"Craig, you can't present all the facts to the average person; it would destroy their faith!"
I have heard this statement from so many ministers, theologians, and even scholars that I have literally lost count. I know that something is drastically wrong with our religious system. I know it, and I know that many of you know it as well because in almost all of my conversations this topic continually emerges in one way or another. If I could use one word to summarize observations made about the American religious system, it would be that it is SICK.
Upon much contemplation I have come to believe that the initial step in solving the problem is to consider the cause of it. For over the past fifteen years I have pursued a course of independent study in which I examined my religious doctrines, not only the ones I believe but also those I proclaimed from the pulpit. Almost as soon as I embarked on this journey, I discovered that I had been the victim of a cover-up that made Watergate look like child's play.
Having the benefit of training in Greek and Hebrew studies of the Bible, I learned facts that challenged the very foundation of my belief system. During the years I pastored at a large non-denominational church in Dallas, I had occasion to often inform other teachers and pastors of my discoveries. In almost every case they either told me I was wrong and I should immediately stop my research, or even more shocking to me, said they were already aware of the information and simply chose not to make it public. Many told me, "Craig, you can't present all the facts to the average Christian; it would destroy their faith!" I disagree!
I continued to question my beliefs since what I had learned in Seminary, as well as my own further studies, revealed facts that I could no longer overlook or avoid. I became aware of some universal facts that could withstand examination by individuals within my faith and, more importantly, individuals outside my faith. It soon became clear to me that some of my doctrines had to be set-aside when confronted with new facts that proved them in error, or else I would have to continue to accept as sacred "old-truths" which were now revealed to be outright falsehoods.
Here comes the hard part. For those of you who are pastors, teachers, evangelists, deacons, and elders, if you decide to embark on this journey for truth, you may find yourself in a major crisis. Some of you may be asked to resign, while others may be openly slandered. If you are an ordained minister, you may lose your papers, pay check and or retirement. However, the decision you will make is very simple: "Are you going to be honest with those who trust in you, or are you going to be an active participant in one of the greatest cover-ups in history?" To all others I ask:
"Are you going to be honest with yourself and your God?"
I came to the decision that I had to present the facts to you even if it meant causing you to question your faith! Just take a look at some evidence.
Answer for yourself: Did you know that the Bible gets the unique credit from being the motivating force behinds the actions of some of the most significant people in history-from Yeshua to Hitler, Mother Teresa to Jim Jones, Hillel to Falwell?
There have been days that I have wondered if I were the only person confounded by the reality of this fact.
Answer for yourself: How can so many contradicting doctrines and philosophies in the over 1500 denominations in Christianity today all be based on the one common source?
One of the earliest conflicts I faced along the journey was concerned with the doctrine of salvation. Being from a major denominational background, I assumed that the doctrine of "once saved, always saved" was without question. I was taught that this doctrine was based on scriptures such as John 6:37,
"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that commeth to me I will in no wise cast him out."
Everything was "OK" until I read Romans 11:21-22,
"For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity; but toward thee, his goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off."
I quickly had a real problem on my hands. On the one hand, my religious training, which was based on the Bible, taught me I could never be cut off, but the Bible was also telling me that I could. A question now confronted me that I had never considered before, "Could I lose my salvation?"
Seeking an answer to this questions led me directly to my next conflict which was the question of salvation: Grace or Works. The way I understood my denominational teachings was that after being saved it really didn't matter how I lived or what I did because I was still going to heaven when I died. This was a very convenient doctrine because it allowed me to do anything I wanted to do while I was on earth, good or bad, and still get my mansion in heaven. My understanding was that this doctrine was based on Romans 10:9-10, "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
Such confession was accomplished by responding to the invitation at the close of the service and that once I had been down the aisle my place in heaven was assured. This is how I understood grace. This belief was reinforced through many sermons based on verses such as Romans 11:6, "And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace; otherwise work is no more work." When this verse is coupled with Romans 10:9-10, there seems to be an air-tight doctrine proclaiming that actions have nothing to do with eternal life.
Thank goodness I read the Bible for myself and not just my Sunday School Quarterly because I read Revelation 20:11-13, "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." As you may guess, I had another major crisis on my hands.
