"Who am I to judge?"

Those were the now famous words by Pope Francis, uttered July 29, 2013 when, on a plane returning from Brazil, he was asked about gay priests.  "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?", he said.  With those five words, the Pope trampled the Word of God.

This past week we saw a stark revelation of how far his words reached and how they resonate with the unsuspecting public.  During the Pope's November, 2015 visit to war-torn Africa, what did we see but throngs carrying signs - even umbrellas - emblazoned with his infamous words.

"Who am I to judge?" 

Many will be quick to latch onto the Christian teaching that "you should not judge".  For example, Matthew 7:1-2 is often cited as their defense:

"You should not judge that you be not judged. For by the judgment that you judge, you will be judged. And by the measure that you measure, it will be measured to you." (AENT)

Most interpret these verses and the similar verses in Luke and John to mean that you should not judge.  Period.  But that is not what the whole of scripture says.  If the Pope (and others) would actually read Scripture instead of revising it, they'd see that Yeshua was addressing avoiding judging others by the standard of your own judgment!  YHWH provides for the standard of judgment and we are expected to use His standard when judging others. That standard is Torah! The issue is that we should not judge if we, ourselves are not obeying Torah and are instead judging by our own interpretation of righteousness.

Even Paul understood this simple fact that the Pope seems unable to understand:

1. There is therefore no excuse for you, O man, who judges your neighbor; for by judging your neighbor, you  condemn yourself; for you that judge do practice the same things. 2. And we know that the judgment of Elohim is in accordance with truth, in regard to those who practice these things. 3. And what thinks you, O man, who judges those who practice these things, while practicing them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of Elohim? 4. Or will you abuse the riches of his benevolence, and his long suffering, and the opportunity which he gives you? And do you not know that the benevolence of Elohim should bring you to repentance?  5. But, because of the hardness of your un-repenting heart, you are treasuring up a store of wrath against the day of wrath, and against the revelation of the righteous judgment of Elohim:  6. Who will recompense to every man, according to his deeds.  7. To them who, by perseverance in good works, seek for glory and honor and immortality, to them he will give life eternal. 8. But to them who are obstinate and obey not the truth, but obey iniquity, to them he will return with wrath and fire. (2 Romans 2:1-8, AENT)

Paul taught only what Yeshua taught!  That when you judge others by your own standard of iniquity you condemn yourself.  But the oft ignored corollary is this: When you judge, you should judge only by the standard of truth, and that truth which Paul addressed is, and only is, Torah. 

In fact, in our community of God-fearing obedient, we are to hold each other to Torah, and correct someone who errs or strays from Torah!  Here is what the scripture says:

" 'Do not be unjust in judging — show neither partiality to the poor nor deference to the mighty, but with justice judge your neighbor." (Leviticus 19:15, CJB)

" 'Do not hate your brother in your heart, but rebuke your neighbor frankly, so that you won't carry sin because of him." (Leviticus 19:17, CJB)

Again, these verses do not tell us to judge others by our own standard. We are to use YHWH's standard!

YHWH expects His people to be holy and live righteously by Torah, and He provided for a leadership structure for righteous judgment (which the world today has long abandoned):

"Pick for yourselves from each of your tribes men who are wise, understanding and knowledgeable; and I will make them heads over you.' "You answered me, 'What you have said would be a good thing for us to do.'  So I took the heads of your tribes, men wise and knowledgeable, and made them heads over you - leaders in charge of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, and officers, tribe by tribe. At that time I commissioned your judges, 'Hear the cases that arise between your brothers; and judge fairly between a man and his brother, and the foreigner who is with him. You are not to show favoritism when judging, but give equal attention to the small and to the great. No matter how a person presents himself, don't be afraid of him; because the decision is God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring to me and I will hear it.'" (Deuterononmy 1:13-17, CJB)

It's no wonder that the Pope would say "Who am I to judge" when he does not understand the standard of judging! Lest you think the "standard" changed, consider Yeshua's own teaching on the subject:

