בַּלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה , Yeshua said this at His last Pesakh Seder, the night He was betrayed. He said, from the Aramaic to Hebrew, “You all will deny me “BaLailah HaZeh“… “THIS NIGHT”. Traditionally, we have our children sing a song called “Ma Nishtanah?” And the gist of the song is that Pesakh is different from every other night, so in the song the children beg the question, “Why is “HaLailah HaZeh“/”This Night” different from all other nights?” Yeshua had walked with these men for three and a half years. He’d taught them. He’d tolerated their doubts, their personalities, their misgivings, their arguments and jealousies, and more. He’d shown them miracle after miracle. He’d rescued them. He’d healed their mothers-in-law, He’d paid their taxes, fed them miracle bread, and on and on… and for three of them, He’d been transfigured before them, and they had seen Moshe and Eli-Yahu talking with him on Har Tabor, two of their long-dead and greatest Prophets. And now, on THAT NIGHT, they would all deny Him. And He told Kefa that “BaLailah HaZeh,” you will deny me THREE TIMES”. And one of them would BETRAY Him. Yeshua said nothing by accident, and the way He said it hearkens to a future song of Israel at the Passover…. Remember, this is a JEWISH MEAL, and ALL those in attendance are Jewish. He wanted that EVERY ONE of them should be faithful. Thank Heaven the Eleven RETURNED to Him! I am already anticipating “HaLailah HaZeh” this year….

Lies. They are everywhere. But, there is ONE BIG lie that is coming on all the world, FAST, and it is a doozie. The mindset for that lie has been managed for years, however, by the ‘power’ behind it. First, let me show you the most obvious warning of that lie, and then the ‘power’ that is behind it:

“For this reason Elohim shall send them strong delusion that they should believe THE LIE, that all who did not believe in HaEmet [The Truth/Torah], but preferred unrighteousness, might be condemned.” [2 Thess 2:11-12]

To rephrase, GOD, the Almighty CREATOR of the Universe, will force people who reject THE TRUTH/TORAH and the Gospel of it, who prefer ‘unrighteousness’, to believe THE lie, and so condemn THEMSELVES.

That is huge. No matter what one thinks TODAY, if they are alive at that time, the Creator Himself will force people NOT to ‘see’ truth, and condemn themselves to an eternity apart from the Presence of G-d and His Salvation.

So, what is that LIE?

“And then the man of sin will be revealed as Ben Ha’Abadon [Son of Destruction], who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called “god,” or that is worshiped; so that even in the Heikhal [sanctuary] of Elohim, he sits as Elohim, and shows himself as though he were Elohim.  ….. And now you know what has prevented him from being revealed in his time……    Then shall the Wicked One be revealed, that one whom Adoneinu Yeshua shall consume with the breath of His mouth, and shall destroy with the revelation of His coming, even he whose coming is due to the working of HaSatan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceitfulness of unrighteousness in those who perish, because they received not the love of HaEmet, that they might be saved thereby…”

This is the LIE. This human being, who is full of the power of the chief adversary of G-d, will call himself GOD, and will defile the Jewish Temple that will be built again, soon, in Israel, just as Yeshua said it would be. And, because people have not developed a love for TRUTH, they, most people, will believe that BIG lie: that a man is very God.

So, what is the power behind it: it is described in the middle of that passage:

“For the mystery of iniquity is already at work, until that which now hinders is taken out of the midst of them.”

The words quoted thus far are all from the second letter of Sha’ul to the believing Congregation at Tesalonika. Yokhanan also tells us what this ‘power’ is.

“My children, it is the last time; and as you have heard that a false Mashi’akh shall come, even now there are many false Mashi’akhim [anointed ones], and from this we know that it is the last time.” Yokhanan continues just a bit later: “Who is a liar but he who denies that Yeshua is the Mashi’akh? He is a false Mashi’akh, and whoever denies HaAv [The Father], denies HaBen [The Son] also.  ²³Whoever denies HaBen, the same does not believe in HaAv; but whoever acknowledges HaBen acknowledges HaAv also.^“ [1 Jo 2]

So, the ‘power’ behind the big and approaching lie is the notion that Yeshua is NOT the Mashi’akh, the One ANOINTED to SAVE mankind from SIN. And what is sin? Yokhanan also tells us this, very plainly. “He who sins breaks the Torah, for sin IS the breaking of Torah!” [1 Jo 3:4]

Yeshua declared very plainly Himself that He came to save mankind from SIN. NOT from earthly governments, or from poverty, or from ill health, but from SIN. THIS is the TRUTH of the Kingdom that He PLAINLY declared. But, because people are distracted by their more base needs, they ‘miss’ it. Or, they’re distracted by their self-righteousness, thinking they know better than God what right and wrong are.

This ‘idea’ of a man-god is saturating the minds of humanity right now. All the comic book movies portray the idea in one form or another. But, worse, certain people who call themselves believers in “Jesus” have the notion that He is G-d, NOT that He is the SON of G-d, but that the ‘father and the son and the holy spirit’ are all rolled up into one ‘coequal’ being. Yeshua Himself clearly told us that HIS FATHER, “Ha’Av” was still on His throne, and that He, Yeshua, ‘proceeded forth and came out of God’ [Jo 8:42], and that He SENT HIM. Yeshua also clearly articulated that there was knowledge reserved ONLY by His Father. Sha’ul points out that at the end Yeshua will hand all ‘authority’ BACK OVER to His Father. This does NOT mean that Yeshua is not the perfect representation of God on earth: HE IS. STILL. But, it does mean that if one stuffs the FATHER into the Body of Yeshua exclusively, one does not ‘have’ the Father.

This was the beginning of the “mystery of iniquity”; when perversion of truth entered into the believing world, and fear caused most people to capitulate to it. Why? Because it took the threat of execution, official, government sanctioned MURDER of those who would not accept this new lie. Before people go off all half-cocked, MANY people who ‘think’ they believe in a ‘trinity’ actually do NOT: they believe the TRUTH. MANY people know deep down that Yeshua is still a MAN, resurrected, and Standing at the RIGHT HAND of the Creator. The official ‘trinity’ doctrine denies this: denying The Father, or The Son, and thereby BOTH. It is interesting to me that just this past week our congress prayed to “Brahma”, the Hindu creator TRINITY, and it was closed with the ridiculous notion that somehow “Amein”, the Hebrew prayer that means, “May it be firmly established”, is politically incorrect, so a new word was invented to accommodate the liars: “awoman”. This came on the heals of the house neutering the English language in congress, a further OFFICIAL attempt to pervert truth, destroy the sexes and all that makes us distinct, and deny the truth of the Creator having created MAN and WOMAN, creating woman FOR man. This shows how preposterous people will become to perpetuate and promote lies. Half our country thinks that congressman was justified for doing that; a big part of the remainder is indifferent to the fact that he did it; and the BIGGEST part of our country do not know that he prayed to a trinity.

Throughout history, man has chosen to believe lies en masse. It is bewildering. Most of western christianity chose to believe that the ‘pope’ was God’s vicar on earth, a co-ruler, and infallible. That the peasant class was destined to be poor, and SAVED because of their poverty, and because of their service to the ruling and religious classes. They believed that so much, that it was called the ‘dark ages’. Mankind as a whole, for the most part, chose to believe that the world was flat, in spite of looking up into the heavens and seeing all other bodies as orbs. Mankind chose to believe that bloodletting was a good source to heal even a flu, when the scriptures clearly tell us that “the LIFE is in the blood”. People of today have believed that the climate would be our demise: first, we were going to freeze to death by 2000; then, we were going to burn up by 2016; now, the general ‘climate’ is going to starve us because of farting cows, so we also need to eat grass [see the ‘world economic forum’s preposterous suggestions for survival]. Then, most of the world believed that a new cold virus magically appeared because one chinaman ate a bat. They could not see that the Wuhan lab, with the CCP, BHO and WHO, along with the likes of Fauci and Gates, manufactured a souped-up cold virus for the purpose of controlling mankind. And our politicians jumped at the chance to starve us into submission. STILL, even in TEXAS, people sheepishly put on masks, that WILL NOT save a person from this jacked-up cold. FEAR has gripped society over a cold that only kills less that 1% of those who catch it. But worse, mankind chose to believe ONE man, Darwin, when he posited that we ‘evolved’ from the simplest of life forms: MOST of mankind has DECIDED that God did NOT create the earth in SIX DAYS, as HE said He did. That He COULD not. And that God did NOT specially create mankind, differently than He created everything else; but that WE CREATED OURSELVES. Nothing is more preposterous and absurd than what most of the ‘scientific’ community suggests about our origin.

