Following God’s Word
We are writing this guide to explain to our friends and family why we are firmly rooted in the Hebrew Heritage of our Christian faith just as Jesus our Messiah was (who’s name in Hebrew is Yeshua). We are following His commandments, and commanded feasts of Yehovah (Yahweh, YHWH, יהוה ) God, instead of celebrating him according to the traditions of the world.
We are to live as Yeshua (Jesus) walked: 1 John 2:3 so we began a journey to learn how he walked.
We discovered some exciting truths about God’s word and his calendar as well as his appointed holidays and want to participate in them too, since Yeshua did as well as all the disciples and apostles both before and after his death and resurrection.
We learned he did not walk in Roman rooted tradition, yet rebutted added traditions of Judaism, and walked only in the way the father laid out in the scriptures. The scriptures we are told in the letter to Timothy are good for teaching, study and reproof, which at that time was the Torah (first 5 books of bible also known as the laws of Moses), the books of the prophets and the writings (such as Psalm, Proverbs) which are all the books that make up the old testament.
Romans 12:2- “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you prove what is that good and well-pleasing and perfect desire of Elohim”
We saw a lot of “non Christian” behavior from our church leadership and it really bothered us. After we left our church, we felt a conviction in our hearts to search after God’s truth and to be like Yeshua, the Messiah and all he did. So we began to test traditional teaching against the scripture to see what was true. We needed to be Bereans and test every teaching against scripture.
What we discovered was very disturbing and yet exciting in regards to everything we have ever been “taught”. We realized that we were just taking someone’s word for it and not looking at the scripture for ourselves, nor understanding the context around scripture that we had been ‘cherry picking” our whole lives.
We realized that our understanding of scripture was really “traditions of men”. These traditions were whatever doctrine was taught at the seminary our pastor went to, and so he in turn (not knowing any better) taught those traditions to his church as truth, and so on through the years. The two main American seminaries, Moody and Dallas Seminary, teach a fairly new theology called “dispensationalism“. A doctrine made up by 19th century theologians as a way to back into an untested vision of a teenage girl who claims to have seen a “rapture”.
We realized that when we study old testament scripture, and most of new testament scriptures, we need to look at it through the eyes of the Hebrew writers, writing to other Hebrews in Hebrew culture. That was their mindset. However, most mainstream Christian churches today look at the scriptures with a Greek mindset and modern culture. We often miss entire points, or more often, badly misinterpret the Word.
Romans 15:4 says this: “ Whatever was written in former times was written for our learning, so that with the encouragement of the Scriptures we might patiently hold onto our hope.”
That said we are in no way saying that new testament scripture has no value, it certainly does. We are merely pointing out that all the teachings and scripture references of Jesus and the apostles are of the old testament and deserve a deeper look. More than half of the new testament is a hyperlink back to the old testament scriptures.
With that being true, we could not have a correct understanding of the gospel and letters in the new testament without a full understanding of the old.
However, do not take our word for it. Please study the scriptures for yourself. See it with your own eyes, and pray that our Father (God) reveals himself to you. He promises that if we seek him, we will find him. Ask him, and you will receive. [Matt 7:7 and Luke 11:9]
Our Search Begins
I just could not sit through another regurgitated sermon, desperately trying to eek out some kind of lesson. Bored of the latest “it” bible study that was no more than another tome of opinions from a popular author, I knew there just had to be more. There is….a LOT more.
So we both prayed to God, crying out for him to reveal his truths to us. To show himself to us. Scripture tells us to ask and we will receive, and boy did we receive!
In the spring/early summer of 2018 we began to search the scriptures for ourselves. We saw God named HIS feasts, as rehearsals for Messiah’s first and second coming, his pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and ways to be his special set apart people. Words and phrases like “grafted in” and “a statute forever throughout all your generations wherever you live” took on a new meaning.
His words saying “do not worship me the way the pagans do” and “do not inquire how they worship their Gods” really hit us hard as we realized we were taking Roman rooted pagan celebrations and trying to “Christianize” them. The exact thing God told us not to do.