"...if your brother with you is at fault, go rebuke him, between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have won your brother.  And if he does not listen to you, take with you one or two others, because of the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word is established. And if he will also not listen to them, tell the congregation.  And if he will also not listen to the congregation, let him be to you like a tax collector and like a heathen." (Matthew 18:15-17, AENT)

Instead of condoning sin, and hiding behind "who am I to judge", not wishing to "rock the boat", we are to attempt to correct our fallen brothers.  Yeshua said so.  (Read also Ezekiel 3:11-21 about how we are to tell our brothers to turn from their wickedness and if we don't tell them, we are held responsible!)  Correcting our fallen brothers is righteous judging, but it is righteous judging if we apply the proper standard - Torah.  And if we cannot bring our brother back into truth, we are to leave them to their own sin for they have denied YHWH and we've done all we can do.  That is what the Pope should have said for when a brother who sins is rebuked, we are not judging - the judgement is by Torah.

But today, Torah is ignored in favor of "changing the Church" to meet the desires of the people.  How sad that the Church does not teach that it is the people who need to change to bring themselves in-line with the will of YHWH.  

A little testimony:

I am Jewish through my mother, born and raised in Germany, near the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Mother always told us kids not to ever tell anyone we were Jewish “because they KILL Jews!” I had no clue what that meant until I had to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” in High school. It was difficult to acknowledge this as a true story because WHO would want to kill anyone because of their religion or ethnicity, etc.? But I soon discovered that human beings can be excruciatingly stupid, arrogant and vicious….

Thanks to a horrendously abusive background, in part, due to an adoptive father who happened to be a raving pedophile (while believing himself to be a “good Christian”), I shunned “religion” – and I definitely didn’t want to have anything to do with Christians! But our ELOHIM pursued me throughout my life, and through some really strange circumstances, at age 44, I ended up in a small town Missouri Baptist church where I “got saved” when the pastor explained who “Jesus” was.

I had never really read the Bible until then; but after that, my life changed drastically and I became obsessed with reading the whole thing, cover to cover, every word. (Yes, I had attended different churches (denominations) and even Jewish synagogues a few times during the course of my life, but they had always “left me cold” because they all “seemed incomplete” and “off the mark” somehow. I felt they were all “missing something” but I had no clue what, because I really didn’t know who or what GOD was. All I knew was, their ideas about God “didn’t feel right” to me.) 

Long story short, my life changed on that proverbial dime when YHWH caused me to end up in that little Baptist Church, where I began to learn about "Jesus" - who he was and what he did. But within months after ravenously devouring the Bible, I realized "something was definitely missing" in the church, and I began to question why, since we were "one in Christ," didn't WE keep the Seventh Day Sabbath and the Feasts. And why did the pastor constantly send me to the writings of Paul to answer my myriad questions? Why did he never refer me back to, for instance Leviticus or any of the other “GOD Himself said such and such” Books? Why always to the writings of an Apostle (whose teachings were very confusing to me at the time because they seemed to go against the things GOD said and what Jesus taught….).

Well, I soon came to understand that the pastor (and every other pastor I had ever met) was “misunderstanding” what Paul actually MEANT! Paul was a JEW who never, ever veered from Torah! (See Am I understanding the writings of Paul properly?, Explaining Romans 2 from a Hebraic perspective, Explaining Galatians ) This hit me after I read Romans 3:31 - “Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law....” BOOM! There it was. Why didn’t anybody get it?

And after doing some diligent study, I discovered that “the Law” actually referred to Torah – God’s Divine Instructions in Righteousness without which we would have NO blueprint for moral, holy living….HOW could that possibly have been “abolished at the cross?” Since Jesus was God’s Son (not to mention, he was a JEW ) WHY would he ever preach against Torah? Well, it soon dawned on me that he didn’t! He constantly UPHELD Torah and Tanach! Even when confronted by Satan, he did NOT quote himself; He quoted from the Tanakh (Luke 4:1-12)! 

