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Yeshua’s Values or Paul’s Secret Gospel?

Yeshua required his disciples to do things, not believe things. What kind of things did Yeshua want his disciples to do?

(1) Learn – The word “disciple” comes from the Latin word discere which means "to learn." The educational model in Yeshua’s movement involves being engaged in face-to-face interactive discussions. Yeshua would have been much more interested in the quality of a disciple’s questions than answers.

(2) Time-Tested Values – Yeshua didn’t use the word values, but that is the best word in our language, in my opinion, that describes what he taught. He lived in a world dominated by Late Second Temple Period Israelite culture. It was not a democracy. There was no “separation of religion and politics.” Rabbinic Judaism didn’t exist. Yeshua didn’t focus on religious rituals or prayers. His teachings were about relationships: relationships of people to Yahweh & relationships of people with each other. The values he taught were about how to have those relationships. They fall into two categories: TZEDAQAH (righteousness) and MISHPAT (justice). They are introduced in the opening accounts of Genesis and are repeatedly taught throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. They are time-tested values.

(3) Eternal Life Based on Actions – Matthew 25:31-46 records Yeshua’s “Salvation Message,” meaning how to have eternal life. According to Yeshua, those who do TZEDAQAH (the righteous) will enter eternal life. What did they do? They fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, etc. They did what Isaiah taught in chapter 58, Ezekiel taught in chapter 34, and many other places in his Scriptures. For the Creator, taking care of human life was his top priority and that was the top priority of Yeshua too.

(4) Religious rituals are useless without TZEDAQAH and MISHPAT – This is another theme that appears in Yeshua’s teachings, a theme that is also repeated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Cain and Abel were involved in a religious ritual and that led to the first murder. The people in Isaiah 58 were involved in religious rituals – fasting and prayer -- while at the same time ignoring the living conditions of those around them. Without acts of TZEDAQAH, their rituals and prayers were ignored.

Paul taught a Gospel that he claimed he had been chosen -- before he was born -- to deliver to mankind. He made it clear that Yeshua didn’t teach it and Yeshua’s apostles didn’t know it. It was a Gospel of Glorification.

(1) Glorification -- A mysterious process by which people with flesh and blood living or resurrected bodies will be transformed into Spirit-Beings with glorious spiritual bodies and become spirit-beings with citizenships in heaven, where they will live forever.

(2) God foreknew and predetermined those who will be glorified. -- God foreknew and predetermined those who will be glorified to share the likeness of the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brothers (Romans 8:29-30).

(3) Paul’s Gospel required for Glorification -- God will call those he predetermined to be glorified through Paul as he proclaims his Gospel.

(4) Righteousness by answering Paul’s call. -- God will justify (make righteous) those who answer Paul’s call. It is a mystical experience done to a believer.

(5) At some unknown date in the future God will glorify the justified. – This will take place when Christ descends from heaven. The dead in Christ will rise along with the justified that are alive. They will all be caught up together in the clouds and experience, simultaneously, a transforming immortalization and receive their new glorified spiritual bodies.

(6) The justified will go to heaven. -- The glorified will then be taken to heaven where they will live with God forever. Nothing is said about everyone else or what happens on earth.

Later Christians removed the “foreknew and predetermined” part of Paul’s message and replaced it with things like freewill, church membership, correct beliefs, having an emotional experience, etc. Today, there are thousands of Christian denominations, many more independent churches and even more individualized Christians who have Buffet Belief Systems (they pick and choose what they want from other Belief Systems and create their own) – and obviously they do not agree on what to believe.

We have had almost 2000 years of Christian religions based on modified versions of Paul’s Gospel that produced crusades, inquisitions, endless protests, heated conflicts and church splits over beliefs. Needless to say, if Christians had followed the teachings of Yeshua and adopted his values which place the protection and preservation of human firstthose things would not have taken place. So why is Paul’s Gospel still so popular?

(1) Most Christians aren’t aware of the histories of their religion or Values of Yeshua.

(2) No church that I know of teaches Yeshua’s Values Message as their Salvation Message.

(3) Paul’s Gospel is easy! A person doesn’t have to do anything but “believe” to go to heaven.

Of course, the serpent in the Garden of Eden persuaded Eve and Adam that all they had to do to become like God was take a bite of a piece of fruit!

What does Yahweh care about? It is you and your life, and the lives of everyone else. What does he want people to do? Based on what Yeshua taught, our conclusion is that he wants people to reveal his image through their words and actions in their daily lives by doing acts of righteousness and justice.

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Shalom,
Jim Myers

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