When I started this blog, I thought the focus would be on my quitting my full time job to stay home with my kids. I had no idea this journey would be so much bigger. This isn’t just about me finding my place as wife and mother; it is about me truly finding God.
Those who know me are probably wondering if I have lost my mind! What do I mean “finding God”, I have been a practicing Christian since I was a young teenager. For over 20 years I thought I knew God, boy was I wrong. Here I was, worshiping a God and I didn’t even know His name! Oh, I thought I knew His name – it was “God” right? Maybe His name was “Lord”. At least that is what my Bible said. I never actually read those beginning notes – you know all those pages before Genesis 1:1. I had no idea that the true name of God had been removed from the scriptures, first by Jewish Rabbis, then by Catholic Priests. God has a name and He declared it almost 7,000 times in scripture – His name is YHWH and it is pronounced “Ya Ho Weh”. He was so clear about His name being known that He gave us a commandment about it. We say “don’t take the name of “the Lord” in vain, but the Commandment is more than that – we are to not let His name come to naught. And, His name is not “the Lord”. In fact, in additional to the title “Lord” mean master, it also means “baal” – you know that false god the children is Israel often got in trouble for worshiping? Yes indeed, whenever we magnify “the Lord” we are more accurately calling on a false pagan god than on the One True God – YHWH.
As I did more digging and studying, I found out that most of my religious walk as a Christian consisted of openly breaking Commandments YHWH had been clear about as well as outright pagan worship. Oh yes, it was dressed up to look pretty and had nice “Christian” words associated with it – like “Christmas”, but all those things were pagan through and through. The more I dug the more I realized I wasn’t worshiping YHWH at all, in fact – the steeped I got in the practice of my religion the more I was twisting scripture. Everything from Sunday worship to Easter was purely pagan to the core. My heart was right, my motivations were right – but I had been deceived! The deception was thousands of years old and intentional. I stood in horror as I looked at my feet sure in the foundations of my faith – only to find they were on sinking sand. I looked in horror as I found that even the Bible I held in my hand had been corrupted by men.
So, this blog will be dedicated to my journey home – home to my Father YHWH as I learn more and grow more. Now, for those still reading and not already fasting and praying for my deliverance – here are some things I will explain right up front. Here are the things that I believe are true:
1. There is one true and living God and His name is YHWH
2. He has one begotten Son and His name is Yahoshua (we will get to this name later)
3. There is but ONE way to God, and that is through His Son; you cannot work your way into heaven, you cannot be good enough or perfect enough
4. The Word of God is TRUE and infallible; however, translation errors and intentional corruption of scripture makes our learning of that True Word take more than just a passive approach. We must study hard, look at multiple translations, go to as close to the original sources as possible, and make our beliefs line up with the Word instead of trying to make the Word line up with our beliefs.
5. The “Old Testament” is still valid today and the plan of salvation was laid out for us even through the words of Moses. The “New Testament” is valid in that is confirms the prophecies about the Messiah and His coming. The NT is also the most challenging because it has been subject to a lot of corruption due to several issues 1)Language – the Greek language, which is what the oldest found manuscripts of the NT were written in was plagued by pagan names and Hellenistic work, 2) Incomplete Manuscripts – there has been NO intact manuscript of the NT found and there are over 3,000 discrepancies found in many of the letters between texts that have been used to translate the NT; these discrepancies are not found in the OT 3) Forgeries – some of the biggest forgeries are found in the writings attributed to Paul with most of the books attributed to Paul now being considered by Biblical scholars to be “questionable”.
So, the next big question is “am I a Christian”? This one is a hard one. Christianity has been such a HUGE part of who I am, most of my friends are Christians, I know the language and lingo, I know the customs and traditions, many of the most important aspects of my life and my most important moments in life were defined in my Christian faith, and even though I had an incomplete view of God – I met Him through Christianity. With that said, there are many defining aspects of Christianity that I no longer accept. For instance, the Christian holy days of Christmas and Easter I can no longer participate in. I believe man had no right to change the Sabbath nor to discontinue the practice of the Set Apart Times declared by God (like Passover). And most importantly, my Savior is named Yahoshua, not Jesus; Christ my God is named YHWH, not Lord. This is more than changing from Baptist to Methodist.
So, do I have a church? Right now we are still on the rolls at our Primitive Baptist Church, we still attend on many Sunday’s and we still regularly pay our tithes there. So no, I am not just trying to “get out of tithing”. Like I said, this is a journey. I would say we are moving closer to a more Messianic walk in our faith, but not so much “Orthodox Jews that believe in Jesus”. It’s really quite hard to define, so I will say this is more about relationship than religion. I can’t say how this will all play out – heck our church’s pastor may read this blog and kick us out, after all – I would be a Christian that doesn’t celebrate Easter!
So, again, welcome to my journey home. I think it will be an exciting one!
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