Matthew 5: 17 Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. 18 Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah – not until everything that must happen has happened. 19 So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P'rushim, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven! (CJB)

Even as a “baby Christian” I recognized that "ALL" hasn't happened yet, and heaven and earth have not passed away, which meant that His Torah was obviously still valid. Torah wasn’t just for “the Jews” as my Baptist pastor kept insisting (after all, we are ONE in Messiah - Galatians 3:27-29). (I also began to wonder how that Jewish guy in our church could have stopped doing Torah once he “met Jesus”….Didn’t he “just know in his gut” that that whole Bible pertained to all of us, and that the last third of the Bible (which doesn’t contain any “thus saith the Lord” scriptures) in NO WAY negated the first two-thirds?)

Armed with that realization, I begged God to please show me exactly what He teaching me through my home studies… And within three years from the day I “got saved” He caused me to end up in a Messianic Torah study where I finally received ALL the answers to ALL my questions. FINALLY, everything came together to make some real sense! The bottom line was “YHWH/Y’shua/Torah” – they CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be separated!

And so I finally knew why God allowed me to endure the horrors of my childhood that caused me to end up shunning “religion” and “religiosity”… It was to keep me from becoming confused with the “world’s religions” so that I could eventually end up in that little Baptist church at “just the right time” where I learned about His Messiah… And then He immediately gave me the discernment to realize there was more to knowing Him than “just believing in Jesus.” He had some Rules to follow – Rules that the churches were calling “a curse”; while, on the other hand, the Jews were calling Jesus a myth and an idol....

It didn’t take me long to realize they were BOTH wrong! The Bible verifies this fact, over and over again, yet many people just don’t get it. They either ignore, or over- or under-analyze Scripture using their limited, human logic to try to understand the Spiritual Realm. How sad for them that they can’t “see the forest for the trees.”

Analysis of an anti-missionary's comments

FACEBOOK POST BY ANTI-MISSIONARY Wil'Liam Scott Hall: 

I knew a woman once, that was continuously abused by her husband and who constantly cheated on her... but because of her "love" for him, she would "never" leave him.

This is the case for so many Christians in their "relationship" with jesus, even though you show them, PROVEN in the Hebrew Scriptures that he is not the "christ", they will "never" leave jesus because of their "love" for him.  Only to continue believing although the proof says otherwise.

I know the good Christian will counter:  "because he first loved ME"...but that doesn't change the Truth.

MESSIANIC RESPONSE:

Let’s see how many errors we can find in Wil’Liam Scott Hall’s poorly-written comments: 

[1]  “I knew a woman once, that was continuously abused by her husband.”  First of all, the use of "that" to describe a woman is incorrect because people are not “that”; they are  “who.”  He should have written, “I knew a woman once WHO….” 

[2]  Furthermore, Wil’Liam Scott Hall’s comments go directly in the Face of  יהוה who said HE would send a prophet who was to do everything He ordered him to do.  No matter how many ways anti-missionaries attempt to debunk that fact or twist "Hebrew Scripture" to force it to comply with their will, that prophet was Y’shua!  (Prophecies, Talmudic evidence for Messiah at 30 BCE, Feasts fulfilled.) 

Deuteronomy 18: 15 "ADONAI will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves, from your own kinsmen. You are to pay attention to him, 16 just as when you were assembled at Horev and requested ADONAI your God, 'Don't let me hear the voice of ADONAI my God any more, or let me see this great fire ever again; if I do, I will die!' 17 On that occasion ADONAI said to me, 'They are right in what they are saying. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I order him. 

[3]   Unlike that poor woman’s abusive husband, Y’shua - YHWH's Son and  Divine Messiah (see Isaiah 53 and our article) has never abused anyone!   The only thing he was guilty of was being born into a sinful world run by people with limited human mindsets, who love to employ personal opinions that don’t necessarily line up with Scripture; a world where he was rejected and killed by evil, unruly and arrogant people who despised his message, which was simply this: 

Luke 4: 43 "But he (Yeshua/Jesus) said, "I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent."

