THEM!

Last week I was watching a film showing charismatics prophesying (supposedly), driving our demons (supposedly) and performing many miracles (supposedly). They were extremely busy doing these things, they were very fervent, very sincere, and totally convinced that they were being anointed by the 'Holy Ghost' as they writhed on the floor, some trying to undress, hooting and howling and the like. They were very zealous indeed and having a party! But you know what? They weren't in the ark - they were exposed to a huge demonic deception. And do you know why? Because they weren't doing what Yahweh told them to do.

We dare not follow ourselves, tradition, or take the word of preachers without checking up what they say in the Bible and then checking it out again with Yahweh in prayer. We dare not! We dare not scoff at Yahweh's way and offer excuses. We dare not show disdain for a giant boat built inland nor to the 'strange' festivals that Yahweh gave to His Covenant people. We dare not! We dare not chop and change and decide what we 'feel' is right since how would we know anyway? There is only one way and that way is narrow and hard to find as I keep on telling you over and over again (Mt.7:14). There are plenty of 'broad ways' out there that turn us into evildoers and lead us to destruction. It's ironic, isn't it, that 'Broadway' in New York leads to the highest professional theatre district in the entire United States where people indulge in a Greek custom utterly foreign to Covenant Israel - acting in 39 different theatres.

Remember those theatres along with the hippodromes and stadiums in Antiochus' and Herod's days? There is no theatre in the Kingdom of Yahweh, ONLY REALITY. Christendom needs to wake up before Yahweh shuts that door. Please don't assume that just because I have said that we probably have another generation before the Antichrist assumes power that we can sit back and continue on in our merry lawless way? Today is the day of every man's and woman's salvation (2 Cor.6:2).

I have watched this year as one person after another has been transported by the Third Wave and taken back to where they started because they either would not choose or chose not to believe Yahweh. It has been heartbreaking, and it's still going on in the aftermath of that great and sudden movement of the Ruach. And now they are trying to 'explain things away' just like the false prophets did throughout Israelite history. Read up Jeremiah and Ezekiel for some good examples. And how easy it is to put on a false face of bravado, having refused Yahweh's call, and marched blithely into the fog and into an unknown and frightening future. And, yes, this world is frightening. We stand at the edge of many potential apocalypses. A showdown between the USA and Iran is brewing and looking more menacing every day. The Islamic world is aflame with a Maccabee-type thirst for revenge and conquest that could explode any moment. It is always calm before the storm, and calmness never meant that storms weren't coming. And even if Yah'shua doesn't come back until the next generation, if you miss your calling now it's going to be too late for you whether He comes while you're alive or not because He's waiting to come to you, now! As the Olive Branch teaches:

It isn't enough to bury yourself in a Bible and think that by this means you are coming to Yahweh, if the soil of your heart is full of the rocks of unbelief. Before the seed can take root you have to choose Yah'shua and repent! Unbelievers open Bibles too and use them to attack believers. Satan did it to Yah'shua. The Olive Branch continues:

Have you ever seen something swell? Well, a heart that has repented and is actively trusting swells with the Ruach too until it feels it is going to burst with love; and when it feels that bursting, it's only desire is to give that love to others so that the pain of love may be relieved and turn to joy! It isn't thinking of self and what it can get, only what it can release and give. When you are born of the Ruach you can't not share the wonderful love of Messiah because you would burst if you didn't. You certainly don't need to force yourself to love or act it out.

People tell me so often that they want this and yet they refuse to choose to die to self and give sovereignty to Yah'shua. For a seed to spout, it must first die. We must die to everything that is not of Him and let Him till our soil.

Last week I saw a vision of a woman who is struggling to be free of oppression. I saw her standing erect, still and solid like a piece of wood, her hair as straight as a ruler, as though she had been refrigerated. She was stiff-necked, stubborn and proud and would not repent. She wanted the world more than Yah'shua but wouldn't admit it and just carried on a pretence of being a Christian. She reads the Bible for hours every day, seeking solace and release, but keeps the door to her heart firmly shut. And she's not alone - so many do this, head for spiritual Broadway, and carry on a lifeless theatre in search of applause and accolades because they won't accept responsibility for their lives. They won't grow up, they want others to make their choices for them, they want others to choose being a Christian for them and to live out the Christian life for them.

Because Hanukkah is a good-cop/cop-bad cop set-up, it's easy to be either an Antiochus Epiphanes or a Judah Maccabee and seek to enforce enslavement or liberty by the sword for the sake of supposed 'good'. Antiochus believed Greek culture was superior and that Judaism was just a primitive, religious relic that had no place in the modern world. Judah Maccabee and his descendants believed that the Kingdom of Yahweh could be established by the sword and that the gentiles were untermensch (sub-humans, just as the nazis and extreme Orthodox Jews do) much as the Catholic Church has done in the past and just as Fundamentalist Islam thinks it can today because they believe that the end justifies the means. Yah'shua came to the world to remind us that the means means everything, because it is the means that establishes the quality and veracity of the end. As Yah'shua warned: "the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt.11:12, NKJV).

But that is not Yah'shua's way, and it's not ours either. There are plenty of people out there who want to force you to belief or unbelief by violently attacking you with the sword or with the pen. They would happily grind you into the dirt to 'prove a point', and especially to prove how 'right' they are (that's called self-righteousness). The means that what they use reveals who their master is. Modern-day Maccabees are doing the same today against the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are answering not only in kind but with unprecedented savagery shaped by their religion. The cycle of external violence there, along with the internal violence that lies in men's souls and which wages relentless war against their consciences, can only be broken by repentance: a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Matthew 24 draws a comparision between the judgement of Noah's day and the impending second coming of Yah'shua:

And not just externally. Today - this very day - Yahweh expects you to give an account to Him and gives you the opportunity to repent and get right with Him. Soon comes a flood of His wrath. You had better be in the ark of safety with the door firmly shut behind you because if you don't, you will only have yourself to blame. The door is shut for some people but remains open a little longer for others. Remember what Yah'shua said:

No one can deny you your salvation - only you can. Yah'shua also said:

But the day is coming when Yahweh will divinely shut that door, when the day of grace is at an end, as He shut the door to Noah's ark. Please be wise. Don't make a fatal decision as Yah'shua warns most soberly:

May we all reflect soberly on the reality around us and within us. We have to get grounded in 'all truth' or perish because only the truth can set us free (Jn.8:32)

For those of us who have chosen, whose hearts are swollen and brimming with love, let us go and have a Sabbath feast! Amen.

Acknowledgements
1. The Legend of Hanukkah
2. Occult Numerology and the Number Nine