Except, perhaps, the lies that most in America are believing right now. Choose your lie: that the election was pristine, and Biden was fairly elected by an overwhelming majority: or, that there is a ‘great awakening’, and people are suddenly going to learn the truth and be righteous because of what is about to be revealed.

“Let God be true, and EVERY MAN a LIAR.” [Rom 3:4] Don’t get me wrong: I truly HOPE that America wakes up to the fact that MOST of our politicians in Congress, and most of our latest presidents, are LIARS, and SELF INDULGENT, self-serving deceivers. I am one that knows that Trump is also a fallible man, but I also see that he has been selfless in his service to this country: he paid for his own campaign; he has donated his whole presidential salary to NEEDS; he has returned the peoples’ money to the people in the form of tax cuts; he has protected America from the robbery of the Chinese and European governments who have bilked the American people for years. And yes, I do still hope and would happily approve of his remaining in office. Because if not, then we have fallen to a hidden oligarchy that is running our country behind the scenes, buying off Republican AND Democratic politicians, clearly evidenced in this last election cycle, and for years and years now. But, so many people have refused to see it.

This is what lets me know that the BIG LIE is going to be upon us, sooner than later. People are so apt to believe whatever the majority believes. Because being in the majority is comfortable. So, when everyone is screaming and crying in joy over the Son of Destruction’s ‘beauty’ and apparent ‘compassion’, they will fall down at his feet and worship him, thinking he is “Jesus”, and “Mohammed”, and “Confucius” and “Buddha” and Brahma” and “Mashi’akh”, because he exalts himself above all ‘gods’ and declares himself to be the creator. He will be so ‘believable’; AND, God HIMSELF will force them to believe him. Why? Because MAN chooses to be unrighteous, to REJECT the guidance of the Torah in defining what sin is.

Yeshua could not have been any more plain: “Whoever therefore tries to loosen [weaken, do away with] even one of these smallest mitzvot [Torah directives], and teaches men so, he shall be regarded as small in [The Kingdom of Heaven] Malkhut HaShamayim; but anyone who observes and teaches them [Torah directives], he shall be regarded as great in Malkhut HaShamayim.” It is amazing the scriptural gymnastics people go through to ‘unteach’ the truth to people, and to stave off anyone teaching the goodness of all of Scripture to the followers of Yeshua. Do they really love the truth? Or, do they prefer unrighteousness [ 2 Thess 2:12]

I cannot even count how many times I have been falsely accused, condemned to hell, accused of being Satan, ad naseum.

And this is usually by people of ‘faith’.

But, in regard to religious condemantion and false accusation, it is usually done by people who have no idea what I actually believe, and DENY it when I tell them, show them, and give the EVIDENCE of what I actually believe.  

These people are the ones who hang on to the christmas ham, and that is usually the only thing keeping them from walking in a manner more like Yeshua walked. 

“Hereby we know that we are in Him:  ⁶he who says “I am in Him” ought himself also to walk His halakha.”  The term ‘His Halakha’ is actually in the greek as well: ‘the way HE walked’ and all the various translations of it. This is telling us that Yeshua is OUR RABBI, our ONLY Rabbi, and that those who SAY they follow Him should follow the way HE teaches THE TORAH. “Halakha” is the concept of following what ‘your Rav’ teaches. MY “Rav” or “Rabbi”, is Yeshua ALONE, thank you.

The ‘christmas ham’ about which I speak is this: the two things that keep many believers from seeing the BEAUTY of the Torah are: christmas and food. 

It just so happens that a favorite christmas meal is the ‘christmas ham’ hearkening back to the Yule of nordic cultures that sacrificed a pig on the winter solstice.  True, most people today do not know that is its origin. But, they don’t care to ‘ask.’  I asked.

People simply do not want to give up their favorite food, bacon, and their favorite holiday.  They know that if they begin to observe the SABBATH on the SEVENTH day of the week, that it casts a shadow over the rest of their belief and practices.

So many people today ‘think’ that Yeshua did not practice a ‘religion’, but He most certainly did: HIS!!!  HE gave the Torah, His genetic blueprint, to the Jewish people, and came to earth as a Jew!  Lived as a Jew, DIED as KING OF THE JEWS, and will come back AS A JEW, being our High Priest.  He will judge the world ACCORDING TO the TORAH.  He will RULE THE EARTH accourding to the TORAH.

Folks who disparage me fail ever to prove that GOD changed the Sabbath. They have to use socratic logic to justify THEIR observance of ‘sun-day’ as their ‘sabbath’, and cannot find ONE verse that actually supports that.  

They THINK that the “NT” overturned the kosher laws, but cannot find ONE JEW in the NT who ever ate pork. They misquote 2 Tim, that says ALL ‘food’ is consecrated, not realizing that the biblical GREEK word for ‘food’ means KOSHER FOOD, and that it is consecrated, ‘set apart’ as food BY THE WORD OF GOD, in Levitius 11 and Deut 14; they also misquote Acts 10 and 11, where Peter explains that his ‘vision’ was NOT about food, but about MEN, while affirming that NEVER IN HIS LIFE, INCLUDING the twenty-some-odd years of BELIEF in Yeshua AFTER His resurrection, had he eaten unclean meat.  And he NEVER DID after that!  They IGNORE Paul’s testimony before JEWISH and ROMAN kings and rulers that he had NEVER violated the Torah!  That he STILL LIVED as a Jew, and that he TAUGHT THE TORAH in Ephesus for two years, every day, and did so all around the known world, wherever God sent him. 

They ‘think’ that God sanctified the unclean meat of pig, which is known to be bad for you, and that He sanctified the birthday of Mithras and the feast of Saturnalia. They impose the birth of Messiah over a pagan date, and celebrate it and DEFEND it as truth, EVEN THOUGH THEY KNOW HE WAS NOT BORN ON 12/25, BUT ON 07/15 of the biblical year, IN THE FALL, proven by simple reading of the NT account of his annunciation and birth.

These two things are idols that believers simply cannot give up. It is spiritual harlotry, mixing the worship of יהוה  with the worship of Ba’al, as did Israel.  Yet they condemn any Jew who believes in Yeshua and worships Him on the day GOD said to worship HIM, and who simply eats the meat that GOD said is FOOD. What in the wide world is so wrong with that.

In my experience, they ‘think’ that by doing these two simple things, that ‘we’ are trying to save ourselves by works, when we say OVER and OVER that we are saved by trust. Here is the declaration of our faith, which is PUBLIC:

“Salvation is from the Jews. Yeshua is Jewish. He is Salvation, and His Name, Yeshua, means “Salvation”.

Yeshua saves us by rescuing us from our sins. Adam brought ‘Khatah” [breaking Torah, sin] into the world, when he disobeyed the instructions of our Creator. The ‘neshama’, the spiritual ‘life’ of Adam, the essence that connected Him to life in the Creator, died when he sinned, and as a result, his body died nearly 1,000 years later.

Yeshua declared salvation, saying that He came to save us from sin, and to give us ‘life’. He restores to us a living neshama by His Ru’akh, and then also gives us of His Ru’akh as a garment. This is ‘eternal life,’ which will one day also resurrect our own bodies. Those who trust in Yeshua continually and demonstrate that trust through humble obedience to His Word will rise from the dead, because they live in Him.