Yeshua said He came to do HIS FATHER's will; not His own! 

John 6: 35. Y'shua said to them, I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will not hunger. And whoever believes in me will not ever thirst. 36. But I have said to you that you have seen me, and you do not believe. 37. All who my Father has given to me will come, and whoever comes not to me I will cast outside! 38. For I came down from heaven,[1] not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. 39. And this is His will, that of Him who sent me, that all that He has given to me I do not lose even one. 40. For this is the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in Him, will have life that is eternal. And I will raise him up on the last day. (AENT) 

FOOTNOTE:  As in the context of Miltha (the Word) or the "Manifestation" or the "Will of" YHWH coming down from heaven to do the Will of YHWH upon earth; his Spirit is of YHWH but his nephesh (soul) and body are human and temporal. This shows that Yeshua was NOT in charge; HIS FATHER WAS! (But yet the anti-missionaries, using flawed Christian logic to their advantage, keep attempting to twist him into something else....)

The Apostles verified what Y'shua did - and Paul reiterated that the teachings of Y'shua neither veered from Torah nor the Prophets: 

Luke 8: 1. And it happened after these things that Y'shua was going around in the cities and in the villages and was preaching and declaring the Kingdom of Elohim. 

Acts 28: 23 "From morning till evening the Apostle Paul explained and declared the Kingdom of God and tried to convince people about Yeshua from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets." 

Acts 24: 14. But this indeed I (Paul) acknowledge, that in that same doctrine of which they speak, I do serve the Elohim of my fathers, believing all the things written in Torah and in the prophets. 

[4]  The tone of Wil’Liam Scott Hall’s overall note is that the woman should leave her husband.  Well, perhaps that woman should have left her abusive husband, but as the Gospels reveal, our divine Messiah Y’shua was never abusive (except to those who desecrated the Temple), so there's no reason to "leave" or "divorce" him!  Not to mention, in Scripture we see that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16 “For I hate divorce,” said יהוה Elohim of Yisra’ĕl, “and the one who covers his garment with cruelty,” said יהוה of hosts.” Y'shua is YHWH's divine Messiah and to reject him is to reject the One who sent him (John 10:30), and those who do reject him are condemning their soul to an eternity without God (John 14:6, John 6:44).  So Wil'Liam Scott Hall wants to lead us into sin by ridiculing us into rejecting YHWH's gift of His Messiah!

By the way, Y’shua’s  teaching on divorce is equally strong:  Matthew 19:3. And the Pharisees drew near to him there, and were tempting him and saying, ”Is it Lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause?”  4. But he answered and said to them, Have you not read, that He who created from the beginning, He created them male and female?[ Genesis 1:27; 5:2]  5. And he said, Because of this, a man will leave his father and his mother and will be joined to his wife, and they will be both of them one flesh.[ Genesis 2:24]  6. Henceforth, they will not be two, rather one flesh.  Therefore, what Elohim has united, man should not separate.  Divorce was never part of God’s original design (Matthew 19:8). 

[5]  Just because Wil’Liam Scott Hall rejects Y’shua and spews poison about him, doesn’t mean that Scripture is wrong, that YHWH didn’t do what He said He would do, or that Y’shua didn’t fulfill what he came to do (and still intends to do in the future)!  No matter what Hall and his ilk espouse, Y'shua was/is our Messiah!  Why should we leave him, just because there are people with skewed viewpoints and hatred in their hearts for "Jesus"?  (People, who - by the way - accept the man-made Talmud and other rabbinic writings, but scoff at the idea of the New Testament....)  To view more of our anti-missionary responses, please check out our Countering the Jewish Anti-Missionaries page.

