“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me,Their worship of me is useless, because they teach man-made rules as if they were doctrines.” “You depart from God’s command and hold onto human tradition. 9 Indeed,” he said to them, “you have made a fine art of departing from God’s command in order to keep your tradition!” Mark 7:6-9
Many times the Lord has shown me these verses, however this is the first time with the CJB, so the wording is a bit different and more in line with what the Lord has shown me. Yeshua says it clearly about the Jews (and now these days the “christians” that they have also made up their own doctrine they follow which has nothing to do with Yeshua.
As I write this, it gives me a perfect example because I have an ongoing conversation with a “christian” guy. And with the new bombing in Iran overnight and a real possibility of WW 3 starting. I made the point he might want to move down here sooner than later (he is looking to buy one of my condos). He said he is not worried about it because of the rapture. To which I said to read Matthew 24:29-31 as it says clearly, “immediately after the tribulation…He will send out his angels with a great shofar;[g] and they will gather together his chosen people from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. But nowhere in the bible does it speak of a pretribe rapture at all.
So it goes back to the main point. Which is “you have made a fine art of departing from God’s command in order to keep your tradition!”
The interesting thing for me is how it is not about the bible like the religions make it about. It is about knowing God and obeying him. But then he teaches using scripture and shows it to you clearly if you are seeking truth. If you are seeking for your religious ways to be in your life, the great deception will come and keep you confused and believing the lie.
So many of man’s teachings make no sense to me, like the rapture. Where do they get this pretrib rapture from? I have asked and researched it and there is not one place it speaks of Yeshua coming and taking his people before the tribulation starts. They point to a verse from Paul about in 1 Thes 4:17 “then we who are left still alive will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we will always be with the Lord.” But my argument is where does it say pretrib or before the problems? They seem to ignore the first part of the chapter also which says clearly “Therefore, brothers, just as you learned from us how you had to live in order to please God” and “What God wants is that you be holy!” And again “For God did not call us to live an unclean life but a holy one.” To be Holy means to live without sin. It does not mean to keep living your life as is and God does not see your sin because of the death of the son. You will not find the doctrine anywhere in the bible either, nor will you find anything in scripture about confession and forgiveness of sins by confessing them and saying a few prayers to the virgin Mary. Or any other nonsense.
With the Thessalonians Paul makes it clear to know the Lord and obey him. Initially to rely on them, feed off them like a baby needs milk to live. But to grow to where you get your feedings directly from the Lord, where you “eat his flesh and drink his blood” or in other words feed off his word and not off a word through a man like me who knows the Lord.
On a similar type of teaching, the Lord keeps showing me the times of Moses in the book of Numbers. And how evil the people were and demanding. I think people have become very demanding these days and worse than ever. And maybe so. But Moses and Aahron along with Adonai had these same issues with the Israelites as well.
Keep in mind the way God intended it to be was for each person to know him and obey him. Many times over the Lord said and keeps repeating “if you hear my voice and do as I say I will prosper and protect you. But if you ignore my voice and do not do what I say, I will bring the same problems and destruction on you as the Egyptians. Yet the People came to Moses and said “we do not want to hear Adonai speak least we die. So ask him for some rules for us to obey.
This is why we have the Torah or law, because before this there was no law, only a handful of men hearing and obeying the Lord. Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, the prophets… They did not have laws, they had a relationship and obeyed the Lord.
In Numbers I just read where a group of the men came up to Moses and thought they were special like Moses and that he was trying to keep them down. So they demanded to give an offering to which the Lord Adonai came and not only set them straight but destroyed them. He had the ground open up and swallow them whole, showing his power and way along with making it clear that Moses had a special place with Adonai and they did not.
As much as anything, the Lord has been making the point or showing me how ungrateful these people were (and are today). They want to live their own lives and expect the Lord to take care of them, feed them, take them in a rapture, bless them financially and in all ways without giving any effort to achieve anything. The funny thing about God the religious people ignore is the word “discipline.” The people want the easy way out, they want God and the government to take care of them and they do as minimal work as possible.
Yeshua preached to choose the difficult path or hard path. The easy path leads to death and not with him. The difficult path means you do things very different from the people of the world and it normally means you are going a different direction than them. The worldly system is set up to push you to the wide path and keep you in sin and poor, always complaining about things because you are poor and the rich get richer and barely giving you a bone. But you deserve this life because you choose the wide path instead of the difficult narrow one.
The narrow path is a difficult one in many ways, because the people on the wide path do not understand why you are on the narrow path and criticize you and push you to the wide path. They hate it when you succeed and do well in life. Your example you will live will make them to have envy and their selfishness and greed makes them covet you. I know many people look at my life and wonder how a guy like me can have so much? A great family, beautiful and sexy wife, a good financial life without concerns. But mostly a deep peace they cannot put a finger on or comprehend.
From the outside looking in, probably 99% of the people would love to have my life. But 99.9% of the people would never take the difficult path to achieve or receive it. You cannot get where I am on the wide path. You must reverse and go back and find the narrow path and go on it. Many have found success in certain parts of this narrow path, maybe with a good wife, a good career financially, good health… But everything, very few.
Some people would argue also that I am 60 and it takes time. Which it does, but I spent the first 45 years on the wide path. Then a few years dating the Lord before vomiting. And then a few years proving to the Lord I was worthy by seeking his wisdom and obeying unto righteousness. And eventually he cleansed me in his truth and blood and made me Holy so I could accept the Holy Spirit in my soul, my Spirit being ruled by his Spirit. Then in about 10 years he blessed me in abundance. So it is a combination of many years of doing things my way and failing, to seeing my calamity and seeking his truth, to the process of a few years of being cleansed to receiving the Holy Spirit and then his blessings of “the everything else.” So what can be the difference in you? Start seeking him before your calamity and at the earliest age possible. It took me 45 years to even seek him and hear him.