Who says knowledge is power?

Today, I would like to share with you my experiences of yesterday and hope that these experiences will help us when we go out to speak to others about the Good News and also help us understand how we view knowledge.

Yesterday, I went to church (I attend a Messianic church) – it was a fantastic day for me in which the Ruach (Breath of God) really blew in the walls of building, there was prophetic singing, praying and ministering from across different members of the congregation – truly beautiful and spiritual, for a long time afterwards I walked around in a daze, I was there in body but my spirit was elsewhere (I was very clumsy for a bit)!!!

A lovely Colombian woman invited my husband and I to go to a local south American haunt to evangelise with her, my husband agreed and although I was tired from being in the spirit earlier on I also decided to go along.  This is where our ‘adventures’ began and is the crux of this post.

Along the way we met 6 people, who I guess you would say are stereotypes of people in the world that we might speak to about the Good News of Salvation:

1. The unbelieving Christian
2. The 2 Muslims
3. The Atheist
4. The Naturist
5. The spiritualist

The unbelieving Christian is one of the many Christians who come out of the mainstream church to find their Hebrew roots but along the way get tied into the many false teachings found which give it a bad name e.g. forcing people to keep the law (many not all and not true followers of this movement hold to a legalistic observance and perversion of Torah which is God’s Word – the New Testament is also Torah BTW).  This man was being swayed by the belief that Paul’s writings should be totally ignored as he was not an apostle of Jesus and that it didn’t follow in line with the teachings of the five books of Moses.  This man didn’t even believe in the Holy Spirit nor did he feel that he had the Holy Spirit, he didn’t believe in many things found in Paul’s writings but I won’t go in to them here.

We next  met  two Muslim men ‘evangelising’ on the street, my Columbian friend went straight in to ‘talk’ to one, my husband when he came a bit later also went straight in for the kill to talk to the other.  I am much more of an observer, I like to sit back and listen and watch what’s going on – I have seen that many Muslims have set ‘techniques’ when speaking to ‘Christians’.  The man whom my friend spoke to was extremely learned, he was dressed in western clothing and he seemed to know a lot about church history.  He even quoted the ‘Shema’ which is Jewish/Hebrew for ‘hear’, it is basically Deuteronomy 6: 4:

Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil YHVH Eloheinu YHVH echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

He focused on the fact that Jesus couldn’t be God because even the Jews know that God is One, I’m sure he has had much success with confusing people with this line of thought because it is an argument that I hear being used often – I felt at this point that I needed to step in.  I asked him a single question “what does echad mean?”  He said, “one” , I explained to him, that yes it meant one but not in the way that we view one as being a singular unit.  In Hebrew there are a number of ways of saying one: echad and yachid, echad means one whole, or complete, absolute or composite whole whilst yachid means singular unit.  The Shema clearly shows that God is a composite whole and not a singular unit, he even verified this himself as he was learning Arabic being a Pakistani Muslim Arabic is not his first language.  Arabic is very similar to Hebrew, echad seems to be spelt as achad and yachid is Yahid or something similar, he informed me that achad means unique or absolute, so the shema can not be used to explain away the composite nature and absolute unity of YHVH.  Actually, even Jewish rabbis know that God is not a unitary being but an absolute deity.

Whilst I was talking a Caucasian man came up to us and said boldly “I don’t believe in God”.  The Muslim man was very offended and had a go at him, but from what I could see the English man thought that all this ‘talk’ was a waste of time, after being ‘berated’ for interfering he walked off – but he made an impression on me, because of the very fact that he spoke up meant to me that in fact he felt that he needed to express himself and hear and was even willing to hear about God himself – I could be wrong but that’s what I felt.  He lives in the local area, so if it’s God’s will, I hope to see him again some day.  For many atheists it is more important to be able to actively test God’s existence than experience Him through faith.

The second Muslim (the one speaking to my husband) was greatly offended by the talk of the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh – which is also said in a very similar way in Arabic), he argued that all talk of the Holy Spirit was emotional mumbo-jumbo (nonsense) and that Christianity uses emotions to prevent you from applying logic.  I think my husband answered him very clearly and well on this point, and I hope we left them both much to think over.

The next individual we met was a naturist I would say, he had very specific criteria for experiencing and believing God even though he was yet to find Him.  God had to fit into his understanding of the universe and nature in relation to his scientific background, have some kind of link to how his ancestors worshiped (West Africa) and be based in ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria in particular.  I spent  a long time speaking to this young man because I felt drawn to him, even though he had strict criteria to experiencing God I could also feel the sadness and confusion he felt at not having found Him.  I spoke to him about my journey, I told him that I had tried to find God in a ‘church’ but that didn’t work for me, it was only when I wanted death to consume me that I cried out to God to save me – did you know that Jesus’ name comes from the Hebrew ‘Yeshua’  which means ‘Salvation’ or Yah Saves’ so when I cried out to Yah to save me, He showed me Yeshua (Jesus) – the One and only route to salvation!!!  I really do hope I planted a seed in this young man’s heart – please pray with me here.