Texe Marrs is a raving anti-Semite

This morning I happened upon a major, raving anti-Semite:  Pastor Texe Marrs.  He has several websites, all containing some horrific allegations against the Jews, and on his Facebook page he writes:  “We are biased in favor of the Truth. We are intolerant of injustice, lies, false teachings, hatred, inhuman cruelty, abortion and other forms of sin and depravity. We view the world through biblical lenses and always seek the mind of Christ.”

I would posit that if this is true, then why is he preaching lies, personal opinions that veer far away from Scripture, and hatred of Israel and the Jews?  The entire Bible is about Israel and the Jews!  Jesus was a Jew…who had a real name:  Yeshua, which is Hebrew for “YAHWEH is Salvation!”  As a believer in “Christ” Marrs doesn’t seem to realize he is part of Israel – which, I guess, means  he hates himself?   All that man ever does is push his personal OPINION instead of Scripture, yet he passes himself off as a pastor and a prophet!

Well, I’m here to say he is a FALSE prophet and a hypocrite – please see more about him in this article on our website.   It’s really too bad he has so many duped.  If they would only read the Bible for themselves, they would see the myriad ways he is WAY off the mark!

Marrs has myriads defending his stance and insisting he's not anti-Semitic and "loves Jews."  If that's the case, his writings certainly don't show it.  Take a look at his description of this book of his (kicked off of Amazon.com) entitled, "Holy Serpent of the Jews."

Today, we are on the threshold of a horrifying new epoch of Jewish history. Now, comes the Holy Serpent, slithering from his fiery abode in hell to wreak havoc upon humanity. Jesus once declared, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers. How can ye escape the damnation of hell?”

Amazingly, the Jews have proven to be exactly what Jesus prophesied. They are the People of the Serpent, unregenerated hypocrites whose religion is unparalleled in its treachery, its wickedness, and its unbounded filth. The Kabbalah and the Talmud, authored by the rabbis, are the very code of hell, the doctrines of devils.

On the surface, the Jews appear to be pious, humanitarian, charitable, and good. The very picture of saintly human beings, they are said to be exalted and true, God’s Chosen. But appearances are deceiving. The evil spirits of those who once worshiped Moloch, who fashioned a golden calf in the desert, and who tortured and tormented Jesus Christ are back, and the whole world is in jeopardy.

"The world" doesn't care about God's Divine Rules!

This morning my husband took me out to breakfast at a local golf course restaurant, and – not surprisingly – their meats were all pork.  No chicken or turkey substitute.  So, we ordered veggie omelettes with hash browns and toast.  It was a good reminder once again how utterly uncaring “the world” is concerning YHWH’s Divine Instructions.  Never once did YHWH say pork was to be consumed by humans!  To be considered “clean” the animal has to chew its cud and have split hooves.  Pigs don’t chew their cud.

The death of Y’shua never changed that – not to mention, He didn’t die so you could eat “unclean” foods; He sacrificed/martyred Himself so that YHWH’s people would no longer be forced to sacrifice innocent animals to atone for their sins.  For more, please see our article discussing some scriptures on kosher foods.

A comment about the most recent terror attacks

If you’ve ever read your way through The Refiner’s Fire, you have seen how we constantly mention how the Books of Daniel and Revelation are unfolding before our eyes, and that the BEST thing we can do in these end times is to “get ourselves right with God.” And we’ve also reiterated again and again that the time will come when things get so bad, we won’t be able to clean up from one disaster before the next one hits. It is clear we are there NOW, because the terrorist attacks (wars and rumors of wars, Matthew 24:6, Mark 13:7) and natural disasters and the decadence of people (as the days of Noah were, Matthew 24:37, Luke 17:26) have been picking up speed for decades.

All week long (the week of November 16, 2015), the news media has been doing nothing but reporting the terrorist attacks on Paris, which have set the world’s collective teeth on edge, with ISIS promising more attacks - including some on Washington, DC. The only place you could get “other news” this week was by browsing the ‘net. It seems we’d best get used to it….