If we are truly wanting to obey God, shouldn’t we abandon the ways of the world, and follow in how Jesus walked? That would mean changing a lot of things that we held dear. However, knowing the blessing that would come will far outweigh any worldly, temporary, and manufactured feel-good party moment.
We began by keeping the 7th day Sabbath, and obeying the food recommendations. That fall, we celebrated our first Day of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, then Sukkot, and in the spring our first Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits and then Shavuot (Pentecost).
Yes it was a little awkward at first, we had no idea how to celebrate. That is the beauty of it. God gives very simple instructions, and the rest is left up to us to celebrate how our family likes to. Things like elaborate Passover Seders are not scriptural, rather traditions of Rabbinical Judaism. We do not follow Rabbinical tradition, only what is in scripture and then whatever fits us as a family.
For example, in God’s instructions for Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) which is in the fall and when Jesus was born, we are instructed to feast for a week! We can eat whatever we want, within God’s food instructions, of course. You wouldn’t eat horse, or dog, cats, shrimp or pigs, to name a few. God does not consider those food, so when He speaks of food, He means we can eat those things He instructed is food.
We have great joy in celebrating God’s feast days (they are not Jewish feasts, although many Jews still celebrate them). Leaving the Roman rooted holidays, knowing we are loving and honoring God in His way has been incredibly liberating and stress free. So we’ve begun new family traditions of celebration rooted in God’s ways.
However, it has come at a cost. We are fortunate to have a loving and believing family and many believing friends. Yet their belief ends at mainstream Romanish Christianity, which works for them. It’s not a salvation issue, we just wanted more. We wanted to draw closer.
Because of this, We’ve been accused of legalism (this one is so funny to us) and some concerned we were under the influence of a possible [cult] leader (less funny). We didn’t even have a pastor, or a congregation at the time. All our leading came from the Holy Spirit.
But God warns that in these times people will call good evil and evil good. People are so indoctrinated with lies that when they are faced with the truth, they are deceived into believing it is evil. I don’t blame them, as I too was once in their position. I could not fathom that all the teachings over the years had been so misguided.
As we studied and looked for ourselves, God revealed himself and the true beautiful picture of His word came into our clear understanding. And the liberation was incredible! The truth really will set you free!
We thought our loved ones would be as excited as we were about discovering the clear truth in the scripture. We thought they too, would want to learn about God’s ways as outlined in the bible. There is, as of this writing, no interest. Not even to learn what we are talking about.
That seems strange to me. If I thought someone I loved was being misled by a false leader, I would study it as much as possible so I could show them proof of the wrong teaching. Yet, to our knowledge, none of our loved ones have sought the scriptures to see if what we are saying is true.
That said, it is not a salvation issue and we believe that we can plant a seed and someday they will seek His face in full truth. It is our dream to have our whole family celebrating the feasts of יהוה together.
At first, it felt lonely not having a fellowship and day by day it became harder to stomach the lukewarm teaching at churches. About 4 or 5 months into our search for the truth in the word of our father, we discovered a film called The Way (the trailer is above).
It showed many people, just like us, coming to truth and their lonely struggle. That one film was very helpful to us emotionally. We realized we were not alone, and that the remnant restoration had begun many years before us and growing steadily. I hope it helps you too.
We have also found many other believers like us all over the world. A true remnant awakening. Several resources are on our home page. We have since found a fellowship we could connect with and are extremely happy and blessed to have found it.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 7 that the path is narrow, and few enter into the narrow gate. Boy He was not kidding. Once we became truly set apart, we realized just how narrow that path can be. But we would not change it for anything.
So now that God has opened our eyes, it comes down to this:
We will not follow Roman rooted traditions of men. We will not follow Rabbinical rooted traditions of men. We will not follow our own hearts or the way of the world. As for me and my house, we will serve YHVH the way HE says to serve him.
We pray that everyone will be given “eyes to see and ears to hear”, being part of the remnant awakening and fully turn to YHVH ( יהוה ) and his ways, coming out of the ways of the world.
We hope the information in this website will bless you as it does us and that you will join us in celebrating God the way he lays out in scripture, the way Jesus (Yeshua) did and the original believers in the first century.
