“The Kiss of Judas” is probably the most notorious act of betrayal in human history.  And have you ever thought about the whole scene?  While outwardly giving Yeshua (Jesus), his Master, a kiss, an outward sign of affection, he was, in reality, doing an act of betrayal.  It was a sign he had arranged with the soldiers who were there with him to indicate which one of the people there in the garden that they should arrest.  But the question that I would like to address here is the following: “Has the American mainstream Church given Yeshua (Jesus) the same kiss of betrayal?”  

Cherry-Picking Scriptures

Although most mainstream Christian churches claim to know and understand the Scriptures, they really do not.  They teach what part(s) of the Bible happen to agree with their own denomination or the pastor’s or priest’s personal philosophy, but they do not teach the whole Bible.  It is no wonder people believe that you can use the Bible to support whatever you want it to say, since they have been watching Christian leaders do this for years.  It used to be that pastors would stand behind the pulpit and declare that they believed and taught the “whole counsel of God,” “everything from the front cover to the maps at the back,” but now we have pastors who deny at least 60% or more of the Bible, claiming that it is not for Christians today.   These leaders are going to be judged severely on the day of judgment.

Gone the Way of Lot

Christian ministers in wanting to minister to the world, a world that is increasingly becoming like “Sodom and Gomorrah,” have become like Lot, who at first lived near “the world” of Sodom, and then he and his family moved into the city, and eventually he became one of the leaders (or judges) sitting at the gate of the city.  Christianity has followed his example.  In wanting to minister to the people, they have moved increasingly closer to “the world,” until now they have become a part of it and made themselves leaders within “the gate of the city,” and by doing so, they have stopped being “a light” to the world, but they have opened their doors to all its abominations and darkness.  They have brought into the church porn, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, transgenderism, and pedophilia, and other abominations – all in the name of “love, tolerance, diversity, and acceptance.”  The disciples in the book of Acts did not bring the sinners into their meeting places, but instead, they went out into the streets and public places, preached out there in the public areas, led people to accept Yeshua out there, and even baptized them out there, and then brought these new believers to their meetings where they could be further taught and trained.  But unlike the disciples, many of these same churches have quit preaching the need for repentance, claiming that it is “a work,” and that they are not to add anything to the cross, and therefore, by their teaching, they pervert the gospel, and Yeshua himself.

Christian Idolatry and Deceptions

These mainstream churches have created “another god” and “another Jesus,” who will accept them in all of their sinful, abominable ways and lifestyles.  These churches are busy “loving and accepting people” all the way to Hell.  Merely mentally accepting (“believing”) that Jesus died on the cross for one’s sins is not enough to “save you” from Hell.  The fact is that Yeshua’s death on the cross was for many purposes – not just for the forgiveness of sins.  This is only one portion of the reasons.  God does not want “saved sinners,” but He wants people who have been changed and transformed by His Spirit, who now walk in obedience to Him and His commandments – not who continue to live in disobedience, because of the deceptive lies that “Jesus’ death forgives all of our sins; past, present, and future,” and that “God now looks at Jesus and He doesn’t even pay attention to us or our sins.”  These are deceptive lies that is based on mistranslations and misunderstandings of Scriptures, such as 2 Corinthians 5:21.   Since Christianity, as a whole, rejects the Bible as a whole – they only believe portions of it – and as a result, they have opened the doors to misinterpretation, innuendoes, misunderstandings, errors, and outright deceptions.  As long as they teach a divided Bible and only focus on what they call the “New Testament,” they will not be a place where “the truth” can be found.  Some may think that this is being harsh, but before things can improve, we must be willing to admit that there is a problem. 

The Delusion of Religion

There are many people in Christianity who do not treat God as “King,” but they only view Him as some aspect of their religion.  Religion reduces God and His Kingdom to a merely set of beliefs that we can either accept or reject.  Religion ultimately is about us remaining in control over our own lives, and us using God for our own purposes.  For example, they treat God like some “Genie in a Bottle,” for when they want something, such as “a better mate or children,” “a better boss,” or “a bigger home,” “a nicer car,” “a nice vacation,” or even “do something for them, like “a promotion,” “another spouse,” or “give them someone else’s spouse,” etc., they merely “rub the lamp” in prayer, and they believe that God will “grant them their wishes.”  On the other hand, you have those in the church who treat God as “a Las Vegas Slot Machine,” who believe if they keep giving money into some ministry, then one day when they really need a miracle from God, all they have to do is “pull the lever” in prayer, and they will “hit the jackpot,” and they will receive all that they want.