Lastly, I met a ‘Black Jew‘, for those of you who don’t know who Black Jews are they are people of African descent who believe that the European Jews of today are imposters and that Jesus was black and not white.  Our Columbian friend specifically wanted us to meet this man as he owned a shop which was filled with all manner of ‘spiritual’ things, on the doorway was the Tetragrammaton, but on the bookshelves was the Egyptian Book of the Dead and some other spiritual titles, there was incense being burnt and hip-hop playing in the background – he also wore a kippah!!!

I really left my husband to speak to this man, although I know that he was also listening to the conversation I was having with the young man in his shop.  I heard him talk a lot about the universe, energy and vibration and it was plain to me that he had gone down the path of seeking spiritual enlightenment.  I sensed in him a defensive aggression, he remained stubbornly quiet, but a part of the conversation nevertheless, when addressed he was quite abrasive in his answers.

Why am I sharing all of this with you today?

Well, as I was praying this morning, these people came to my mind and I was overwhelmed by how much darkness and confusion there is in the world, those of us who know Yeshua should realise just how much we have been saved from the oncoming destruction.  Those who cling to the world and are a part of the world will face the same judgement as the world will face, this is what saddens me the most.  Time is running out, and as each second passes so does the darkness which cloaks the earth – as someone said in church yesterday, we are called to stand in the gap between those who are living and those who are dead.  To me this means that we have a duty to reach into the darkness to bring those who are there into the light, by being light and placing our selves strategically between death and life (those who are saved and unsaved) we are like lighthouses or beacons of lights to those who are becoming lost and confused in the darkness, when they see us they receive direction to help them find their way home.

The Knowledge of good and evil

Yesterday, a deacon in our congregation spoke about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil‘ – did you know that this tree is in total opposition to life and light?  Those who eat of the tree die, just like God said to Adam and Eve, but the thing is that those who eat of it don’t know that they are dying, because it continues to blind them with every bite.  How?  Have you ever come across someone so filled up with worldly knowledge that they just can’t ‘get’ spiritual truths?  I have, and that’s what I encountered yesterday, each person I came across was filled with the fruit of that tree:

The unbelieving Christian had real problems with Paul because he couldn’t align his writings with that of the Torah.  I have to admit here that this is one of the traps that I fell in when I first discovered Hebrew roots, this is based on the belief that you must fulfill every single law of God in order to please Him and as Paul’s writings seem to go against this then he must be a false messenger.  Someone who believes this is a lot happier living by tradition and works rather than faith and love, they prefer the idea of ‘working for God’ rather than serving Him because it fits in with their concept of who God was and not who He is.  He wasn’t able to ‘just believe’ in the truth of the Bible, he had to understand it and the fact that he couldn’t reconcile Paul’s writings to the Old Testament became a stumbling block to him.  It’s impossible to ‘get’ the bible without the help of the Ruach, sometimes we may have to simply say “God, I don’t understand what I’ve read” and leave it as that and in His time He will reveal it to us – but for some this isn’t enough and the quest to get things causes them to draw their own conclusions based on their own limited knowledge and understanding.

The first Muslim with all his knowledge of church history and the ‘oneness’ of God was stuck because his knowledge didn’t make room for the infinite deity of God.  God could never become man, because He is One.

The second Muslim, argued that there is no place for emotion in religion, that we must reason and be logical in order to find God.

The Atheist brushed God off because he couldn’t tangibly experience Him.

The Naturist needed God to fit into his own preconceptions and knowledge from everything he had seen and read and understood.

The Black Jew, was more focused on peripherals such as what colour Jesus was and whether Jews are really white or black to care about salvation!

Does all this knowledge help mankind at all?  NO, it doesn’t.  Carnal knowledge brings chaos and confusion and keeps mankind roaming around in a place of complete darkness until the final bell sounds and the books are opened up.

We have eaten from Yeshua, the Tree of Life – when you eat from Yeshua, you leave behind all this worldly knowledge and become a creature of faith instead.  Faith is the opposite of knowledge because faith is positive, faith is trust, faith is rest and peace but knowledge brings confusion, doubt and fear and ultimately death.  You cannot eat from both trees as they are in opposition to each other.

How do we eat from the Tree of Life?

Let go of your carnal knowledge; Yeshua said that we must become like little children to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, little children have very little knowledge and if they do it’s instinctual knowledge not the type of knowledge that we learn through exposure to the world.   We need to drop our own beliefs and ideologies and live and walk by simple trust alone, not dependent on our senses but on the Word of God and the Ruach as our guide.  My husband has a favourite saying from the Bible (1 Corinthians 3:19 and 1 Corinthians 1:25):

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God and again the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

I say, “who needs knowledge?” Let God’s foolishness be our guide.

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• SHEMA! Hear! We must listen… (ptl2010.com)
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• the rebbe : echad is deeper unity than yachid! – 04min (societystacktrace.wordpress.com)
• I Am- the Becoming One (mitsilancer.wordpress.com)