As we see in Daniel and Revelation and elsewhere in Scripture we are constantly involved in spiritual battle – and in the end, the ONLY thing that matters is where we are with YHWH/Y’shua/Torah. (We included Torah, because without it, we have no clue how WE can be holy/set apart – and yet, myriads are fiddling around with semantics and arguing about minutiae!)

Nobody is guaranteed to live through these times, and that is why we MUST start taking Scripture seriously. Y’shua knows who is His and who is not, and upon His return He will NOT even “know” you if you were an atheist, agnostic, or even a “lukewarm” believer (Matthew 7:21-23). You will be vomited from His mouth (Revelation 3:16). We ALL have the choice to BE His servant…or not. There is no gray area.

Our flaw in this ISIS debacle

The ISIS attack on Paris, I feel in my gut, is only the tip of the iceberg of the evil unleashed on the world.  I suspect many, if not most, have not thought much about this society of barbarians we call "ISIS", but we should.  They defy any definition of humanity.

These subhuman animals, are a radical religious sect, nothing more.  They don't care about their own mortality.  They are of "one mind" that they are participants in a greater "good" (though that "good" is only in their pea-sized minds).  I am convinced they are out to bring about the destruction of the  world - no matter how long it takes - as their individual lives do not matter to them.  They WANT the world to retaliate against them!  They want to die for their cause!  They WANT world chaos!  They want this because they see the goal as the return to 7th century "Sharia Law" and damned be to all who don't agree!  The sooner the world comes against them the sooner (in their view) their "new world order" can take over. If not now, in future generations of their progeny.

The problem is, at least until these latest attacks on Paris, the world has given pretty much a collective "meh" to their presence!  This despite their clear intent.  Where is the outrage?  Why haven't  nations to come together to defeat these charlatans and restore world order? ("Resolutions" in Congress, or at the UN mean nothing.)  The required response is missing.  We've collectively "let our guard down".  Even the Muslim world has been silent!  It may not be clear to you, but those of the Muslim world who embrace capitalism and democracy are just as despised by ISIS as the rest of the world and ISIS will kill them as brutally and viciously as they have killed non-muslims.   I say again: Where is the world outrage?

You see, the ideology of ISIS, as misguided as it is, is absolute.  Their interpretation of the Koran is absolute, and they will not bend to rational thought.  What they have set out to do, they will continue, and many more bad things are to come.  MANY.  We of the rest of the world, by our lack of resolve, by our lack of faith in the one true God of Israel, are now doing nothing but cowering in the corner with our fingers in our ears so as not to have to deal with our impending doom.  Why do I say it is a lack of faith?  Because the faithful in YHWH should be massing against ISIS right now!  YHWH had His people wage war against such evil.  Now it is our turn and we are instead turning a blind eye. 

We, in the USA are especially guilty.  We have become in the last half century a nation of godless.  We permitted the removal of God from our schools beginning in 1962, and we demand the mythical "constitutional separation of church and state".  We could have been a great, God-fearing nation, a nation the last great war sought to preserve.  Instead, we tossed it all away in favor of "tolerance" and "equality" and consequently pacifism and socialism is taking over.  (Vote for a democrat and you'll see more!)  Without God, we are nothing but a floundering ship about to be scuttled.  Scuttling, in case you don't know is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull.  The USA is sinking.  We have no will to fight the evil that is ISIS.  We have been scuttled. 

ISIS has one thing over us.  They are of one mind.  We are of no mind. Our flaw is who we've become.

Responding to an anti-missionary who tried to correct us on our "erroneous" belief about Y'shua

ANTI-MISSIONARY COMMENT: G-d didn't make Adam G-d. You made j G-d. Only G-D made all things as it says in Genesis 1:1.The nt changes that by saying j made all things (colossians 1:16). How blasphemous. G-D doesn't make Himself.The nt says G-D made j (acts 2:36) so j is not G-D. G-D is One and not human (Numbers 23:19).