They Reject the Scriptures

These views and ideas of God are perversions of who God is, or what He is like.  Christianity has lost its way, and it is no longer teaching us “the whole counsel of God.”  Today, there are many mainstream churches who reject 60% of the Bible, because they claim that the “Old Testament” is not for today, and in fact, they reject even more than that since they believe that Jesus’ life and ministry was part of the “Old Testament,” and even it is not for them today.  I would argue that it is even higher than that since they do not accept all of Paul’s teachings either, but only those verses and passages of Paul that seemingly aligns with their own personal theories and theology.  For example, you will never hear any of these pastors of these churches teach 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1,

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?  Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?  Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?  For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,
        “I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God and they shall be My people. (quoting Exodus 25:8);
        “Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord, “and do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you.” (quoting Isaiah 52:11)
        “And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty.
        Therefore, having these promises, beloved, LET US CLEANSE OURSELVES from all defilement of FLESH AND SPIRIT, PERFECTING HOLINESS in the fear of God. (I Corinthians 6:14-7:1, NASB; emphasis added)

When have you ever heard any of these “free grace” pastors teach that God expects us to do something to “cleanse ourselves from all defilements of both flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God”?  None of those “free grace” churches will touch this passage, and yet it is one taught by Paul.  Another passage that they will not teach is in the book of Romans.  In this section, Paul teaches that there are two levels of things that we are to do to attain eternal life.  For example,

  1.  Present ourselves slaves in obedience to God – resulting in righteousness (Romans 6:16-17);
  2.  Present ourselves slaves to righteousness (- resulting in sanctification (Romans 6:18-21).

And then Paul writes that the outcome of “sanctification” is ETERNAL LIFE (Romans 6:22).  If Sanctification is the outcome of this process of first righteousness by being “slaves in obedience to God and His commandments,” and secondly by being “slaves to righteousness” which leads to “sanctification,” and the outcome of “sanctification” is, in fact, “eternal life,” then how can we possibly receive at the beginning of the process “eternal life” when it is something that we receive at the culmination of this process?   Most pastors will actually quote Romans 6:23, which is the summary of the process: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” But you know what they will not do – teach this process.  If this is not clear deception, I do not know what is. 

You cannot stand there in church and sing hymns, songs, and psalms on Sunday, and think that 90 minutes of praise and listening to a sermon is going to erase a whole week’s worth of disobedience and sin.  God does not work that way.  He expects obedience to Him 24/7, not just when it is convenient to you.  Salvation is not just going up front to the altar and saying, “the sinner’s prayer.”  Many people have been deceived into believing that once they do this, then God will give them their “free ticket” into heaven, and regardless of how they live, they will be allowed to go to heaven.  More people have gone to hell believing this deception, then many other deceptions that are out there.

Salvation – An Exodus?

Salvation is actually an Exodus, a journey, in which we are to leave our “Egypts of sin,” by our faith (trust) in God and the blood the Lamb, and then we need to pass through the waters (Baptism/immersion), before we are finally out of “Egypt” and are free.  We then must continue to travel to Sinai where God can reveal Himself and His commandments to us, and then the rest of our life is a journey through the wilderness where we are repeatedly tested to see if God’s commandments are truly in our hearts.  We do not enter into the Promised Land of our salvation, until we get ready to cross over into God’s Kingdom at death, or until Yeshua returns at his second coming.  The Exodus is a much better paradigm to use to understand salvation than anything I have ever heard any pastor, Bible teacher, or evangelist teach.  Thus, we are only saved, as long as we are still on the journey, the Exodus.  The moment we “return to Egypt,” and go back and live our sinful, abominable lifestyles, we are no longer in obedience, and we have lost our salvation.  Salvation is not a thing that we can own, it is a relationship with a person, the biblical Holy God of Isra’el and His Chosen Messiah, the Jewish Yeshua – not the made up “God” and “Jesus” of Christianity who do not pay attention to your sins or expect repentance – but accept you just as you are.

Daniel and Us – A Comparison

Inner transformation comes as you begin to obey God’s Word, His commandments, and as you do, God’s Spirit will empower you to walk in obedience to Him.  Do not believe the Christian lie that you cannot obey God’s commandments “perfectly,” because God has never commanded that we obey them “perfectly.”  He only asks that we, as loving and faithful children, obey His commandments – at least those we can do now while there is no Temple, no active priesthood, or sacrifices being offered, just as Daniel and the others did while they were in Exile in Babylon.  Daniel and his friends did not have a Temple, a priesthood, or sacrifices available, but they kept what commandments they could, such as the commandments to have no other Gods before Him, against idolatry, the various food laws, studying and obeying the Scriptures, etc., and God blessed them there in Babylon and even saved Daniel from being killed by the Lions, and his three friends from being burned alive.  If God did that for them, even if they could not observe all of the commandments “perfectly,” but keeping what they could, then God will do the same for the rest of us, since God does not change (Malachi 3:6). 

