Last night I had the pleasure of speaking for a few hours with a man who had been a Baptist Pastor before crossing over to be Messianic twenty years ago. We where at a Shabbat gathering, and had just watched a video by a man who was a false teacher, going through scripture to see how what he taught aligned or didn't. Because of this the conversation turned to how disheartening it is to see people come to Torah Observance and quickly fall prey to so many false teachers within that side.
From people suddenly disavowing the Trinity, or changing the Trinity, to only Torah obedience gains eternal life (Works based salvation), to smaller issues like distractions from scripture with things like the flat earth. We see all sorts of major and minor issues within teachers. Now, admittedly, no teacher will be 100%, we're all fallible humans after all. There is, however, a large difference between a teacher who say, holds a different eschatological view, and a teacher who teaches an entirely different gospel or blasphemes Elohim.
The reality is that when many of us learn scripture deeper for ourselves and see the holes in what the modern church has been teaching, and find that the modern church can not answer those holes, we feel lied to. Many begin to question everything they have been taught, and rightfully so, but sadly they begin to jade everything they had been taught, and not to look objectively. Many begin to throw out the baby just because the bathwater is muddied. Laying side what is biblical teaching simply because they no longer trust who taught it to them. This vulnerability is prime territory for the Adversary to swoop in, and swoop in he has!
Lucifer has taken the weakness of those moments and used his favorite tactic for deceit. Taking some truth and injecting just enough poison to lead people away. When the Nature of the Godhead is changed, that is another gospel. When the deity of Yeshua is removed, that is another gospel. When the Ruach Hakodesh is Blasphemed, that is another gospel. Yet these are major issues that have permeated the Torah Observant side! Lesser, yet still serious issues, can be thing like making a blatantly works based salvation, if you don't obey Yeshua you don't love him. Or recently I heard this taught in the subtext because the speaker redefined salvation to be separate from eternal life! That salvation is free, but eternal life is only for those who obey the Torah. It is the same message, but the language was changed just enough that most who watched the video with me didn't even catch the heresy being spoken.
When Satan can't catch us with such changes to the gospel he created distractions from it. Things like helio or geocricity, the flat earth, and the like. Which, while the argument could be made to properly interpret literal scripture, do nothing to change the gospel message through scripture. I have written on the flat earth before, and how it is not a biblical argument. No matter which of these is the case, they do nothing to change the necessities to the gospel. We must use discernment to find what is truly important in scripture, and what takes us away from the message of Yeshua.
So what are the essentials? The things we absolutely can not allow ourselves to travel from left we find ourselves chasing another gospel? I like to use the acronym D.O.C.T.R.I.N.E.
D - Deity. The Deity of Yeshua is taught strongly through scripture. We must not budge from his deity as our Messiah, the Son of Abba, Echad with Abba and the Ruach to form the Godhead.
O - Original Sin. That through Adam's sin we are all born with sin nature, the inherent desire to sin over to do good. Our blindness that makes us seek after the flesh and not after Yahweh.
C - Canon. That the canon of scripture is closed and complete. That the canon of scripture is in inerrant word of God and divinely inspired. Every word in it is from God to his people.
T - Trinity. That the Godhead is made up of three distinct yet separate entities, Abba, Father, Yeshua, and the Ruach Hakodesh.
R - Resurrection. That Yeshua rose from the grave, defeating death and proving himself the Messiah.
I - Incarnation. That when we become believers, followers of Yeshua, we receive the baptism of the Spirit and the Ruach Hakodesh, the Holy Spirit, not dwells within us.
N - New Creation. That when we become believers, followers of Yeshua, we become new creations in him. We now have the ears to hear and the eyes to see and our minds are to be heavenly directly, following the leading of the Ruach, rather than holding to earthly things.
E - Eschatology. Now, I don't mean all disputes within Eschatology, but that we all agree that Yeshua is coming back to earth one day to reign forever more and make a new heavens and a new earth.
So why is it that when the body of the Messiah goes through such bold revivals we see such issues arise? Well, besides the obvious that I have pointed out, Lucifer attacking when we are weakest, there is a visible pattern many times over! Even if we just look to recent history we can see it. Today, with the return to Torah, we see these issues come into play. But just this past century we saw the revival of charismatic worship. This revival held many wonderful things in it, but it also brought in many false teachers as well which sadly shadowed the movement. Again, we see that as good things come opposition also arises.
And what of the last big leave from Babylon, Catholicism? Just look to the Reformers! While I hold very little regard for many of the teachings of the men in that movement one can not deny the good they did for preparing the way of the Messiah. They're teachings and eagerness to return to scripture was so strong they even risked persecution and death to go against many of the false teachings in Catholicism.
But that is hardly where it ends, or began. If we even look to scripture we see the same type of event in a pattern. As we grow in Yeshua, as we see to follow Yahweh, opposition is to be expected. Just look back to when the Tribe of Judah was leaving their Babylonian captivity and returned to Judea. They began work on rebuilding the temple only to have it stopped because of opposition. Issues arose frequently as prophet after prophet was sent to them to straighten it out and shut down the issues.
Or all the way to first large scale issue for Israel, the Exodus. Israel left Egypt, to go to the promised land. Yet when they go there they met with opposition! In fear of it their response earned them an additional 40 years before they'd get to enter, and all but a few finally got to see the Promised Land.
What then can we see from this? That we must walk the straight and narrow, neither going to far to the left or to the right. We must compare all teachers to scripture and beware of the wolves and snakes. We also must not fear the opposition, nor let it stop what Adonai is doing in us as we leave Babylon to follow him as he tells us to. We believers are the Israel of today, and we must not fear the opposition or bow down to it. We must take up our swords, scripture, put on the armor of Elohim, and fight back against what is happening. We must show that such wolves do not speak for us. We must protect those still vulnerable from them. Israel, We Must Stand!