My church doctrine was telling me that I was saved by grace and works were not important; but, I kept studying my Bible, and it says that I was saved by grace but will be judged by my works! To the best of my reasoning ability, I concluded that anyone following my denomination's doctrine could live a lifetime believing they were saved, while possibly ending up in the lake of fire on Judgment Day.
Torn by this dilemma, I continued my studies and came to understand by returning to the original languages and culture of the people of the Bible, that salvation must be understood in relationship to righteousness, which consists of both grace and works.
In coming to terms with understanding Biblical salvation, I needed only to consult my Bible.
Answer for yourself: But, why was my Bible the real Bible when others carried different Bibles from mine? My American Jewish friend's Bible is what we call the Old Testament, while to my Catholic friends the Bible consist of the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocrypha. My Bible contains more than the Jewish Bible and less than the Catholic Bible. To make matters worse, I soon discovered that none of these Bibles was "the Bible" but only a translation.
I learned that all translations supposedly came from the "original scriptures." The answer was simple, all I needed to do was obtain a copy of the original scriptures to see which Bible was the right one. I was then told, "We do not have any original scriptures, although we do have some ancient copies of them." Hoping that a quick glance at them would solve this problem only led me to another major problem. One of the most ancient copies of original scriptures included "The First and Second Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians," while another included "The Shepherd of Hermas" and "The Epistle of Barnabas," none of which is included in the Jewish, Catholic or my Bible. Why?
Other questions flooded my mind.
Answer for yourself: Why doesn't the Jewish Bible include the New Testament and or the Apocrypha?
Answer for yourself: Why doesn't my Bible contain the Apocrypha?
Answer for yourself: Why doesn't the Catholic Bible contain the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas or the Shepherd of Hermas?
These questions led to a more basic question:
Answer for yourself: Who made the decision as to which books should be included in the Bible and which should be excluded?
At first I didn't really understand the magnitude of this question; but, as time passed, I began to face the reality that certain men (Gentiles belonging to the Church of Rome-Roman - Catholics) decided which writings were to be considered sacred and which were to be considered non-sacred..and to make matters worse these men were shown to be blatant anti-semites and Jesus was a Jew. More problems.
What this means is that someone who was anti-Semitic shaped the content of what many call "The Word of God."...does that sound right to you?
Having opened a can of worms with the above questions, I quickly decided to use multiple translations in my Bible study. Problems surfaced again. In reading John 5 in the New International Version, I discovered that the verses were numbered, 1,2,3,5, 6, etc.
Answer for yourself: Did you notice that verse 4 was missing?
Answer for yourself: Do you have several different versions around the house?
If you do, stop and check it out (by the way this isn't the only instance). When I was investigating why verse 4 was missing, I soon made another major discovery. There are literally thousands of manuscripts and fragments of New Testament writings. When you line them up and compare their words, they are not always the same. Sometimes there are additional words, changes in word order, different endings and prefixes on the Greek words, and entire verses added or omitted. Many times verses from the Jewish Scriptures are not merely "mistranslated" but purposefully altered to bring completely new meanings to the Christian's Bibles that were not in the earliest Jewish texts from which the Christian's Bible was supposed to come. I could continue with many other examples of textual variations (see two other websites where we tackle these problems: http://returningtofaithofyeshua.freeservers.com &http://paulproblem.faithweb.com) but I want to point out the most alarming discovery of my pilgrimage. Even after being able to determine which words were most likely to be the original words I still was unable to understand their original meaning because I applied my American meanings to ancient Jewish words. It is an indisputable fact that the meaning of words is determined by their author's culture and system of thought. Therefore, in order for me to understand the meaning of words of the Old or New Testament, I had to identify and learn the culture of the writers. This is not as hard as it sounds, for all the writers of the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament, were Jews. The answer was simple, one only has to understand the Hebrew culture and system of thought before he can understand correctly the author's message as presented in any book of the Bible. This simple fact seems to be almost unknown to the average person and most Christian Bible translators, for many Bible translators apply American meaning to Hebrew words without considering the differences between the two systems of thought. The fact of the matter is that they were not translating the Bible, but rather completely reinterpreting it to reflect evangelical theology.