RESPONSE: If you truly think we believe that "G-d made himself" then you CLEARLY have no concept about Yeshua! If that is what you believe, then it's no wonder you left "Jesus!". (BTW, you guys keep calling him “Jesus” – that was never his name, so by posting it ad nauseum on this page, you need to begin realizing you’re talking to those who know his REAL name..please USE it!)! Here’s the scoop about Y’shua:

Yeshua, our Final SIN Offering (He martyred Himself, and there is no prohibition against that!) came to reveal YHWH to the world - not to abolish His Torah, without which we would have NO blueprint for moral, holy living! (See John 17:1-3)

(NOTE: Our use of the term "martyr" is intentional because anti-missionaries love to point out that "G-d never required human sacrifice!" Well, Y'shua wasn't a "human sacrifice" because nobody "sacrificed" Him. He was a Divine Sacrifice who willingly went to the cross/stake. As a human being, He had the choice to obey YHWH or not. As we see time and time again, He CHOSE to obey. He KNEW who He was....)

Proverbs 30: 4 Who has cupped the wind in the palms of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely you know!

Many anti-missionaries attempt to use the above in a sarcastic way, insisting that the above scripture has no relevant meaning. However, coupled with many other references including Isaiah 53 and the foreshadowing of Yeshua in the YHWH's commanded mo'edim, it is hard to negate the fact that YHWH does have a "Son" …Y’shua was a human being with a divine qnoma:

Qnoma is a very important term that has been greatly diluted and misunderstood over the centuries. Through an exceedingly complex linguistic chain of events this word, meaning "an occurrence of a nature" got morphed and perverted into "person" in Greek. As a result, the One Elohim (YHWH) is represented in a pagan manner in the Greek New Testament as a "person" distinct and equal with "Elohim the Son" and "Elohim the Ruach haKodesh." Instead, it is the oneness of YHWH that manifests in Mashiyach, not that Mashiyach’s divinity is separate from his Father’s. However, in this case we are talking about humanity and not YHWH, and both of them have "natures" that cannot be seen, and yet are a root part of their being.

Or, to put it another way, a "nature" is like a body hidden behind a curtain. For those in the audience, nothing of that nature can be seen. Then, all of a sudden, a hand and part of an arm appears through the veil. While we know there is a body attached to that limb, the limb is all we see. Furthermore, that arm moves with full force, will and agreement of the mind that controls the body. For the viewers, the arm appearing out of the curtain is the qnoma (occurrence) and the hidden mind behind that limb’s movement is its kyanna (nature).

As the centuries moved along, the ancient meaning of qnoma as "occurrence of a nature" devolved by Aramaic assemblies who compromised with the Byzantine Empire. Gradually, "core substance" became the common definition; at first it closely paralleled its Greek counterpart, hypostasis. More time passed and Greek redactors changed the meaning of hypostasi, taking it further from the original definition of qnoma. Qnoma/hypostasis became equivalent to "person" to line up with Greek passages that used this meaning in the form of the word prospon.

In Greek, "person" implies a physical presence as opposed to Aramaic where body metaphors like "I will set my face towards" are very common. The revision began at the beginning of the Third Century when these same "westernized" Aramaic Christians began to proffer up readings in their "Peshitt-o" versions of Acts 20:28 and Hebrews 2:9 that were meant to align with the Byzantine majority Greek. However, the original eastern "Peshitt-a" escaped these revisions as it was in the rival Persian Empire. Aramaic, as in this verse, retains the original meaning of qnoma. It is NOT the external "person" that teaches someone about Elohim, but the Ruach working through their "inner being." The idea of "person" in Greek, unfortunately, does not address the neshama (spirit) of a person as the likeness or "image of Elohim."

Having explained the above, we invite you read the following links which further explain why we believe Yeshua is our Final Sin Sacrifice, and the Messiah for whom the Jews have been waiting: Yeshua, in a Nutshell and Qualifications of Messiah, in a nutshell.

And by the way, GOD is just a title! There is no reason, whatsoever to put a hyphen in the word!  YHWH gave His Name to Moses, and there is absolutely NO reason to not use it.