Yeshua saves us from ourselves, our propensity to break His Torah. Sin is the breaking of Torah. Remaining in sin, or continually breaking Torah without contrition, brings perpetual death. These are the lost.

SALVATION IS BY TRUST ALONE. NOTHING in scripture can be more plain. True salvation that imparts ‘tzedaka’, however, will produce OBEDIENCE to His Mitzvot. This is probably the MOST critical tenet of trust in Yeshua the Messiah. Many believers who do not follow the Torah ‘fully’ DO follow it, even though they do not realize it. [Rom 2:14] We believe that ALL believers, Jew AND Gentile, are being ‘purified’ in these last days, by being called back to the foundation of trust, Yeshua, our Rabbi, and His Torah, walking it out the way He did. Trusting in the blood He shed on the tree saves us. Obeying His Mitzvot consecrates us, and communicates His message of REPENTANCE more clearly in this DARK world.“

It never ceases to amaze me how willing people are to perpetuate the lies of the past in order to maintain a little bit of ‘usual.’

²⁴And My servant David shall be king over them, and they all shall have one shepherd; they shall also walk in My ordinances, and observe My statutes, and do them. ²⁵And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Ya’akov My servant, wherein your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, they, and their children, and their children’s children, forever; and David My servant shall be their prince forever.

The passage above is from Yekhezkel/Ezekiel 37. The context of that chapter is clearly AFTER the resurrection. This is about the Messianic Kingdom on earth, when Yeshua has returned as the Root of Ishai, Ben David, the King of Kings. He is going to rule the land of Yisra’el, and all the earth, according to The Torah. NOT a watered-down, ‘christian’/new law of ‘christ,’ but The Torah of G-d, the Father, the Almighty Creator, which has in it ordinances and statutes. The one speaking here is The Almighty, as seen in verse 21:  ‘Thus says Adonai  יהוה , ‘…..

It would defy simple logic for the Creator to say that He is going to temporarily suspend His Torah for 2,000 years, and then that His Messiah will lead and govern the world by it for 1,000 years…. Please, dear brothers, understand that His Word begins in Genesis, and ALL of it, especially the Brit Khadashah/Renewed Covenant Scriptures [NT], is founded on the first five books: The Torah. It is the heart of G-d expressed on paper, and perfectly expressed and taught in and by Yeshua. Ignoring it now is not wise. ^“He that turns away his ear from hearing the Torah, even his tefilah is an abomination.” [Mishlim/Proverbs 28:9]. And Yeshua Himself said, “Whoever therefore tries to loosen even one of these smallest mitzvot [commandments of the Torah], and teaches men so, he shall be regarded as small in Malkhut HaShamayim/The Kingdom of Heaven; but anyone who observes and teaches them, he shall be regarded as great in Malkhut HaShamayim.”

The word in the picture contains three Hebrew letters, reading right to left:

Khet

Tet

Alef

Hebrew letters are symbols, pictographs of a sort. Each symbol has a meaning that is relative to both the sound of the letter and its symbolic purpose.

The ‘khet’ is a gutteral burst, and its symbol is “life”, relative also to the number eight, as it is in the eighth position of the alef-bet. 

The “tet” is a serpent; it is in the ninth position, right after the khet in the alef-bet.

An alef is a picture of an ox, and invokes the idea of power.

So, the word above has in it this hidden-in-plain-sight meaning: life/serpent/power  > or, serpent within the power of life, life in the power of the serpent… etc…

This word is actually pronounced exactly the same as the name of the first letter: “khet”.  That word, the ‘name’ of the letter, actually means ‘break’, and is spelled חת , where the ‘t’ sound comes from a different letter than the serpent, the ‘tav’, whose symbol means ‘sign’/’signature’. This word ‘khet’ actually means ‘break’; so, we have the hope that we can ‘break the power of the serpent.’

The word in the picture, however, ‘khet’ is defined as “SIN”.

Sin is “breaking Torah”. [1 John 3:4]  The SERPENT’s FIRST WORDS to man were: “”Has Elohim [G-d the Creator] INDEED SAID ?”….. Deviating from what G-d SAID, like “Remember the Seventh Day and KEEP IT HOLY”, is SIN.  That NEVER CHANGES.

After the serpent cast doubt on WHAT G-d said, he then took something G-d REALLY DID SAY, and he TWISTED it.  And THAT is still his chief tactic in deceiving the world.

Whatever our SIN is, it is us handing the power of LIFE over to the serpent.  If left in that state, the serpent will take us with him into the eternal darkness, and the knowledge of our insolence and guilt, FOREVER, outside of the Presence of our Merciful creator, and our Savior, Yeshua, who REALLY DID SAY that SIN will destroy you.

I despise HaSatan, that slant serpent, the adversary, the enemy of G-d, the perverter of His Word, the progenitor of ALL LIES.  I have been praying for Nitzakhon [to overcome] for me and mine, that we have the POWER OF LIFE in Elohim! Wherein lives SHALOM, SIMKHA, and REAL ‘prosperity’.

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; there shall step forth a star out of Ya’akov, and a scepter shall rise out of Yisra’el….”

Most students of scripture know that Yehudah [Judah] is the tribe to whom a ‘scepter’ was promised, to be the ruling tribe.  Yeshua is not only a bonafide member of that tribe, but twice the son of Melekh David: a direct biological descendant through Miryam, and a direct legal descendant through Yosef, his adoptive, earthly father. He IS a Jew. And He is the KING of the Jews.

But, we also have the scientific nature of this prophecy, that, in all likelihood, gave those Babylonian Jews who are called “M’gushim”, ‘wise men’, the knowledge to follow a star TO Yerushalayim, and FROM there to Beit Lekhem, to find the Messiah born unto Yisra’el.

Today, in just a few days, Jupiter and Saturn will align, and will appear as one star. Many think this is the “Star of Bethlehem,” the one that those ‘wise men’ followed to find Messiah. I was concerned it may be, and that would throw the timing of the Yovel [Jubilee] off by a great deal, as the previous Jupiter/Saturn conjuction of the time of Messiah would have been in 7 BC.  That is a problem. 

I have long believed that 3 BC was the year of Messiah’s BIRTH. That He was born on Sukkot, in the FALL.  That He was CONCEIVED at Khanukah, in the winter. If He was born on Sukkot in the FALL, in 3 BC, the STAR that guided the M’gushim to Him would have been ‘some time’ after that. We do NOT have a timeline. The ONLY people who we can emphatically say saw him on the NIGHT of His birth are the SHEPHERDS. “For THIS DAY is born to you in the city of David, a Moshi’ah, who is  יהוה  HaMashi’akh.  And this is a sign for you: you will find the babe wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a sukka.” [The Aramaic Peshitta BK uses an ancient word, אוֹריָא , that has been used as ‘sukka’ in other ancient texts] Luka 2:12. So, they indeed saw the Savior THAT NIGHT.  In the FALL. But, the account of the M’gushim is in Matai, and does NOT give us such a precise time of their seeing the Savior child.  Matthew does not tell us the details of his birth, except these only: He was born in Beit Lekhem to a virgin [1:23, 2:1] in the ‘days’ of Herod. So, Herod had to be alive.  There are many scholars who think Herod died in 4 BC.  I do not. Many scholars also do not think the 4BC date is accurate, but maintain the 1 BC date of his death. The 4BC group think so because Josephus said he died after an eclipse and a blood moon at Pesakh, and there are stellar events in 4BC that match. But, there was a very distinct eclipse just before Pesakh in 1BC, and a moon event at Pesakh. Before that, there was a CONJUCTION of Jupiter and Venus in 2 BC, on June 17. This would have been NINE MONTHS after Yeshua was born, and the likely date of the visitation by the M’gushim. By all appearances in scripture, Yosef and Miryam stayed in Beit Lekhem for some time after Yeshua was born. Yosef was in a house, not a sukka [temporary holiday booth] when he was told by the Messenger to flee to Mitzrayim from Beit Lekhem. Time had passed. Shortly after the M’gushim would have showed up, and Herod would have began killing infants from 2 years old and younger, Herod died in the spring of 1 BC. 

So, I do not think 5 BC, or 7 BC, the other two dates of ‘stars’ that did appear in the night skies, are accurate dates. This year’s ‘star’ is a repeat of the earlier, 7 BC event. I still believe Yeshua was BORN in the fall of 3 BC.  There WAS a ‘star’ that would have appeared ‘in the east’ in 2 BC [nine months after his birth], and Herod would have died in the spring of 1 BC, nine months after the M’gushim would have betrayed him, when he started his killing spree.

Yeshua was CONCEIVED in the winter, at Khanukah, and brought LIGHT into darkness at this time of year, by the union of the divine and the human in Miryam’s womb.

It takes eight [to nine] nights for the blastocyst (unit of cells formed after conception) to form and embed itself in the wall of the uterus to receive blood from the mother. If a conjuction happens at this time of year, it better commemorates His conception, as his visitors who followed the star were NOT there on the night of His birth anyway.

His 3BC birth means that Yeshua would have stood in the Beit K’nesset in 27AD and declared the Yovel, and then preached for three years. Forty years after His declaration, which is in our weekly reading cycle this week, the Roman army surrounded Yerushalayim in 67 AD and began judgment on the city and the nation, disrupting and ENDING Temple service with great desecrations, just as Yeshua predicted. And forty is the number of judgment. My gut, now, is that the miracles of the Temple ended after 27 AD when Yeshua made His declaration, and this is the benchmark of Josephus’ telling us that they did not happen in the last 40 years of its service.

If that is the case, then FORTY YOVELS from then will be complete in 2027AD.  Something big should happen between now and then. Perhaps Yeshua’s bride will be hidden some time before that happens.

Whatever the case, we live in very interesting times, and the Sign of the Son of Man may be seen in the heavens very, very soon… now is NO TIME to dismiss the Creator and His Son.

The “dreidel” is a toy that is used at Khanukah. It was a game created to commemorate the rebellion of the Maccabees and the faithful Jews of the 2nd century BC who continued to worship יהוה , in spite of the fact that the Greeks made it illegal to call on His Name, to worship Him, to keep the Sabbath, to circumcise their children, or even just to speak Hebrew. They forced “hellenization”, which was ‘hell’ to those Jews. Our Jewish people, the faithful, despised the Greek culture and language, as attested to by the first Century, Jewish historian, Josephus. The idea that Greek was the ‘lingua franca’ of Israel in the time of Messiah is a lie, and a continuation of the anti-Semitic spirit of Antiochus Epiphanes, and the spirit of anti Messiah.

The dreidel is, again, a toy. The study of Torah was illegal in “Khasmonian Days”, but gambling was not. The Jews would get together to study, legend has it, and when the Greeks would knock, they’d change over to pretend to be gambling, in order to appear compliant. The Ashkenazi Jews, who settled in Germany in the dark ages, commemorated this legend in the form of the top that is called a “Dreidel,” a ‘turner’. It is a four-sided top with a point on the bottom of it, so that it could spin. On each side a Hebrew letter is painted/engraved, used to determine the result of each spin. The first letter is the ‘nun,’ the Hebrew נ, and the second, ‘gimel’, is ג, the third, ‘heh’, is ה, and the fourth, ‘shin’, is ש. These letters were chosen to represent the phrase, “Nes gadol hayah sham,” A great miracle happened there!” If one is in Israel, the phrase is “Nes gadol hayah po”, “A great miracle happened here!”, and the last letter is changed to ‘peh’, פ. The game is a simple game that uses chocolate coins, called ‘gelt’, and the top, where each letter determines how much gelt is added to or taken from the pot by the spinner. It is quite fun for all, especially children, who get to eat most of the gelt, which is delicious.

For me, the whole notion of the game is very special, as my maternal Jewish lineage comes from the family “Dreyer,” who were Ashkenazi Jews who came to this country in the mid 1800’s, running from something in Germany [likely persecution], but they maintained family contact back in Germany. I have on my shelf two German books from about 1899, with hand written notes from the giver of the books, written in German, and sent to Georgia to one of my grandparents. We found the books in the “plunder room” in the old plantation house some years ago.

The name ‘Dreyer’ means either ‘turner’, or ‘leader of three’, and it stems from the same word used for ‘dreidel’. As our family is Jewish, the name was likely the former, ‘turner’, as Jews were not typically elected/appointed on a council of ‘three’ in German villages. So, the dreidel is connected to our Jewish family name, indirectly. The defiance it commemorates seems to run in our blood as well. [Incidentally, “Shuler,” the Jewish name on my father’s side, means “Torah Teacher”, which has also come to mean a lot to me. That line also came to the states just before the Civil War. But, I digress.] So, while the dreidel is an innocuous, innocent toy today, it commemorates MORAL COURAGE, which is extremely lacking in our day!

This ‘spirit’ of the Seleucids, the Greeks who conquered and persecuted Israeli Jews 2200 years ago, is alive in the U.S. today, with governors and mayors around our country using a man-modified cold virus as an excuse to make worshipping G-d illegal. And in many of those cities and states, the believers seem to be compliant. We, our ‘little sanctuary,’ however, have not once ‘observed’ or ‘obeyed’ the ridiculous, unconstitutional edicts of our governor, who violated the principles of our Republic briefly. Thankfully, in our county we have a judge who sees the illegality and despotic nature of these mandates. But, around the country, many live under absolute tyranny already. And the threat of it looms large over the rest of us, depending on whether or not TRUTH prevails in this election we await to be resolved.

We did hear of one pastor in California who reclassified his congregation as a casino so they could worship, evincing the very spirit of the Maccabees commemorated in the Dreidel.

But, for me and my house, we will NOT succumb to the tyranny nor submit to the fear-mongering of the media, as far too many already have. It is entirely possible that a civil war is brewing in this country. Godless people are being financed by the CCP, and sent here from far and wide, armed, in order to try to overthrow our REPUBLIC. The Constitution of the United States stands in the way, but is under attack from within. The times in which we live are perilous indeed [2 Tim 3], and could get worse. I said last year that we could begin to go through “Birthpangs” before the great tribulation comes upon us, and I believe we are there. How severe they get in the short term, I do not know. I think that depends, again, on the outcome of this election, which is NOT settled as yet.

We could be in another Maccabean period, where the lowly misfits who maintain right MUST ‘stand up’ with COURAGE. Or, the coming communist rebellion could be squelched in the short term, provided the right president is in office. [continuing rebellion, but its just that most people have been oblivious to the seedbed of the communist uprising that has been going on in this country for a generation] No matter which way it goes, “AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE, WE WILL SERVE יהוה !” And we will spin the Dreidel this year courageously, put our Khanukiah in the windows proudly, and SING unto Yeshua, the ROCK of our SALVATION! [“Rock of Ages” is a traditional Jewish holiday song!]

Tonight, Khanukah begins.

For someone who grew up in the deep south among protestant believers, this “Khag” makes the season very different. The “Khanukiah”, or “Khanukah Menorah”, looks like a “Jewish Symbol,” and it very much is. But, it is reflective of the very symbol of Messiah Yeshua, the only one given in scripture, THE Menorah. Yeshua “Walks among the seven Menorahs”, according to the book of Revelation. He warns the seven congregations that He will REMOVE THEIR Menorah, if they do not return to doing the Truth.

The implication is that He gave that Menorah to them, and He alone has the authority to REMOVE IT, and that He will certainly do so with persistent DISOBEDIENCE.

Another thing is that HE gives a Menorah to EACH INDIVIDUAL congregation. Even though His ‘Body’ is ONE, and there is indeed one complete Congregation, each LOCAL congregation is responsible to possess and keep its own Menorah.

This, of course, is not the coveted, pure gold Menorah of the Temple era. By the time of the Revelation, that one had been stolen from Israel and taken to Rome. This was something FAR MORE valuable: The “Ru’akh HaKodesh”, the very BREATH/SPIRIT of G-d the Creator, given to us by Yeshua as individuals, and as congregations.

The one seen in the picture above is not, in fact, a “menorah” per se, but a Khanukiah, fashioned after the Menorah. It is specifically made to have eight lights, originally. In Medieval days, in Ashkenazi communities, a mistake was made when many menorahs were smithed, and a ninth branch/light was added. The Rabbis made do, and called the ninth light the “Shammash”, or ‘servant’ candle. It is now used to light the other eight lights.

This, of course, would not have been done in Yeshua’s day, when they lit a tiny oil lamp that had eight lights only. But, the implications seem to have the finger of G-d on them.

There are seven powers of the Ru’akh listed in Isaiah 11:1-2. There are seven ‘spirits’ mentioned in Revelation 4. But, there are nine ‘gifts’ of the spirit mentioned in Brit Khadashah scriptures. There are seven feasts listed in VaYikra [Lev] 23, but there are nine on the calendar, when we include Purim and Khanukah. Purim manifests in the book of Esther, and Khanukah in Psalm 30 and John 10. Khanukah is not mentioned in any ancient, divinely inspired scriptures BUT “New Testament” scriptures. It is indeed a very “Messianic” feast.

Yeshua was conceived on the first night of Khanukah. He was born nine months later on the 1st night of Sukkot. The miracle of His coming was His CONCEPTION, and NOT His birth. He was born the way of every other man, but was conceived by way of the Ru’akh, through a woman, without the help of man, in the darkest time of year, to be born during the “Season of our Joy” in the fall.

The image above was put by Jewish people in the window, as is customary, in Nazi Germany, in defiance of the Nazi flag hanging just across the street. This invokes the courage of the Maccabees, who were farmers who defied the Greek king who had outlawed the worship of יהוה and the calling on His Name, the circumcision of Jewish children, and the study or reading of the Torah. These “Hammers”, these hard Jewish men, raised an army of misfits and miraculously defeated the Greeks, and they restored the Temple by cleansing it, and by lighting THE Menorah, which had not been lit for 3 and 1/2 years. They celebrated Sukkot “out of season”, as the “Dedication of the House” done by Solomon was done at Sukkot. The cleansed “House” had to be dedicated, and the dedication could not begin without lighting the Menorah; there was just enough oil to celebrate the feast. The oil was very hard to find and/or make, especially at that time of year, after so much oppression.

This year, as we put our “Khanukiah” in the window, I feel just as defiant: defiant of false doctrines, and of tyrannical people who would just as soon snuff us out, should the gain/retain power. These people are drunk on power, and of the notion of ‘transforming America’, of winning the ‘soul of America’. They are far worse than were the Seleucids. They are godless communists who hide behind a veil of feigned righteousness, pretending to care for ‘the people’, all the while caring only about robbing the people and creating a ‘classless’ society of two groups: those who rule, and those who serve their every whim.

But, right now, I do not defy them, but all those who are absolutely BLIND to the attempted takeover of our government. We have sat and allowed them to take over hollywood and create the perfect propaganda machine, to transform our schools into communist indoctrination houses, including k-12 and the colleges and universities, to take over the whole of media so that they could persistently drone into the heads of the masses their false narrative, and vilify anyone who disagrees or tries to expose them.

Khanukah is about LIGHT. The “Ru’akh” is the VERY Light of G-d, and it is the purveyor of TRUTH. There is only ONE G-d, and His Name is יהוה . He SENT His Son, the MAN, Yeshua from Nazareth, who was conceived at this time of year, to be born in the fall during Sukkot, “Tabernacles”, who would, after 33 and 1/2 years die on the Passover, be buried on Unleavened Bread, rise from the dead at the first Omer on the first day of the week, and send the Ru’akh to His followers in power after seven sabbaths on the feast of Weeks.

His Ru’akh convinces/convicts us of our OFFENSES against G-d and both compels AND empowers us to CHANGE, to be transformed into the image of the Messiah, to be bearers of His Menorah, His Ru’akh/Breath, to give light to the world by obeying in TRUTH. EVERYTHING that HIS WORD instructs us to do, we are to do that. What HE tells us we are not to do, through HIS WORD, we are not to do it. It is so incredibly simple. Yet MAN has come along and distorted, and even perverted His Word, in order to justify EVERY sin. “He who sins breaks the Torah. Sin IS the breaking of the Torah.” 1 John 3:4

May our country’s patrons find COURAGE to look for LIGHT, to SEE it in HIS WORD ALONE, and to RESPOND to it, to follow the NARROW path onto which His Word directs us. There truly is no other way.

Shalom, and may you have the delight of the Oil of Khanukah for all EIGHT NIGHTS, as we commemorate this time of the triumph of LIGHT over darkness.

The “Ru’akh” is the breath of G-d. It is what we call “Spirit”. It is “Kadosh,” or consecrated/holy. That means that it is not ‘used’ or ‘present’ in anything that is impure, defiled, unclean, or ‘ordinary.’ It is not a ‘personality’ or a separate ‘person’ from The Creator, but is in fact an outward ‘manifestation’ of The Creator, throughout the universe. Today, and since 2,000 years ago when Yeshua first gave this ‘gift’ to the Eleven remaining “Shlikhim”/Apostles, [Yokh 20:19-22], this ‘breath’, His Ru’akh, is given to all those who trust in G-d our Father, the Almighty Creator, because of and through belief in the Resurrection of the Son of G-d, the MAN, Yeshua the Messiah.

This ‘Breath’ is the life force, light, the Presence of the Son of G-d AND His Father, in the believer. There is also available “Ko’akh”, or “MIGHT”, from the Ru’akh, and the ability to be “Filled” by/with it. There are several occasions where Kefa [Peter] was ‘filled’ again with the Ru’akh, after He was first filled with it. There are also ‘measures’ of the Ru’akh, different measures of it that are given to believers, based on the amount of ’emunah’/believing trust that is in them. Sha’ul [Paul] instructs all believers with the imperative statement “BE filled with The Ru’akh”, in contrast to being worldly: “but be filled with HaRu’akh, ¹⁹speaking to your souls in Mizmorot, and Tehillot, and Zimrot [biblical melodies/words of the psalms] of HaRu’akh; sing with your heart to יהוה , giving ²⁰ thanks always for all men to Elohim HaAv, in the name of Adoneinu [our Master] Yeshua HaMashi’akh.” [Efisim 5]

Today, there are so many ‘claims’ as to how to ‘know’ whether one is filled, in regard to self or in regard to another. Many claim that one is ONLY ‘filled’ with the ‘holy ghost’ if one speaks in a ‘tongue’. And there are many definitions of what ‘speaking in tongues’ actually is. Instead of studying the whole of scripture to find out, they stick to two verses, most of them, in order to define it. When the scriptures, BOTH the Aramaic AND Greek-sourced texts, say plainly that these are simply ‘languages’. In Biblical context, they are exclusively EARTHLY languages. But, the way translations read, it ‘sounds’ like there are ‘otherworldly/angelic/heavenly ‘tongues’ that are separate and distinct from human language. This simply is NOT the case. The Aramaic more plainly reads: “¹Though I speak with every language among men and among Malakhim [Messengers], and have not love in my heart….” Further, there is not ONE episode where a Messenger, whether in Heaven or on Earth, speaks in any other language other than Hebrew. And all the recorded places where men ‘seem’ to speak ‘in tongues’, they are actually speaking in known languages. So, being filled with His Breath does NOT mean speaking syllabic nonsense that can only be understood by G-d or angels.

So, what DOES it mean? Let’s look at the times the scriptures actually say someone was filled with His Breath. The FIRST place anyone in scripture is seen to have been FILLED with HIS BREATH/Spirit is actually IN THE TORAH:

“….whom I have filled with the Ru’akh …. that they make Aharon’s garments to hallow him, that he may minister unto Me in the Kohen’s office.” This was a group of Isra’elites who were empowered by G-d to make garments. [Shemot 28:3] Similarly, He filled Betzalel, “I have filled him with the Ru’akh of Elohim, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship…” [Shemot 31:3, 35:31], again, to make things for the Mishkhan.

Next, we have Yehoshua filled with His Breath: “Yehoshua Bin Nun was full of the Ru’akh … ; for Moshe had laid his hands upon him;” [D’varim 34:9]

And the next person we see ‘filled’ with the Ru’akh is Yeshua Himself: “¹Now Yeshua, full of The Ru’akh HaKodesh [after His immersion], returned from the Yarden, and HaRu’akh carried Him away into the wilderness ²forty days, in order that He might be tempted by the accuser.” [Luka 4]

Some might argue that in these instances, these men were filled NOT with THE Holy Spirit, but with “a” spirit of ‘wisdom’ OR of ‘understanding’, asserting these are NOT THE “holy spirit”. These people do not understand that there is only ONE RU’AKH from Elohim! But, it is ‘divided’ into ‘powers’. Yesha-Yahu 11 is a prophecy about the “Messiah”, the one who would be ANOINTED/”mashakh” with the Breath/Ru’akh, and therefore BE “The Anointed One, Mashi’akh, Messiah. “¹“And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Yishai, and a branch [netzer, the root word of the name of the town “Nazareth”] shall grow forth out of his roots. ²And the Ru’akh  יהוה  shall rest upon him, the Ru‘akh Khokhma and Binah [wisdom and understanding], the Ru’akh Etzah and G’vorah [counsel and might] , the Ru‘akh Da’at and Yirat  יהוה  [knowledge and the Fear of  יהוה ] [Yesha-Yahu 11]. There are SEVEN ‘breaths’ or ‘spirits’ enumerated here. There are seven ‘breaths‘/spirits seen, as a Menorah, in front of the Throne in the Hitgalut [Rev 4]. This is ONE ‘spirit’, DIVIDED into several ‘powers’.

This ‘anointed’ person is also prophesied in Yesha-Yahu 61:1-2. In Luka 4, Yeshua claimed to BE this ‘anointed one’ when He started His own ministry in Natzrat by reading that scripture from the Hebrew scrolls, in His hometown Synagogue: “¹⁶And He came to Natzrat, where he had been brought up; and He entered the Beit K’nesset on Yom HaShabbat, as was His custom, and stood up to read.  ¹⁷And the book of Yesha-Yahu HaNavi was given to Him. And Yeshua opened the book and found the place where it is written, ¹⁸“The Ru’akh of Adonai  יהוה  is upon me; because of this He has anointed me to declare good news to the poor; and He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, and to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind; to strengthen with forgiveness those who are oppressed, ¹⁹and to declare the year of the favor of  יהוה .” 

So, we can infer from this passage that being FILLED with the Ru’akh would mean that we would “declare the good news,” “heal the brokenhearted”, and PROCLAIM LIBERTY to captives”, “declare/give sight to the blind”, and ‘forgiveness to the oppressed,” and to declare the” ‘favor’ of יהוה.” This is certainly what happened RIGHT AFTER the 500 were ‘filled’, and Kefa himself ‘filled with the Ru’akh’, began to do these exact things. After they ALL spoke what the Ru’akh gave them to say, GOOD NEWS, in the known languages of the men who were present there with them from all over the world, Kefa stood up and declared the GOOD NEWS, that the MAN from Natzrat had come, and had been ANOINTED, and had been executed, but G-d had RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, and that forgiveness of sins was available to all who trusted, thus declaring the time of the FAVOR of יהוה was upon mankind. He did all the things Yeshua said it meant to be ‘anointed’, FILLED.

And of course, the ‘signs’ of the Ru’akh are seen as ‘fruits’, and may be the very things that give someone who is genuinely ‘filled’ with His Breath the credibility they need in order to be ‘heard’ when they DO what the Ru’akh anoints us to do. These fruits are listed in one place as: “love, joy, shalom, patience of spirit, gentleness, goodness of heart, absolute trust, ²³meekness, enduring tolerance.” Perhaps, these are just the ‘abiding presence’ of our G-d in us, and being ‘filled’ is done on the occasions we are USED by Him to ‘demonstrate’ His Khesed and Khen [compassion and grace] by declaring what we are to declare. That is how it appears in scripture.

So, if it is possible that so many misunderstand what it means to be ‘filled,’ is it also possible that we do know really know ‘how’ actually to ‘be filled,’ since we are given the Biblical imperative to do so: “[you] BE filled with the Ru’akh!”. There are so many rites and rituals people have today to try to accomplish this, and so many resultant ‘sign’s’ that contradict what the scriptures say, that we may be missing the simple truth of ‘how’ just to BE filled with HIS BREATH.

In the imperative we looked at, “but be filled with HaRu’akh, ¹⁹speaking to your souls in Mizmorot, and Tehillot, and Zimrot [biblical melodies/words of the psalms] of HaRu’akh; sing with your heart to יהוה , giving ²⁰ thanks always for all men to Elohim HaAv, in the name of Adoneinu [our Master] Yeshua HaMashi’akh” we saw the followup, which may just be part of the ‘how’ to BE filled: speaking to one’s own soul, as did David, “Bless יהוה , O MY SOUL!” “Mizmorot, Tehillot, and Zimrot” are different categories of PSALMS, which are PRAYERS! Prayers BREATHED to David the King and others BY THE RU’AKH! Singing in one’s HEART… this is not just ‘singing’, but ‘SINGING’ from the motor of our humanity! Might this be part of what Sha’ul meant when he told Timothy: “⁶For this reason I remind you to stir up the gift of Elohim which is in you by smikha from my hands.” [2 Tim 1] “GIVING THANKS always”, which many of the Psalms do for us so eloquently….

The Ru’akh is a manifestation of Yeshua, and of His Father, and is thus our ‘bread of LIFE’. To be FILLED with His Bread, how do we ‘consume’ it? BY THE WORD OF G-D, by READING and ‘chewing’ for UNDERSTANDING, to TAKE IT INTO OUR SOULS. So that by IT we will be TRANSFORMED in our minds. Sha’ul equates the TORAH, which is the FOUNDATION of the WORD OF G-D, and the primary words Yeshua taught from, fought the devil with, and DECLARED, with THE RU’AKH! “For we know that the Torah is of the Ru’akh!” [Rom 7:14] HIS TORAH AGREES WITH HIS RU’AKH. HIS RU’AKH AGREES WITH HIS TORAH!

I will close by saying that Melekh David, also filled with the Ru’akh, by which he wrote our prayer book, gave us a deep look at how His Torah is so relevant as HIS WORD, HIS BREATH, HIS BREAD, HIS LIFE. Tehillah 119 raves about the foundation of His Word, equating The Torah with HIS WORD MANY TIMES OVER. And, His Word became A Body, the Man, Yeshua the Messiah, risen from the dead.

⁴¹Vav. Let Your mercies also come unto me, O  יהוה , even Your Salvation [Yeshua], according to Your word; ⁴²That I may have an answer for him that taunts me; for I trust in Your word. ⁴³And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth; for I hope in Your ordinances; ⁴⁴So shall I observe Your Torah continually forever and ever; ⁴⁵And I will walk at ease, for I have sought Your precepts; ⁴⁶I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings, and will not be ashamed. ⁴⁷And I will delight myself in Your Mitzvot, which I have loved. ⁴⁸I will lift up my hands also unto Your Mitzvot, which I have loved; and I will meditate in Your statutes. 

Khag Khanukah is coming! And we are beginning our preparations.

This year has been SOOOOO different from any other year, for everyone, I’m certain.

My wife and I both learned later in life we were Jewish, yet both of us grew up in traditional, protestant homes. And we observed the ‘feasts’ that everyone else does at this time of year for the first half of our lives. But, some twenty-seven years ago, we began to bow out, because of a desire in us to do what Yeshua did, to live our lives the way the Son of G-d lived His.

But, before that, when I first turned back to G-d in my early twenties, after having wandered aimlessly for eight years [14 years to 22 years old], my love for this season had not abated. I was on board the U.S.S. Ohio, SSBN 726(G), a Trident Ballistic Missile submarine. It was an extremely long patrol, that began in the fall of that year, and took us up to mid-December. In the middle of that patrol, I said the first truly sincere prayer to G-d my Father in my forward, top bunk in bunk-room 5. “Father, I want to know what Yeshua [I still called Him by His English name then] would say to me if He were standing here.” And I began to read Matai [Matthew] 5 through 7. I don’t quite know why/how I turned there, but I remember those first words, what most call the ‘beatitudes’, piercing my heart, showing me how I was none of those things then. Then, how the rest of those chapters were clearly Yeshua teaching the scriptures more ‘clearly’. And I began, midway through that long, cold-war patrol, to devour the rest of scriptures.

Because I was a health nut already, when I read Leviticus 11, I decided then that G-d must know better about what ‘food’ is than man, and I began to eat a simply kosher life. I stopped eating pork, shrimp, and the other meats that He said were not ‘food’.

But, as I said, that season was upon us. Our captain had us getting the ship ready for a big inspection of the engineering spaces. A torpedoman, named Webster, and I were assigned to taking out the screws in all the deck plates in Engineering middle-level, scrubbing them with wire brushes, and putting them back in with the screw head aligned ‘fore and aft’ with the ship. The monotony of it had us bored, down on our hands and knees undoing, scrubbing, and fighting with screws, and we began to sing carols. All of them. It put me in such a mood that I wrote one myself. And it is beautiful. I taught it to my new wife a few years later. But, all the while, there was this realization that Yeshua never would have known anything about this day. And, there was the realization that He could not have been born at this time of year, according simply to scripture, which had recently become the anchor of my life, my ‘guidance system’.

The further I delved into the scriptures, the less I saw of the customs I had grown up in, with the exception that certain of those customs were forbidden in scriptures, and the Jewish people had ‘tried them on for size,’ and had been sorely punished for them. Many of the customs of the season were in ancient Israel, but they just went by different names; Hebrew versions of the same customs and deities.

Right after I got off the boat, G-d began to do actual miracles in my life. But, to me, in retrospect, the biggest thing HE did in my life at that time, was actually a very tiny seed. Just a month or so after having left the boat, I was driving to Seattle on Highway 16  [our base was in Bangor, Washington]. My Navy buddy, Dave, who served on the U.S.S. Michigan, had just passed me on the right, and introduced me to his fiancé as we were driving down the road. I turned the radio back up after that conversation through our windows, and pushed the seek button. I was near Gig Harbor, Washington. The first radio station that the receiver found was out of Tacoma, and it was playing Hebrew-sounding music. I had, for some reason, always been drawn to Jewish music and tradition. I listened to that song play out, and then a speaker began to speak, and I heard him say “Yeshua”. Another song came on, and that name was throughout the Hebrew song. My heart leaped inside of me, and I didn’t even know why.

Shortly after that, I got orders to shore duty in Georgia, which was unheard of, after having only done three of the seven to eight patrols I was supposed to make. I did not have to re-enlist for that shore duty because of a clerical error that happened two years before! The Navy messed up when I finished “A-school”, and because of their trying to fix that error, they made ANOTHER clerical error, and I got shore duty for only two years, without having to extend for two more years, like so many others had to do.

I experienced a ‘vision’ and a ‘prophecy’ for the first time just before I transferred, after someone took vengeance on me. I did not realize what was going on, but the short of it is, the Creator used me to rescue a young sailor, to bring him to Messiah instead of killing himself, after I ‘saw’ his whole life in my mind, and spoke to him about it. There is an old post on here from about a year ago that tells this story, if I remember right.

After settling down in Georgia, I ran across a teacher from Port Arthur, Texas, teaching about Rosh HaShanah” and how it models the return of Messiah. I somehow ended up in a “Messianic Synagogue”, a startup in Jacksonville, Florida. And my pursuit of a pure, “Messiah-like” walk took root that Shabbat.

Because I began to ‘see’ how the ‘feasts’ that G-d created were ALL pointing to Messiah’s first AND second comings, I began to see how the feasts that catholics created and protestants inherited from catholics all pointed AWAY from Him, in spite of the great efforts of the faithful to ‘try’ to ‘keep christ in x-mas’. What they were [and are] in fact TRYING to do is “PUT MESSIAH in x-mas”. I realized HE had never been ‘in’ that feast, nor any other that the Catholic church had given us.

It is for THIS reason that I began to change my life. NOT for a hatred of ‘all things christian’, but for a LOVE of ALL THINGS BIBLE. G-d had given His people seven yearly feasts that modeled, FOR ALL PEOPLE, His Son’s first AND second comings, His WHOLE ministry of Salvation to mankind. This is what Yeshua meant when I read in Mat 5:17-19 that He said “I did not come to abrogate the Torah, but to confirm/fulfill it”. Yeshua has yet to fulfill the last three of the seven feasts. There is more to do.

I won’t go into all the details of the transition from a traditionally protestant life to a traditional life in Messiah Yeshua. What I wanted to convey this year about Khanukah is that it is a symbol of “The Tree of Life”.

The Menorah is the TREE OF LIFE. It is alluded to in Genesis 2:9. It is spoken of as The Torah in Proverbs 3:16-18. It is manifested in Yeshua, when He was executed on an OLIVE TREE, after having carried a beam up the hill. He was ‘nailed to the TREE‘. [ 1 Peter 2:24, Acts 5:30, 10:29].

The Menorah’s seven lamps are filled with OLIVE OIL. Yeshua was ANOINTED [Messiah] with the Ru’akh of the Creator, and the ‘oil’ is what was used to ANOINT kings and priests, and Messiah. He hung on an OLIVE TREE, on the Mt. of Olives.  When we come to the base of that TREE, where Messiah died, we receive LIFE.  Incidentally, while hanging on the tree, Yeshua quoted Psalm 22, and just a few verses from what He quoted [vs 2] while hanging there have these words: “I am a tola’at, and not a man”. A ‘tola’at’ is a particular worm born white. It is red, however, ‘scarlet’, and the female bores itself into an olive tree and bears its young; when she does, she dies, and her blood spills onto her young and turns them scarlet. They are ‘washed’ in her blood.

The “khanukiah”, what most people call a “Channukah Menorah”, is a lamp very similar to the Menorah. During the Maccabean revolt in 165 B.C., the Maccabees, 12 Jewish brothers, overthrew the Greeks. The Greeks had come into Israel, they had sacked the Temple, sacrificed a pig, erected a statue of Zeus, and Antiochus Epiphanes, their king, the ‘fourth king’ of the Book of Daniel, stood in the Temple and declared himself to be god. He forbade the declaration of the Name יהוה , circumcision, the teaching of the Torah, and speaking Hebrew.  Judah Maccabee [The Hammer] and his sons revolted. They miraculously won the war. It was the 25th Day of the NINTH [Biblical] MONTH, the ‘tenth’ month of the Roman/Greek calendar. The Maccabees and Israel decided to hold a “DEDICATION [ חֲנֻכָּה‎ / khanukah ] OF THE HOUSE” [Psalm 30], in much the same way Moshe and Shlomo had, and Ezra [Exodus 40, 2 Chron 5-7, Ezra 6]. Only this time, not in the first or seventh months, but the ninth. “Out of season”.

The Menorah has to be lit first, before any sacrifices can go on. [Ex 40:3]. Similarly, we must confess faith in Yeshua, who hung on the Tree, before we have anything to offer G-d in truth.

After the dedication of the house during the time of the Maccabees, a tradition was born, that of lighting a lamp with EIGHT LIGHTS.  Because they celebrated SUKKOT, the EIGHT DAY FEAST of G-d, “Out of Season”, to DEDICATE the House of G-d again, after it had lain dormant and polluted for three and a half years, during which time keeping the faith of G-d had been illegal.

The FIRST CENTURY HISTORIAN, Josephus, writes of this. He was a Jewish priest as well:

“Now Judah celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon; but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honored God, and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when, after a long time of intermission, they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival.”

Today, small “Khanukah Lamps” with eight lights have been found in Israel that date from the first century.

This was the darkest time of the year. This was a very dark time in the History of Israel. It was a mere 162 years before Yeshua’s birth. 162 years after the Menorah was lit for Sukkot in ‘december’, Yeshua was CONCEIVED.

It is His CONCEPTION that is the miracle! Yeshua, the LIGHT OF G-D, was announced to Miryam by Gavri’el on the first night of Khanukah! Yokhanan HaMatbil [John the Immerser] had been conceived right after his father’s first two weeks of yearly service in the Temple, when he burned the incense in the “Order of Avi-Yah”.  That order was the EIGHTH ORDER of the priests [1 Chron 29]. They were divided into 24 ‘orders’, to serve for two weeks out of the year in the Temple. The other weeks that make up the year are the FEASTS, when ALL orders served. But, this was HIS ORDER serving.

Zekhar-Yah returned home after HIS service, and Elisheva CONCEIVED. this was June. We know by when the order of Avi-Yah served. SIX MONTHS LATER Yeshua was conceived, and Miryam went and visited her cousin Elisheva, and Yokhanan ‘felt’ Yeshua nearby. He was warmed by His light! Yokhanan had the Ru’akh during his time in the womb, as did Yeshua. They ‘knew’ each other. Six months after Zekhar-Yah left and Yokhanan was conceived was Khanukah. Yeshua was conceived at this time of year, in the WOMB of a VIRGIN, MIRACULOUSLY, the LIGHT of G-d was lit in human flesh!

Thirty-three and a half years later, Yeshua hung on the tree during Pesakh [Passover], the FIRST of the SEVEN FEASTS. He began lighting each lamp of the Menorah of prophecy. He lit Pesakh’s first lamp of the Menorah by dying on the tree. He lit the second lamp of Matzot by being put in the grave [Matzot is “Unleavened Bread”, that is baked, after the dough is pierced]; he lit the third lamp of the First Omer of Bikkurim by rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven, being ‘lifted up’ as the first fruits to G-d; he lit the fourth lamp by sending the Ru’akh, “Ko’akh”, power from On High, on Shavu’ot, the SEVEN WEEK festival that started on the First Omer.

He has not yet fulfilled the remaining three feasts: Yom Teru’ah [Rosh HaShanah], Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. He will, when He calls away His Bride, disciplines the Jewish People [causing them to return to G-d through Him], and returns to earth to JUDGE THE WICKED.

So, why are there NINE lamps now on the Khanuki’ah? Our Jewish people cannot help but declare Yeshua in their customs! Even ones they have created LONG AFTER Messiah was sent to Israel! In the middle ages, some Ashkenazi Jews ordered Khanuki’ah “lamps” with EIGHT BRANCHES. But, perhaps their smith was a gentile? Somehow, the NINTH LAMP was added to them by accident. So, the Rabbis decided simply to add a NINTH LIGHT to the customary eight, and called it the “Shammash“, the “Servant Candle”. It would be used to light all the other eight lights.

Khanukah is a Sukkot held out of season. It is an EIGHTH FEAST. AFTER the original Maccabean dedication [khanukah], the traditional eight lamps were lit to commemorate the season. Almost 1,000 years later, a NINTH lamp was added quite by accident.

There are actually NINE celebrations in the scriptures. Chronologically, according to TIME, they are the first seven already named, then, two and a half months after the seventh one, SUKKOT, ANOTHER Sukkot is held in the ninth month, called Khanukah. Then, three months later, in the 12th month, “Purim” is held, where we celebrate Israel being saved from destruction by a BRIDE QUEEN hidden away in the palace.

The Khanuki’ah, then, is indeed a prophetic picture of ALL the celebrations mentioned in Scripture. Yeshua went to Jerusalem during “Khanukah”, and while there, he preached about the false shepherd, while Antiochus Epiphanes would have been on the minds of Jews.

²²It was Khag Khanukah [Feast of Dedication] at Yerushalayim, and it was winter.  ²³And Yeshua was walking in the Heikhal in Shlomo’s porch.  ²⁴Then the Y’hudim surrounded Him and said to Him, “How long do you vex our soul with uncertainty? If you are the Mashi’akh [Anointed], tell us openly.”  ²⁵Yeshua answered, saying to them, “I have told you, but you do not trust; yet the works which I do in the name of Avi [My Father] testify of me.  ²⁶But you do not trust, because you are not of my sheep, just as I told you.  ²⁷My own sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; ²⁸and I give to them Khayei Olam [Eternal Life]; and they will never perish, and no man will snatch them from my hands.  ²⁹For Avi who gave them to me is greater than all; and no man can snatch anything from my Father’s hand.  ³⁰I and Avi are unified.”  ³¹Then the Y’hudim again took up stones to stone Him.  ³²Yeshua said to them, “I have shown you many good works from Avi; for which one of them do you stone me?”  ³³The Y’hudim said to Him, “It is not because of the good works that we stone you, but because you blaspheme; for while you are only a man, you make yourself Elohim.”  ³⁴Yeshua said to them, “Is it not so written in your Torah, “I said, you are elohim [gods]?”  ³⁵If he called them gods because the D’var HaElohim [Word of God] was with them, and the scripture cannot be broken,  ³⁶why to the one whom HaAv [The Father] consecrated and sent to the world, do you say, ‘You blaspheme,’ just because I said to you, ‘I am Ben HaElohim.’ [The Son of God]  ³⁷If I am not doing the works of Avi, do not believe me.  ³⁸But if I am doing them, even though you do not trust in me, trust in the works, so that you may know and believe that Avi is in me, and I am in Avi.”  

³⁹And they wanted again to seize Him; but He escaped from their hands.  ⁴⁰And He went away to the Yarden crossing, to the place where Yokhanan was, where He first immersed; and He remained there. 

Yeshua returned, after again declaring Himself to be the Son of G-d, to the place where He had been declared the Son of G-d BY G-D THE FATHER, on the day He became THE ANOINTED, and began declaring ETERNAL LIFE to Israel. He did THIS AT KHANUKAH!

That is why this season has so overshadowed the other feast in our lives during this time of year. G-d forbade Israel to adopt the religious practices of those around them. He loathed the fact that they mixed the worship of Ba’al and Asherah with His worship. That was the sin of Jezebel. She polluted Israel’s worship, through the king of Israel. The same happened to “christianity”, the faith that was created by MIXING the Roman version of Ba’al and Asherah with Messianic faith, when x-mas was CREATED as a ‘christian’ holiday, some three-hundred years AFTER the Jews had given the gospel to the world.

Yeshua was NOT born at this time; he was conceived. He was born NINE MONTHS LATER, during SUKKOT! In a Sukkah! He was circumcised on the EIGHTH DAY of His life, the EIGHTH FESTIVITY of Sukkot, when Israel “Rejoices in the Torah”.

G-d is calling ALL of HIS sheep back into the Sheepfold of Yisra’el. Can you hear HIS VOICE? Or, are you content to be mixing His faith with the world. Are you trying to stuff your walk with Yeshua somewhere were He NEVER walked?

Do you KNOW Yeshua? If not, know this: He WANTS to know you! He died on the tree 2,000 years ago, to rescue EVERY ONE of us from sin. Return to G-d, and DO GOOD. Do what GOD says to do with your life, because you LOVE Him who first loved you!