Crimes of Christianity Against God

Obviously, then, this whole idea that we need to observe the commandments “perfectly” is a deceptive lie that Christianity has bought into and teaches, because it is the only way they know to explain the death of Yeshua.  They do not know how to explain it any other way.  But Christianity has become guilty themselves of the following:

  1.  They have affronted and betrayed the throne of God by ignoring God’s laws and policies, and they have replaced them with teachings of their own making, “the beliefs of their denomination,” being able to eat unclean food, and things like Christmas, Easter, and/or Lent, etc., and then they not only willfully dismiss and ignore His commandments, but they even go so far as to label them as “legalism,” “bondage,” and “works righteousness.”
  2. They have affronted and betrayed God by chopping up His words, instructions, and laws like a buffet meal, and they tell people to decide for themselves what is for them and what is not.
  3. They have betrayed Him by turning people away from the truth of Scripture by setting up a “false God” and a “false Christ” who accept their sinful lifestyles and abominations; in fact, their “false God” sounds more like the ancient Canaanite god, Baal, whose main doctrine was “freedom from God’s Laws,” and who allowed all sorts of sexual perversions there at his altars and high places, but they preach a “false gospel,” “the gospel of love, tolerance, diversity, and acceptance,” and all they have done is to open the doors of the church to porn, fornication, adultery, homosexuality,  transgenderism, and the sexualization of children, and the millions of aborted babies so far, all of which are abominations in God’s sight.
  4. Finally, they have betrayed Him by profaning His name, His character, nature, and reputation among the non-believing world.  Rather than sanctifying His name, they have made Him the laughingstock and butt of jokes among agnostics and atheists.

These are the four crimes that God has against both Christianity and many Jews.  Some even treat Him with disregard and disrespect by calling Him “Home-Boy,” “Bud,” “Hey Dude,” “the Guy in the Sky,” or as “Daddy-O.”  So as you can see, neither side is living life the way that pleases God.  Although most of the Jewish people have rejected His Chosen Messiah, His Son, Yeshua, God says, “at least they obey My commandments,” which is something that most mainstream Christians are not doing.

Another Gospel of Christianity

In addition to all of this, even those who consider themselves “traditional” and are not part of the whole “Woke Movement,” are not teaching the same “gospel” that Yeshua taught.  They have taken I Corinthians 15:1-4 and used that to define “the gospel,” and they have completely ignored the rest of the Bible.  If you take any biblical text out of its original contexts, then you make it a “pre-text,” and you open the door to misinterpretations, misunderstanding, deceptions, and errors.  This is what Christianity has done with the whole “New Testament.”  They have removed it from its original contexts – the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, Second-Temple Judaism, and the history of Isra’el – and they have placed them within a completely foreign context – the religion of Christianity – and not only have they done this, but then they have refocus, repackaged, and even re-identified them as being “Christian.”  And by doing so, they have removed its original Jewish contexts and framework that God intended for us to know to properly interpret and understand these Scriptures.  

Other Misinterpretations and Man-Made Traditions of Christianity

Thus, what we find taught within Christianity is not “Kingdom,” as Yeshua and his disciples taught and lived – but religion.  Religion is the greatest enemy to God and His Kingdom because religion looks for even the smallest crack or crevice within our lives to sneak in and substitute for Kingdom.   Religion, in essence, is any time we substitute man’s ways for God’s words.  It comes in our interpretations, our translations, our added understandings to the commandments of God, like Chavah (Eve) did in the Garden of Eden, or to anything we add to the Scriptures, like our added religious traditions that we teach and hold on to that are not taught within the Scriptures.  For example, the belief that the Bible is divided into two parts, called “Old Testament” and “New Testament,” and that each part teaches a distinctive different revelation from God.  This is all man-made doctrine that is not biblical at all.  There is no verse or passage in the Bible that teaches that the “Old Testament” is the first 39 books of the Bible, nor is there one verse or passage that teaches that the “New Testament” is the last 27 books of the Bible.  This is all Christian tradition, a man-made doctrine that is not biblical at all.

Christianity teaches other man-made traditions as well:

  1.  Lucifer is the name of Satan.  The name “Lucifer” is actually not even in the Scriptures.  It is a Latin word, and the actual Hebrew word is haylel, and it is an ancient Hebrew word for the planet Venus.  So what is a Latin word doing in a Hebrew text?  It came in when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Latin, and this tradition grew that Satan’s name was “Lucifer,” and it has remained ever since.
  2. That there is a “church age” that ends with an event called “the rapture.”  The word “church” is an English translation of the Greek word Ecclesia, which means “the gathering of those summoned,” and it existed for 620 years before the conception and birth of Yeshua.  In ancient Greece, it was an assembly of citizens in one of the city-states of Greece.  Today, we would refer to it as a “town meeting.”  Therefore, it was used and seen as a political term.  Caesar had his own Ecclesia, which was “the Roman Senate,” and there were ecclesias in each town.  This term, Ecclesia, was used, along with sunagoge (G4864), as synonyms for Isra’el throughout the Greek translation of the Scriptures.  The reason Paul chose to use it instead of sunagoge (synagogue) was because sunagoge had religious connotations, and Ecclesia had political meanings and connotations.  Obviously, then, this whole idea that the ecclesia (church) was something separate than Isra’el came into existence after the Christianity came into existence during the early part of the second century, C.E., and after it separated itself from Judaism.  Again, a man-made tradition.  Thus, there is no such thing as a “church age.”
            The same is true when it comes to the belief in this “secret catching away” called “the rapture.”  This was a doctrine that did not begin with Yeshua or any of his disciples, but it began more than eighteen centuries after their time with the teachings of John Darby in 1830, and this teaching, along with concept of “Dispensationalism,’ another man-made Christian doctrine, was included in the notes of C.I. Scoffield’s Study Bible, and there it quickly spread throughout Christianity.  In truth, there is no Rapture, no secret catching away, but we have to look forward to the same thing as all of the disciples, including Paul, the Second Coming.  
  3. Another deception and error of the church is that “God’s laws were nailed to the cross.”  This is based on misinterpretation of Colossians 2, 
              Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us,
              and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross    . (Colossians 2:14)
    In the Roman era, when Romans crucified someone, they would nail their crime above their heads so that those who looked on could see what they had done and what resulted as a result.  This was to keep people from doing the same thing.  What Paul is teaching here is that the crimes that we have committed against God has been removed from our crosses, and they have been nailed to Yeshua’s.  God’s law was not nailed to the cross, as I have heard Christians teach, but what happened was that our violations against God’s law was nailed to his cross.  His commandments remained intact and apply to all people for all time.
  4. The final deception and error of Christianity that I want to point out is their teaching that God’s Law, the whole Temple system and sacrifices, ended when the Temple veil split.  This is again based on Christian misinterpretation of events.  There is not one verse of passage in the New Testament that says that God’s law ended with the tearing of the Temple veil.  There is also no verse or passage anywhere in the Bible when any commandment of God is ended by the tearing of any cloth.  Instead, there are numerous passages throughout the Scriptures where the tearing of cloth is an act of mourning because someone dies, going all the way back to Genesis when Jacob learns about Joseph’s alleged death.  When the Temple veil split, God was doing what any loving Jewish father would have done who had witnessed the heinous death of his own son, He tore the cloth over His heart – the Temple veil – from top to bottom.

Therefore, as we can see by all of these misinterpretations, errors, and deceptions being taught within the mainstream Christian churches, and them not insisting on people living a holy life before God without any ned for change or transformation from how they lived before, they have given Yeshua “the kiss of Judas,” the “kiss of betrayal.”  But not only have they created “another god” and another Jesus,” who will accept their sinful and abominable lifestyles, but they have also substituted their “gospel” of his death, burial, and resurrection for Yeshua’s gospel, which was the “good news of the kingdom of God,” which if you trace it back into the Hebrew Scriptures is “the good news of the Restoration of Isra’el,” and his death, burial, and resurrection was not only to deal with the yetzer ra (sin nature), but it was also to open the way for the Restoration of Isra’el to happen.  This is why Sha’ul Paulus (Paul), a second-generation Beyt Hillel Pharisee, was sent out to the nations, because this is where the descendants of the Northern Kingdom, as well as the Jews, the descendants of the Southern Kingdom, as well as any non-Israelites who wanted to attach themselves to Isra’el, God’s Bride, were located.  It was not to begin a new religion, called Christianity, but it was to begin the process of Isra’el’s Restoration.

Conclusion

As long as Christians continue to divide the Scriptures, and only focus on those Scriptures that fit their personal and denominational views, and they continue to dismiss the commandments of God handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai, believing the deception and lie that these commandments were given only to the Jews and not to all people for all time, then they will continue to have the problems that they are having, and they will not be ready for Messiah’s return for his beloved bride, Isra’el. 

 

 

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