The earliest Christian church had no Gentile members. Therefore, the members of that church had no need to study Hebrew culture and thought since they were Hebrews. Before the death of the Apostle John, however, new cultures and systems of thought invaded the church as Greek-speaking Gentiles became its leaders and interpreters. They were very familiar with the Greek manuscripts or both the Old and New Testaments but not familiar with the Hebrew culture or system of thought from which the Scriptures originated. It was inevitable that conflicts concerning the interpretation of Scriptures would arise in the church between its Gentile and Jewish members. In order to solve these conflicts, the elders used their Gentile cultures and systems of thought to give new meanings to the Jewish Scriptures.
This process that originated by the Gentile leaders of the early church had three significant consequences. First, the original message of each author became unknown to the church; second, Christian Gentiles came to regard the Jews as their enemies; and third, the original purpose of the church as established by Yeshua was lost. These consequences were based on a single, fundamental difference between Hebrew and Gentile (Greek) thought--namely, that certain words (such as love, righteousness, forgiveness, etc.) to the Hebrew mind signified concrete actions, but to the Greek mind these same words signified abstractions. In other words, statements such as , "A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you," were understood in different ways by the Gentile Christians. The Christian Gentiles believed they had fulfilled this commandment simply through abstract or emotional feelings, whereas Christian Jews believed that this commandment was fulfilled only when they put their feelings into actions.
Let me give you a good example how these two Christian groups (Jew and Gentile) would have reacted to the same situation. Suppose a member of the church did not have enough food to feed his family. The Christian Gentile could go to that person, knowing the situation, pray for them, have a good feeling about the situation, and leave. The Christian Gentile would believe that he had fulfilled the new commandment. If the Christian Jew encountered the same family, he would obtain food for them and know that he had fulfilled the commandment. Only in this way could he say that he loved them.
Having spent much time thinking about the differences between the Jewish and Gentile cultures and systems of thought, it didn't take long to realize that the Gentile mindset was responsible for the illness of the church. I suppose that this illness can be reflected in no greater capacity as in the perversion of the tithe as preached in Gentile Christian churches today, as God's tithe goes toward building bigger and fancier buildings instead of building up people by meeting their needs. This is a horrible sin which can be blamed upon ignorance of the Jewish Scriptures and greed.
The conclusion that Yeshua will ultimately judge mankind on the basis of their actions was reinforced by my study of Matthew 25, which describes the final judgment. This same sentiment seems to be reflected in the following quotation from Mother Teresa in summing up Yeshua's position on the matter: "At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you clothed me, I was homeless and you took me in.' Hungry not only for bread, but for love. Naked not only for clothing, but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks, but homeless because of rejection. This is Christ in distressing disguise."
Looking back, my entire journey was, in reality, an attempt to answer one question: "As a person who believes in God, what am I supposed to do with my life?" I had been taught the only place to look for such an answer was the Bible. However, in retrospect, I learned that my perception of the Bible proved to the origin of many of my problems because my "teachers" taught conflicting doctrines, each of which was supposedly based on the Bible. My dilemmas, which are undoubtedly shared my many, sprang from the teaching that every word of the Bible is to be taken literally. In reality, however, what was called a literal meaning turned out to be my preacher's theology.
Most leaders in the religious world are very much aware of the various problems with their doctrines. They are usually aware of those "other scriptures" that disagree with their published teachings. But the average man or woman on the street is never presented with this information. You are not allowed to see all of the information so that you can make your own intelligent decisions.
It is my goal as Pastor and teacher of Bet Emet Ministries to provide you with that factual information, not just conclusions which represent one side of the issue. From the biblical point of view to withhold information is a form of fraud or theft. To steal a man's mind is the greatest form of theft.
As stated earlier, I firmly believe that you can handle factual information and you can make solid decisions once you are presented with all the facts. I am committed to a course that consists of gathering factual information from all sources and getting that information into your hands, even if it disproves what I have thought to be truth previously.
Two of the greatest errors that have been allowed to prevail and dominate our religious world are: "We will never be able to agree" and " Everyone must interpret the Bible for himself." We would never apply this principle in our businesses, marriages, etc. and expect to achieve any degree of success.
We must make the facts public and expose the "cover-up." We must jointly and openly test all doctrines and tell the results to all people. Let's not be afraid to ask questions and seek facts about the Bible. Let us begin with these questions: